Scientific Annals of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iaşi. New Series SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK Section

ANCESTRY AND NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION IN ROMANIA

HORATIU RUSU — 2021-12-29

This paper examines the relation between the ethnic origin and the strength of national identification, as emotional attachment to Romania. Despite there are many nationalism studies, not enough are exploring empirical data while questioning ethno-nationalist conceptions in and about Romania. Considering the primordialist perspectives, the roots of the nation are of ethnic origin, therefore a stronger relation should be expected between those of Romanian ethnic background and their national identifications, as compared to national identifications of people that ascribe a different or mixed ethnic origin. By running a multivariate analysis on the Romanian ESS9 wave, the article finds clues of equal degrees of identification with Romania among all these categories of people. Results do not deny connections between ancestry and national identification. The findings rather point out that in terms of emotional attachment, Romanians, Hungarians, Roma, and other citizens declaring a different common ancestry for all ancestors or a mixed ancestry, have similar levels of identification with the country.

IDENTITY CHANGES IN CRISIS SITUATIONS. ANXIETY, FRUSTRATION AND ANGUISH DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ANTONIO SANDU — 2021-12-29

In this article, a review of the socio-anthropological literature on the impact of pandemics on the mental health of the population is made. Also, the way this pandemic affects the construction of identity of the population affected by pandemic is taken into discussion. The historical-anthropological perspective refers to the plague epidemic that affected Europe during the Middle Ages, to its psychological impact from the perspective of the individual's relationship with otherness - as a possible source of danger. The article presents a series of similarities and differences from the perspective of anguish, anxiety and frustration caused to the population by the plague pandemic and the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the results of studies published during 2020 in journals indexed in Web of Science, dedicated to the impact of the pandemic. of Coronavirus on the mental health of the population. The research focused on several dimensions of the social construction process of the Covid-19 pandemic, among which we mention: information on the pandemic, restrictions imposed by the authorities as elements of social

(re)construction of the limit of the human condition, medicalization of the social life and the perception of the contemporary society as a risk society. In this article we will refer exclusively to the results aimed at changes in the identity construction of people affected by the pandemic.

ESCAPING FROM SELF” AND REBUILDING IDENTITY

NICU GAVRILUŢĂ — 2021-12-29

This article proposes an understanding of the issue of personal / social identity as the result of binary choices such as yes or no. They make up a fractal complex of our own lives. Depending on these choices, each of us builds and rebuilds our life, but also our own identity. Some of the hypostases of our identity are quantifiable and captured by empirical sociological analyzes. I illustrated the idea with the results of field sociological research on European identity from 2015-1017. This classic identity - focused on social representations of country, language, religion, family and national culture - is reconfigured as a result of „self-escape” (David Le Breton) and the magic of new technologies. The escape into the white space of the virtual world is often accompanied by the reconfiguration of otherness by identifying with social otherness in the guise of radical religious movements or classical religious denominations. To all these challenges and problems that appeared as a result of the recomposition of the identity, we also proposed a series of solutions.

“I AM LARGE, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES”: IDENTITY, ALTERITY AND THE TRANSITIONAL SELF

GABRIELA IOANA MOCAN — 2021-12-29

What is identity and what makes us be who we are? The concept of identity has changed considerably over the past century, the subject finding itself at the intersection of nation, gender, the rise of multiculturalism and colonial history. While we are born with no self- awareness and our first point of reference is the world outside us, navigating existence involves a constant self-analysis and the realisation that any attempt at defining ourselves will result in newer interrogations. Aiming to provide some guidance to this relentless quest by introducing few of the key concepts used in identity research, the present paper addresses the fluidity of the self by focusing on the identity-alterity nexus and by prioritising the ‘becoming’ over the ‘being’. Identity is, thus, always shifting and never a given; it is a transitional process oscillating between self-identification and identification made by the others, a puzzle whose interlocked pieces can be moved around and change in meaning.

DIGITAL IDENTITY

CRISTINA GAVRILUŢĂ — 2021-12-29

The text aims to bring forward a topical issue, that of digital identity. Based on a series of international discussions (Davos Forum, EU) but also in the context of recent announcements in the field of new technologies (the announcement made by M. Zuckerberg on the metaverse), I proposed a socio-anthropological approach of the identity phenomenon today. At least in the documents consulted, the classic social identity is doubled by a virtual social identity and the latter has different names: digital wallet, Good Health Pass, global identity. From a phenomenological perspective and placed in the context of the distinction between utopia and heterotopia (M. Foucault) we can say that digital identity is revealed to us as a heterotopic identity that places our entire system of perception and identity construction in a new paradigm.

TWO VISIONS OF IDENTITY: FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY AND VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV

SERGEI NIZHNIKOV — 2021-12-29

In Russian thought of the second part of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) are two prevailing figures. However, they had different approaches to interpreting the correlations between the universal and the individual, the global (panhuman) and the universal (all-human). These approaches stem from their different visions of identity.

ALTERITY, RECOGNITION AND THE DIALOGICAL PRINCIPLE

MENDO CASTRO-HENRIQUES — 2021-12-29

The author presents the dialogical principle I am constituted through Thou as a tool to understand the double edge concept of identity, as sketched by Zygmunt Bauman whom he considers an enlightened sceptic. He pays special attention to the concept of recognition or acknowledgment, as a meeting point of the universal and the unique, for the building of relational and dynamic identities in post-modern societies. Contemporary authors such as Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig, or Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine and St John Climacus, and other traditions, consider the I and Thou relationship as the fundamental standpoint for man’s existence; as such, we may follow their ideas as a reference for intercultural and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world.

REONTOLOGIZATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE LIQUID AND GLOBAL WORLD

IOAN DURA — 2021-12-29

In this article, I intend to highlight the fact that the realities that are being recorded at the morphological level of contemporary societies (the phenomenon of migration, wars, the dynamics of mobility and communication, the economic pace, the health crisis generated by Covid-19) are bringing to the fore the redefinition of religious identity. What is undeniably clear is that Western societies have become an ethnic and religious mosaic, a diversity that requires specific regulations in terms of norms in order to avoid conflict. However, this ethno-religious diversity also calls for an interpretation of the relationship between identities. The aim of my analysis is to argue as to whether or not religious identity is an inflexible, immobile reality, static in its representativeness towards and in relation to other identities representing different religious cultures. In this respect, I will insist on the role that migration plays in the construction of religious identity. Is religious identity decomposing in the context of the liquid flow of global society? Are the boundaries of such an identity, as structures of individual, social, cultural validation, desubstantiated in the daily experience of religious diversity and in the dynamics of current societal transformations?

WHEN RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE BUILDS IDENTITY

NICUȘOR NACU — 2021-12-29

Starting from the writings of Félicité de la Mennais, the article aims to analyze religious indifference as an important coordinate of the current identity profile. Finding its roots in the skepticism of humanistic thinking and in the interpretive approaches that try to elaborate rational explanations, religious indifference is, in the end, the consequence of a life choice. It can manifest itself in radical forms and in this sense, we have identified fundamentalist indifference as an expression of an intellectual manifestation that is imposed on society in an ideological way based on an artificial dichotomy between sacred and profane. All this offers a new, objectifying paradigm within which the definition of homo religious is built. Thus, religious difference accumulates a series of behaviors that subscribe to the centrality of personal experience.

INDIAN CHRISTIAN IDENTITY: RELIGIO-CULTURAL INTERACTION TO MINORITY FRAMING

PATRICK GNANAPRAGASAM — 2021-12-29

Indian Christianity has been an interactive community, living out its faith and traditions in an ambience of spontaneity. It implied moments and dynamics of acceptance, rejections, hesitations, and criticism from the outside others, even while Indian Christianity itself involved in dynamics of exclusions and inclusions towards others. All these religio-cultural dynamics took place in a vein of spontaneity, interactivity, and creativity. However, in the recent past, it has been made to become self-conscious of its identity as the majority’s ‘other’ through a process of ‘minority framing’. From being an ancient religious community, which went about its life and activities in an ambience of freedom, the Indian Christian community is now made to become a ‘communally conscious minority’, concerned about its vulnerable communal identity. This essay narrates the contours of the changes.

RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES IN LIQUID MODERNITY: POSTISLAM

MOHAMED BEN MUSTAPHA — 2021-12-29

Postislam has been regarded as a new concept in need of a dire delineation. Basically, a Postislamic tendency is a paradigm of thought (philosophical, scientific, mystical, religious, theological2, etc.) that excessively transcends at least one of the three sources of Islam’s juridical Canons (i.e. Quran, Sunna, Ijma’ or consensus of Scholars). This paper provides a definition for the founding principles of Postislam. It shall examine this concept from a generic point of view. It will equally suggest a constellation of some central problems structuring an emergent system: Postislam. This tendency is positively inherent „in potentiality” (dunamis), in an Aristotelian sense, according to multiple forms of enunciations and semantic variations throughout the history of theology as well as the history of philosophy, theology, Islamic mystique and science. Postislam represents a potentiality devoid of a preexisting concept within Islam; it is an unnamed historical tenant, disseminated throughout a complex combination of theological and mystical first faltering steps.

I will examine some of these instantiations, expressed essentially in Islamic theology (Avicenna’s Metaphysics of Emanation) and mystical tradition (i.e. Sufism in a general acceptance, and the nodal case of Al-Hallâj, in particular). Then, by isolating the essence of Islam’s theological mystique (the structural duality between Sharī’a and Haqīqa, Law and Truth), in order to construct a synthetic deconstruction identified to the concept of Postislam as pure mysticism, or the possibility a of a permanent theophany, indefinitely experienced throughout ecstatic theopathy. We ought to, at this step, enunciate divers axioms based on this concept. As a sequel, I will discuss further philosophical counterpoints and limits to this construction.

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN A FLUID PANDEMIC CONTEXT. MEASURING ACADEMIC WORRIES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: INITIAL VALIDATION OF A SCALE

ALEXANDRU-COSMIN APOSTOL — 2021-12-29

The aim of the paper is to test the validity and highlight the psychometric properties of a scale about the academic worries of students in the pandemic context (Pandemic Academic Worries among University Students scale - PAWAUS scale), following a quantitative research study consisting of a self-administered questionnaire within a university in north-eastern Romania in May 2021. The sample comprised 282 undergraduate and master students in the Social Work field. The factor analysis performed shows an initial validity of the PAWAUS scale. Generally, the findings of this study indicate that the students adapted rapidly and (relatively) fluidly to the new context but reported worries related to their academic and professional path. The premise from which we started was the following: the Social Work students follow, in the pandemic context, a speciality where the combination of theoretical knowledge with practical skills even from the undergraduate period is essential, which may contribute to the formation of their professional identity. The second objective of the paper consisted of analysing the emotional impact of the pandemic among the Social Work students using a recently- developed tool – PEIS (Ballou et al., 2020). Through the specific analysis of the relationship between the two scales, we have identified that the worries of the Social Work students are influenced significantly by the emotional impact generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

IDENTITIES AND CRISES. THE SOCIAL WORKER, A PROFESSIONAL OF SOCIAL INTERVENTION

CARMEN PALAGHIA — 2021-12-29

The global crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19 disease is a difficult period for humanity, apart from other catastrophes, such as floods, fires, the refugees' conditions etc. The social effects are immediate, such as: major changes in people's relationships, lifestyle and the quality of their lives. Prolonged isolation becomes extremely stressful to people and it can reach serious mental illnesses .The mass media points out that in a pandemic, many parents turn to counselling sessions because their children have became neurotic. The online courses have a major effect on pupils' psyche, with the risk of emotional disturbances that may occur due to overexposure to the screen, isolation, repressed emotions and not discussing with parents or friends. This article reveals effective interventions of the school social worker in order to get out of the crisis.

IDENTITY AND GENDER EQUALITY IN ROMANIA A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE 2030 AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

CIPRIAN IFTIMOAEI — 2021-12-29

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the paradigm in which international organizations, UN member states, national, regional and local authorities act together to solve the concrete problems facing the world today. Although women and girls represent more than half of the world's population, they do not enjoy the same rights and freedom everywhere. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 of the 2030 Agenda proposes to empower women by promoting equal opportunities for women and men around the world, facilitating women's access to education, training and careers, ensuring participation in political decision-making and in the management positions of companies, providing solutions to accommodate the time spent for childcare and family with the work schedule, preventing and combating all forms of violence against girls and women, improving their access to health and reproductive services. Starting from the targets and indicators associated with SDG 5, this study proposes a quantitative assessment of the quality of life of women in Romania. In this regard, we used data provided by Eurostat, the National Institute of Statistics, the National Commission for Strategy and Forecasting, as well as data from the reports of the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men and the European Institute for Gender Equality. To verify the working hypotheses (research questions) we used descriptive statistical analysis with SPSS, Pearson correlation and linear regression processed with the XLSTAT program, graphical representation techniques with PHILCARTO software.

„HOMO MAGICUS” – A SOCIOANTHROPOLOGICAL READING OF THE WORLD

OTILIA HUZUM — 2021-12-29

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HYPOSTASES OF OTHERNESS AND SOCIAL SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE CHURCH

ILARION MÂŢĂ — 2021-12-29

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SOCIAL PHENOMENA IN CULTURAL DIALOGUES

COSTEL MARIAN DALBAN — 2021-12-29

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