The present paper examines some of the tensions, problems and chal¬lenges associated with claims for equality of opportunity (the fairness argument). The introductory part identifies three separate forms of jus¬tification for public education, including the argument associated with equality of opportunity. Part II examines in detail two questions that reveal part of the anatomy of equality of opportunity: (1) what an op¬portunity is, and (2) when individuals’ opportunities are equal. This is followed by a presentation of the two basic principles of equality of op¬portunity: (1) the principle of non-discrimination, and (2) the “levelling the playing field” principle. The next part takes up the multiculturalist hypothesis advanced by minority groups for the accommodation and recognition of cultural diversity. This is followed by the identification of a set of claims comprising the “fairness argument”. The last section focuses on the “currency problem” associated with cultural diversity as a form of “unfair disadvantage”. Part V examines two of the major shortcomings associated with the multicultural conception of equality of opportunity, while the concluding part discusses some of the ques¬tions that must be answered by any conception of equal opportunities.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2948439
This article considers one of the key recommendations of MacBride report on democratization of communication and information in the context of changed conditions of post-national European public. The notion of post-national public is defined as an ambiguous (utopian) constitution of an integrated supranational sphere of European political and cultural citizenship on the one hand, and the (actual) globalized public of individualized consumers on the other. Both aspects form an interrelated and co-dependent structure which frames the future of media democracy in relation to traditional hegemonic European public cultures. Amidst these, new transnational citizenship spaces are emerging which, by virtue of temporary, situated and contingent belongings to two or more publics, further fragment the post-national constellation. The reorganization of modern national media scapes presents a major challenge for theory of democratic communication and information and concerns a rethinking of divisions such as inclusive and exclusive deliberation, minorities and hegemonic majority, homogeneous, dialogic and poly-vocal communication. The key argument in this paper is that transnationalization and postnational disposition brings a deconstruction of semantic coherence of key concepts of media democracy; and that democratization of information irrevocably depends on the power to mobilize, instead of group will, individual desires for emancipation and utopian futures.
COBISS.SI-ID: 59161698
In this article, the phenomenon of the border between the EU and states along the Mediterranean Sea is discussed. The refugee crisis has started the process of transforming the abstract-formal border into a concrete-political one. These borders were drawn by western powers and have therefore never existed in the form demanded by the ontology of the border, i.e. as the relation of absolute otherness. On the contrary, moral and political imperialism was present (substituting the military one) and breaching the border continues to be an easy act. The escalation of the refugee crisis has forced the EU to change the discourse to confront with it. The rhetoric of human rights as a universal concept has been replaced by a particular concept of interest. With this shift, the EU's concrete-political borders along the Mediterranean Sea are constituted which, despite the formal abandonment of the colonial tradition, were never recognised. The result will not be the closing up of the EU; on the contrary, the conditions for the formation of solid relationships between the states of North Africa and the Middle East will emerge. Only the full recognition of subjectivity to these states can contribute to solving the refugee crisis at its origin.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539005380
Cinema played an important role in the creation of media culture and in the mediatisation processes in the societies of the 20th century. In this paper, I use the cultural-historical approach and Geertz's thick description method to analyse cinema-going practices and audiences' ritual uses of cinema in Slovenia. Around 180 interviews with cinemagoers helped me to collect their memories of cinema-going habits to find out how the mediatisation of society is intertwined with ritualised human action. In its early and in its golden years, cinema was closely connected with sociability and functioned as an important social and leisure space for the emerging mass audience. With the examples from the Slovenian society until the 1970s I illustrate how ritualisation had been an integral part of mediatisation processes when cinema started to cultivate and disseminate specific media dispositions through the ritual practices.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33819997
The paper analyses reporting about the "refugee crisis" in Slovenia's three main daily newspapers Delo, Dnevnik and Večer in the first weeks of mass migrations through the country that were named "the first and the second wave of refugees" by the journalists. The analysis focuses on the question of framing and on the dominant journalistic conventions through which objectivity is performed. The paper tries to reflect on the paradox in reporting these issues where the problem is dominantly framed in terms of humanitarian crisis on the explicit level and rarely as a security issue but on the connotative level factism and episodic framing suggest another reading of the problem that supports the fear of the imigrants. What is more, examples of more engaged reporting can be found where archetypal figures of heroes are called upon and where daily news functions similar as myth.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34711901