Bank
hegemony
The five articles
of the section (written by Peter Eigner, Béla Tomka, György
Kövér, Ágnes Pogány, and Attila Bartha-György
Lengyel) deal with different aspects of Central European banking history.
The development of Germany, Austria and Hungary was not uniform in terms
of banking-industry relations. The situation evolved differently in Cis-
and Transleithan areas, the intensity and dynamics of the relations being
different at the turn of the century, in the 1920s and the 1930s. In Hungary,
these relations culminated in the post-World War I period of inflation
and over the twenties in general. It is important to know whether the bankers'
position in industry meant a say in the decisions of the enterprises or
was only a sort of simple control and orientation? Was the development
of the monetary sphere bank- or market-oriented? As long as such examinations
based on internal sources are not available about our times, it is hardly
possible to draw generalizing conclusions concerning the present. What
is certain, however, is that during the privatization of firms, the representatives
of the banking system have accumulated more leading positions to the detriment
of the managers of the productive sphere.
Modernity
on the periphery: the national self-image of the finns
Five papers
constitute this thematic section, each highlighting a salient issue in
view of Finnish identity. In the introductory essay with personal overtones,
András Csite discusses the process in which a Hungarian social scientist
tries to get close to the Finns. Jukka Ammondt's paper is about the Finnish
tango. Outside Argentina and several Latin American countries, there are
few places in the world where the tango enjoys such popularity as in Finland.
At the same time, the emotions and desires in the lyrics, the way of dancing
it reveal several Finnish specificities. Leo Granberg's article focuses
on the Finnish small-scale producer, discussing the rapid changes that
took place in the life of rural land and forest cultivators in the second
half of the 20th century. Recalling an “everyday story", he touches on
human tragedies resulting from the confrontation between modernization
and personal values due to the rapid transformation. In the next article,
Raimo Lovio, Matti Pulkkinen and Teemu Väänänen put the
NOKIA company under scrutiny. They outline the changes in the business
strategy and organization of the huge enterprise, and analyze the combined
effect of chance and planning underlying these changes. The study closing
the section is Matti Peltonen's piece about the identity of the Finns from
the latter half of the last century to our days. By describing the permanent
and occasionally appearing topoi in the self-image of the Finns (alcohol
consumption, barbarous forest, landscape, and language), he argues that
the fears and anxieties of the dominant elite are seen by the “Finnish
people" as signs of their mental deficits and cultural infancy.
Emotion and
memory: The “second cognitive revolution"
This thematic
section aims to present discursive psychology. The introductory essay of
Peter Bodor is followed by an article of Rom Harré who defines discursive
psychology as the reviver of present-day academic, cognitive psychology.
Harré wishes to provide a synthetic framework for psychology in
which humans can be represented both as social and active beings. Harré's
article is criticized by Imre Orthmayr, who scrutinizes Harré's
efforts in discursive psychology from the angle of philosophy, comparing
it to some works of Ryle and Winch. He intends to show that on the basis
of its formulae, discursive psychology failed to produce a successful synthesis
between psychology, linguistics, and sociology. In the last paper of the
section, Zoltán Kövecses replies to Harré's ideas about
emotions. Affiliated with a current in cognitive linguistics worked out,
basically, by G. Lakoff, Kövecses debates with Harré at certain
points, reproaching him for ignoring the metaphorical and metonimical use
of language.
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