As the lockdown has been relaxed (in Romania, the homeland of TMFI), yet social distancing is still a sacrosanct recommendation, we release the second episode from our collection of editorial products, this time from our in-house harvest. We hope that the variety and the quality of these “corona-readings” to function as a cure equally for unjustified anxieties and for mind hibernation. More
It has been three years since our project – The Market for Ideas – took shape. We have tried to present our readers with interesting ideas from a wide variety of fields and penned by a wide variety of others. To the best of our abilities, we have tried not to turn this journal into a publication by Romanians for Romanians, only in English, which would be snobbery, but a shared space in which Romanian issues could be presented alongside more general considerations for the edification of a diverse and educated, but non-expert audience. The figures back us up, both on Facebook and on the website, where Romanians are still a plurality, but no longer the majority of our readers. Hopefully, we have not driven any of them away; instead, we rather managed to interest some people in our corner of the Internet, which is a difficult thing to do in a world given to shallow and homogenizing diversity. Facts and figures: TMFI is being read in 188 jurisdictions all over the world and its writers come from more than 50 countries. More
The Market for Ideas initiated an editorial project in which “international business and economics” students, besides being consumers of quality information, become (co)producers of this “good”. The concept aims for a quadruple gap-filler, with young people, from all over the world, story-telling, in a non-“homework”, but “freestyle” manner, on the value and values of entrepreneurship. More
The process of institutional transformation from the socialist, command economy to the capitalist, market economy can be understood theoretically and historically, as a priority, like a process of intellectual transformation. Romania in the 1990s, perhaps to a greater extent than any other country in the ex-communist bloc, was the theatre of a transition at the level of politico-economic institutions which was little-announced and stated by a convergent, consensual idealistic transition. More
Social Science and Humanities Research Association (SSHRA) is an international community of researchers, practitioners, students and educationists that is devoted to the development and the spread of ideas in the field of social sciences and humanities. SSHRA is promoted by Eurasia Research. SSHRA aims to bring together worldwide researchers and professionals, encourage intellectual development and create opportunities for networking and collaboration. These objectives are achieved through academic networking, meetings, conferences, workshops, projects, research publications, academic awards and scholarships. More
“The disappearance of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 reflected the collapse of the existing belief system and accordingly the weakening of its support organizations” (North 1997, 18). Such a verdict catches the image of a bivalent process of deconstruction and institutional reconstruction: from former imposition of material and moral servitudes to economic and political liberalization. But that new order – of the market and of the multiparty system – could have been accomplished, ultimately and inevitably, with the same people who inhabited the old institutional and organizational architectures, both at the top and at the base of society. The intellectual scaffolding of transformation became a critical resource, and its training and performance were, among others, functions of epistemic tradition and transfer. More
We, humans, live and act in the old physical space, though spatiality will never be the same after digits became the atoms of some “virtual matter”, in which our bodies and souls e-immersed. Cyberspace, equated reasonably with the Internet, allows for larger and better markets and fortunes, as well as more and fierce dangers to our security and liberty, to our homes and homelands. More
We all are equal in front of death, but we are living lives in unequal ways, because of our deeply uneven endowments and unsimilar chances that Gods or odds reserve for us. We are (supposedly) alike in front of laws, while some (one-sidedly) legislate fake sameness. Among the many questions we may ask while getting bored in the tight safety of our lazaretto homes: is Corona an equalizer? More
I started writing about economics and economy in the “big press”, both academic and mass-media, around the same time, somewhere in 2002. This, after having explored journalism during the university studies. I had understood the difference in the literary species between an article dedicated to the mass-media field and one published in academic journals, long before the biblio- and sciento-metric tsunami reached Romania, with its (inter)national indexations and citations of the scientific publications. More
Climate change and sustainable development are, somehow, like “love and marriage”, and they go together like “a horse and carriage”; and if you ask “the local [as well as global] gentry”, they will say that this is “elementary”. But despite a basic consensus, that something is happening to our earthly environment and something must rapidly be done, the problem is much more delicate scientifically and politically. More
If people were to tell their story to the inhabitants of other worlds in this universe, it would suffice to produce a chronicle of earthly discussions containing the keyword or hashtag #WorldCup. I believe we can safely leave out “football” from this label – the elliptical expression “World Cup” instantly directs our thoughts to the sport that will have grown into a religion defined by the “new testament” of Diego Maradona (1986) and his “second coming” in the form of Lionel Messi (2022). The secular religion of football is economic as well as political in nature; in other words, it is an instance of “scientifically” exploited “culture”. The Qatar edition is one of the clearest examples thus far of how the downright scientific marketing of a symbolic good (i.e., football) can contribute either insidiously or ostentatiously to the planetary management of cultural values (a potpourri of frigid conservatism and frivolous progressivism): a campaign worth some $300 billion meant to wash the image of some and the brains of others on the shores and hydrocarbon reserves of the Gulf. More
Could Britain be immutable as well as irreplaceable? This is a question worth pondering, given several of Britain’s attributes: its greatness as an island with tendrils reaching across the entire planet, even if it is limited today to a mere geo-cultural-symbolic rite as its geo-politico-economic clout has somewhat waned; its unity, if only among its own constituents, insofar as in Europe it hasn’t been particularly long-lived due to an overly Brussels-based rigid and (op)pressing bureaucracy; its kingship, even if henceforth God must Save the King after having watchfully protected Queen Elisabeth II throughout her 96 years of life, 70 of which spent as a reigning monarch. To a Euro-citizen recently returned to the United Kingdom after the Brexit, having to hand over the passport instead of the more familiar ID card at the border control represents the most immediately apparent change of tone. Looking strictly at the ambience, just as entering the (predecessor of the) European Union didn’t perturb the daily affairs of the Brits, neither did Britain’s divorce from the EU generate any depression. Yet, one cannot always perceive the subtleties beneath people’s (changes of) mind and (pre)judgments, even if these people are His Majesty’s subjects, yet also subject to error. More
