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Această pagină a fost redactată în limba engleză la invitaţia Who’s Who in the World. Translate with Google

A.

Coaching

Stănciulescu, E. (2024). Beyond coping and adaptation: Toward a sociology of coaching. A necessary paradigm shift to address contemporary dramatic social change. Social Science Information, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184241252770

This article discusses how, in today’s world of disruptive and dramatic social change, non-sports related coaching, which includes a wide range of services such as life coaching, career coaching, executive coaching, and team coaching, can inadvertently fuel undesirable social dynamics. There is little or no awareness of this risk among coaches and coachees. The global, fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar industry aimed at supporting people and organizations to perform better and increase wellbeing while managing and adapting to change has been developed with limited sociological input. The article is based on 15 years of social constructionist-informed reflective practice by a sociologist-turned-coach, and uses a multi-layered theory-driven autoethnographic account to argue for a sociologically informed paradigm shift in coaching, as well as relevant sociological knowledge, learning sciences, and action research methodology in coaches’ education. It presents the rationale and key features of a new coaching approach that places dramatic social change-relevant sociological concepts at the heart of the process, helps people develop psycho-sociological awareness, and uses a learning-to-develop through research design. A new definition of coaching to address dramatic social change is derived. Coaching practitioners will find dramatic social change-relevant sociological concepts, critical reflections, coaching questions, and procedures to expand coaching effectiveness. Interdisciplinary research topics are proposed, combining coaching sociology – which must be developed to make coaching a well-founded profession – and coaching psychology, which currently dominates the knowledge production in the field. Implications for workplace strategies to attract, motivate, and retain employees in search of meaning or purpose in life are also suggested.

B.

Sociology of the Post-communist Transition.
Sociology of Education.
Sociological Theory.

‘Avatars de la démocratie dans une société en transition’, in Silvie Bardeche (ed.), Les Balkans et l’Europe face aux nouveaux défis. Actes du colloque de l’A.I.S.L.F., 3-6 mars 1994, Sofia (Bulgaria), pp.168-176. Paris: L.S.C.I.-IRESCO. 1995 (translated into Bulgarian).

Included in Despre tranzitie si universitate / On Transition and University. Iasi : Polirom. 2002.

The first post-communist Romanian study which had foreseen and explained the evolution of the Romanian society towards some local oligarchies or even local totalitarian power, some 5-6 years before Romanian media and society began speaking about the so called ‘local barons’ (baronii locali).

The first study having addressed the crucial importance of the local level in building democracy, and tried to systematically use a theoretical approach which combines structure and agency.

The first study addressing the process of building democracy within the Romanian educational system (university).

‘Lumea academică şi morala complicitatii demonstrative / The Academic World and the Ethic of the Demonstrative Complicity’. Revista de Cercetări Sociale. 1999, 1-2: 99-114.

Included in Despre tranzitie si universitate / On Transition and University. Iasi : Polirom. 2002.

This study develop an original set of theses, which may explain some apparent unethical behaviors: in their day-to-day life, the ordinary social actors have to articulate their own agendas with a complex, heterogeneous and difficult-to-‘read’ structural pluralism, so that they arrive to build a collective complicity in order to just demonstrate (= create the appearances only) that their actions are ‘right’ within the various and different, sometimes contradictory, social orders. Specific social forms and rhetorics are produced this way, and the social succes is massively influenced by such competences as reading the structural pluralism (social orientation) and making use of an ethic of demonstrative complicity.

‘Gérer la contradiction et l’équivoque au jour le jour. Étude sur les dynamiques identitaires au sein de l’ancienne nomenklatura communiste universitaire / Coping with the Contradiction and Equivocation in Everyday Life. Study on the Former University Communist Nomenklatura’. Paper for the XVI- e Congrès de AISLF : Une société-monde? Québec, 3-7 Juillet 2000.

Included in Despre tranzitie si universitate / On Transition and University. Iasi : Polirom. 2002.

The originality of this study comes from its grounded theory approach and its conclusions. It explains the post-communist success of the former communist nomenklatura highlighting the idea of an idealtype of the successful social actor of our transitional (post-communist or even, more generally, contemporary?) world, who has no stable attachments to values, being able to ‘navigate’ among different sets of values-norms-rules and to ‘slide’ from an identity figure to another, following an ‘either-neither’ social logic and co-participating to the social production of the ethic of the demonstrative complicity. These conclusions were confirmed by other studies, included in the same volume.

‘Despre reversibilitatea atitudinilor politice ale actorului social al tranzitiei. Comentarii pe marginea unui cvasi-experiment natural’ / On the reversibility of the social actor’s political attitudes in the context of post-communist transition. Interpretations of a natural cvasi-experiment’ (2002).

First published in Despre tranzitie si universitate / On Transition and University. Iasi : Polirom. 2002: 149-166.

This study shows how, after more than 10 years from the fall of the communist regime, oligarchic behaviors were still in place, and the new generations (young people) and superior educated people were not the carriers of the democratic values and changes, as too optimistic leaders believed. This last observation have been confirmed in 2011 by the CSOP survey (see also Sondajul CSOP, tinerii şi comunismul).

C.
Sociology of Childhood.
Sociology of the Family.
Sociology of Education.
Qualitative Methods.
Sociological Theory.

Sociologia educaţiei familiale. Vol II. Familie şi educatie in societatea romaneasca. O istorie critica a interventionismului utopic/ Family and Education in Romanian Society: A Critical History of the Utopian Interventionism. Iasi : Polirom. 1998 (415p. Second edition : 2002).

See also, in French:

• (1996) ‘Tel enfant, tels parents: de la redéfinition et de la construction de l’enfance et de la parentalité’, in René B. Dandurand, Roch Hurtubise, Céline Le Bourdais (dir.) Enfances. Perspectives sociales et pluriculturelles, pp. 237-258. Sainte-Foy: Institut Québécois de Recherche sur la Culture, Les Presses de l’Université Laval.

• (1995) ‘Redéfinition et construction progressives des espaces domestiques du point de vue de l’enfant’, in Bernadette Bawin-Legros, René B. Dandurand, Jean Kellerhals, François de Singly (sous la direction) Les espaces de la famille. Actes du Colloque, pp.121-130. Liège : Derouaux Ordina Editions, Médiatique.

PhD thesis. Professor Eric Plaisance from Rene Descartes University, Paris V – Sorbonne, member of the examination board, appreciated that “The thesis deserves to be praised as an original contribution […] with regard to the international research in the matter”.

The first empirical post-communist Romanian study having systematically used life histories (and, more generally, qualitative research methods), some years before writers and historians spoke about, and made use of, this method of research.

The author collected life histories from ordinary children and youth (aged 9 to 22) and put them in reciprocal perspective with parents’ life histories and with the main historical events and changes, in order to capture a longitudinal picture of the day-to-day exchanges between adults and children, as well as micro- and macro- structural changes produced this way. It launched an original methodological concept: the historical-biografical series.

The first sociological study which rediscovered and developed the contributions that the Sociological School of Bucharest had given to the sociology of childhood during the 4th and 5th decades of the 20th century.
It has also pointed out some other contributions of the Sociological School of Bucharest, which may help to explain a lot of recent phenomena and processes within the Romanian society – i.e. the double social order that has been created by the importation of the western modern jurisdiction, leading to the progressive social construction of the lack of legitimacy of both modern institutions and traditional moral norms.

For the first time in Romania the concept of the child as social actor in the sense of co-producer of social life was used here. Starting from the ‘traditional’ family education perspective, it was based on an almost exhaustive analysis of Romanian written discourses on children (ideological, normative, belletristic, and scientific) from the middle of the 19th century to the last decade of the 20th century, and crossed life-stories of the 20th century parents and their children who were born and socialized in the communist era.

Up to now, it remains the only Romanian study on this topic trying to combine agency and structure in its theoretical framework and providing empirical evidence for such theses as: children strategies for redefining and restructuring family spaces; active child participation in restructuring families’ roles and power; their contribution to parents’ social learning in a changing context; their participation in their families’ construction of social reality (the ‘learning together’ concept). Based on these, it assumed that children worked as co-producers of macro-structural changes, i.e. social mobility, values and lifestyles (see some details below).

It unveils the central values within three generations being socialized during the 20th century, and put into light the changes yield by the rural-urban migration.

It discloses the main Romanian family strategies aiming to the school success of children, and launches some original concepts, such as: emotional capitals, negative capitals, etc.

The first Romanian study providing an interpretativist and dynamic approach of such concepts as: social structure, social class, middle class.
Based on the same interpretivist approach, it created some other theoretical hypotheses (concepts), like: practical and descriptive rapport to the life-world (of less educated categories) as opposed to the normative and scholastic rapport (of educated categories); personalized structures of day-to-day life; subjective reservoir of resources to building identity.

The first empirical study in Romania using a grounded theory approach.

The only one empirical study warning against the unexpected consequences of the Utopian social interventionism via the education process. (Today, the author critics are expressed much more straight: the school, which has been thought as a tool of the social progress and justice, has eventually become in many respects a social danger – see articles within this site.)

‘Globalisations idéologiques et pouvoir d’une catégorie vulnérable: les enfants «de la rue‘, Les Sciences de l’Education. Pour l’Ere nouvelle. Revue internationale. 2006, 39(2) : 69-88.

This article attempts to unveil how it is possible that that a category supposed to
be amongst, or even the most deprived of all social groups – the street children, might take openly a social good (in occurrence, an adult territory) whose usage is normally authorized as under surveillance. The mechanisms of such an acquisition are inferred through data from ethnographic observation displayed in an interpretive grid which applies to two concepts: ideological globalisation and the child as actor.

Two conclusions are drawn at the end of the discussion :
(1) a phenomenon such as that of the street children can be modeled in a theoretical framework focused on the globalisation of the market and of consumption. To achieve this, the social structures of less developed countries and of the under privileged groups are introduced into the equation by the ideologies generated from externalised ideologies such as Christianity, communism, and certain philosophical and scientific work.
(2) If this hypothesis is validated, the management of such a phenomenon could work on the ideological foundations of contemporary society and, most importantly, developing more consciously the localisation of cosmopolitan ideologies which are more generous than they might appear.

Stanciulescu, E. (2010). Children and Childhood in Romanian Society and Social Research: Ideological and Market Biases and some Notable Contributions. Current Sociology, 58(2), 309-334. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392109354247

The first (and the only one, up to now) review of sociological childhood studies in Romania.

This paper draws on Romanian sociological and anthropological literature, laws and official statistics, as well as on the most important programs and reports of various organizations, in order to: (1) depict a historical map of the main theoretical and methodological approaches, themes and objects of research on children and childhood in Romania; (2) outline some historical evolutions of the value of children in Romanian society. Underlining the prominent lines of continuity as well as the significant changes, and disclosing a couple of similarities and dissimilarities between Romanian society and social sciences and the Western ones, it reveals to what extent Romanian sociological traditions were particularly promising with regard of the structural sociology of children and childhood, and in what way nowadays research has become very open to the ‘sociology of children’ or to ‘the minority group child’, while the structural sociology of childhood still remains a quite isolated ‘island’, or only implicit.

‘O perspectivă etnologică asupra socializării în familiile româneşti’.Revista de Cercetări Sociale. 1996, 2: 154-163.

This article made known an unpublished study on Romanian society, conducted by the famous American anthropologist Ruth Benedict for the Secret Services during the Second World War: Romanian Culture and Behaviour, New York, distributed by Institute for Intercultural Studies (Not for publication). Accessible to University of Washington Library.
It pointed that Benedict’s observations prove how o lot of present Romanian attitudes and behaviours are not results of our communist history only – as usually supposed -, but have long lasting roots in our traditional culture.

D.
History of sociology

‘Déconstruction de la « science normale » et renouvellement de la sociologie. A travers les tribulations de la réflexion sociologique roumaine sur l’individu’. Unpublished paper. Prepared for the XVII-è Congrès des sociologues de langue française : L’Individu social.Tours, France, 5-9 Juillet 2004. Séance plénière : L’espace scientifique européen et les sociologies francophones.

As far as I know, it was the first invitation for a Romanian sociologist to speak within a plenary session of a world Congress, in the last 50 years.

The first (and the only one, up to now) review on the Romanian sociology of the individual.

It elicit some prominent Romanian contributions, even priorities if compared with the dominant ideas (the ‘normal science’) of their time, e.g.: the role of the individual within the social determinism (Draghicescu, 1904); the individual and the social construction of the reality (Petre Andrei, 1936); the individual freedom within a traditional (rural) community and the unexpected consequences of a powerful socialization process, which may lead to stimulate the social change (Traian Herseni, 1934), etc.

This paper discloses and incriminates the ethnocentrism – in theory, methodology and communicating / writing style – which still dominates the international exchanges and acknowledgment within the social sciences.

Teorii sociologice ale educatiei. Producerea eului şi construcţia sociologiei / Sociological Theories of Education. Mind’s Production and Construction of the Sociology. Iaşi : Polirom. 1996 (216 p).

The first attempt to disclose the centrality of such a topic as the social construction of the mind (education included) within the evolution of the sociological thought and to make known in Romania some prominent sociological theories of mind’s construction and education: the first functionalism (Emile Durkheim); systemic functionalism (Talcott Parsons); symbolic interactionism (George Herbert Mead); phenomenology (Alfred Schutz); phenomenological constructivism (Peter Berger and Thomas Luchmann); Erving Goffman’s dramaturgic model; ethnometodology and cognitive sociology (Aaron Cicourel); constructivist structuralism (Pierre Bourdieu)..

E.
Traslating

• Max Weber (2001) Teorie şi metodă în ştiinţele culturii. Trad rom. Nicolae Rambu si Johann Klusch. Scientific consultant for translation Elisabeta Stănciulescu.  Iaşi : Polirom  (180p).
• Bernard Lahire (2000) Omul plural. Socialul individualizat şi sociologia psihologică. Trad. rom. Elisabeta Stănciulescu. Iaşi : Polirom (225p).
• François Laplantine (2000) Descrierea etnografică. Trad.rom. Elisabeta Stănciulescu şi Gina Grosu. Iaşi : Polirom (166p).
• Jean Copans (1999) Introducere în etnologie şi antropologie. Trad.rom. Elisabeta Stănciulescu şi Ionela Ciobănaşu.  Iaşi : Polirom (166p).
• François de Singly, Alain Blanchet, Anne Gotman, Jean-Claude Kaufmann (1998) Ancheta şi metodele ei: chestionarul, interviul de producere a datelor, interviul comprehensiv. Trad.rom. Elisabeta Stănciulescu, Oana Bibiri, Alina-Agnes Lazarescu, Anca Laura Zahaniciuc. Iaşi : Polirom (321 p).
• Claudette Lafaye (1998) Sociologia organizaţiilor. Trad.rom. Elisabeta Stănciulescu şi Mihaela Zoicaş. Iaşi: Polirom (122 p).

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F.
Creating and developing institutions

• Created and headed (2006-2008) the international master program European Masters in Children’s Rights at Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania (see www.enmcr.net). During the first academic year, the name of this master program was Children and Childhoods in Changing Societies.
• Created and taught the fist Romanian university course in Sociology of Childhood (2006-2008).
• Created and taught the fist Romanian university course in Research Methods of Children and Childhood (2006-2008).
• Co-founder (2000) of the research comity Sociologie de l’enfance, within the AISLF – Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française. Member of the board of this research comity (2000-2009).
• Initiated and headed (1998-2008) two editorial series Sociology-Anthropology (Collegium and Cercetări şi eseuri / Research and Essays) for Polirom Publishing House – one of the most prestigious publishing house in Romania.