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- Project description
- Contact information
Meetings
- Summer School 2000: International Comparative Programmes in the Social Sciences, organised by Prof. N. Genov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Sofia, Bulgaria, 20-25 June 2000
- Third International Conference on Transformation Risks, in co-operation with the Bulgarian National UNESCO-MOST Committee and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, Sofia, Bulgaria, 25-26 February 1999
- Central and Eastern Europe: Assessment and Management of Transformation Risks, Sofia, Bulgaria, 6-7 February 1998
Publications
- Managing Transformations in Eastern Europe
by Nikolai Genov, Paris - Sofia, 1999
- Unemployment: Risks and Reactions
edited by Nikolai Genov, Paris - Sofia, 1999
- Central and Eastern Europe - Continuing Transformation
edited by Nikolai Genov, Paris - Sofia, 1998
- Sociology on Trial: the Challenge of Transformation Risks
Conference paper by Nikolai Genov
- Economic Reforms and Social Integration: the Role of the State
by Nikolai Genov, in: Nikolai Genov (Ed.). Bulgaria 1997. Human Development Report. Sofia: UNDP, 1997, pp. 1-12
- Long-term Unemployment as Social Exclusion
by Iskra Beleva, in: Nikolai Genov (Ed.). Bulgaria 1997. Human Development Report. Sofia: UNDP, 1997, pp. 29-36
- What kind of transformation and for whom?
by Nansen Behar, in: Nikolai Genov (Ed.). Bulgaria 1997. Human Development Report. Sofia: UNDP, 1997, pp. 87-95
Statement of the problem :
The social problem situation :
The countries from the Central and Eastern Europe are going through
a period of intensive risks. The risks are directly caused by
the current economic, political and cultural transformations,
or accompany them. Thus the management of social transformations
in the region means first of all to develop and implement
policies which avoid or alleviate intensive social risks.
Therefore, it is the crucial task of social sciences to focus
on risk perception, risk assessment and risk management in the
regional transformation processes.
The efforts to cope with risks of social transformation in Central
and Eastern Europe are of fundamental interest both for social
sciences and for policy-makers in the region and beyond its boundaries
since the process is a unique case of social learning. The major
subject matter of learning is the extent to which it is possible
to rationally manage national transformations under the current
conditions of globalization of technology, economy, politics and
culture.
Some cognitive and organizational preconditions :
Following an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), teams in several Eastern European countries prepared in
1994-95 national Human Development Reports. They
are modelled along the pattern of the global Human Development
Reports published by the UNDP since 1991. According to a
recent decision of UNDP national Human Development Reports
will be produced in all Central and Eastern European countries,
in all republics of the CIS, as well as in some other countries
(Turkey, Cyprus and Malta) in 1996. This means 25 countries altogether.
The guiding idea of the national Reports is to be the necessity
to foster sustainable human development in the region. Besides
many other unified indicators, all the national reports make an
extensive use of the Human Development Index in order to
measure basic parameters of conditio humana. Moreover,
like the background philosophy of MOST, the national Reports
are intended to facilitate governmental decision-making. That
is why it is an utmost challenge to start at the level of standardization
of indicators, the structurally unified content of the national
Reports and the organizational scheme for preparation and
use of the UNDP national Reports as a background of a truly
international, interdisciplinary, comparative, and policy-relevant
project on managing transformation risks in Eastern Europe.
Problem formulation :
How to operationalize and apply the concept of risk (risk perception,
risk assessment, risk management) in order to put a correct diagnosis
of the Eastern European national and regional transformations
laying the stress on the active involvement of individual and
collective actors in the processes? How to use the preliminary
work done in the preparation of national and global Human Development Reports for enhancing the diagnostic power of the analysis
making it truly comparative? How to focus on the potential practical
use of the diagnostic efforts both at national level and with
a view to the need to manage regional and global processes?
Statement of Objectives :
- To focus the project on the core of the current transformation
processes in Central and Eastern Europe, namely the management
of intensive technological, economic, political, cultural and environmental risks ;
- To develop and properly operationalize a differentiated risk
concept (risk perception, risk assessment, risk management) which
is well attuned to a differentiated concept of social transformation ;
- Using the above concepts to design and implement the study as
a fully-fledged cross-national comparative project based on primary
conceptualizations and empirical information contained in the
global and national Human Development Reports ;
- To compare the perception and management of selected types of
risk like unemployment, impoverishment, educational inadequacy,
uncertain health care provision, environmental risks, etc. at
the micro level (individuals), meso level (settlements) and macro
level (national governments). Whenever possible, the level of
supranational organizations will be added to the analysis.
- To combine descriptive and explanatory approaches with normative
assumptions and social technological recommendations ;
- To disseminate the results of research to well targeted audiences
including decision-making bodies and organized interest groups ;
- Whenever possible to materialize parts of the research project
as typical action research ;
- To develop a stable conceptual, methodological and organizational
core of the project and to combine it with flexibility as to specific
topics and research partners ;
- To design the organizational structure of the project in the
way to be able to monitor the processes in the course of five
years and possibly to repeat the study ten years from now ;
- To document all stages of the project by means of reports and
publications prepared to influence various agencies and audiences.
Organizational design :
The crucial organizational problem of the project is how to start
it as being firmly based on the standardized information collected
and analysed in the framework of the global and national Human
Development Reports, and in the same time to go beyond their
scope towards well substantiated regional comparisons and towards
immediate practical relevance. So the core team of the project
will include a group of leaders of national teams preparing Human
Development Reports 1996 (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania).
Another group will consist of participants who are not immediately
members of the UNDP NHDR teams, but represent countries, in which
such reports are being prepared (Russia, Latvia). And still another
group of participants will provide references to countries, where
the transformation processes go quite specific paths (Germany,
Austria).
 Project co-ordinator :
Prof. Dr. sc. Nikolai Genov
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Sociology
13A, Moskovska Str.
1000 Sofia
Bulgaria
Office Tel: 3592-9806132
Office Fax: 3592-9806132 / 3592-803791
Home Tel: 3592-6241666
E-mail:
nbgen.most.risk@datacom.bg
UNESCO-MOST Co-ordinator :
Paul de Guchteneire
Fax: + 33 1 45 68 57 24
E-mail : p.deguchteneire@unesco.org
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