“THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY - PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS Psychology to support of the civic education”: Author: Antoaneta Hristova

Abstract

(Review by Prof. Sava Djonev)

It takes a lot of courage, dedication and calling to undertake and carry out such a large-scale project as the justification and or- ganization of civic education. The addressee of the monograph - the mature generation - is a community with established principles and attitudes, with resistances that are difficult to change and form initially. The problem re- quires a complex approach in which sociol- ogy, political science, political psychology, social psychology, didactics meet. Therefore, I want to share my satisfaction with the erudi- tion with which the author handles these tran- sitions and the ease with which she conducts her dialogue with the reader. The work has a volume of 205 pages - sci- entific text and 282 literary sources (classics and modern authors). It is made up of three parts that build on each other: “Problems on the way to democracy”, “And now where? A matter of approach.”, “Topics of socio-psy- chological knowledge relevant to civic behav- ior on the road to updated democracy”. The first part - “Problems on the way to democracy”, which is dedicated to the main categories of the theoretical construct “civic education”, outlines the limits of the problem in a cognitive aspect. On the one hand, these are basic concepts in political psychology, which prepares the reader for a deep and com- prehensive scientific analysis. On the other hand, these are topical topics that concern so- ciety every day and significantly: democracy, justice, information and trust, motivation and demotivation for participation in the elec- toral process, coalitions, polarization, radi- calization, anomie and alienation, conspiracy theories. Each of these categories hides deep content related to social relations and drama inherent in social fate. ...

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