Giftedness and cultural and ethnic background as categories of diversity are viewed from a personalist perspective. After introducing the issue, we look at the question of giftedness and cultural and ethnic background not only as sociocultural constructs but also as categories that influence practice when dealing with diversity in schools. From a personalist perspective, the person is the source for educational thinking and acting. I will therefore describe what it means to view the human being as a person, presenting the historical and philosophical roots as well as the dimensions and functions of the concept of the person as a basis of educational theory and practice. The consequence of these considerations will be the thesis that the starting point and aim of educational theory and practice cannot be the narrow focus on giftedness and cultural and ethnic background, but rather the human being with all his individuality and dignity, with his capabilities and talents that are to be realized during his life-time. Finally, I will discuss the implications resulting from this anthropological basis for a personalist pedagogy of fostering giftedness and gifted students.

Nostalgia, originally a psychological term, is a recurrent concept in the literary works. The meaning of the term encompasses homesickness, regret for past, and a desire for an earlier time. The immigrant authors have also dealt with the theme of nostalgia to a great extent. In this article, the authors by choosing the Shemiran house, the novel written by Goli taraghi Persian contemporary immigrant writer, aims to respond to the following question by adopting post ─ Greimassian approaches to semiotics. How and under what circumstances nostalgia would be considered as semiotic and discursive mediation? How it would be possible to establish a relationship between this notion and the question of identity in the host culture? In the light of theoretical frame work of tensive semiotics, cultural mediation and semiosphere theory of Lotman, the hypothesizes of this article in one hand prove that nostalgia creates a tensive zone which is temporally and spatially bounded and on the other hand it causes the transmission of values to the present time of enunciator which results in the scission of being and the challenge between Self and I. The interaction of guest and host semiosphers leads to the formation of a hybrid identity as well.

This paper inquires two kinds of imagination evoked in the age of digital technology, examining two music videos, Britney Spears's “Toxic” and Perfume's “Electro World.” The paper argues that, while “Toxic” demonstrates the imagination of “direct impact” and this imagination of “direct impact” is dominant in the contemporary society at a global scale (at least in the United States and some Asian countries, including Japan and Korea), Perfume's “Electro World” suggests another imagination of “lightness.” This paper highlights the imagination of “lightness” in comparison with “direct impact,” reviewing some recent studies of visual culture and cinema as well as referring to Martin Heidegger's notion of technology.

The digital allows all technological automatisms to be unified by implanting the producer into the consumer and through the production of all manner of sensors, actuators and related software. But the truly unprecedented aspect of digital unification is that it allows articulations between all these automatisms: technological, social, psychic and biological ― and this is the main point of neuro-marketing and neuro-economics. The context of the task of thinking conceived as therapeutic is one in which automatisms of all kinds are being technologically integrated by digital automatisms. The unique and very specific aspect of this situation is the way that digital tertiary retention succeeds in totally rearranging assemblages or montages of psychic and collective retentions and protentions. The challenge is to invert this situation by having an ars of hyper-control instead reach towards a new idea of dis-automatization that would arise from out of today's dis-integrating automatization.

This study is about “Catastrophe Risk and Democracy”. Following my previous study entitled as “Catastrophe and Media”, in order to examine how media reported or even　“performed” catastrophic events ─ the Earthquake of 3/11 2011, the Tsunami which devastated the East Cost of Japan and the Nuclear Power Plant Accident of Fukushima, I would like to deliver so a “second elaboration” of my reflection on catastrophe and society: How people live the aftermath of this catastrophe? And what changes this recent past brought to the habitants of the concerned society? What is the implication of the aftermath of catastrophe for the society?

This article aims at analyzing the 2014 football world cup kick-off, which highlighted a paraplegic person equipped with an “exoskeleton guided by thought”. In a first part, the ritualistic framework which surrounds the event is described. It seems to establish a mediation of a symbolic or even religious nature, conducive to building trust in an announced “miracle”. In a second part, the event itself is described in a factual fashion. It is clearly proven that the miracle didn't occur. Some elements of media coverage are provided, as well as internet users' reactions. It seems there was a distortion in the perceptions of the event. In a third part, after having shown that a rational reading of the announcement seemed to imply that it was impossible to carry out, a theoretical framework with a psychosocial inspiration is suggested to attempt to better explain the distortions in individuals' perceptions, during this event.

Subsequent to the deregulation of the markets in the 1990s, a bigger diversity of clients (Sheth & Shainesh, 2005), and a significant change in consumer behavior, the situation for numerous sectors, such as the bank sector, drastically changed and led to a crisis of confidence. To find a way out of this situation, certain financial organizations looked to improve their image by reinforcing customer-employee interaction and intensifying interpersonal relations (Berry, 1993). In this respect, the experience of the Austrian cooperative bank Raiffeisenlandesbank (RLB NÖ-Wien) could inspire microfinance. The bank provided specific linguistic and intercultural training for its staff working with a multi-ethnic population, and has bank branches with multi-language speaking employees in high immigration density districts. This managerial model could be of particular interest in the Ivory Coast given that the linguistic communication model upon which microfinance is based in the Ivory Coast has shown its limits with regard to an illiterate clientele or one with a poor level of French.

Organizations are fictions contracts punctuated by opportunistic behavior of the contracting parties who cooperate. They can operate in a deficit of confidence thanks to agreements between agents. But, they can not achieve optimal performance and should be content with a satisfactory performance.

The entire world has been affected in some way or other by the 2008 financial crisis. While economic recovery has been seen in high-income countries, risks for emerging and developing economies are affecting global growth. Many developing countries, which were considered the centre of growth during or since the 2008 Financial crisis seem to be currently affected in some way or other. We thus notice that risky, uncontrolled behavior in terms of lending practices by unregulated banks in the USA led to the Subprime and subsequent global financial crisis. The whole world and regulatory bodies spanning the globe seem to be determined to prevent such further crises by bringing about rule books and regulations to prevent repeats of conditions that could reproduce such situations. Financial regulation is a constant issue that is discussed in terms of regulatory needs. Everybody wants it to be done but most Stakeholders do not have a clear idea of why it should be put in place; nor how it should be done.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of consumer trust in their willingness to pay of luxury perfumes. Among the high symbolic value brands, the luxury brand has a particular marketing approach insofar as consumer behavior does not only relate to the brand or product, which makes a special and separate category from other brands. To investigate the relation between trust and willingness to pay we realized a survey on 124 people. By analyzing the process preceding the act of purchasung and using a Tobit model, we conclude that trust positively determines the WTP. This experimental study allows to better understand the purchasing process and helps to support a pricing strategy of aiming to improve the perception of trust among consumers.