Društvene i Humanističke Studije (Apr 2023)

Presentation of the World of Politics (Consideration on the Book of Amir Karić the Dictionary of Politics)

  • Enes Pašalić

DOI
https://doi.org/10.51558/2490-3647.2023.8.1.197
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1(22)
pp. 197 – 210

Abstract

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Amir Karic's The Dictionary of Politics ambitiously contains around 300 wide range of terms, from the basic categories of political science, law, and other related scientific disciplines, to the terms used in colloquial speech. The terms have been arranged in alphabetical order, which indicates that the author has already presented the world of politics through political concepts defined as separate units, and not through relations between terms and conceptual clusters. The author's approach in defining most of the terms in The Dictionary of Politics is by defining them as separate entities/units, without consideration of their relation to other terms, and even less so, their consideration from the aspect of certain conceptual clusters and ideological doctrines. Therefore, the conception of the world of politics in The Dictionary of Politics by Prof. Karic, often looks blurred and unclear. It is a world of extracted separate particularities whose understanding is just guessed, without an internal connection between them that would form a more complete depiction of the world of politics. The main reason for deficiencies in definitions of fundamental concepts of politics by Prof. Amir Karic is that he overlooked the complex relations between the concepts of politics and political, or political, as the ontological assumption of politics. But it is necessary to say that the author did not even have such ambitions. The dictionary is exclusively the function of training students of political science, and other related scientific disciplines, for whom it is known that they do not yet possess the knowledge of the meanings of basic political, sociological, and legal terms, which would allow them to follow and comprehend lectures held by professor Karić. In this way, we have received a dictionary of an informative nature for the needs of elemental understanding of basic terms in lectures of political, and related sciences. As such, it can serve its planned purpose (elemental literacy of students to understand the world of politics), but it cannot represent the basis for understanding the foundations of political science.

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