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Este ensaio pretende ser uma defesa da importância acadêmica do ensaio. Na vida acadêmica atual, vigora sobretudo o pragmatismo da produtividade funcional e da eficiência, expresso, através de um inglês comercial, sobretudo pelo paper. Esse esvaziamento das palavras convida-nos a enfatizar a importância do ensaio. De Montaigne a Steiner, passando por Adorno, o ensaio, gênero da modernidade, torna-se, assim, sobretudo num tempo de crise das grandes narrativas, o modo de captar o eterno naquilo que vivemos e percebemos como destinado a perecer. Constitui-se como escritura do sujeito moderno, e manifestação de suas extraordinárias inquietudes e de suas solidões. O ensaio como artesanato da suspeita, ao invés de ser visto como vitória do amadorismo na vida acadêmica, é o caminho com que se revelarão os limites de toda pretensão universalista e do produtivismo acadêmico hoje imperante.

The article aims to present a comprehensive review about the influence of Montesquieu, Locke and Rousseau’s thought regarding representation, division of powers, and idea of republicanism on the Federalist Articles. The discussion of such concepts on Locke`s Two Treatises of Governments (1689), Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws (1748), and Rousseau’s The Social Contract and Discourses (1762) is compared to the ideas presented by the Federalists on their 85 Articles to assess how the latter conception of republic, representation and division of powers is influenced by the former. Furthermore, the article presents the debate between Anti-Federalists and Federalists to elucidate how the ideas of those three modern political theorists formed the base for both sides’ arguments.

This text assesses some of the impacts on the Portuguese labour market resulting from the introduction of flexicurity. Taking the European Commission Green Paper as a reference, the contents and objectives of flexicurity are discussed and some of the features of the “Danish model”, normally taken as the example to be followed, are tested. From an analysis of various examples revealing vulnerable situations within the labour market, it is concluded that there is more evidence of the unsuitability of flexicurity in the Portuguese context than of the potential of this deliberate political measure.

A general academic networks view is presented. This network has been build from the author’s interaction through their scientific papers, indexed by Thomson Reuters (previously ISI Thomson). Accent is place in the interaction of main academic subsystems: Scientific Research; Schools and Faculties; Humanities Research and General Secretary Office. The data base under analysis encompass 71878 papers with one Mexico’s coauthor at least, all papers are indexed by ISI Thomson. Papers publication date goes from 1981 to 2003.

After several decades of economic integration and enlargement, divergence has been increasing in the European Union (EU), with weaker member states and regions falling behind their stronger counterparts. This paper argues that the structural causes of this increasing divide are explained in terms of the divergent trajectories of interdependent economies with different productive capabilities. In the process of European integration, the Southern peripheral countries were exposed to macroeconomic policies and shocks that, although apparently neutral, generated different effects and ever increasing regional disparities. Since the formation of the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union in 1992, events representing important milestones in the process of divergence include China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the eastward orientation of German industry, and the 2008 financial and sovereign debt crises and the ensuing austerity. In the final part, the paper evaluates whether new divides are likely to emerge in the new global context triggered now by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

COVID-19 has exposed, reproduced, and created new inequalities in Latin America and the world. In this introductory paper, we discuss the impact of extant inequities on vulnerability to COVID-19 but we also identify new, and some unexpected, vulnerabilities. We emphasize vulnerabilities to the disease as well as vulnerabilities to policies and other responses in the fight against COVID-19. Building on insights from Peter Hall and Michele Lamont’s work on social resilience, we draw on the papers of this special issue to identify the important role of the state in addressing vulnerabilities and discuss the types of social resilience that vulnerable groups have turned to in their response to COVID-19.

This paper examines the Non-Habitual Residents (NHR) tax regime from a sociological perspective. This analysis is twofold: it explores the social conditions for its emergence and next conceptualizes the political rationality that determines it, and the type of individual subjectivity regulating it. Methodologically, the analysis is developed according to the principles of Foucauldian governmentality studies. The paper is structured in three sections: 1) characterization and analysis of the evolution of the beneficiaries applying for this tax regime; 2) analysis of the emergence of NHR regime within the scope of 2008 financial crisis; and 3) the definition of the political rationality that inspires the regime. We conclude that this is a program conceived according to a neoliberal political rationality, and also a procedure to reproduce such rationality through the promotion of an “economic citizen” model.

Society management and the COVID-19 pandemic require continuous restatement and consolidation. Furthermore, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development created by the United Nations establishes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations and where Goal 5 addresses gender equality as a central priority. The main aim of this paper is to present a crossed-analysis study on how the health crisis has influenced differently the social behaviour between gender and generations in Spain. For this study there have been used a massive open data from the Sociological Research Centre (CIS). The mixed techniques´ methodology of this research was applied to study four social effect dimensions, such as “way of living”, “way of thinking”, “way of self-healthcare” and “social habits and behaviour”. The used techniques contributed analytically to gender and generations management during the pandemic with the intent of complementarity. Obtained findings by analysing four studied dimensions explain the effects and consequences of the pandemic involving differences between men and women, younger and older generations, leading to society management implications that can timely serve as a paradigm with scientific insights for public policies.

The paper revisits the debate on the political function of work, defined as the contribution of work to the production and transformation of social relations, in both conceptual and empirical terms. It begins by briefly recalling the terms of the debate about the emancipatory potential of work as seen by Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, and then proceeds to argue, contra Arendt, that since work is a collective and cooperative activity, it is not a-political. The major contribution of the paper consists of discussing the issue by critically considering the literature on both economic theories of the firm and labour economics, two strands of literature usually kept apart. We regard the quantification and individualisation trends that characterise the contemporary world of work as a de-politicisation process, one linked to the (mainstream) agency theory of the firm which legitimises financialisation. We conclude by outlining a way in which to re-politicise work and the firm.

Established, either in the theoretical field or in constitutional practice, as a founding principle of democratic order, freedom of expression was and has been scrutinized by diverse areas of knowledge. In this paper we explore the main debates involving free expression of ideas fundamentals, seeking to highlight their relationship and conflict with other values, such as equality, tolerance and justice. In a problem-oriented approach, we shed light on the issues of hate speech and pornography, and, as well, on the implications, to public deliberation, of the unequal access to mass media and the new technology of information. At the end, we present the papers that make up this dossier. We expect, in this sense, to contribute to the constitution of a research agenda about freedom of expression, an urgent task in the current scenario in which this fundamental right has been under attack by governments of different ideological orientations.

Geography enlightened a vast area of social sciences. It consists earth’s land and ocean surface, different landforms and their formation, evolution, sub-surface phenomena, atmosphere and related activities, environment and its attributes, environment as a habitat of living elements as well as a human being and their reciprocal relationships in a very critical and analytical approach. From the inception of geography as a separate discipline, it evolved through its versatile, comprehensive and holistic nature. Alteration and modification change its nature through space and time. And accordingly, the established paradigm always changed depending on the demand of the geographers. This paper highlighted specifically the paradigm shift in geographical research with special reference to geospatial applications. Geography has two basic aspects, Pure and Applied. Recent trend shows that most of the geographical research is focused on the applied field rather than the pure aspects of the subject itself. The most interesting fact is that the applied research is basically depends upon the Geospatial technology. A distinct paradigm shifts have been taking place in both the Geographical Research and the Geospatial Technology through Digitalization. The large growing population of the world require a logical and scientific shift in both pure and applied research in the domain of geography. Particular mention may be made in the fields of Geography such as geomorphology, population geography, urban geography, rural development and environmental geography. This paper also highlights the major paradigmn shifts in the behavioural geography, systematic geography, regional geography, medical geography, geospatial sustainability and cartography from paper map to digital map. It is now established that no discipline can survive without adopting a new strategy and technology.

This paper aims to discuss Legal Pluralism from a transformative perspective as a product of community practices exercised by social collectivities that seek to address fundamental needs. In this perspective, the problem is to verify if the institutionalized pluralism in the Andean region (the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia) is qualified as a transforming legal pluralism, autonomous from state and with an authentic community profile. Even though this premise can be admitted, the essential question is: to what extent are its strength, validity and efficiency satisfactory inside the political-legal institutions? The result is the duality recognition of the legal pluralism that not only traditionally coexists with the State but is characterized as “subaltern” and limited by impositions of a monist culture that renews itself by keeping colonial remnants. For the discussion, a theoretical-reflective methodological approach with a critical and socio-legal content was employed, along with a specific bibliography.

This paper discusses the relationship between regional integration and industrialization in Latin America over the past seventy years. To this end, it shows how ECLAC’s structuralist thought and integrationist dynamics have influenced each other in practice. It outlines the positions on regional industrialization found in old regionalism, open regionalism and in 21st century regionalisms, and how such positions were shaped by conflicts between social groups. Specifically, it introduces the Andean Pact, MERCOSUR and ALBA as examples. This paper’s contribution consists in reflecting critically on Latin American experiences of drafting and implementing common industrial policy in diverse contexts.

The concept of integral human development is central to the Catholic social tradition. Yet, it remains under-explored with regard to its integrating components and their implications. What does taking an integral human development perspective mean for social analysis and action? The paper seeks to answer this question on the basis of the four encyclicals in which the idea of integral human development is treated, and in combination with the literature on human development in the multidisciplinary social science field of international development studies and its conceptual foundations in Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Based on this comparative analysis, the paper proposes an understanding of integral human development that it calls a “spirituality-extended capability approach to the progress of peoples”.

Participatory practices, within broader processes of rescaling and governance, have been identified as the solution to the “democratic deficit” in healthcare. Conversely, scholars have underscored how these practices could well be used for a contrary purpose, particularly in a top-down process. The first part of this paper outlines a theory-based evaluation framework oriented towards the analysis of institutional practices fostering citizens’ involvement in healthcare decision-making processes and how this involvement can act as a driver for the democratisation of the healthcare system. Following this interpretation, the second part of the paper analyses the new local governance structure adopted by Tuscany (Italy) in the healthcare sector, in particular the later stages of its adoption and diffusion and more than ten years after its institutionalisation. This leads us to identify certain crucial issues to be addressed when institutions promote re-visiting decision-making processes.

This paper will examine the relationship between Fascism and football in Italy from the regime’s origins in the mid­-1920s through to the present day and will seek to explain the far right’s continued presence in the game. Contextualising Italian football’s development within the nation’s postwar history, it will argue that while the Fascist regime laid the foundations of the contemporary game, its influence was not profound enough to explain the far­-right’s existence in Italian stadiums since the 1980s. By situating the politicisation of Italian football within theories of post­-Fascist memory and via the examination of specific incidents of pro­-regime and anti­-Semitic activity within the stadiums, this paper will argue that the failure to combat the far­-right’s presence has been a direct consequence of the weakness/absence of the Italian state.

This paper links three dimensions articulated by the discussions on football in South America: fans, the market, and internal politics. First, the frenzied debate regarding the institutions’ legal format is presented. This first section on the clubs themselves and their legal models is necessary in order to later consider the different forms of participation and organization found by the actors involved in that sphere. Since the economic and political changes occurring in football clubs are not produced in isolation, the second part of this paper addresses those measures incorporated in the sporting realm as part of a global process of commercialization. The third section focuses on how club members and fans express their discontent regarding the structural transformations and decisions taken by club management.

At the end of the 1960s, neighborhood movements burst onto the municipal agenda in many metropolitan environments worldwide through numerous demands related to basic needs. In Madrid, these demands took different neighborhood spaces and some former municipalities that were integrated as districts in the city’s urban core as a geographic scale of reference. This placed these locations at the center of the political debate, which gradually faded away as a result of the various municipal reforms developed during the first two decades of parliamentary democracy in Spain. In the last fifteen years, neighborhood demands have taken a different turn, as a political phenomenon has appeared linked to new forms of neighborhood protest called neighborhoodnalism. This process was not diminished during the hardest moments of the global covid-19 pandemic; rather, it has been strengthened as a dynamic of political socialization, solidarity, and daily resistance in many of Madrid’s neighborhoods. As a result, the referents and elements of identification around the neighborhood, as well as the political practice of neighborhoodnalism itself, have been expanded. From a spatial perspective of neighborhood movements that considers political identity as a dynamic and resignified process through protest and collective organization, and through ethnography and the analysis of in-depth interviews held over five years in the Madrid district of Hortaleza around the Three Kings Parade, this paper studies how these socio-political practices are being articulated in urban space and how the learning of this form of spatial socialization is influencing Madrid’s municipal agenda as a whole.

Based in a digital archive of first-person witness by people currently incarcerated in the United States (U.S.), this paper discusses witness texts that document and grieve the experience of alienation of self-identity, fight that alienation, and that together map both the degradation of human dignity at the center of current U.S. penality and how it can be resisted in restoring sociality with other incarcerated people. Writing from inside often represents a moment not only of resistance to the prison regime, but of reconstruction of the self that is the premise for all further resistance. After placing prison witness today against the background of such witness from an earlier penal era, the paper looks at patterns across the essays currently posted in the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). The paper suggests that the very availability of the APWA could re-ground future U.S. prison scholarship.

This paper applies the concept of inequality regime, in the tradition of the Regulation School, to the analysis of the patterns and drivers of socioeconomic inequality in Portugal in the last few decades. Key empirical patterns are identified with respect to income inequality, top and bottom incomes, wealth inequality, monetary poverty and non-commodified provision of basic goods. We then discuss several underlying processes and mechanisms, namely the capital-labour relation, classification struggles, financialisation, redistribution, and welfare, to account for the identified empirical patterns. We conclude that Portugal’s inequality regime is remarkably contradictory and argue that the country’s success in curbing most measures of inequality in recent times is especially vulnerable to a variety of pressures.

Digital Platform Work (DPW) is part of a new phase of capitalism, in which monopolistic digital platforms use algorithms to mediate labour supply and demand. As DPW grows, the share of atypical workers in the labour market increases and European Union states are pressed to regulate it, but the strategies adopted are different. This is the case with the regulation of DPW in the passenger transport sector approved by the governments of Portugal and Spain. This paper makes a comparative analysis of these case studies based on parliamentary debates and media reports. We argue that the centre-left parties which led the governments in both countries, adopted a distinct regulation strategy because they each have specific conceptions of solidarity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the transformations in the frameworks of reflection and action that promoted territorial documentation policies, developed in coordination between the National Direction of Migration and the provincial and municipal governments in the southern area of Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina. Based on an ethnographic approach to the activities of a local office, the Dirección de Entidades y Colectividades de La Plata, and interviews with its main managers, we focus on the interrelation between documentation policies and the visibility (and production) of the electoral potential of foreigners that crystallized during the implementation of these programs. Unlike the literature that focuses on the analysis of the intentions (explicit or implicit) of the laws and projects, and on the difficulties encountered in achieving the purposes stated in them, the originality of the article is given by its monitoring of positions, relationships, languages, and objects that were produced (to some extent unexpectedly) during their implementation. This strategy reveals that the documentary programs and the officials who carry them out have gradually become part of the networks of the so-called territorial policy, in which the relevance assigned to foreigners has increased. The fundamental shift in this dynamic is the progressive recognition of its electoral potential and the conceptualization of the migration issue as an area of strategic dispute for local and provincial political life. Thus, the main conclusion is that throughout the implementation of these programs, migration policy became politicized; that is, it acquired a “political” status in the consideration of different relevant actors. This recognition lasted even after document operations were discontinued in 2016 and was part of their reinstatement in 2019.

This paper is organized into four parts of discussion. Firstly, we present the Portuguese decriminalization law and the central role of harm reduction within this framework. The second section discusses the mainstream meanings ascribed to the ‘HR double’ mainly anchored in problematic drug uses. The third section highlights the need to take into account the specificities of recreational drug uses, users and environments. Thus, the paper highlights the experience of the Kosmicare Project at the Boom Festival, which combines principles of harm reduction, crisis intervention and Grof’s approach. The fourth section draws upon the project’s experience itself and in the idea of the normalization of drug uses to acknowledge and to discuss the potentialities, tensions and limitations of these contributions when it comes to analyzing and constructing a strong version of the ‘HR double’.

This paper reviews the role of discourse in law and public life and identifies threats to the polity from malicious forms of communication. In addition to its role in legal argument, communication is fundamental to public debate in the formation of laws and policies, and it constitutes the social and political fabric through the use of forms of address and recognition of others. This argument builds on aspects of discourse theory and feminist and other critiques of it that suggest that it applies to a narrow community of discourse, and so excludes other cultures. It takes a broad view of participants in public debate, which necessarily crosses national and cultural borders. Responsible communication demands that we argue in good faith, truthfully and coherently, and that we recognize our partners in discussion, both for who they are and for their place in a shared community. The paper argues that public discourse has sunk to dangerous levels in the present century, citing examples of bad faith, provocation and insult from Australian prime ministers (2002, 2015) and presidential candidates in France (2005) and the United States (2016). It concludes that lying, incoherence, self-contradiction, insult and injury fall outside the bounds of public discourse. Rapid communicative intervention is needed to identify each of these malicious forms of communication as a betrayal of the civic public, before it provokes the next vicious response.

This paper aims to travel historically through the path of consolidation on the Scientific Psychology. Starting from de Cartesian system when Modern Age began, we can observe the establishment of modern regulations, which later were radicalized by the Sciences, including Psychology, by establishing a disciplinarian character in their praxis. Through this paper, the scientific objectivity for the operationalization of the scientific psychology and its ethical-political implications arediscussed, seeking to understand how Psychology designed the subjectivity looking for scientific legitimacy and the implications of this tendency in contemporary subjectivity. As a result, the contemporary times reveal a psychological science still limited to an outdated scientific project, which limits its possibilities of intervention to a materiality of practices and results, and causes the object that it investigates to become a product of this same science.

This paper describes elements of automobile culture, a topic that has hardly been studied at all in research on transport and urban culture. Based on Colombian cases, the paper shows how the practices, beliefs, values and emotions associated with automobiles have transcended the universe of cars, to the point that many of the cultural changes in cities were related to automobilities. The argument is developed through a discussion of the role of autonomy, the notion of the driver personality and the automobility system’s own socio-material hierarchies. The research is based on the review and analysis of press items and statistical bulletins from the period of 1950-1968 referring to the cases of Bogota and Barranquilla.

In this paper the authors analyze Brazilians’ and Paraguayans’ presence in the process of recent colonization in the municipality of Santa Rita, Department of Alto Paraná, Oriental region of the Republic of Paraguay, initiated in the 1970’s. The objective of the paper is to contribute to the understanding of the social relations among migrants (foreign and national) in that space of colonization. In order to achieve this, the authors establish methodological interfaces between the fields of History and Social Anthropology, conjugating bibliographical, documentary and ethnographic research for a reflection on the historical situation observed in the region

The intellectual path of Augusto Boal was parallel to his life course. “A path making by walking”, we can say using Machado’s words. This article wants to be an example of how important is the connection between personal experience and research process in the field of education, as it was for me before as educator as well as education sciences researcher, later. Education, politics, social research are fields very related to each other. In my personal experience, working as educator I discovered the necessity of a pedagogical framework to sustain the practice; thinking as pedagogist I realized the important of the politic meanings of education; acting as Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner I understood the importance of keeping linked theory and praxis, personal and academic research. Summarily, in this paper I try to carry out some connecting points between pedagogy, politics and research using the method of the Theatre of the Oppressed as framework. The first part described the reasons of my interest on Pedagogy of the Oppressed (P. Freire) and then on Theatre of the Oppressed (A. Boal). Later on, the focus is put on the meaning of the words ‘theatre’ and ‘oppression’ to explain the aims and the roots of the Theatre of the Oppressed. In the end of the paper, it is described the project “TOgether”, an European research-action path aimed to build up a curriculum for the Theatre of the Oppressed trainer as well as to experiment the aesthetics potential of the method.

This paper explores Occupational Therapy (OT) interventions using a dialogical perspective with therapists and people with functional diversity.[1] Framing the dialogue between the discourses that participate in the therapeutic process, the paper reflexively explores the interferences in the forms of subjectivity that the discipline promotes under the governmental umbrella. The research uses ethnographic and narrative material as the basis of its methodology. The material suggests that OT, like other health disciplines, constitutes a governmental mechanism of bodily regulation that produces subjectification through certain procedures: distributing persons in space, regulating their use of time, and perfecting their performance of activities. The reflection allows us to reconsider the construction of the “patient” in OT interventions considering the rights of persons with functional diversity.

In this paper, the categories of centre, periphery, and semiperiphery are revised for the studies of world society. The centre of world society has primary functional differentiation, whilst other forms of differentiation, such as segmentary differentiation and stratification, remain dominant in the periphery. The semiperiphery may be defined as an arena in which functional differentiation struggles for hegemony against other forms of differentiation. Firstly, the centre is defined by its cognitive closeness as well as its power of definition and interpretation against the periphery, whilst the periphery can only accept the interpretations, definitions, and decisions performed at the centre. The emergence of national identity as a cultural identity outside of the centre is not understandable without relation to the centre. However, semiperipheral and peripheral cultural identities prevent some nations from further modernising toward functional differentiation. Secondly, the centre of modern world society is defined by the implementation of functional differentiation, whilst an important indicator of the border between the centre and periphery is the status of human rights. Thus, we can say that all regions are exposed to the structural effects of world society, especially that of the world economy, but all functional systems have not been implemented equally throughout the world. Whilst in the centre, access to social resources is guaranteed by individual human rights (fundamental rights), the population in the semiperiphery and periphery requires membership in particular organisations or social ties to obtain the benefits of the modern world and world economy. Thirdly, while the periphery of world society is seen in ‘failed states’, this paper proposes that authoritarian regimes are semiperiphery. Societies in the semiperiphery are characterised by the dominance of political and economic systems over other functional systems. The modern systems theory calls such a society an organisation society.

This research paper presents a queer feminist analysis of gendered discourses in South Africa’s (SA) (2020-2025) National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). It builds on an extensive field of WPS scholarship by using the case study of SA’s NAP to illustrate how policy can be used to harness critical gendered language and create possibilities for radical (re)imaginings of gendered peace. While a considerable knowledge base that explores the gendered discourses of NAPs on WPS already exists, a key gap in the literature —that has only more recently begun to be explored with greater rigor— is the bridging of queer and feminist theories to further push the boundaries of discursive policy analysis. Against this backdrop, feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) was applied to the NAP case study to surface dominant and counter-discourses on gender and their possible inclusionary/exclusionary effects. Key findings centre the potential value of policy discourses which, in their fragmentation, ruptures, continuities and ambivalences, can facilitate opportunities for queer peace at the instrumental level and beyond.

Structural changes imposed on Brazil’s dairy industry are influenced by the international market while it presses local industries and local producers. One of the main difficulties in the dairy sector is the standardization of milk based on the international standards of quality. So, to meet these requirements, standard operating procedures are established for the entire production chain, and they’re called '' Good dairy farming practices”. This paper addresses in a systemic way the influences of these standards in the Brazilian milk production, and the difficulties for adopting these procedure standards in family farming, especially in the Amazon region. The Amazonian family farmer is characterized by a peculiar diversity related to the ways they produce and live in society. In addition, there is at the same time a variety of local contexts very striking in the Amazon, which involve and influence the practices of farmers, making it difficult to join a homogenizing principle of good practices. The criticism of this paper does not report the need for sanitation improvements in milk production practices, but it wants to demonstrate as a leading line that the local context and the logic of producers are extremely necessary, so that the actions elaborated can value their practices and have them as a starting point. It should be noted in this study that the result of standard procedures for family farmers is the differentiation and social reunification in between them, where some are consolidated in milk production and others are excluded.

The paper reflects on the articulation of social categories of difference and intersectionalities from the analysis of a domestic worker trajectory, who is in transition to the profession of nursing assistant. I argue that, in the analyzed trajectory, the professional qualification and the possibility to consume some goods, before accessible only to middle and upper classes, were prominent in the search for agency, achievements facilitated by a favorable socio-economic context. Through an anthropological perspective, the purpose of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the articulation of categories such as gender, class and race, focusing on the agency possibilities in contexts marked by inequalities.

Essentially based on the author’s doctoral research, this paper analyzes the representations of non-EU migration stemming from the discourses of the main political and social actors engaged in the construction of the “EU Framework for the Integration of Third Country Nationals”. It focuses on the discursive specificities characterizing Brussels’ “elitist” and “politically correct” context, the most important consequence of which is the production of “proactive” and not openly negative representations of immigration, based on the paradigm of “active citizenship” rather than on the ideas of “lack” or “shortage”. In spite of this difference, the paper highlights the fact that a combination of Eurocentric and selective assumptions still underlies such discourses and analyses them.

This article analyzes Argentine news coverage of Nazi crimes during the period of liberation of prisoners from concentration camps, when Allied troops discovered the “atrocities” that had been committed in them. For this purpose, a corpus was put together of news articles taken from the four main Argentinean newspapers of the period: the morning papers La Prensa and La Nación, and the evening papers La Razón and Crítica. The analysis of these materials shows that the Argentine press consolidated an interpretive paradigm of Nazism as absolute “barbarity.” This type of coverage created confusion regarding the place specifically reserved for Jews in the Nazi system of destruction, despite the fact that the same press had been reporting on the systematic extermination of the Jewish populations in Europe ever since 1942.

This paper intends to question the primacy of human beings and their domination over nature based on a critique of the obsolescence of zoos as reinforcers of boundaries between humans and animals. The analysis was conducted of the anthropocentric assumption and of the nature of zoos as places of forced marginalization and animal confinement. In order to achieve the established goals, the historical, deductive and explanatory method is applied. Books, papers and journals have been used as bibliographical sources. Tom Regan’s Theory of Animal Rights and Sônia T. Felipe’s Animal Ethics have been adopted to demonstrate the most adequate “solution” for these and so many other cases of animal exploration: empty cages and animal freedom.

Based on documentary research at the Torre do Tombo National Archives, and employing the perspective of glottopolitics and critical sociolinguistics, this paper analyzes the role of the Portuguese language as an element of national cohesion and internationalization through two major linguistic-politic events: the National Commission of Centennials (1938-1943) and the National Commission for the Commemorations of the Portuguese Discoveries (1986-2002). In contrast with other states, in which different nations and languages are under the same legal-political system, and in which the oppression of linguistic minorities became less accentuated as we approach the present, the Portuguese case works differently. In the context of globalization and transition to democracy, the value of Portuguese is seen to mobilize a type of re-nationalizing identity through processes of racialization of the colonized population and of symbolic detachment from Portuguese emigrated communities.

This paper proposes a model for characterize-ing and analyzing workspaces in contemporary Latin American organizations that seeks to portray the heterogeneous forms in which the activity of work unfolds in a single social and productive space. This model may be relevant for different types of social studies of work insofar as it sheds light on the structural characteristics that account for different social and subjective processes. It proposes the notion of work scenarios, understood as typical labor configurations where certain ways of organizing work and employment and human management practices converge which reflect the basic contribution that is expected of workers by the organization, and the type of relation the organization offers in return. In addition to proposing analytical criteria and methodological approach strategies, the paper describes a qualitative research experience that tested the notion of work scenarios as a result of which six scenarios were identified that provided cross-section of important sectors of the Chilean economy.

This paper is intended to explore modes of inquiry into culture and public discourse. To this end, the first part of the paper is devoted to situating discourses and practices within a broad notion of culture, a notion which goes beyond the cultural turn and focuses on culture in action, as well as on the dynamic dialogue between structure and action. In order to advance in a methodological proposal, the paper examines four different studies that propose differentiated strategies for making the concept of culture operational.

This paper intends to make a reflection and analysis of the impact of theoretical and methodological frameworks of reference on different neo-institutional approaches in social policy. The paper questions the functionality and continuity of the institutions that are responsible for the functions of designing and implementing programs of social policy, given the profound changes on the environment of economic globalization processes. The method used primarily focuses on critical analysis and reflection. It is concluded that the institutions of welfare and social security must develop the technological, organizational and administrative skills to create and maintain institutional effects that go beyond being conductive to efficiency, effectiveness and equitable development.

In a reversal of previous policies, development agencies are increasingly adjusting their interventions to local cultures. This paper analyses how Timorese culture has been interpreted, processed and factored into UN development programmes. Which types of concessions do agencies make? Where are the red lines in this hybridization process and does it entail a renegotiation of development approaches or just unilateral concessions? The paper argues that UN agencies’ efforts to become more culturally sensitive in their operations in Timor‑Leste has clear limitations and fails to reflect local culture in its diversity. In this complex interplay of co‑existing variations of local culture, power asymmetries and international orthodoxy, development agencies are both: always one step behind in understanding local culture, but one step ahead regarding their power to define the rules of engagement.

This paper focuses on the chasm between domestic and international understandings and approaches to peacebuilding and the mixed outcomes that characterize contemporary efforts to assist war‑torn countries. It argues that post‑Cold War peacebuilding relies on a wide array of international actors with diverse interests and mandates which are not necessarily aligned with local realities or needs. Building on the rich literature on the role of external actors in conflict zones, the paper examines the interface between domestic and international actors through the concept of ‘hybridity’. It then reviews two mechanisms that aim to level the playing field between war‑affected countries and international actors: the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission and the New Deal for Engagement with Fragile States.

This paper discusses the ways in which the Timorese state has dealt with elements of local governance complexes called kultura. Based on the analysis of recent uses of tara bandu and the organizational dynamics of local power, the text argues that the way in which aspects of local governance complexes have been recognized and incorporated have turned them into means for pacifying, integrating and monopolizing power. At the same time, kultura is used to transpose and internalize modern practices and projects of social organization and subjectivation. The paper discusses the criticism levelled at the politicization of local elections as an expression of agency and resistance on the part of sectors of the rural populations to projects of political co‑optation of their social reproduction dynamics by the Díli‑based national elites.

At the beginning of the Pandemic, Sweden took a different path from her Nordic neighbours and many other countries, namely by not implementing a “forced mass lockdown” or applying stringent restrictions. This paper sets out to examine Sweden’s national strategy for responding to COVID-19. This research seeks to address the extent to which the underlying concepts of Swedish “ethos” and “tradition” influenced or shaped the national strategy to avoid forced mass lockdown during the pandemic. To prevent an enforced lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19, the Swedish government presented a range of different measures, both “voluntary and legally binding”. The strategy employed by the Public Health Authority was based on notions of “individual responsibility” and “mutual trust” between the government and the citizenry. The guidelines were often ambiguous and left to individuals to interpret for themselves.

This article examines the scientific literature on return migration in Colombia that assesses and sheds light on the importance of this phenomenon in terms of its empirical contributions, in the first two decades of the present century. To do so, four dimensions of analysis are used as a starting point: what and who are the returnees; where they return to —the territorial scale of return from an ontological viewpoint, specifically, the territorial dimension—; the reasons for return; and the public policies of return. The bibliographic review and selection strategy was undertaken in four phases: 1) bibliographic search in indexing and abstracting systems (SIR): ALAP-OIM, DOAJ, Redalyc, Scopus, Seriunam, Clacso, Clase, LatAM-Estudios, Redib, SciELO Colombia, Biblat, Publindex-Colombia, Cepal and Web of Science; 2) purging of duplicate studies; 3) eligibility; and 4) specific selection. The total number of papers located was 424. Of these, a total of 127 were selected according to the inclusion-exclusion and methodological evaluation criteria. Despite the progress made, we concluded that there is a lack of studies on return migration in areas such as family, multidimensional reintegration, transnationalism, and political participation. There are also few studies that address current return from Venezuela, making it difficult to design policies to manage the phenomenon. Finally, the originality of this article consists in the dimensions of the analysis of return and its temporality. This in the light of a methodological procedure using grounded theory, in which each scientific text constituted a heuristic and hermeneutic unit of comparative analysis.

This paper presents a comparative study between two religions – wicca and candomblé – whose rituals and practices enable women’s empowerment and promote the Sacred Feminine. The ethnographic field research conducted in Belem, Brazil, between 2011 and 2015, reveals that these religions’ worldviews contain elements that promote their members’ feminist practices. The paper explores the gender relations and family patterns built within these two religious groups in order to show how their practices contribute to the empowerment of women. The ethnographic analysis serves as the basis for a preliminary discussion on whether or not it is possible to analyze these religions using the concept of feminist spiritualities.

This paper will argue that democracy should be treated as an object of policy studies. Against some opposing theoretical views stemming from political theory, I will sustain that the public policies which are relevant for democracy are those pertaining to effective political inclusion. This requires casting light on the institutional design of political regimes, on the conditions that promote democratic values, electoral competition and political representation, and on the models of participatory governance in public policy. This paper will also discuss some factors related to the processes of institutional change that affect policies related to democracy. This paper aims to stimulate a more dynamic dialogue between political theory, comparative politics and policy studies.

The purpose of this paper is to point out some features of the relationship between solidarity and lack of solidarity in modern and contemporary constitutionalism. In order to do that, the article traces the historical emergence of two distinct notions: that of "solidarity", in the context of the French Revolution, and that of "solidarism", used as a reaction to the late nineteenth century conservative constitutionalism. After that, the paper discusses the uses of "solidarity" in the various kinds of social constitutionalism that existed throughout the twentieth century. Thirdly, it attempts to show the perversions, if not the neglect, of the idea of solidarity in what might be called neoliberal constitutionalism. After offering a brief critique of this approach, the article tries to explore the conditions for the emergence of a new kind of constitutionalism founded on democratic solidarity and fraternity. In comparison with its previous versions, this constitutionalism should be able to project it basic features in public and private relationships, within and beyond state borders.

In this paper we present a response mechanism to the COVID-19 pandemic consistent with the previous empirical literature that emerged during the Great Recession, although not with the underlying ontology. Therefore, we analyze the principle of the endogeneity of money and argue how the proposed mechanism, the Guaranteed Employment, is an institutional and functional solution that allows for overcoming the limitations of the mechanisms used during the Great Recession. This is a further step towards closer coordination between the Central Bank and the Treasury, which has certainly proven essential for financial stability since the international financial crisis of 2007-2008, and which must also encompass macroeconomic stability to cope with the current and future challenges we face as a society: today it is the pandemic, but tomorrow it will be climate change.

This paper argues that the expression archaeologies of the future is a syntagm that allows us to explore recent challenges in the languages of criticism. In view of this, it proposes three indications for systematizing current thinking: provincializing language, a critique of ontological dualisms and derangements of scale.