Search

This article presents notes on the 13th Conference of the Sociology of Religion at lloret-de-Mar, Costa-Brava, Catalonia, Spain, in 1975. The conference was held at a popular tourist resort. The place was crowded with bars, souvenirs and tourists mainly coming from Great Britain and West Germany. The theme of the conference was Religion and Social Change. The principal papers were not read at the conference but appeared in advance in the acts either in extenso or as resumés. The papers were discussed at the conference in five different kinds of sessions. It is quite possible to unite the many different papers and discussions in one single view or even in a short article. Thirty papers were printed in the acts, and half of them in extenso. The subject areas also varied widely: From African to Irish religion and from Polish to Japanese popular beliefs. The theoretical discussions also covered the wide range from traditional positivism and functionalism to some tender outbreaks of critical theory, This confrontation which is very usual among secular sociologists still possesses the charm of novelty among sociologists of religion, but nevertheless it made discussions difficult at the conference.

Identity and democracy and, more particularly, national identity and deliberative democracy account for a controversial relationship. However, from a classical deliberative democratic point of view, the controversy over who is the 'we' that needs to stand together in contemporary complex societies settled with the constitution of modern states. In this sense, the main contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I rebut the analytical appropriateness and conceptual coherence of Habermas' discursive approach to democracy for the case of plurinational societies in contemporary constitutional democracies. A discussion of a test case – Catalonia – demonstrates that this inadequacy renders incoherent the deliberative model regarding one of its most fundamental premises: the equal weight of the principles of law and the principle of democracy. On the other hand, I sustain that the challenge is not about identity but democracy, and more particularly, about the role deliberative democracy is called to play when controversy challenges whether the people of a state do conform to a single people or not. More concretely, I explore the opportunities offered by the systemic turn to sustain a more realistic approach to deliberative democracy regarding its capacity to steer society towards integration in the context of the system of public deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon the region (nation) of Catalonia, Spain and in particular upon the ways in which Catalan political parties have 'Europeanized' their discourse, viewing Europe both as an alternative institutional channel to promote their objectives and as an example to follow of socioeconomic and political modernization. After reviewing some of the reasons that account for the increased importance of subnationalism in the EU, the paper considers the contours of the Catalan political system. Following this there is a detailed discussion of the ways in which the main political parties in Catalonia employ the issue of European integration in their political rhetoric. By way of conclusion, the paper considers the differing reasons behind each of the parties' position on Catalonia's role within the process of European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do secessionist parties advance identity, socioeconomic or political frames for constitutional change? By performing a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of 93 party manifestos from six Western regions, the results identify a key variable that plays an important role in rhetorical strategies: the governmental status of the party. In linguistically distinctive regions, parties tend to put forward identity frames when in opposition. Instead, being in office is a condition for framing their position in socioeconomic terms. The results concerning political frames are highly complex, although patterns around office holding have also been identified. Hence, the present article shows that office-seeking strategies imply a fundamental change in how these parties frame their claims. Minority nationalist parties take the opportunity of being in office to enhance their credibility as governing parties by downplaying identity issues in favour of a more inclusive and policy-oriented appeal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its re-emergence in 2017, the #MeToo movement has been adopted across the globe. #MeToo has a transnational dimension, transcending its initial US context and placing international issues alongside national concerns. This article aims to contextualize and situate #MeToo, providing a critical review of the movement in two local contexts – Catalonia (Spain) and Portugal. The analysis is grounded on empirical observations on social media, drawing as well on previous scholarship on the topic produced both internationally and in the contexts of study, and on the engagement with relevant national media sources. By focusing on national expressions of #MeToo in Portugal and Catalonia, this article explores how #MeToo took shape in (and was shaped by) the local contexts and existing feminist practices. It presents the different temporalities and dynamics of the movement in these two contexts, exploring the roles of both social media and traditional press in the local developments of #MeToo, and also briefly exploring the local legislative implications of the movement. This article thus presents #MeToo as common and easily recognisable frame used in local contexts to approach different issues of sexual and gendered violence, yet flexible enough to allow for national specificities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the First World War was a crucial time for nationalist leaders and minority communities across the European continent and beyond. The impact of the post-war spread of self-determination on the redrawing of Eastern European borders and on the claims of colonial independence movements has been extensively researched. By contrast, the international historiography has paid little attention to minority nationalist movements in Western Europe. This article focuses on three regions (Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol) that experienced considerable sub-state national mobilization in the interwar period. We aim to understand whether the leaders of Western European minorities and stateless nations shared the same enthusiasm as their anti-colonial and Eastern European counterparts for the new international order that self-determination seemed to foreshadow in the months following the end of the First World War. Because the American President Woodrow Wilson stood out as the most prominent purveyor of the new international legitimacy of self-determination, the article further examines how Western European nationalist movements exploited Wilson's image and advocacy to achieve their own goals. Nationalist forces in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol initially mobilized self-determination and referred to Wilson as a symbol of national liberation, but this instrumentalization of self-determination was not sustained. Large-scale mobilization occurred only in Catalonia, and, even there, it disappeared suddenly in spring 1919. Furthermore, sub-state nationalist movements in Western Europe tended to mobilize self-determination to gain regional autonomy, rather than full independence, thus pursuing internal, not external, self-determination. The willingness of these movements to privilege autonomy over full independence made them more receptive to compromise. Radical forces would become stronger only in the 1930s and largely for reasons not directly connected to the post-war mobilization around self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1645 the Portuguese historian Francisco Manuel de Melo published the Historia de los movimientos, separación y guerra de Cataluña, an account of the so-called ‘Rebellion of Catalonia’ against the Spanish monarch Philip IV. Although the accuracy of the book has been the subject of controversy, very little has been said about its discursive strategies, in spite of its having been considered ‘an exceptional work’ (Menéndez y Pelayo 1893) and ‘full of perfections’ (Rosell 1852) in terms of its elocutio. The aim of this paper is to analyze the historiographical strategies that govern the construction of the Historia, in an attempt to place the early modern writing of history within a tradition that goes back to the ancient rhetoricians. In the particular case of Melo, the most immediate reference is that of the Dell’arte istorica (1639), a treatise by the Italian Jesuit Agostino Mascardi, specifically mentioned and praised by Melo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the literature on housing market areas, different approaches can be found to defining them—for example, using travel-to-work areas and, more recently, making use of migration data. This paper proposes a simple exercise to shed light on which approach performs better. Using regional data for Catalonia, in Spain, housing market areas are computed with both commuting data and migration data. In order to decide which procedure shows superior performance, the uniformity of prices within areas is examined. The main finding is that commuting algorithms present more homogeneous areas in terms of housing prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper formally analyses the effects that public goods (in a broad sense) have on tourists and private tourism firms. By approaching the tourism product as a bundle of characteristics, the paper shows how the supply of public goods in tourism municipalities positively affects both the tourists' utility functions and the private firms' production functions. Some implications of this fact regarding the sustainability of tourism are discussed. By means of hedonic methods, empirical evidence of location on prices for hotels on Catalonia's coast (Spain) is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can secessionism be a basis for affective or social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the risk of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that the issue of secession can affectively polarize along both policy and ethnic group lines even in the case of nonviolent disputes, and posit a number of expectations regarding such secessionist-based polarization. We test our argument with the case of Catalonia, a substate territory that has experienced a deep secessionist crisis since 2017, using new data from a panel survey and embedded experiments fielded across two key time periods. We find that individuals' secessionist preferences condition high levels of affective polarization, in that pro- and anti-independence advocates have strong negative views of one another. In addition, there is spillover in terms of stereotypes of associated language groups (i.e. Catalan, Spanish). Importantly, we find a group of moderates in between the two policy poles that exhibit far less polarization. Finally, we document the persistence of these overall patterns. Our results contribute to understanding the underexplored polarization dynamics of secessionist movements, particularly in contexts where high intensity violence (e.g. terrorism, civil war) has not occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than theorizing trust and mistrust in the abstract, recent anthropological scholarship has shown how trust and mistrust emerge in particular social settings. In this article, I build on this scholarship by drawing on fieldwork with the members of an anti-capitalist Catalonian cooperative who looked to create alternative economic systems that were said to be based on trust. The central aim of this article is to redirect analytical attention from the emergence of the experience of (mis-)trust in particular contexts, toward an analysis of how trust and mistrust are mobilized to make particular iterations of an 'alternative economy' emerge out of competing grassroots economic conceptualizations. By analysing how trust and mistrust are constituted within a relational field involving the state and a broader landscape of cooperative movements, this article shows that socio-economic formations are continually formed through embodied, affectively charged practices instead of being solely 'based' on trust or mistrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how a feminist approach to politics can resonate within a nation-building project in Catalonia against the backdrop of rising transnational anti-feminist right-wing populism in Europe. Feminism and nationalism have often been presented as oppositional, and nationalist struggles have been considered to further patriarchal regimes. However, nation-building can also be an opportunity to think of feminist alternative futures. The article explores the role of feminism in the political project of the pro-independence Catalan left (Esquerra Independentista), and exposes internal tensions and difficulties in aiming to achieve both independence and feminism in an emancipated Catalonia. Esquerra Independentista adopt two distinctive strategies of feminist politics: the promotion of the indivisibility of social, gender and national struggles (independence, socialism, feminism), and an embodied politics that centralises women's political agency as a political tool. However, Esquerra Independentista's proposals for a socialist and feminist future are fragile and limited by internal tensions between the prevalence of masculinist models of doing politics on one hand, and on the other hand, alternative ideas about the strategic importance of class, gender and national oppressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the dominant expectations of the late 20th century, secessionism surged in two West European minority national communities, Catalonia and Scotland, over the last decade. Yet, in two others enjoying similar degrees of autonomy, Flanders and South Tyrol, secessionism did not gain strength. This outcome suggests that focusing on the degree of autonomy afforded to minority national communities is misplaced. This article shows that the nature of autonomy is more important than its degree for understanding the strength of secessionism. It demonstrates that the key to autonomy regimes weakening secessionism is their capacity to adjust and expand over time. Dynamic autonomy staves off secessionism while static autonomy stimulates it. The article is based on a controlled comparison of, on the one hand, Catalonia and Scotland, where autonomy regimes have been mostly static during key periods of time, and, on the other hand, Flanders and South Tyrol, where they have been dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores women's and men's perceptions of the specific barriers that prevent women from participating fully in the cultural labour market. To this end, an online questionnaire was administered to 375 cultural professionals in Catalonia (Spain) regarding their perceptions of the barriers faced by women in a range of areas. The results show similar views between genders regarding the difficulties associated with the work–life balance as the most important obstacle preventing women from entering specific cultural fields and from rising to decision-making positions. However, perceptions of the barriers impacting the recognition of women's career achievements differed greatly between men and women. While men place more emphasis on issues of work–life balance, women more frequently mention the existence of a glass ceiling and their exclusion from networks of influence. Regarding the visibility of women's artistic creations, although intersectionality is mentioned by both genders as the main limiting factor, there are marked differences between women's and men's perception of the other barriers. Men thus more frequently refer to the barriers of work–life balance and the association of creativity with maleness as the main factors limiting the visibility of women's artistic creations. In short, this study provides evidence to stakeholders of the different perceptions that men and women have in relation to the main barriers that prevent women from climbing the career ladder; gaining recognition and visibility for their work; and, in some creative sectors, even from entering the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyse the experiences of probation officers who supervise women in the community in Catalonia. To this end, qualitative research involving 15 semi-structured interviews with probation officers in Barcelona and Girona was carried out. The results show that professionals agree that there are important gender differences in relation to: (a) personal and penal characteristics and (b) supervision style. The perceptions of practitioners and existing empirical data are broadly consistent. Women who serve community sentences have a wide range of problems, needs and responsibilities compared to men, which is often reflected in the fact that women's attendance is much more irregular, an issue that presents multiple challenges for practitioners. Probation officers already carry out different gender-responsive practises, however, they face different challenges in a gender-insensitive probation system. Furthermore, given the great heterogeneity of the female service users compared to the men, service provision for women in the community also needs to be intersectionally-responsive. Based on these disparities, the elements of probation that the professionals believe work better with women and those that could be improved are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores party strategies in electoral competition in Catalonia in order to test the existence of ethnic outbidding (Chandra, 2005 ; Zuber and Szöcsik, 2015). We contribute with original findings on this case by addressing the evolution of political parties' discourses through a qualitative analysis of their manifestos for the last five regional elections campaigns (2006–2017), covering a period of strong territorial conflict between Catalonia and Spain. Our analysis aims to measure the impact of secessionism growth on parties' ethnic competition in Catalonia and compares the strategies of secessionist, federalist and centralist parties. In order to measure ethnicity, we focus on language, the most salient identity marker in Catalan politics, and link the evolution of parties' territorial positions to that of their treatment of national identities and the Catalan and Castilian languages – both official languages in Catalonia – in their manifestos. Our findings include diverse strategies that do not entirely fit in with ethnic competition theories. First, we find that territorial outbidding does not always imply ethnic outbidding: political parties generally do not use the main identity marker in Catalonia (language) for outbidding purposes. Second, we find some evidence of ethnic outbidding in majority nationalist parties, but not in minority nationalist parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing use of modern digital signal processors (DSPs) in industrial control and other applications in the past few years. While courses offered in electrical and computer engineering disciplines cover such topics as mobile and digital communication, image and sound encoding and decoding, few courses focus on the use of DSPs in real-time control of electrical machinery and drives. Therefore, there is a growing need in industry for engineers who can perform control design and system integration for various applications in motor control. This paper describes a course on Control of Electrical Machines offered by the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB), Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain. A description of a hands-on laboratory testbed for motor control. An outline of the course structure, the laboratory setup and the design aspects for implementing modern real-time motor control applications are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bombardment of civilians from the air was a regular feature of the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. It is estimated some 15,000 Spaniards died as a result of air bombings during the Civil War, most civilians, and 11,000 were victims of bombing from the Francoist side that rebelled against the Republican government, supported by German and Italian aviation that joined the rebellion against the Republic. In Catalonia alone, some 1062 municipalities experienced aerial bombardments by the Francoist side of the civil war. In cities across Spain, municipal and regional authorities developed detailed plans for civilian defense in response to these air campaigns. In Barcelona, the municipality created the Junta Local de Defensa Passiva de Barcelona, to build bomb shelters, warn the public of bombings, and educate them on how to protect themselves against aerial bombardment. They mobilized civilians around the concept of 'passive defense.' This proactive response by civilians and local government to what they recognized as a war targeting them is an important and under-studied aspect of the Spanish Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article provides information on the 13th International Conference on the Sociology of Religion to be held August 31-September 4, 1975 in Catalonia, Spain, The conference will revolve around the theme religion and social change. Those who register for the Conference will receive in July the Acts of the Conference. The Acts comprise 16 papers in extenso which will be discussed in the plenary sessions. At each session a rapporteur will present a critique of the papers under discussion, and authors will act as respondents. These groups will be conducted in one language, without translation. Subsequently, the conference will reconvene or a general discussion among participants. Simultaneous translation will be provide in English, French and Spanish.

Policymakers in Canada and across Europe have largely embraced the creation of post-disciplinary systems of punishment. In the autonomous region of Catalonia, Spain, this meant expanding connections between prisons and communities, expanding the publics a prison serves. At the same time, in part driven by austerity policies, incarceration in Spain and Catalonia has become more punitive and bureaucratic. Actuarial risk assessments introduced in Catalan prisons in 2009 are an example of this type of reform—designed to facilitate the release of low-risk inmates earlier and to control mobility. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Catalan prisons from 2012 to 2014, I show how both actuarial and clinical risk evaluation involved therapists' anticipation of future aggressive acts on the part of inmates. Analyzing risk assessment as a practice and as an ideological frame, I argue that the short-term focus of risk assessments reinforced existing forms of interpreting inmates' actions that therapists attempted to hold at bay. Risk as an ideological frame in the context of austerity contributes to a form of publicity that can further isolate inmates rather than facilitating the construction of community inside and outside of a rehabilitative prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of internal resettlement in times of civil war by using a novel dataset of all municipalities of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which includes information on the total number of internally displaced from other parts of Spain that sought refuge in Catalan localities during the civil war. The dataset, which also incorporates information on relevant covariates, is built with a combination of primary (i.e. archival) and secondary sources. The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that political identities have a significant impact on resettlement: people tend to relocate to places where they can find others who share their political and/or ethnic identity; we see this reflected in political and ethnic alignments at the municipal level. In addition, the article uncovers a relevant dynamic in the diffusion of violence at the local level: the arrival of internal refugees in a new locality may have the unintended effect of increasing levels of direct violence due to its role in disseminating credible news of atrocities committed by the other side. The implications of this study go beyond the Spanish case and make a contribution to unpacking dynamics of violence and internal displacement in civil wars. The article also sheds light on some of the mechanisms by which refugee flows can play a role in the diffusion of violence throughout a given country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to present the findings of an analytical framework we have designed to monitor discriminatory political discourse on immigration. Through the understanding of how some of the most relevant studies in three disciplines (political science, social psychology and linguistics) have framed racism, we try to infer how such racism may manifest in discourse through particular discriminatory tendencies. The combination of these tendencies has contributed to the designing of the proposed analytical framework that aims, by means of 12 standards, to systematically certify political discourse as discriminatory, quantify how much discriminatory discourse is and assess how such discrimination is legitimised or justified. By implementing such a framework within the context of Catalonia, this pilot study offers a global picture of how Catalan political discourse on immigration is constructed and how each of the standards appears (or does not appear) in discourse. Once the viability of this framework is proven, we conclude it could be the basis of comparative research in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the challenges facing the Catalan press in a context marked by the digitization and by a political process that demands independence. The media landscape in Catalonia is populated by media produced at Spanish level and at Catalan level, and this applies to the press, radio and television. Mainstream paid-for newspapers, available to the citizens of Catalonia produced at a national, regional, local or state level, whether written in Catalan or Spanish merit discussion. This kind of press is the most influential in the shaping of Catalonian public opinion and therefore plays a central role in the political debate on independence. In this context, newspapers in Catalonia are facing the crisis of the print-only business model and falling revenues from a declining readership base and the subsequent fall of advertising revenue. To face this problem, newspaper publishers are throwing themselves into digital strategies (web, tablet, mobile phones). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living together in neighbourhoods characterised by various aspects of diversity is central to the everyday life of Casamançais in both Catalonia, Spain, and Casamance, Senegal. Discursively, Casamançais speak about it similarly in both localities, construing co-residence on the neighbourhood scale as a sociality that builds on similar moral values such as relative equality, respect and consideration. At the same time, this sociality also implies negotiation, interaction and translation as central everyday practices. Investigating these practices reveals how they facilitate locally specific forms of neighbourliness. These practices are central to the suggested conceptualisation of conviviality as a process in which a fragile balance is maintained over the course of both cooperative and conflictual situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 31 January 1911, a terrible and unpredicted sea storm affected most of the coast from Catalonia to Valencia, causing nearly 140 deaths, mainly among the fishing population. As a result of this storm, a sea port was constructed in Arenys. This article analyses the decision to build it in one of the few villages on the Catalan coast with almost no fishermen, a village in which the marine tradition ended half a century before the disaster. It examines the management of this catastrophe as a process of heritagization of maritime culture by the local elites. Of particular interest is the place of attracting tourists in the decision-making of these elites. To provide an insight into the political economy of maritime culture, the study also assesses the commemoration of the disaster in 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While direct national press subsidies were abolished in the late 1980s, they continue to be granted in seven of Spain’s 17 regional autonomous communities. Two features of these subsidy schemes are their highly discretionary nature and their particular concern for the language component, the latter of which, in some cases, is linked to processes of nation building. Catalonia was the first regional autonomous community to introduce press subsidies. It has also spent the highest amounts on such subsidies. But, in the current context of financial crisis, it has applied more radical cutbacks to them than any other region in Spain. This article focuses on the description and analysis of subsidies that have been granted in Catalonia since the 1980s. It pays particular attention to the changes brought about by a politically progressive shift in the Government of Catalonia in 2003 and the implications of the financial crisis that became apparent in 2011, by that time in the context of a conservative government. All of these issues are considered after describing and explaining the national and regional subsidy circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new collection model was designed and tested in Catalonia (Spain) to foster the separate collection and recycling of electrical and electronic toys, with the participation of selected primary and secondary schools, as well as waste collection points and municipalities. This project approach is very original and important because small household WEEE has low rates of collection (16–21% WEEE within the EU or 5–7% WEEE in Spain) and no research on new approaches to enhance the collection of small WEEE is found in the literature. The project was successful in achieving enhanced toys collection and recycling rates, which went up from the national Spanish average of 0.5% toys before the project to 1.9 and 6% toys during the two project years, respectively. The environmental benefits of the campaign were calculated through a life-cycle approach, accounting for the avoided impact afforded by the reuse of the toys and the recycling of the valuable materials contained therein (such as metals, batteries and circuit boards) and subtracting the additional environmental burdens associated with the establishment of the collection campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Princess of our noble Catalan land Oh Virgin of the mountain… pious Mother of this land that has always loved you, make it great and powerful1Over the course of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain (1939–1975), we can trace a remarkable transformation in the position of the Catholic Church in the historic territory of Catalonia. Subject to deep-rooted anti-clericalism, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Church found itself the target of an unprecedented assault. The victory of Franco’s Nationalist forces in 1939 restored the Church, yet due to its Spanish Nationalist ideology, sought the ending of the Catalan Catholic tradition. However, over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the Catalan Church was able to undertake a cautious reconstruction of the indigenous religious and cultural movement. This revival would begin to transform the Church’s position in Catalan society to the point where, by the mid-1960s, it was possible to assert that anti-clericalism was no more. The Church became a key element in the revival of Catalan nationalism and an important component to the opposition in late anti-Francoism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The entry of General Franco's 'liberating' Nationalist army into the city of Barcelona in January 1939 was the prelude to a wave of violent repression across the Principality of Catalonia. In addition to the New State's persecution of the language, culture and national personality of Catalonia, fascist zealots also clamoured for the dismantling of the region's factories and mills. Whilst it was often asserted that the Franco dictatorship systematically discriminated against Catalonia for its treachery in supporting the defeated Second Republic (1931-39), the aim of this article is to present new arguments in defence of the revisionist case that the resulting economic paralysis of Catalonia during the period 1939-51 was not so much the result of the bloody-mindedness of the victors in the Spanish Civil War as the New State's obsession with autarky and interventionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I address conflict during the Spanish Civil War and the immediate post-war years by searching for any discernible social bases for the coalitions that confronted each other locally in a particular rural area in Catalunya. I try to address the real complexity of how civilians locally, and often violently, confronted their close neighbors and how this related to larger issues at stake. The careful reading of one document in this article enables an examination of the particular local expression of the civil war conflict, not just as a source of factual evidence but also as the expression of a particular kind of historicity, that of modernity. In the article I use the production of this document and the explicit aim of its author to confront present-day processes of the 'Recuperation of Historical Memory' that are being produced by a wide range of political groups, public institutions and private initiatives in Spain, and which have attracted wide exposure in the media. This leads to a discussion of the issue of the different 'regimes of historicity' that can emerge around the recuperation of memory and their political value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic demyelinating disease, which represents a great economic burden to society. Cost-of-illness studies of MS tend to underestimate the intangible costs related to pain, anxiety and helplessness. The purpose of this study was to estimate the intangible costs of MS, and determine whether these costs increase as disability progresses. We studied 211 consecutive patients with MS who attended our MS unit. Patients mean age was 41.6 (SD: 10.7) years, 69% were female, and their mean Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score was 2.47 (SD: 2.05). Quality-of-life was measured with the EuroQoL visual analogue scale. Quality-adjusted life year (QALY) was calculated for each patient. Patients were grouped into five disability stages according to their EDSS, and QALY was compared between patients and a group of healthy controls matched by age and sex. A benchmark value was ascribed to each QALY lost, and the intangible costs per patient-year were calculated as ϵ0 (EDSS = /0), ϵ1100 (EDSS = /1–3), ϵ8250 (EDSS = 3.5–5.5), ϵ9900 (EDSS = /6–7) and ϵ11 000 (EDSS > /7.5). Sensitivity analysis showed a similar progression of costs. We conclude that intangible costs are relevant in MS, especially when disability increases. Although the method to calculate the costs remains controversial, we consider that they should be included in cost analysis of MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nation needs its own fiction. It is for this reason that many countries have used fictional narratives to create a self-image. This article describes the role that fictional television series play in the process of nation building and proposes an analytical model that is based on quantitative and qualitative methods. It is argued that national identity is promoted through referential elements in fictional discourse, most of which are territorial and linguistic, although some are historical, institutional and cultural. It is also argued that the process unfolds in a politically controversial space of contestation where national culture is defined. The author studied the production of fiction cm Catalan public television from 1994 to 2003, analysing content and documentation and carrying out in-depth interviews with scriptwriters and managers. The article points out how important cultural policy and production dynamics are in determining the kind of nation that is being represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governments of the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain, the most industrialized regions in Spain and the most active in demanding political self-government, were among the first to develop industrial cluster policies. The concrete application and further evolution of these policies have been rather different. The main reason for this has been the particular social structures and dynamics of their respective regional industrial-business systems, composed of distinctive socio-business communities, industrial groupings, and industry associative systems. In the Basque case, the main policy result has been the constitution of II cluster-associations of the whole Basque Autonomous Community as long-term and broad public-private cooperation arrangements at industry level. In the Catalan case, the policy has resulted mainly in short-term and specific collaborative processes at local cluster or district level. Despite these differences, both cases of cluster policies exemplify the construction of ‘government-industry’ collaboration at the subnational-state regional level, within the emerging decentralized socio-institutional system in the Spanish industrial economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all industrial and technological agglomerations several types of public and semi-public actors coexist. The same happens with the levels of government. Consequently, the daily reality of agglomerations is characterized by a wide diversity of innovation-support institutions more or less actively engaged in enhancing the technological capabilities and knowledge flow of the territory. Taking this consideration as a starting point, the article presents the dynamics of the technological agglomeration of the Vall`s Occidental County, located within Catalonia, Spain. It has supplied information on the major efforts of different public actors in the territory since the 1980s, mainly through the establishment and enhancement of innovation-support institutions, and analyses succinctly their effects through selected successful and failed cases. Two normative statements are suggested from the analysis. The first is that policy strategies should not try to be hegemonic. Instead, they should be elaborated seeking complementarity and coexistence. A second normative conclusion is the necessity of fostering the learning processes within and across institutions, by mobilizing collectively the assets of the area into an open explicit option for the economic performance of the territory. The conclusions include a final plea for further research about the industrial dynamics and knowledge flows in the Vallès Occidental County, an important growth pole of Catalonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]