Implications of governance structures on urban climate action: evidence from Italy and Spain

47 p.

Together we have it all ! Benefits of participation in collective emotional gatherings and communal coping

244 p.

El Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay), una alternativa para transformar el modelo actual de desarrollo. Un principio facilitador para la Educación Social

[es] La finalidad de esta investigación consiste en dar significado y comprender el enfoque del Buen Vivir como una alternativa al modelo actual de desarrollo. El situar la solidaridad y el pensamiento colectivo en las acciones dirigidas al cambio social, es un reto asumido en esta investigación. Para ello, se ha realizado un análisis en profundidad de los principios y teorías que están en la base de este enfoque y, a partir de este, se proponen cinco claves a tener en cuenta en una intervención social, inspiradas en el Sumak Kawsay. Finalmente, se exponen directrices para construir puentes entre el Buen Vivir y la Educación Social, para dotar a la acción comunitaria de una visión holística que se asiente en la concepción del Bien Común.

The impact of economic crises on social inequalities in health: what do we know so far?

Since 2008, Western countries are going through a deep economic crisis whose health impacts seem to be fundamentally counter-cyclical: when economic conditions worsen, so does health, and mortality tends to rise. While a growing number of studies have presented evidence on the effect of crises on the average population health, a largely neglected aspect of research is the impact of crises and the related political responses on social inequalities in health, even if the negative consequences of the crises are primarily borne by the most disadvantaged populations. This commentary will reflect on the results of the studies that have analyzed the effect of economic crises on social inequalities in health up to 2013. With some exceptions, the studies show an increase in health inequalities during crises, especially during the Southeast Asian and Japanese crises and the Soviet Union crisis, although it is not always evident for both sexes or all health or socioeconomic variables. In the Nordic countries during the nineties, a clear worsening of health equity did not occur. Results about the impacts of the current economic recession on health equity are still inconsistent. Some of the factors that could explain this variability in results are the role of welfare state policies, the diversity of time periods used in the analyses, the heterogeneity of socioeconomic and health variables considered, the changes in the socioeconomic profile of the groups under comparison in times of crises, and the type of measures used to analyze the magnitude of social inequalities in health. Social epidemiology should further collaborate with other disciplines to help produce more accurate and useful evidence about the relationship between crises and health equity.

"Heroes" and "Villains" of World History across Cultures

Emergent properties of global political culture were examined using data from the World History Survey (WHS) involving 6,902 university students in 37 countries evaluating 40 figures from world history. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis techniques found only limited forms of universality in evaluations across Western, Catholic/Orthodox, Muslim, and Asian country clusters. The highest consensus across cultures involved scientific innovators, with Einstein having the most positive evaluation overall. Peaceful humanitarians like Mother Theresa and Gandhi followed. There was much less cross-cultural consistency in the evaluation of negative figures, led by Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. After more traditional empirical methods (e.g., factor analysis) failed to identify meaningful cross-cultural patterns, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to identify four global representational profiles: Secular and Religious Idealists were overwhelmingly prevalent in Christian countries, and Political Realists were common in Muslim and Asian countries. We discuss possible consequences and interpretations of these different representational profiles.