O lado escuro da capital social: implicações sociais e políticas

O artigo questiona a associação direta entre a interação em redes sociais e a produção de um tipo de capital social que traz ganhos benéficos à comunidade. O capital social pode adquirir formas e resultar em efeitos negativos sobre as relações sociais. Argumentase assim que relações fundadas em tais princípios, dependendo do tipo de vínculos entre os atores, do contexto sócio-econômico e da fragilidade das ações das instituições e do Estado, podem favorecer a emergência do lado escuro do capital social, conduzindo ao aumento do crime organizado, à perpetuação do clientelismo e da corrupção.

Body and sexuality during pregnancy

The objective of this ethnographic study was to understand how women experience their body's physiological processes during pregnancy and their effects on sexuality. The study involved seven women living in a poor neighborhood in Sao Paulo. Data collection was performed through participant observation and interviews using guiding questions. The data were presented in the narrative form and then organized into the following categories: realizing the changes in the body; living with the changes in the body; and feelings and sensations experienced in sexual life during pregnancy and imagining the body after pregnancy. The women referred to the changes in their bodies as discomforts, and expressed their concern that these changes would be permanent. They expressed they hoped that, after childbirth, their body would go back to what it was like before pregnancy and that they would recover their sexual desire. Recognition of these concerns is an essential tool to guarantee appropriate professional practices.

Divide to conquer: a complex pattern of biodiversity depicted by vertebrate components in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

The identification of northern and southern components in different vertebrate species led researchers to accept a two-component hypothesis for the Brazilian Atlantic forest (BAF). Nevertheless, neither a formal proposal nor a meta-analysis to confirm this coincidence was ever made. Our main objective here was therefore to systematically test in how many vertebrate components the BAF could be divided by analysing existing empirical data. We used two approaches: (1) mapping and comparing the proposed areas of vertebrate endemism in the BAF and (2) analysing studies mentioning spatial subdivisions in distinct forest-dependent vertebrates within the biome, by the use of panbiogeography. The four large-scale endemism area components together with the six small-scale panbiogeographical ones allowed the definition of three BAF greater regions, subdivided into nine vertebrate components, latitudinally and longitudinally organized. Empirical time estimates of the diversification events within the BAF were also reviewed. Diversification of these vertebrates occurred not only in the Pleistocene but also throughout the Miocene. Our results confirm the BAF's complex history, both in space and time. We propose that future research should be small-scale and focused in the vertebrate components identified herein. Given the BAF's heterogeneity, studying via sections will be much more useful in identifying the BAF's historical biogeography. (c) 2012 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, 107, 39-55.