Reflections on migration in the global south

How can we achieve a better understanding of the variations in international migration to, from, and within the Global South? To facilitate a dia-logue about this topic, we asked a number of contributors to write or to provide a video statement about their region of expertise. To some we explicitly posed the following question: Is it possible to distinguish current or historical experiences or patterns of migration in the Global South that differ from patterns in the Global North?

Die Stadtbäder der Goldenen Zwanziger. Kommunale Prestigearchitektur zwischen Tradition und Moderne

Die Dissertation behandelt eine für das Badewesen bedeutende Epoche, die sich durch den Beginn des sportorientierten Bäderbaus auszeichnet. Es entsteht ein neuer architektonischer Hallenschwimmbadtypus und es etabliert sich eine gemeinsame Badekultur von Mann und Frau - zwei Errungenschaften, die den Bäderbau bis in die Gegenwart prägen. Viele Bauprojekte und Ideen kamen allerdings durch die Wirtschaftskrisen jener Zeit frühzeitig zum Erliegen, sodass die baulichen Leistungen der Kommunen nicht nur an den Ausführungen, sondern auch an den Entwürfen abgelesen werden müssen. Die kommunale Hallenbäderarchitektur veranschaulicht paradigmatisch die Sozialgeschichte, die Sport- und Hygienebewegung sowie die Genderentwicklung der Zwanziger Jahre. Mangels an Würdigung einerseits sowie einer seit den letzten Jahrzehnten zunehmenden Freizeitorientierung im Bäderbau andererseits wird der Erhalt der schwimmsportorientierten Bäderarchitektur durch Leerstände, Umnutzungen und Abbrüche gefährdet. Durch die Aufarbeitung der Historie und zeitgenössischen Diskurse, die Vermittlung der planerischen Grundlagen sowie durch die Analyse, Auswertung und Typologie des historischen Bäderbestandes der Zwanziger Jahre wird eine fundierte Basis geschaffen, um die Hallenbäderarchitektur als Bedeutungsträger ihrer Zeit angemessen zu würdigen.

La mitificación occidental de Saladino: Un viaje por las principales literaturas románicas de los siglos XIII y XIV

This article deals with the figure Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn, Saladino or Saladin and his reception in European cultures. It describes its function as myth which reappears in distinct shapes in relation to local realities and nevertheless also exhibits general features of the European cultural identity.

El copernicanismo en las Españas del XVI y el XVII. Ciencia, filosofía y literatura.

In 1543 Nicolas Copernicus published his Revolutionibus Orbium's Coelelestium. This is the scientific work that gave birth to modern science, something thoroughly European, since scientists of different countries contributed to it: Poland, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, etc. A work that appeared in a crucial moment obviously represented the need of that time to correct the Julian calendar. A new procedure to calculate the positions of the stars was necessary for astrology and for the making of predictions that were important at that time. Our intention is to outline the history of how it was introduced in Spain at the beginning of the scientific revolution. We will not conceal that Spain has been a country that has only contributed to scientific literature in a deficient way, maybe we can offer some arguments that help to understand why this has happened.

The Participation of Townspeople Making Music in Public Events in the Low Countries in the Fifteenth Century

Musicians, rhetoricians and crossbowmen, all of them employed by the city of Brussels, acted, sang and played instruments during the "Ommegang" procession in the 15th century in the main square, some of them during other processions, too. In Bruges, instrumentalists and singers took part in the representation of biblical scenes on street corners, which were part of the entry of Philip III the Good, Duke of Burgundy, into the city around the year 1440. The members of the clergy who knew music sang plainchant in all of these three roles, and independent musicians probably participated, too, even though the documents don't name them or describe their function. Except for the disabled, who marched in a procession on their own, the "common people" were only spectators of these events, which were planned in advance. The evidence that remains indicates that the voices of the "common people" remained hidden in these events, which were intended to promote civic unity.

Religión y sociedad en la Granada cristiana: la Cruz de Mayo

The celebration of the Cruz of May – based on a fact for which tradition and the Legendi di Sancti Vulgari Storiado (Jacopo da Varazze, circa 1264) were possibly more relevant than history itself and extended by the ecclesiastical authority as a means of increasing faith – was accepted by people and was transformed into a social feast and an expression for local or social identity, which lead to peculiar rivalries amongst neighborhoods or streets. They had the aim to hold the best Cruz, leaving aside the feasts initial religious character. If the cross was, until the death of Christ, an instrument of martyrdom holding negative connotations (death, infamy, barbarism, etc.), it eventually transformed into a symbol of Christianity, a sign of triumph and everything related to Christ, and subsequently into a source of celebration and social festivity.

Misiones Bolivarianas. Sozialpolitik und Transformationsprozesse in Venezuela (1999-2013)

Das Konzept der „Misiones bolivarianas" besteht seit den Sozialprogrammen von 2003, die bis heute mit Unterstützung der bolivarianischen Regierung, des Fachpersonals aus Kuba und der aktiven Partizipation der „organisierten Gemeinden“ im Bereich einer innovativen und heterogenen Sozialpolitik in Venezuela entwickelt worden sind. Heutzutage gibt es ca. 35 Missionen, die sich auf unterschiedliche Sozialräume konzentrieren. Der bolivarianischen Verfassung 1999 zufolge, wird dieser Sozialpolitik einen „universellen“ Charakter zugeschrieben; der Fokus der Missionen ist allerding de facto die venezolanische „Exklusionsgesellschaft“. Ziel meiner Untersuchung ist es, eine Geschichte der Misiones zu erzählen. Grundlage sind die Stimmen der „normalen, kleinen Leute“, der Mitglieder (Misionarios und Misionarias) der organisierten Gemeinden (Comunidades organizadas), die sich an diesen Sozialprogrammen aktiv beteiligen. Zwei wissenschaftliche Disziplinen bieten fundamentale Werkzeuge und Ideen in dieser Richtung an: die „Mikrogeschichte“ und die „historische Anthropologie.“ Dazu kommt die Leitfrage meiner Forschungsarbeit: Wie soll eine Geschichte der bolivarianischen Missionen auf Grund der alltäglichen Erfahrungen und Erzählungen der Menschen, die heutzutage innerhalb der venezolanischen „heterodoxen“ Revolution leben, aufgebaut werden? Die Feldforschung spielt sowohl in verschiedenen venezolanischen Städten, als auch auf dem Land eine fundamentale Rolle bei meiner Dissertation.

El pueblo y los libros: prácticas de apropiación e intención editorial

Common people and books seem to be opposed terms. On the one hand books are usually the symbol of culture; on the other hand the culture of the Volk did not used to be a literate one. This article reviews the relation between both terms from the 16th to the 19th Century and shows that it is not possible to separate both terms, because the different ways of appropriation allow people to 'read' books in many different ways.

Las Voces de los Quijotes

In this work we present a detailed analysis of the character profile in the three Quijotes by Cervantes and Avellaneda. Several properties of the languages and sub-languages are explored.

Picasso y Cornuty. La absenta como adicción cambiosecular europea

Electricity coined the nightlife in the European capital par excellence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Paris. Under the artificial reflection dandies, elegant workers, and bohemians flocked to the new playground. Painters, converted to urban chroniclers, show pictorial modernity and vitality; in the canvas of Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas or Jean Béraud we see a common element: the glass of absinthe on the table. The absinthe took sacrosanct dyes in the daily living of Parisian habitants and became an indispensable ritual to Henri Albert Cornuty, a poet who was part of the Madrid bohemian and in the gallery of disinherited that Picasso painted in blue stage. A writer and a painter that bring us to the drink-image of the intelligentsia of the time; this elixir was attributed with hypnotic, aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic powers; the myth of absinthe was part of the imaginary Paris at end of the century, an iconography that continues shaping identity in the twenty-first century.

Los convulsos años treinta en el espejo del tiempo: La rehabilitación de la responsabilidad social del escritor

In the 21st century field of culture, the economic crisis (and its consequences) has fomented a debate on the social responsibility of the writer. In particular quite a few works of Spanish literature account for a marked responsible, interventionist and dissident discourse. Thus, from the present day and aware of historicity, this article pauses at a key episode in the trajectory of the said debate: the rehumanization of art during the 1930s, the passing from autonomy to commitment in art. A crucial aspect in the Edad de Plata is addressed with the aim of precisely showing how a milestone in the attitude of the creator before society and its disruptions arose, how an exemplary case developed for exploring aspects specific to this positioning of the author, which is itself being reconsidered today.

Entre ética e ironía: aspectos retóricos en los “pies de foto” de Juan José Millás.

The aim of this short essay is to analyze the techniques of argumentation developed by the writer and journalist Juan José Millás in his articles named Pie de Foto. Millás is known for his peculiar way of writing, in which language is highly unstable and is thereby apt to the creation of new perspectives and points of view. In the Pie de Foto, this ambivalence of language is enriched by the presence of a picture, of which his textual article is a comment. Using the definition given by Genette, Millás rhetoric is not a ‘restricted’ one but it is a complex system, in which also the apparently superficial figures can provide semantic effects and enrich information. Within this frame, irony plays a fundamental role because it helps questioning the standard discourse of politics. By means of techniques such as the mechanical reproduction and the ridiculing of the fallacies hidden in common sense, Millas raises ethical problems and develops a critique to the postmodern way of life in western countries.

Historiografía, mantenimiento y pérdida de la identidad léxica y cultural: el caso de Gualchos a través de los datos del proyecto Vitalex

This work aims at providing a first approximation to the study of lexical vitality by comparing its results to those of ALEA as well as carrying out a study on the current state of affairs. These results represent our early data collection from location 515 corresponding to Gualchos in La Alpujarra. Here we show a very interesting relationship between the deep socio-economic and demographic transformation of the area and a lexical mutation that is shown by a high percentage of lexical mortality and a loss of dialectal specificity giving rise to a shift towards standard terms, especially in fields related to agricultural and ranching life.

Una esquina con identidad uruguaya – la mirada propia, la mirada ajena

The aim of this paper is to introduce the less known part of the Río de la Plata: Uruguay. The main question is whether a country relatively young and of tiny dimensions has its own identity. For that, after giving some theoretical information, we present a brief history of this country and the results of two surveys. The first done a couple of years ago for the Spanish newspaper El País and the other conducted recently among a group of Argentines. It is not a professional survey, rather an invitation to reflect on the process of the creation of the Uruguayan identity, its principal points and relations between two apparently very close countries, separated by the same river.