Perspectives on gender, migration and transnational work: joint work of social reproduction and care in Southern Europe

This paper presents the "state of the art" and some of the main issues discussed in relation to the topic of transnational migration and reproductive work in southern Europe. We start doing a genealogy of the complex theoretical development leading to the consolidation of the research program, linking consideration of gender with transnational migration and transformation of work and ways of survival, thus making the production aspects as reproductive, in a context of globalization. The analysis of the process of multiscale reconfiguration of social reproduction and care, with particular attention to its present global dimension is presented, pointing to the turning point of this line of research that would have taken place with the beginning of this century, with the rise notions such as "global care chains" (Hochschild, 2001), or "care drain" (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2013). Also, the role of this new agency, now composed in many cases women who migrate to other countries or continents, precisely to address these reproductive activities, is recognized. Finally, reference is made to some of the new conceptual and theoretical developments in this area.

Net-surplus as a useful tool to analyse financial information in co-op societies

This paper aims to analyse a sample of Galician co-ops to verify whether or not it is possible to deduce different financial behaviours among co-op partners from the amount of net-surplus. To this end, our study adds net-surplus to the variation registered in some account entries so that other residual incomes yielded by the co-op may be considered. The distribution of these revenues shows that partners do not usually choose to fully anticipate residual incomes. This reveals that some firms follow a positive net-surplus strategy, which is actually different from the null net-surplus strategy asserted by the classical financial theory. Furthermore, results show that differences between both strategies are statistically significant. This opens a path to future research on determinants explaining why co-op partners voluntarily renounce to anticipating these residual incomes. Such behaviour only arises when yearly accounts render a positive result, thereby making the accounting net-surplus a useful tool to analyse financial information in co-op societies.

Contribution to the knowledge of the genus "Cladonia" in Macaronesia

Sixteen species of the genus Cladonia are reported from Macaronesia from the Canary Islands. Three species are new to canarian flora and, two of them new to Macaronesia. The chemical variation of the taxa is reported. A phytogeographic distribution of the taxa with data on their habitat and ecology are presented.

Lifelong learning through digital storytelling in corporate training

In this paper we discuss collaborative learning strategies based on the use of digital stories in corporate training and lifelong learning. The text starts with a concise review on theoretical and technical foundations about the use of digital technologies in collaborative strategies in lifelong learning. We will also discuss if the corporate training may be improved by the use of individual audio-visual experience in learning process. Careful planning, scripting and production of audio-visual digital stories can help in the construction of collaborative learning spaces in which adults are in the context of vocational training throughout life. Our analysis concludes emphasizing on the need to experience the routing performance of digital stories in the context of corporate training, following the reference levels mentioned here, so we can have in a future more theoretical and empirical elements for the validation and conceptualization in the use of digital stories in the context of corporate training. Ultimately we believe that lifelong learning can be improved with the use of strategies that promote the production of personal audio-visual for those involved in teaching and learning process in organizational context.

Social networks and cooperative learning in a MOOC

MOOCs are changing the educational landscape and gaining a lot of attention in scientific literature. However, the pedagogical design of these proposals has been called into question. It is precisely MOOCs’ social aspect, i.e. the interaction between course participants and the support for learning processes that has become one of the main topics of interest. This article presents the results of a research project carried out at the University of the Basque Country, which focused in cooperative learning and the intensive use of social networks in a MOOC. Significant data was compiled through Likert-type surveys, revealing that the use of both external and internal social networks in a massive open online course is a factor that is evaluated positively by students. We argue that the use of social networks as a learning strategy in a MOOC has an influence on academic performance and on the students' success rate. Furthermore, the participants’ age also has a bearing on the social networks they use, and we have found that the younger members tend to work with external networks such as Twitter or personal blogs, whereas the older students are more inclined to use forums from the Chamilo or Ning platforms.

‘Close as a kiss’: Gyn/Affection in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad (2005) seemingly celebrates Penelope’s agency in opposition to Homer’s myth in The Odyssey. However, the twelve murdered maids steal the book to suggest the possibility of what Janice Raymond calls gyn/affection, a female bonding based on the logic of emotion that, in Atwood’s revision, verges on Kristevan abjection, the sinister and the fantastic, and serves a cathartic effect not only in the maids but also in the reader. This essay aims to question the generally accepted empowerment of Atwood’s Penelope and celebrates the murdered maids as the locus of emotion, where marginal aspects of gender and class merge to weave a powerful metaphorical tapestry of popular and traditionally feminized literary genres that, in plunging into and embracing the semiotic realm, ultimately solidify into an eclectic but compact alternative tradition of women’s writing and myth-making.

Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

John Tzetzes and the pseudo-Aristotelian Peplos in middle-Byzantium. The testimony of the Matritenses 4562 and 4621

Tras mi reciente edición de los pseudo-aristotélicos Pepli Epitaphia, el presente trabajo se centra en los apochrypha a dichos epitafios que compuso Juan Tzetzes en el siglo xii, un conjunto de ocho dísticos elegíacos para los héroes que consideró meritorios de tal tarea, y para quienes no pudo encontrar un epitafio conservado en las fuentes manuscritas a las que tuvo acceso. Para lograr dicho propósito, también se investiga el grado de conocimiento y la transmisión de ese corpus epigramático en la literatura bizantina, además de considerar las lecciones y el sentido mismo de dos códices guardados en la Biblioteca Nacional de España (M y Md). En ellos, Constantino Láscaris copió, directamente a partir de Tzetzes, dos breves antologías de dichos componentes.

L’écriture de Mohammed Dib entre photographie et intertexte

En 1946, Muni de son Rolleiflex, Dib, tout jeune photographie sa ville natale Tlemcen. En 1994, il publie son livre Tlemcen ou les lieux d’écriture, un texte empreint de nostalgie et d’amour pour sa ville et pour son pays. Ses photos y côtoient ses textes anciens dans un biblio personnel. Le lecteur se trouve entre un présent et un passé appelé sémiologiquement de deux procédés différents, mais complémentaires ; l’image et le texte. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons d’étudier comment la photographie s’est installée dans l’œuvre de Dib et comment elle se trouve au centre de son intérêt littéraire et nostalgique à la fois. Puis, nous verrons comment l’intertexte, devenu autotexte, est un moyen de vivre la nostalgie.   

El valor mitográfico del "Anonymi in Statii Achilleida commentum"

El breve commentum in Statii Achilleida resulta muy interesante para el estudio de la transmisión mitográfica de la Antigüedad tardía al Medievo, pues no sólo participa de las características propias de la mitografía (narraciones de mitos, exégesis racionalista y/o alegórica, interpretaciones etimológicas, anonimato, pseudepigrafía,…), sino que también es otro eslabón en la cadena textual de transmisión, simplificación y canonización de los mitos clásicos.

Notas sobre el "primum cognitum" en Cayetano y su vínculo con la metafísica

Cayetano tuvo un papel protagónico en los debates intelectuales de su época (s. XVI), destacándose como un auténtico adalid del tomismo; inclusive muchas de sus tesis pasaron a formar parte de tal doctrina, las cuales –a veces matizadas y otras no tanto– perviven hasta nuestros días. Entre los diversos temas que afrontó se destaca su particular noción de primum cognitum. Aquí, partimos del hecho de que la tradición tomista no ha visto mayores inconvenientes en equiparar lo que entienden Cayetano y el Aquinate por el ens primo cadit; empero nosotros estamos en condiciones de afirmar que tal equiparación al menos es problemática. En este sentido, nos ocuparemos de realizar un primer acercamiento al tema del ente primer conocido cayetaniano para intentar mostrar su real significado. Asimismo, procuraremos ver, ayudados por los aportes de algunos estudiosos contemporáneos –en especial el de Lawrence Dewan–, hasta qué punto tal noción se corresponde o no con los desarrollos teóricos de Tomás de Aquino, sobre todo con el vínculo entre el primer conocido y el ente como objeto de la metafísica.

Cercanía y distancia como elementos dramáticos en "Odysseus. Verbrecher" de Ransmayr y "Odisej" de Stefanovski

La función dramática de los conceptos mentales y geográficos ‚cercanía‘ y ‚distancia‘ se pone a prueba de forma exitosa en el término ‚Heimat‘. Se analizan Odysseus. Verbrecher de Christoph Ransmayr y Odisej de Goran Stefanovskis. Se ve que un retorno puede ser decepcionante porque la idea mental de ‚Heimat‘ no coincide con la geográfica. El repatriado permanece en esta distancia mental, lo cual daña a su entorno y la formación de su identidad. El concepto alemán de ‚Heimat‘, tal y como lo explica Peter Blickle, se puede aplicar a ambos textos. En el texto de Ransmayr se puede observar, no obstante, que crea su posición y crítica a raíz de este concepto, mientras que la comparación con el texto de Stefanovski solo muestra semejanzas, pero ninguna congruencia con el concepto cultural de ‚Heimat‘.

La fictohistoria o historiografía imaginaria en las literaturas románicas desde el siglo XIX: ensayo de tipología y panorama de un género formal insospechado (II)

El doble aspecto documental y artístico de la escritura de la historia ha quedado prácticamente oculto por la insistencia en el carácter científico de la disciplina y su expulsión subsiguiente del canon literario desde el siglo XIX. El cultivo de la historiografía ficticia o imaginaria (fictohistoria) surgió entonces como un modo de salvar la literariedad de la historia, en su calidad de género formal, mediante el uso del discurso historiográfico como procedimiento retórico para conseguir un efecto de historicidad en textos que son, no obstante, claramente ficticios, y que tienen a menudo un carácter satírico o admonitorio. Esto no está reñido con el hecho de que la mayoría manifieste en primer lugar una reflexión sobre el devenir de la humanidad, es decir, sobre la Historia. Los ejemplos de este género son relativamente abundantes y se pueden clasificar en varias categorías temáticas. Esta segunda parte del estudio se centra en la historia prospectiva.

« "Le gênant", c‟est qu‟Olivier ne sera pas seul ». Le problème de l‟adjectif substantivé thématisé en français

Nous étudions dans cet article les tournures du type « Le gênant, c’est qu’Olivier ne sera pas seul », lesquelles sont fréquemment décrites, d’un point de vue formel, comme des structures de type article/adjectif substantivé. Après avoir analysé les propriétés morphosyntaxiques de notre tournure, nous montrons qu’en réalité on ne saurait parler d’adjectif substantivé par un article, dans la mesure où ni l’adjectif ne devient un substantif, ni l’article ne fonctionne comme un véritable article. Ce dernier, en effet, peut être défini comme un « article-démonstratif neutre ». Nous sommes dans cette perspective amené à repenser le schéma de l’article de la psychomécanique du langage, et à proposer du tenseur binaire guillaumien une vision élargie que l’on peut représenter par un schème trimorphe.