The value of military oath in civil wars in Rome: The example of conflict 49-45 BC

During the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the military oath which binds the soldier to his army is often openly violated. Yet despite this offense, commanders of armed struggle require recursively the oath to their men. Admittedly, this ritual act seems ineffective given the many desertions and mutinies identified, but military leaders use its symbolic and sacred meaning to legitimize one hand their ���anti-republican��� actions, on the other armies fighting in a context deemed impius.

Temor, silencio y deliberaci��n: la inhibici��n de la opini��n en Tuc��dides

Tuc��dides es una de nuestras mejores fuentes de informaci��n para conocer la pr��ctica argumentativa de la deliberaci��n democr��tica. En este trabajo se analiza uno de los vicios que, seg��n el historiador, har��a su aparici��n en la escena pol��tica ateniense a la muerte de Pericles: la instrumentalizaci��n del miedo para obtener la victoria moment��nea en la asamblea. El temor prudente, que fuera una arma periclea para conducir la deliberaci��n racional en aras del bien com��n, habr��a desaparecido siendo sustituido por el amedrentamiento del rival, la calumnia, el obstruccionismo y la par��lisis de la confrontaci��n dial��ctica. Instauradas en la ciudad la desconfianza y la sospecha de ocultaci��n, los golpistas del 411 hallaron el terreno abonado para callar las voces contrarias y, gracias al silencio, instaurar el terror.

Of Marx and Makers: an Historical Perspective on Generative Justice

In Marxist frameworks ���distributive justice��� depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements���peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.���take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, there is no general theory for bottom-up, unalienated value circulation. This paper examines the concept of ���generative justice��� through an historical contrast between Marx���s writings and the indigenous cultures that he drew upon. Marx erroneously concluded that while indigenous cultures had unalienated forms of production, only centralized value extraction could allow the productivity needed for a high quality of life. To the contrary, indigenous cultures now provide a robust model for the ���gift economy��� that underpins open source technological production, agroecology, and restorative approaches to civil rights. Expanding Marx���s concept of unalienated labor value to include unalienated ecological (nonhuman) value, as well as the domain of freedom in speech, sexual orientation, spirituality and other forms of ���expressive��� value, we arrive at an historically informed perspective for generative justice.��

Media diversity as a guarantee to cultural diversity: the promotion of identities from an international law approach

This article deals with several international instruments which provide legal guarantees for media diversity, which is essential for the promotion of cultural diversity. Based on several articles of the Convention of cultural diversity, the General Comment of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights No. 21 on the right to take part in cultural life, as well as the work of the UN Independent Expert on Cultural Rights, this article aims to identify legal tools for the establishing of measures promoting cultural diversity in the media. This article looks at the case study of Honduran Garifuna community radios. It emphasizes the importance of taking into account the economic aspects of cultural and communicational rights.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Ecohumanists. Protection of physical ecology demands respect human ecology

What is the human being? Which is its origin and its end? What is the influence of the nature in the man and what is his impact on nature? Forthe animalists, men are like other animals; freedom and rationality are not signs of superiority, nor having rights over the animals. For the ecohumanists, human beings are part of nature, but is qualitatively different and superior to animals; and is the creator of the civilization. We analyze these two ecological looks. A special point is the contribution ofecohumanists -from the first half of the Renaissance, who dealt in extenso the dignity and freedom of the human being-, of Michelangelo and finally, of Mozart, through his four insurmountable operas, which display the difficulty of physical ecology to engender so much beauty, so much wealth, so much love for the creatures and so much variety.