Health reforms in Latin America: processes and results

Two types of health reforms in Latin America are analysed: one based on insurance and service commodification and the one referred to the unified public systems of progressive governments. Health insurance with explicit service packages has not fulfilled their purposes of universal coverage, equal access to necessary health services and improvement of health conditions but has opened health as a field of profit making for insurance companies and private health providers. The national health services as a state obligation have developed territorialized health services and widened substantially timely access to the majority of the population. The adoption of an integrated and wide social policy has an impact on population well fare. It faces some problems derived from the old health systems and the power of the insurance and medical complex.

China, perspective from the European Union: commitment and cooperation

The bilateral relationship between the EU and China has a tendency toward growth in recent years. At present, China’s economic development is at a critical transition period for deepening reform in the economic structure. The economic and trade cooperation with the countries of the European Union has a significant influence for the stability of trade development and economic growth. Therefore China tries to expand cooperation and eliminate the issues and difficulties that exist, it will more often to promote cooperation between the two parties towards deeper into various cooperative areas.

La creación de valor en el museo y la sociomuseología

Los museos tienen normalmente mucha dificultad en justificar su existencia y en demostrar su valor real y su contribución al desarrollo de las comunidades a las que sirven. El coste del mantenimiento de un museo, después de inaugurado, nunca parece estar justificado para las tutelas y financiadores que lo promovieron. El museo, grande o pequeño, puede ser un elemento esencial en el desarrollo cultural del conjunto social, pero necesita tener una actividad que lo justifique y que su labor sea reconocida. Para contribuir con eficacia debe compartir con la comunidad su misión y sus actividades y para probar su valor debe tener sistemas de evaluación que permitan verificar si su labor de investigación y acción sobre el patrimonio, de promoción de la cultura y la ciudadanía y de colaboración con escuelas y asociaciones, reduce el fracaso escolar, aumenta la participación en la vida y cultura o contribuye a la cohesión social y a la formación de ciudadanos más responsables y solidarios. La Sociomuseología estudia estos campos de la actividad del museo, acompaña experiencias y propone soluciones a estas dificultades.

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.