Discovering keys to explain social policies within the social and democratic rule-of-law sate

There is a collective worldview on social policies that is expressed and understood by university professionals. However, it takes students time to construct this knowledge. Here, we provide fundamental ideas and a dynamic to facilitate learning of social policies. The preparation of a brief dictionary of significant terms is to be constructed as a group, alongside the maieutic work to be carried out by the teacher. The goal is to discover keys to understand the meaning of social policies and the underlying values that sustain a social and democratic rule-of-law state such as the one proposed in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Attention is focused on the structure of the mixed welfare state. This is an integral proposal and comprises three dimensions. First, it considers the state and its possible welfare agents: business, market, the Church and civil society. The attitudes with which universal and inclusive social action is promoted, breaking radically with the aid-based meaning contained in other systems, are then addressed. Finally, we examine human dignity as a principle and aim of intervention, a basis for understanding other concepts such as human, social, labour and political rights. It is to be hoped that these pages prove useful for both teaching staff and students.

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

What is social innovation? The paradigm shift and its relationship with Social Work

Innovation is a fundamental part of social work. In recent years there has been a shift in the innovation paradigm, making it easier to accept this relationship. National and supranational policies aimed at promoting innovation appear to be specifically guided by this idea. To be able to affirm this hypothesis, it is necessary to review the perception that social workers have of their duties. It is also useful to examine particular cases that show how such social innovation arises.

A view, different proposals: Concept of gender and public policy

This article analyzes the meaning of “gender” as a category of analysis in public policy. The concept has been transferred from the feminist theories and this has meant that the United Nations and European Union have incorporated the inequality as a structural inequality and an issue justice. So, the feminist demands enter the political agenda as an integral project which is characterized by the adoption of the gender perspective and its application from a transversal methodology (“gender mainstreaming”). In this sense, the "gender ideology" is a new paradigm against the “patriarchal ideology”. Now, political actions should be articulated in a double movement of correction and promotion to achieve real equality in societies more democratic and ultimately more just.

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.

Looking for Determinants of Ontological Security in the Spain of the Crisis

The concept of ontological security has a remarkable echo in the current sociology to describe emotional status of men of late modernity. However, the concept created by Giddens in the eighties has been little used in empirical research covering various sources of risk or uncertainty. In this paper, a scale for ontological security is proposed. To do this, we start from the results of a research focused on the relationship between risk, uncertainty and vulnerability in the context of the economic crisis in Spain. These results were produced through nine focus groups and a telephone survey with standardized questionnaire applied to a national sample of 2,408 individuals over 18 years. This work is divided into three main sections. In the fi rst, a scale has been built from the results of the application of different items present in the questionnaire used. The second part explores the relationships of the scale obtained with the variables further approximate the emotional dimensions of individuals. The third part observes the variables that contribute to changes in the scale: These variables show the structural feature of the ontological security.

Metaphysics of love in the religious philosophy of Pável Florensky

This article focuses on the analysis of the concept of love in the religious philosophy of Pavel Florensky, who shares the ontological approach to the consideration of love with other representatives of Russian religious philosophy (N. berdyaev and S. bulgakov). We pay more careful attention to the understanding of love-άγαπαν by Florensky. We have drawn the conclusion that, in the philosophy of P. Florensky, Love, closely connected with truth and beauty, is considered an ontological basis existence of personality. We develop the ideas of Pavel Florensky, and accordingly assume that it is possible to synthesise love-agape and love-eros around the idea of sacrificial love. Agapelogical and erotical ‘bezels’ of one jewel of love is aspects of united love, which is given by God. this gift of God, the gift of united love, is kept by humans through prayer and deeds of love.

Music therapy, in tuning at the end of life

In this article music therapy is presented as a helpful tool to support the persons (and their relatives) living at the end of their life and, also, as a non pharmacological and complementary therapy in an integral and holistic medicine. What we report here comes from the direct experience, nourished after many years of interventions and reflections in oncology and palliative care units. We’re talking about silence, music, therapy, models and techniques. We will read and feel therapeutic sessions… but above all, we’re talking about life, conscience and love.

Plato’s Parmenides and understanding the One in the philosophy of Plotinus: an oversight by Heidegger?

The present article focuses on the study of the exegesis by Plotinus with regard to the meaning of the ineffability of the one provided in Plato’s Parmenides in the first hypothesis. He places this first ineffable one at the very centre of his system, which would have important implications from both an ontological point of view and with regard to understanding the language. The conception of reality that derives from the ineffability of the first principle and the implications for the nature of philosophical language that this postulate raises will be the centre of our reflections. To shed light on the position set down in the Enneads, we will review the key points based on the original texts that deal with this issue and related critical works. We will also look at the contemporary relevance of this position and its ability to go beyond the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics.

Childhood’s crossings: rites of initiation in "Campo Geral" by Guimarães Rosa and "Terra sonâmbula" by Mia Couto

The present work analyses, under an anthropologic perspective, each one of the phases of the rites of passage lived by the protagonists of Guimarães Rosa’s Campo geral and Mia Couto’s Terra sonâmbula, trying to track in these texts the elements related to the traditional societies’ culture and trying to identify the meaning of the mentioned elements in the specific context of the authors. The two writers mix these primitive components with the regional culture and therefore achieve, starting also from the local representations, to reach a universal extent.

Around the Origin of the Images in the Veintena Section of the "Primeros Memoriales" by fray Bernardino de Sahagún

By examining the pictorial content of the veintena section of the Primeros Memoriales, the manusctipt compiled by fray Bernardino de Sahagún, I identify new pieces of evidence on the origin of these illustrations and their authors. A carefull analisis of this material suggests that it is strongly embedded in the pre-Hispanic tradition and that it is doubtful that their iconographic sources originated in Tepeopolco, as it is widely believed.

Legal Translation from English to Spanish in the Classroom: Problems when Translating Standard Formulas of Expression

The purpose of this paper is to identify problems when translating standard formulas of expression in English to Spanish legal translation. To achieve the goal, a total of 250 Spanish translations were analyzed of 10 sentences from legal texts in English. The degree of difficulty posed by the translation of these formulas is confirmed by the results obtained, which is related not so much to the intrinsic meaning of the words that compose them, but to their contextual meaning. An eclectic approach that combines discourse analysis with contrastive linguistics is proposed, and some specific didactic guidelines are indicated to facilitate the translation teaching of these standard formulas of expression. Lexical interpretation and contextual recreation allow the apprentice translator to make progress with the translation of these phrases and to improve his/her attitude when facing them to achieve a successful semantic and contextual interpretation, that is to say, getting the closest natural equivalent while respecting the genius of the language.

Technical metaphor in Spanish-English translation of the fields of blindness, fatigue, and the spiritual world

The correspondence in the Spanish-English translation is analyzed of three different fields of technical metaphors based upon blindness, fatigue, and the spiritual world. Some terms have been left aside that under the appearance of metaphors were mere samples of no-deviated language or cases of homonymy. The study reveals a higher presence of the metaphor in the Spanish language in the three fields of study, although the English language also shows a high index of metaphors. In between metaphors and non-metaphors, we find a lack of metaphorical equilibrium between Spanish and English in certain cases, which is a sign of the different perception of the reality. Finally, the conclusions shed light on the meaning of these words: blind, annoyance, fatigue, antifading, core, angels, espectrum, phantom, ghost, magic, postmortem, dead, etc.

Who is in charge? An L2 Discourse Intonation Study on Four Prosodic Parameters to Exert the Pragmatic Function of Dominance and Control in the Context of L2 Non-specialist Public Speaking

This paper reports the findings from a study of the learning of English intonation by Spanish speakers within the discourse mode of L2 oral presentation. The purpose of this experiment is, firstly, to compare four prosodic parameters before and after an L2 discourse intonation training programme and, secondly, to confirm whether subjects, after the aforementioned L2 discourse intonation training, are able to match the form of these four prosodic parameters to the discourse-pragmatic function of dominance and control. The study designed the instructions and tasks to create the oral and written corpora and Brazil’s Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English was adapted for the pedagogical aims of the present study. The learners’ pre- and post-tasks were acoustically analysed and a pre / post- questionnaire design was applied to interpret the acoustic analysis. Results indicate most of the subjects acquired a wider choice of the four prosodic parameters partly due to the prosodically-annotated transcripts that were developed throughout the L2 discourse intonation course. Conversely, qualitative and quantitative data reveal most subjects failed to match the forms to their appropriate pragmatic functions to express dominance and control in an L2 oral presentation.