A Venezuela contemporânea: do antineoliberalismo ao anticapitalismo? Uma formação social em disputa hegemônica

A retomada do processo de acumulação de capital no pós-crise dos anos 1970 demandou profundas alterações no capitalismo mundial, que se traduziram, fundamentalmente, em uma nova estratégia (autointitulada) de desenvolvimento que disputasse a hegemonia teórica, ideológica, política e econômica com o keynesianismo. Esta nova estratégia, denominada neoliberal (e o receituário de políticas dela resultante) foi amplamente difundida nos países da periferia do capitalismo mundial. O neoliberalismo, por um lado, mostrou-se incapaz de retomar o crescimento/desenvolvimento econômico com distribuição de renda e, por outro lado, aprofundou a dependência dos países periféricos em relação aos centros do capitalismo mundial, pela via da intensificação da superexploração da força de trabalho. Nesse contexto, ao final do século XX, se estabeleceu uma crise do neoliberalismo (ainda que não se trate de uma derrota) que, em grandes linhas, colocou em xeque tais políticas e teve, como consequência, a subida ao poder de vários governos na região latino-americana que foram eleitos a partir do descontentamento social com seus resultados. Na Venezuela, mais especificamente, o projeto de transformações proposto para o país no pós-1999 é manifestação de rechaço ao neoliberalismo. Como o cenário histórico para compreensão dos conflitos, que resultaram na constituição de um projeto de sociedade anti-hegemônico na Venezuela (a hegemonia do povo) nos últimos anos, remonta ao marco da inserção do país no capitalismo dependente e periférico, é possível afirmar que as transformações pós-1999 transitaram da constituição de um projeto antineoliberal para uma proposta anticapitalista (o chamado Socialismo do Século XXI). Esse projeto de transformações não está, entretanto, isento de contradições e limites (internos e externos). Em que pese essa afirmação, o capítulo mais recente da trajetória histórica de constituição da sociedade venezuelana possui inequívocos avanços, capitaneados pelo papel central que assume o Estado. Este, ao retomar o efetivo controle sobre os recursos petroleiros em benefício da maioria da população, promove progressos em direção a consolidação da soberania nacional, da justiça social e também da constituição de uma democracia participativa e protagônica.

La reestructuración de las cajas de ahorros y el análisis de la evolución de la obra social en el contexto de la crisis financiera

Partiendo del mapa de las cajas de ahorros españolas y de la información suministrada por las mismas sobre su Obra Social, conoceremos la importancia de la Obra Social para la sociedad y analizaremos cómo ha afectado a tal distribución la actual crisis financiera en dicho sector.

Acercamiento al modelo federal y crisis del estado autonómico

El objeto del presente trabajo pasa por el estudio de dos cuestiones. Por un lado, el conocimiento del federalismo como sistema político de organización territorial del poder dentro del Estado. Para ello, comenzaremos viendo unos conceptos básicos e imprescindibles para situarnos en el modelo federal, así como su origen y desarrollo histórico, para posteriormente hacer un análisis de las líneas generales del sistema federal alemán. Por otro lado, contemplaremos la que consideramos crisis del modelo autonómico español, haciendo una oportuna comparación con el sistema federal, para finalizar reflexionando sobre las propuestas y reformas posibles ante tal realidad.

El periodismo no está en crisis, quienes están en crisis son "El País" y "El Mundo"

Nivel educativo: Grado Duración (en horas): Más de 50 horas

Caribbean corals in crisis: record thermal stress, bleaching, and mortality in 2005

Background: The rising temperature of the world’s oceans has become a major threat to coral reefs globally as the severity and frequency of mass coral bleaching and mortality events increase. In 2005, high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean resulted in the most severe bleaching event ever recorded in the basin. Methodology/Principal Findings: Satellite-based tools provided warnings for coral reef managers and scientists, guiding both the timing and location of researchers’ field observations as anomalously warm conditions developed and spread across the greater Caribbean region from June to October 2005. Field surveys of bleaching and mortality exceeded prior efforts in detail and extent, and provided a new standard for documenting the effects of bleaching and for testing nowcast and forecast products. Collaborators from 22 countries undertook the most comprehensive documentation of basin-scale bleaching to date and found that over 80% of corals bleached and over 40% died at many sites. The most severe bleaching coincided with waters nearest a western Atlantic warm pool that was centered off the northern end of the Lesser Antilles. Conclusions/Significance: Thermal stress during the 2005 event exceeded any observed from the Caribbean in the prior 20 years, and regionally-averaged temperatures were the warmest in over 150 years. Comparison of satellite data against field surveys demonstrated a significant predictive relationship between accumulated heat stress (measured using NOAA Coral Reef Watch’s Degree Heating Weeks) and bleaching intensity. This severe, widespread bleaching and mortality will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for reef ecosystems and suggests a troubled future for tropical marine ecosystems under a warming climate

A Global Crisis for Seagrass Ecosystems

Seagrasses, marine flowering plants, have a long evolutionary history but are now challenged with rapid environmental changes as a result of coastal human population pressures. Seagrasses provide key ecological services, including organic carbon production and export, nutrient cycling, sediment stabilization, enhanced biodiversity, and trophic transfers to adjacent habitats in tropical and temperate regions. They also serve as “coastal canaries,” global biological sentinels of increasing anthropogenic influences in coastal ecosystems, with large-scale losses reported worldwide. Multiple stressors, including sediment and nutrient runoff, physical disturbance, invasive species, disease, commercial fishing practices, aquaculture, overgrazing, algal blooms, and global warming, cause seagrass declines at scales of square meters to hundreds of square kilometers. Reported seagrass losses have led to increased awareness of the need for seagrass protection, monitoring, management, and restoration. However, seagrass science, which has rapidly grown, is disconnected from public awareness of seagrasses, which has lagged behind awareness of other coastal ecosystems. There is a critical need for a targeted global conservation effort that includes a reduction of watershed nutrient and sediment inputs to seagrass habitats and a targeted educational program informing regulators and the public of the value of seagrass meadows.

The Cuban Missile Crisis And The Threat Of Nuclear War: Lessons From History

Scott, Len, The Cuban Missile Crisis And The Threat Of Nuclear War: Lessons From History (London: Continuum, 2007), pp.xii+222 RAE2008

How Do You Handle a Crisis?

sermon text; MS Word document

The role of transformative thinking and practice in a property entrepreneur's response to the funding crisis since 2008

This portfolio of exploration explores the role of transformative thinking and practice in a property entrepreneur’s response to the financial crisis which swept over Ireland from 2008. The complexity of this challenge and the mental capacity to meet its demands is at the core of the exploration. This inquiry emerged from the challenges the financial crisis presented to my values, beliefs, assumptions, and theories, i.e. the interpretive lens through which I make meaning of my experiences. Given the issue identified, this inquiry is grounded in aspects of theories of constructive developmental psychology, applied developmental science, and philosophy. Integrating and linking these elements to business practice is the applied element of the Portfolio. As the 2008 crisis unfolded I realised I was at the limits of my way of knowing. I came to understand that the underlying structure of a way of knowing is the ‘subject-object relationship’ i.e. what a way of knowing can reflect upon, look at, have perspective on, in other words, make object, as against what is it embedded in, attached to, identified within, or subject to. My goal became enhancing my awareness of how I made meaning and how new insights, which would transform a way of knowing, are created. The focus was on enhancing my practice. This Portfolio is structured into three essays. Essay One reported on my self-reflection and external evaluation out of which emerged my developmental goals. In Essay Two I undertake a reading for change programme in which different meaning making systems were confronted in order to challenge me as a meaning maker. Essay Three reported on my experiment which concerned the question whether it was possible for me as a property entrepreneur, and for others alike, to retain bank finance in the face of the overwhelming objective of the bank to deleverage their balance sheet of property loans. The output of my research can be grouped into General Developmental and Specific Business Implications. Firstly I address those who are interested in a transformational-based response to the challenges of operating in the property sector in Ireland during a crisis. I outline the apparatus of thought that I used to create insight, and thus transform how I thought, these are Awareness, Subject-object separation, Exploring other’s perspectives from the position of incompleteness, Dialectical thinking and Collingwood’s Questioning activity. Secondly I set out my learnings from the crisis and their impact on entrepreneurial behaviour and the business of property development. I identify ten key insights that have emerged from leading a property company through the crisis. Many of these are grounded in common sense, however, in my experience these were, to borrow Shakespeare’s words, “More honor'd in the breach than the observance” in pre Crisis Ireland. Finally I set out a four-step approach for forging a strategy. This requires my peer practitioners to identify (i) what they are subject to, (ii) Assess the Opportunity or challenge in a Systemic Context, (iii) Explore Multiple Perspectives on the opportunity or Challenge with an Orientation to change how you know and (iv) Using the Questioning Activity to create Knowledge. Based on my experience I conclude that transformative thinking and practice is a key enabler for a property entrepreneur, in responding to a major collapse of traditional (bank debt) funding.

The Islamic commercial crisis: Institutional roots of economic underdevelopment in the Middle East

During the second millennium, the Middle East's commerce with Western Europe fell increasingly under European domination. Two factors played critical roles. First, the Islamic inheritance system, by raising the costs of dissolving a partnership following a partner's death, kept Middle Eastern commercial enterprises small and ephemeral. Second, certain European inheritance systems facilitated large and durable partnerships by reducing the likelihood of premature dissolution. The upshot is that European enterprises grew larger than those of the Islamic world. Moreover, while ever larger enterprises propelled further organizational transformations in Europe, persistently small enterprises inhibited economic modernization in the Middle East.

Of Trustees and Offsprings: A Diasporic Trail of Parsi “Crisis” from Bombay to Hong Kong

This thesis examines the discourse(s) of crisis in the Parsi diaspora. Treating crisis as a common variable, rather than a singular and unique event across various Parsi communities, I investigate the dimensions of crisis that bind separated Parsi communities in anxiety through a shared language, cultural experience, and historical memory. Turning first to India and then Hong Kong as my case studies, I analyze “crisis,” that has often been identified in terms of demographic decay or postcolonial decline, in the context of more subtle debates around racial purity and trust funds. Crisis, for the Parsi diaspora, while indicating a critical moment in the present, also serves to reveal the underlying and pre-existing socio-economic and cultural tensions in the communities. Relying largely on life-story interviews, online blogs and articles, and archival work, I portray the crisis not as a unique and sporadic event, but rather as one of continuity and complexity, albeit manifesting each time in different and unique guises, that continues to disrupt as well as unite the Parsi diaspora today.

Witnessing Crisis in Contemporary and Golden Age Spain

In this volume, experts on the Spanish Golden Age from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States offer analyses of contemporary works that have been influenced by the classics from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Metaphors and metamorphoses: narratives of identity during times of crisis

The narrative of transformative crisis appears in both autobiographical and fictional accounts of individual lives; it typically involves a difficult or traumatic episode and a period of self-questioning out of which a person emerges more able and more emotionally mature than before (Booker, 2005; Erikson, 1968; Tedeschi and Calhoun, 1995). The present study used interviews to elicit 22 narratives about crises experienced between the ages of 25 and 40, and about any developmental transformation and change that surrounded these crises. Analysis revealed a common four-phase process to the crisis episodes, common metaphors and recurrent descriptions of identity metamorphosis, ie. of ‘becoming a new person’. Comparison of these findings with theory on fictional plots shows a clear parallel between the four-phase process of crisis found in the current study and the ‘rebirth’ plot described by Booker (2005). The theoretical significance of these findings and interpretations is discussed.

A case study of pre-midlife crisis: an extraordinary transformational episode in an ordinary life

This case study explored a single in-depth narrative of an episode of crisis. The participant, an English Jewish man in his late thirties (Guy), was selected using a ‘random purposeful’ design from a sample who had previously participated in a study on the experience of crisis in pre-midlife adulthood. From a subgroup of participants chosen for giving full accounts of both inner and outer dimensions of crisis, the individual was selected randomly. Data collection comprised two interviews followed by an email discussion. The crisis occurred in Guy’s late thirties, just before the midlife transition, and so can be considered a ‘pre-midlife’ crisis. It subsumed the period surrounding leaving a high-profile banking career and a dysfunctional marriage, and the ensuing attempts to rebuild life after this difficult and emotional period. Qualitative analysis found four trajectories of personal transformation over the course of the episode: Firstly there was a shift away from the use of a conventional persona to a more spontaneous and ‘authentic’ expression of self; secondly there was a move away from materialistic values toward relational values; thirdly a developing capacity to reflect on himself and his actions; fourthly an emerging feminine component of his personality. The case study portrays an extraordinary event in the life of an ordinary man approaching middle age. It illustrates the transformative nature of crisis in ordinary lives, the dramatic nature of narrative surrounding crisis, and also illustrates existing theory about the nature of adult crises.