Dots i llegats dels Baldrich de Valls (1768-1863)

Aquest article presenta les dificultats que van haver d’afrontar entre 1768 i 1863 els hereus de la casa Baldrich de Valls per liquidar els dots i les deixes testamentàries. Anton Baldrich Janer va nomenar hereu el fill gran del primer matrimoni amb l’obligació de pagar als seus germans i especialment als seus germanastres unes quantitats molt elevades de diners atorgats en un moment de grans expectatives econòmiques, gràcies al comerç amb Amèrica i el nord d’Europa. Durant la primera meitat del segle XIX, alguns anys de males collites, les contínues guerres i la independència de les colònies americanes feren minvar els recursos i van afeblir la hisenda familiar. Els successius hereus maldaven per pagar les contínues reclamacions dels cabalers i les cabaleres de les diferents generacions, fet que els impedia invertir en noves empreses per tal d’ampliar i modernitzar els seus negocis. L’any 1863, el darrer hereu Baldrich va morir sense descendència, havent pagat els darrers deutes familiars però sense haver creat nous horitzons per als seus successors.

War and National Renewal: Civil Religion and Blood Sacrifice in American Culture

Wars are often associated with a rhetoric of renewal or new beginnings. This essay explores this claim through the lens of civil religion and a recent book by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, which combines Emile Durkheim with Réné Girard in proposing that modern national cohesion depends on blood sacrifice. I unpack some of the paradoxes raised by this theory of national renewal in the context of 9/11, with a special focus on the sacred status of the flag and the special attention given to uniformed serviceman in the American body politic.

'Making Science Understandable'. Divulgació científica i mediació editorial: el cas de The Wisdom of the Body de Walter B. Cannon (1871-1945)

The present paper aims at an historical reconstruction, in the framework of the publishing industry in the years between the two World Wars, of the role played by the publisher William W. Norton in the genesis, published in 1932, and new edition in 1938, of Walter B. Cannon"s book The Wisdom of the Body. With the analysis of this case study, we aimed at contributing to the current criticism of the «dominant view», which tries, in an uncritical manner, that scientific popularization follows an ineluctable, continuous and linear evolution.

Cinema and the Work of Doré

According to Ray Harryhausen, a special effects expert in the film industry, "Gustave Doré would have made a great director of photography . . . He saw things from the point of view of the camera." Doré's work has had a permanent impact on the imaginative realm of film since its very early days. In return, the silver screen has etched Doré into the 20th century imagination. Almost every film about the Bible since The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ produced by Pathé in 1902 refers to his illustrations, and every film adaptation of Dante or Don Quixote has used him as a model, from Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Orson Welles to Terry Gilliam. All films dealing with life in London in the Victorian era by directors ranging from David Lean, to Roman Polanski and Tim Burton draw on the visions in London: a pilgrimage for their sets. A large number of dream fantastical or phantasmagorical scenes take their inspiration from Doré's graphic world, beginning with Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon in 1902. In the realm of cartoons and animation, Walt Disney owes a huge debt to Doré. Doré primal forests, from Atala in particular, were also used in the various versions of King Kong from 1933 to the 2005 film by Peter Jackson, who had already drawn on Doré for The Lord of the Rings. Jean Cocteau was also indebted to the illustrations for Perrault's Fairy Tales for his Beauty and the Beast (1945), as was George Lucas for the character Chewbacca in Star Wars (1977) and even the Harry Potter film series. Through his influence on film history, Doré shaped the mass culture imagination.

Teories de l’imperialisme. Un estat de la qüestió

El propòsit d’aquest treball és presentar i discutir les diferents teories sobre l’anomenat «imperialisme modern», delimitat cronològicament des de finals del segle XIX fins a l’inici de la Primera Guerra Mundial. A més a més, és també l’objectiu d’aquest article mostrar l’evolució de la discussió presentant aquestes teories en ordre cronològic i insistint en com els conceptes «imperialisme» i «colonialisme» han canviat de significat. Les teories marxistes i liberals de principis del segle XX consideraven l’imperialisme un procés fonamentalment econòmic mentre que la teoria sociològica de Schumpeter el veia com un atavisme. Algunes teories després de les guerres mundials han insistit en la importància de parar atenció en els territoris colonitzats i en com la seva relació amb Europa ha afectat la nova forma imperial. Les explicacions més recents n’han destacat aspectes molt diferents, des de la importància sobre com ha permès l’expansió del lliure-comerç fins a l’imperialisme com una perversió del nacionalisme.

'Making Science Understandable'. Divulgació científica i mediació editorial: el cas de The Wisdom of the Body de Walter B. Cannon (1871-1945)

The present paper aims at an historical reconstruction, in the framework of the publishing industry in the years between the two World Wars, of the role played by the publisher William W. Norton in the genesis, published in 1932, and new edition in 1938, of Walter B. Cannon"s book The Wisdom of the Body. With the analysis of this case study, we aimed at contributing to the current criticism of the «dominant view», which tries, in an uncritical manner, that scientific popularization follows an ineluctable, continuous and linear evolution.

Bien-être et croyance en un monde juste en ex-Yougoslavie: traces laissées par les guerres et la précarité socio-économique

RÉSUMÉ En combinant la perspective du parcours de vie à la théorie du stress et selon une approche psychosociale, cette thèse montre comment les expériences individuelles et collectives de victimisation ont marqué les parcours de vie, les croyances et le bien-être d'une cohorte de jeunes adultes ayant traversé les guerres en ex-Yougoslavie. Le premier article applique des analyses de courbes de croissance à classes latentes et dégage différentes trajectoires d'exclusion entre 1990 et 2006. L'analyse de ces trajectoires met en évidence les intersections entre vies individuelles, contexte et temps socio-historique et démontre que les expériences de guerre et les périodes d'exclusion socio-économique laissent des traces sur le bien-être à long terme. Les deuxième et troisième articles montrent que la croyance en un monde juste est ébranlée suite à des expériences de précarité socio-économique et de victimisation dues à la guerre au niveau individuel et contextuel. Un effet curvilinéaire et des interactions entre les niveaux indiquent que ces relations varient en fonction de l'intensité de la victimisation au niveau contextuel. Des effets de récence sont aussi relevés. Le quatrième article démontre que l'impact négatif de la victimisation sur le bien-être est en partie expliqué par un effritement de la croyance en un monde juste. De plus, si les individus qui croient davantage en un monde juste sont plus satisfaits de leur vie, la force de ce lien varie en fonction du niveau de victimisation dans certains contextes. Cette thèse présente un modèle multiniveaux dynamique dans lequel la croyance en un monde juste n'exerce plus le rôle de ressource personnelle stable mais s'érode face à la victimisation, entraînant ainsi un bien-être moindre. Ce travail souligne l'importance d'articuler les niveaux individuels et contextuels et de considérer la dimension temporelle pour expliquer les liens entre victimisation, croyance en un monde juste et bien-être. ABSTRACT By combining a life course perspective to stress theory and according to a psychosocial approach, this thesis shows how individual and collective victimisation experiences marked the life course, beliefs and well-being of a cohort of young adults who lived through the wars in former Yugoslavia. In the first article, latent class growth analyses were applied to identify different exclusion trajectories between 1990 and 2006. The analysis of these trajectories highlighted the intersections between individual lives, socio-historical context and time and demonstrated that experiences of war and socio-economic exclusion leave traces on well-being in the long term. The second and third articles showed that the belief in a just world was shattered due to socio-economic precariousness and war victimisation at individual and contextual levels. A curvilinear effect and cross-level interactions indicated that these relations varied according to the intensity of victimisation at the contextual level. Time effects were also noted. The fourth article showed that the negative impact of victimisation on well-being was partly explained by an erosion of the belief in a just world. Furthermore, if high believers were more satisfied with their lives, the strength of this relation varied depending on the level of victimisation in particular contexts. This thesis presents a multilevel dynamic model in which the belief in a just world no longer exercises the role of a stable personal resource but erodes in the face of victimisation, leading to a lower well-being. This work stresses the importance of articulating individual and contextual levels as well as considering the temporal dimension to explain the links between victimisation, belief in a just world and well-being.

Mercado del libro y empresas editoriales entre el Centenario de Independencias y la Guerra Civil española: la editorial Sudamericana

[spa]Las estrategias comerciales de los libreros y editores españoles para desembarcar en los mercados americanos son analizadas en un contexto signado por las tendencias americanistas en el plano político y las iniciativas regeneracionistas en el económico durante el periodo que va del Centenario de las Independencias hasta la Guerra Civil española. Se abordan algunas de las políticas empresariales editoriales implementadas en Cataluña, el liderazgo ejercido por esta región como epicentro del proyecto hispano, y finalmente las condiciones que permitieron la creación de la editorial Sudamericana en Buenos Aires ante la inminencia del triunfo franquista. Los ejes de estudio son las estrategias editoriales y comerciales; el peso de las asociaciones y corporaciones patronales del libro; y los vínculos tejidos con el sector intelectual argentino en las primeras décadas del siglo XX a través de delegaciones consulares, instituciones culturales y cámaras españolas de comercio.

Mining in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Sustainability Challenges

Mining has severe impacts on its surrounding. Particularly in the developing countries it has degraded the environment and signigicantly altered the socio-economical dynamics of the hosts. Especially relocation disrupts people from their homes, livelihoods, cultures and social activities. Mining industry has failed to develop the local host and streghten its governance structures; instead it has further degraded the development of mineral rich third world countries, which are among the world poorest ones. Cash flows derived from mining companies have not benefitted the crass-root level that however, bears most of the detrimental impacts. Especially if the governance structure of the host is weak, the sudden wealth is likely to accelerate disparities, corruption and even fuel wars. Environmental degradation, miscommunication, mistrust and disputes over land use have created conflicts between the communities and a mining company in Obuasi, Ghana; a case study of this thesis. The disputes are deeply rooted and further fuelled by unrealistic expectations and broken promises. The relations with artisanal and illegal miners have been especially troublesome. Illegal activities, mainly encroachment of the land and assets of the mine, such as vandalising tailings pipes have resulted in profits losses, environmental degradation and security hazards. All challenges mentioned above have to be addressed locally with site-specific solutions. It is vital to increase two-way communication, initiate collaboration and build capacity of the stakeholders such as local communities, NGOs and governance authorities. The locals must be engaged to create livelihood opportunities that are designed with and for them. Capacity can also be strengthened through education and skills training, such as women’s literacy programs. In order to diminish the overdependence of locals to the mine, the activities have to be self -sufficient and able to survive without external financial and managerial inputs. Additionally adequate and fair compensation practises and dispute resolution methods that are understood and accepted by all parties have to be agreed on as early as possible.

Soldiering and the making of Finnish manhood : conscription and masculinity in interwar Finland, 1918–1939

Military conscription and peacetime military service were the subjects of heated political, social and cultural controversies during the early years of national independence in Finland. Both the critics and the supporters of the existing military system described it as strongly formative of young men’s physical and moral development into adult men and male citizens. The conflicts over conscription prompted the contemporaries to express their notions about what Finnish men were like, at their best and at their worst, and what should and could be done about it. This thesis studies military conscription as an arena for the “making of manhood” in peacetime Finnish society, 1918–1939. It examines a range of public images of conscripted soldiering, asking how soldiering was depicted and given gendered meanings in parliamentary debates, war hero myths, texts concerned with the military and civic education of conscripts, as well as in works of fiction and reminiscences about military training as a personal experience. Studying conscription with a focus on masculinity, the thesis explores the different cultural images of manliness, soldiering and male citizenship on offer in Finnish society. It investigates how political parties, officers, educators, journalists, writers and “ordinary” conscripts used and developed, embraced or rejected these notions, according to their political purposes or personal needs. The period between the two world wars can be described as a fast-forward into military modernity in Finland. In the process, European middle class gender ideologies clashed with Finnish agrarian masculinities. Nationalistic agendas for the militarisation of Finnish manhood stumbled against intense class conflicts and ideological resistance. Military propaganda used images of military heroism, civic virtue and individual success to persuade the conscripts into ways of thinking and acting that were shaped by bourgeois mentality, nationalistic ideology and religious morality. These images are further analysed as expressive of the personal experiences and emotions of their middle-aged, male authors. The efforts of these military educators were, however, actively resisted on many fronts, ranging from rural working class masculinities among the conscripted young men to ideological critiques of the standing army system in parliament. In narratives about military training, masculinity was depicted as both strengthened and contradicted by the harsh and even brutal practices of interwar Finnish military training. The study represents a combination of new military history and the historical study of men and masculinities. It approaches masculinity as a contested and highly political form of social and cultural knowledge that is actively and selectively used by historic actors. Instead of trying to identify a dominant or “hegemonic” form of masculinity within a pre-determined theoretical structure, this study examines how the meanings ascribed to manhood varied according to class, age, political ideology and social situation. The interwar period in Finland can be understood as a period of contest between different notions of militarised masculinity, yet to judge by the materials studied, there was no clear winning party in that contest. A gradual movement from an atmosphere of conflict surrounding conscription towards political and cultural compromises can be discerned, yet this convergence was incomplete and many division lines remained.

Hybrid warfare – just a twist of compound warfare? : views on warfare from the United States Armed Forces perspective

The wars the Western armies are involved with today are different from those that were fought in the end of 20th century. To explain this change, the Western military thinkers have come up with various different types of definitions of warfare over the last 30 years, each describing the tendencies involved in the conflicts of the time. The changing nature of conflicts surfaced a new term – hybrid warfare. The term was to describe and explain the multi-modality and complexity of modern day conflict. This thesis seeks the answer for the question: what is the development of thought behind hybrid warfare? In this thesis the Vietnam War (1965-1975) is used as an example of compound warfare focusing on the American involvement in the war. The Second Lebanon War (2006) serves as an example of hybrid warfare. Both case studies include an irregular opposing force, namely National Liberation Front in Vietnam War and Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War. These two case studies are compared with the term full spectrum operations introduced in the current U.S. Department of Army Field Manual No. 3-0 Operations to see the differences and similarities of each term. The perspective of this thesis is the American point of view. This thesis concludes that hybrid warfare, compound warfare and full spectrum operations are very similar. The first two terms are included in the last one. Although hybrid warfare is not officially defined, it will most likely remain to be used in the discussion in the future, since hybrid wars and hybrid threats are officially accepted terms.

Winning time in land warfare : a reading of the classical strategists prior to the age of mechanization

We live in an age where rationalization and demands of efficiency taint every aspect of our lives both as individuals and as a society. Even warfare cannot escape the increased speed of human interaction. Time is a resource to be managed. It has to be optimized, saved and won in military affairs as well. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the dogmatic texts of military thought to search for answers what the classics of strategy saw in the interrelations of temporality and warfare and if their thoughts remain meaningful in the contemporary conjunction. Since the way a society functions is reflected in the way it conducts its wars, there naturally are differences between an agrarian, industrial and information society. Theorists of different eras emphasize things specific to their times, but warfare, like any human interaction, is always bounded by temporality. Not only is the pace of warfare dependent on the progress of the society, but time permeates warfare in all its aspects. This research paper focuses on two specific topics that arose from the texts themselves; how should time be managed and manipulated in warfare and how to economize and “win” it from the enemy. A method where lengthy quotations are used to illustrate the main point of the strategists has been chosen for this research paper. While Clausewitz is the most prominent source of quotations, thoughts from ancient India and China are represented as well to prove that the combination of right force in the right place at the right time is still the way of the victorious. Tactics change in the course of time but the principles of strategy remain unaltered and are only adapted to suit new situations. While ancient and pre-modern societies had their focus on finding auspicious moments for battle in the flow of kronos-time based on divinities, portents and auguries, we can trace elements of manipulation of time in warfare from the earliest surviving texts. While time as a fourth dimension of the battlespace emerged only in the modern era, all through the history of military thought it has had a profound meaning. In the past time could be squandered, today it always has to be won. This paper asks the question “why”.

Post-industrial 2.0 – Social Web as the second coming of the post-industrial society

This study presents a review of theories of the so-called post-industrial society, and proposes that the concept of post-industrial society can be used to understand the recent developments of the World Wide Web, often described as Web 2.0 or social Web. The study combines theories ranging from post-war management science and cultural studies to software development, and tries to build a holistic view of the development of the post-industrial society, and especially the Internet. The discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society after the World Wars has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. It is furthermore deeply connected with the discourse on the postmodern society, which emphasizes cultural fragmentation, intertextuality, and pluralism. The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. While 1990s Internet technologies often used the network as a traditional broadcasting channel with added interactivity, Web 2.0 technologies are specifically designed to utilize the network model by facilitating communication between various services and devices, and analyzing the relationships between users and objects in order to produce intelligent insight. The wide adoption of the Internet, and recently of Internet-enabled mobile devices, is furthermore continuously producing new ways of communicating, consuming, and producing. Applications of the social Web, such as social media or social networking services, are permanently changing our traditional social, cultural, and economic practices. The study first presents an overview of the post-industrial society, the Internet, and the concept of Web 2.0. Then the concept of social Web is described with an analysis of the term social media, the brief histories of the interactive Web and social networking services, and a description of the concept ―long tail‖, used to represent the masses of information available in the Web that do not receive mainstream attention. Finally, methods for retrieving and filtering information, modeling social and cultural relationships, and communicating with customers, are presented.

Hezbollah and Taliban - hybrid adversaries in contemporary conflicts? : views on an adversary from the United States Armed Forces perspective

The experiences of the United States Armed Forces of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel Defense Forces in the Second Lebanon War resulted a new term to surface called “hybrid warfare”. It was to describe the complexity of today’s battlefield. The term “hy-brid warfare” was never officially defined nor is it today. The updated version of the US ARMY Field Manual 3-0: Operations (Change 1) from February 22, 2011, introduced and defined “hybrid threat” and thus opened the discussion for hybrid adversary. In this thesis a model is introduced according to which any organization, group or an ad-versary can be examined and evaluated to see whether it qualifies as a hybrid adversary. It is demonstrated by the example of Hezbollah, which is recognized as the best example of an organization utilizing “hybrid warfare” and subsequently categorizing as a hybrid adver-sary. The model will be tested with Afghan Taliban to see whether both the model works and Taliban qualifies as a hybrid adversary or not. According to the model used in this thesis, it is concluded that Taliban does not meet the standards of a hybrid adversary, but with acquisition of standoff weapons it would quickly qualify as one. The model proved to work, and it could be used as a tool by intelligence of-ficers for estimating the threat levels of any group or identifying those groups that are al-ready or are about to develop into a hybrid adversary.