Political instability and the persistence of religion in Greece: the policy implications of the cultural defence paradigm

This paper examines the implications of ‘cultural defence’ in the nature of democracy and the stability of the political system in Greece. It focuses on the Greek Orthodox Church’s maintenance of power and political relevance by virtue of its strong link to national identity. We argue that the inhibition of secularization in Greece as a result of cultural defence has significant policy implications, especially in times of crises, when the role of nationalism as a cohesive factor against perceived threats is intensified. The paper further explores three policy/politics areas: (1) political orientation; (2) religious pluralism; and (3) education.

Reflexive stasis, scale reversal and the myth of modern cinema

This chapter looks at three films whose Portuguese urban settings offer a privileged ground for the re-evaluation of the classical-modern-postmodern categorisation with regard to cinema. They are The State of Things (Wim Wenders, 1982), Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010). In them, the city is the place where characters lose their bearings, names, identities, and where vicious circles, mirrors, replicas and mise-en-abyme bring the vertiginous movement that had characterised the modernist city of 1920s cinema to a halt. Curiously, too, it is the place where so-called postmodern aesthetics finally finds an ideal home in self-ironical tales that expose the film medium’s narrative shortcomings. Intermedial devices, whether Polaroid stills or a cardboard cut-out theatre, are then resorted to in order to turn a larger-than-life reality into framed, manageable narrative miniatures. The scaled-down real, however, turns out to be a disappointing simulacrum, a memory ersatz that unveils the illusory character of cosmopolitan teleology. In my approach, I start by examining the intertwined and transnational genesis of these films that resulted in three correlated visions of the end of history and of storytelling, typical of postmodern aesthetics. I move on to consider intermedia miniaturism as an attempt to stop time within movement, an equation that inevitably brings to mind the Deleuzian movement-time binary, which I revisit in an attempt to disentangle it from the classical-modern opposition. I conclude by proposing reflexive stasis and scale reversal as the common denominator across all modern projects, hence, perhaps, a more advantageous model than modernity to signify artistic and political values.

The politics of slowness and the traps of modernity

This chapter re-evaluates the diachronic, evolutionist model that establishes the Second World War as a watershed between classical and modern cinemas, and ‘modernity’ as the political project of ‘slow cinema’. I will start by historicising the connection between cinematic speed and modernity, going on to survey the veritable obsession with the modern that continues to beset film studies despite the vagueness and contradictions inherent in the term. I will then attempt to clarify what is really at stake within the modern-classical debate by analysing two canonical examples of Japanese cinema, drawn from the geidomono genre (films on the lives of theatre actors), Kenji Mizoguchi’s Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Zangiku monogatari, 1939) and Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds (Ukigusa, 1954), with a view to investigating the role of the long take or, conversely, classical editing, in the production or otherwise of a supposed ‘slow modernity’. By resorting to Ozu and Mizoguchi, I hope to demonstrate that the best narrative films in the world have always combined a ‘classical’ quest for perfection with the ‘modern’ doubt of its existence, hence the futility of classifying cinema in general according to an evolutionary and Eurocentric model based on the classical-modern binary. Rather than on a confusing politics of the modern, I will draw on Bazin’s prophetic insight of ‘impure cinema’, a concept he forged in defence of literary and theatrical screen adaptations. Anticipating by more than half a century the media convergence on which the near totality of our audiovisual experience is currently based, ‘impure cinema’ will give me the opportunity to focus on the confluence of film and theatre in these Mizoguchi and Ozu films as the site of a productive crisis where established genres dissolve into self-reflexive stasis, ambiguity of expression and the revelation of the reality of the film medium, all of which, I argue, are more reliable indicators of a film’s political programme than historical teleology. At the end of the journey, some answers may emerge to whether the combination of the long take and the long shot are sufficient to account for a film’s ‘slowness’ and whether ‘slow’ is indeed the best concept to signify resistance to the destructive pace of capitalism.

Predicating from an early age: edusemiotics and the potential of children’s preconceptions

This paper aims to explain how semiotics and constructivism can collaborate in an educational epistemology by developing a joint approach to prescientific conceptions. Empirical data and findings of constructivist research are interpreted in the light of Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics is an anti-psychologistic logic (CP 2.252; CP 4.551; W 8:15; Pietarinen in Signs of logic, Springer, Dordrecht, 2006; Stjernfelt in Diagrammatology. An investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology and semiotics, Springer, Dordrecht, 2007) and relational logic. Constructivism was traditionally developed within psychology and sociology and, therefore, some incompatibilities can be expected between these two schools. While acknowledging the differences, we explain that constructivism and semiotics share the assumption of realism that knowledge can only be developed upon knowledge and, therefore, an epistemological collaboration is possible. The semiotic analysis performed confirms the constructivist results and provides a further insight into the teacher-student relation. Like the constructivist approach, Peirce’s doctrine of agapism infers that the personal dimension of teaching must not be ignored. Thus, we argue for the importance of genuine sympathy in teaching attitudes. More broadly, the article also contributes to the development of postmodern humanities. At the end of the modern age, the humanities are passing through a critical period of transformation. There is a growing interest in semiotics and semiotic philosophy in many areas of the humanities. Such a case, on which we draw, is the development of a theoretical semiotic approach to education, namely edusemiotics (Stables and Semetsky, Pedagogy and edusemiotics: theoretical challenge/practical opportunities, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2015).

The Tastes of a Nation: M.F.K. Fisher and the Genre of Culinary Literature

This project works to situate this gastronomic revolution within a historical context, arguing at greater length that our contemporary food culture in the United States is in part the legacy of the body of food representations. Here we witness the evolution of a particular culinary sensibility that appealed to readers differently in different historical moments, as exhibited by the variety of ways that Fisher’s body of work was publicly received. By the end of the twentieth century, Fisher’s ethos reigned supreme, because Americans began to view food with less fear and anxiety as they slowly became more comfortable expressing their physical appetites and desires. By the millennium, Americans began to respect and honor the physical appetite and give more consideration to the quality and origin of the foods that they consumed. Feelings of guilt associated with the enjoyment of food began to diminish as well.

Modernist Success in a Postmodern Failure: Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, the Avant-Garde and the Ascension of Late Capitalism, Art after 1945

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the events at the end of World War II. The thought produced in the face of a myriad of deaths is almost unfeasible sixty years after the fact, but the energy was integral to the changing social landscape. Because of the country's prominence in and fortitude after the war, the U.S. was left responsible for reshaping and rejuvenating the international landscape that was destroyed by the years of brutal fighting and vile contestation. The American establishment was granted a major opportunity to establish itself amongst the global leaders. Such a grand responsibility must account for the multiplicity of thought that arises in such a decisive moment. In order to align the Abstract Expressionist art movement with the intersection of the intense, multifaceted thought developed during the postwar period, the following will discuss the political, philosophical, economic, and art historical overlap that occurred in the mid to late 1940s in the hopes of illustrating the fertility yet lingering problems associated with the restructuring of the world with America at the helm. In this way, the duration of the Abstract Expressionist moment will be better understood for both its triumphs and downfalls.

Rational expectations and the service of public debt: a recursive approach

This paper uses dynamic programming to study the time consistency of optimal macroeconomic policy in economies with recurring public deficits. To this end, a general equilibrium recursive model introduced in Chang (1998) is extended to include govemment bonds and production. The original mode! presents a Sidrauski economy with money and transfers only, implying that the need for govemment fmancing through the inflation tax is minimal. The extended model introduces govemment expenditures and a deficit-financing scheme, analyzing the SargentWallace (1981) problem: recurring deficits may lead the govemment to default on part of its public debt through inflation. The methodology allows for the computation of the set of alI sustainable stabilization plans even when the govemment cannot pre-commit to an optimal inflation path. This is done through value function iterations, which can be done on a computeI. The parameters of the extended model are calibrated with Brazilian data, using as case study three Brazilian stabilization attempts: the Cruzado (1986), Collor (1990) and the Real (1994) plans. The calibration of the parameters of the extended model is straightforward, but its numerical solution proves unfeasible due to a dimensionality problem in the algorithm arising from limitations of available computer technology. However, a numerical solution using the original algorithm and some calibrated parameters is obtained. Results indicate that in the absence of govemment bonds or production only the Real Plan is sustainable in the long run. The numerical solution of the extended algorithm is left for future research.

Net Neutrality Compendium: Human Rights, Free Competition and the Future of the Internet

The ways in which Internet traffic is managed have direct consequences on Internet users’ rights as well as on their capability to compete on a level playing field. Network neutrality mandates to treat Internet traffic in a non-discriminatory fashion in order to maximise end users’ freedom and safeguard an open Internet. This book is the result of a collective work aimed at providing deeper insight into what is network neutrality, how does it relates to human rights and free competition and how to properly frame this key issue through sustainable policies and regulations. The Net Neutrality Compendium stems from three years of discussions nurtured by the members of the Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality (DCNN), an open and multistakeholder group, established under the aegis of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

The revenge of the market on the rentiers why neo-liberal reports of the end of history turned out to be premature

Starting from the perspective of heterodox Keynesian-Minskyian-Kindlebergian financial economics, this paper begins by highlighting a number of mechanisms that contributed to the current financial crisis. These include excess liquidity, income polarisation, conflicts between financial and productive capital, lack of intelligent regulation, asymmetric information, principal-agent dilemmas and bounded rationalities. However, the paper then proceeds to argue that perhaps more than ever the ‘macroeconomics’ that led to this crisis only makes analytical sense if examined within the framework of the political settlements and distributional outcomes in which it had operated. Taking the perspective of critical social theories the paper concludes that, ultimately, the current financial crisis is the outcome of something much more systemic, namely an attempt to use neo-liberalism (or, in US terms, neo-conservatism) as a new technology of power to help transform capitalism into a rentiers’ delight. And in particular, into a system without much ‘compulsion’ on big business; i.e., one that imposes only minimal pressures on big agents to engage in competitive struggles in the real economy (while inflicting exactly the opposite fate on workers and small firms). A key component in the effectiveness of this new technology of power was its ability to transform the state into a major facilitator of the ever-increasing rent-seeking practices of oligopolistic capital. The architects of this experiment include some capitalist groups (in particular rentiers from the financial sector as well as capitalists from the ‘mature’ and most polluting industries of the preceding techno-economic paradigm), some political groups, as well as intellectual networks with their allies – including most economists and the ‘new’ left. Although rentiers did succeed in their attempt to get rid of practically all fetters on their greed, in the end the crisis materialised when ‘markets’ took their inevitable revenge on the rentiers by calling their (blatant) bluff.

Somatotrophic and thyroid hormones around the onset of lay in broiler breeders under different conditions

Somatotrophic and thyroid hormones were determined around the onset of reproduction in broiler breeders reared in two different housing systems [dark, close-sided house (CH) and conventional, open-sided house (OH)]. In both groups age-related changes were obvious for thyroxine (T-4), growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1); levels of T-4 decreased, especially between 24 and 28 weeks in both groups; concomitantly GH sharply increased over the same period. A transient peak in triiodothyronine (T-3) occurred between 25 and 27 weeks. The effect of housing was only present after the onset of lay. Between weeks 27-28 and the end of the period studied, the CH group showed higher levels of GH and T-3 but lower T-4 levels as compared to the OH group. A significant increase in GH after onset of lay, without any significant rise in T-3 or in IGF-I, could point to a relative insensitivity to high plasma GH levels. Changes at GH receptor level, together with an increased pituitary GH secretion and/or decreased GH turnover may be expected. This may indicate that hypothalamo-pituitary changes at the onset of lay not only imply changes of gonadotrophic cell function, but also other hormonal axes. The relatively decrease in T-4 without changes in T-3, may point to a decrease in the activity of the thyrotropic axis.

Amblyomma cajennense (Acari : Ixodidae): Salivary gland cells of partially engorged females ticks and the production of lipid by their mitochondria

Morphologically,. The salivary glands of ticks are paired structures consisting of a secretory and an excretory portion, lacking a reservoir for the storage of the secretion. The secretory portion is composed in females by cells that form acini classified into the types I, II, and III. The excretory possess a major duct, from which arise several intermediate ducts that then subdivide to form the canaliculi or acinal tubules, which end at the acini from where they collect the secretion. The present Study describes the ultrastructural changes that occur in the mitochondria of cells of the acini I, II, and III in the salivary glands of partially engorged females of the Cayenne tick Amblyomma cajennense. The results show that this organelle exhibits completely disarrayed crests due to the presence of lipidic material inside the matrix and between the crests, thus demonstrating their participation in the production of the lipids that would be used structurally by the cells. These organelles with ultrastructural changes were denominated derived mitochondria. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Non-local interactions and the dynamics of dispersal in immature insects

A simple mathematical model is developed to explain the appearance of oscillations in the dispersal of larvae from the food source in experimental populations of certain species of blowflies. The life history of the immature stage in these flies, and in a number of other insects, is a system with two populations, one of larvae dispersing on the soil and the other of larvae that burrow in the soil to pupate. The observed oscillations in the horizontal distribution of buried pupae at the end of the dispersal process are hypothesized to be a consequence of larval crowding at a given point in the pupation substrate. It is assumed that dispersing larvae are capable of perceiving variations in density of larvae buried at a given point in the substrate of pupation, and that pupal density may influence pupation of dispersing larvae. The assumed interaction between dispersing larvae and the larvae that are burrowing to pupate is modeled using the concept of non-local effects. Numerical solutions of integro-partial differential equations developed to model density-dependent immature dispersal demonstrate that variation in the parameter that governs the non-local interaction between dispersing and buried larvae induces oscillations in the final horizontal distribution of pupae. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.

Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2008

Includes bibliography

Ageing and the protection of human rights: Current situation and outlook

Includes Bibliography