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This article focuses how power and resistance are exercised in one of Stockholm’s biggest shopping centres. Power and resistance are key words in Cultural Studies. However, the tradition is dominated by studies where 'ordinary/common’ people and their everyday resistance against economical, political and symbolic power is analysed. Critics of Cultural Studies have pointed out that this domination in some cases has led to a romanticized view on common people s resistance and an unproblematic, simplified concept of power. This article works in the tradition of Cultural Studies, but takes this critique seriously by distinguishing three arenas where economic, political and symbolical forms of power intersect and clash with other interests. These are located in the tension between three sets of relations: a) the shopping centre versus the local municipality, b) the centre management versus the individual businesses that run shops in the centre, and c) the shopping centre as a whole (comprising the owners, the shops and the space itself) versus the visitors (who are predominantly women). The empirical material consists of observations and field-notes, branch statistics, interviews with customers, shop employees and centre managers, photographic documentation, advertisements and other public sources from 1998 to 2002.

"Uma Admiração Pastoril pelo Diabo", in Suroeste, n.º 6, Badajoz, 2016

Recensão ao livro de António M. Feijó, "Uma admiração pastoril pelo diabo (Pessoa e Pascoaes)", sublinhando a renovação dos estudos pessoanos em Portugal.

Advanced Spectroscopy for the Study of Colourants in Cultural Heritage

Colourants are substances used to change the colour of something, and are classified in three typology of colorants: a) pigments, b) dyes, and c) lakes and hybrid pigments. Their identification is very important when studying cultural heritage; it gives information about the artistic technique, can help in dating, and offers insights on the condition of the object. Besides, the study of the degradation phenomena constitutes a framework for the preventive conservation strategies, provides evidence of the object's original appearance, and contributes to the authentication of works of art. However, the complexity of these systems makes it impossible to achieve a complete understanding using a single technique, making necessary a multi-analytical approach. This work focuses on the set-up and application of advanced spectroscopic methods for the study of colourants in cultural heritage. The first chapter presents the identification of modern synthetic organic pigments using Metal Underlayer-ATR (MU-ATR), and the characterization of synthetic dyes extracted from wool fibres using a combination of Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) coupled to MU-ATR using AgI@Au plates. The second chapter presents the study of the effect of metallic Ag in the photo-oxidation process of orpiment, and the influence of the different factors, such as light and relative humidity. We used a combination of vibrational and synchrotron radiation-based X-ray microspectroscopy techniques: µ-ATR-FT-IR, µ-Raman, SR-µ-XRF, µ-XANES at S K-, Ag L3- and As K-edges and SR-µ-XRD. The third chapter presents the study of metal carboxylates in paintings, specifically on the formation of Zn and Pb carboxylates in three different binders: stand linseed oil, whole egg, and beeswax. We used micro-ATR-FT-IR, macro FT-IR in total reflection (rMA-FT-IR), portable Near-Infrared spectroscopy (NIR), macro X-ray Powder Diffraction (MA-XRPD), XRPD, and Gas Chromatography Mass-Spectrometry (GC-MS). For the data processing, we explored the data from rMA-FT-IR and NIR with the Principal Component Analysis (PCA).

Vers une autre temporalité de la "parthénos" : entre mythe, littérature et disciplines du corps

Cette thèse trace la généalogie culturelle de la jeune fille en Occident en ciblant les moments charnières de son devenir femme au sein de structures de savoir qui ont activement participé à forger cette figure hétéronormative. Mon objectif est de produire une analyse culturelle en forgeant une cartographie des adolescences au féminin. Afin de sortir de la temporalité téléologique de la virginité et de la défloration, j’emprunte un mot étranger, parthénos, qui fait appel à l’idée de la jeune fille, sans nécessairement se limiter à ses connotations conventionnelles. La première partie, intitulée « La virginité, une affaire de jeunes filles », laisse place à une analyse du concept de parthénos à partir d’une lecture au carrefour de la médecine, de la loi et du mythe. Une lecture du traité hippocratique De la maladie des jeunes filles dévoile comment la défloration et la grossesse deviennent une cure érotique, une discipline du corps, qui décide du passage de la jeune fille dans une temporalité utile à la Cité. Un déplacement paradigmatique s’opère au 19e siècle dans les écrits médico-légaux, parce que l’hymen, auparavant inexistant dans la doxa hippocratique, devient le signe matériel par excellence pour examiner le statut de virginité de la fille. L’analyse de ces traités (frères Beck, Ambroise Tardieu, Paulier et Hétet) révèle la configuration de pratiques et de discours d’infantilisation des victimes de viol, et le refus des médecins légistes de reconnaître qu’une femme mariée puisse être violée. À partir d’une lecture contemporaine des tragédies L’Orestie d’Eschyle et Antigone de Sophocle, je montre que les figures d’Antigone et d’Électre constituent des exemples et des symboles convaincants de ce destin funeste de la parthénos qui n’accède jamais au statut de femme mariée. À ces figures mortelles, se télescopent les figures d’Artémis et des Érinyes pour montrer le potentiel de régénération inhérent à la figure de la parthénos. La deuxième partie, qui porte le titre « Le liminaire. Repenser les devenirs de l’adolescence », engage une réflexion à la lisière du contexte contemporain des Girlhood Studies, de la psychanalyse sociale et des études féministes sur le corps et le sexe, pour faciliter le déploiement d’une cartographie plus contextualisée du concept de parthénos. Je montre ici les écueils et les effets du danger qu’engendre la rationalité économique (cf. Henry A. Giroux) pour les espaces de liberté et d’exploration propres à l’adolescence. Cette posture est appuyée sur une lecture des récentes études en psychanalyse sociale (Anne Bourgain, Olivier Douville et Edmond Ortigues). Il est ainsi question d’identifier ce qui marque le passage entre l’adolescence et l’âge adulte : la crainte de la disparition et le fantasme de la naissance de soi. La théorie de la volatilité corporelle qu’élabore Elizabeth Grosz à propos de la sexualité féminine, ainsi que les théories de Michel Foucault, reprises par Judith Butler, en ce qui concerne les disciplines du corps, répondent à mon objectif de sortir de l’écueil d’une temporalité téléologique pour saisir les effets et les ramifications du discours sur la matérialité du corps de la jeune fille, sur ce qui lui arrive lorsqu’elle ne correspond pas tout à fait à l’idéal de régulation. Enfin, la dernière partie, qui porte le titre « Temporalités de la parthénos en tant que sujet liminaire », est traversée par les modalités particulières de la parthénia qui semble désincarnée dans la littérature contemporaine. L’objectif est de prouver que la virginité est toujours un marqueur symbolique qui déploie le destin de la fille dans un horizon particulier, trop souvent celui de la disparition. En proposant un éventail de cinq textes littéraires que j’inscris au sein d’une posture généalogique, je souhaite voir dans la littérature contemporaine, une volonté, parfois aussi un échec, dans cette pensée de la parthénos en tant que sujet liminaire. Le récit Vu du ciel de Christine Angot montre que l’ascension vers le statut d’ange concerne seulement les victimes enfants. Le récit d’Angot met donc en lumière la distinction entre la vraie victime, toujours innocente et pré-pubère, et la fausse victime, l’adolescente. Contrairement à Vu du ciel, The Lovely Bones d’Alice Sebold met en scène la possibilité d’une communauté politique de filles qui sera en fait limitée par le refus du potentiel lesbien. La question du viol sera ici centrale et sera abordée à partir de l’insistance sur la voix de la narratrice Susan. La littérature devient un espace propice à la survie de la jeune fille, puisqu’elle admet la reprise de l’expérience de la première relation sexuelle. Si la communauté est convoquée dans The Lovely Bones, elle est associée à l’image de l’identité sororale dans le roman Virgin Suicides de Jeffrey Eugenides. La pathologie virale et la beauté virginale que construit le narrateur polyphonique et anonyme font exister le discours médical sur la maladie des vierges dans un contexte contemporain. Le récit médical rejoint alors le récit érotique puisque le narrateur devient médecin, détective et voyeur. À la différence de ces trois récits, Drames de princesses d’Elfriede Jelinek montre une parthénos, Blanche Neige, qui fait face à son agresseur pour s’inscrire dans une historicité discursive. Cette collision dialogique ranime le cycle tragique (celui d’une Antigone confrontant Créon) et traduit de nouveau le danger d’une superstructure sociétale composée d’images et de discours où la fille est construite comme un accessoire pour le plaisir éphémère de l’homme. À l’inverse de l’image de la vierge sacrée et désincarnée que proposent les récits d’Angot, de Sebold, d’Eugenides et de Jelinek, Virginie Despentes offre une autre réflexion dans Apocalypse bébé. Le personnage de Valentine est configuré comme une sœur des parthénoi qui préfère le suicide et la terreur à la domestication, faisant ainsi appel à une temporalité radicale et inachevable, celle de la fin de la jeune fille. Mon souhait est enfin de souligner la nécessité de penser au mérite autant épistémologique, intime que politique, d’explorer le temps des éclosions sexuelles de la fille par delà l’idée de la première relation sexuelle.

Rovibrational energy levels for the electronic ground state of A1OH

The vibrational-rotational energy levels of aluminum monohydroxide in its electronic ground state, (A) over tilde (1)A' AlOH, have been predicted using the variational method. The potential energy surface of the (X) over tilde (1)A' ground state of AlOH was determined employing the ab initio coupled cluster method with single, double, and perturbative triple excitations [CCSD(T)] and the correlation-consistent polarized valence quadruple zeta (cc-pVQZ) basis set. Low-lying J= 0 and J= 1 vibrational levels are reported. These are analyzed in terms of the quasilinearity of the molecule. Coriolis effects are shown to be significant. We hope that our predictions will be of value in the future when assigning rovibrational transitions in spectroscopic studies. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Entram em cena as tecnologias de subjetivação: Corpos e Desejos na cinematografia brasileira pela ótica de diretoras de cinema no período de 2002 a 2012 e suas implicações para (des)construção dos gêneros

Pós-graduação em Psicologia - FCLAS

Die Sakralisierung des Alpenraums: Kulturelle Interpretationsmuster der rätischen Kapuzinermission (17. und 18. Jh.)

The Capuchins of the Rhaetic Missions had to deal with local forms of catholic piety, which for them were almost as exotic as the religious practices of non-Christian communities in Asia or America. Therefore they regarded it as their task to propagate the true faith among the “schismatic” Catholics from the Grisons. For this purpose, the Capuchins developed a particular pattern of interpretation: They created a sacred territory in which the divine grace can be experienced by the faithful. Hence the missionaries built new churches and chapels, decorated the old ones in baroque style and brought numerous of holy relics from Italy. Thus, they enforced the sacralisation of the alpine space. Recent developments in cultural studies and social sciences make it possible to capture such processes of spacing more precisely. In the course of the “spatial turn”, space is no longer conceived as a physical entity but now is regarded as a human construct. The paper discusses possibilities and limitations of “space” as an analytical category for the study of mission within Catholicism. The sociological concept of space developed by Martina Löw (2001) is used as starting point. This allows the simultaneous consideration of social interactions and cultural contexts in construction of “sacred space”.

Introduction

Werner Sombart (1863-1941) was a famous and controversial social scientist in Germany during the early 20th century. Highly influential, his work and reputation have been indelibly tainted by his embrace of National Socialism in the last decade of his life. Although Sombart left an enormous opus spanning disciplinary boundaries, the scholarly assessment of and intellectual reaction to his work inside and outside of Germany is divided, and ambivalent. Best known for his analyses of capitalism - his essay "Why is There No Socialism in the United States?" remains a classic - Sombart consistently responded to the social and political developments that have shaped the 20th century. This collection provides a representative sampling of those portions of Sombart's work that have stood the test of time. The volume opens with a substantial introduction by the editors reviewing Sombart's life and career, the evolution of his major intellectual concerns, his relation to Marx and Weber, and his political affiliation with the Nazis. Their selection of texts emphasizes areas of his economic and cultural thought that remain relevant to intellectual trends in the social sciences, particularly those trends that seek a more broadly based, cross-disciplinary approach to the relationship of culture and economics. Sombart's writings on capitalism are represented by essays on the nature and origin of the market system and the diversity of its actors and motives among the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Also included is an excerpt from Sombart's controversial volume "The Jews and Modern Capitalism" exploring the widely perceived relation between economic life and Judaism as a religion. In essays on the economics of cultural processes, Sombart's comprehensive and expansive idea of cultural science yields remarkable and prophetic insights into the nature of urbanism, luxury consumption, fashion and the cultural secularization of love. The volume's final section consists of Sombart's reflections on the social influences of technology, the economic life of the future, and on socialism, including the influential essay "Why is There No Socialism in the United States?". Encapsulating the most valuable aspects of his work, this study provides clear demonstration of Sombart's sense for fine cultural distinctions and broad cultural developments and the predictive power of his analyses. It should be of interest to sociologists, economists, political scientists and specialists in cultural studies.

Audio-Visual Information Processing across different age groups

People possess different sensory modalities to detect, interpret, and efficiently act upon various events in a complex and dynamic environment (Fetsch, DeAngelis, & Angelaki, 2013). Much empirical work has been done to understand the interplay of modalities (e.g. audio-visual interactions, see Calvert, Spence, & Stein, 2004). On the one hand, integration of multimodal input as a functional principle of the brain enables the versatile and coherent perception of the environment (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009). On the other hand, sensory integration does not necessarily mean that input from modalities is always weighted equally (Ernst, 2008). Rather, when two or more modalities are stimulated concurrently, one often finds one modality dominating over another. Study 1 and 2 of the dissertation addressed the developmental trajectory of sensory dominance. In both studies, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and adults were tested in order to examine sensory (audio-visual) dominance across different age groups. In Study 3, sensory dominance was put into an applied context by examining verbal and visual overshadowing effects among 4- to 6-year olds performing a face recognition task. The results of Study 1 and Study 2 support default auditory dominance in young children as proposed by Napolitano and Sloutsky (2004) that persists up to 6 years of age. For 9-year-olds, results on privileged modality processing were inconsistent. Whereas visual dominance was revealed in Study 1, privileged auditory processing was revealed in Study 2. Among adults, a visual dominance was observed in Study 1, which has also been demonstrated in preceding studies (see Spence, Parise, & Chen, 2012). No sensory dominance was revealed in Study 2 for adults. Potential explanations are discussed. Study 3 referred to verbal and visual overshadowing effects in 4- to 6-year-olds. The aim was to examine whether verbalization (i.e., verbally describing a previously seen face), or visualization (i.e., drawing the seen face) might affect later face recognition. No effect of visualization on recognition accuracy was revealed. As opposed to a verbal overshadowing effect, a verbal facilitation effect occurred. Moreover, verbal intelligence was a significant predictor for recognition accuracy in the verbalization group but not in the control group. This suggests that strengthening verbal intelligence in children can pay off in non-verbal domains as well, which might have educational implications.

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.

Stereological and allometric studies on neurons and axo-dendritic synapses in the superior cervical ganglia of rats, capybaras and horses

The superior cervical ganglion (SCG) in mammals varies in structure according to developmental age, body size, gender, lateral asymmetry, the size and nuclear content of neurons and the complexity and synaptic coverage of their dendritic trees. In small and medium-sized mammals, neuron number and size increase from birth to adulthood and, in phylogenetic studies, vary with body size. However, recent studies on larger animals suggest that body weight does not, in general, accurately predict neuron number. We have applied design-based stereological tools at the light-microscopic level to assess the volumetric composition of ganglia and to estimate the numbers and sizes of neurons in SCGs from rats, capybaras and horses. Using transmission electron microscopy, we have obtained design-based estimates of the surface coverage of dendrites by postsynaptic apposition zones and model-based estimates of the numbers and sizes of synaptophysin-labelled axo-dendritic synaptic disks. Linear regression analysis of log-transformed data has been undertaken in order to establish the nature of the relationships between numbers and SCG volume (V(scg)). For SCGs (five per species), the allometric relationship for neuron number (N) is N=35,067xV (scg) (0.781) and that for synapses is N=20,095,000xV (scg) (1.328) , the former being a good predictor and the latter a poor predictor of synapse number. Our findings thus reveal the nature of SCG growth in terms of its main ingredients (neurons, neuropil, blood vessels) and show that larger mammals have SCG neurons exhibiting more complex arborizations and greater numbers of axo-dendritic synapses.

Eastwards / westwards: which direction for gender studies in the 21st century?

Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? is a collection of essays which focus on themes and methods that characterize current research into gender in Asian countries in general. In this collection, ideas derived from Gender Studies elsewhere in the world have been subjected to scrutiny for their utility in helping to describe and understand regional phenomena. But the concepts of Local and Global – with their discoursive productions – have not functioned as a binary opposition: localism and globalism are mutually constitutive and researchers have interrogated those spaces of interaction between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, bearing in mind their own embeddedness in social and cultural structures and their own historical memory. Contributors to this collection provided a critical transnational perspective on some of the complex effects of the dynamics of cultural globalization, by exploring the relation between gender and development, language, historiography, education and culture. We have also given attention to the ideological and rhetorical processes through which gender identity is constructed, by comparing textual grids and patterns of expectation. Likewise, we have discussed the role of ethnography, anthropology, historiography, sociology, fiction, popular culture and colonial and post-colonial sources in (re)inventing old/new male/female identities, their conversion into concepts and circulation through time and space. This multicultural and trans-disciplinary selection of essays is totally written in English, fully edited and revised, therefore, it has a good potential for an immediate international circulation. This project may trace new paths and issues for discussion on what concerns the life, practices and narratives by and about women in Asia, as well as elsewhere in the present day global experience. Academic readership: Researchers, scholars, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, doctoral students and general non-fiction readers, with a special interest in Gender Studies, Asia, Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Historiography, Politics, Race, Feminism, Language, Linguistics, Power, Political and Feminist Agendas, Popular Culture, Education, Women’s Writing, Religion, Multiculturalism, Globalisation, Migration. Chapter summary: 1. “Social Gender Stereotypes and their Implication in Hindi”, Anjali Pande, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. This essay looks at the subtle ways in which gender identities are constructed and reinforced in India through social norms of language use. Language itself becomes a medium for perpetuating gender stereotypes, forcing its speakers to confirm to socially defined gender roles. Using examples from a classroom discussion about a film, this essay will highlight the underlying rigid male-female stereotypes in Indian society with their more obvious expressions in language. For the urban woman in India globalisation meant increased economic equality and exposure to changed lifestyles. On an individual level it also meant redefining gender relations and changing the hierarchy in man-­woman relationships. With the economic independence there is a heightened sense of liberation in all spheres of social life, a confidence to fuzz the rigid boundaries of gender roles. With the new films and media celebrating this liberated woman, who is ready to assert her sexual needs, who is ready to explode those long held notions of morality, one would expect that the changes are not just superficial. But as it soon became obvious in the course of a classroom discussion about relationships and stereotypes related to age, the surface changes can not become part of the common vocabulary, for the obvious reason that there is still a vast gap between the screen image of this new woman and the ground reality. Social considerations define the limits of this assertiveness of women, whereas men are happy to be liberal within the larger frame of social sanctions. The educated urban woman in India speaks in favour of change and the educated urban male supports her, but one just needs to scratch the surface to see the time tested formulae of gender roles firmly in place. The way the urban woman happily balances this emerging promise of independence with her gendered social identity, makes it necessary to rethink some aspects of looking at gender in a gradually changing, traditional society like India. 2. “The Linguistic Dimension of Gender Equality”, Alissa Tolstokorova, Kiev Centre for Gender Information and Education, Ukraine. The subject-matter of this essay is gender justice in language which, as I argue, may be achieved through the development of a gender-related approach to linguistic human rights. The last decades of the 20th century, globally marked by a “gender shift” in attitudes to language policy, gave impetus to the social movement for promoting linguistic gender equality. It was initiated in Western Europe and nowadays is moving eastwards, as ideas of gender democracy progress into developing countries. But, while in western societies gender discrimination through language, or linguistic sexism, was an issue of concern for over three decades, in developing countries efforts to promote gender justice in language are only in their infancy. My argument is that to promote gender justice in language internationally it is necessary to acknowledge the rights of women and men to equal representation of their gender in language and speech and, therefore, raise a question of linguistic rights of the sexes. My understanding is that the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights in 1996 provided this opportunity to address the problem of gender justice in language as a human rights issue, specifically as a gender dimension of linguistic human rights. 3. “The Rebirth of an Old Language: Issues of Gender Equality in Kazakhstan”, Maria Helena Guimarães, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. The existing language situation in Kazakhstan, while peaceful, is not without some tension. We propose to analyze here some questions we consider relevant in the frame of cultural globalization and gender equality, such as: free from Russian imperialism, could Kazakhstan become an easy prey of Turkey’s “imperialist dream”? Could these traditionally Muslim people be soon facing the end of religious tolerance and gender equality, becoming this new old language an easy instrument for the infiltration in the country of fundamentalism (it has already crossed the boarders of Uzbekistan), leading to a gradual deterioration of its rich multicultural relations? The present structure of the language is still very fragile: there are three main dialects and many academics defend the re-introduction of the Latin alphabet, thus enlarging the possibility of cultural “contamination” by making the transmission of fundamentalist ideas still easier through neighbour countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (their languages belong to the same sub-group of Common Turkic), where the Latin alphabet is already in use, and where the ground for such ideas shown itself very fruitful. 4. “Construction of Womanhood in the Bengali Language of Bangladesh”, Raasheed Mahmood; University of New South Wales, Sydney. The present essay attempts to explore the role of gender-based language differences and of certain markers that reveal the status accorded to women in Bangladesh. Discrimination against women, in its various forms, is endemic in communities and countries around the world, cutting across class, race, age, and religious and national boundaries. One cannot understand the problems of gender discrimination solely by referring to the relationship of power or authority between men and women. Rather one needs to consider the problem by relating it to the specific social formation in which the image of masculinity and femininity is constructed and reconstructed. Following such line of reasoning this essay will examine the nature of gender bias in the Bengali language of Bangladesh, holding the conviction that as a product of social reality language reflects the socio-cultural behaviour of the community who speaks it. This essay will also attempt to shed some light on the processes through which gender based language differences produce actual consequences for women, who become exposed to low self-esteem, depression and systematic exclusion from public discourse. 5. “Marriage in China as an expression of a changing society”, Elisabetta Rosado David, University of Porto, Portugal, and Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia, Italy. In 29 April 2001, the new Marriage Law was promulgated in China. The first law on marriage was proclaimed in 1950 with the objective of freeing women from the feudal matrimonial system. With the second law, in 1981, values and conditions that had been distorted by the Cultural Revolution were recovered. Twenty years later, a new reform was started, intending to update marriage in the view of the social and cultural changes that occurred with Deng Xiaoping’s “open policy”. But the legal reform is only the starting point for this case-study. The rituals that are followed in the wedding ceremony are often hard to understand and very difficult to standardize, especially because China is a vast country, densely populated and characterized by several ethnic minorities. Two key words emerge from this issue: syncretism and continuity. On this basis, we can understand tradition in a better way, and analyse whether or not marriage, as every social manifestation, has evolved in harmony with Chinese culture. 6. “The Other Woman in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Case of Portuguese India”, Maria de Deus Manso, University of Évora, Portugal. This essay researches the social, cultural and symbolic history of local women in the Portuguese Indian colonial enclaves. The normative Portuguese overseas history has not paid any attention to the “indigenous” female populations in colonial Portuguese territories, albeit the large social importance of these social segments largely used in matrimonial and even catholic missionary strategies. The first attempt to open fresh windows in the history of this new field was the publication of Charles Boxer’s referential study about Women in lberian Overseas Expansion, edited in Portugal only after the Revolution of 1975. After this research we can only quote some other fragmentary efforts. In fact, research about the social, cultural, religious, political and symbolic situation of women in the Portuguese colonial territories, from the XVI to the XX century, is still a minor historiographic field. In this essay we discuss this problem and we study colonial representations of women in the Portuguese Indian enclaves, mainly in the territory of Goa, using case studies methodologies. 7. “Heading East this Time: Critical Readings on Gender in Southeast Asia”, Clara Sarmento, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. This essay intends to discuss some critical readings of fictional and theoretical texts on gender condition in Southeast Asian countries. Nowadays, many texts about women in Southeast Asia apply concepts of power in unusual areas. Traditional forms of gender hegemony have been replaced by other powerful, if somewhat more covert, forms. We will discuss some universal values concerning conventional female roles as well as the strategies used to recognize women in political fields traditionally characterized by male dominance. Female empowerment will mean different things at different times in history, as a result of culture, local geography and individual circumstances. Empowerment needs to be perceived as an individual attitude, but it also has to be facilitated at the macro­level by society and the State. Gender is very much at the heart of all these dynamics, strongly related to specificities of historical, cultural, ethnic and class situatedness, requiring an interdisciplinary transnational approach.

Trans-cultural aspects of social anxiety disorder and related conditions: a Brazilian case series and a review of international clinical studies

Cross-cultural studies have much to teach clinicians and researchers alike about psychopathology in general and about social anxiety disorder (SAD) in particular. Unfortunately, little is known about the degree and the mechanisms through which cultural environment may influence clinical manifestations of SAD. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to identify culture-related clinical patterns in SAD and related disorders. METHODS: We described socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of a sample of 62 adult outpatients with SAD seen at a university clinic for anxiety and depressive disorders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and compared them with those reported in clinical samples from North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania identified through a systematic review in Medline, PsychINFO, and LILACS. RESULTS: Our comparison of trans-cultural features of SAD lends partial support to Heimberg's (1997) contention that the majority of socio-demographic features and symptoms of this disorder are relatively independent of geographic and cultural differences. CONCLUSION: Patients with SAD were almost universally characterized by: 1) a predominance of males in clinical samples; 2) early onset of the disorder; 3) high educational attainment; and 4) great frequency of comorbidities.

Personality and Culture Cross-Cultural Psychology at the Next Crossroads

A review of nearly three decades of cross-cultural research shows that this domain still has to address several issues regarding the biases of data collection and sampling methods, the lack of clear and consensual definitions of constructs and variables, and measurement invariance issues that seriously limit the comparability of results across cultures. Indeed, a large majority of the existing studies are still based on the anthropological model, which compares two cultures and mainly uses convenience samples of university students. This paper stresses the need to incorporate a larger variety of regions and cultures in the research designs, the necessity to theorize and identify a larger set of variables in order to describe a human environment, and the importance of overcoming methodological weaknesses to improve the comparability of measurement results. Cross-cultural psychology is at the next crossroads in it's development, and researchers can certainly make major contributions to this domain if they can address these weaknesses and challenges.

Intercultural bridges in teenagers' theatrical events : performing self and constructing cultural identity through a creative drama process

The overriding aim of this drama educational case study is to deepen the understanding of meaning making in a creative intercultural youth theatre process and to examine it in the context of the 10th European Children's TheatreEncounter. The research task is to give a theoretical description of some key features of a creative drama process as the basis for theory about meaning makingin physical theatre. The first task is to illuminate the culture-historical connections of the multilayered practice of the EDERED-association. The second taskis to analyse and interpret theatrical meaning making. The ethnographical research site is regarded as a theatrical event. The analysis of the theatrical eventis divided into four segments: cultural contexts, contextual theatricality, theatrical playing and playing culture. These segments are connected with four research questions: What are the cultural contexts of a creative drama process? How can the organisation of the Encounter, genres, aesthetic codes and perception ofcodes be seen to influence the lived experiences of the participants? What are some of the key phases and characteristics in a creative practice? What kind of cultural learning can be interpreted from the performance texts? The interpretative question concerns identity and community (re)construction. How are the categories, `community´ and `child´ constructed in the Encounter culture? In this drama educational case study the research material (transcribed interviews, coded questionnaire answers, participant drawings, videotaped process text and performance texts) are examined in a multi-method analysis in the meta-theoretical framework of Dewey's naturalistic pragmatism. A three-dimensional research interest through a combination of lived experiences, social contexts and cultural-aesthetical practices compared with drama-educational practices required the methodological project of cultural studies. Furthermore, the critical interpretation of cultural texts is divided into three levels of analyses which are called description, structural analysis and theoretical interpretation. Dialogic validity (truthfulness, self-reflexivity and polyvocality) is combined with contextual validity (sensitivity to social context and awareness of historicity) and with deconstructive validity (awareness of the social discourses). My research suggests that itis possible, by means of physical theatre, to construct symbolic worlds where questions about intercultural identity and multilingual community are examined and where provisional answers are constructed in social interaction.