Juventude sobre pressão: um fórum alemão e uma obra de Octávio Ianni

In the 20th century, youth has become a western myth rather than an important social category in the projection of future societies. The Right-wing was ahead of left-wing movements supporting national political projects. The crisis in the Welfare state and socialism system disoriented the right and left-wing movements. The myth of youth as reference for the progressive development of history was destroyed. Youth movements, consolidated in some student movements and supported by some religious organizations took over this reference position. However, these new youth movements are rarely engaged in political or environmentalist projects. The violence that originates from disturbing practices of social reproduction puts youth under pressure.

Participação, representação e cidadania política na América Latina

This introductory text to the 40th Issue of "Pensamiento Propio" refers to the diversity in the search to expand and deepen democracy in the continent. Even after a decade of left-wing parties who prioritized implementing high-impact policies on social inequality which characterizes Latin America, the democratic deficit persists, both in the context of local and national governments and of the multilateral organizations of the hemisphere. Reflecting on the participation of civil society in the control of governments and the State in the past few decades is an absolute necessity for those who acknowledge the need to strengthen our political citizenship.

El Salvador: da guerra civil às reformas institucionais dos anos 1990

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

A vigilância sem farda: a espionagem interna na ditadura civil militar através do DEOPS

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

Augusto Boal: alguns encontros e desencontros com Bertolt Brecht

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA

Labour, LGBT* rights, and Europe. Discourses in Italy and Serbia

At the time of writing, all three elements that are evoked in the title – emancipation and social inclusion of sexual minorities, labour and labour activism, and the idea and substance of “Europe” – are being invested by deep, long-term, and – to varied degrees – radical processes of social transformation. The meaning of words like “equality”, “rights”, “inclusion”, and even “democracy” is as precarious and uncertain as are the lives of those European citizens who are marginalised by intersecting conditions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class – in a constellation of precarities that is both unifying and fragmented (fragmenting). Conflicts are played, in hidden or explicit ways, over material processes of redistribution as well as discursive practices that revolve around these words. Against this backdrop, and roughly ten years after the European Union provided an input for institutional commitment to the protection of LGBT* workers' rights with the Council Directive 2000/78/EC, the dissertation contrasts discourses on workplace equality for LGBT* persons produced by a plurality of actors, seeking to identify values, semantics, and agendas framing and informing organisations’ views and showing how each actor has incorporated LGBT* rights into its own discourse, each time in a way that is functional to the construction and/or confirmation of its organisational identity: transnational union networks, by presenting LGBT* rights as a natural, neutral commitment within the framework of universal human rights protection; left-wing organisations, by collocating activism for LGBT* rights within a wider project of social emancipation that is for all the marginalised, yet is not neutral, but attached to specific values and opposed to specific political adversaries (the right-wing, the nationalists); business networks, by acknowledging diversity as a path to better performance and profits, thus encouraging inclusion and non-discrimination of “deserving” LGBT* workers.

Sinistra extraparlamentare e Partito comunista in italia 1968-1976

La ricerca affronta il rapporto tra il Partito comunista italiano e le organizzazioni della sinistra extraparlamentare nate nel biennio 1968-1969. Sulla base di documentazione d’archivio e fonti a stampa, vengono ricostruite ed analizzate le relazioni tra questi due soggetti nel periodo compreso tra la fine degli anni Sessanta e la metà del decennio successivo, quando i principali gruppi politici della sinistra extraparlamentare si dotarono di una struttura organizzativa più stabile che segnava una discontinuità con l’esperienza precedente. Nel corso della prima metà degli anni Settanta, i rapporti tra il PCI e queste organizzazioni furono complessi e talvolta contraddittori. Il conflitto si consumò prevalentemente sulla reciproca pretesa di possedere l’esclusiva rappresentanza politica del fermento sociale che attraversava il paese in quegli anni: il PCI rappresentando se stesso come l’unica forza politica capace di mediare tra movimenti sociali e istituzioni; i gruppi della sinistra parlamentare come «avanguardie» di un irrealizzabile progetto «rivoluzionario».

MoVimento 5 Stelle - Fortführung des italienischen Rechtspopulismus?

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird analysiert, ob die neue italienische Partei MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S) eine rechtspopulistische Partei ist. Darüber hinaus wird mithilfe eines Vergleichs mit Berlusconis Partei Popolo della libertà (PDL) erörtert, ob das M5S den italienischen Rechtspopulismus fortführt. Das M5S wurde im Jahre 2009 von dem italienischen Komiker Beppe Grillo gegründet und zog nach seiner ersten Teilnahme an nationalen Wahlen im Jahre 2013 als zweitstärkste Partei in das italienische Parlament ein. Mit seiner Anti-Establishment-Programmatik und der Ablehnung der etablierten Parteien ähnelt das M5S nicht nur Berlusconis Partei PDL, sondern auch den rechtspopulistischen Parteien, die seit den 1980er Jahren in Westeuropa beständig an Relevanz gewonnen haben. Diese Parteien polemisieren gegen Politiker und Parteien, stellen die Legitimität von Minderheitenrechten und die Prinzipien der repräsentativen Demokratie in Frage. Organisatorisch gruppieren sie sich um einen charismatischen Anführer, dessen Anspruch es ist, die ‚Stimme des Volkes‘ zu repräsentieren. Diese und andere zentrale Charakteristika sind Gegenstand des theoretischen Teils dieser Arbeit. Die Analysedimension sind ‚Programmatik‘ und ‚Organisation‘. Die letztgenannte Kategorie wird in ‚interne Organisationsstruktur‘ und ‚Kommunikation‘ unterteilt. Die Basis der Analyse bilden Parteidokumente (Wahl- und Parteiprogramme, Parteistatuten, Blogeinträge), Experteneinschätzungen und die Forschungsliteratur. Die Untersuchung kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass es sich beim M5S nicht um eine rechtspopulistische, sondern um eine populistische Partei mit linken Elementen handelt. Den italienischen Rechtspopulismus, wie ihn Berlusconis Partei pflegt, führt sie folglich nicht fort. Sie zeigt in der Organisation starke Parallelen, da beide Parteien von ihren Anführern dominiert werden. Aber das M5S hat eine stark web-basierte Organisationsform und vertritt Umweltthemen, was keine typischen Merkmale rechtspopulistischer Parteien sind. Darüber hinaus vertritt es keine nationalistischen Position, was hingegen konstitutiv für Rechtspopulismus ist.

The Institutional Framework around Successful Art Forms in Communist Czechoslovakia

Mr. Michl posed the question of how the institutional framework that the former communist regime set up around art production contributed to the success of Czech applied arts. In his theoretical review of the question he discussed the reasons for the lack of success of socialist industrial design as opposed to what he terms pre-industrial arts (such as art glass), and also for the current lack of interest into art institutions of the past regime. His findings in the second, historical section of his work were based largely on interviews with artists and other insiders, as an initial attempt to use questionnaires was unsuccessful. His original assumption that the institutional framework was imposed on artists against their will in fact proved mistaken, as it turned out to have been proposed by the artists themselves. The basic blueprint for communist art institutions was the Memorandum document published on behalf of Czechoslovak visual artists in March 1947, i.e. before the communist coup of February 1948. Thus, while the communist state provided a beneficial institutional framework for artists' work, it was the artists themselves who designed this framework. Mr. Michl concludes that the text of the memorandum appealed to the general left-wing and anti-market sentiments of the immediate post-war period and by this and by later working through the administrative channels of the new state, the artists succeeded in gaining all of their demands over the next 15 years. The one exception was artistic freedom, although this they came to enjoy, if only by default and for a short time, during the ideological thaw of the 1960s. Mr. Michl also examined the art-related legislative framework in detail and looked at the main features of key art institutions in the field, such as the Czech Fund for Visual Arts and the 1960s art export enterprise Art Centrum, which opened the doors into foreign markets for artists.

Finnish Americans and the Farm Revolt of the 1930s

Farm protest in the United States attracted widespread attention in the 1930s as militant farmers interfered with foreclosure sales, demonstrated at county court houses and state capitals, and blocked highways and stopped trains to prevent crops and livestock from going to market in an effort to raise farm prices. The best known of the protest groups was the Farmers Holiday Association, which was formed in 1932. Prior to the Holiday, however, a left-wing group organized by Communists in 1930 known as the United Farmers League (UFL) gained an initial following in the cutover country of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, and parts of the Dakotas and northeast Montana. Finnish Americans dominated the UFL in the Upper Midwest and in a few locales in the Dakotas. Evidence for this high level of influence comes from the fact that the head of the Communist Party’s Agrarian Department was Henry Puro, a key figure in Finnish American Communist circles and a member of the Party’s Politburo. This paper will focus on Finnish American involvement in the UFL and, to a lesser extent, the broader-based Farmers Holiday movement.

Unions to Die For

The Copper County Strike of 1913 was heroic, tragic, and large in meaning, both for those who lived in it and for those haunted by it in the years that followed. Carl Ross was born in Hancock only hours before the strike erupted. His father was a printer for Työmies. I had the good fortune to meet Carl and work with him for some twenty years. Carl spoke often of the strike—of what it meant for him, his family, and the radical Finnish community in Superior, Wisconsin, where he grew up. I had never heard of the Copper Country strike before I met Carl, but what I heard about that strike resonated with some of my own experiences. I grew up in New Castle, Indiana, a town that left-wing journalist I.F. Stone called a “labor citadel” in the midst of hostile territory. I want to use these two recollections, Carl’s 1913 Strike reminiscences and my memories of New Castle, to talk about how some strikes carry a moral vision of enormous importance. The presentation will have three parts. In the first part I will relate a little of what Carl had to say about the Copper Country Strike. In the second part I will talk about strikes of my own experience. In the final part, I will talk about the differences in the structures of labor movements and the ethical implications of those differences.

Agrarian learning processes in Switzerland 1918–1939

This paper examines the social impacts of weather extremes and the processes of social and communicative learning a society undertakes to find alternative ways to deal with the consequences of a crisis. In the beginning of the 20th Century hunger seemed to be expelled from Europe. Switzerland – like many other European countries – was involved in a global interdependent trade system, which provided necessary goods. But at the end of World War I very cold and wet summers in 1916/17 (causing crop failure) and the difficulties in war-trade led to malnutrition and enormous price risings of general living-standards in Switzerland, which shocked the people and caused revolutionary uprisings in 1918. The experience of malnutrition during the last two years of war made clear that the traditional ways of food supply in Switzerland lacked crisis stability. Therefore various agents in the field of food production, distribution and consumption searched for alternative ways of food supply. In that sense politicians, industrialists, consumer-groups, left-wing communitarians and farmers developed several strategies for new ways in food production. Traditionally there were political conflicts in Switzerland between farmers and consumers regarding price policies, which led mainly to the conflict in 1918. Consumers accused famers of holding back food to control extortionate prices while the farmers pointed to the bad harvest causing the price rising. The collaboration of these groups in search for new forms of food-stability made social integration possible again. In addition to other crisis-factors, weather extremes can have disastrous impacts and destroy a society’s self-confidence to its core. But even such crisis can lead to processes of substantial learning that allows a regeneration of confidence and show positive influence on political stabilization. The paper focuses on the process of learning and the alternative methods of food production that were suggested by various agents working in the field during the Interwar period. To achieve that goal documents of the various associations are analyzed and newspapers have been taken into consideration. Through the method of discourse-analysis of food-production during the Interwar period, possible solutions that crossed the minds of the agents should be brought to light.

How parties frame social citizenship and the inclusion of immigrants in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom

Recent research on the transformation of West European party systems emphasises that cultural issues such as immigration have gained in importance besides the traditional socio-economic cleavage. While this literature shows that parties address not only cultural but also economic is-sues, it has paid less attention on whether parties combine cultural and economic issues. In this paper we focus on immigrants’ social rights by analysing if and how mainstream parties combine immigration and redistributive issues. Drawing on Faist (1995), we distinguish three different perspectives how political actors, here mainstream parties, might react to the welfare chauvinist claims that aim to restrict immigrants’ social rights. Our analysis relies on party manifestos in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom between 1999 and 2011. The results of the anal-ysis indicate that variation is found among party families, in particular among the left. Even though the purpose of the paper is not to ‘prove’ that the populist challenge explains how the mainstream left-wing parties behave, the results allow nonetheless for interpreting mainstream parties’ strategic combination of welfare and immigration issues as a response to anti-immigration and anti-integration issues raised by populist challengers.

Choosing the path of austerity: how parties and policy coalitions influence welfare state retrenchment in periods of fiscal consolidation

What are the conditions under which some austerity programmes rely on substantial cuts to social spending? More specifically, do the partisan complexion and the type of government condition the extent to which austerity policies imply welfare state retrenchment? This article demonstrates that large budget consolidations tend to be associated with welfare state retrenchment. The findings support a partisan and a politico-institutionalist argument: (i) in periods of fiscal consolidation, welfare state retrenchment tends to be more pronounced under left-wing governments; (ii) since welfare state retrenchment is electorally and politically risky, it also tends to be more pronounced when pursued by a broad pro-reform coalition government. Therefore, the article shows that during budget consolidations implemented by left-wing broad coalition governments, welfare state retrenchment is greatest. Using long-run multipliers from autoregressive distributed lag models on 17 OECD countries during the 1982–2009 period, substantial support is found for these expectations.

Una literatura peligrosa : relatos testimoniales y sectores subalternos en el programa estético-político de Rodolfo Walsh

El presente trabajo se ocupa de desarrollar una reflexión sobre los textos testimoniales escritos por Rodolfo Walsh durante los años setentas abordando las cuestiones estéticas, ideológicas y políticas que suscita una operación de lectura que pone en juego las inflexiones en la trayectoria del autor y ciertos debates de la intelectualidad de izquierda argentina y latinoamericana. En tal sentido, se intentará dar cuenta tanto de las continuidades como de las modulaciones que presenta la escritura testimonial de Rodolfo Walsh luego de una inflexión identificada en torno a los años 1968-1969, atendiendo a las marcas de la configuración de su habitus, a su posicionamiento en el campo intelectual y a sus intervenciones en el terreno de la militancia política. De este modo se buscará indagar sobre las implicancias y propuestas estéticopolíticas que esos textos generan en torno a los vínculos entre escritura, literatura, testimonio y sectores subalternos. Mi lectura, entonces, se centra en las prácticas de escritura testimonial walshianas que, en tanto articulan una narrativa de la experiencia histórica de los sectores populares, cuestionan los modos de concebir y producir el ejercicio de lo literario en tiempos de revuelta.