Introduction to the BASIN Special Issue: State of art, past present a view to the future

Marine ecosystems are complex networks of organisms interacting either directly or indirectly while under the influence of the physical and chemical properties of the medium they inhabit. The interplay between these biological agents and their abiotic environment results in complex non-linear responses to individual and multiple stressors, influenced by feedbacks between these organisms and their environment. These ecosystems provide key services that benefit humanity such as food provisioning via the transfer of energy to exploited fish populations or climate regulation via the sinking, subsequent mineralization and ultimately storage of carbon in the ocean interior. These key characteristics or emergent features of marine ecosystems are subject to rapid change (e.g. regime shifts; Alheit et al., 2005 and Scheffer et al., 2009), with outcomes that are largely unpredictable in a deterministic sense. The North Atlantic Ocean is host to a number of such systems which are collectively being influenced by the unique physical and chemical features of this ocean basin, such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the basin’s ventilation with the Arctic Ocean, the dynamics of heat transport via the Gulf Stream and the formation of deep water at high latitudes. These features drive the solubility and biological pumps and support the production and environments that results in large exploited fish stocks. Our knowledge of its functioning as a coupled system, and in particular how it will respond to change, is still limited despite the scientific effort exerted over more than 100 years. This is due in part to the difficulty of providing synoptic overviews of a vast area, and to the fact that most fieldwork provides only snapshots of the complex physical, chemical and biological processes and their interactions. These constraints have in the past limited the development of a mechanistic understanding of the basin as a whole, and thus of the services it provides.

Super-villains of the "real world": the political use of the characterization of villains in Chistopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Trilogy"

It is almost a tradition that celluloid (or digital) villains are represented with some characteristics that remind us the real political enemies of the producer country of the film, or even enemies within the country according to the particular ideology that sustains the film. The case of Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight trilogy, analyzed here, is representative of this trend for two reasons. First, because it gets marked by political radicalization conducted by the US government after the attack of September 11, 2001. Secondly, because it offers a profuse gallery of villains who are outside the circle of friends as the new doctrine “either with us or against us” opened by George Bush for the XXI century. This gallery includes from the very terrorists who justify the War on Terror (Ra's al Ghul, the Joker), to the “radical left” (Bane, Talia al Ghul) including liberal politicians (Harvey Dent), and corrupt that take advantage of the softness of the law to commit crimes with impunity (Dr. Crane, the Scarecrow).

Art and Social Work: an intervention programme for transforming society’s vision to include people with early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s

This paper presents a program centred on arts and education as tools in social work for the inclusion of people with earlyonset dementia and Alzheimer’s. The objective of the programme is to eradicate the stigma and myths associated with the disease.The program is part of the Junta de Castilla y León and the European Social Fund’s ARS Project (Arte y Salud Alzheimer; Alzheimer’s Art & Health). The programme presents a series of evaluated artistic and educational activities that can be undertaken by people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and that can also be used by caregivers and family when working with this group of people, with the aim of improving their wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life.

Typical reggaeton in Morocco: forms of female political affirmation throught dance

Through an ethnographic account, this text analyses how social dance may become a discourse involving the cultural affirmation of a subordinate group. It describes how a group of girls faced with a complex of outlooks that construed them as Moroccan, Muslim or unattractive —or as objects of education and intervention— responded by affirming their own culture with an unanticipated corporal discourse. The way in which looking construes bodies is explored through metaphors: a hand that touches, a chisel that sculpts, a whip that lashes and a cobweb that controls and traps bodies. Owing to this political dimension of dance, workshops can also be an oppressive and silencing tool; to prevent this, the article concludes with a series of recommendations to implement dance in social intervention processes.

Museums as a factor for the social integration of art in the community. The experience of cultural volunteering by members of the senior community

After considering museums as cultural institutions responsible for preserving cultural memory and its evolution over time, this article describes the cultural practices within our society that are aimed at disseminating art and at reproducing and transmitting culture, history and identity. Further, it considers the key role that older people are steadily assuming in Spain’s ageing society. New social-empowerment activities based on volunteering by the elderly are linked to generativity because the individual and social groups acquire new skills through those activities, thereby strengthening a society for all ages. Never in the history of social work have so many older people been prepared to participate actively at the community level, and never has a social movement with these features gone so unnoticed by so many social agents.

Playback Theatre: the art of being oneself. A tool for empowerment and real change for individuals and communities

This article presents the application of a theatrical technique—Playback Theatre, which was developed in the United States during the 1970s—to social intervention, as a narrative and listening space that confers value and dignity upon the person and the unique and distinct individual experiences that facilitate their social and relational integration. This art of being oneself, as the author states, uses the oral tradition and spontaneous and creative communication of psychodrama and combines them with theatrical expression. This technique has been shown to be pertinent to both community social work and support groups for persons in problematic situations. The aim of this is to celebrate some specific moment of their lives, as individuals or as a community, and to define strategies for improving living conditions or resolving or alleviating conflicts. It is also used to assess the achievements of the proposed objectives, to strengthen the motivation to change and to transform existing relationships into collaborative ones. This is possible not only owing to the participation of persons, but also to the assumption of different roles that can permit the overcoming of certain traumatic events.In addition to support groups, it is used for the training and supervision of social work professionals. The theatrical technique in question allows them to assume roles as diverse as narrator, audience or actor, whether simultaneously or successively. Taking the role of «performer» or guide to the theatrical action requires prior preparation in order for the group of participants to be able to pool their individualities and their emotions and reflect on them. The participatory methodology that Playback Theatre proposes is important in community social work and is posed in a new and transformative key.

Art, adolescence and Social Work: Anja, the invisible manager

This article has been written with the intention of being able to analyse the contributions of art —theatre, in this case— to the practice of social work. For this purpose, we have chosen to read the social reality in which we intervene through the lens of social constructionism. This helps us to rescue the social and subjective side of art, and, moreover, to recover the depathologization of the subject in professional intervention. Thus, using a practical case taken from work with adolescents in the German FSJ programme, hand-in-hand with a young girl called Anja we trace the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescence in order to later address certain common points of art and psychosocial work. Art will hence be redefined as a transitional object allowing questions to be addressed relating to (self-) perception, attachment, communication and changes in conduct as the ultimate goal of professional action. Lastly, we note the limitations and risks of art-based intervention, in order to conclude with a final synopsis.

State power matters: power, the state and political struggle in the post-war American novel

This article is concerned with resituating the state at the centre of the analytical stage and, concomitantly, with drawing attention to the dangers of losing sight of the state as a locus of power. It seeks to uncover the relationship between two related lines of critical inquiry: Marxist and Foucauldian theories of the state; and the attempts by three postwar American novelist (Ken Kesey, William Burroughs and E.L. Doctorow) to determine the nature and extent of this power and to consider under what conditions political struggle might be possible. It argues that such a move is needed because recent critical analysis has been too preoccupied by corporeal micropolitics and global macropolitics, and that the postwar American novel can help us in this move because it is centrally concerned with the repressive potentiality of the US state. It maintains that the resuscitation of Marxist state theories in early 1970s and a debate between Poulantzas and Foucault is intriguingly foreshadowed and even critiqued by these novels. Consequently, it concludes that these novels constitute an unrecognized pre-history of what would become one of the key intellectual debates of the late twentieth century: an engagement between Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of the power and resistance.