Transformaciones habitacionales en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires : El pasaje del neoliberalismo al neodesarrollismo urbano

La recuperación de la economía argentina luego de la crisis del 2001/02 implicó una importante mejora de múltiples indicadores sociales y económicos, dada entre otros factores, la orientación de políticas públicas tendiente a recuperar el tejido productivo y el empleo. En este contexto, el tándem construcción-obra pública se transformó en un tema central de la agenda y la expansión inmobiliaria fue bien recibida desde la mirada macroeconómica. Sin embargo, este proceso no estuvo exento de contradicciones, y se observan en la región metropolitana un conjunto de tendencias concurrentes producto de la hibridación entre el neoliberalismo urbano aún vigente y la difusión del neodesarrollismo urbano. De allí que la ampliación de acciones de desmercatilización estatal del consumo de bienes y servicios orientados a la reproducción social coexiste con la persistencia del proceso de desmercatilización social regresivo de la producción del espacio habitacional, junto a la intensa mercantilización del espacio construido asociada a la creciente financierización de los ladrillos

Conflictividad y resistencias en los márgenes de La Pampa (1990-2012)

Las formas de producción de territorios materiales e inmateriales entran en tensión y se yuxtaponen cuando espacios dominados por la territorialidad campesina son revalorizados por el capital y buscan imponer su espacialidad. En el extremo oeste pampeano, en el período 1990-2012, además de las nuevas racionalidades y prácticas de los campesinos, avanzaron el proceso de mercantilización y el accionar de productores-empresarios extralocales. En este contexto, emergieron los conflictos por el uso y la apropiación de los recursos, el modo de vida y la construcción social del espacio. La organización de las familias que ejercen actos posesorios para conservar la forma de manejo de los "campos abiertos" y el control del territorio dio origen a la conformación de estrategias de lucha colectivas. Ante los conflictos generados por el uso del monte y el achicamiento de los campos de los últimos diez años por la llegada de nuevos agentes que cercan las propiedades y desarticulan los circuitos de pastoreo, muchas familias del paraje comenzaron a organizarse con el apoyo de organizaciones urbanas para denunciar la reducción del espacio de pastoreo compartido. Con la finalidad de analizar los cambios y reconstruir las estrategias de organización campesinas, utilizamos distintos materiales empíricos en los que se combinan el análisis de estadísticas con entrevistas en profundidad e interpretación de diversos documentos

Identity Entrepreneurs

In my previous article Racial Capitalism, I examined the ways in which white individuals and predominantly white institutions derive value from non-white racial identity. This process flows from our intense social and legal preoccupation with diversity. And it results in the commodification of non-white racial identity, with negative implications for both individuals and society. This Article picks up where Racial Capitalism left off in three ways. As a foundation, it first expands the concept of racial capitalism to identity categories more generally, explaining that individual in-group members and predominantly in-group institutions — usually individuals or institutions that are white, male, straight, wealthy, and so on — can and do derive value from out-group identities. Second, the Article turns from the overarching system of identity capitalism to the myriad ways that individual out-group members actively participate in that system. In particular, I examine how out-group members leverage their out-group status to derive social and economic value for themselves. I call such out-group participants identity entrepreneurs. Identity entrepreneurship is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Rather, it is a complicated phenomenon with both positive and negative consequences. Finally, the Article considers the appropriate response to identity entrepreneurship. We should design laws and policies to maximize both individual agency and access to information for out-group members. Such reforms would protect individual choice while making clear the consequences of identity entrepreneurship both for individual identity entrepreneurs and for the out-group as a whole. A range of legal doctrines interact with and influence identity entrepreneurship, including employment discrimination under Title VII, rights of privacy and publicity, and intellectual property. Modifying these doctrines to take account of identity entrepreneurship will further progress toward an egalitarian society in which in-group and out-group identities are valued equally.

Fundamental Rights of workers in the Digital Age: A methodological approach from a case study. WP C.S.D.L.E. "Massimo D'Antona" .INT - 89/2011

The relationship between employer and worker is not only obligatory but above all, as Sinzheimer said, a ‘relationship of power’. In the Digital Age this statement is confirmed by the massive introduction of ICT in most of the companies that increase, in practice, employer’s supervisory powers. This is a worrying issue for two reasons: on one hand, ICT emerge as a new way to weaken the effectiveness of fundamental rights and the right to dignity of workers; and, on the other hand, Spanish legal system does not offer appropriate solutions to ensure that efficacy. Moreover, in a scenario characterized by a hybridization of legal systems models –in which traditional hard law methods are combined with soft law and self regulation instruments–, the role of our case law has become very important in this issue. Nevertheless, despite the increase of judicialization undergone, solutions offered by Courts are so different that do not give enough legal certainty. Facing this situation, I suggest a methodological approach –using Alchourron and Bulygin’s normative systems theory and Alexy’s fundamental rights theory– which can open new spaces of decision to legal operators in order to solve properly these problems. This proposal can allow setting a policy that guarantees fundamental rights of workers, deepening their human freedom in companies from the Esping-Andersen’s de-commodification perspective. With this purpose, I examine electronic communications in the company as a case study.

The Shape of Global Wealth: Slender Towers from New York to Seattle

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Developing New Tourism Services: Dinosaurs a New Drive Tourism Resource for Remote Areas

This paper examines issues encountered when developing new tourism services generally, and specific aspects relating to the development of remote area dinosaur fossil fields for tourism. It studies two sites, one in the USA and one in Australia. Access to both sites is by minor roads, and both sites are characterised by long drives separating the sites from small communities that offer limited infrastructure and few other attractions for visitors. In both areas, however, tourism is seen as one of the few possible ways to sustain existing communities in the face of declining primary-industry-based employment. In general, tourists visiting these areas are on touring holidays of two weeks’ duration or more where the attraction is the general attributes of the region as well as to a lesser extent their interest in dinosaur fossils. These provide a potential resource for remote-region economic development through commodification as a new tourism attraction. Development of dinosaur fossil finds as a tourism resource is conceptualised here as new service development. Developing new tourism services, especially in remote regions, is challenging and has not been well examined in the tourism literature. The new service development process used in this case study first examines the characteristics of the existing tourists travelling through the region. The characteristics of a number of potential market segments currently interested in dinosaur fossils were then examined and contrasted with the existing market. This is conceptualised on a specialist-generalist spectrum of interest in fossils. A study of the tourist service features associated with dinosaur fossil tourism in remote regions of the USA was conducted, leading to the identification of a number of possible incremental development opportunities. The paper then takes a strategic approach to examining potential new tourism service development related to dinosaur fossils in remote regions of Queensland, Australia. In particular, it describes use of information about existing services in similar regions as the basis for ideas about development as well as comparison between existing and potential markets.

An Australian Idol of Modernist Consumerism: Minnie Tittell Brune and the Gallery Girls

The Australian career of the young American actor Minnie Tittell Brune exemplifies the complex cultural and economic forces operating on the institution of live theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. Brune focalizes the contemporary processes which reconstituted the international institution of mass entertainment out of the traditional cultural practices of theatre. The theatrical star is seen as both engaging with and resisting the commodification of her labour power; image and talent resulting from her ambiguous industrial role as magnetic 'star' and as managerial commodity. However, the iconic and affective power of the actor evokes strong attachment from significant sections of the newly heterosocial popular audience, in particular from the gallery girls, the young female audience who idolized Brune as a performative personality enacting social self-realization and glamorous transformation. Through reading Brume's repertoire, her social persona as 'star' and her 'emotional' performative style, it is demonstrated how artistic retro-glamour, religious evangelicalism and discourses of sexuality and femininity serve to manage theatre's move into the mass-entertainment age.

Liberalization and the public sector:the pre-eminent role of governments in the ‘sale’ of higher education abroad

Much recent scholarship concerning liberalization has emphasized the role of regulatees, rather than governments, in promoting liberalization. This article examines such scholarship in the light of an important development in the British and French public sectors—the creation of new agencies (the Education Counselling Service and EduFrance) to ‘sell’ British and French higher education to potential international students. The new agencies attempted to induce two things: competition amongst higher education institutions for the recruitment of international students from developed and emerging economy countries, and the commodification of these students. This article shows that, contrary to existing theories of liberalization, governments were pre-eminent in pushing forward this liberalization, while higher education institutions attempted to hold it back.

From Where Do We Teach? Potential Positions in Public Education

This thesis is a conceptual examination of the positions from which we teach in public education. As it is philosophical in nature, it takes no qualitative or quantitative data. It offers a review of selected relevant literature and an analysis of personal and professional experience, with the intent to pose critical questions about teaching and learning. The framework of this thesis represents the following contentions: First, from its inception, public schooling served capital by preparing skilled labour for emerging industrial markets. This history is the hegemonic shadow that hangs over public education today. Second, movements toward the standardization of funding, curriculum, and evaluation support the further commodification of public schooling. The “accountability” that standardization offers, the “back to basics” that it aims for, is counter to the potential that public education might critically inform citizens and seek social justice. Third, movements toward the privatization of public schooling under the guise of “choice” and “mobility”, brought on by manufactured crisis, serve only to widen socio-economic inequities as capitalist neoliberal interests seek profit in both the product of public schools and in schooling itself. If we recognize and understand the power of public education to inform vast numbers of citizens who will, in turn, either maintain or reform society, we must ask: What do we want public education to be? What are the effects of continuing down historically conventional and increasingly standardized paths? What do progressive pedagogies offer? How might teachers destandardize their pedagogy and pursue equitable opportunities for marginalized students? How might students name themselves and their world, that they might play a part in its reimagining? For whom do we teach, and under what conditions? From where do we teach, and why? For educators to ask these questions, and to employ what they discover, will necessitate taking substantial risks. It will necessitate taking a stand and cannot be done alone. Teachers must seek out the collaboration of their students. They must offer students the time and the space to find their own voices, to create their own selves, and to envision previously uncharted paths on which we might walk together.

An Examination of Current Approaches to Integrative Indigenous and Western Knowledge System Implementation in Water Research and Management: A Case Study Encompassing the Colonized Geographies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States

The commodification of natural resources and the pursuit of continuous growth has resulted in environmental degradation, depletion, and disparity in access to these life-sustaining resources, including water. Utility-based objectification and exploitation of water in some societies has brought us to the brink of crisis through an apathetic disregard for present and future generations. The ongoing depletion and degradation of the world’s water sources, coupled with a reliance on Western knowledge and the continued omission of Indigenous knowledge to manage our relationship with water has unduly burdened many, but particularly so for Indigenous communities. The goal of my thesis research is to call attention to and advance the value and validity of using both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems (also known as Two-Eyed Seeing) in water research and management to better care for water. To achieve this goal, I used a combined systematic and realist review method to identify and synthesize the peer-reviewed, integrative water literature, followed by semi-structured interviews with first authors of the exemplars from the included literature to identify the challenges and insights that researchers have experienced in conducting integrative water research. Findings suggest that these authors recognize that many previous attempts to integrate Indigenous knowledges have been tokenistic rather than meaningful, and that new methods for knowledge implementation are needed. Community-based participatory research methods, and the associated tenets of balancing power, fostering trust, and community ownership over the research process, emerged as a pathway towards the meaningful implementation of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Data also indicate that engagement and collaborative governance structures developed from a position of mutual respect are integral to the realization of a given project. The recommendations generated from these findings offer support for future Indigenous-led research and partnerships through the identification and examination of approaches that facilitate the meaningful implementation of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems in water research and management. Asking Western science questions and seeking Indigenous science solutions does not appear to be working; instead, the co-design of research projects and asking questions directed at the problem rather than the solution better lends itself to the strengths of Indigenous science.

Green Economy and Employment: employment potential of the ecological transition in Spain

The Green Economy offers real possibilities for productive innovation, economic growth and employment creation in Spain. These three factors are critical to facilitate the necessary change in the productive model to overcome the crisis. However, the measures taken by the current Conservative government have moved in the opposite direction: significant cutting in incentives for renewable, increasing tax burden on renewable energy production to self-consumption and privatizing public spaces of social and environmental interest. This hinders the achievement of the environmental objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. A strategy that is born already in itself highly limited, unambitious and subordinated to the interests of energy oligopolies and the imperatives of the Stability and Growth Pact (Maastricht) and the Austerity policies imposed from EU institutions to overcome the 2008 financial crisis. So the Ecological Transition goes further, claiming a substantially change in Economic Policy away form the increasing commodification proposed by the Green Economy. Despite these limitations, young and unemployed people have much to gain from a comprehensive development of environmental industries. Therefore, innovative-sustainable plans, investment and training in green sectors are necessary to make easier the transition from a services low-valued economy to an innovative and sustainable model to make our country an environmental reference in Europe.

Health reforms in Latin America: processes and results

Two types of health reforms in Latin America are analysed: one based on insurance and service commodification and the one referred to the unified public systems of progressive governments. Health insurance with explicit service packages has not fulfilled their purposes of universal coverage, equal access to necessary health services and improvement of health conditions but has opened health as a field of profit making for insurance companies and private health providers. The national health services as a state obligation have developed territorialized health services and widened substantially timely access to the majority of the population. The adoption of an integrated and wide social policy has an impact on population well fare. It faces some problems derived from the old health systems and the power of the insurance and medical complex.

Effect of reading sport chronicles on the perception of justice and the predisposition to protest actions in soccer

In this study three chronicles from national newspapers (one generalist and two sport press) were analyzed. The chronicles belong to Spain’s soccer final of the King’s Cup in 2014. The aim of the study was to know if there was any influence on the readers’ perception of justice and consequently if this influence could cause a particular predisposition to participate in acts of protest. 462 university students participated. The results showed that different chronicles caused differences in the perception of justice depending on the chronicle read. However, a clear influence on the willingness to participate in acts of protest was not obtained. These results should make us think about the impact of sport press and its influence, and to be aware of the indirect responsibility of every sector on the antisocial behaviors generated by soccer in our country.

Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

Antropología de la Conservación en España. Balance y perspectivas

En este artículo presentamos un balance de la Antropología de la Conservación en el Estado español. Durante las últimas décadas, la protección de los espacios naturales ha aumentado de una manera exponencial en todo el mundo. A la vez que se extendía esta patrimonialización de la naturaleza, los trabajos etnográficos sobre las áreas protegidas han ido ganando terreno dentro de la disciplina y, en particular, en el campo de la Antropología Ambiental. La mencionada bibliografía ha puesto de relieve los múltiples aspectos derivados de las nuevas políticas territoriales de regulación, apropiación y mercantilización de la ‘naturaleza’. En este trabajo realizamos una revisión exhaustiva de la producción generada a raíz de este interés por las áreas protegidas en nuestro país subrayando sus principales aportaciones, características y debilidades. De este modo pretendemos reflexionar acerca de su continuidad, con el fin de evitar la mera reiteración y favorecer el avance en sus resultados.