The Levelling Process as a Function of the Masses in the View of Kierkegaard and Ortega Y Gasset

The present article is an analysis of the emergence of a new Uruguayan author, Armonía Somers (1914–94), as well as the publication in 1950 of her first novel, La mujer desnuda (The Naked Woman). It focuses on the Uruguayan social body of the 1950s, when society lived the paradox of recognizing women in its legal structure, but limiting them in the everyday social and cultural life. In this context, Somers's novel symbolically explores what I call the “crisis of feminine subjectivity,” through the creation of a woman who on her thirtieth birthday decided to throw away all the costumes and masks with which society and tradition imposed feminine roles and, naked, tried new ways of being, new subjectivities. Central to this study is an analysis of the different ways in which historical, social, and cultural demands produce certain kinds of human bodies, especially how they produce a woman's body. The specific argument that underlies this article is that the body inserts itself in conflictive and tense manners with the marks imposed on the genders. This article's theoretical contribution lies in its emphasis on the aesthetic and ethical ramifications of “feminine subjectivities” and “historical marked bodies” in a fiction that presents itself as a black box in which Somers finds herself as a woman who became a novelist in the 1950s and in which readers also find themselves questioning the persistence of gender marks on their own social bodies.     

Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.     

The (Ir)relevance of the Aside in Golden Age Drama

The professionalization of public theatre in late sixteenth-century Spain transformed the public street drama of playwrights and actors such as Lope de Rueda into an activity whose survival and success depended on ticket sales and attendance. It is within this context that the aside became one of the most popular dramatic techniques of Spain's Golden Age theater. This article seeks to answer two questions about the aside: (1) Do Golden Age playwrights utilize the aside in the same manner? and (2) Does the subgenre of a comedia dictate the use of a particular category of aside? I propose to answer these questions, focusing in particular on the different ways that the following comedias utilize the aside to transform the audience from mere spectators to active accomplices of what they witness on stage: Calderón de la Barca's El alcalde de Zalamea (comedia de honor), Antonio Mira de Amescua's El esclavo del demonio (comedia hagiográfica), and Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla (comedia moral).     

Allochthonous red pigments used in burial practices at the Copper Age site of Valencina de la Concepción (Sevilla,Spain): characterisation and social dimension

The use of red pigments linked to burial practices is widely documented in the Iberian prehistoric record and very often it has been traditionally interpreted as a ritual practice entailing the utilisation of local raw materials (iron oxides). Some research works, nevertheless, have also detected the use of red pigments which can only be interpreted as allochthonous. The red pigments spread over a single inhumation in a monumental Megalithic tomb surrounding Valencina de la Concepción Copper Age settlement was studied by means of X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray microfluorescence, micro-Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. This approach allowed characterising the red pigments as cinnabar, mixed with tiny amounts of iron oxides. The presence of cinnabar, a product that was necessarily imported, in a context of an exceptional set of grave goods, suggests that the use of cinnabar was linked not only to ritual but also to practices related to the display of social status.     

A People for the Patricians: Cuadros De Costumbres and State-Making on the Frontier in Colombia and Venezuela

This essay argues that the individual nature of the sketch of manners (cuadros de costumbres) imagined, in the midst of post-war politicisation of the popular classes, a dismantling of alliances of class and race to privilege a single possible image of community: the nation. By reconstructing the discourses – in particular of José María Vergara y Vergara and Ramón Páez – that facilitated the production of the llanero type in Venezuela and the Indian (indio) type in Colombia, this essay posits the sketcher as embodying a ‘patrician mindset’. As a product of it, the sketchers project their own personal histories onto their representations of the people and, in so doing, erases the frontier histories of these populations. By confounding the history of the nation with their own histories, Vergara y Vergara and Páez equated ‘patria’ with patrimony, producing peaceful populations as ‘pueblo’ (national people). Paradoxically, these idyllic portraits of the ‘pueblo’ belie an all but peaceful principle of authority that these post-independence patricians used to legitimise themselves.     

Nationalism,economic crisis and ‘realistic revolution’ in 1980s Mexico*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how the Mexican state drew upon nationalist discourse for legitimacy following the 1982 debt crisis. The analytical framework situates Mexico within the context of Latin American nationalism and explores the structural and conjunctural factors that contributed to the endurance and effectiveness of Mexican revolutionary nationalism as a hegemonic nationalist discourse. Historical commemorations during the Miguel de la Madrid administration (1982–88) are then examined to show how the state evoked nationalist motifs as it dealt with economic crisis, pressure from the USA, domestic political opposition and the implementation of neoliberal reforms. The relative effectiveness of sometimes counterintuitive appeals to nationalist legitimacy is found to be neither wholly ‘rational’ nor ‘irrational’, in this case having its basis in a history of elite and popular negotiation through the revolutionary nationalist framework, the continuity of the post‐revolutionary Partido de la Revolución Institutional (PRI) state model and the lack of a viable competing paradigm.     

The ivory workshop of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville,Spain) and the identification of ivory from Asian elephant on the Iberian Peninsula in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC

During excavations in the huge ditched enclosure of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain), the main centre from the first hierarchical framework-settlement in the Guadalquivir Valley, a pit with remains of a context for producing ivory artefacts, dating from the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, was discovered in the large metallurgical nucleate workshops. Scientific (Optical Microscopy, FIRT and Raman Spectroscopy, C/N Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) analyses revealed that the ivory belonged to Asian elephants and the archaeological study, which was made in a specialized workshop context. In this paper we present the archaeological context, the study of the ivory artefacts and the state of research on ivory in the Lower Guadalquivir Basin during the 3rd millennium BC. In a parallel way, this paper discusses the significance of this workshop context in the configuration and function of the long distance circulation of raw material and the specialized craft areas in the first political centres.     

Perceptions and Misperceptions of Regime Stability and Iran's Convoluted Rise to Regional Influence

This article seeks to explain revolutionary Iran's convoluted rise to regional prominence over the last three decades. We hold that perceptions and misperceptions of regime stability (both of one's self and of others) by the relevant actors have played a major role in Iran's recent. The main logic is that the success of many strategies employed by relevant regional actors to augment their regional influence (both Iran seeking more influence and others seeking to stem that influence) have crucially hinged on making correct assessments of regime stability. This study has both theoretical and empirical findings. Theoretically, we find that failures to accurately estimate regime stability stem from three main sources: (1) objective uncertainties regarding the target state's level of regime stability, given the high strength of societal forces shaping state‐society relations in the Middle East and given the distinct variation between autocrats in terms of their ability to develop effective counterrevolutionary/repressive tools; (2) ideological blinders, from which both the United States and regional actors frequently suffer, which have often led them to be falsely optimistic regarding the existence of either subversive opportunities or opportunities to stabilize regimes facing domestic pressures; and (3) incorrect theories regarding sources of regime stability which lead experts and policymakers to overlook factors which may destabilize a regime. This article has two major empirical findings. First, Iran's rise may be at least partly attributed to Iran demonstrating a slightly better learning curve at the tactical level (i.e., learning subversive skills from its Lebanese experience in the 1980s–1990s and applying them to Iraq in the 2000s–2010s) as well as at the strategic level (i.e., understanding the limits of its subversive capacities and correctly assessing when it can engage in successful stabilizing operations). Second, two errors committed by the United States have been far more consequential than those committed by Iran for the regional balance of power: First, the George W. Bush Administration myopically opened up subversive opportunities for Iran when it invaded Iraq in 2003 by thinking that it could stabilize a democratic regime and insulate it from outside influence; second, on two occasions Washington overestimated the transformative effect that its concessions to Iran would have in terms of sufficiently empowering reformists so as to bring about complete regime transformation from within.     

从铭文看两汉铜器皿的生产经营方式及其变化

汉代铜器皿的生产经营方式多样,且变化明显。大致可分为三个阶段:西汉早期,国家的经济政策较为宽松,铜器生产较为自由,制作机构既有中央和地方政府控制的各级工官,也有地方诸侯和富商,产品得以自由买卖;西汉中晚期,由于对地方诸侯和私人工商业实行打击和限制政策,铜器的生产经营方式发生变化,地方诸侯和富商基本退出铜器的生产领域,铜器的制造由政府专控;东汉早期,随着政策的放宽,铜器由政府专控的局面开始松动,私人作坊造作的铜器出现,至东汉中晚期政府各级工官基本退出铜器生产领域,铜器的制作为私营或工官监制私人承制的形式。