Songs of the Fields: The Forgotten Songs of the Valencian Community

Agricultural work in many cultures has been accompanied by a series of songs used to break the monotony of work and to give rhythm to the activity. Furthermore, certain facets of life in each society are reflected in their words. The objective of this study is to look at the role of songs relating to farm labour in the social and cultural context of the Valencian Community, through analysis of the accounts of participants and of the significance they attribute to these songs as part of their cultural heritage and community identity.     

A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids

O’Gorman, J.P. & Coria, R.A. September 2016. A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids. Alcheringa 41, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

A new fossil elasmosaurid specimen, MLP 15-I-7-48, from the upper Maastrichtian Sandwich Bluff Member of the López de Bertodano Formation, Vega Island, Archipelago James Ross, Antarctica, is described. The fossil is a well-preserved anterior limb, which shares with Vegasaurus molyi from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica, a concave to flat anterior margin of the humeral shaft, and with Vegasaurus molyi and Aphrosaurus furlongi from the upper Maastrichtian of California, a well-defined depression on the anterior margin of the ventral surface of the humeral shaft. A phylogenetic analysis recovered MLP 15-I-7–48 as sister group of the lower Maastrichtian Vegasaurus molyi within a new clade nominated as Weddellonectia: Kawanectes lafquenianum ((Vegasaurus molyi; MLP 15-I-7–48) (Morenosaurus stocki (Aristonectinae))). This indicates that the previously proposed faunal turnover between the early and late Maastrichtian Weddellian marine reptile fauna, did not severely affect the non-aristonectine elasmosaurids. Additionally, other taxa previously considered evidence of a faunal turnover are re-evaluated.

José P. O’Gorman. [joseogorman@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar]. División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n., B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina. Rodolfo A. Coria. [rcoria@unrn.edu.ar]. Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro—Subsecretaría de Cultura de Neuquén—Museo Carmen Funes, Av. CVórdoba 55 (8318), Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina.     

Angel investing in an austerity economy – the take-up of government policies in Portugal

Business angels (BAs) are recognized as playing a significant role in stimulating entrepreneurial activity. With the decline in both bank lending and venture capital investment since the onset of the global economic crisis, government efforts to stimulate BA activity have become a more significant component in strategies to increase the level of entrepreneurial activity. This paper examines the responsiveness of angels to such initiatives in so-called austerity economies – countries that were hardest hit by the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent global recession and, as a consequence, had to take extreme economic and fiscal measures to reduce their budget deficits. We examine this question in Portugal which experienced one of the deepest recessions in the European Union following the implementation of severe austerity measures. This study confirms that government intervention to support angel investing can have a positive impact. However, the different types of intervention have varied in take-up rates. Other countries can learn from the Portuguese experience in three ways: the types of interventions that have the highest and lowest levels of take-up, the link between the design and the take-up of incentives, and types of intervention that should be considered but have not been implemented in Portugal.     

Topoiesis: Procesos de espacialización en la literatura (crítica y metodología)

ABSTRACT

Space in literary texts has been widely studied but poorly systematized. There is no valid method of analysis that gives space a critical meaning. For instance, critics have eluded the fact that time and space cannot be considered separately. On the other hand, they have used concepts or methods from disciplines aside literature such as anthropology, biology, psychology, or geography that do not help clarify the meaning or signification of a literary text. We begin this article by giving a review of the main theoretical and critical positions regarding space in literature from the second half of the twentieth century. We do this in order to evaluate the main results those studies have attained. Later on, we propose a methodology that may clarify the significance of space in a literary text. The concept topoiesis (as far as we know, it has not been used in the humanities) represents for us a key word. It helps us to distinguish one main process where space can turn from a signification practice to the production of meaning in a literary text.     

Topoiesis de la recepción literaria

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a particular notion about “topoiesis,” focusing on the text reception point of view. Initially, it establishes a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism, to later discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a “fusion of horizons” in which a “sense of space” of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader. Finally, through this space we propose a categorization of the different types of “topoiesis” of literary reception, establishing correspondences with the concept of “enunciative instances” in the text space, detailed in another article.     

Topoiesis de las instancias enunciativas

ABSTRACT

The literary text is a communicative situation that involves a sender, a message, and a receiver. Literary theorists and critics have extensively studied the different instances of enunciation, making it clear that the author of a literary text is not the enunciator of it. This article intends to show that each one of them belongs to a distinctive level: those of the communicative situation and the enunciative situation. This article intends to show the space-time axis related to the situations mentioned above. This would allow the researcher to find the mechanisms of power that lie behind the authorization or discredit of a speech. By doing so, we intend to extend the analysis of the literary work, including the context of creation of the literary text. We would like to focus our attention on three aspects related to the enunciator: topoiesis of the communicative situation, topoiesis of the enunciative frame, and topoiesis of the writing individual.     

Crafting identities in a multinational context: evidence from Catalonia

The nationalist messages that family and school transmit are very often concurrent, making it difficult to measure their independent impact on individuals. In order to separate out the leverage of these two agents of socialisation, this article focuses on a case study in which such concurrence cannot be taken for granted: Catalonia. The article exploits variation in parents' national identification, resulting from the presence of a population born in other regions of Spain outside Catalonia, to tease out the effect of both parents and Catalan school in crafting individuals' identification. The results, which draw on the analysis of a household survey, suggest that more years of schooling makes more likely that individuals develop a dual identity; however, parents' attachment to Catalonia is key in fostering an exclusive identification with Catalonia. Results also suggest that residence in neighbourhoods in which the proportion of natives and immigrants from other regions of Spain favours contact between children from different identity backgrounds is decisive in promoting a more Catalan‐oriented identification between second generations.     

THE FOOD VALUE CHAIN AS A LOCUS FOR (DIS)AGREEMENT: CONVENTIONS AND QUALITIES IN THE SPANISH WINE AND NORWEGIAN SALTED COD INDUSTRIES

According to the theory of conventions, food value chains (FVCs) involve a complex array of actors who share an agreement about the qualities embodied in their particular foodstuff. Nevertheless, that agreement is continuously challenged by changes in consumer markets. Therefore, I argue that FVCs able to adapt those qualities to new trends will perform better than FVCs whose commitment to certain qualities leads to a misunderstanding between producers and consumers. The organization of the chain itself, the values of national regulatory frameworks, and the goals of the national innovation system are discussed as factors that shape an FVCs' ability to re‐arrange that core agreement. By using professional reports, statistical records and personal interviews, this article focuses on two FVCs that have experienced contrasting trajectories in recent decades in the Spanish market: the wine industry located in the region of Castile and Leon (Spain) and the Norwegian salted cod industry. The growing wine FVC has achieved a successful agreement about a set of qualities linked to nature, tradition, and place, all of them guaranteed by the reputation of the Designation of Origin (DO) system. In contrast, the salted cod FVC is losing its market share because its main actors are failing to properly communicate the key qualities of environmental sustainability and artisanal cod production to concerned Spanish consumers, as well as in the adoption of the place‐related attributes that still shape consumer preferences in Spain.     

Has the Income Share of the Middle and Upper‐middle Been Stable around the ‘50/50 Rule’, or Has it Converged towards that Level? The ‘Palma Ratio’ Revisited

In an article published in this journal in 2011, an alternative measure of inequality was suggested, which has subsequently become known as ‘the Palma Ratio’. In this new article, the author of the original proposal revisits the argument for such a measure. Using new data, he examines whether the current remarkable homogeneity in the income share of the middle and upper‐middle around the world — the foundation of the so‐called ‘Palma Ratio’ — is an historically stable stylized fact, or whether it is a new phenomenon, the outcome of a process of convergence towards the current ‘50/50 Rule’ (in which half of the population in each country located within deciles 5 to 9 tends to appropriate about 50 per cent of the national income, or just above). Although partly written in response to a comment on the 2011 paper (published in this issue), the article also makes a substantive further contribution to the literature on inequality and the statistics to measure it.