An Area Studies Division was created at the 6th Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the mid-1950s. It was devoted to several world regions, including the USSR and eastern Europe. This article investigates the links between its institutionalization and the international scientific and financial transfers underpinning it: the transatlantic support granted to the nascent division by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the academic cooperation programme that it launched with eastern Europe. The Russian, Soviet and East European (...) programme served, thus, as an East/West interface and a platform for broader intellectual exchanges. Local French scientific, academic and political rationales favoured the specific pathways it took. The article also shows that the EPHE 6th Section was discreetly linked with American players in Cold War intellectual warfare whose forms of action gradually changed in the context of the thaw. In particular, it had connections with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. These collusions attest to the entanglement of scientific and political issues, their intricacies increasing when external factors compounded domestic ones. (shrink)

Une haute stèle de marbre opisthographe trouvée il y a quelques années à Marmarini, au nord-est de Larissa (Thessalie), propose un long texte de 54 et 82 lignes aujourd’hui lisibles. En s’appuyant sur cette inscription du milieu du iie s. av. J.-C., qui d’une part comporte un calendrier cultuel et de l’autre un certain nombre de prescriptions touchant aux rites, le présent article propose une présentation de l’aspect probable du sanctuaire (péribole, temple, autel etc.), une liste des divinités concernées (...) — Artémis Phylakè comme divinité principale, mais d’autres divinités grecques et surtout plusieurs divinités d’origine orientale jusqu’alors inconnues — et des remarques sur les modalités d’un culte qui était sans doute un culte à mystères. Ce document, par son contenu, par les détails qu’il donne, est une trouvaille exceptionnelle en Thessalie. (shrink)

In this article we discuss Foucault's genealogical critique of psychoanalysis as it was articulated in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. We first show on what grounds Foucault claims that psychoanalytic theory and practice can be considered to be the acme of the 'repressive hypothesis'. Through an analysis of the Freudian and Lacanian theory of the the law we then try to make plausible that Foucaults interpretation of this theory might be nothing but a philosophical translation of the (...) analysant's fantasies regarding the therapy and his/her analyst in the beginning of the cure, rather than an accurate account of it. However, this analysis of Foucault's misreading of psychoanalytic theory allows for a re-evaluation of his relation towards this theory. In our conclusion we suggest that Foucault might be much closer to Lacanian psychoanalysis then he himself realized. (shrink)

Nous étudions dans le texte que nous présentons ici, l'importance de l'analyse heideggerienne du temps pour la théorie psychanalytique de Jacques Lacan, telle qu'ill'a élaborée dans quelques textes d'avant 1955. Nous montrons tout d'abord le parallélisme entre le Dasein en tant que souci et la caractérisation lacanienne du sujet psychanalytique. En plus, Lacan — tout comme Heidegger — fonde l'unité structurale du Dasein/sujet dans la temporalité qui est censée expliquer la possibilité d'une existence authentique. Ici, comme ailleurs, Lacan incorpore la (...) philosophie heideggerienne comme source d'inspiration pour sa propre théorie de l'analyse. Lacan échoue, toutefois, à donner une explication psychanalytique cohérente de l'idéal d'authenticité tel qu'il fonctionne dans la pensée heideggerienne. Cet échec pointe vers une déconstruction nécessaire de la distinction hiérarchique entre l'imaginaire et le symbolique qui caractérise de façon décisive la théorie de Lacan. (shrink)

In this article we show how the Lacanian theory of the Imaginary , as elaborated in Lacan's earlier texts, is strongly influenced by the Hegelianism of Alexandre Kojève. In the first part we explain how Lacan is giving a fresh interpretation of Freud's theory of Narcissism by making use of the category of the Imaginary. The second part indicates how the Kojèvian interpretation of the dialectics of Self-consciousness serves as a paradigm for imaginary intersubjectivity. Imaginary intersubjectivity, however, leads to an (...) impasse since authentic recognition requires a symbolic context. That is why Lacan's theory of a fundamental desire for recognition is intrinsically linked up with his theory of the Symbolic. According to Lacan this aspect has been neglected by Hegel . Hegel did not see the importance of the symbolic order. This affirmation, however, implies a severe misinterpretation of Hegel's text. In the last part we elaborate the relation between the Imaginary and the Symbolic as a dialectical one. The Lacanian interpretation of Freud's theory, ' Hegelianizes' Freud. We illustrate this in reference to the Freudian concept of 'libido'. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Olympischen Spiele sind nicht nur sportliche Wettbewerbe, sie sind auch das Mittel, die verschwenderische Konkurrenz zwischen Nationalstaaten tun Aufmerksamkeit, Legitimität, Moderni- täts- und spezifisches Leistungsprestige, also tun weiche Güter, mit Hilfe sportlicher Erfolge zu ermöglichen. Dabei nimmt der Medaillenspiegel eine zentrale Rolle ein. Mit seiner Hilfe treten teilnehmende Nationen in eine indirekte „Konkurrenz um den Menschen, [in] ein Ringen tun Beifall“. Die indirekte Konkurrenz der Nationen wird in regelmäßigen Abständen wieder von neuem geführt, und das obwohl das IOC (...) eigentlich den Wettbewerb zwischen den Nationen eindeutig zugunsten eines Wettbewerbs zwischen den Athleten ablehnt. Dabei wird medial und politisch um die Aufmerksamkeit des Dritten gebuhlt. Die Aufmerksamkeit des Dritten ist es, die dem Medaillenspiegel als symbolischem Anzeiger nationaler Konkurrenz um weiche Güter Legitimität und Prestige verleiht. Dabei ist tatsächlich unklar, welche Bedeutung die Bevölkerung dem Medaillenspiegel beimisst. Auf Basis einer BevölkerungsStichprobe wurden mit Hilfe eines multivariaten ordinalen logistischen Regressionsmodells Faktoren ermittelt, die das Interesse am Medaillenspiegel erklären. Demnach interessieren sich aktive Sportler, Sportinteressierte, Personen mit höher ausgeprägtem Nationalstolz, mit autoritären Einstellungen und solche, die sich allgemein bei der Entscheidungsfindung an Ratgebern usw orientieren, eher für den Medaillenspiegel. Die sozioökonomischen Variablen Alter, Geschlecht, Migrationshintergrund und schulische Bildung haben nach Kontrolle der erklärenden Variablen keinen signifikanten Einfluss mehr. (shrink)

The 1970-1971 revision of the Belgian constitution recognized the existence of three cultural communities and three geographic regions.The implementation of the constitutional provisions regarding cultural and regional autonomy led to the creation of several new subnational institutions of which the most important are the cultural and the regional Councils. Each cultural Council groups the senators and the representatives of similar linguistic group, while the regional Councils are composed of these same parliamentarians in accordance with their geographic residence. These Councils may (...) thus be seen as sub-groupings of the national Parliament.Although both are essentially advisory bodies, the cultural Councils do legislate decrees which, when enforced by the respective Ministers of Culture, have the force of law. On the other hand, the regional Councils are purely consultative assemblies, providing opinions and requesting clarifications and justifications of national decisions in the functional areas, specified by the Constitution. A ministerial committee of each region considers the Council's recommendations in enforcing national policies in the regions.The complexity of national-community-regional relations and the political discussions between the supporters of regionalization and those favoring culturalization shows the temporary nature of the present institutionalization. (shrink)

Rural landscapes are facing a loss of biodiversity. To deal with this challenge, landscape governance is seen as an alternative and addition to sectoral policies and a potential way of realizing transformative change for biodiversity. To study transformative change in the Bulb Region, the Netherlands, this study uses a discursive-institutional perspective. A mixed methods approach was used including 50 interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The structuration and institutionalization of three competing landscape discourses were analyzed: a hegemonic discourse rejecting any (...) changes in bulb farming; an emerging discourse aiming to enhance sustainability through innovation; and an unstructured discourse questioning the sustainability of bulb farming. The paper shows that the emerging sustainability discourse strengthens the hegemonic discourse by providing an action repertoire for farmers to deal with changing societal demands, while not questioning the hegemonic view on the landscape. Moreover, an institutionalized landscape discourse can be very stable if discursive (relation between naturalized landscape perspectives, identity and the articulated economic interests) and non-discursive factors (natural-spatial conditions, structure of agricultural sector, embeddedness in international trade) are strongly intertwined, leaving little room for alternative discourses. The sustainability discourse was induced by changes outside the Bulb Region (e.g., legislation), thus raising the question whether landscapes are the appropriate level to expect the initiation of transformative change. For rural transformations to come about, solely relying on policies on the landscape level is not sensible. A mix of policies at both the landscape and higher levels offers more perspective for transformative change. (shrink)

The revision of the Constitution in 1970 changed the so far unitary Belgium into a state made of four regions and three communities : the French, the Flemish and the German one.Specific organs guarantee their working: the «cultural councils». The French and the Flemish councils legislate by «decree».The Chambers vote the credit total allowed to each council, which, in its turn, by decree, appropriates that sum.The minister is responsable for the sanction, the promulgation and the execution of the decree. Y (...) et, he has not to account for it before the council.Does it mean that there exists no political responsability before the cultural councils? We do consider that this responsability is equivalent to the responsability that prevails before the Chambers and that the Constitution recognizes expressively and implicity the right to incriminate the minister, even to compel him to resign, if he has lost the cultural council's confidence. (shrink)

The elections for the provincial councils of the 8th of November 1981 show the same tendencies as the parliamentary elections, held at the same time. The liberals had a general progress, the socialists kept their positions and the christian democrats were subject to severe decline. Whereas the Flemish nationalist Volksunie regained his strength of the pre-Egmont period, the French and Walloon federalist parties lost a considerable part of their electorate. This however does not represent by itself the care of the (...) regional asymmetric electoral behaviour; it is rather the fact that in Flanders there was only one loosing party, where in the other regions more than one party had a considerable decline. (shrink)

This article explores witchcraft-related violence against elderly women in the AmaZizi chiefdom of kwaZangashe in Eastern Cape, South Africa. The potential causes that have promoted such violence form the central subject of the study. The study includes a research design that combines questionnaires, focus groups and follow-on interviews. The findings have revealed a prevalence of witchcraft beliefs in the region and have pointed to elderly women as the likely victims of witchcraft violence. This has resulted in AmaZizi’s elderly women being (...) socially isolated, verbally abused and at risk of physical violence and even murder. This study concludes with several interventions organised to combat future witchcraft-related violence and to support the elderly women in the chiefdom.Contribution: By giving voice to the lives and stories of a community of people rendered invisible in the wider public sphere, this article introduces accounts on witchcraft and healthcare that might otherwise have gone unarticulated. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had (...) a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

Le Conseiller d'Etat ou Recueil général de la politique moderne est l'un des grands traités politiques du XVIIe siècle. Son auteur, Philippe de Béthune, diplomate réputé et fin connaisseur de la vie publique, a écrit un livre étonnant de philosophie politique, de stratégie, d'économie et d'urbanisme. Œuvre d 'un homme de cour, habitué à côtoyer les princes, il est le produit de la réflexion et de l'expérience d'un personnage singulier, mais aussi d'une époque insolite de mutation entre deux mondes, - (...) celui de la Renaissance, des guerres de religion et des troubles de la Ligue, et celui de l'absolutisme monarchique et de l'État moderne, - marquée par une transformation profonde des valeurs politiques et morales. Personnalité peu commune, qui a voyagé à travers toute l'Europe, qui par deux fois a été ambassadeur à Rome et qui a bénéficié d'une longévité remarquable, Philippe de Béthune est le frère puîné de Sully Il naît sous Charles IX, commence sa carrière comme mignon, dans l'entourage de Joyeuse, l'archi-favori d'Henri III, sert Henri lV Louis XIII, Richelieu et termine sa vie sous le ministériat de Mazarin. Publié en 1633, avec l'accord du cardinal ministre, Le Conseiller d'Etat n 'a jamais été réédité depuis 1684. Cette nouvelle édition est précédée d'une longue introduction sur l'art politique de la première moitié du XVlle siècle et le paysage mental de l'époque. (shrink)

The Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement (SFCEM), founded as a Spanish organization to favour the integration of Spain in Europe, was composed of representatives of various political organizations of the Republican government in exile. Correspondence between the President, Salvador de Madariaga, and the members of the Basque and Catalonian delegations discloses one of the most critical issues of the time: how to organize the Spanish regions after the fall of Franco’s regime. This article explores how the ideas of (...) a Spanish federation – defended by Madariaga – and the interest of the nationalist groups collided during the decades of 1950s and 1960s. The result was a harsh debate on separatism between the Basques and Catalans, who saw Franco’s Spain as the representation of centralism and repression of their identities, and other Spanish exiles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René DescartesDennis Des CheneRichard Watson. Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes. Boston: David R. Godine, 2002. pp. viii + 375. Cloth, $35.00.Somewhere between hagiography and debunking lies truth. Or so we may think: the biographer's sources are almost always tipped one way or the other, and it is his or her job to establish, or divine, the way of authentic (...) fact and, if facts fall short, then of sturdy sober hypothesis. In general the debunker has more fun, especially when the weight of tradition favors the ennobling, if not the beatification, of its subject.Descartes is a case in point. Until a few years ago, there was in English no satisfactory biography. Now there are three: an "intellectual biography" by Stephen Gaukroger, the Descartes of Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, and Watson's. Gaukroger dwells on Descartes's natural philosophy, especially in the early years. Only after 300 pages does he reach the period of the Discourse, Descartes's first published work. Rodis-Lewis offers a more even-handed treatment, the fruits of a lifetime of study. Her Descartes resembles, not the modern scientist or professional philosopher, but the ancient sage for whom metaphysics is a once-in-a-lifetime affair, and even natural philosophy subordinate to wisdom. Watson's Descartes is an altogether more worldly type, born into a family of lawyers, well-connected, touchy [End Page 113] about his place in social and scientific circles, and not all that interested in what we think of now as philosophy. Nor, for that matter, is Watson: you will look in vain for an analysis of the Meditations, a discussion of method, or a definition of générosité. (Watson does conclude, I should note, with a discussion of Descartes's doctrine on the soul, whose title might well have been "The future of an illusion" if Freud had not used it already.)If you like your philosophy uncluttered by context, if you find it worthwhile to read or write about "Cartesian skepticism" or "Cartesian dualism" without troubling yourself to understand who the historical Descartes was, or what might have moved him to confront the skeptics and save the soul, then Watson is not for you. It is emphatically a Life, not a Life and Works. It is, moreover, a life in the manner of many modern biographers, in which the biographer, rather than conceal himself behind the curtains of scholarly convention, figures into the narrative, retracing the steps of Descartes's passage to Italy, examining the baptismal certificate of Descartes's illegitimate daughter Francine, and eating lunch at the Queen Kristina restaurant "next door to the house in which Descartes died" (303). The quality of a biography thus written depends in part on the personality of its author (and in the case of Cogito Ergo Sum, the author's wife, who intervenes more than once on the side of common sense during their peregrinations). Watson is, to my mind, an agreeable companion, dedicated to the search for biographical truth, impatient with hagiographic fog and time-hallowed error, down-to-earth in his assessment of Descartes's motives and circumstances.One example to show the differences among the three biographies. In November 1618 Descartes met the future Latin schoolmaster Isaac Beeckman in Breda. Beeckman records with enthusiasm their joint endeavors in physico-mathematics over the next few months (Gaukroger has the details). It seems clear that the impetus for studying the various problems mentioned in Beeckman's Journal came from Beeckman, who had been pondering physical questions since 1613 or before. Descartes's contribution, at least at first, was his immense mathematical skill. Their interests lay largely within the "mixed mathematics" of the period, especially hydrostatics and mechanics. They also discussed music, an aspect of the "new science" now often neglected (but see H. F. Cohen, Quantifying Music [Dordrecht, 1984]). On New Year's day 1619 Descartes presented Beeckman with his Compendium musicæ (Gaukroger 74, Rodis-Lewis 51/29). A decade later, Descartes, having heard that Beeckman had appropriated the Compendium to himself, became angry and eventually, late in 1630, dismissed Beeckman with a masterpiece of de haut... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René DescartesDennis Des CheneRichard Watson. Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes. Boston: David R. Godine, 2002. pp. viii + 375. Cloth, $35.00.Somewhere between hagiography and debunking lies truth. Or so we may think: the biographer's sources are almost always tipped one way or the other, and it is his or her job to establish, or divine, the way of authentic (...) fact and, if facts fall short, then of sturdy sober hypothesis. In general the debunker has more fun, especially when the weight of tradition favors the ennobling, if not the beatification, of its subject.Descartes is a case in point. Until a few years ago, there was in English no satisfactory biography. Now there are three: an "intellectual biography" by Stephen Gaukroger, the Descartes of Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, and Watson's. Gaukroger dwells on Descartes's natural philosophy, especially in the early years. Only after 300 pages does he reach the period of the Discourse, Descartes's first published work. Rodis-Lewis offers a more even-handed treatment, the fruits of a lifetime of study. Her Descartes resembles, not the modern scientist or professional philosopher, but the ancient sage for whom metaphysics is a once-in-a-lifetime affair, and even natural philosophy subordinate to wisdom. Watson's Descartes is an altogether more worldly type, born into a family of lawyers, well-connected, touchy [End Page 113] about his place in social and scientific circles, and not all that interested in what we think of now as philosophy. Nor, for that matter, is Watson: you will look in vain for an analysis of the Meditations, a discussion of method, or a definition of générosité. (Watson does conclude, I should note, with a discussion of Descartes's doctrine on the soul, whose title might well have been "The future of an illusion" if Freud had not used it already.)If you like your philosophy uncluttered by context, if you find it worthwhile to read or write about "Cartesian skepticism" or "Cartesian dualism" without troubling yourself to understand who the historical Descartes was, or what might have moved him to confront the skeptics and save the soul, then Watson is not for you. It is emphatically a Life, not a Life and Works. It is, moreover, a life in the manner of many modern biographers, in which the biographer, rather than conceal himself behind the curtains of scholarly convention, figures into the narrative, retracing the steps of Descartes's passage to Italy, examining the baptismal certificate of Descartes's illegitimate daughter Francine, and eating lunch at the Queen Kristina restaurant "next door to the house in which Descartes died" (303). The quality of a biography thus written depends in part on the personality of its author (and in the case of Cogito Ergo Sum, the author's wife, who intervenes more than once on the side of common sense during their peregrinations). Watson is, to my mind, an agreeable companion, dedicated to the search for biographical truth, impatient with hagiographic fog and time-hallowed error, down-to-earth in his assessment of Descartes's motives and circumstances.One example to show the differences among the three biographies. In November 1618 Descartes met the future Latin schoolmaster Isaac Beeckman in Breda. Beeckman records with enthusiasm their joint endeavors in physico-mathematics over the next few months (Gaukroger has the details). It seems clear that the impetus for studying the various problems mentioned in Beeckman's Journal came from Beeckman, who had been pondering physical questions since 1613 or before. Descartes's contribution, at least at first, was his immense mathematical skill. Their interests lay largely within the "mixed mathematics" of the period, especially hydrostatics and mechanics. They also discussed music, an aspect of the "new science" now often neglected (but see H. F. Cohen, Quantifying Music [Dordrecht, 1984]). On New Year's day 1619 Descartes presented Beeckman with his Compendium musicæ (Gaukroger 74, Rodis-Lewis 51/29). A decade later, Descartes, having heard that Beeckman had appropriated the Compendium to himself, became angry and eventually, late in 1630, dismissed Beeckman with a masterpiece of de haut... (shrink)

L’examen du corpus constitué par les régimes de santé en Europe, entre la fin du xvie siècle et le xviiie siècle, permet d’apporter des réponses intéressantes à la question de savoir si l’on peut vieillir sans médecins. Depuis le Trattato de vita sobria de l’Italien Luigi Cornaro (1558) jusqu’à The History of Health and the Art of Preserving it (1758) rédigée par l’Écossais James MacKenzie, on assiste à un effort pour distinguer le processus naturel du vieillissement de la vieillesse comme (...) maladie. L’approche médicale préventive et diététique du vieillissement se trouve ainsi intégrée au sein d’une réflexion anthropologique et le projet de prolongation de la vie justifiée d’un point de vue théologique. L’enjeu est bien de s’efforcer de penser le sens moral, politique et plus généralement existentiel d’une vie humaine prolongée. (shrink)

Este artículo se refiere a una línea de interpretación de la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel que tiene en Alexandre Kojève a su exponente más conocido e influyente. En ella se privilegian los aspectos antropológico-existenciales e histórico-políticos por sobre los aspectos lógico-sistemáticos de la obra. La exposición se divide en dos partes. La primera está dedicada a la lectura de Hegel realizada por Kojève en su célebre curso dictado entre 1933-1939 en la École Practique des Hautes Études de París, y (...) la segunda se ocupa de su aporte a cinco filósofos directamente influidos por su interpretación. Finalmente concluye con una breve evaluación de estas lecturas. (shrink)

While COVID-19 spreads aggressively and rapidly across the globe, many societies have also witnessed the spread of other viral phenomena like misinformation, conspiracy theories, and general mass suspicions about what is really going on. This study investigates how exposure to and trust in information sources, and anxiety and depression, are associated with conspiracy and misinformation beliefs in eight countries/regions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in an online survey fielded from May 29, 2020 to June 12, 2020, resulting in (...) a multinational representative sample of 8,806 adult respondents. Results indicate that greater exposure to traditional media is associated with lower conspiracy and misinformation beliefs, while exposure to politicians and digital media and personal contacts are associated with greater conspiracy and misinformation beliefs. Exposure to health experts is associated with lower conspiracy beliefs only. Higher feelings of depression are also associated with greater conspiracy and misinformation beliefs. We also found relevant group- and country differences. We discuss the implications of these results. (shrink)

África Occidental representa a día de hoy un lugar clave para la geopolítica del islam contemporáneo. Esta situación no es una nueva, al contrario, ya que es un territorio que históricamente ha estado ligado a la religión musulmana. Actualmente, esta región supone un lugar estratégico prioritario para los intereses de los países occidentales, de países musulmanes aliados de estos y de insurgentes y rebeldes ligados a ideologías neo-fundamentalistas. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar desde una perspectiva transdisciplinar el juego (...) geopolítico del islam en África Occidental, como influyen las diversas escuelas de pensamiento islámico contemporáneo en las identidades locales y que estrategias siguen las potencias actuales para intentar influir identitariamente en la zona. Para este propósito, abordaremos algunos hechos históricos acaecidos, especialmente, en Senegal, Mali, Nigeria y Mauritania. (shrink)

The blooming desert or ‘El desierto florido’ in Spanish, is a millenarian climate pattern caused by El Niño that warms the surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and creates the conditions for rain in the Altiplano and the Atacama Desert, north of Chile. After some millimeters of abundant rain, a rich biotic community emerges, and in a matter of hours or days, the driest surface on Earth becomes an impressive colorful habitat for more than two hundred different species (...) of eye-catching flowers that host the desert biotic life. Unfortunately, this breathtaking display of colors coexists with less appealing but equally astonishing landscapes. The Atacama Desert harbors the largest accumulation of discarded clothing worldwide and the largest pools of lithium mining which require vast amounts of water for their production. Every year, approximately 56,000 tons of used clothing, predominantly consisting of fast fashion polyester products, water-intensive cotton fabrics, and equally polluting material scraps, are deposited, forming toxic mountains of waste. This article presents an interpretation of these distinct landscapes as interconnected realities of the dump that illustrate the impact of biocultural semiocides, whereby the loss of relationships and meanings with Earth materials is shaped by glocal forces. By making this argument, the article contends that the Atacama region replicates the conditions of the Earth as a global dumping and solastalgia, namely ‘the pain caused by the loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to one´s home and territory.’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John WitgenGeronimo Barrera de la TorreSeeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America BY MICHAEL JOHN WITGEN Williamsburg, Va., and Chapel Hill, N.C.: Omohundro Institute for the Study of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2022The colonial projects (...) of nation-states in the Americas have defined the relationship between states and Indigenous peoples by means of [End Page 138] dispossession, as Anishinaabeg thinker Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asserts.1 Seeing Red delves into the processes through which dispossession of Indigenous land became the ideology and systematic practice behind US expansion as Indigenous communities struggled to reshape their place in the new context. The book carefully details the settler- colonial ideology and logic of elimination that permeated US territorial expansion over the Northwest Territories at the end of the eighteen and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries. Seeing Red thoroughly examines the complex context of dispossession by the US colonial power, centering on Anishinaabeg communities, the “mix- race” population, and the different Indigenous people inhabiting this region. However, the book focuses on what the author names “unthinkable history,” following Michel- Rolph Trouillot’s argument that this region, and the whole continent, was conceived as an unsettled territory instead of belonging to many Indigenous peoples. Thus, the text explores Indigenous and mixed- raced communities’ political imaginaries and imagined futures to retain autonomy and territory.Author Michael John Witgen is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. His research centers on the complex relations between Indigenous people and settler colonizers in the Great Lakes and the Northwest Territories. Seeing Red expands his previous analysis of race, ethnicity, and citizenship intersections, bringing to the fore Indigenous people’s history to rethink the statemaking process in the United States.This book’s pages show that theft lies at the foundation of wealth transfer from Indigenous territories to the United States government and white citizens. The white settler ideology, based on a “doctrine of discovery,” established a stark division between the civilized and uncivilized to rationalize, among other things, the theft of Indigenous people. This is a central argument of the book that signals how the civili zation project underpinning the territorial expansion of the United States was based on the transformation of commons into private property. Indigenous land became critical in the “political economy of plunder” advanced by the state and the meaning of “native” as a racial categorization of exclusion. Chapter 1 explores this economy of plunder by detailing the advancement of the settler frontier through different [End Page 139] mechanisms, such as the treaty policy— subsequently violated by the state— and territory surveying to make land legible for the state and cheap for settlers. It is worth mentioning that the book contains historical and thematic maps that visually represent the ideology of wilderness behind the colonization project and evidence of the territorial extent of dispossession suffered by Indigenous communities. However, this crusade to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their territory also rested on the national mythology that strengthened the trope of Indigenous vanishing. The author shows how during the years of the study, the Indigenous population was not vanishing but immersed in an intricate social world and transregional trade networks. Chapter 2 explores such context, following the story of an Ojibwe man to evidence the context in which settlers and federal officials relied on Indigenous customs to profit from the fur trade while using ties with communities to further land cessions.Mix- race families played a crucial role in expanding the settler frontier through treaty negotiations but remained marginalized as they identified themselves as both Natives and US citizens. Chapter 3 examines the significance of mixed- raced families, particularly women, in establishing and expanding missions’ schools that relied on their domestic and linguistic labor. Moreover, it shows the intricate landscape of the civilization mission that depended on the complex networks that had created... (shrink)

In the mid-1940s, Argentina was partially isolated and ruled by a military regime. The political confrontation between the military and the scientific community as well as international pressures played a major role in the failure of the first attempts to cope with nuclear development. Only after the relationship between the military and local scientists was readjusted and control of atomic energy was placed in the hands of the Navy, and Argentina's international relations restored, did nuclear development begin to take off. (...) This paper examines the traumatic process of creating the political and institutional conditions for the reception of nuclear technology in a peripheral context. The key to shaping future policies was the decision made by Argentina's Atomic Energy Commission in April 1957 to construct its first research nuclear reactor instead of buying it as other countries such as Spain and Brazil were doing at the time. (shrink)