Normative literature on the Catalan crisis is largely occupied with the conflict’s central legalistic problem: can political units like Catalonia be allowed to split off from Spain unilaterally? This article reframes the issue and asks why secessionist Catalans should ever abide by Spanish legal constraints, given that Spanish law is precisely the institution they are politically trying to get rid of. It focuses on the anti-secessionist role played by the Spanish Constitutional Court between 2010 and 2017 and studies three (...) arguments why Catalans supposedly have to accept the Court’s authority. The article contends that two arguments—the “mutual benefit argument” and the “law and democracy” argument—will not be independently persuasive to Catalan secessionists. Instead, the Constitutional Court’s authority must ultimately be grounded in a different type of argument: the “law and order argument.” Secessionist Catalans’ supposed duty to obey the orders of the Constitutional Court is ultimately not rooted in a positive service provided by the Court, but in the disruptive effects of disobeying. That exposes an explanatory defect in Joseph Raz’s influential theory of authority, which seeks to ground authority exercises in a concept in prior reason or their capacity to make our life better. That conceptualization misses the key decisionistic element to political authority: its capacity to constitute our reasons, that is, to define the terms that give meaning to our evaluations. (shrink)

Normative literature on the Catalan crisis is largely occupied with the conflict’s central legalistic problem: can political units like Catalonia be allowed to split off from Spain unilaterally? This article reframes the issue and asks why secessionist Catalans should ever abide by Spanish legal constraints, given that Spanish law is precisely the institution they are politically trying to get rid of. It focuses on the anti-secessionist role played by the Spanish Constitutional Court between 2010 and 2017 and studies three (...) arguments why Catalans supposedly have to accept the Court’s authority. The article contends that two arguments—the “mutual benefit argument” and the “law and democracy” argument—will not be independently persuasive to Catalan secessionists. Instead, the Constitutional Court’s authority must ultimately be grounded in a different type of argument: the “law and order argument.” Secessionist Catalans’ supposed duty to obey the orders of the Constitutional Court is ultimately not rooted in a positive service provided by the Court, but in the disruptive effects of disobeying. That exposes an explanatory defect in Joseph Raz’s influential theory of authority, which seeks to ground authority exercises in a concept in prior reason or their capacity to make our life better. That conceptualization misses the key decisionistic element to political authority: its capacity to constitute our reasons, that is, to define the terms that give meaning to our evaluations. (shrink)

Food sovereignty can be conceptualized as a political proposal for social change in the field of agri-food relations. However, specific strategies of how to achieve this transformative potential are diverse, and context-dependent. The paper explores this diversity by examining discourses on the food sovereignty construction process in Catalonia. Using Q methodology we have explored visions held by individuals participating in the social movement for food sovereignty, identifying five discourses: activism, anti-purism, self-management, pedagogy, and pragmatism. Key strategies of transformation include (...) social mobilization, institutional negotiation, self-management, education to foster value change, and politics of the possible. The relevance assigned to ideological affinity explains different views on the subject of transformation, particularly regarding the involvement of the administration and the productive sector. As regards transformative strategies, discourses assign differing importance to the role of agency for effecting social transformation, which influences their assessment of individual actions as an effective means for social change. Forms of individualized and classic collective action currently coexist within the Catalan agri-food movement, but such diversity is not acknowledged as an effective alliance towards food sovereignty. Moreover, all discourses agree to a dual definition of food sovereignty, both as a process, that is, as democratization of the decision-making process in the agri-food sector, and as a result, that is, establishing an agri-food model alternative to the neo-liberal one. However, the discourses share an unclear view of democracy as decentralized collective decision-making that does not make explicit how this model should be implemented to achieve social control of the agri-food system. (shrink)

“A stubborn problem of Catalonian urban history” is how Stephen Bensch recently characterized the question of why Catalonia's first communal magistracies were created so late and lasted so briefly. While consulates appeared in Italian towns circa 1100 and in the Midi circa 1130, the first sure attestations to Catalonian consulates date to the 1180s. Charters recording the establishment of consulates exist for Cervera , Perpignan , and Lleida . Barcelona's consuls are first mentioned in 1183, but, since no consular (...) charter survives for Barcelona , the date and the circumstances of the consulate's creation there remain unknown. There was an attempt to establish a consulate at Vic between 1175 and 1185, probably at a date closer to the latter year than the former. As Philippe Wolff has pointed out, the lapse of approximately half a century between the arrival of the consulate in the Midi and in Catalonia cannot be attributed to earlier and more complete urbanization in the Midi. Commercial development proceeded more quickly at Barcelona than at Toulouse, yet the consulate appeared at Toulouse before Barcelona. André Gouron has argued influentially that the chronology of the spread of Roman law determined the chronology of the consulate's diffusion. (shrink)

In recent years the term ‘family language policy’ has begun to circulate in the international sociolinguistics literature (cf. Spolsky 2004, 2007, 2012, King et al. 2008; Caldas 2012; Schwartz & Verschik 2013)1. From a conceptual standpoint, however, the creation and/or use of this syntagma, applied directly to the language decisions taken by family members to speak to one another, can raise questions about whether one should apply what appears rather to be a framework that pertains to actions arising out of (...) institutionalisation, public debate, and formal decisions to a phenomenon produced ‘spontaneously’. ‘Language policy’, which is also commonly associated with the term ‘planning’, has traditionally evoked the study of actions taken by public authorities at the level of the institutional and social use of languages and of their process of decision-making, implementation and any effects on social language behaviours that may ensue. The expansion of this concept to the level of interpersonal uses in families, which corresponds to another sphere involving elements that are distinct from those of the political level or of a formally constituted organisation, can be misleading and conceal phenomena specific to this level of social reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPolitical actors use metaphor in their speeches in order to frame political issues [Charteris-Black, J.. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. If they succeed in imposing a particular frame, especially when there is no agreement on the definition of certain political issues, this can become the prevailing way for referring to that issue [Semino, E.. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. In this research, we argue that this was the case for the metaphor of (...) the JOURNEY in the Catalan political conflict during electoral periods. To that end we use Critical Metaphor Analysis [Charteris-Black, J.. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] to analyse televised campaign ads from the last three elections for the Parliament of Catalonia – from 2010, 2012, and 2015 – in order to identify how political actors’ use metaphors to talk about the Catalan political situation during these years and to verify if JOURNEY metaphor resulted into the dominant narrative. The results show that the political situation has been conceptualized in terms of a ‘process en route,’ although the narratives generated by the political actors that shaped that discourse differ. (shrink)

The concept of the Noosphere is of great importance when looking at the values underpinning the technocratic artifacts and technocracies (human physical technological objects and knowledge processes) by which Humans relate to the Geosphere through other human beings. In this sense, the Noosphere may inform geoethics as an environmental, social, and spiritual praxis and thinking aiming at ecological justice. The concept of the Noosphere represents the coexistence and coevolution of Humans and the Geosphere, overcoming the dichotomy between instrumental materialistic and (...) intrinsic ecocentric values but considering the meaning of a constitutive dimension. Thus, the Noosphere becomes a concept for reconnection with the human community, the natural world, and the Divine, and develops into an ecological mysticism that, in turn, unfolds in resistance in hope as a kind of spiritual activism. The theoretical framework is illustrated with the case study of the Terres de L’Ebre in Catalonia (Spain). (shrink)

Are fragile majorities capable of opening themselves to deep-rooted and new ethnic and cultural pluralism? What role does education play in this process? Based on ten years of comparative research, Fragile Majorities and Education is a nuanced study of ethnic dominance, linguistic integration of immigrants, and diversity in education. Ethnic relations are often depicted in an oversimplified framework where a clear dominant majority exercises power over various minorities. In many societies worldwide, however, this model does not hold true. In some (...) countries, two or more groups possess relatively equal power to control the state and impose their definitions of the nation, as is the case with Flemish speakers and French speakers in Belgium, and with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. In other instances, such as in Quebec or Catalonia, clearly identifiable majorities are nonetheless minorities at a larger nation-state level, which creates a situation of ambiguous ethnic dominance. Marie McAndrew analyzes and clarifies these complex situations through the lens of education as a means for both maintaining and transforming ethnic boundaries and identities. Deeply insightful and meticulously researched, Fragile Majorities and Education is a groundbreaking contribution to the field of ethnic studies. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter (...) to market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

Between 1939 and 1959, the regime led by General Franco pursued a policy of economic self-sufficiency. This policy inflicted great injury on Spanish science and industry, not least in Catalonia, and in its capital, Barcelona. In response, Catalan industry looked to a future made more promising by the advent of nuclear power. This paper describes the innovative role of an industrial body, the Official Chamber of Industry of Barcelona, in catalyzing one the first programmes of teaching and research in (...) nuclear engineering in Spain. (shrink)

Around 990, somewhere in Catalonia, a certain Julius was staying in the house of a certain Ramió. Unbeknownst to Ramió, Julius was stealing from him: mostly bread and wine, and perhaps other things as well. Eventually Ramió figured out what was going on, but instead of dragging Julius to the comital court, Ramió made a deal with him. As part of this deal, Ramió promised Julius not to involve the lawyers: neither he nor his descendants would get any count, (...) viscount, or advocate to prosecute the matter of the theft, under the heavy penalty of a pound of gold. How do we know about all this? Because Julius got Ramió to write up a document recording it: a scriptura securitate, which is currently preserved in the episcopal archive of Vic. This is the only such document that I have come across in Catalan sources, and it is absent from an influential tenth-century formula book from Catalonia. The scribe himself did not quite know how to handle the situation, as he began the document with the formula for a simple gift, as if Ramió were granting something tangible to Julius: “In nomine Domini. Ego Ramio donator …” Historians who do not work on Catalonia are no doubt tired of hearing those who do refer to the apparent mania for the written word in this society, but it is documents like this that lie behind such claims. If we may judge by the rarity of their names in contemporary documents from this region, Ramió and Julius are nobodies—a small-time landowner and a petty thief—but for some reason, in working out their dispute they decided that it was necessary to round up three witnesses and hire a scribe to put something down on parchment. (shrink)

Studies of food waste claim that its main causes are technological and logistical deficiencies in the first stages of the agri-food chain. The present article discusses this statement using a specific case as a starting point: the production of fruit in Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). Since the 1980s, fruit production in this region has undergone a process of innovation and development. However, the agents who participate in the sector claim that the wasted volume of edible foodstuffs is greater than in (...) previous times. This article argues that studies of food waste do not consider the power relations existing within the agri-food chain. When these relations are asymmetrical, technological innovation and logistics optimisation do not improve the efficiency of the system; rather, they help the hegemonic players to monopolise the commercial margin and transfer some of their running costs to the weaker agents. The ethnographic data for the study were obtained between 2017 and 2019 using qualitative research techniques. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter (...) to market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

The recent Catalanian crisis raises three issues, each of which is dealt with in a section of this intervention. First, the issue of a proper reconstruction of facts, which attributes the responsability to Spanish nationalism no less than Catalonian one. Second, the issue of a sociopolitical interpretation of Catalonian events, in a context charachterized by the difficulty of the various national establishments to handle the global challenges and the emergence of so-called populist movements. Third, the issue of a legal-constitutional way-out, (...) which could only consist of a federalist compromise. A very narrow way-out, however, entrusted more to the institutional fancy of jurists than to the agenzy of politicians. (shrink)

While the Catalan independence movement (henceforth, CIM) has received much academic attention, one key aspect remains theoretically and empirically understudied: what role did populism play in the...

Not much attention has been paid to gender in environmental management and decision-making. This article explores how a gender dimension can contribute to the environmental debate by means of a comparative study of three environmental grassroots organisations in the North of Catalonia. The study shows that gender is significant for distinguishing different priorities between women and men in local conflicts and in environmental interests in general. The analysis of unequal power relations between genders in grassroots organisations leads us to (...) discuss how women have fewer opportunities to influence the environmental debate and to advance their ideas. The concluding thoughts stress the need for developing a gender dimension in environmental management and decision-making, considering the opportunities that are presented by emerging governance practices, and particularly by participatory processes. (shrink)

After more than 25 years of development of Filosofia 3/18 project – Philosophy for Children- in Catalonia, the Superior Assessment Council (Consell Superior d’Avaluació) of the Ministry of Education of the Government of Catalonia (Departament d’Educació de la Generalitat de Catalunya) conducted an external evaluation in order to see the results of the application of this project after so many years. In this report, you will see the results.

Felipe Portales es un ensayista profundo y documentado. En su libro anterior, La democracia tutelada, denunció valientemente la tutela militar y reaccionaria de la llamada “Democracia de la Transición”, que ha sido posible por la conversión de los líderes antidictatoriales al modelo neoliberal imperante y la timidez de los gobiernos de la Concertación, respecto a las presiones de un ejército profundamente antidemocrático, dirigido por uno de los más corruptos dictadores de América Latina. En ..

The aim of this article is to analyse the issue of “weak separatism” in Latin America as well as to give an answer to the question why there are no significant separatist movements in this region. The authors provide the definitions of separatism and secessionism as well as an explanation of these phenomena. Moreover, they present an overview of historical and contemporary separatist movements in Latin America. Based on Horowitz’s theory of ethnic separatism, the authors attempt to analyse the separatist (...) movement “The South is My Country” in Brazil and compare it with separatism in Catalonia in Spain, where a referendum on independence from Spain was held in 2017, serving as an impetus for a similar referendum that took place in the South of Brazil. In spite of similar goals of these two separatist movements, the authors argue that there are significant differences in their nature, which are determined by the history and culture of the respective countries. (shrink)

Current historiography has considered eugenics to be an emanation from state structures or a movement which sought to appeal to the state in order to implement eugenic reform. This paper examines the limitations of that view and argues that it is necessary to expand our horizons to consider particularly working-class eugenics movements that were based on the dissemination of knowledge about sex and which did not aspire to positions of political power. The paper argues that anarchism, with its contradictory practice (...) afforded by the convulsive social situation of the Civil War in Spain, allows us to assess critically the parameters of the social action of eugenics, its many alliances, and its struggle for existence in changing political circumstances not of its own making. (shrink)

This article aims to illustrate the confusion within today’s secessionist movements regarding the liberal and the nationalist arguments for legitimising secession. To do so, the liberal theory of s...

“comprenderlo todo, no significa personarlo todo”(Peter Burke)Einstein dijo una vez con relación al destino que «el Universo no juega con nosotros a los dados». Con ello quería decir que simplemente el azar no existe, y que además se trataba de una de las más descabelladas ideas fabricadas por la mente humana. Karl G. Jung, un apasionado defensor de la Astrología, definió al destino como «aquello de nosotros mismos que no conocemos». Y es justamente esto lo que le tocaría vivir al (...) Coronel Mi.. (shrink)