In recent years, the psychological causes and consequences of poverty have received renewed attention from scientists and policymakers. In this essay, we summarize new developments in this literature. First, we discuss advances in our understanding of the relationship between income and psychological well-being. There is a robust positive relationship between the two, both within and across countries, and in correlational and causal analyses. Second, we summarize recent work on the impact of “scarcity” and stress on economic preferences and decision-making. Our (...) view of this literature is that the evidence is relatively weak. Third, we summarize evidence on the impact of psychological interventions on economic outcomes. Light-touch psychological interventions, such as videos that aim to raise aspirations, have shown some promise in encouraging investment and improving economic well-being. Similarly, psychotherapy and pharmacological mental health treatments have positive effects on economic outcomes. Relative to the effects of cash transfers, these impacts are small in absolute terms and large in per-dollar terms. We conclude by discussing whether a psychological poverty trap is plausible. (shrink)

Did affluence lead to psychological changes such as reduced discounting, and did these changes facilitate the innovation associated with the Industrial Revolution? I argue that claims of this sort are best made when they can be supported by causal evidence and good psychological measurement. When we have neither identifying variation nor adequate measures, the toolbox of psychologists is not useful.

The intertwining of landscape and face belongs to human spatial epistemology: as suggested by Matteo Meschiari, primitive humans used to orientate themselves in landscape through recognition of facial patterns. By reflecting upon Marlen Haushofer’s novel The Wall (Die Wand), the article aims to question the semantic of the “face of the landscape” in the wake of an imagined nuclear apocalypse that leaves behind a cat, a cow, a dog, a woman and a wall. The wall transcends the boundaries between (...) human and other-than-human: in terms of Roberto Marchesini, it creates a somato-landscape – a hybridization of inner and outer landscapes typical of post-human awareness. Finally, such a landscape culminates in the dismissal of the pre-apocalyptic culture of the face: faces no longer function as a means of recognition. (shrink)

The idea of Mitteleuropa began to gain momentum in the German geopolitical science of the beginning of the twentieth century. German geopolitics, which became famous through the works of Karl Haushofer, had set out a geographical and political notion of Mitteleuropa that supported a political project based on German expansion. As such, Mitteleuropa developed as both a political and scientific concept, a project and a `reality'. With an analysis of the core elements defining the term Mitteleuropa one can begin (...) to appreciate the characteristics that differentiate it from other geographical concepts, as well as the features which some conservative authors have promoted following the geopolitical scientists. As a `geopolitical idea', Mitteleuropa can be shown to designate a way of understanding politics, nature and culture, or more specifically, their relationship. (shrink)

Ratzel's Time in Munich . When zoologist Friedrich Ratzel came to Munich in 1875, he switched from earning money from travel journalism to going back to university studies analysing the observations of his last trip to North and Middle America. He loved the comfortable way of life of the Bavarian town with its beergardens and inns, where everybody sat together regardless of social difference. Geologist Karl Zittel and ethnologist Moritz Wagner introduced him to the learned circles of the town. Especially (...) Wagner became his fatherly friend. Ratzel also made friends with his colleagues Max Haushofer and his brother Karl von Haushofer. At the end of the year Ratzel finished his studies with habilitation and became professor of geography at the Technical University of Munich. Besides his duty of teaching economic geography and general geography, he gave special lectures representing his actual interests and book projects like geography of high mountains, geography of polar regions, and ethnology. Besides his teaching, he began to investigate different problems in the Alps. Ratzel mostly engaged himself in the Geographical Society in Munich. A member since 1875, he influenced it very much in making it more scientific: he did so by introducing special talks and discussions only among members as well as invited papers concerning Bavarian geography in addition of reports and papers for the public. He also was involved in the Munich Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, where he served as second secretary for two years. Finally the paper describes the connection of Ratzel's social life and personal commitment with his publications between 1875 and 1886, before he left Munich to become head of the chair of geography at Leipzig. (shrink)

Este artigo trata de três assuntos: a) As origens alemãs da geopolítica (em particular, a teoria dos "Grandes Espaços" de Karl Haushofer, o geopolítico da cúpula nazista) e sua extensão na América do Sul, sobretudo na Argentina, no período das ditaduras européias, até o final da Se­gunda guerra mundial; b) Os planos geopolíticos da Argentina na América do Sul (com particular atenção à sua expansão no Brasil meridional) até o final da Segunda guerra mundial; c) A geopolítica e os (...) geopolíticos da ditadura militar brasileira e a "reabilitação" da geopolítica depois dos anos setenta-oitenta. (shrink)