En el presente ensayo se analizan algunos aspectos importantes de la interpretación elaborada por Henri Bergson acerca de “la risa” y el fenómeno de lo cómico en relación, principalmente, a lo social. Este aspecto, crucial a nuestro juicio, es lo que nos permite pensar dicho fenómeno más allá de la pura frontera estética, hacia los linderos siempre difíciles del ethos. Tomando en cuenta también la relación entre esta propuesta y otros aspectos del llamado “bergsonismo”, en lo que sigue afirmamos y (...) defendemos el potencial correctivo y ético de la risa dentro de la generalidad de su filosofía. (shrink)

Children and youth are typically positioned as passive subjects in learning, and when talking about working class children in particular, the common belief is that attendance at school institutions will translate into social displacement; that is, that children and young people from this economic segment who invest in the study will be able rise economically. It is in this context that recent public policies aimed at maintaining and extending the presence of children and young people in educational institutions can be (...) understood. Some of these policies aim to guarantee access by blacks and the poor to higher education, from which they have been historically excluded. This paper reports on a qualitative study that addresses the motivations that make young people from lower classes feel called to seek participation in higher education, and what are the subjective consequences of this movement. The study focused on 23 university students, beneficiaries of the Quota Law or the University for All Program, from two recognized quality higher education institutions located in Rio de Janeiro. The results demonstrate that the support of family and peers, a passion for studying per se, identification with the university as a life path, and the expectation of upward social mobility were factors that contributed to motivating young people toward higher education. As far as the university is concerned, we found that it delivers contradictory messages to young people from the lower classes. For one, entering an institution historically destined for another social class can make young people feel that they don’t belong there, which promotes uncertainties about the future. Faced with these challenges, poor young people are driven to “bet on themselves” as a way of overcoming the hardships of the present. However, it was also observed that many of these young people want to use their knowledge and university status to bring about changes in reality. It is concluded that the university in the neoliberal context can reinforce a model of individualistic subjectivation, but that, on the other hand, it can also operate to open lines of escape from this model, in instrumentalizing the poor young person for action towards the other. (shrink)

This article aims to present four case studies of the different responses to governmental measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic by supreme and constitutional courts, especially in cases of jurisdictions that have been facing democratic erosion. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded immediate public policies and other political decisions from the branches of government. Executive authorities were the main actors in effecting constitutional public health norms. The expectation was that they will abide by the rule of law in fulfilling (...) their duties; that has not been the case under governments that promoted democratic erosion. The different contexts of the threats posed to the constitutional democracies led populist and illiberal leaders to opportunistically either try to—and then be contained by courts—or effectively consolidate the expansion of powers under the conditions of the pandemic. Concentrating on four jurisdictions (the USA, Hungary, El Salvador, and Brazil), the article demonstrates that courts can effectively work as bulwarks against waves of democratic erosion, especially in situations of stress, as it was the case in the global COVID-19 pandemic. This hypothesis is also proven by episodes in which courts did not sufficiently operate to curb illiberalism because they were already captured. The analyses enable classifying the court’s responses to the COVID-19 executive measures in a threefold pattern: deferential, restrictive, and of forced capitulation. (shrink)

Antônio de Castro Alves was born on 1 March 1847 on the Fazenda das Cabaceiras (Cabaceiras Farm) in the state of Bahia, and died in July 1871 in Salvador, the state capital. For this short twenty-four year span of his life he represented, as no one else in Brazil did, the myth of the Romantic poet and hero.His literary vocation became clear very early on. Coming from a well-to-do family, he studied law in Recife (the capital of Pernambuco), (...) Salvador and São Paulo. He fell in love with a Portuguese actress, Eugênia Câmara, ten years older than himself, and had the deep experience of a love affair with her that shocked the moral provincialism of contemporary Catholic monarchist Brazil. Like many writers of the period he wrote plays, and had great success with the drama Gonzaga, or the Minas Revolution, about the (abortive) attempt to free Brazil from the Portuguese yoke, which had been made in Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century. But it was in poetry – Espumas flutuantes (‘Floating Foam’, 1870) as well as the posthumous A cachoeira de Paulo Alfonso (‘Paulo Alfonso's Waterfall’, 1876) and Os escravos (‘The Slaves’, 1883) – that Castro Alves stood out on the country's literary scene. (shrink)

Antônio de Castro Alves was born on 1 March 1847 on the Fazenda das Cabaceiras (Cabaceiras Farm) in the state of Bahia, and died in July 1871 in Salvador, the state capital. For this short twenty-four year span of his life he represented, as no one else in Brazil did, the myth of the Romantic poet and hero.His literary vocation became clear very early on. Coming from a well-to-do family, he studied law in Recife (the capital of Pernambuco), (...) Salvador and São Paulo. He fell in love with a Portuguese actress, Eugênia Câmara, ten years older than himself, and had the deep experience of a love affair with her that shocked the moral provincialism of contemporary Catholic monarchist Brazil. Like many writers of the period he wrote plays, and had great success with the drama Gonzaga, or the Minas Revolution, about the (abortive) attempt to free Brazil from the Portuguese yoke, which had been made in Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century. But it was in poetry – Espumas flutuantes (‘Floating Foam’, 1870) as well as the posthumous A cachoeira de Paulo Alfonso (‘Paulo Alfonso's Waterfall’, 1876) and Os escravos (‘The Slaves’, 1883) – that Castro Alves stood out on the country's literary scene. (shrink)

Esta entrevista tem como escopo registrar algumas das experiências e saberes de uma das maiores sociólogas do Brasil, Mary Garcia Castro. Graduada em Ciências Sociais pela Universidade Federal da Bahia, mestre em Sociologia da Cultura pela mesma instituição. Também possui mestrado em Planejamento Urbano e Regional pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro e doutorado em Sociologia pela University of Florida. Ela tem um vasto currículo marcado por atuações e publicações nacionais e internacionais. Mary Castro foi professora e (...) pesquisadora da UFBA, além de pesquisadora associada da Universidade Estadual de Campinas e da Universidade Católica de Salvador. (shrink)

The empirical relationship between a firm’s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature. Despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue, the results are still mixed. We argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used. Instead, we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic (...) decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings. We show that, using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991 to 2005, how some of the results found in previous research change, and some are even reversed when endogeneity is properly taken into account. (shrink)

This paper takes the view that compensated donation and altruism are not incompatible. In particular, it holds that the arguments against giving compensation stand on weak rational grounds: the charge that compensation fosters “commodification” has neither been specific enough to account for different types of monetary transactions nor sufficiently grounded in reality to be rationally convincing; although altruism is commendable, organ donors should not be compelled to act purely on the basis of altruistic motivations, especially if there are good reasons (...) to believe that significantly more lives can be saved and enhanced if incentives are put in place, and offering compensation for organs does not necessarily lead to exploitation—on the contrary, it may be regarded as a necessity in efforts to minimise the level of exploitation that already exists in current organ procurement systems. (shrink)

This article develops a theory of border subjectivity that considers the cybernetic role of narrative structures and mediation in political advocacy aimed at dreamers and DACA recipients. "Cybersujetos” are border subjects who are racialized by cybernetic systems and media narratives, but can resist control by repurposing cultural technologies. In assessing the limitations of journalism, literature, and film as outlets for political advocacy, this article finds that remediated representations of undocumented youth that attempt to expand their political agency can further alienate (...) them. Outdated stereotypes in representation are substituted with a proliferation of diverse but still racialized figures meant to demarcate "exceptional" candidates for naturalization, thus failing to challenge the normative parameters of citizenship itself and the militarized position of the US on the global stage. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Neuroethics, the study of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying ethical decision-making, is a growing field of study. In this review, we identify and discuss four themes emerging from neuroethics research. First, ethical decision-making appears to be distinct from other types of decision-making processes. Second, ethical decision-making entails more than just conscious reasoning. Third, emotion plays a critical role in ethical decision-making, at least under certain circumstances. Lastly, normative approaches to morality have distinct, underlying neural mechanisms. On the basis of (...) these themes, we draw implications for research in business ethics and the practice of ethics training. (shrink)

I criticize the widely accepted “practical” interpretation of the universality test contained in Kant’s first formula of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals – the formula of the universal law of nature. I argue that this interpretation does not work for contradictions in conception because it wrongly takes contradictions in the will as the model for them and, as a consequence, cannot establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction. This interpretation also assumes (...) an understanding of universality that departs from Kant’s own and, cannot, for this reason, capture the kind of contradiction that he explicitly claims to establish. I provide an alternative interpretation, which I call revised logical interpretation, that allows us to account for contradictions in conception, including those examples that the practical interpretation cannot handle, as well as to establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction. (shrink)

Mediante la discusión de un artículo del musicólogo Carlos Villanueva, tomado como paradigma de un determinado tipo de discurso, problematizamos la noción de interpretación histórica para confrontar al historicismo sonoro no una lúcida crítica presentista sino un enfoque actualista capaz de contraponerse con solidez filosófica y artística a las prácticas museísticas del historicismo musicológico típicamente basado en una pretensión de objetivismo sonoro supuestamente respaldada por las disciplinas historiográficas. Esta expansión hermenéuticamente actualista, tanto de la noción de autenticidad como de fidelidad (...) a la intención del compositor, fundamentaría prácticas interpretativas que acercasen mejor el repertorio histórico al oyente actual sin el lastre del canon estético típicamente imperante en las salas de concierto. Porque, ¿y si mediante un enfoque actualizador novedoso la labor interpretativa del repertorio histórico musical lograse comunicar mejor a la idiosincrasia social actual las grandes obras del pasado sin renunciar a un rigor de adecuación estilística ni traicionar, o incluso preservando mejor aún, la intención del compositor? (shrink)

What is the relationship between Thailand’s human rights crisis during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s leadership and the USA-led post-9/11 war on terror? Why did the human rights situation dramatically deteriorate after the Thaksin regime publicly supported the Bush administration’s war on terror and consequently received US counterterror assistance? This article offers two conceptual arguments that jointly demonstrate a constitutive theoretical explanation, which shows that counterterror and militaristic transnational and national discursive structures enabled the strategy of state repression in Thailand under (...) Thaksin. The first concept refers to strategic localization, which refers to how the Bush administration’s global war on terror—and its consequent overarching emphasis on military security—provided an opportunity for the Thaksin administration to strategically localize the global threat of terrorism in ways that could seem relevant to the local Thai context. The second concept pertains to resource mobilization, which shows how converging US and Thai discourses on military security facilitated Thaksin’s strategy of increased state repression that led to the proliferation of state-led human rights abuses. This research article contributes to the human rights literature in two ways: by highlighting how foreign aid programs and its constitutive political discourses shape recipient countries’ domestic human rights situation and by tracing the macro-political factors that lead to the eventual democratic decay of contemporary Thailand. (shrink)

Ciencias sociales : saberes coloniales y eurocéntricos / Edgardo Lander / - Europa modernidad y eurocentrismo / Enrique Dussel / - La colonialidad a lo largo y a lo ancho : el hemisferio occidental en el horizonte colonial de la modernidad / Walter D. Mignolo / - Naturaleza del poscolonialismo : del eurocentrismo al globocentrismo / Fernando Coronil / - El lugar de la naturaleza y la naturaleza del lugar : ¿globalización o postdesarrollo? / Arturo Escobar / - Ciencias sociales, (...) violencia epistémica y el problema de la invención del otro / Santiago Castro-Gómez / - Superar la exclusión, conquistar la equidad : reformas, políticas y capacidades en el ámbito social / Alejandro Moreno / - Abrir, impensar, y redimesionar las ciencias sociales en América Latina y el Caribe. ¿Es posible una ciencia social no eurocéntrica en nuestra región? / Francisco López Segrera / - Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina / Aníbal Quijano. (shrink)

El presente texto busca reflexionar en torno al mundo de las prácticas del cuerpo y su vínculo con cierto tipo de culturas juveniles que poseen como forma de vida la alteración corporal, y donde en la actualidad se puede observar –en nuestro país– una explosión de la experimentación con el tatuaje y con el piercing, y de manera más incipiente –pero también significativa– con los implantes, las escarificaciones, los branding, las expansiones y la variante de las suspensiones humanas; práctica sobre (...) la cual el artículo profundiza intentando dar cuenta del contexto social y cultural donde surge la suspensión humana; los procesos de apropiación que experimenta esta práctica a partir de la irrupción de culturas juveniles en las sociedades contemporáneas; los significados y procedimientos asociados a este ritual; y los nexos entre política, estética y modificación corporal. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

We offer an ethical assessment of the market for data used to generate what are sometimes called “consumer scores” (i.e., numerical expressions that are used to describe or predict people’s dispositions and behavior), and we argue that the assessment has ethical implications on how the market for consumer scoring data should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market produces serious harms, either for participants (...) in the market, for third parties, or for society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates to whether participants understand the nature and significance of the exchanges they are making, if they can be guaranteed fair representation, or if there is differential need for the market’s good. We argue that consumer scoring data should be subject to the same sort of regulation as the older FICO credit scores. Although the movement in the 1990s that was aimed at regulating the FICO scores was not aimed at restraining a market per se, we argue that the reforms were underwritten by concerns about the same sorts of problems as those outlined by our heuristics. Therefore, consumer data should be subject to the same sort of regulation. (shrink)

La búsqueda de una educación ambiental basada en los principios de la sustentabilidad, está en el centro de la reflexión de la autora. El arte de educar implica, por parte de educadores y educandos, consiste en asumirse como seres sociales y complejos; inmersos en una realidad que exige un compromiso constante con el medioambiente. La libertad que podemos alcanzar en el mundo exterior -el cual habitamos en tanto cuerpos interrelacionados entre sí y respecto de su medio- tiene como requisito previo (...) el desarrollo de nuestra libertad interna. La propuesta implica una educación ambiental como proceso crítico de comunicación y reelaboración constante del conocimiento, donde se construyen realidades sobre la base de la paz y de un futuro compartido. (shrink)

Este artículo reflexiona sobre algunas facetas de la descalificación al pensamiento libre, en paralelo a las inequidades de género. Se ejemplifica con la persecución a mujeres en distintas épocas a las que el poder destruyó, de un modo análogo a como la codicia del poder destruye la naturaleza. Realza el artículo la existencia de una diversidad de saberes, para los que se requieren puertas abiertas, superando los cerrojos excluyentes, cruzando los muros de la inequidad de género, de las injusticias sociales (...) y de los atropellos por razones étnicas y otras, y las actitudes destructoras de la naturaleza y de las culturas. (shrink)

In this study we examine (1) how a manager’s risk behavior is influenced by developing success (or failure) as an impending settling up deadline to report performance approaches, (2) how willingness to provide transparent accountability is negatively affected by perceived risk and eroding trust, and (3) how others interpret and respond to reduced transparency. As perceptions of high levels of risks suggest a lack of environmental control of a firm’s destiny in contemporary settings, we adopt a historical approach to examine (...) these issues. In this respect we draw on primary sources found in library archives in Spain and Argentina. Our focal case refers to the contract signed and executed between the South Sea Company and Captain José de Salinas (1731–1735) to walk 408 Negroes from Buenos Aires to Potosí and sell them en route or at destination. Drawing on this evidence, we examine how bring about unethical conduct featured by increasingly risky business practices, and how eroding trust conditions lead to only summary record-keeping and delayed reporting. In turn, diminished accountability further undermined trust. Our findings have implications for further research in this area as well as for contemporary cases of accounting failures. (shrink)

A proposal to allow prisoners to save their lives or to be eligible for commutation of sentence by donating kidneys for transplantation has been a subject of controversy in the Philippines. Notwithstanding the vulnerabilities associated with imprisonment, there are good reasons for allowing organ donations by prisoners. Under certain conditions, such donations can be very beneficial not only to the recipients but to the prisoners themselves. While protection needs to be given to avoid coercion and exploitation, overprotection has to be (...) avoided. The prohibition on the involvement of prisoners in organ transplantation constitutes unjustified overprotection. Under certain conditions, prisoners can make genuinely independent decisions. When it can be reasonably ascertained that they are able to decide freely, society should recognise an obligation to help them implement their decisions, such as when they intend to donate an organ as a way of asserting their religious faith and performing a sacrifice in atonement for their sins. (shrink)

This book is about what Mark Rothko and Romy Castro think about painting. The bottom line placed here is: what is matter for a painter? What they want to communicate with their art? And how they do it? This book seeks to uncover some of the secrets that are in minds painters. In the backgrond, waht unites, apparently, two such different artists is the way they establish intimacy with matter, even that a concept of matter or intimacy may assume (...) and be used in different interpretations. (shrink)

Friends and foes of liberal neutrality assume that neutrality presupposes pluralism. On this view, the state should be neutral among the many permissible conceptions of the individual good that citizens affirm. I argue that neutrality need not be construed as a response to pluralism. I focus on the case of specifically religious neutrality and argue that it can be an appropriate political response to what I call “the fact of religious hegemony,” which is a social scenario in which a particular (...) religion is unanimously recognized as dominant. Religious neutrality, in this kind of context, requires the state to avoid all religious words and symbols that can be taken as an expression of endorsement or criticism of religion. I take this conception of religious neutrality from both political history and current political practice and discourse. Neutrality was originally conceived of as a proper political response in contexts of religious hegemony both in France and in Mexico. Today, and despite the growth of religious pluralism, this conception continues to be a live political posture in the places where it first originated. I call it “neutrality as independence from religion” and argue that it differs from liberal neutrality in crucial respects. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire (...) attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis. (shrink)