Average,normal, and beautiful: representations of bodies in Brazilian biotypology (1930-1940)

Th present article deals with the visual culture present in the books and textbooks on biotypology in Brazil, in the 1930s and 1940s. It analyses the representations of bodies in images, all of which were employed to guide people on the reasoning and practices of bodily measurement and classification according to the main biotypology approaches. Images herein discussed expressed the following scientific modus operandi of biotypology in Brazil: anthropometry, biometry and the construction of an average body; categorisation of biotypes, physical culture and classic aesthetic; and the link between normality, beauty and moral conceptions applied to women’s body features. This analysis also seeks to shed light on some of the ways in which biotypology strayed from and was consistent with eugenic discourse in Brazil. The representation of bodies in Brazilian biotypology showed the efforts to construct normal and deviant bodies defined according to ideals of national and racial identity, perfection, symmetry, harmony, goodness, fairness, femininity and beauty.     

Intimate Encounters with the State in Post-War Luanda,Angola

Abstract

Since the end of the war in 2002, Luanda has become an iconic site of urban transformation in the context of a particularly entrenched oligarchic regime. In practice however, urban dwellers are often confronted with a ‘deregulated system’ that fails to advance a coherent developmental agenda. The paper narrates the trajectory of a family forcibly removed from the old city to the periphery. It shows how city-dwellers experience the control of the party-state through a series of encounters with authority across the city. Questioning the intentionality of a state that appears at the same time omnipotent and elusive, openly violent and subtly hegemonic, the paper reveals the fine mechanisms through which consent is fabricated in the intimacy of the family.     

Conceptualizing the Landscape of Decision Making for Complex Problem Solving

Complex problem resolution often involves the need for a pragmatic integration of knowledge from stakeholders with competing epistemic claims. The decision-making process regarding complex problem resolution is characterized by four basic sources of knowledge: disciplines, societies, organizations, and individuals. From the perspective of the public administration, we conceptualize the structure of the interactions between the disciplines and other sources of knowledge potentially relevant to the resolution of a public problem. To aid this exercise we examine a series of cases that we believe represent relevant aspects of complex problem resolution. We describe these basic interactions as collaborative, agnostic, or adversarial. This is a reorientation to the knowledge at play in the problem at hand. The study of public administration is well suited as a body of knowledge to address complex problems because it has a rich history of cooperation with other disciplines, practitioners, and stakeholders in the public.     

Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, efforts to encourage practices of citizenship and new citizens who will act in ways that support communities and the nation are promoted by government policies and networks of international organizations, civil society groups, and NGOs. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogy of citizenship that is common in these efforts and the role of ‘active citizenship’ within it. Relying on interviews with leaders of NGOs and activist groups and on participatory research with six organizations, we examine the ways in which different meanings and aspects of active citizenship are mobilized. Active citizenship is often dismissed depoliticizing citizenship and dampening dissent. The activists we interviewed and with whom we worked, however, challenge that critique. A central issue in our analysis are competing views as to whether active citizenship should be evaluated in terms of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘disruption.’ While some agents might incline toward effective and incremental change, many youth activists understand active citizenship as a tool that enables radical, disruptive acts capable of decolonizing South African society. Their use of active citizenship points to the need to avoid conflating citizenship with particular political goals and to not assume that active citizenship is necessarily and unequivocally enrolled in post-political consensus.     

Between Accommodation and Opportunism: Explaining the Growing Influence of Small Gulf States in the Middle East

Abstract

Smaller members of the Gulf Cooperation Council defied theoretical and practical expectations as they were able to enlarge their international influence during the years of the Arab Spring. They adopted markedly different foreign policy strategies, which can be seen as stances lying between accommodation and opportunism, depending on the extent to which they respected the security concerns of their geopolitical patron, Saudi Arabia. The mainstream schools of IR theory – neorealism, neoliberalism and constructivism – offer different explanations for these phenomena. Although none of the three schools can provide a completely exhaustive explanation, neoliberalism seems to offer the most comprehensive framework for analysis.     

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable.     

The Catch-up Strategy of Petrobrás through Cooperative R&D

This article seeks to reflect on the possibilities of cooperative R&D to constitute an opportunity for companies in developing countries to take part in the innovation concerning technological frontier. In order to show this thesis can be true, this article is based on the case study of Petrobrás, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, which has employed the resource of cooperative R&D to gain access to the new subsea boosting technology and to acquire a place in the vanguard of such technology. However, the catch-up occurs only when firms in developing countries actively take part in the innovation process and accomplish an efficient process of technological learning, which is reflected on the evolution of interactions with external partners. The experience of Petrobrás is analyzed emphasizing the technological learning process through the transformation in its agreements with external partners. We present three cases of subsea boosting technologies developed by Petrobrás together with a majority of foreign producers or institutes. The analysis of these experiences allows us to show that the learning process and the mastery of in-house processes were accompanied by a significant evolution in the agreements with external sources. Petrobrás passes on from the position of cosponsor to that of articulator of the innovation process in technological cooperation agreements. The article proposes an evolutionary sequence to analyze the company's learning process. The evolutionary trajectories are different in each case, but in all of them it was possible to prove the increasing commitment of Petrobrás to the innovation effort.     

Identité culturelle et ethnologie juridique (Les ``Carceleras' et le krausisme)

Materials in the field of Law & Literature are explored; in particular,the study of specific popular poetic forms found in the Andalusianfolklore of flamenco, such as prisiones songs (las tonás de carcelerasand coplas de presos). Various appropriate aspects of concern and interest of reformist doctrines and the Positivist school of criminallaw in 19th century Spain are related to criminal policy, the image ofthe penintenial system and criminal justice. Thus themes of legalethnology and legal criminal philosophy are connected. the author usesitems compiled by some krausists, who were influenced by evolutionarydoctrines, Darwinism and folklorist Positivism (Krausopositivism). Theseare characterised as ``Krausofloklorists', who, in turn, are sensibleto the crisis and necessary modernization of the States system ofsanctions and punishments. The article concludes by reflecting onproblems connected with identity and cultural and sociopoliticalethnicity of excluded and marginal groups.     

Artifacts Caused by Leaf-Cutting Ants of the Genus Atta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Postmortem Bite Injuries and the Tearing of Clothes

Ants are one of the first insects to find an exposed cadaver and can be present during all stages of decomposition. Although these organisms are not commonly used in postmortem interval estimates, they are to be taken into account on criminal investigations involving human corpses, since they can leave bite marks that can be mistaken for antemortem or perimortem injuries, which could be misleading when ascertaining the occurrence of abuse or physical altercation during a crime. A few studies report the action of ants on human cadavers and even though leaf-cutting ants of the genus Atta are frequently encountered in succession studies that use animal carcasses, there are no records of these fungus-growing species on human corpses. Atta is a genus restricted to the New World, ranging from northern Argentina to southern United States and acts as one of the most conspicuous neotropical herbivores. In this study, we report three cases of violent death that illustrate the impact of ants, especially those of the genus Atta, in a forensic setting. We compare the patterns displayed by postmortem bite injuries caused by leaf-cutter ants and other common species with less robust mandibles. We also present the capability of Atta ants to create artifacts by cutting victim’s clothes in a crime scene, contributing to the knowledge of ant-mediated confounding factors in crime scene investigation.