Historical Configurations Research Articles

The analyst subject of delegation and the delegation of the analyst: obstacles and bridges towards the assumption of the patient

In this work we propose a reflection on the meaning of the concept of assumption within the analytical process, defined as the possibility, for the I-subject, to come to terms with his own historical configuration, to appropriate it, to go beyond the implementation of himself that occurs on the basis of consciousness and access the qualitative relationship with the organization that is his own through the consciousness of consciousness, going beyond the delegation that is the tendency of each I-subject and that unites patient and analyst as both I-subject. One wonders, even through the brief illustration of a clinical case, about the meaning and role of the assumption of self and patient by the analyst, within the therapeutic relationship, and how the analyst can promote the assumption of self by the patient through the assumption of self, paying constant attention to the games of delegation and mutual claims that inevitably arise during the analytical process.

Contribuições do pós-colonialismo para o currículo cultural da Educação Física

Percepções apressadas afirmam que os problemas do colonialismo foram dissolvidos, finalizados, e que agora vivemos numa época livre de qualquer conflito ou tensão. O pensamento pós-colonial acena o contrário. Persiste um nítido reconhecimento que forças de dominação apenas se ressignificaram, marcando a passagem de uma configuração ou conjuntura histórica de poder para outra, assim, problemas de dependência, subdesenvolvimento e marginalização, situações bem características do período colonial, persistem de maneira vigorosa na pós-colonialidade. Num esforço para descolonizar o currículo da Educação Física, um grupo de docentes deixou-se inspirar pelos argumentos pós-colonialistas e desenvolveu experiências pedagógicas em escolas públicas de Ensino Fundamental. Os documentos que os professores produziram como forma de registro da prática pedagógica foram submetidos ao confronto com o referencial pós-colonial de Homi Bhabha e da perspectiva cultural da Educação Física. Os resultados evidenciam uma prática político-pedagógica a favor de quem sofreu, e ainda sofre, com a mão pesada do poder imperial colonial.

Distribution of soil properties along forest-grassland interfaces: Influence of permanent environmental factors or land-use after-effects?

Soil properties vary spatially according to land use; both because land users have selected specific soil properties for specific land uses, and land uses modify the soil properties. However, permanent environment factors and land-use effects are unlikely to display the exact same spatial patterns. Study of the spatial and historical patterns of distribution of soil properties could help to separate between these two causes. In this aim, we studied 22 forest-grassland interfaces with controlled historical configurations in northeast France. In each land use (forest and grassland), three distances to the edge (edge, periphery and core) and two land-use histories (ancient and recent) were studied.Along forest-grassland interfaces, forests were usually located slightly upslope of grasslands, and mainly because this non-random topographic position the topsoil texture was significantly more silty in forests, and clayey in grasslands. After statistically controlling for the effects of topography and soil texture, we observed two main gradients of variation in soil properties according to the distance-to-edge (acidity in forest and nutrient content in grassland). In forest, pH and Ca dropped from the edges to the peripheries (15 m distance), while in grassland, C, N, P and Na sharply increased from the edges to the cores (25 m distance). These results demonstrate, through the edge effect, the strong influence of the land use on a part of soil properties. Furthermore, less than two centuries after grassland afforestation or deforestation, we observed that soil properties in recent forests and recent grasslands were respectively closer to their current land use than to their former land use. These results demonstrate a rapid change in soil properties after land-use change. However, recent forests and recent grasslands kept a legacy of soil texture from their former land use, respectively. Recent grasslands also kept a lower soil density, N and Na content compared to ancient grasslands.Hence, this study of forest-grassland interfaces show strong and short-scale relationships between land use and soil properties and suggest that they express both original choices of land users for specific soil properties and land-use after-effects. The non-random topographic position of the forest-grassland interfaces indicates a conscious choice of this positioning by the land users, for agronomic reasons. Beyond that, land use, through vegetation composition and management practices, also has a strong impact on soil properties. The fact that land-use changes affect most soil properties after only a few decades confirms the existence of land-use effects over time.

To be or not to be informational: Preverbal complements in Medieval French V2 configurations

It is widely assumed that Medieval French V2 constructions relate to an informational value (Labelle & Hirschbühler 2018 i.a.). This assumption is however rarely tested by quantitative studies, which tend to rely on heterogeneous textual material. The purpose of this paper is to document the informational value of preverbal complements that associate with (unambiguous) V2 configurations. I use a novel, homogeneous corpus of prose legal texts from the Normandy region over the period 1150–1475. Defining a decision tree, I determine the informational value of V2 complements, specifically whether they represent old information (explicit mentioned, anaphoric, accommodated or inferable) or new information. A categorical discourse-old value is evidenced for preverbal V2 complements for the period between 1150 and 1236. The loss of the categorical informational value precedes the decline of V2 as a productive configuration with the emergence of formulaic uses. The detailed documentation of the informational value of historical configurations, based on an explicit, replicable method applied to a homogeneous corpus, contributes to the understanding of the driving role of informational structure for syntactic change.

Collateral times

Today’s financial system essentially relies on the pledge of collateral. A closer look at this uniquely cross-disciplinary instrument not only reveals a remarkable absence in the modern disciplines but also a close relationship with money. This connection is brought into theoretical perspective by analysing the role of pledge in three historical configurations. In ancient Greece, symbola and horoi stones emerge as two distinct devices to secure contract that become entwined in seventeenth–eighteenth century pledge-theories of money as witness and object of exchange. Together these throw new light on the contemporary form of shadow money as a distinct marriage of security and safety.

Global Crisis and Restructuring: Theory, Analysis, and the Case of Greece

Τhis book examines the global restructuring since its appearance from the late 2000s to the present. It tries to describe and explore the fundamental dimensions of the phenomenon of the current crisis and repositioning of the global socioeconomic system by following an analytical perspective that exceeds a “conjunctural” perspective. It counter-proposes a view of examining the contemporary historical configurations of globalization dynamics in structural and evolutionary terms. Finally, it considers that a valid perception of the current global restructuring requires the simultaneous co-examination of adaptation, innovation, and change management of the partial socioeconomic organizations, sectors of economic activity, and overall socioeconomic systems, at all the “organically linked” levels of space: local, national, international, and global. [...] In conclusion, this book proposes a new perspective of understanding the global dynamics and moves towards a repositioned perception of the phenomenon of global crisis and restructuring in structural and evolutionary terms. Nowadays, according to this analytical proposition, “organic” and transversal innovations and the prerequisite change management mechanisms pose the central development question for the sustainable exit of the global crisis. Moreover, it seems that for socioeconomic systems in a structural crisis, such as the Greek system, “conjunctural” perspective to confront the crisis prevails with insufficient results. The structuration of economic policy in Greece until now reflects this methodological and interventional inefficiency in constructing anti-crisis paths. To rupture the vicious cycle of misunderstandings in economic policy formation and implementation and moving towards a new, virtuous cycle of viable and long-term development, an evolutionary and historical understanding seems a prerequisite not only for Greece but also for other socioeconomic systems at a similar level of development. Finally, this continuous reshaping process of the global environment requires from all the agents of action new adaptation mechanisms. The manner that local and national systems manage to achieve innovation and change management is critical and, therefore, policy initiatives such as the Local Development and Innovation Institutes that focus on fostering local innovation seem essential for constructing sustainable developmental trajectories.

Historical configuration of visual impairment and the implications for public health

Las personas con discapacidad, han sido objeto de diferentes miradas que dan cuenta de la manera como históricamente han sido significadas y ubicadas en la realidad social. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo hacer una reflexión con relación a la configuración del constructo de discapacidad visual al interior de los modelos teóricos sobre el tema y las implicaciones que han tenido en la manera como se interviene desde la salud pública. El modelo de la diversidad funcional, así como la interseccionalidad se constituyen en elementos clave que deben ser incluidos en la reflexión del quehacer en la salud pública alternativa, pues permiten hacer un ejercicio comprensivo de la realidad de las personas con diversidad funcional visual, y tener herramientas para superar las discriminaciones y establecer las condiciones para la garantía de sus derechos humanos, aspectos fundamentales desde la mirada política y técnica de la salud pública.

Base types selection of PSS based on a priori algorithm and knowledge‐based ANN

Manufacturers tend to bundle a product with its related services as a product service system (PSS), to create more values for customers and gain competitive advantages for themselves. Configuration design is the key process of PSS development. Configuring a PSS involves selecting and combining appropriate product and service components, to satisfy individual customer requirements. This study studies the mapping relationship between customer requirement attributes and PSS base types in PSS for CNC machine tools, which provides a great reference value for engineers in configuration design. Owing to the high complexity and non-linearity between customer requirement and product, an integrated intelligent learning method based on a priori algorithm and knowledge-based artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed in this study. First, the data of historical configuration instance data sets are processed and then a priori algorithm is used to extract the effective rules as domain knowledge. Domain knowledge is used to build the initial structure of ANN. Moreover, data sets are used to further optimize the network. The knowledge-based ANN is used to realize the mapping between customer requirement attributes and PSS base types. The proposed method is validated in the selection of the PSS base type for CNC machine tools.

The Bullet in the Brick: The Materiality of Conflict in Museum Objects

Tangible traces of conflict in visual artefacts can take viewers uncomfortably close to the realities of war—violence, destruction and fatalities. This article questions the evidential force of objects associated with conflict and their eventual display in exhibitions. Through a study of the display of a brick in which is embedded a bullet that is said to have passed through the body of Francis Sheehy Skeffington when he was executed by firing squad during the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, this article explores the historical configuration of the brick and analyses its public display in the National Museum of Ireland (NMI). By examining the actions carried out by the NMI in collecting and archiving the object and analysing the narrative strategies of its display, this article considers how the visual aspects of exhibition displays can perpetuate a particular version of historic events and accredits objects with assumed authenticity.

Relative preference-based product configurator design

Product configurators have been considered as a major enabling toolkit for product customization. Configurators interact with customers and transform customers’ specific requirements into a set of tangible product specifications. They serve as the bridge between customer needs and companies’ offering. Current product configurators often require customers to make choices based on the product design parameters. However, customers may not have enough expertise of the product which they are unfamiliar with. A semantic gap exists between customer requirements and product parameters. It increases the confusion and difficulty that customers encounter in configuration process. This paper attempts to improve the performance of product configurators by bridging the semantic gap between customer needs and detailed product design parameters. Based on historical configuration data, we build a ranking function which leverages on customers’ relative preferences towards attribute choices. Then a relative preferences-based product configurator will be developed to bridge the semantic gap by leveraging on the relationship network. When using the relative attribute-based configurator, customers don’t need to specify their desired attribute choices one by one. They just need to indicate the relative preferences towards a reference product variant and an updated product variant will be presented based on the ranking function. This shields customers from the potentially demanding and confusing configuration task.

Acaparamiento de territorios marinos y costeros: dos casos de estudio en el Caribe colombiano

Este artículo presenta los casos de dos comunidades de pescadores artesanales raizales y afrodescendientes en Providencia y Barú (Caribe colombiano), en relación con el acaparamiento de sus territorios colectivos marinos y costeros. Expone la configuración histórica de estos últimos, a través de los usos sociales tradicionales de los ecosistemas y analiza los cambios ocasionados por el desarrollo turístico, la especulación inmobiliaria y algunas iniciativas de conservación que, en el marco de la introducción de las lógicas del capitalismo neoliberal a estos territorios, han desembocado en su progresivo acaparamiento.

Circulating planning ideas from the metropole to the colonies: understanding South Africa's segregated cities through policy mobilities

In the early part of the twentieth century, South African cities were segregated in accordance with British city planning concepts that embodied the belief that social order can be manipulated through the urban form. This paper surveys the history of South African planning practices to understand the spread of segregation policies and practices. Whereas scholars tend to agree that the apartheid city (post−1948) is a more highly organized and structured version of the colonial city (pre−1910), the literature lacks consensus on the development of the segregated city (1910−1948) within South Africa. How did concepts of segregation circulate and why was it implemented with such consistency? Accordingly, this paper employs concepts of policy mobilities to trace historical configurations in South Africa to international influences. The focus on the circuits of knowledge explains how concepts and designs transplanted from elsewhere helped create the form of South African cities today. Understanding the movement of planning ideas through policy mobilities furthers geographical understandings of historical circulation processes, the role of the local actors, and policy mobilities failure. This history of learning also challenges the assumption that South African cities are unique and in so doing opens the doors for knowledge sharing between postcolonial cities.

Habitat Loss Challenges the Conservation of Endemic Plants in Mining-Targeted Brazilian Mountains

SummaryIronstone outcrop habitats harbour rare and endemic rupicolous plants. In southeast Brazil, they concentrate on mountaintops in the Iron Quadrangle (IQ), an intensively exploited iron ore reserve. To evaluate the current habitat availability of 32 plants endemic tocanga(ironstone outcrops) and to support priority conservation areas and actions, we compared their functional connectivity in the IQ before (1960s) and after (2014) massive habitat loss to opencast mining. The Integral Index of Connectivity and associated metrics of habitat availability were used to evaluate present and past connectivity at a threshold distance of 500 m. The overallcangahabitat loss up to 2014 was 50%. The historical configuration of 334 patches totalling 18 654 ha was already disconnected and the proportion of patches acting as relevant stepping stones was thus very low. Furthermore, in both the historical and current settings, the largest contribution to habitat availability came from ‘intrapatch connectivity’ (i.e., patch area), especially in the east sector. All the IQcangaendemics fall into the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Critically Endangered category and require protection. The recommended strategy for their conservation is to protect large, preferably well-preserved ironstone patches. This measure will require finding the middle ground between economic development and conservation of natural heritage.

‘Totemless Aliens’: The Historical Antecedents of the Anti-Malawian Discourse in Zimbabwe, 1920s–1979

Due to their state of unbelonging, many immigrants across Africa have, in times of turmoil, been stereotyped or constructed as unpatriotic outsiders, with adverse consequences on their welfare in foreign spaces. Such has been the case of migrant descendants (aliens) in Zimbabwe, who were victimised during the country’s agrarian reform and electoral processes in the new millennium. While literature on the discrimination of immigrants in post-2000 Zimbabwe is rich, there is little work on its historical roots. Therefore, using life histories, archival data and secondary literature, this article seeks to provide historical insights into the emergence and evolution of hostility in Zimbabwe towards African immigrants from the north from the 1920s to 1979. It historicises the antecedents of the anti-migrant sentiments, focusing mainly on people of Malawian ancestry in Zimbabwe who, because of various historical configurations and dynamics, became associated with the unpatriotic tag. Central to this characterisation was the immigrants’ alleged collusion with settler ‘domestic’ regimes, capital and power; their hegemonic influence over urban space, trade unionism and proto-nationalism during a period when they demographically dominated the Rhodesian African labour force; and their alleged disruption of local gender dynamics. All this became part of an anti-Malawian discourse that could be drawn upon in independent Zimbabwe to legitimise their economic and political exclusion.

Book Review: Diane Richardson, Sexuality and Citizenship

The book is a culmination of Diane Richardson’s numerous examinations over the years on sexuality and citizenship and it offers a critical analysis of the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ (p. 2). In seven chapters divided into two key sections, the book provides a persuasive and easy to read analysis on the sexual citizenship literature and how it has evolved over time, but also the limitations of sexual citizenship within the Euro-North American historical configuration (p. 49). The conceptual analysis offers a social, cultural, economic and political exposition on the concept of sexual citizenship and brings forward the complex linkages of undeviating issues relating to sexuality, gender and citizenship.

Commentary: Masculinity and the Racial State

In their 1991 monograph on Nazi Germany,The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann asked why it was “acceptable to use anthropological categories in the case of youth or women, and apparently unacceptable to employ them in the case of men?” The expansive historiography of Nazism, they complained, offered nothing “beyond an isolated venture into the realm of male fantasies, or a few studies of homosexuals.” The answer, in fact, had a lot more to do with scholarly motivation than acceptability. Put starkly, there was no intellectualfrissonin recovering the history of “men” as a social category in Nazi Germany. Influential asThe Racial Stateproved to be in driving the research agenda for historians of National Socialism, the authors’ ensuing chapter, “Men in the Third Reich,” merely confirmed as much. It presented a dry, empirical overview of Nazi racial and economic policies, excised of those specifically directed at women and children. The termsgender,masculine, ormasculinitydo not appear once in thirty-six dense pages of text. To be sure, this reflected the wider state of knowledge in the academy. Now, almost three decades later, historians can draw on a sociology of gender relations that was still in its infancy when Burleigh and Wippermann were writing. They study “men” to decode historical configurations of power. They no longer conceive of women, children, and men as discrete actor groups, but as protagonists in systems of gender relations. A sophisticated interdisciplinary literature has rendered men legible as gendered subjects, rather than as an unmarked norm. This scholarship stresses the plurality of masculine identities. It advises that a racial state, like all known states, will be a patriarchal institution, and that the gendering of oppressed ethnic minorities plays a key role in the construction of majority femininities and masculinities. By pondering the relationship between racial and social identities in Nazi Germany, Burleigh and Wippermann nevertheless raised questions with which historians continue to grapple. Each of the contributors to this special issue ofCentral European Historyfocuses productively on the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and power in the “racial state.”

Variaciones de Caracas: el espacio como imagen textual en Celeste Olalquiaga, Yolanda Pantin y Arturo Uslar Pietri

En este artículo se pretende analizar cómo los textos de los venezolanos Celeste Olalquiaga, Yolanda Pantin y Arturo Uslar Pietri, cada uno producido en diferentes etapas históricas del país, convienen la representación del espacio como una imagen textual. Esta representación del espacio como imagen textual retrata su contemporaneidad y da cabida a una serie de efectos que van desde la memoria y la configuración histórica de la ciudad, hasta la sugerencia de nuevos modos de ver y sentir en un espacio dado. Para dar respuesta a esta hipótesis se propone estudiar el corpus articulando aspectos teóricos sobre lo visible y lo enunciable (Jacques Rancière), y la idea de la generación de imágenes a partir de la textualidad del relato o el poema (Luz Horne). Se partirá de estas aproximaciones teóricas para argumentar que los textos analizados, valiéndose de una remediación del Realismo, convienen el espacio como una imagen que intenta tanto retratar lo contemporáneo como condensar en lo imaginario los afectos que induce un espacio determinado como la ciudad de Caracas.

Tendencias investigativas para pensar la relación entre las ciencias sociales escolares y la epistemología de las ciencias sociales en Colombia

El artículo presenta la revisión bibliográfica realizada como base para la problematización y el desarrollo de una tesis doctoral que indaga sobre de la configuración de las ciencias sociales escolares durante el siglo xx y su relación con las epistemologías de las ciencias sociales. Esta muestra avances sobre las tendencias teórico-metodológicas en el campo de conocimiento de la historia de la educación y de la epistemología de las ciencias sociales, que permiten estudiar de manera compleja la configuración histórica de una disciplina escolar: las ciencias sociales en relación con las llamadas “ciencias de referencia” y con las epistemologías que circularon, se apropiaron y resignificaron en el transcurso del siglo xx en Colombia. Además, evidencia una dispersión de temas frente a este objeto de estudio que fueron agrupados en tres tendencias o núcleos en este documento: historia de las disciplinas y de los saberes escolares, didáctica de las ciencias en relación con su estatus epistemológico y epistemología de las ciencias sociales.

Understanding the Creation and Radicalisation of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM)

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM) through the lens of social movement theory. By locating these movements in a larger historical and socio-political configuration, the paper documents the national and international political opportunities that fostered SIMI and IM's emergence and radicalisation, including the rise of Hindu extremism, socially institutionalised discrimination and international Islamist revival. Further, the paper investigates the emergence of a seemingly new collective identity and the resources it mobilised. Finally, it investigates the frames employed in justifying calls for violence by deconstructing and contextualising the groups’ Islamic cultural repertoires.

La fiebre del ámbar en Chiapas. La minería en una región agraria

En las últimas décadas, el ámbar chiapaneco fue ganando espacios en los mercados regional, nacional e internacional. Pero en 2012 su demanda aumentó significativamente, generándose una sobreexplotación de las minas. El auge duró hasta 2015, sin embargo las repercusiones socioambientales en el principal sitio de extracción, Simojovel de Allende, han sido notorias. En este trabajo se analizan las condiciones socioeconómicas que permitieron el apogeo del ámbar, así como el impacto que este suceso ha tenido en la dinámica social de la región de estudio, sobre todo entre los jóvenes, mayoritariamente de familias campesinas. El estudio considera las dimensiones temporal y espacial para analizar los procesos sociales de la región o el lugar, entendido éste como una configuración histórica producto de relaciones sociales de poder que trascienden sus límites físicos. Asimismo, la juventud se concibe como una categoría construida en procesos sociohistóricos particulares y no como un estado esencial.