Presentation of the study. Analysed issues. Relevance of the topic. The Legal regulation of gambling differs across Europe and the world. Some jurisdictions have liberal gambling regulation where operators are free to engage in the betting and gaming business, other jurisdictions enjoy a gambling monopoly. Those countries which have state gambling monopolies participate in gambling through state-owned enterprises or through private concession-based operators. The Scandinavian countries also have long standing gambling monopolies and all gambling revenues are returned back into society to finance state budgets or public projects. Having followed the consequent Nordic tradition during the interwar period, after the restoration of independence Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (with certain exceptions) chose a completely different gaming regulatory approach. These jurisdictions chose a fairly liberal and also unique gambling regulation. The Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian gambling regulators acknowledge that these countries can not be classified within any gambling legal regulatory system. Certain conceptual problems that are endemic in gaming legal regulation in Lithuania and Baltics were observed by the author while working as a legal practitioner. Since then, through becoming more and more involved in gambling legal regulation and through the observation of foreign law, the author began to think about what might constitute ideal gambling regulation guidelines, and began encouraging the students of Mykolas Romeris University to carry out investigations into ideal gambling legal regulation in their Master theses. In this way, the problem of the selection of the gambling regulatory regime most advantageous to the public came to be crystallised, later forming the axis of this thesis. Is there an ideal legal regulation for gambling at all and what form should this legal regulation take? These reasons led to a comparative legal study – in which the gambling regulatory features in Scandinavia and the Baltic states were compared. As the Scandinavian and Baltic states represent two major approaches to the regulation of the gaming market – a market monopoly (in Scandinavia) and a liberal, competition-based regulation (in Baltic states), the separate issue under investigation were the pros and cons of each of these regulatory approaches. It has to be noted that a gambling monopoly is not just a legal concept enabling the exclusive entity to organize and provide gambling services. The monopoly is also a socio-economic category, whose consequences to the market and the public can be measured. For this reason, the analysis in the thesis touched not only on the legal but also the socio-economic peculiarities of gambling regulation. State and society benefits were also under evaluation, as legally they have to offset an indisputably negative attribute of gambling – it's addictiveness. Thus, this dissertation assesses whether there is a legal basis to assert that the monopoly, based on Nordic gambling regulation traditions, is more proactive (or defective) than the free market based gambling regulations followed in the Baltic States, in terms of the legal, social and economic aspects of these two alternative gaming market regulation methods. The relevance of the study, in particular, is founded on the existing conceptual problems faced by the current Lithuanian legal regulation regarding games of chance. During the nine years of its gambling regulation practice, the Republic of Lithuania has been unable to develop an effective gambling regulatory model that could effectively combine public (society's and state's) and private (gambling operators') interests. The current situation is evidence of the fact that public interest in the gaming sector is not legally covered and protected. The current legislation neither foresees public protection against the harmful effects of gambling, nor regulates public self protection. There are no legal measures of protection in Lithuania that would allow for personal self exclusion from casinos and other gambling venues. The public interest of the government is not protected from the economic point of view. Gambling tax collection and distribution in Lithuania is not effective. Data from 2008 showed that Lithuania had the lowest aggregate gambling tax collection in the region. In contrast, the study showed that the gambling turnover in Lithuania was the largest among the Baltic countries. This shows that the gambling business does not face any real restrictions with regards to its operations. Lithuania lacks legal mechanisms to either regulate the working hours of gaming establishments, or their places of establishment. The dissertation tackles this problem by offering a concrete option - the establishment of a state gambling and lottery monopoly. Monopolistic state participation in the gambling business (the Scandinavian model) guarantees not only the state revenue collected in the form of taxes, it also makes it possible to claim for full gambling generated income (profit). The raising of state revenue is of perpetual relevance to every jurisdiction, especially in the presence of a global financial crisis. The financial difficulties currently met by the Baltic States add additional relevance to this dissertation. The relevance of the thesis is not only contingent on the solution offered to conceptual problems in the field of gambling and the increasing of public revenue. The thesis also evaluates the legitimacy of the monopoly. If sovereign jurisdictions are free to choose a gambling regulatory method, legal problems have occasion to arise when the particular method chosen does not correspond with international legal obligations. For example, article 43 of the Treaty on European Community regulates the freedom of establishment within the EC. Article 49 prohibits restrictions on the provision of services to another Member state of the Community. The infringement of the aforementioned articles is often addressed to states in which legal regulation of gambling is based on a state monopoly. The dissertation provides response to the question of whether gambling monopolies are legal. Due to the international nature of the topic of the dissertation, it is relevant not only in Lithuania, but also Latvia, Estonia and those other Scandinavian countries which are currently concerned with the dilemma of maintaining a monopoly or opening it. The last, but most important, elements which determine the permanent topicality of this paper are the legal aspects of gambling addiction prevention that are researched in the dissertation. In all Baltic States, the prevention of gambling addiction is not given adequate legal consideration. Scandinavian countries apply a number of different gambling addiction prevention measures. Public safety and public order are universal legal values towards which special attention must be paid during the process of forming gaming legal regulation. The paper reveals what legal stand is occupied by the Baltic States in comparison to those Scandinavian countries with monopoly based gambling regulation. The paper reveals how the legal basis of all three Baltic jurisdictions can be improved in the context of gambling addiction prevention. In this respect, the paper is also relevant. The objective and tasks of the study The dissertation is comprised of a comparative legal study, whose purpose is to compare monopolistic legal regulation and the liberal legal regulation of gambling in a specific context - Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, as well as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian jurisdictions. This specific context – the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, has been chosen due to the fact that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia share a similar history, geopolitical situation, legal system and legal regulation of gambling, even if they are not identical. Latvia and Estonia have monopolized their lottery market, but the rest of the gaming market is liberal. The Scandinavian countries, which are all representatives of state owned gambling monopoly countries, have been chosen as they are close Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian neighbours, whilst their social protection system and social policy are perhaps the best in Europe. These are social welfare countries whose social welfare indices, according to the classification of the Nobel Prize winning economist Amarta Sen, are among the highest in the world. Therefore, the aim of the study was to reveal the effectiveness and appropriateness of gambling legal regulation in Lithuania and other Baltic states, by first comparing these countries to each other and then to Scandinavian countries which are famous for their social well-being. In order to meet the study objective the following tasks have been set: 1. To disclose the concept, nature, evolution and characteristics of the legal regulation of gambling. To disclose social costs management in the Nordic and Baltic countries. 2. To compare gaming regulatory features, including the practice of gaming regulatory institutions, liability against infringement of gambling legal regulation and gambling taxation in Nordic and Baltic countries. 3. To compare gaming safety measures applied in Nordic and Baltic countries The novelty of the study. The scientific value of the dissertation. This is the very first legal dissertation in Lithuania on gambling. The countries under investigation (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia) are also lacking any single comparative legal study on gaming regulatory issues. This is the first scientific work to analyze the pro et contra of market competition and monopoly-based gambling regulation. Only one study, which was performed by the Comparative Law Institute of Lausanne (Switzerland) under assignment of the European Commission: \"Study of Gambling Services in the Internal Market of the European Union. Final report.\" can be held as inter-related to the cur
La revalorización de la selección uruguaya de fútbol, luego de actuaciones a las que no estamos acostumbrados, es el proceso de revaluación más directo y cercano de los últimos días. Otro tipo de revaluación -mucho más distante que las pasajeras pasiones futboleras- debería estar en el radar de los observadores de las relaciones internacionales. Me refiero a los inicios de una dinámica de apreciación del renminbi, la moneda china. El sábado 19 de junio el Banco Popular de China –i.e. el Banco Central- emitió un comunicado señalando que incrementaría la flexibilidad de la moneda. En la práctica, se volvería al modelo aplicado de 2005 a 2008 (período en que la moneda se revaluó en más de 20 por ciento), donde el renminbi se administraba en base a una canasta de monedas –modificando la mecánica de los últimos dos años, en la que se tenía en cuenta solamente el valor del dólar. Dos incentivos sobrevuelan la decisión de apreciar la moneda. En primer lugar, apaciguar la presión externa. La comunidad internacional, particularmente Estados Unidos y Europa, han acusado a China de mantener la moneda artificialmente devaluada (entre un 20 y un 40 por ciento, según la metodología utilizada). En el debate económico estadounidense el valor del renminbi y sus consecuencias sobre Estados Unidos se han posicionado como el foco de atención más relevante de los últimos meses. Reconocidos generadores de opiniónargumentan que la depreciación administrada, y el consecuente déficit de balanza de pagos que generaría entre Estados Unidos y China, es el principal obstáculo hacia la recuperación de la economía. Estados Unidos –y buena parte del resto de los países con voz en el ámbito internacional- le han hecho saber a China su descontento.El segundo incentivo deriva de intereses domésticos. Una mayor flexibilidad en el tipo de cambio debería actuar como herramienta de control inflacionario. Así como generador de una progresiva reducción de la sobre-dependencia en el crecimiento basado en las exportaciones, mientras que se promueve el consumo doméstico.A primera vista, el anuncio de una nueva etapa de revaluación debe ser acogido positivamente. En términos económicos podría ayudar a estabilizar el magullado sistema económico mundial. En cuanto a lo político, la revaluación es un paso importante hacia la generación de dinámicas de cooperación con Estados Unidos -bastante golpeadas a partir de noviembre de 2009- y el resto del sistema internacional.Esto es lo básico que se puede decir de una noticia que está todavía muy fresca. Cuando se profundiza el análisis, sin embargo, una serie de asuntos necesitan ser seguidos bien de cerca en el corto y mediano plazo:La velocidad y el tamaño real de la revaluación. El comunicado del sábado da pocos detalles sobre el proceso de apreciación. Para generar verdaderos efectos sobre la economía internacional el aumento en el valor del renminbi tiene que ser sustantivo. Beijing ya anunció que el movimiento va a ser muy gradual; teniendo en cuenta la cautela que caracteriza a los chinos, esto es lo que debería esperarse. Especialmente cuando en los últimos tiempos el renminbi ya se ha apreciado en un 15 por ciento sobre el Euro -siendo la UE su mayor mercado de exportación. Las expectativas generadas a escala global a partir del sábado pueden darse contra una pared si se termina en una revaluación muy lenta o muy insignificante. Los objetivos internacionales de corto plazo. Vinculado a los motivos reales de los tomadores de decisión en Beijing, vale la pena poner atención al período post-G20. El comunicado del Banco Central Chino aparece días antes del comienzo de la cumbre del G-20, que prometía terminar en un cúmulo de diatribas acusando a Beijing de un explícito manoseo de su política cambiaria. El aparente giro en la política económica china desvió el centro de atención. El núcleo de la reunión seguramente virará hacia los problemas económicos europeos, y otros asuntos que China está siempre deleitada de poder discutir y dar largas y tediosas lecciones. En una hábil maniobra, Beijing obvió aparecer como el mal alumno de la clase. Los líderes chinos ya han flirteado con este tipo de estrategias de distracción; por lo que no se debería descartar que se esté ante una táctica retórica y no mucho más. Como señala Eswar Prasad, profesor de la Universidad de Cornell: "They have taken the issue right off the table for the G20 and can refocus attention on what they see as the real problem for global financial stability - rising government debt in the advanced economies, especially the US." El rol del nacionalismo en China. Las dinámicas entre el Partido Comunista y la sociedad china, ante la posibilidad de una apreciación de la moneda, es el patrón más relevante para observar a largo plazo. La posición cuasi-consensual entre los sinólogos serios es que el nacionalismo y el éxito económico son los pilares más importantes de la política doméstica en China. En la China de hoy, los líderes políticos son cada vez más profesionales; es decir: el liderazgo divino à la Mao y Deng es una cosa del pasado. El Partido debe tener una visibilidad y legitimidad que se base cada vez más en responder a las demandas de la población. Esta lectura de la política china señalaba que cualquier revaluación del renminbi no era viable mientras fuese, en el imaginario chino, el resultado de la presión extranjera –particularmente la estadounidense. Los costos de las reacciones nacionalistas eran muy altos (aunque vale señalar que en ocasiones el Partido ha arengado el nacionalismo como herramienta política, y la real interacción entre gobierno y nacionalismo popular es aún borrosa). Estados Unidos pareció entender esto y, por ejemplo, postergó hasta nuevo aviso el envío de un reporte al Congreso que aclarara si Beijing estaba manejando arbitrariamente el valor de su moneda. Aún así, el sábado mismo, la web se pobló de posts como el siguiente: "I didn't imagine I would see the day when China would submit to America and agree to appreciation of the renminbi." Al día siguiente, el gobierno chino emitió un comunicado –sólo en idioma chino, a diferencia del anterior que había sido en inglés y chino- donde se aseguraba que la decisión era el resultado de intereses puramente domésticos y que iba a ser gradual y cautelosa. El tenor que adquiera el nacionalismo ante la nueva política económica, la influencia que tenga sobre la toma de decisiones gubernamentales, y el margen de maniobra del gobierno ante tal fenómeno, va a representar un buen estudio de caso para refinar las hipótesis sobre el rol del nacionalismo y la opinión pública.Excusando la incertidumbre que impone la inmediatez del análisis, convengamos, por el momento, que los indicios de revaluación de la corriente semana –y no me refiero sólo a la calidad de juego de la selección uruguaya- son buenas noticias. De llevarse adelante una apreciación real del renminbi el sistema económico se va a ver beneficiado. Tanto por el re-equilibrio de las balanzas de pagos,(1) así como por el apaciguamiento de los coros que piden medidas proteccionistas ante la política cambiaria china y arriesgan el inicio de una reacción en cadena. Por otra parte, de progresar la apreciación, China habría actuado con cierta "responsabilidad sistémica," conducta que el sistema internacional le ha venido demandando. Dos asuntos quedan, no obstante, del lado preocupante de la cuestión. Cómo va a reaccionar Beijing en el ámbito internacional luego de esta suerte de concesión es el primero. La posición no cooperativa de Beijing en los últimos meses había tensionado el sistema, reflejando un "power-role gap" en la toma de decisiones. Peligroso sería que Beijing utilice la excusa de la apreciación como dispositivo ilimitado para pedir concesiones al orden, o simplemente para volver a una postura no cooperativa. El toma y daca en la política internacional debe ser dinámico. La segunda cuestión es el problema de las expectativas incumplidas en Occidente, y las consecuencias políticas que esto podría acarrear. Las frustraciones pueden resultar tanto de promesas no cumplidas desde Beijing, así como deanálisis económicos mal enfocados –e.g. si en realidad el problema de la economía estadounidense es estructural y nada tiene que ver con el déficit en la balanza de pagos. El tiempo aclarará algunas de estas cuestiones que hacen a la esencia del orden internacional contemporáneo y de los desafíos que un estado en ascenso le plantea.(1) Como señala un artículo de The New York Times: "C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicted that if the renminbi rose by 20 percent over the next two or three years, and if adjacent countries like Taiwan and Malaysia similarly let their currencies rise, the United States would lop $100 billion to $150 billion a year from its current account deficit and create up to one million American jobs." *Profesor Universidad ORT.Maestría en Estudios Internacionales, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Tesista)
Las metodologías de evaluación de pavimentos, son utilizadas como una herramienta técnica, objetiva, sistemática y reproducible, para evaluar la eficiencia y eficacia de las obras de rehabilitación y mejoramiento vial, empleadas en todo el mundo para recopilar y analizar información sobre el estado de las carreteras. Evaluaciones que incluyen diagnósticos, tanto de la capacidad estructural de las vías, como de su capacidad funcional en términos de comodidad y costo de operación de los vehículos, así como elementos de diseño geométrico, de seguridad vial y de su condición superficial lo cual permite tener un enfoque integral de los diversos problemas asociados a la infraestructura vial. Los resultados obtenidos se constituyen en guía para que quienes administran el patrimonio vial puedan técnicamente determinar las políticas y estrategias de intervención, tanto a nivel de red vial, como a nivel de proyectos específicos y lograr así que estas prácticas conlleven a inversiones eficientes y eficaces de los limitados fondos públicos. Existen varias metodologías o manuales para la evaluación de las condiciones de los pavimentos asfálticos, que difieren en definiciones y sistemas de calificación; para el desarrollo del presente trabajo se adelantaron actividades de campo relacionadas con la aplicación de diferentes formas de calificación de estado de los pavimentos asfálticos, comparando los resultados de la evaluación superficial del sector elegido, mediante las metodologías VIZIR, PCR y PCI. El Instituto Nacional de Vías – INVÍAS encargado de administrar la red vial nacional, adoptó en el 2002 la metodología francesa VIZIR para el inventario de daños de las calzadas con pavimento asfáltico de la red a su cargo, igualmente con base en esta metodología estructuró los contratos de mantenimiento integral; adicionalmente el Instituto Nacional de Concesiones INCO en los estudios contratados para establecer los anexos técnicos del proyecto de concesión Ruta del Sol realizados por la firma Euroestudios para la IFC International Finance Corporation utilizó la metodología antes mencionada. El Ministerio de Transporte - Plan Vial Regional en el 2008 desarrolló un proyecto para el levantamiento de inventarios viales en la red secundaria y parte de la terciaria de los departamentos; en los pliegos de condiciones estableció que para determinar el estado de superficie de las vías que se encuentren con pavimento asfáltico o concreto, debería calcular el índice de condición de pavimento (PCI) siguiendo las pautas dadas en el documento "PAVEMENT CONDITION INDEX (PCI) PARA PAVIMENTOS ASFÁLTICOS Y DE CONCRETO EN CARRETERAS", preparado por el ING. ESP. LUIS RICARDO VÁSQUEZ VARELA. De lo anterior surge la pregunta: ¿Cuál es la metodología más adecuada para evaluar el estado de los daños y los índices de condición en pavimentos asfálticos en las carreteras de Colombia? Los resultados obtenidos por las entidades territoriales, no se han comparado con la aplicación de otras metodologías (PCR, PCI), convirtiéndose en un incentivo para el presente trabajo, a fin de proponer mediante el mismo para los entes gubernamentales, la metodología más cercana a las necesidades de la red vial a cargo a partir de las evaluaciones y recomendaciones que reflejen realmente las condiciones de estado de los daños e índices de condición en pavimentos asfálticos. Situación que permitirá disponer de una herramienta útil que estandarice las actividades de inspección de los deterioros de los pavimentos asfálticos, a la vez contar con instructivos con los cuales se puedan llevar a cabo, de una manera práctica y sencilla, la caracterización y la evaluación de los deterioros, obteniendo la información necesaria para el diseño de las intervenciones requeridas por la vía considerando que: 1. Proveer información cualitativa para determinar las posibles causas de deterioros en los pavimentos asfálticos y el desarrollo de estrategias apropiadas para reparar los defectos y prevenir su recurrencia. 2. Evalúen la progresión de los daños, las consecuencias de postergar su intervención y el costo de las diferentes estrategias de rehabilitación. 3. Permitan zonificar tramos uniformes para el diseño. Para la elaboración de este documento se han tenido en cuenta diversas experiencias obtenidas en la práctica local, así como de agencias reconocidas en otros países como Méjico y Costa Rica, a partir de las cuales se determina que la valoración visual de los deterioros del pavimento no se constituye en un criterio suficiente para definir las acciones que requiere una calzada para su rehabilitación. De lo anterior, un estudio de estos deberá complementarse con la siguiente información: •Análisis de los resultados del Índice de Rugosidad Internacional (IRI). •Valoración para cada uno de los sectores de estudio de la capacidad mecánica de la estructura de pavimento mediante análisis deflectométrico de subsectores representativos y la caracterización físico-mecánica de las capas granulares y de la subrasante, para cumplir tal fin, se evaluará la información tomada en campo, así como la obtenida en estudios previos. ; Pavement evaluation methodologies are used as a technical, objective, systematic and reproducible tool to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of road rehabilitation and improvement works, used throughout the world to collect and analyze information on the state of the roads. roads. Evaluations that include diagnoses, both of the structural capacity of the roads, as well as of their functional capacity in terms of comfort and cost of operation of the vehicles, as well as elements of geometric design, road safety and their surface condition which allows to have a comprehensive approach to the various problems associated with road infrastructure. The results obtained constitute a guide so that those who administer the road assets can technically determine the intervention policies and strategies, both at the road network level, and at the level of specific projects and thus achieve that these practices lead to efficient and effective investments of limited public funds. There are several methodologies or manuals for the evaluation of the conditions of asphalt pavements, which differ in definitions and rating systems; For the development of this work, field activities related to the application of different forms of qualification of the condition of asphalt pavements were carried out, comparing the results of the surface evaluation of the chosen sector, using the VIZIR, PCR and PCI methodologies. The Instituto Nacional de Vías - INVÍAS, in charge of managing the national road network, adopted in 2002 the French VIZIR methodology for the inventory of damage to the asphalt paved roads of the network under its charge, and based on this methodology it structured the contracts comprehensive maintenance; Additionally, the National Institute of Concessions INCO in the studies contracted to establish the technical annexes of the Ruta del Sol concession project carried out by the firm Euroestudios for the IFC International Finance Corporation used the aforementioned methodology. The Ministry of Transport - Regional Road Plan in 2008 developed a project for the survey of road inventories in the secondary network and part of the tertiary of the departments; In the specifications it established that to determine the surface condition of the roads that are with asphalt or concrete pavement, the pavement condition index (PCI) should be calculated following the guidelines given in the document "PAVEMENT CONDITION INDEX (PCI) FOR ASPHALTIC AND CONCRETE PAVEMENTS ON HIGHWAYS ", prepared by ING. ESP. LUIS RICARDO VÁSQUEZ VARELA. From the above, the question arises: What is the most appropriate methodology to evaluate the state of damage and condition indices in asphalt pavements on Colombian roads? The results obtained by the territorial entities have not been compared with the application of other methodologies (PCR, PCI), becoming an incentive for this work, in order to propose through it for government entities, the methodology closest to the needs of the road network in charge of the evaluations and recommendations that really reflect the condition of the damage and condition indices in asphalt pavements. Situation that will allow to have a useful tool that standardizes the activities of inspection of the deterioration of the asphalt pavements, at the same time having instructions with which the characterization and evaluation of deterioration, obtaining the necessary information for the design of the interventions required by the road considering that: 1. Provide qualitative information to determine the possible causes of deterioration in asphalt pavements and the development of appropriate strategies to repair defects and prevent their recurrence. 2. Evaluate the progression of the damage, the consequences of delaying your intervention, and the cost of the different rehabilitation strategies. 3. Allow uniform spans for the design to be zoned. For the preparation of this document, various experiences obtained in local practice have been taken into account, as well as from recognized agencies in other countries such as Mexico and Costa Rica, from which it is determined that the visual assessment of the deterioration of the pavement does not it constitutes a sufficient criterion to define the actions that a road requires for its rehabilitation. From the above, a study of these should be complemented with the following information: • Analysis of the results of the International Roughness Index (IRI). • Evaluation for each of the study sectors of the mechanical capacity of the pavement structure through deflectometric analysis of representative subsectors and the physical-mechanical characterization of the granular layers and the subgrade, to fulfill this purpose, the information will be evaluated taken in the field, as well as that obtained in previous studies. ; Magíster en Infraestructura Vial ; http://unidadinvestigacion.usta.edu.co ; Maestría
Wird Theater zum Film, wenn – wie bei Castorf, Hartmann, Pucher – auf der Bühne Videokameras und Projektionsflächen eingesetzt werden? Wird Film zum Theater, wenn – wie bei Lars von Triers Dogville – Konventionen und Ästhetiken von Theater übernommen werden? Wie lassen sich die Grenzgänge zwischen Theater und Stadtraumaktion bei Rimini Protokoll oder zwischen Theater und Politik bei Joseph Beuys und Christoph Schlingensief begrifflich fassen? Diesen Fragen stellt sich das Buch Theater im Kasten, das Andreas Kotte, Direktor am Institut für Theaterwissenschaft der Uni Bern im Chronos Verlag herausgegeben hat. Der Band umfasst fünf eigenständige Arbeiten sowie einen Anhang mit Interviews und einem exemplarischen Sequenzprotokoll. Jede einzelne der Arbeiten, als Lizentiatsarbeiten an der Uni Bern entstanden, besticht durch ausführliche und präzise Aufführungs- und Ereignisbeschreibungen, durch fundierte historische Kontextualisierungen und umfangreiche Materialdarstellungen. Theoretische Referenzen und Reflexionen hingegen sind, bestätigt Andreas Kotte im Vorwort, stark gekürzt worden. Zum einen, um Wiederholungen zwischen den sich überschneidenden Themen der Arbeiten zu vermeiden, vor allem aber, weil "die dichten Beschreibungen von Inszenierungen [.] als Bezugsgrössen stärker präsent [bleiben] als die bei jedem Paradigmenwechsel re-formulierten und dadurch scheinbar stets aktuellen Bewertungen" (S. 10). Die konservative – im Sinne von 'bewahrende' – Haltung von Kotte zeigt sich nicht nur im Verhältnis von 'Beschreibung' und 'Bewertung' (als ließen sich diese so einfach trennen), sondern auch in dem von 'Theater' und 'Medien'. "Den Mediengebrauch im Theater zu erforschen […] ist gerade dann unerlässlich, wenn man Theater nicht für ein Medium hält" (S. 7). Kotte möchte die Schnittstelle zwischen Theater und Medien als Reibungsfläche für verschiedene Theaterbegriffe nutzen, so fragt er: "Was passiert eigentlich, wenn szenische Vorgänge mediatisiert werden, wenn sich Theater in die Kästen verkriecht? Ins Telefon, in die Videokamera, […], in den Filmprojektor?" (S. 7) Für eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung freilich muss der Kasten des Filmprojektors verlassen und der Blick auf die Leinwand gerichtet werden. "Sehe ich einen Film oder bin ich schon im Theater?" lautet der kenntnis- und beispielreiche Beitrag von Sonja Eisl, die sich vielseitig am Genre 'Theaterfilm' abarbeitet. 'Theaterfilm' sieht Eisl als "Oberbegriff für Filme, die sich durch Aspekte von Theater oder Theatralität auszeichnen sowie für Filme, die sich theatraler Strategien bedienen oder diese thematisieren" (S. 35). Offen bleibt, warum es eines Genres 'Theaterfilm' überhaupt bedarf, worin dessen Chancen und Risiken liegen. Neben Filmen, die Schauspieler- und Theaterwelten als Sujet behandeln (All about Eve, To Be or Not to Be etc.) wird das Etikett auf Filme geklebt, die auf einer ursprünglich fürs Theater produzierten Dramenvorlage beruhen (Romeo and Juliet etc.) sowie auf Filme wie La vita è bella oder Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, denen Inszenierungs- und Stilmittel des Theaters zugeschrieben werden. Eisl verpasst die Gelegenheit, sich kritisch mit möglichen Grenzziehungen auseinander zu setzen, obgleich sich ihr erstes Beispiel, Lars von Triers Dogville, dafür durchaus geeignet hätte. Statt dessen arbeitet sie in ihrer Analyse sehr schön wesentliche Charakteristika des Filmes heraus und erläutert plausibel, wie und warum gerade der weitgehend realistisch-psychologische Schauspielstil innerhalb des theatral-stilisierten, anti-realistischen Raumes eine Umkehrung erfährt und als künstlich und befremdend erfahren wird. Als zweites Beispiel dient ihr Von Triers Idioterne. Eisl plädiert dafür, dass sich die Theaterwissenschaft des Theaterfilmes annehmen solle, weil "keine andere Wissenschaft über derart profunde Analyseinstrumentarien […] bezogen auf Theater und Theatralität verfügt" (S. 82). Die Definitionskriterien indes, die Eisl anführt (Fischer-Lichtes "Kopräsenz" und Kottes "szenische Vorgänge" und "Konsequenzverminderung") sind nicht unbedingt hilfreich für eine Analyse von Idioterne. Handelt es sich tatsächlich, nur weil junge Menschen so tun, als seien sie behindert, um einen Theaterfilm? Gilt gleiches für Filme über Heiratsschwindler und Geheimagenten? Wenn die Schwierigkeit, Theater zu definieren, auf ein unscharf bleibendes Genre 'Theaterfilm' ausgeweitet wird, ist wenig gewonnen. Viel jedoch, wenn – wie Eisl das immer wieder hervorragend gelingt – mit theaterwissenschaftlichem Instrumentarium Filmelemente analysiert werden, die sich theatraler Konventionen bedienen. Das Spiel mit audiovisuellen Medien auf der Bühne analysiert Silvie von Kaenel in ihrem Beitrag "Was vermag Video auf dem Theater? Stefan Pucher – Matthias Hartmann – Frank Castorf". Als Material dienen ihr die Inszenierungen Homo Faber (Zürich 2004), 1979 (Bochum 2003) und Der Meister und Margarita (Wien/Berlin 2002). Alle drei Inszenierungen werden präzise dokumentiert und anschaulich beschrieben. Von Homo Faber findet sich im Anhang beispielhaft ein Sequenzprotokoll, das die zweistündige Inszenierung in drei Beschreibungsebenen und 37 Sequenzen gliedert. Das Bemühen um 'objektiv-wissenschaftliche' Berichterstattung führt u. a. auch zu einer Tabelle zum Inszenierungsvergleich, in der die Anzahl der Videosequenzen ebenso vermerkt ist wie die prozentuale Videoeinsatzdauer oder die Dauer der jeweils längsten Videosequenzen. Dieser auf Zahlen vertrauenden Objektivierung steht die Subjektivität der "Rezeption durch die Tagespresse" gegenüber, die Von Kaenel in Bezug auf 1979 wie folgt kontrastiert: "Das Videospiel verdrängt das Schauspiel, stützt es wesentlich oder wächst mit ihm zu einem Gesamtkunstwerk zusammen. Video verdoppelt, vergrössert, verfremdet, konkurrenziert, kommentiert […]. Video geht den Figuren tiefer auf den Grund oder verstärkt die Distanz zwischen [zu?] ihnen." (S. 126 bzw. 154) Wie ist bei derart verschiedenen Wahr-Nehmungen ein Nachdenken über die Wirkungen von Video auf dem Theater möglich? Von Kaenel stellt systematisch dieselben Fragen an alle drei Inszenierungen. Dabei geht es ihr um die 'Einsatzformen von Video' und darum, 'Was Video erzählt'. "Wie gehen die Schauspieler mit Kamera und Leinwand um? Wie beeinflusst das Video die Wahrnehmung des Zuschauers? […] Wie wirken sich die Videosequenzen auf den Inhalt aus? Wie auf die Dramaturgie?" (S. 94). Während diese Fragen in klare und interessante Antworten münden, erscheinen weitere Fragestellungen eher problematisch: ob Videoeinsatz die "Performativität" der Aufführung begünstige und ob er ihre "Bildhaftigkeit" verstärke, kann nicht plausibel beantwortet werden, solange beide Begriffe schwammig bleiben. Auch die Hypothese, der beschriebene Videoeinsatz sei überwiegend "intermedial" (im Gegensatz zu "bloss multimedial") bleibt aufgrund fehlender Begriffsklärungen undifferenziert. Anhand des (leider ebenfalls unklaren) Begriffes der "Authentizität" formuliert Von Kaenel indes interessante Ambivalenzen: Einerseits werde Theater gerade aufgrund der Unvermitteltheit, der körperlichen Anwesenheit und der 'theatralen Feedback-Schleife' als authentisch erfahren (S. 138), andererseits erlaube erst die Videokamera den Blick auf intime Details und das Mikrophon ein privates Sprechen. Die Leinwand ermögliche "'Echtzeit, Gelassenheit, maximale gestische Privatheit' [und damit] 'Realmomente', wie sie allenfalls im Film bisweilen glückten" (S. 140).1 Meister von "Realmomenten" im Theater sind Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi und Daniel Wetzel, bekannt unter dem Label Rimini Protokoll. Miriam Ruesch untersucht in "Call Cutta – bei Anruf Kunst" deren 2005 entstandenes "The world's first Mobile Phone Theatre". Die Inszenierung Call Cutta lässt sich beschreiben als "Theatergang durch Kreuzberg, mit Rimini Protokoll und indischen Dienstleistern" sowie als "Mischung aus Stadtführung, Geschichtslektion, Telefonflirt und Selbsterfahrungstrip" (S. 164).2 Im Zehnminutentakt starten Zuschauer am Berliner Theater Hebbel am Ufer 2 zu einem einstündigen 'Audiowalk', geführt und angewiesen via Handy von einer Person in einem indischen Call Center. Dieses Erlebnis wird von Ruesch plastisch und präzise beschrieben und eingebettet in eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Arbeitsweise von Rimini Protokoll. Neben den begrifflichen Überlegungen, die Ruesch vor allem unter Bezugnahme auf Fischer-Lichte (Ko-Präsenz und Ereignishaftigkeit), Lehmann (postdramatisches Theater und metonymischer Raum) und Kotte (Hervorhebung und Konsequenzverminderung) anstellt, bilden besonders die Selbsteinschätzungen der Beteiligten in den von Ruesch geführten Interviews einen aufschlussreichen Zitaten-Schatz. Helgard Haug ist wichtig, dass "Call Cutta im Rahmen von Theater" und nicht nur als "Stadtraumaktion" wahrgenommen werde (S. 199). Der Stadtraum werde, so Ruesch, bei einer traditionellen Stadtführung tendenziell als Wissensraum empfunden, bei Call Cutta hingegen als Erlebnisraum. Diese Raumunterscheidung wird um weitere Raumkonzepte von De Certeau, Lehmann, Löw und Roselt ergänzt. Ruesch differenziert außerdem physischen Raum und Wahrnehmungsraum, öffentlichen Raum und Stadtraum, visuellen und akustischen Raum, realen und imaginären, Gesprächs- und Kommunikations- sowie Handlungs- und Sinnesraum. Unter so viel "Raum" auf 13 Seiten leidet leider die Orientierung. Interessant ist, wie Ruesch versucht, in den 'Gesprächsraum' einzudringen. Was geschieht im Persönlichen, Zwischenmenschlichen, und welche Rollenzuteilungen finden statt? Die Call-Center-Mitarbeiter haben zwischen vorgegebenen Textpassagen Frei-Raum zur Improvisation und zum spontanen, privaten Gespräch; angeblich sind daraus langfristige Kontakte und "Telefonfreundschaften" entstanden. Was ereignet sich im intimen Zweiergespräch zwischen den vorgegebenen Regieanweisungen? Wie ist diese spezielle Gesprächssituation überhaupt begreifbar? "Die Agenten in Call Cutta [.] telefonieren zwar für Geld [.], der Grund ihres Anrufes ist jedoch Kunst." (S. 196) Worin besteht der Unterschied zwischen der Dienstleistung Kunst/Theater und anderen Dienstleistungen wie der Telefonseelsorge oder dem Telefonsex? Interessant ist die Frage, wie sich das gleichermaßen Anonymität und Intimität versprechende Medium Telefon auf das Theater auswirkt – und welche Grenzen die Inszenierung über Globalisierung und grenzenlose Kommunikation dabei öffnet oder (er)schließt. "Grenzgänge zwischen Kunst und Politik. Joseph Beuys und Christoph Schlingensief" lautet der Titel der gut recherchierten und eindrucksvollen Arbeit, in der Rahel Leupin offen legt, wie stark sich Schlingensief an Beuys orientiert. "Wir sind zwar nicht gut, aber da" (S. 280), sagt Schlingensief, und die Art, wie er und wie Beuys 'da' waren, wird von Leupin umfang- und zitatenreich dargestellt. Unter Einbeziehung der politischen Hintergründe, der inhaltlichen Aspekte und Ziele sowie der Reaktionen von Teilen der Öffentlichkeit (Zuschauer, Presse, Politiker) untersucht sie Aktionen von Beuys (vor allem sein Büro der Organisation für direkte Demokratie auf der documenta 5, 1972) und Schlingensief (vor allem seine Hamlet-Inszenierung, Zürich 2001). Die Arbeit fragt nach den Anliegen beider Künstler sowie deren Realisationen, vergleicht das Auftreten der beiden unter dem Aspekt von Präsentation, Repräsentation und Selbstpräsentation. Dabei sieht Leupin Beuys vor allem (wie in Kassel 1972) in einem Raum "zwischen Atelier und Klassenzimmer" (S. 236), er trete auf wie ein Lehrer, "mit missionarischem Eifer von seiner Gesellschaftsalternative überzeugt" (S. 278). Schlingensief hingegen inszeniere sich als postmoderner Theaterclown, der Dekonstruktion anstrebe, ohne Alternativen und Visionen anzubieten, er "spielt ein Was-Wäre-Wenn-Spiel ohne über einen konkreten gesellschaftspolitischen Entwurf zu verfügen" (S. 284). Deutlich wird dieser Unterschied unter anderem im Hinblick auf beider politisches Engagement, denn während Joseph Beuys Anfang der 1980er tatsächlich versucht habe, für die Grünen in den Bundestag zu gelangen, könne man nicht davon ausgehen, dass Schlingensief mit seiner Partei Chance 2000 im Bundestagswahlkampf 1998 tatsächlich ein politisches Mandat angestrebt habe. Schlingensiefs Ausrufe à la "Tötet Helmut Kohl!" seien nicht nur PR-wirksame, bewusste Provokationen, die ihm kurzzeitige Verhaftungen eingebracht haben. In ihnen offenbare sich auch Schlingensiefs ambivalente Haltung: Einerseits behauptet er eine Verachtung für den arrivierten Kunst- und Theaterbetrieb und möchte "in die Gesellschaft rein", andererseits ziehe er sich, sobald es ernst werde, auf die (Narren-)"Freiheit der Kunst" zurück, nutze Theater als Ort der Konsequenzverminderung. Als Gemeinsamkeit von Beuys und Schlingensief streicht Leupin heraus, dass beide zwar einerseits den traditionellen Kunstkontext sprengen wollten, ihn aber andererseits benutzen als rechtlichen Schutz sowie als Rahmen der Organisation und Finanzierung. Außerdem sei "beiden Künstlern […] gemeinsam, dass ihre Aktionen zwar einen einmalig unmittelbaren und spontanen Eindruck erwecken, trotzdem jedoch akribisch genau dokumentiert werden. Während Beuys dazu vor allem das Medium der Fotografie und des Films bevorzugte, braucht Schlingensief zusätzlich das Internet als Kommunikationsplattform und Instrument zur Öffentlichkeitsarbeit." (S. 277) Im Rahmen dieses Buches wäre eine reflektiertere Analyse gerade der medialen Gesichtspunkte (als Beuys 1986 starb, war das Internet erst im Entstehen) wünschenswert gewesen: Welche Medien und Mittel wählen die beiden Künstler? Wie und warum werden Handzettel, Buttons und Plakate, Kreide und Tafel, Megaphon, Foto, Video oder Internet eingesetzt und wie beeinflussen die Kommunikationsformen – sowie der Rahmen des Museums, Theaters, Bildschirmes – die Aktionen, Ästhetiken, Wirkungen? Gerade die Aktionen auf der documenta 5 (Beuys) und documenta X (Schlingensief) sowie die Wahlkämpfe hätten sich unter medialen Aspekten gut vergleichen lassen. Ein mangelnder Fokus aufs Mediale freilich ist den Autorinnen nicht vorzuwerfen, sind ihre Arbeiten doch als eigenständige Lizentiatsarbeiten entstanden und erst nachträglich zum "Theater-Kasten" zusammengewürfelt worden. Um eine Engführung der vier vorangehenden Arbeiten bemüht sich Nicolette Kretz in "Am I really here, or is it only art? Agierende und Schauende in der Aufführungsanalyse". Darin führt sie die in den anderen Arbeiten besprochenen Beispiele in aufführungsanalytischer Perspektive zusammen und entwirft eine (schau)bildliche Darstellung des Verhältnisses von Akteurshaltungen und rezeptiver Rahmung. Ist der Akteur "darstellend" oder eher nicht, und empfindet der Zuschauer die Aktion als "Theater" oder nicht? Kretz erstellt ein zweidimensionales Koordinatensystem mit der "Haltung des Akteurs" auf der X- und der "rezeptiven Rahmung" auf der Y-Achse. Eine Handlung, die vom Akteur als Theater gemeint und vom Rezipienten ebenso wahrgenommen wird, situiert sich nahe dem Nullpunkt am Achsenkreuz. Sie entfernt sich von diesem nach rechts oder oben (oder beides), wenn entweder Akteur oder Rezipient (oder beide) nicht mehr der Meinung sind, dass es sich beim Getanenen oder Gesehenen um Theater handelt. Folglich kann ein eingetragener Punkt im Laufe eines Ereignisses wild im Koordinatensystem umherwandern, etwa einen Sprung vollführen in dem Moment der Erkenntnis bei Call Cutta, in dem Kretz bemerkte, dass sie "etwas für Theater [gehalten hatte], was in Wirklichkeit vollkommen ungespielt war" (S. 302). Anschaulich illustriert wird der Wechsel von Akteurshaltungen bzw. rezeptiver Rahmung anhand der vielschichtigen Arbeiten des libanesischen Künstlers Walid Raad und der Atlas Group. Das Verfahren von Kretz schafft eine praktikable Möglichkeit, aufführungsanalytische Elemente zu systematisieren und zu visualisieren. In seiner Zweidimensionalität freilich bleibt das Modell unterkomplex. Zwar schlägt Kretz als dritte Achse und Dimension die der Medialität vor: "vom unmittelbaren Gegenüber über die audio-visuellen Medien hin zur grafisch unterstützten virtuellen Präsenz" (S. 315), dies bleibt jedoch eine unausgeführte Skizze. Außerdem fehlen im Modell Frame-konstituierende Aspekte des Raumes sowie eine Zeitebene, die eine Entwicklung berücksichtigen würde. Interessant bis amüsant ist die Anwendung des Koordinatensystems auf prominente Definitionsversuche von Theater. Von den neun Feldern, in die Kretz ihr Diagramm unterteilt, werden demnach mit der Theaterdefinition von Bentley drei, von Lazarowicz ein, von Fischer-Lichte sechs und von Kotte achteinhalb abgedeckt. Theater im Kasten besticht, wie aus den einzelnen Besprechungen deutlich wurde, durch ausführliche Beschreibungen theatraler Ereignisse, Anschaulichkeit und Materialintensität. Diese beschränkt sich auf Worte, es gibt keine Begleit-DVD und nur wenige Bilder in dem ansprechend gestalteten Hardcover-Band. Theater derart "einzukasteln" bietet freilich Risiken, zumal es um ein Theater der Erweiterungen geht, ein Theater, das Platz braucht, das Grenzen zum Film, zur Stadtraumaktion, zur Politik hin sprengt, das Offenheit erfordert und keinen zu engen Rahmen. Dennoch: Das selbstformulierte Ziel des Buches, "Partikel des Flüchtigen" zu dokumentieren, wurde eingelöst, die Partikel sind feinsäuberlich gesichtet, sortiert und liebevoll ausgestellt. Theater im Kasten bietet keine Theorie des Theaters, aber vielleicht einen kleinen Baukasten dafür. Dass in der Zusammenstellung der fünf Lizentiatsarbeiten die theoretische Flanke offen bleibt, verweist auf das Praktische an einem Kasten: Im Gegensatz zur Kiste ist er nur an fünf Seiten geschlossen und an einer offen und ermöglicht so stets neue Zugriffe. 1 Von Kaenel zitiert hier Cornelia Niedermeier, "Der Satan hat den Blues", in: Die Tageszeitung, 20.06.2002. 2 Ruesch zitiert hier Jan Oberländer, "Wer ist der Feind deines Feindes? 'Call Cutta'", in: Der Tagesspiegel, 05.04.2005.
The Peruvian university is not depositaria of the technological or scientific truth like constituting itself in the axis of the national development, central fact that it motivated the execution of the present investigation. In the historical period of the Spanish coloniaje, as well as in the republican life the University did not have, nor has to the date, own personality like becoming, in the axis of the national development, because she has not formed herself according to our reality and I interest nationals, has not changed the political scheme of the origin of the world-wide university, simply adopted the conception, the method and the government of a millenium ago of years, therefore it is a dehumanized center, in which it prevails the cientificismo and university or been out of phase theories and lacks the democratic advances that must have by their importance in the world-wide society. This historical reality and antecedents justify the removal of its base that entail to change their structures and to form a new being of University, for such reason our problem of raised investigation was: What paradigms must sustain the model of Peruvian university like axis of development of Contemporary Peru? The central variables of the problem are sustained in the approach of the nature of science based on a world-wide vision, in the level of development of Peru and in how altogether creating a scientific attitude in their estates and the population, mainly in the production agents. This scientific conception cannot be to the margin of a variable humanist, that is to say, in as much it is not understood what is man in the Peru and how to honor it in its person, her dignity of such form that humanizes to science and the technology or he is to the service of her the being of the university. The democratic conception completes this theoretical base since at the moment the university is not an island of the society, is not a feudo so that their governed authorities and are muten in brief time, when occupying positions, become scientists, models of government and handle the new monarchy that the estates confer to him; then the democracy has evolved much, but not yet the Peruvian university has arrived. We culminated these approaches conceptualizando the terms: development, legal security, human rights, human person and human dignity. Then, the handled hypothesis necessarily gathers the teorización that we propose to the investigated problem and its presentation like work direction, was formulated thus: "The paradigms that must sustain the university model as axis of development of contemporary Peru is: the humanismo based on the process of hominización, science like instrument of the state and the Peruvian nation and the democracy sustained in a social state of right. " As far as the material and methods used in the execution of the investigation, there are been premunidos of the conceptions and modern approaches to try at any moment to be objective and to find episteme university that we drew up in the objectives and to obtain to the longed for university paradigm that direccione the development of the Peruvian nation. In the pertinent part to results and discussion, we have found the conception humanist of the man during last the 1000 years and stated that the single Peruvian university makes of it a normative declaration, but is free in all the academic activity, because in his currículo and units of learning do not exist the mini sample of humanismo, on the contrary prohangs to the dehumanization, no university even exhibits certain conception humanist. As far as science, the Peruvian university does not make it and the 30.000 educational college students, approximately, make remedos of scientific research, are mentally ill with the cientificismo, proof of it is that the Peruvian society does not benefit with any from those investigations, inasmuch as they do not enter the scientific or technological market, single are personal rejoicings intrawalls. As far as the democracy, the director, the dean, the institute and director of an institution in general is not but monarchs had with being able and connected among them, who turn to the university their feudo, reason of the struggles and university crisis; this monarchic structure has not changed during last the 500 years of university existence. The conclusions of the thesis are centered in standing out separately on humanismo, science and democracy, the alternative falencias of the Peruvian university, as well as proposals. Finally in this investigation we recommended to carry out matematizadas investigations, of such form that we enter to the era of the accreditation from an historical perspective and in her to postulate the philosophy of this thesis. ; La universidad peruana no es depositaria de la verdad tecnológica o científica como para constituirse en el eje del desarrollo nacional, hecho central que motivó la ejecución de la presente investigación. En el periodo histórico del coloniaje español, así como en la vida republicana la Universidad no tuvo, ni tiene a la fecha, personalidad propia como para convertirse, en el eje del desarrollo nacional, pues ella no se ha configurado de acuerdo a nuestra realidad e intereses nacionales, no ha cambiado el esquema político del origen de la universidad mundial, simplemente adoptó la concepción, el método y el gobierno de hace un milenio de años, por tanto es un centro deshumanizado, en el cual prevalece el cientificismo y teorías universitarias ya desfasadas y carece de los adelantos democráticos que debería tener por su importancia en la sociedad mundial. Esta realidad y antecedentes históricos justifica la remoción de su base que conlleven a cambiar sus estructuras y configurar un nuevo ser de Universidad, por tal razón nuestro problema de investigación planteado fue: ¿Qué paradigmas deben sustentar el modelo de universidad peruana como eje de desarrollo del Perú contemporáneo? Las variables centrales del problema se sustentan en el enfoque de la naturaleza de la ciencia en función de una visión mundial, en el nivel de desarrollo del Perú y en cómo crear una actitud científica en sus estamentos y en la población en conjunto, principalmente en los agentes de producción. Esta concepción científica no puede estar al margen de una variable humanista, es decir en tanto no se entienda lo que es hombre en el Perú y cómo honrarlo en su persona, en su dignidad de tal forma que humanice a la ciencia y la tecnología o esté al servicio de ella el ser de la universidad. Completa esta base teórica la concepción democrática puesto que actualmente la universidad no es una isla de la sociedad, no es un feudo para que sus autoridades y gobernados se muten en brevísimo tiempo, al ocupar cargos, se conviertan en científicos, modelos de gobierno y manejen la nueva monarquía que los estamentos le confieren; pues la democracia ha evolucionado mucho, pero aun no ha llegado la universidad peruana. Culminamos estos enfoques conceptualizando los términos: desarrollo, seguridad jurídica, derechos humanos, persona humana y dignidad humana. Entonces, la hipótesis manejada necesariamente recoge la teorización que proponemos al problema investigado y su presentación como dirección de trabajo, se formuló así: "Los paradigmas que deben sustentar el modelo de universidad como eje de desarrollo del Perú contemporáneo son: el humanismo basado en el proceso de hominización, la ciencia como instrumento del estado y la nación peruana y la democracia sustentada en un estado social de derecho.". En cuanto al material y métodos utilizados en la ejecución de la investigación, hemos estado premunidos de las concepciones y enfoques modernos para tratar en todo momento de ser objetivos y encontrar el episteme universitario que nos trazamos en los objetivos y conseguir el ansiado paradigma universitario que direccione el desarrollo de la nacion peruana. En la parte pertinente a resultados y discusión, hemos encontrado la concepción humanista del hombre durante los últimos 1000 años y constatamos que la universidad peruana solo hace de ello una declaración normativa, pero está exenta en toda la actividad académica, pues en su currículo y unidades de aprendizaje no existe la mínima muestra de humanismo, por el contrario se propende a la deshumanización, incluso ninguna universidad exhibe determinada concepción humanista. En cuanto a la ciencia, la universidad peruana no la realiza y los 30,000 docentes universitarios, aproximadamente, realizan remedos de investigación científica, están alienados con el cientificismo, prueba de ello es que la sociedad peruana no se beneficia con ninguna de esas investigaciones, por cuanto no ingresan al mercado científico o tecnológico, solo son regocijos personales intramuros. En cuanto a la democracia, el rector, el decano, el director de escuela y de los institutos en general no son sino unos monarcas revestidos de poder y enlazados entre ellos, que convierten a la universidad en su feudo, razón de las pugnas y crisis universitaria; esta estructura monárquica no ha cambiado durante los últimos 500 años de existencia universitaria. Las conclusiones de la tesis se centran en resaltar por separado sobre humanismo, ciencia y democracia, las falencias de la universidad peruana, así como las propuestas alternativas. Finalmente en esta investigación recomendamos efectuar investigaciones matematizadas, de tal forma que ingresemos a la era de la acreditación desde una perspectiva histórica y en el seno de ella postular la filosofía de esta tesis.
OVER FORTY MILLION PEOPLE ARE INFECTEDwith the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the causative agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and more than 95% of these infected individuals are in the developing countries. The prevalence levels for this virus will continue to rise globally. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is the most devastating global public health crisis since the great plagues of the middle-ages with approximately fifteen thousand new HIV infections and ten thousand deaths due to AIDS every day and approximately 3.1 million total deaths due to AIDS.1 Historically, vaccines have proven to be the most effective weapon in our fight against infectious diseases such as small pox, polio, measles and yellow fever. HIV vaccines are our best hope to end the HIV pandemic. Although successful vaccines have been developed for the common childhood diseases, the development of a vaccine against the AIDS virus is a much greater challenge. The best way to stop the spread of the disease and the suffering of AIDS patients is by the development of successful vaccines to prevent infection with HIV and delay or stop progression to AIDS. It is now two decades and a half since HIV was first discovered and researchers have spent millions of Riyals (Omani currency; 1 Riyal = 2.6 US$) looking for possible candidates as vaccines, but what is the outcome of this research? It seems the discovery of a licensed and globally accessible HIV/AIDS vaccine is still years away, the question that arises is: how soon are we going to see a successful HIV/AIDS vaccine? More realistically, how long are we going to wait for such a vaccine? In this article, I will very briefly touch on the scientific hurdles that have impeded the search for an effective AIDS vaccine and discuss novel research approaches to accelerate its progress. Despite important progression in the understanding of HIV pathogenesis2 and HIV/AIDS virus compared to any other viral disease, why are we still not able to produce an effective or even partially effective HIV/AIDS vaccine? The answer to this question lies in understanding how the virus evades the immune system. First, HIV disables the very cells that are responsible for fighting it. Second, HIV is able to integrate its viral genome into the chromosome of the infected cells and therefore hide from recognition by the immune response for many years. Third, HIV is able to conceal the protein components that can induce protective immune responses and therefore presents itself to the body in a way that makes it difficult for the immune system to respond effectively. Fourth, HIV is genetically diverse and rapidly changing, particularly its outer envelope, and this allows the virus to evade most of the natural and protective immune mechanisms that the immune system is able to make. As soon as HIV infection becomes established, HIV continues to mutate genetically and many variants may arise within an infected person. Therefore, investigators need to know the significance of strain variation within the individuals and among the populations when developing an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine. The most logical approach for designing an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine is to identify which immune responses are most protective against this virus infection and to construct a vaccine that is able to stimulate these protective responses. Of the two main types of immune responses, the humoral immune response mainly uses antibodies to protect against a cell-free virus, whereas the cell mediated immune response is essential for body defense when the virus is hidden inside the cells. Although earlier vaccine research focused primarily on vaccines that elicited antibodies, it is now generally believed that both arms of the immune response are required in order to control and prevent HIV infection. Moreover, much attention has recently been directed towards vaccines that induce good innate (natural) immune responses particularly dendritic cells and toll-like receptors which play an important role in inducing and modulating the adoptive immune responses.3 The most practical goal for an HIV vaccine is to prevent HIV transmission rather than preventing infection with the virus. Experts believe a vaccine is the only way to eradicate HIV/AIDS because the most common modes of transmission, sexual contact, injection drug use and mother-to-child transmission at childbirth or breast-feeding are impossible to eliminate completely. The main characteristics of a desirable HIV vaccine are: safety, simple administration as well as affordable cost, long lasting immunity and effective against all HIV subtypes. To develop such an HIV/AIDS vaccine there is a need for team work in fundamental basic research; preclinical screening for active candidates and appropriate animal model followed by product development, manufacturing, and clinical research.3 Currently, there are more promising vaccine candidates being tested than ever before. Vaccine candidates are being constructed based on isolates from different regions of the world, and several research groups are testing a cocktail or a mixture of different viral components from different isolates of HIV. In addition, to optimize the immune responses, new vaccine strategies are being tested [Table 1]. The most current HIV vaccine candidates focus on producing cytotoxic CD4+ T cells, which attack HIVinfected cells in the body; such vaccines might not prevent an HIV-negative person from contracting the virus, but would delay HIV from progressing to AIDS and prevent transmission to others. Another challenge in vaccine research is that HIV strains vary among people and regions. Vaccine trial participants are chosen based on health standards for industrialized nations and many people in developing countries are not healthy enough to participate in such trials.4 Vaccineinduced antibodies that interfere with viral entry are the protective correlate of most existing prophylactic vaccines; however, for highly variable viruses such as HIV-1, the ability to elicit broadly neutralizing antibody responses through vaccination has proven to be extremely difficult. The major targets for HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies are the viral envelope glycoprotein trimers on the surface of the virus that mediate receptor binding and virus entry. HIV-1 has evolved many mechanisms on the surface of envelope glycoproteins to evade antibody-mediated neutralization, including the masking of conserved regions by glycan, quaternary protein interactions and the presence of immunodominant variable elements. The primary challenge in the development of an HIV-1 vaccine that elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies therefore lies in the design of suitable envelope glycoprotein immunogens that circumvent these barriers.5 Individuals who are infected with HIV but remain healthy and keep viral replication in check may offer some hope for guiding the design of an effective HIV vaccine.6 Some of these long-term survivors make a very small amount of antibody, which, when isolated, can neutralize HIV from patient isolates. Further, those antibodies can neutralize viruses from many different patient isolates, which is necessary for an AIDS vaccine that will be effective against a broad spectrum of HIV strains. Unfortunately, even these antibodies may not be the whole answer. Tests of cells in culture indicate that the antibodies must be present at surprisingly high concentrations to block HIV entry into cells effectively. Many researchers continue to look into developing a live, attenuated HIV vaccine despite safety concerns. Because such a vaccine would closely mimic active HIV, it should theoretically be effective at inducing cellular immunity, antibody-based immunity and perhaps- other unknown modes of protection. By systematically deleting genes critical for HIV replication, scientists hope to develop a variant of the virus that can elicit a strong immune response without giving rise to AIDS.4 It also is hoped that vaccines may give the body an immunological 'head start' by priming the immune system to attack HIV as soon as it appears, rather than taking time to initiate a defense from scratch. As the pathogenesis of HIV infection has become better understood, investigators have realized that if the virus can be kept at low concentrations in the blood, an infected person may never progress to AIDS.7 This insight is encouraging because it suggests that even a partially effective vaccine could be valuable in limiting the amount of virus in patients, thus potentially reducing virus infectiousness and the AIDS symptoms. The multitude of scientists searching for successful AIDS vaccines will require appropriate funding and ample time. Funding is now improving, but because of the above difficulties we may not see a vaccine in near future.8 Governments need to cooperate to break barriers, reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, encourage HIV testing, provide support for people with HIV/AIDS and allocate appropriate funding to institutes that work for the development of HIV/AIDS vaccines. The development of appropriate antiviral therapy and reconstructing the damaged immune system are two approaches, both of which require significant financial support. For developing countries, educating the public on preventative measures is the first step in preventing and reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Treating those infected with HIV or who have AIDS is also, of course, critical, but the real hope for the future lies in developing a successful vaccine.
The Agbiotech Bulletin Volume 5 Issue 1 January 1997 Published by AG-WEST BIOTECH INC. Code Number:NL97003 Sizes of Files: Text: 48.9K Graphics: No associated graphics files Biotech Discovery Will Boost Oilseed Industry Researchers at the National Research Council's Plant Biotechnology Institute (PBI) in Saskatoon have discovered a genetic modification capable of increasing the oil production of rapeseed by up to 25 per cent. Developing High Erucic Rapeseed The discovery resulted from efforts to increase rapeseed's erucic acid content by adding a yeast gene. The erucic acid content was increased, but overall oil content in the seeds also rose by 25 per cent. Industrial Uses of S.H.E.A.R. Erucic acid and its derivatives, now obtained mainly from H.E.A.R. Brassica napus varieties, are widely used in the chemical industry, where they are considered environmentally friendly and a renewable resource. The main use of the oil is in the manufacture of plastic films, where the derivative erucamide is used as an anti-block, slip promoting agent. More recently erucic acid derivatives have been used in the manufacture of low-calorie food additives and coatings. Substantial Economic Implications Worldwide demand for erucic acid is expected to increase from about 40 million pounds in 1990 to 75 million pounds by 2010. Over the same time frame, demand for the derivative behenic acid is expected to triple to about 102 million pounds. News Ag-West President Resigns Dr. Bill Riley has resigned as President of Ag-West Biotech Inc. and as General Manager of ICAST effective January 5, 1997. Feed Centre Cements Chinese Contacts Four University of Saskatchewan researchers visited China recently to strengthen ties between the Saskatchewan and Chinese feed industry. Red Williams, Phil Thacker, Vern Racz, and David Christensen all of the Department of Animal and Poultry Science lectured at the First International Feed Industry Conference held in Beijing and took part in the official opening of the Ministry of Agriculture Feed Industry Centre (MAFIC) and its new headquarters building. Foiling Aluminum Intolerance Researchers at Agriculture Canada's Lacombe Research Centre are combing oat genetic resources in search of varieties with tolerance to the aluminum found in acidic soils. Fast method of detecting E. coli A seven-hour method of detecting Eschericha coli in food has been developed by Cornell University researchers. E. coli is a food-borne bacteria that causes hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uremic syndrome, two problems that can be deadly to children and elderly adults. Wild genes boost rice yield Also at Cornell, plant breeders have discovered genes in wild rice species that may help boost production of some of the world's major agricultural crops. Transgenic Cotton Has "Polyester" Fibres Researchers at Agracetus of Middleton, Wisconsin report the development of a transgenic cotton with some of the properties of polyester. .and Colours Meanwhile, a patent for transgenic colour changes in cotton has been issued to Calgene of Davis, California. Retrovirus-like components identified in corn genome Every living organism has a genome the DNA in each cell's nucleus which includes the active genes that determine the organism's characteristics. However, genes make up only a tiny percent of the genetic material in a cell, begging the question, "What are all those other things?" Scientists find way to eliminate junk genes Purdue University scientists Thomas K. Hodges and Leszek Lyznik have found a way to reduce the guesswork and errors in genetic engineering. The technology, which has been licensed for commercial application to Plant Genetic Systems, could speed the delivery of biotech-derived crops, and possibly even benefit human gene therapy. Scientists Narrow Search for Genes that Starve Worms Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service and Mississippi State University are making progress in their efforts to modify corn to express genes that can "starve" leaf-eating fall armyworms. Transgenic Blue Carnations Commercialized Florigene of Melbourne, Australia will be selling its transgenic blue "Moondust" carnations in Europe and Japan later this year. Regulatory Copyright Law Could Affect Research International treaties being proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization could inhibit common uses of published research. Events Going Public CIBC's Knowledge-Based Business Unit will be jointly sponsoring a seminar on Taking Your Technology Company Public on Thursday, January 23, 1997. Biopesticides and Transgenic Plants A conference on Biopesticides and Transgenic Plants: New Technologies to Improve Efficiency, Safety and Profitability will be held January 27-28, 1997 in Washington, DC. Direct Seeding Direct Seeding: The Economic Advantage is the theme of The 9th Annual Meeting, Conference, and Trade Show of the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association. It will be held February 12-13 at the Saskatoon Prairieland Exhibition, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Farm Animal Genetics Canadian Farm Animal Genetic Resources at the Crossroads: Crisis or Opportunity? is the topic of an International Speakers Forum planned for February 27-28, 1997 at Le Chateau Cartier in Aylmer, Quebec. Animal Biotech Beijing The Beijing International Conference on Animal Biotechnology will be held June 11-14, 1997 at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, China. Brassica '97 The International Society for Horticulture Symposium on Brassicas and the Tenth Crucifer Genetics Workshop will occur in Rennes, France from September 23-27, 1997. BIOTECH '97 The National Biotechnology Network will be holding BIOTECH '97 in Toronto from March 11-13, 1997 at the Toronto Marriott Eaton Centre Hotel. ABIC '98 Planning is underway for the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference 1998 (ABIC '98) which will be held June 9-12, 1998 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Trends Depressing News Proponents of something called Kondratieff Wave cycles have come out with some depressing future trend forecasts. US Tops Canada in Biotech Support US authorities provide more support for biotech than their Canadian counterparts, laments an article appearing in the Ontario Farmer. Tide Turning For Biotech in Germany According to an item in the journal Science, surveys indicate that 60 per cent of Germans want their country to play a leading role in the development of the European biotech industry. Alliances Ontario Farmers Form Alliance for Biotech R&D A farmer initiated alliance to develop agricultural biotechnology has been formed in Ontario. Ontario Agri-Food Technologies brings together players ranging from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, growers associations, and the Ontario Cattlemen's Association; to the universities of Toronto, Queen's, Waterloo, and Guelph; to major agricultural companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Ciba, and Cyanamid. Tech Transfer Beef Development Centre To Facilitate Tech Transfer Years of discussion and planning among Saskatchewan's beef industry, government, and beef researchers has resulted in an innovative concept becoming a reality. Finance AgriBioTech Is Roundup Ready AgriBioTech has licensed Roundup Ready soybean technology from Monsanto, enabling it to market soybeans under its own AgriBioTech label. PGS/AgrEvo Deal Sign of the Times An article in Nature Biotechnology points to the acquisition of the biotech company Plant Genetic Systems by the agri- chemical giant AgrEvo as a key example of the growing value of innovative, patented plant biotechnologies. DE Gains Control of Mycogen DowElanco has bought a controlling share in Mycogen Corp. According to the Wall Street Journal, the purchase is a move to block Monsanto's bid for the agbiotech company. Monsanto To Spin Off Chemicals The directors of Monsanto Co. has approved a plan to spin off its chemical business to existing shareholders, leaving behind the company's more profitable agbiotech, pharmaceutical, and food ingredient business. Issues Biotech Controversy Boon to US Company The European controversy over transgenic crops has been a boon for Genetic ID, a US company that markets a test able to detect genetic alterations in corn and soybeans. European Food Labelling Dismissed as Ineffective Greenpeace has dismissed the European Parliament's move to label transgenic foods as ineffective. Greenpeace believes the move does not go far enough because some biotech-derived foods are exempted. South Africa Considers Biotech Regulation The South African Department of Tourism and Environmental Affairs has released a Green Paper on Biodiversity which also considers the potential environmental impacts of biotechnology in that country. Attitudes Biotechnology, Agriculture and Our Future: A Student's View (The following essay is by Kathryn Gustafson of Macoun, Saskatchewan. Gustafson, who attends Estevan Comprehensive School) Resources Feednews Feednews is the quarterly newsletter of the Feed Resource Centre located at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It carries news and information about international feedstuff markets, opportunities for value-added processing of Saskatchewan feed crops, and developments in animal nutrition. ULearn Centre Offers Ag Resources The ULearn Centre of the Extension Division of the University of Saskatchewan offers a wide range of print material and software to support on-going agricultural education and research. Progrid-TA^R Technology Assessment Progrid is a proprietary methodology for measuring the technical and commercial readiness of technology ventures and products. It is based on the experience of major Canadian technology-intensive corporations, supplemented with the track record of small and medium-size enterprises in bringing new products and services to the market place. Genome Workshop Report The report of the 1996 ISAG Comparative Genome Workshop in Tours, France is now available on the Web. Just click on "Comparative Mapping" and choose whatever format you prefer. People Watch Brandon Research Centre Dr. Karl Volkmar and Dr. Al Moulin have recently transferred to the Brandon Research Centre of Agriculture Canada. IBAC The Industrial Biotechnology Association of Canada recently elected its Board of Directors for 1997. We Welcome Your Input The AgBiotech Bulletin welcomes submissions of news, ideas and articles from subscribers. Information about new developments at your company or institution, notices about new products or resources, or observations about events and opportunities affecting the agbiotech industry will be considered for publication. Credits: The Agbiotech Bulletin is published 12 times per year on behalf of Ag-West Biotech Inc. by Westcross House Publications, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7K OR1.
El objetivo general de esta tesis es describir los modos de participación de los hogares en la estructura económico-ocupacional y en los sistemas de política social, y evaluar sus cambios durante el ciclo de políticas heterodoxas en la Argentina (2003-2014). A partir del estudio articulado de la participación en los mecanismos de distribución primaria y secundaria del ingreso, la tesis se propone contribuir al estudio de las transformaciones en los modos de reproducción socioeconómica de las unidades domésticas y aportar nuevas evidencias acerca de las rearticulaciones verificadas en la relación entre la heterogeneidad estructural y las formas de intervención social del Estado en la Argentina. En contraste con el ciclo de ajuste estructural de los noventa, durante la primera década de los años 2000 se verificó un giro hacia políticas macroeconómicas heterodoxas y políticas sociolaborales de corte redistributivo. A su vez, el período estuvo jalonado por la presencia de rasgos estructurales del régimen social de acumulación (alta concentración económica, especialización productiva y restricción externa). En este contexto, el caso argentino es relevante para evaluar la capacidad del crecimiento bajo políticas heterodoxas para promover cambios sustantivos en los patrones de desigualdad emergentes de la heterogeneidad estructural de los mercados de trabajo y para examinar el rol de las políticas sociales sobre las condiciones de vida de los hogares en el contexto de una economía capitalista periférica. El estudio articula tres líneas conceptuales. En primer lugar, la cuestión de las condiciones de vida es abordada a partir de aportes teóricos (en especial, de la sociología latinoamericana) que tematizaron la reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo y de las unidades domésticas. Estos aportes señalan que la reproducción socioeconómica de los hogares se asocia con la satisfacción de necesidades y se desenvuelve en una articulación de planos macro y microsociales. En segundo lugar, el marco teórico estructuralista, la tesis de la marginalidad económica y los enfoques de la segmentación laboral son claves para comprender las dinámicas de desigualdad de la estructura económico-ocupacional en la que participa la fuerza laboral de los hogares. En tercer lugar, recogemos una lectura en clave de economía política de la política social que permite reponer su papel con respecto a la regulación de la reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo y del conflicto social. La hipótesis general es que la heterogeneidad estructural del régimen de acumulación –y su correlato en la incapacidad de los sectores más dinámicos de la economía para absorber al conjunto de la fuerza de trabajo– habría dado lugar a dinámicas persistentes de desigualdad económico-ocupacional y de exclusión o marginalidad, con amplias consecuencias sobre las capacidades de reproducción económica y el bienestar material de los hogares, restringiendo los procesos de convergencia socioeconómica entre el 2003 y el 2014. Sin embargo, estas dinámicas no habrían impactado de forma directa sobre las condiciones de vida debido a una mediación, de relevancia variable según el momento político-económico del ciclo, de la política social y de los propios comportamientos microsociales de los hogares. Tales elementos habrían desempeñado un papel compensador –aunque limitado, dadas las condiciones estructurales prevalecientes– sobre las capacidades de reproducción económica de las unidades domésticas. En la investigación seguimos un abordaje metodológico cuantitativo con un diseño de estática comparada. En términos analíticos, se recurrió a técnicas de análisis multivariado, de descomposición y de microsimulación. La principal fuente son los microdatos de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH), relevada trimestralmente por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC). Empleamos las bases correspondientes al cuarto trimestre de 2003 a 2014 para una serie de años ventana. La tesis reúne evidencias que indican que la heterogeneidad de la estructura económicoocupacional, los procesos de segmentación del mercado de trabajo y la dinámica de la marginalidad económica constituyen instancias estrechamente asociadas con una pauta relativamente rígida de desigualdad sociolaboral. Esta pauta condiciona las capacidades de reproducción de los hogares e inhibe la convergencia socioeconómica: mientras que una parte de las unidades domésticas participa de sectores económicos dinámicos mediante sus integrantes, otra amplia franja permanece ligada a ocupaciones en microunidades, sin protección laboral y con ingresos que, o bien no garantizan la satisfacción de necesidades, o bien los dejan expuestos al riesgo de no hacerlo. Los comportamientos laborales de los integrantes de los hogares mediatizan esta pauta de desigualdad, pero su efecto agregado, en términos cuantitativos, resulta limitado. Por su parte, la política social adquiere creciente relevancia en la cobertura de los hogares peor posicionados en la estructura económico-ocupacional y los ingresos por transferencias constituyen un nuevo componente de su balance reproductivo. En este sentido, la tesis da indicios de algunas modificaciones en los patrones de reproducción socioeconómica de los hogares, al menos durante el ciclo histórico examinado. Sin embargo, exhibe que, en condiciones de baja integración económica sistémica (derivada de la heterogeneidad estructural), la política social no es suficiente para garantizar la convergencia en las condiciones de vida. ; The general objective of this thesis is to describe the modes of households' participation in the labour structure and in the system of social policies, and to evaluate its changes during the period of heterodox policies in Argentina (2003-2014). By binding households' participation in the primary and in the secondary income distribution together, the thesis aims to analyse changes in their socioeconomic reproduction patterns, and to provide new evidences about the existence of transformations in the relationship between the structural heterogeneity and the State social intervention in Argentina. In contrast to the phase of structural adjustment (in the 1990s), a turn to heterodox macroeconomic policies and redistributive labour and social policies took place during the 2000s. This period was also characterised by the presence of some long-term features of the social accumulation regime (such as a high economic concentration, the productive specialization in raw materials exports and the external restriction). Thus, Argentina offers a proper scenario to evaluate the ability of the economic growth under heterodox policies to change the inequality patterns derived from the structural heterogeneity of labour markets, as well as to examine how social policies shape living conditions in a peripherical country. This thesis is underpinned by three theoretical perspectives. Firstly, living conditions are tackled from a conceptual framework (mainly based on Latin American sociology) that emphasizes both labour power and households' reproduction. According to these conceptual contributions, socioeconomic reproduction is related to needs satisfaction and thus to income distribution and based on the interaction of micro and macrosocial processes. Secondly, the structuralist approach, the thesis of economic marginality and the theories of labour market segmentation are crucial to comprehend the inequality dynamics that underlie socioeconomic structure in which the members of the households participate. Thirdly, we take a political economy interpretation of social policy, recovering its role in terms of the regulation of labour power reproduction and in the regulation of social conflict. The general hypothesis is that the structural heterogeneity of the social regime of accumulation –and the insufficient labour demand of the most dynamic sectors of the economy– would have led to a persistent labour inequality pattern, with several consequences on households' economic reproduction conditions and material wellbeing, thus restricting socioeconomic convergence during the period 2003-2014. However, we suggest that this pattern would not have impacted directly on living conditions due to the intervention –of variable relevance according to the moment of the period– of social policy benefits and households' microsocial behaviours. These factors would have played a compensation role –even if limited, due to the structural conditions– on households' economic reproduction conditions. The research has followed a quantitative methodological design, based on cross-section data approach. Several multivariate analysis techniques were applied, as well as decomposition and microsimulation techniques. The main data source was the Permanent Household Survey (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares) carried out quarterly by the National Institute of Statistic and Censuses. We used microdata corresponding to fourth quarters of several years from 2003 to 2014. The evidences gathered in this thesis reveal that the labour structure's heterogeneity, the labour market segmentation and the economic marginality are processes strongly related to a rigid inequality pattern. This pattern affects households' living conditions and inhibits socioeconomic convergence: whereas a part of the households has members working in dynamic, modern and productive economic sectors, another fraction remains linked to employment in micro enterprises without labour protection and with low incomes, thus particularly exposed to the risk of not satisfying their reproductive needs. Households' members labour behaviours intervene on this inequality pattern. However, in aggregated terms, their effect is quantitatively limited. With respect to social policy, the thesis shows that it increases its relevance upon those households that are vulnerable in terms of the occupational position of its members. In this vein, social benefits are a new part of those households' reproductive balance. To sum up, the thesis suggests the existence of some changes in households' socioeconomic reproduction patterns, at least during the considered period. However, it also reveals that in a context of a low economic "system integration" (derived from structural heterogeneity), social policy is not enough to guarantee living conditions' convergence. ; Fil: Poy Piñeiro, Santiago. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina
Neonatal brachial plexus palsy is a complication that occurs during difficult vaginal delivery or due to unexplained causes, probably prenatal in which some or all brachial plexus branches are affected (avulsion, rupture, stretching). A cohort of 28 cases evaluated in our clinic in 6 years and 6 months (Jan 2007-July 2013) from the clinical and paraclinical point of view, treatment, and the outcome were analyzed. 17 (60.7%) of the patients were boys and 11 (39.2%) were girls. 14 (50%) had right brachial plexus palsy, 12 (42.8%) had left brachial plexus palsy and 2 (7.1%) had bilateral involvement. 5 (17.8%) of them had reconstructive surgery done. 11 (39.2%) had good to complete recovery. The purpose of this paper is to underline the importance of early presentation for neurological evaluation and the beginning of physical therapy.
Most reports on refugees deal with the immediate needs of displaced people. This paper seeks to go beyond the emergency phase and explore the challenges surrounding protracted refugee situations. The paper examines the refugee situation in Sub-Saharan Africa from a long-term angle, from the perspective of refugees own agency as well as from the perspective of the host community. The paper aims to shed light on the economic lives of refugees in their host communities. Starting with an overview of the situation of refugees in Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper draws on findings from the literature to debunk some entrenched beliefs about refugees. The discussion of refugee crises in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda draws some lessons. The decision to return is discussed and it is argued that the decision depends on the socioeconomic condition in the host country versus the country of refuge, integration versus return policies in place, the individual set of skills of each refugee, and his or her subjective perception of the political climate in both countries.
This article assesses the impact of the East Asian financial crisis on farm households in two of the region's most affected countries, Indonesia and Thailand, using detailed household level survey data collected before and after the crisis began. Although the natures of the shocks in the two countries were similar, the impact on farmers' income (particularly on distribution) was quite different. In Thailand, poor farmers bore the brunt of the crisis, in part because of their greater reliance on the urban economy, than did poor farmers in Indonesia. Urban-rural links are much weaker in Indonesia. Farmers in both countries, particularly those specializing in export crops, benefited from the currency devaluation. Although there is some evidence that the productivity of the smallest landholders declined over the period in question, it is difficult to attribute this directly to the financial crisis. At least in Thailand, a rural credit crunch does not seem to have materialized.
Issue 34.5 of the Review for Religious, 1975. ; Revtew ]or Rehgtous ts edited by faculty members of the School of DIvlmty of St Louts University, the edttorlal ol~ces bemg located at 612 Humboldt Buddmg, 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copy-right (~) 1975 by Review [or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. S!ngle copies: $1.75. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years (for airmail delivery, add $5.00 per year). Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to Review ]or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming .to represent Review ]or Religious. Change of address requests should include former ad~ciress. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Galicn, S.J. Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor September 1975 Volume 34 Number 5 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. / ;" ~: :°~Vith these ,words Po o ~t only for Jesmts,~but-~f6r all~rehg~ous;~ )s wh6, .in ~varyingways, ~dentff, y:.o. 671 A Survey of the Thirty-second General Congregation John R. Sheets, S.J. Fr. Sheets, chairman of the theology department of Creighton University and director of its new Masters Degree in Christian Spirituality program, was an elected delegate of his province (Wisconsin) at the 32nd General Congregation. He resides at Creighton University; 2500 Califor-nia St.; Omaha, NB 68178. The Thirty-second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus began on December 2, 1974. It finished its work on March 7, 1975. The Holy See authorized the promulgation of its decrees on May 2, 1975. In this article I will attempt to set down in an intelligible way a description of what went on during those ninety-six days, especially for (hose who are not Jesuits but who are in-terested in the congregation. Having gone over once again both the official documents and the Acta of the congregation, and having tried to recapture.my own experience over those days, I feel keenly the limitations of what follows. In the first place, it is difficult to give a survey of the vast amount of material covered by the various commissions;-secondly, it is hard to detail my own ex-perience without writing an autobiography; thirdly, it would take someone with both a sense of historical detail and a journalistic flair to present the in-terplay that took place among the various identifiable groups within the con-gregation, and also what took place between the Vatican and the congregation. In spite of these reservations, I hope that the observations that follow might provide some insight into what happened, and at the same time provide a counterweight to impressions given to the public through the general press. For me personally the congregation was the peak experience of my life. I am still trying to sort out the reasons for this. There is the obvious fact of hav-ing been part of a decision-making body whose decrees could have momentous importance for the Societ), of Jesus and for the Church at a very critical mo- A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation / 673 ment in history. Again there was the experience of being "companions in the Lord" with two hundred and thirty-six other Jesuits from all over the world, united in the same Ignatian vision, sharing a common purpose, praying and working together to formulate with the help of the Holy Spirit responses to what the Church and the world ask of the Society today. The "honeymoon experience" of the first days gave way, as the weeks went on, to the .experience of fatigue, the perplexities of the search for the proper wording, the experience of working on disparate problems at the same time, without any clear point of convergence. Added to these was the experience of the interaction between the Vatican and the congregation which brought with it great anguish. However, it was also perhaps the experience that changed the congregation from a group of planners relying much on our own wisdom into something approximating an instrument of the Holy Spirit. The whole experience of the congregation in many ways paralleled what a person goes through in making the Spiritual Exercises, where one is subject to the movement of different spirits. On the one hand, it was the occasion of the greatest consolation; on the other, 1 have never in my life experienced such heaviness of heart. There were moments when one could almost feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, particularly at the concelebrated liturgies where one was drawn into the mystery of the communio jesuitarum, both the living and the dead, ~hrough our sharing in the Eucharist. Certainly the con-celebrated Mass, celebrated on the opening day of the congregatiofi in the Gesu, a church hallowed by the memories of Ignatius, Xavier and the early history of the Society, with seven hundred Jesuits participating, was one such moving experience. But if there were consolations, there were also periods of desolation, the worst desolation I have ever experienced. These came from the pall of uncer-tainty cast over the congregation from the communications of the Holy Father through Cardinal Villot in reference to the way the congregation had proceeded on a particular point concerning the Fourth Vow in the Society. This was also the occasion for the Holy Father to remark with pain that he detected from the Acta of the congregation attitudes among the delegates which were at variance with the kind of disposition a Jesuit should have toward the Pope. To be frank, however, it was not so much the interventions of the Holy Father that depressed me. In fact, as events would show, he was under the im-pression that we had received a specific communication on the subject that he had given to one of the delegates to be transmitted to us. But because of a mis-understanding the delegate did not in fact communicate it, and the congrega-tion learned about it only after we had taken a step which seemed to con-travene directly the explicit instruction of the Holy Father. To me the tone of his and Cardinal Villot's letter, while severe, was comprehensible in the light of this misunderstanding on the communication of their earlier message. What was far more upsetting was the sudden change in the mental climate of the congregation. Somewhere Kierkegaard mentions that the sudden is the 1574 / Review for, Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 category of the demonic. In the course of only minutes, the demon of rumor, suspicion and recrimination was let loose. Suddenly it all fitted into a kind of master plot to discredit Fr. Arrupe, bring about his resignation, and bring to nothing the efforts of the congregation. No one knew who the enemies were, but some gave the impression that there was one hiding behind every column in the Vatican. Among the memories which will always be with me are the occasions when I used to walk in St. Peter's Square at night, when it was deserted, except for a police car and a few pa~sers-by. The majestic beauty of the facade of St. Peter's, bathed by the light of the moon, the beauty of the fountains flashing in the lights, the Vatican apartments with a light here and there, formed a setting of peace which seemed to overflow into me, particularly when events occurred which plunged the congregation into gloom. Looking back over those difficult periods I am certain that if it were not for the example and leadership of Fr. Arrupe we would have lost courage. He transmitted to us both by word and example a sense of the working of God's providence and the life-through-death process in which we were engaged. We were faced with the humbling and humiliating fact that we experts who were supposed to discern the signs of the times could not discern a sign that was much closer to us. In many ways the misunderstandings did not "have to be," when one looks at them from a human point of view. The reports from the press about con-frontation, maneuver and counter-maneuver were the product of journalistic imagination. The sad fact is that pain was caused by people who were trying their utmost to act with responsibility to the Holy Father and to the Society. But I have probably got ahead of myself. All I wanted to do in these in-troductory remarks was to point out that for me personally the experience of those three months led by the diverse paths of joy and anguish to a deeper ex-perience of the ways of God, that "If Yahweh does not build the house, in vain the masons toil." The Procedure Followed in the Business of the Congregation In preparation for this congregation there had been four years of highly organized participation on the level of the local communities and the provinces. The extent of this participation varied. In general, however, it had a beneficial result in creating the awareness that this congregation would grow out of the discernment that took place on the local level rather than work from the top down. Perhaps some might consider that this was a waste of time and money when we measure the results of those years of preparation, and the little impact that it had directly on the congregation. However, the minimal result of this preparation was that at least we did not come into the work of the congregation cold, but had some awareness of the problems that confront us, as there were seen by a large segment of the Society. For those who are not familiar with the structure of the Society of Jesus, a few words of explanation may be helpful. In the Society of Jesus the supreme A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation / 675 authority is vested in the General Congregation. It does not meet at regular in-tervals, but only on two occasions, either to elect a new superior general, or to face a particular state of affairs which can be handled only by the highest authority of the Society. Of the thirty-two congregations that have met in the four hundred and thirty-five years of the Society's history, all except seven have been called to elect a new superior general. When, therefore, in 1970 Fr. Arrupe decided to call a General Congregation to convene after appropriate preparation, he felt that the state of the Society needed to be reviewed. It was an opportune time, since ten years would have elapsed since Vatican II and our last congregation. Delegates to a General Congregation are basically of two kinds: the provincial superiors, who attend by right of office, who make up ap-proximately one-third of the membership of a congregation and the other two-thirds who are elected. The only delegates who were unable to attend the 32nd General Congregation were a few from behind the Iron Curtain. Their unoc-cupied desks remained an ever-present symbol to the assembly of the oppres-sion of the Church in various areas. In spite of these absences, there were two hundred thirty-six delegates present. In the Society of Jesus the agenda is made up after the congregation con-venes. It is based mainly on the postulates (requests) submitted either from in-dividual Jesuits or provinces. Contrary to what one might suspect, there is probably no more democratic legislative group than is to be found in the General Congregation. Any Jesuit can send in postulates either through his province or directly, as an individual to the General Congregation. All of these are considered on their merits independently of their source. Over one thousand postulates were submitted. After a preliminary analysis, it was seen that they could be organized according to ten categories. Ten commissions were set up roughly corresponding to these ten categories. Initially the commissions had a membership of about twenty-five each, com-posed of representatives from different parts of the Society. Later, for the sake of efficiency in composing the documents emerging from the commissions, the number was reduced to four or five. The amount of work that went into the final draft of the documents was enormous. The work of the commission would be submitted to the whole assembly, receive revisions (or even be re-jected), be returned to the commission; then again be submitted to the assembly, with a repetition of the same procedm:e, until the assembly was satisfied with it. The whole assembly convened in a large hall that had been especially renovated for the congregation. Electronic equipment was installed to provide simultaneous translation. Voting was done by means of a small switch at each desk. In the front of the hall in full view of all the delegates was a large elec-tronic board, with indicator lights arranged accordihg to the seating plan in the hail. This board registered the votes with a green light if affirmative or a red, if negative. At the top of the board was a place where the total affirmative and negative vote would register immediately after the vote was taken. All ~'~' ~ ~.~. 676;~ R~i~.w for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 voting~'~bhe exception," was public. The exception came at the request of the congregatiori ~hen it came to vote on the question of grades in the Society. Doubtless this pr0ce.dure was intended to provide the general with the oppor-tunity to vote in a way that would not compromise him in whatever future ac-tions he would have to take.as a result of the vote. The Main Themes Seventeen documents issued from the congregation, most of them originating from the ten commissions which had been established. Other documents came from special commissions appointed as the need arose. Though the documents differ in content, some common themes run throughout. Perhaps the main theme reflected in the documents is that of mission. Related to this is a reawakened awareness of the Society as a whole, of which the local communities are part. The Society, while it exists also for the sanc-tification of its members, takes its special meaning from its apostolic orienta-tion. This apostolic orientation is specified by its relationship to the Holy See, particularly through the Fourth Vow, and in its service to the Church through the promotion and defense of the faith. A characteristic of this apostolic orienta-tion is adaptability to the needs of particular times and places. In our day this involves an overriding concern to overcome the injustices which oppress so many millions of people. However, in all of its apostolic work, the goal and the means it uses are to be consistent with the tradition of the Society as set forth in its Formula of the Institute which sets forth its fundamental pontifical law. This ties in with the identity of the Society, a theme that is both the subject of one particular document and one that runs through all of the others as well. The Society is a priestly, apostolic body, bound to the Holy See in a special way for the defense and promotion of the faith. The sense of mission involves not only working with those who are op-pressed but it also involves becoming identified with them as far as this is possible. Our poverty, therefore, which has its juridical as well as evangelical aspects, takes on a particular experiential mode in so far as, by it, we can iden-tify with the poor. The decree that has to do with union of hearts and minds is also intimately related to the nature of the Society as an apostolic body. Ignatius clearly saw that the Society's apostolate depended first of all on the union of the members with God, and then derivatively on their union with one another. One theme which is conspicuous is that of repentence. The Society acknowledges that it has failed in recent years to live up to those characteristics which were suppose to distinguish it, such as obedience, loyalty to the Holy See, fidelity tO the principles of the religious life. The State of the Society One of the commissions set up early in the order of business was the one charged to examine the state of the Society. Its purpose was to form some A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation / 677 kind of an evaluation of the condition of the Jesuit order at this point in its history, assessing both its weaknesses and its strengths. To provide this com-mission with input, the delegates met in small groups over a period of several days. These small groups were of two kinds: what were called "assistancy groups" (for example, all of the American Jesuits belong to one "assistancy," the French to another, etc.), and "language groups," composed of people from different countries who had some facility in their own and other languages (German-English, French-English, Spanish-French, etc.) These groups dis-cussed the state of the Society in reference to key points such as formation of Jesuits, religious observance, the apostolate. These sessions broadened the practical knowledge each of us had of the Society and helped to create among us an awareness of community. They were also informative, first of all in bringing us to realize that many of the problems were common, with varying degrees of acuteness, while others were peculiar to a particular section of the Society. A criticism which many of us in the western world resonated with came from one of the German provincials in my group when he said that the image that the Society in Germany gives is that of B~rgerlichkeit, which in English connotes a comfortable, gentlemanly, middle-class existence. On the other hand, the situation of the Jesuits from behind the Iron Cur-tain, some of whom were also in my language group, has spared them some of the enervating effects of secularization. For one reason, their apostolate, where they are able to exercise it, is mostly pastoral work; secondly, their precarious existence serves to keep their faith at a high level of vitality. The delegates from the Third World countries brought other emphases. From the Spanish speaking countries there was a strong orientation toward social change, bringing with it problems of political involvement and the degree to which such involvement could subscribe to an ideology which often had Marxist overtones. In other regions, such as Africa, Indonesia and the Far East, one of the main problems is "inculturation," embodying the faith and the spirit of the Society in forms peculiar to their own cultures. As part of this evaluation on the state of the Society, Fr. General himself gave a picture of the way he sees the Society at the present, as a body which is very much alive, but with certain illnesses. He also gave a detailed description of his own relationship with the Holy See and the other officials in the Vatican, providing afterwards an opportunity for the delegates to question or discuss any of the points he had brought up. The document on the state of the Society which came out as a result of all this exchange is not one of the papers published to the Society. It was intended only for the delegates and their work in the congregation itself. However, the document is not in fact that useful. Its main value was in providing the oppor-tunity for the delegates to familiarize,themselves with the state of the Society through their live exchanges with one another. A document of this kind by its nature remains general, and gives little sense of the extent and import of either the positive or negative points. 671~ / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 The Work of the Commissions As was mentioned above, ten commissions were formed, more or less along the lines of the categories of material received in the postulates. While a few others later came into being and some of the original ones were changed, these ten commissions formed pretty much the working base of the Congrega-tion. Risking over-simplification, they could be divided into those which looked mainly inward, for example, about our "grades," the Fourth Vow, for-mation, final incorporation into the Society (final vows), central government, the constitution of provincial and general congregations; those which looked outward, namely, the mission of the Society today, inculturation, the service of the Society to the Church; and finally those which look both inward and outward, for example, on union of hearts, the Jesuit today. Some comments on a few of the documents might contribute to a better understanding of them. 1. The Mission of the Society Today The decree which took up the lion's share of the time, and which provided the platform for most of the rhetoric was the one that dealt with the mission of the Society today. The very nature of the topic explains why it took so long to come up with a satisfactory formulation. It involves an articulation that had to bring together the old and the new: fidelity to the essentials of the Society's apostolic nature, and coming to grips with the needs of today. While such a formulation has its own difficulties, the problem was exacer-bated by an initially one-sided approach and by the impression that some gave of using language more appropriate to political parties than to a religious group attempting to clarify its mission. The initial approach was largely horizontal, too much concentrated on the socio-economic aspects, with too lit-tle of the priestly. In the effort to make the congregation conscious of the urgency of these problems there was a tendency to absolutize what was in fact only one aspect of the Society's apostolate. One of the observations offered by Cardinal Villot in the letter in which he com-municated the Pope's authorization to promulgate the work of the congregation pertains to this decree. He stresses an important point, which is already present in the decree, but which deserves emphasis, namely, that the total work of evangelization has a comprehen-sion that cannot be reduced to working for social justice, and secondly that there is a priestly way of working for social justice that is distinct from the proper role of the laity. No one can judge from the final document how much work went into it. If one were tothink of a carpenter shop filled with shavings, and one tiny cabinet to show for the work, the comparison would be apt. The final decree, though somewhat diffuse, manages to relate the fundamental apostolic orientation of the Jesuit life as a priestly order to the promotion of faith which in the real-life situation is inseparable from the promotion of justice. 2. Poverty The. subject of poverty has continued to bedevil our recent congregations. A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation ] 679 As everyone knows, there are two main aspects to what is called religious poverty: the juridical and the evangelicalwor the personal appropriation of the values of evangelical poverty. The decree on poverty, probably the most im-portant document to come out of the congregation, has two parts, the first be-ing more inspirational and exhortatory, while the second is juridical, setting down a basic reform in the structures of our institutional practice of poverty. It is not possible to enter into the technicalities of the juridical part of the decree since it presupposes some knowledge of the structure of the Society. Suffice it to say that the decree formulates what is, to my mind, a creative way of realizing for our own times the Ignatian ideal of poverty, taking into con-sideration the different socio-economic conditions of the twentieth and six-teenth centuries. On the personal side, frugality, the sense of being part of the kenotic mystery of Christ, dependence on the community, and identification with the poor are stressed. in his letter, Cardinal Villot makes two points concerning this decree. After commenting on the fact that the Holy Father was aware of the immense amount of work that had gone into this decree, which attempts to relate the traditional practice of poverty in the Society to the needs of our times, he says that considering the newness of the approach, it would be better to promulgate the decree ad experimentum, to be reviewed in the next General Congregation. He also cautions that the decree should not jeopardize the Society's traditional approach to gratuity of ministries. 3. Grades and the Fourth Vow No other subject discussed by the congregation received as much attention from the press as that of our "grades" and the Fourth Vow. As I remarked above, the delegates had proceeded in a spirit of obedience to the Holy Father's wishes, but in the spirit of Ignatian obedience which allows represen-tation of one's case to the superior, with full openness, however, to the final decision of the superior. But, as I mentioned above, the delegates were not aware of an important communication from the Holy Father which he had given to one of the officials manifesting his mind clearly on the topic. We were made aware of this special communication only after we had proceeded in good faith to take up the question, and to give an "indicative" votewone that is not definitive, but from which it is possible to infer the mind of the delegates. The indicative vote was overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing grades. One can imagine the consternation of the Holy Father when he read of the results of this in the Acta, a copy of which he received regularly, especially when he learned that we had not been given his specific directive on this matter which had been communicated to one of the officials of the congregation. This unfortunate series of events precipitated a strong response from the Vatican. First there was a letter from Cardinal Villot in the name of the Holy Father expressing his consternation at the proceedings. Later there was a letter from the Holy Father himself, tin which he expressed his wonderment, pain, disappointment. What the delegates found particularly difficult to understand in Cardinal Viilot's letter was the strong language used about the failure of Fr. Arrupe to exercise the proper kind of leadership that could have headed off this series of unfortunate events. I~1~0 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 While the delegates were still reeling from this unexpected turn of events, they learned of the directive that had been given by Cardinal Villot to one of the officials to be given to the congregation. The official explained before the whole congregation that he had not understood that he was supposed to transmit this directive to the delegates in any official way. This was a costly mistake. Yet in some ways I think it was a felix culpa because of the benefits which came out of it, as I shall comment below. At this point I should say something about the meaning of the grades and the Fourth Vow for those unfamiliar with the Society's structure and legisla-tion. When the idea of the Society was evolving in the mind and experience of Ignatius, one of the features that emerged was a conception of having membership in the Society on different levels, or "grades." For those with their final vows, there were to be three levels or grades. First of all, there are the "solemnly professed," with solemn vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and a Fourth Vow of special obedience to the Holy Father in regard to mis-sions, that is, apostolic commissions. In the past one hundred years about 40% of Jesuit priests have belonged to this grade. In the mind of Ignatius the professed were supposed to exemplify to a special degree what he looked for in every Jesuit, proficiency in learning, a high degree of virtue, mobility, a life supported only by free-will offerings, exemplifying in their lives a similar relationship to the Vicar of Christ that the disciples showed toward Christ Himself. In addition, key positions in government were reserved to the professed, such as the office of provincial. Again, only the professed could take part in a General Congregation. In the second place, there were priests whose final vows were simple, not solemn. Without going into detail on the differences between solemn and sim-ple vows, it is sufficient to remark here that for one thing they differ accord-ing to the seriousness of the reasons needed for dispensation. This grade is that of "spiritual coadjutor." Members of this grade do not take the vow of special obedience to the Holy Father. In the third place, there are "temporal coadjutors" or brothers. Their final vows are also simple vows of poverty, chast.ity, and obedience. They have the same apostolic purpose as the priests, but have a different way of contributing to the realization of it. The grades are a feature that are peculiar to the Society. As one would sur-mise, the distinction has not been an unmixed blessing in the history of the Society. Though Ignatius never conceived of a Society which would have privileged and unprivileged castes, human nature being what it is, the results were predictable. Since human nature associates power with authority, the professed came to be considered as a kind of first-class type of Jesuit, and the non-professed as second-class. In recent years there has been much historical research on the origin of the ~grades. Also there has been considerable discussion whether the distinction of ~the grades was inextricably tied up with the vision of St. Ignatius, or whether it was something that with the change of times no longer served a purpose. The A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation Thirty-first General Congregation did not face the question head-on. It con-tented itself with broadening the norms by which a person could be admitted to profession. It also transmitted the final solution of the problem to the Thirty-second General Congregation. The intervention of the Holy Father did not directly concern grades. He limited himself to the question of the Fourth Vow, which he said could not be extended to non-priests. This intimates that the Holy Father was concerned not simply about a juridical division in the Society which could be changed by another law, but about a theological question concerning the relationship between the priestly identity of those who take the Fourth Vow and the mis-sions which are the direct object of the vow. Again (I am speculating) the intervention of the Holy Father might be a healthy reminder in this age of blurring all distinctions for the sake of dubious notions of equality, that differentiation in functions does not necessarily mean division. Reserving the Fourth Vow to priests helps to keep the priestly focus of the apostolic work of the Society which has characterized it from the begin-ning. This need not create first- and second-class citizens, but it could engender an awareness that there are different gifts within the same body by which the same goal is realized. 4. The Union of Hearts A commission without a name was set up as a kind of catchall to handle four topics that on the surface had little unity: the question of union and pluralism, communal discernment, religious life, and community life. Since I was a member of this commission from beginning to end, I feel more in touch with it than with the other commissions. It was a kind of a "Benjamin" com-mission compared with those set up to handle the "important" topics like mis-sion, grades, poverty, etc. Ironically, Benjamin was suddenly given an importance late in the con-gregation. The Holy Father in his intervention had commented on the fact that he had heard a lot about mission and justice, but little about renewal of the religious life, even though we had already been at it for two months. So all of a sudden the pressure was on to come up with something significant along those lines. The final document on union of hearts is a contemporary commentary, on Chapter One of Part VIII of our Constitutions, "Aids Toward the Uniori of Hearts." Under this heading the commission found a focus which could unite the various topics given to it. Much effort was spent in an attempt to formulate a clear statement on the subject of union and pluralism. Many of the postulates asked for such a state-ment, some of them stressing the harm coming from internal divisions, others emphasizing the need for a "healthy pluralism." Eventually the commission decided that a theoretical statement would not be helpful. Instead it for-mulated, along with principles on which union of hearts is based, certain prac-tical directives on prayer, community life, sacraments, and communal discern-ment. 682 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 The subject of communal discernment received a lot of discussion. Some wanted to turn it into a kind of Aladdin's lamp which could call forth some kind of a jinni. Others were more skeptical over the possibility of univer-salizing the practicableness of such a process. The final statement in the docu-ment attempts to locate communal discernment within the spectrum of various kinds of spiritual exchange within a community, not exaggerating its role, but on the other hand recognizing the value that it has when the right dispositions and circumstances are present. Incidentally about midway through the congregation, an ad hoc commis-sion was also established to see whether the congregation itself could not carry on its work through a method of communal discernment. After a couple of meetings, it dissolved, because it felt that proceeding according to a formal method of communal discernment was impractical for the congregation because of the large numbers involved and the wide range of subjects on the agenda. 5. The Jesuit Today In the light of the diversity that has appeared in Jesuit life over the past ten years, it was felt necessary to have a statement which would describe the meaning of being Jesuit today. The congregation was presented with five different papers, each of which approached the subject of Jesuit identity from different points of view. They opted for the one which now appears among the official decrees. The decree relates Jesuit identity today in a very simple way to our Igna-tian tradition, to our apostolic mission, and to the source, center, and goal of Jesuit life, which is the imitation of Christ. The Holy See and the General Congregation We have already commented on the intervention of the Holy See in regard to the subject of extending the Fourth Vow to non-priests. However, this is only an application of something which is much broader. The interest of the Holy See in this congregation is unparalleled in the whole history of the Society. Perhaps this comes from the fact that Pope Paul had a keen sense of its importance for the Society and for the Church itself. I have just finished once again going over the papal documents, beginning with the letter written to Fr. Arrupe on September 15, 1973, which the Holy Father wrote after Fr. General had announced the convening of the General Congregation, and concluding with the covering letter which was added to the approbation of the decrees. There is one theme running through all of these communications: the necessity of being faithful to the distinctive nature of the Society as it is expressed in the Formula of the Institute, a distinctiveness which has proved its fruitfulness over hundreds of years of experience. Specifically, the Society is described time and time again as a priestly apostolic order, with a special bond of obedience to the Holy See. There is, to be sure, a stress on the need to adapt to the needs of our times, but such adap- A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation I 683 tation must always maintain the essentials as these are to be found in the For-mula. 1 Pope Paul wrote of his concern for the Society not only as the Vicar of Christ who has responsibility for the whole Church, but in terms which, unless I am mistaken, are unprecedented in the history of this relationship between the Society and the Holy See. He speaks of himself as the one who has the chief responsibility for the preservation of the Formula of the Institute, "supremus 'Formulae Instituti' fideiussor," and the chief protector and preserver of the Formula, "Formulae Instituti supremus tutor ac custos." It would not be true to say that all of the delegates responded with un-qualified enthusiasm to the interventions of the Holy Father. Though all recognized his right in abstracto to intervene, a~nd the corresponding attitude of obedience to which we were obliged and, which all gave without contesta-tion, nevertheless when the interventions came in this particular way, with these particular words and in this particular timing, there were signs of ruffled feelings. In case anyone needed reminding, we learned in the process that the delegates as a whole, while good and responsible men, are not yet ready for canonization. However, we did see in an exemplary way the incarnation of Jesuit obedience in at least one person, Fr. Arrupe. This was not something he did just "to give good example." His whole life has been so totalized by his faith that even his perceptions pick up the reality beneath the appearance. He senses the presence of the Vicar of Christ beneath the appearance of Pope Paul. The concern of the Holy Father shown in so many ways over the past few years and in a special way through his vigilance over the activities of the con-gregation are to my way of thinking a special grace for the Society. In a way that we never planned on, the interventions of the Holy Father brought us to a level of faith we would not have reached by ourselves. It also brought us to a realization that the Society is a servant of the Church. In some small way the history of this congregation parallels the description of Peter's death, about whom our Lord said, "You will stretch out your hands, and somebody else will put a belt round you and take you where you would rather not go" (Jn 21:18). Father Arrupe I have already mentioned that if it were not for Fr. Arrupe's example and leadership the congregation would have capsized under the difficulties it ran into. He constantly called us to a vision we needed in order to see what was happening from a supernatural point of view, and in order to avoid the traps of tNot many Jesuits are aware either of the content or the importance of the Formula of the Institute. Yet, even more than the Constitutions, it is the basic rule or fundamental code of legisla-tion in the Society. It contains the results of the deliberations of Ignatius and his companions in 1539 which provided the first sketch of the Institute of the Society of Jesus. It was first approved by Paul Iil in 1540, then again by Julius 111 in 1550 in a slightly revised form. 684 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 self-pity or recrimination that were only too present. Like one of th~ prophets, he reminded us to see what was happening as coming from the hand of God, and to use it for our own purification and conversion. In a talk given to the delegates on the second day of the congregation, he spoke of the answer that we had to give to the needs of our times. It should be the foolishness of the cross by which Christ redeemed the world, which is the wisdom of God. "In the absolute foolishness of the Cross, the emptying of all things, we find the key to the ultimate solution to the problems of today." In a way we did not foresee, those words were prophetic. Again, he exercised his leadership by leaving the congregation free to follow the paths where its deliberations would take it. In its authority, the General Congregation is superior to the general. Fr. Arrupe always acted with full awareness of this fact. On occasion he would let the delegates know how he felt about certain things, not to pressure them, but in order to make this part of the input of their deliberations. The congregation showed its appreciation of his leadership over the past ten year,s in many ways. There are few who have had to pilot a ship through such a stormy period. The burden has not been easy. But there is always evi-dent in him the same buoyancy and infectious joy that somehow puts him in touch with the Stillpoint that is beyond, above, beneath the storm. Yet, while realizing his outstanding qualities, the delegates did not apotheosize Fr. Arrupe. They realized that with all of his gifts there were also limitations. In fact, the decree which set up a council for the general was framed mainly to supply the kind of help which might balance out the one-sidedness of some of his gifts. Differences Between This Congregation and the Previous Ones The Thirty-second (2ongregati0n had many characteristics which made it very different from any preceding General Congregation. Some of the more important ones might be the following. As was mentioned above, there was a four-year period of preparation for this congregation which was unprecedented. Similarly a few months before the actual opening day a special preparatory commission met to organize the material. This was the first General Congregation where, from the start, traditional rules of secrecy were lifted, except for the prohibition against making public either the names of delegates who spoke on the different questions, or the tally of the votes. Five Jesuit journalists were given free access to the meetings. They published a report about every week that kept the Society informed of the progress of affairs. In this Congregation for the first time the voices of the Third World were not only heard in larger numbers, but they showed a vitality that added zest to the meetings. However, even among these voices there were different accents. All of them were keenly aware of the injustices which oppress their peoples by reason of the exploitation of the capitalistic countries. However, the Spanish- A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation / 685 speaking delegates tended to stress political and social involvement; the Africans continually reminded us of the need for the sense of the transcendent, the specifically God-and-Christ-centered nature of our apostolate; and those from the Far East, while keeping these same perspectives, also stressed the need for approaches that were directed both toward personal conversion and change of the structures. No other congregation has met at a period when there has been such a crisis in vocations. Over the past ten years, the Society has diminished from about 36,000 to 30,000 members. While in some places the number of novices has begun to pick up again, the overall picture remains dim. In 1965 there were 1902 novices compared to 705 in 1974. In the United States there are about 200 novices, showing a slight increase over the past few years. In some coun-tries, however, the picture is dismal. Spain, for example, had 269 novices in 1965. In 1974 it had only 30. Germany had 114 in 1965. At present it has about 30. Similar figures could be given for France, Belgium, Holland, Italy. When one compares the number of scholastics presently in their training with the number of priests engaged in apostolic work, there is only one scholastic for every five priests. This will seriously change the scope of our apostolic work over the next fifty years. Another unique factor was the everpresent concern of the Holy See in regard to the preparation for the congregation, the things taken up, and the final results, as I have mentioned above. The theme was repeated over and over again: be faithful to yourselves, especially to your identity as it is ex-pressed in your Formula of the Institute. The only specific feature which was singled out in the expressions of this concern was fidelity to the lgnatian idea of the Fourth Vow, both positively in the fact that it should be a vital factor in the life of the Society, and negatively in that it should not be extended to non-priests. Again, the fact of asking the congregation to submit its decrees to the Holy See for its approval before they were promulgated was unprecedented. The approbation was given with, in some instances, a few qualifications. Another characteristic which distinguishes this congregation from begin-ning to end and is evident in the decrees is thee theme of repentance. There is a mea culpa, mea maxima culpa evident in the Introductory Decree, the Decree on Mission, on The Jesuit Today, as well as in others. The Society is painfully conscious of its failings over the past ten years. Particularly in contrast to the Thirty-first Congregation, with its stress on freedom, subsidiarity and conscience, this one stressed the complementary features of the limits of pluralism, the need for norms that are applicable for Jesuit life as a whole, the responsibility of superiors for a greater firmness in governing, the importance of the manifestation of conscience both for the spiritual direction of the individual, and the good of the apostolate, the value of communal discernment when the proper conditions are realized. This congregation, unlike others, had a unifying theme throughout: the mission of the Society today. This did not happen because it was planned. There was a kind of unconscious dynamic at work which imperceptibly gave 686 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 this orientation to the various decrees. The consciousness of mission, if fully appropriated in all of its richness, could do much to revivify the Society, over-coming in the first place a great deal of individualism and self-will, and bring-ing about a greater sense of the living presence of Christ sending through His Church, and through superiors. In the actual procedure of the congregation there were unique features arising from the sharing that took place in smaller groups. One of the most im-portant parts of our daily life was the concelebrated Mass which was celebrated according to the different language groupings. Finally this congregation is probably distinctive in the fact that a little over half of the delegates were under forty-nine years old (122 out of the 236). Strengths and Weaknesses of the Congregation Like all meetings of this kind there are both strengths and weaknesses to be found. I could not resist the temptation to say that one of the strengths was un-doubtedly sheer psychological tenacity to "keep at it" for over three months when everyone was exhausted both from the work itself and the emotional strain. But the main strength of the congregation is the sense of solidarity manifest among the delegates and throughout the Society, a solidarity coming from a vision based on faith and brought into an Ignatian focus through the Spiritual Exercises and our Jesuit tradition. However, I think that there are also some deficiences evident in the work and structure of the congregation. Some way has to be found to expedite the carrying out of business. Though it was an attempt to get the input from the whole Society, on balance, the analysis of the postulates took up too much time. And questions of order consumed interminable hours. In regard to particular questions, in retrospect, it might have been a serious mistake not to have separated in some way the question of the Fourth Vow from that of grades. While they are related, they are distinct. And the interven-tion of the Holy See was concerned with the Fourth Vow, and not directly with grades. Again the expression given to the relationship of the Society to the Holy Father is "safe," but it creates the impression of one who is driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. It does not seem to ex-press the 61an of Jesuit spirituality in its fullness. One reason for this inade-quacy stems from the fact that the congregation came to the topic only in the last few days before it ended, and the members did not have the mental energy or the time to do justice to it. Another difficulty is in the formulation itself. Attempts to combine both the unreserved expression of the spirit of loyalty and the juridical aspect of limits tend to cancel one another out. For example, there were numerous attempts, all sterile, to speak of "mission" in relationship to "doctrine," wherein loyalty would be unreserved in regard to mission, but conditioned in regard to doctrine. Consequently the resulting statement is bland, not nuanced. This will probably be one of the main topics that will have to be taken up at the next General Congregation. A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation Another deficiency is the fact that the congregation treated those problems which are more obvious because they have a certain shrillness--the problem, for example, of global injustice. Just as important, however, but without the volume being turned up, are questions touching man and technology, par-ticularly the genetic manipulation of man. Again, these questions will probably have to be faced by the next congregation. What to Hope For If the Society as a whole could translate what is set down in the decrees from formulation into fact, it would be renewed. In turn it would become a great force in renewing the Church and the world. What hope is there for such a renewal? The parable of the sower and the seed has its application to the Society as well as to the Church. There are those whose roots are not deep enough to withstand trials. There are others whose life of faith is choked by cares and riches. But then there are the many who do yield fruit, some, a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Decrees, however excellent, are no substitute for the gospel-call to totality. To the degree that individuals open themselves to the radical call of the gospel will they also open themselves to the decrees, which after all are only a faltering attempt to express this radical call in a way that is both Ignatian and contemporary. There are many factors which will contribute to energizing this renewal. Many feel a need for a deeper life of prayer. The importance of spiritual direc-tion is expressing itself strongly. A fuller appropriation of the Spiritual Exercises ¯ through the directed retreat is a great blessing. Again, an important factor is the reinforcement and leadership given to the Society by other religious con-gregations which have already led the way in the renewal of religious life by bringing their lives more in conformity with gospel simplicity and single-mindedness. We can also hope that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past ten years. Considering the turmoil and confusion coming from "future shock," these mistakes are perhaps understandable. But no organization can exist in a state of continuous convulsion. Many of the delegates, in searching for answers to the problems which faced us "discovered" our Thirty-first Congregation, which someone described as the great congregation in the history of the Society. We found that in many cases we could not do better, in fact could hardly come up to the decrees of the Thirty-first. But we also felt like a traveler who had spent hours trying to find his way only to discover after much meandering that there was a map in his glove compartment. The documents of the Thirty-first General Congreg -tion were such a map. The logical question, then, is: why were not the decrees implemented? A still more haunting question is: will the same thing happen to the decrees of this congregation? This was a problem which preoccupied the delegates throughout the whole time. Meetings were held to discuss implementation. But as the saying goes, 61~! / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 there is many a slip,between the cup and the lip. How much will the Society be able to drink in from the decrees? One of the main sources of hope, in addition to those mentioned above, is a renewed sense of solidarity and confidence among the provincials, and a strong sense of support in Fr. General. In the past ten years very often inaction resulted not from a failure of courage or faith, but because of a blurring of ideas concerning the fundamentals of religious life, often enough because of contradictory views bandied by theologians. The provincials obviously have not suddenly received some formula of universal application to solve all problems, but there is a greater sense of assurance and direction. The weight of implementation turns around the local superiors with the support of the provincials. There is hope here also, because the superiors themselves have a greater sense of their solidarity and of their role as spiritual leaders of the local communities. Ultimately the problem is always the same: conversion. It is something never accomplished once and for all, but continues to repeat its call. There are the perennial obstacles to conversion: inertia, self-love, self-will, the evil spirits that affect us all as individuals. However, it especially in the way that the collectivity reenforces the inertia in individuals that we find the main obstacle today. Group-think and group-feel, in large part created through the media, produce a kind of closedness that filters down from a collective level to in-dividuals, bringing about imperceptibly a closedness in the individual. Each one, young or old, is caught in some degree on this split level of collectivity and self, and suffers from the unfreedom of the collectivity. Jesuits already engaged in the apostolate have to discern how much this group-think affects their personal lives, impeding their personal conversion and the fruitfulness of their apostolate. Jesuits who are in formation have to do the same. The responsibility of those who are in charge of training the younger Jesuits is great. The importance of the congregation comes not from the written decrees but from the support that these decrees give to creating in the Society a different kind of group-think, a "group-feel" based upon the gospel. "My name is legion." Legions can be driven out only by legions. The demonic in collectivity can only be driven out by the embodiment of holiness in collec-tivity. The Society will rise or fall to the extent that the good will of the in-dividual is supported and sustained by a corporate realization of sanctity. No individual can abdicate the responsibility for his own conversion. But in a special way superiors have a responsibility for the whole group. Newman remarked somewhere that good is never done except at the expense of those who do it, and truth is never enforced except at the sacrifice of its propounders. Reformers and prophets have never been well received. Perhaps superiors are destined to enter into that role, not, however, with a martyr complex or heaviness of heart. We have a living example in Fr. Arrupe that it is a role that is compatible with a deep joy. Aiding and facilitating the work of the superiors are the communities A Survey of the Thirty-Second General Congregation / 689 themselves which are called upon, through community meetings and prayerful discernment, to face their own response to the gospel call to simplicity, and to bridge the gap between the radical response to which we have vowed our lives and the actual way in which we live them. When I asked one of the delegates who was in great part responsible for the formulation of the decree on poverty how optimistic he was about its im-plementation, he said: "When I think of human nature, I am not very op-timistic. But when I think of the power of the Spirit, 1 am hopeful. Everything depends on the Spirit. Legislation can support; it cannot convert. Of ourselves we are weak, but with the power of the Spirit we can overcome, overcome even ourselves." POSITION OPEN The Department of Theology in the School of Religious Studies of the Catholic University of America announces the opening, beginning January, 1976, for: Assistant, Associate or Full Professor in the field of Christian Spiritual Theology. Applications should be sent to:Chairperson Department of Theology Catholic University of America Washington, DC 20064 The Catholic University of America is an equal ol~portunity employer. The Recovery =of Religious Life Bro. Raymond L. Fitz, S.M. Bro. Lawrence J. Cada, S.M. Both authors belong to the Marianist Training Network. Brother Raymond Fitz is director of the Marianist Institute of Christian Renewal and associate professor of Engineering Management and Electrical Engineering at the University of Dayton. He lives at 410 Edgar Avenue; Dayton, Ohio 45410. Brother Lawrence Cada is chairman of the Department of Science and Mathematics at Borromeo College of Ohio and lives at 315 East 149 Street; Cleveland, Ohio 44110. I. Introduction~ How long will the turmoils now besetting religious life last? Are they almost over, and has the process of returning to a more normal situation begun? Or will things stay unsettled for some time to come? This article will argue for the likelihood of the latter alternative. On the basis of the models and analyses presented, the article will try to show that religious life in America is undergo-ing a profound transition, which will take another twenty to twenty-five years to run its full course. Moreover, the study will seek to demonstrate that social disintegration (loss of membership, lack of vocations, collapse of institutions, etc.) of religious communities in the Church will probably continue for at least the next ten to fifteen years. The most significant questions facing religious life in those ten to fifteen years will center on "death and dying." Many aspects of the life as it has been known will be passing away. Only after these questions are accepted and creatively answered can religious life be expected to be revitalized and renewed within the Church. This process will demand both a recovery of that deep dynamic impulse which first gave rise to religious life in the Church and a recovery from the malaise through which it is now passing: tThis is a draft of a work in progress. Feedback on the content and style of this paper would be ap-preciated. 690 The Recovery of Religious Life hence the title "The Recovery of Religious Life." Although much of this arti-cle argues for the plausibility of these assertions and their implications for the future of religious life, there will also be provided an explanation of how the data were collected and organized, and of what was called important or unim-portant. In this sense, these assertions represent a starting bias that informs the entire article. As such, this bias merits being stated at the outset. The approach taken in this article2 is to explore the questions about the future of religious life from a historical and sociological point of view. In the first two parts of the article, two models are developed: a historical model of the evolution of religious life as a movement in the Church and a sociological model dealing with the organizational life cycle of an individual religious com-munity. Then, in the final sections of the article, these two models will be used to address questions about the present condition of religious life and its future. Every model represents a simplification of reality, and the models in this arti-cle are no exception. To arrive at the questions posed in the final sections, the article will digest and condense large amounts of material drawn from a variety of sources that are partially indicated in the notes. It is hoped that this simplification is not a serious distortion of the facts and that it will arrange the historical and other data in such a way as to provide an overview from which some tentative generalizations can be made. II. The Evolution of Religious Life: A Historical Model Religious communities in the life of the church are not fixed and static en-tities. Taken together they make up a historical process unfolding over time, and religious life can be viewed as a significant social movement in the history of Western Culture. As parts of a movement, religious communities arose in response to dramatic social change in the Church and in the larger cultural and political arena of Western Civilization. They became a dynamic force in shap-ing and cha~ging the Church and secular culture. They have been both a cause and an effect of social change: the founding of religious communities has fre-quently been a response to major developments of society, and the evolution of the Church and Western Culture has been significantly influenced by the life and work of religious communities. As in all social movements, the role of myth, the emergence of belief systems, the fashioning of institutions and social structures, and the role of personal transformation and commitment are central to the evolution of religious life. The dynamic interplay of all these elements creates, sustains and limits the histo~'ical unfolding of religious communities. ~This article grew from a variety of experiences over an extended period of time with multiple presentations at workshops and reflections from many religious. Especially helpful were Fr. Norbert Brockman, S.M., Sr. Gertrude Foley, S.C., Bro. Thomas Giardino, S.M., and Sr. Carol Lichtenberg, S.N.D. The scheme of dividing the history of religious life into the five eras presented in the second part of this article was first suggested in a lecture given by Fr. David Fleming, S.M., at the University of Dayton in December, 1971. 692 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 A. Organizing Concepts One way to view the unfolding of religious life within the Church is to look at how the image of religious life has evolved over time and what implications this evolution has had for the functioning of individual religious communities.3 The term dominant image of religious life is used here to name a multifaceted reality that includes how religious view their life and its functions and role within the Church and the world during a given period. The term is also meant to indicate the sense of history which permeates religious life at a given time. How do people, both the religious and the members of society at large, picture the past of this way of life? What kind of future are religious supposed to be creating? The process by which the dominant image of religious life evolves in time can be characterized by a repeated sequence of identifiable phases of change: - Growth Phase. A relatively long period of elaboration and develop-ment of the dominant image of religious life and its implications. - Decline Phase. A period of crisis in which the dominant image of religious life comes under strong question. Religious communities seem no longer suited to the aspirations of the age. Religious com-munities lose their purpose, drift into laxity, and disintegrate. Transition Phase. A comparatively short period of revitalization in which variations of the dominant image of religious life emerge and one of these is gradually selected as the new dominant image. - Growth Phase under a New Image. A period of elaboration and development under the new dominant image of religious life. The supposition that religious life has passed through a succession of such phases of growth, decline, and transition is the basis of a model that can be used to organize and interpret the data of the history of religious life.4 The remainder of this section is devoted to illustrating a way this model might be constructed. 3Some sources used to clarify the notion of dominant image were Fred Polak, The hnage of the Future, translated and abridged by Elise Boulding (San Francisco: Jassey-Bass, 1973); Changing Images of Man, Policy Research Report No. 4, Center for the Study of Social Policy, Stanford Research Institute, May, 1974; and Kenneth E. Boulding, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). *Some sources used to clarify the notion of social evolution were Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding-I (Princeton: P. U. P., 1972); Anthony F. C. Wallace, "'Paradigmatic Processes in Cultural Change," American Anthropologist (Vol. 74, 1972), pp. 467-478; Donald T. Campbell, "'Variation and Selective Retention in Socio-Cultural Evolution," in H. R. Barringer, G. I. Blanksten, and R. W. Mack (¢ds.), Social Change in Developing Areas (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1965); Edgar S. Dunn, Economic and Social Development." A Process of Social Learn-ing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1971); and Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). The Recovery of Religious Life / 693 The following questions have been used in fashioning the model. First, there are questions about variation that deal with searching and experiment-ing. Under what conditions do variations appear in the dominant image of religious life? If these variations lead in certain directions, what factors in culture, the Church, or religious life itself influenced the choice of those direc-tions? Second, there are questions about selection. What determines which variations in the dominant image of religious life are selected out to serve as essential elements of a new image of religious life? How do members of religious communities distinguish well-founded and properly justified variations from those which are precipitous, not well thought out, and hasty? ¯ Finally, there are questions about retention that deal with incorporating and establishing the new. How are selected variations incorporated into religious communities? What processes are needed? What set of factors distinguishes in-novations which endure from those which disappear quickly? B. Major Eras in the Evolution of Religious Life Using the concepts described above, the history of religious life can be divided into five main periods: the eras of the Desert Fathers, Monasticism, the Mendicant Orders, the Apostolic Orders, and the Teaching Congregations) The description of these eras given in this section constitutes the historical model that will be used in the final portion of this article. 1. Era of the Desert Fathers The first period was the Era of the Desert Fathers. Following the earliest manifestations of religious life in the mode of consecrated virgins and widows within the Christian communities of the persecuted Church, ther~ emerged the image of the religious as the ascetic holy person. The description of the her-mit's life given by Athanasius in his Life of Anthony crystallized an ideal which inspired both solitary anchorites and many communities of cenobites. The desert was seen as the domain of the demons to which they had retreated after being driven out of the cities by the triumph of the recently established Church. It was to this "desert" that generous men and women withdrew to 5Factual and historical data on the history of religious life were gathered from such standard sources as The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), the An-nuario Pontificio, The Official Catholic Directory, and The Catholic Almanac. Some of the other sources on this topic were Raymond Hostie, S.J., Vie et mort des ordres religieux (Paris: Descl~e de Brouwer, 1972); David Knowles, O.S.B., Christian Monasticism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969); Humbert M. Vicaire, O.P., The Apostolic Life (Chicago: Priory Press, 1966); Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964); Owen Chadwick, John Cassian, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: C. U. P., 1968); William Hinnebusch, O.P., "'How the Dominican Order Faced Its Crises," Review for Religious (Vol. 32, No. 6, November, 1973), pp. 1307-1321; William A. Hinnebusch, O.P., The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols. (New York: Alba House, 1966, 1973); Teresa Ledochowska, O.S.U., Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula, 2 vols. (Rome: Ancora, 1969); William V. Bangert, S.J., A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972); and Adrien Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, 2 vols. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961). 69t~ / Review for Religious, lZolume 34, 1975/5 carry on the Church's important work of doing battle with the devil in the wilderness as Christ had done long ago. In this way the desert came to be seen as a place of austere beauty, where the monk was trained in the ways of perfec-tion. He returned from time to time into the midst of his fellow Christians, who saw in him the power to do good--healing the sick, casting out demons, comforting the sorrowful with gentle words, reconciling the estranged, and above all urging everyone to put nothing in the world before the love of Christ. This image captured the imagination of the Christian world as news about the Desert Fathers spread from Egypt to all points of the Roman empire. Throughout the 4th century monasteries sprang up on all the shores of the Mediterranean. By the 5th century, the golden age had begun to fade. In the East, the monks had become embroiled in doctrinal controversy. In the West, TABLE 1: ERA OF THE DESERT FATHERS (200-500) Dominant Image of Religious Life. The ideal of religious life is the holy ascetic who seeks " the perfection of Christ as a solitary or in community with a group of monks. Disciples withdraw into the "desert" and place themselves under the care of a master ascetic who teaches them the ways of perfection. They live nearby as hermits or gather in cenobia or monasteries where the master is the superior. The monk prays, mortifies himself, does battle with the devil for the sake of the Church, and spends his life seeking union with Christ. 2nd and 3rd Centuries 251 Anthony horn Consecrated virgins and widows live a form of 271 Anthony withdraws into the desert RL within Christian communities of the early 292 Pachomius born Church during the persecution. 4th Century 313 Edict of Milan 325 Pachomius founds cenobium 356 Anthony ~lies 357 Athanasius writes Life of Anthony 360 Basil founds monastery in Cappadocia 363 Martin founds monastery in Gaul 376 Melania founds monastery on Mount of Olives 393 Augustine founds monastic group in Hip-po 399 Cassian, disciple of Evagrius, migrates from Egypt to West Hermits and cenobites flourish in the Egyptian desert. Various forms of solitary and com-munity RL spread around eastern rim of the Mediterranean (Palestine, Syria, Cappadocia). First monasteries are founded in the West. 5th Century 410 Alaric sacks Rome RL continues to expand in the East. Spread of 415 Cassian founds monastery in Marseille wandering monks and various kinds of 455 Vandals sack Rome monasteries in the West while the western half 459 Simon the Stylite dies of the Roman Empire crumbles. 476 End of western Roman Empire 1st TRANSITION: SPREAD OF BENEDICT'S RULE The Recovery of Religious Life / 69t~ the foundations of Roman civilization weakened under the onslaught of the barbarian tribes, and the ties between the eastern and western halves of the Empire began to break apart. The monasteries in Gaul and other parts of the moribund West became refugee cloisters, where the monks gathered the few treasures of civilization they could lay hold of. As dusk settled on the glories of imperial Rome, the stage was set for the rise of feudal Europe and with it the next period in the evolution of religious life. 2. Era of Monasticism The next period was the Era of Monasticism. In his attempt to regularize religious life as "a life with God in separation from the world," Benedict produced a new dominant image of religious life. This image was not only a correction of the abuses which had crept in during the 5th and 6th centuries, it also, and more importantly, turned out to be a successful adaptation of religious life to the feudal society of the Dark Ages and the early medieval period. Benedict's short and practical Rule furnished workable guidelines for all monastic activity and every age and class of monks. It combined an uncom-promising spirituality with physical moderation and flexibility. It emphasized the charity and harmony of a simple life in common under the guidance of a wise and holy abbot. By the 9th century, this new image had spread to virtually all the monasteries of Europe. The ideal of the Benedictine monk became the model for Christian spirituality and played a part in the stabilization and unification of society. Various modifications, such as the Cluniac, Carthusian, and Cister-cian Reforms, maintained and adapted the dominant image to the developments in European society. Cluny and the Cistercians devised methods of uniting monasteries into networks that became harbingers of the modern order. However, by the time the 'first stirrings of urbanization began at the end of the 12th century, the dominant image began to show its inadequacies and once again laxity in religious life was not uncommon. There was also a great debate between monks and canons about which form of religious life was a more authentic embodiment of the apostolic ideal. As the civilization of the high Middle Ages began to emerge, new possibilities were felt in society and with them came the opportunity for a transition in religious life. 3. Era of the Mendicant Orders When Francis and Dominic launched their communities, they ushered in the next period, the Era of the Mendicant Orders. As mendicant friaries sprang up in towns across Europe, they met with an initial hostility which could not fathom how this new style could be an authentic form of religious life. Gradually, though, the new image of religious life became acceptable, and it proved to be a much better adaptation of ~:eligious life to the needs of urban society than was possible for the monasteries in their rural settings. During the course of the 13th century, even the monastic orders established studia close 696 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 to the new universities, where the mendicants were flourishing. As Christen-dom was passing through its zenith, the image of a religious life unen-cumbered with landed wealth played a key role in the cultivation of the in-tellectual life by the Church within society and in the preaching of the Gospel for the Church. TABLE 2: ERA OF MONASTICISM (500-1200) Dominant Image of RL. Life in a monastery is the ideal of the religious. The daily round of liturgical prayer, work, and meditation provides a practical setting to pursue the lofty goals of praising God and union with Christ. Within the Church and society, the monks set an example of how deep spirituality can be combined with loving ministry to one's neighbor and dutiful fidelity to the concrete tasks of daily living. 6th Century 529 Benedict founds a monastery to live ac- Spread of monasteries throughout western cording to his Rule Europe (Gaul, Spain, Ireland, etc.). Various 540 Celtic monasticism takes root in Irela'nd formats. Excesses and laxity are common--as 590 Columbanus founds monastery in Lu~r are wandering monks. euil 7th and 8th Centuries 642 Arab conquest of Egypt Gradual spread of Benedict's Rule to.more and 700 Venerable Bede more monasteries of Europe. Missionary 746 Boniface founds monastery in Germany journeys of Celtic monks to evangelize 755 Canons of Chrodegang founded northern Europe. 9th Century 816 Regula Canonicorum of Aix-la-Chapelle Observance of Canons Regular is made uni- 817 Charlemagne's son decrees that form by the spread of the Rule of Aix. Con- Benedict's Rule is to be observed in all solidation of Benedict's Rule. Virtually all monasteries. This project coordinated by monasteries are "Benedictine." Benedict of Aniane. 910 Cluniac Reform 1084 Carthusian Reform 1098 Cistercian Reform 10th and llth Centuries Various reforms breathe new life into Benedict's ideal and introduce organizational variations. 1111 Bernard joins the Cistercians 1120 Premonstratensians founded 12th Century Canons Regular unite into orders which are a variation of the monastic networks of Cluny and Citeaux. Military orders attempt a new form of RL which is temporarily successful (Knights of Malta, Templars, Teutonic Knights, etc.). 2nd TRANSITION: RISE OF THE MENDICANTS After a rapid flowering, the mendicant orders were affected by the same changes which spread across the Church and European society in the 14th and 15th centuries. As the Renaissance presaged the new humanism, the secularization of European society, and the breakup of the unity of Christen-dom, there emerged the conditions for yet a new kind of religious life. The Recovery of Religious Life / 697 TABLE 3: ERA OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS (1200-1500) Dominant Image of RL. The simple friar who begs for his keep and follows in the footsteps of the Lord is the ideal of RL. He prays as he goes, steeping himself in the love of Christ. Unencumbered by landed wealth, the mendicants are free to travel on foot to any place they are needed by the Church. They hold themselves ready to preach, cultivate learning, serve the poor, and minister to the needs of society in the name of the Church. 1211 Franciscans founded 1216 Dominicans founded 1242 Carmelites founded 1256 Augustinians founded 13th Century Mendicant friaries spring up in medieval towns across Europe. These foundations lend themsel~,es to work in the new universities and the apostolate of preaching. Rapid expansion of the mendicant orders. Monastic orders make some attempts to take up the style of the mendicants. 1325 75,000 men in mendicant orders 1344 Brigittines founded 1349 Black Death 1400 47,000 men in mendicant orders 1415 Hus burned at the stake 1450 Gutenberg 1492 Columbus 1500 90,000 men in mendicant orders 14th Century ~tabilization and slow decline of the mendicant orders. Abuses in RL are prevalent. 15th Century Various reforms restore the mendicant ideal and produce a gradual increase in membership. First stirrings of the Renaissance introduce an uneasiness into the Church and RL. 3rd TRANSITION: THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 4. Era of the Apostolic Orders The transition to the next period in religious life, the era of the Apostolic Orders, happened with the Counter-Reformation. Not long after Luther sparked the Protestant Revolt, the new image of religious life appeared with the foundation of various orders of Clerics Regular, the chief of which were the Jesuits. The verve and style of this new foundation set the pace for religious life, The mendicant orders had taken up this ideal in part by joining in the mis-sionary conquests,of the Church in the newly discovered lands. The new image also spurred religious to come to terms with the secularizing trends of the scientific revolution, modern philosophy, and the rise of nationalism in Europe. Jesuits, for example, could be found in the royal courts of almost all of Europe's Catholic kingdoms, in the laboratories of the new scientists, and teaching the youthful Descartes at La Fl~che. As the proponents of the Enlightenment testily challenged the very ex-istence of the Church, a slow decline descended upon religious life. Large and nearly empty monasteries dotted the European countryside. Jansenist and Enlightened thought undermined the.rationale for religious life from opposite directions. The Bourbon kings succeededin persuading Rome to suppress the 69~! / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 Jesuits in 1773. On the eve of the French Revolution, worldwide membership in all the men's religious orders stood at about 300,000; by the time the Revolution and the secularization which followed had run their course, fewer than 70,000 remained. Many orders went out of existence. As the 19th century began, there was need of a thorough-going revival of religious life, which could realistically cope with the new consciousness of Europe. TABLE 4: ERA OF THE APOSTOLIC ORDERS (1500-1800) Dominant Image of RL. Religious are an elite of dedicated and militant servants of the Church with a high level of individual holiness, a readiness to defend the Church on any front, and the zeal to win new expansion for the Church to the very ends of the earth. 1517 Luther sparks the Reformation 1535 Ursulines founded 1540 Jesuits founded 1541 Francis Xavier sails for Far East 1545 Trent starts 1562 Discalced Carmelite Reform 16th Century RE virtually wiped out in Protestant Europe. Founding and expansion of a new kind of RL in the format of the Clerics Regular. These groups work at shoring up the Church's political power in Catholic Europe, reforming the Church, and spreading the Gospel in the foreign missions. 17th Century 1610 Visitation Nuns founded 1625 Vincentians founded 1633 Daughters of Charity founded 1650 St. Joseph Sisters founded 1662 Ranc6 launches Trappist Reform 1663 Paris Foreign Mission Society founded 1681 Christian Brothers founded 1700 213,000 men in mendicant orders Flowering of spirituality, especially in French School, leads to new foundations such as the various societies of priests and clerical con-gregations. Bulk of men religious still belong to mendicant orders. 1725 Passionists founded 1735 Redemptorists founded 1770 300,000 men in RL in world 1773 Jesuits suppressed by Rome 1789 French Revolution starts 18th Century A few clerical congregations emerge, but RL as a whole seems to be in decline due to the in-roads of Enlightenment thought, Jansenism, wealth, and laxity. Weakened RL is given the coup de gr?tce by the French Revolution, which sets off a wave of political suppression and defection in France and the rest of Catholic Europe. 4th TRANSITION: FRENCH REVOLUTION 5. Era of the Teaching Congregations The revival of religious life which occurred in the next period, the Era of the Teaching Congregations, set off in a new direction. There were about 600 foundations of new communities in the 19th century. They were, for the most part, dominated by the movement of educating the masses. For the first time The Recovery of Religious Life / 699 in European history, the idea of educating everyone had the possibility of be-ing concretely realized. The new congregations joined in this movement in hopes of planting the seeds of a hardy faith in the souls of the children they taught by the thousands. This zeal for the education of children was combined with a cleansed Jansenistic spirituality to form the new image of religious life. While the activity of religious spilled over into other apostolic works such as hospitals, teaching set the pace. Even the few pre-Revolution orders which were managing a slow recovery took on many of the trappings of the typical 19th century teaching congregation. For the first time in the history of religious life, recruitment of adult vocations was almost completely displaced by the acceptance of candidates just emerging from childhood. Through the end of the 19th century and on into the 20th the religious who gave themselves to this demanding work of teaching edified the Church and produced a brand of holiness which was most appropriate for a Catholicism which sought to strengthen a papacy denuded o.f worldly power and to care for the masses of the industrialized wor.ld in need of christianization. By the mid-1960's membership in religious communities reached the highest point in the history of the Church. In the last decade, this trend was reversed for the first time in more than a century. Crises have set in which some ascribe to a loss of identity TABLE 5: ERA OF THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS (1800-present) Dominant Image of RL. Religious dedicate their lives to the salvation of their own souls and the salvation of others. The style of life of religious men and women blends in intense pursuit of personal holiness with a highly active apostolic service. Identity with the person of Christ unites this two-fold objective into a single purpose. 19th Century 1814 French Restoration; Jesuits restored by Rome 1825 Fewer than 70,000 men in RL in world 1831 Mercy Sisters founded 1850 83,000 men in RL in world 1859 Salesians founded 1870 Papal infallibility declared Revival of RL after widespread state sup-pressions. Numerous foundations of con-gregations dedicated to a return to authentic RL blended with service, principally in schools. Old orders, such as Jesuits and Dominicans, rejuvenated in the format of the teaching con-gregations. Church gradually centralizes around the papacy and isolates itself from secular trends of the modern world 20th Century 1950 275,000 men in RL in world 1962 Vatican II starts; 1,012,000 women in RL in world 1965 335,000 men in RL in world 1966 181,500 women in RL in U.S. 1972 879,000 women in RL in world 1973 143,000 women in RL in U.S. 1974 227,500 men in RL in world Expansion and solidification. In the sixties, crises set in from within RL due to loss of iden-tity and inroads of secularizing process. Numerous defections and decreasing numbers of new members. 5th TRANSITION: (?) 700 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 and the inroads of secularism. It seems that another transition in the long history of religious life has begun. Further considerations will be undertaken in the remainder of this article to better analyze the present situation. 11I. The Life Cycle of a Religious Community: A Sociological Model The previous section of this paper focused on a historical model for the evolution of religious life as such within the Church; in this section attention is turned toward the life of the individual religious community or institute. To this end, a sociological model for the life cycle of individual religious com-munities which organizes the important dimensions of each period in the life of the communities is developed.6 This model allows further probing of the questions concerning the plausibility of a revitalization of religious life, since revitalization of present religious communities is one way that religious life as a whole will be renewed. A. Organizing Concepts To date, only thirteen men's religious orders in the entire his.tory of the Church have ever surpassed a membership figure of 10,000 at some point of their existence. The membership pattern of three of these orders--the Dominicans, the Minims, and the Jesuits--is graphed in Figure 1 below. Although these three examples are taken from among the largest orders of the Church, they are representative of the membership pattern in most religious communities, large or small. Typically one finds one or more cycles of growth and decline in the number of members. These membership patterns suggest a dynamic of inner vitality that goes on in a religious community. Using such analogies as the human life cycle and other cycles of growth and decline, a sociological model has been devised which divides the life cycle of an active religious community into five periods: foundation, expansion, stabilization, breakdown and transition. The model is shown schematically in Figure 2. The shape of this curve is intended to repre-sent the over-all vitality of the community as it passes from one period to the next. In the following section salient events and characteristics which typify each of these periods are described. An attempt is also made to isolate the crises which occur during each period. ~Some sources used to clarify the notion of a life cycle were Hostie, Vie et mort; Wallace, "'Paradigmatic Processes"; Gordon L. Lippitt and Warren H. Schmidt, "Crisis in a Developing Organization," Harvard Business Review (Vol. 45, No. 6, November-December, 1967), pp. 102- 112; and Lawrence E. Greiner, "Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow," Harvard Business Review (Vol. 50, No. 4, July-August, 1972), pp. 37-46; Thomas F. O'Dea, The Sociology of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966); Luther P. Gerlach and Virginia H. Hine, People. Power and Change: Movements of Social Transformation (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 1970). The Recovery of Religious Life / 701 _z 20 LLI ~ lO 30 1200 1300 ! \/ , st 1400 1500 1600 1700 I t I t I I I II ! I ! 1800 1900 2000 Figure 1: Membership of Dominicans, Minims, and Jesuits IFOUNDATIONIEXPANSION ISTABILIZATION BREAKDOWN TRANSITION Figure 2: Life Cycle of a Religious Community B. The Periods of the Life Cycle 1. The Foundation Period The first period in the life of a religious community centers around a found-ing person and his or her vision. The founder or foundress undergoes a radically transformi,ng experience, which can usually be pinpointed to an event or series of events, and .which is perceived as an abrupt shift in the founding 702 / Review for Religious, I/olume 34, 1975/5 person's identity and a timeless moment in which a vision or dream is received. Contained in the transforming experience is a new appreciation of the message of Jesus which leads to innovative insight on how the condition of the Church or society could be dramatically improved or how a totally new kind of future could be launched. A new impetus to live the religious life in all the totality of its demands is felt, and a new theory emerges that is at once a critique of the present, an appropriation of the past, a compelling image of the future, and a basis for novel strategies. The founding person's transforming experience is followed by the initial emergence of the community. A fortuitous encounter takes place between the founder or foundress and some contemporary men or women in which the founding experience, the innovative insight, the emerging theory, and the call to holiness are shared. The group unites under the guidance of the founding person to search for and invent new arrangements for living the Gospel together and working toward the realization of the Kingdom of God. The foundation period may last ten to twenty years or longer and fre-quently coincides with the last part of the founding person's lifetime. Integra-tion and cohesion center on the founding person and still more deeply on the person of Christ. The structural identity of the community appears in seminal form, and authority in the community springs from the wisdom of the found-ing person. Founding events of religious communities have a uniqueness about them which has caused them to be especially treasured as significant moments in the Church's past. Examples of founding persons and their visions readily come to mind: Angela Merici's dream of a new kind of religious life for women that centered on an active apostolate; the hopes of Robert of Molesme to restore fervor through the primitive observance of Benedict's Rule in the wilderness of C~teaux; Don Bosco's contagious vision of loving Christ and joyfully serving the poor. The more striking cases of founding persons receiving their in-spirations have become part of the common heritage of all religious: Anthony hearing in a Sunday Gospel the words which were the key to his life's aim; Ignatius retiring to Manresa to receive his visions. For the most part the foundation period is a time of grace and charism for a new religious community. But there are also crises that must be faced. The crisis of direction forces the community to decide which undertakings are im-portant and which must be sacrificed. The crisis of leadership confronts the community with the problem of finding out how it will live beyond the time of its founding person. The crisis of legitimization engulfs the nascent community in the question of whether or not the Church will approve it as an authentic form of religious life. The Waldensians, for example, showed some signs of becoming a new religious order on the pattern of the mendicants, but they never overcame the crisis of iegitimization. Instead of becoming a religious community, they ended up as renegades who had to hide out in the woods of medieval Europe. The Recovery of Religious Life / 70a 2. The Expansion Period When the community has emerged from the foundation period, it un-dergoes a fairly long period of expansion, during which the founding charism is institutionalized in a variety of ways. A community cult and belief system solidifies, a community polity is fashioned, and community norms and customs take hold. As members of the community's second generation mature and grow older, they recount stories of the foundation, which they have heard from the pioneers or have themselves experienced in their youth. These stories enshrine decisive events which set the community's direction or establish its characteristic traits. Gradually, rituals and symbols which express and com-memorate the most treasured facets of the foundation are fused with the.iore of the older members into a sort of sacred memory and cult that begins to be passed on from generation to generation as the community's "founding myth." Attempts are made at thinking through the founding myth and expressing it in terms of contemporary thought patterns. Eventually these efforts result in theories, interpretations, and social models which coalesce into a belief system and give a rational structure to the more intuitive thrust of the founding myth. Simultaneously, procedures are devised for community decision making and communication, and bit by bit the community's polity.takes shape. Norms are set down and customs emerge which cover all aspects of the community's life, such as membership criteria, leadership standards, and apostolic priorities. The members of the young community experience an excitement about the growth and success which characterizes the expansion period. Large numbers join the community, and new works are rapidly taken on which enhance the possibility of a still broader recruitment. Major interpreters of the founding vi-sion are recognized. Patterns of spiritual practice are determined, and the community's spirituality is made concrete in manuals of direction or other written documents. With expansion come certain organizational crises. How is authority to be delegated? What means will be used to integrate and tie together the rapidly expanding network of establishments and the burgeoning membership. When Bernard joined the Cistercians thirteen years after their foundation, he led the community through this kind of organizational crisis. In the process, a new en-tity, the general chapter, was invented to cope with the situation, and this in-novation is still a standard feature.of most religious orders today. Another crisis of this period centers on maintaining the pristine vigor of the founding vision. As rival interpretations arise, which will be discarded? A classic exam-ple of this kind of crisis occurred in the great debates about poverty among the early Franciscans just after Francis died. 3. The Stabilization Period After a fairly long expansion, which may last two to three generations or "/04 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 longer, there ensues a period of stabilization. Numerical increase in membership may continue, but geographical expansion usually slows down. The stabilization period may last a century or more, but it is sometimes as brief as fifty years or so. A feeling of success pervades the community during the stabilization period. Members experience a high degree of personal satisfaction from simply being in the community. The prevailing image of religious life is clear and accepted. It provides a basis for describing unambiguous social roles for religious. The community is accomplishing its purpose and this purpose is self-evident. The need to improve is not seen as a need to change things but simply to do better what is already being done. Gradually, as stabilization sets in, more and more of the community assumes that religious life has always been the way it is now and that it will always remain so in the future. There is little need to elaborate the understanding of the founding vision or penetrate into it more deeply. It is simply accepted and repeated to new members who join. No one is left in the community who knew the founding person or the first dis-ciples personally. Memory of the founding events takes on the cast of past his(ory that is separate from the present moment. Formation of new members emphasizes their conformity to standard patterns of external behavior that are seen as the best means of cultivating interior commitment. The over-all feeling of success which is so typical of the stabilization period is not illusory. There is in fact a job that is being done and done well by the many generous religious who devote themselves to its accomplishment. The kinds of crises that Crop up during the stabilization period are linked to the other characteristics of the period. The crisis of activism occurs. Members become so absorbed in work that they lose sight of its spiritual and apostolic underpinning. They allow the satisfactions of accomplishment to dis-place a centeredness in Christ. Loss of intensity is another crisis of the stabilization period. Is it possible to maintain the intensity of vision and com-mitment among members, now that the community has become so highly in-stitutionalized? They can often be simply carried along by the sheer inertia of the community's activity and held in place by the pressure of social expecta-tion placed on their role as religious from people in the Church. Another danger stems from the crisis of adaptation. In the midst of success the com-munity is seldom open to adaptation, and any changes that have to be made are fraught with difficulty. Quite often, even the most legitimate changes are rejected, and their proponents are righteously and intolerantly silenced. The failure of later Jesuit missionaries to implement the ideas of Matteo Ricci con-cerning Confucian practices among Chinese Catholics is perhaps a good ex-ample of the sort of resistance to adaptation that can be found during the stabilization period. 4. The Breakdown Period Eventually the seeming immutabilities of the stabilization period start to give, and the religious community enters the breakdown period. The The Recovery of Religious Life / 705 breakdown may be gradual and last a half a century or more, or it may be rapid and run its course in a few decades. In either case, what happens is a dis-mantling of the institutional structures and belief systems that arose in the ex-pansion period and served the community so well during the stabilization period. This collective decline gives rise, in turn, to stress and doubt in the in-dividual members. Initially .a number of persons become dissatisfied with the current state of the community. Perhaps they are simply struck by what they judge to be the silliness of some of the community's customs or procedures. Or they may come to see that the community's life and work are not equipped to handle im-portant new challenges. Unanswered questions about the function and purpose of the community begin to accumulate and start to raise doubts. Levels of in-dividual stress increase slowly at the beginning, but then rise rapidly as doubt spreads to more and more levels of the community's social structure. To handle the growing problems, standard remedies are tied. All that is needed, it seems, is to get back to doing well what has always been done and to renew commitment to the community's mission. However, the usual problem-solving techniques become increasingly ineffective. A sense of crisis grows as community authority and decision-making structures become confused. The community's belief system begins to appear archaic and bound in by the trap-pings and articulations of a bygone age. The founding experience and myth, which had been internalized by the community's early generations, is no longer felt by the members. As the community loses its sense of identity and purpose, service to the Church becomes haphazard and lacks direction. Moral norms in the com-munity are relaxed and some members perhaps distract themselves with sex and a misuse of wealth. There is a net loss of membership through increased withdrawals and decreased recruitment of new members. The crises that arise during the breakdown period center on the various phenomena of decline in the community. The crisis of polarization can become acute when those who have faith in the community as it was align themselves against those who in varying degrees reject the community as it is. The crisis of collapsing institutions sets in as the community is forced to stop doing "business as usual" and abandon long-established works. The resulting demoralization leads to the crisis of the community's impending death. What is to be done as the chilling awareness grows in the community that it is inex-orably listing into disintegration on all sides? 5. The Transition Period The breakdown is followed by a period of transition. Three outcomes are possible for religious communities during this period: extinction, minimal sur-vival, or revitalization. Extinction, the first of these outcomes, occurs when all the members of a community either withdraw or die and it simply passes out of existence. This happened, for example, to 76% of all men's religious orders founded before 706 / Review for Religious, l/olume 34, 1975/5 1500 and to 64% of those founded before 1800. From a historical perspective, then, a reasonable expectation would seem to be that most religious com-munities in the Church today will eventually become extinct. A religious community which does not die out may go into a long period of low-level or minimal survival. If the membership pattern of presently existing religious orders founded before the French Revolution is examined, one finds that most of them enter into a period lasting across several centuries in which the number of members is very low. In fact, only 5% of all men's orders founded before 1500 and only 11% of the orders founded before 1800 have a current membership which is larger than 2,000. The Minims (Figure 1) are typical of the orders which once were quite large and now have a small membership. This type of outcome should not be interpreted as a dis-appearance of vitality in every case. The Carthusians, for example, follow this membership pattern. Yet they seem to be living UP to their reputation of never having relaxed their observance--never reformed and never needing reform. To this day the order's spiritual impact appears greater than its numerical strength. There is also a small percentage of religious communities which survive the breakdown period a~d enter into a period of revitalization. At least three characteristics can be singled out in all communities which have been revitalized in this way: a transforming response to the signs of the times; a reappropriation of the founding charism; and a profound renewal of the life of prayer, faith, and centeredness in Christ. The time in history fn which revitalization occurs seems to make a difference. If the revitalization occurs during one of the shifts in the dominant image of religious life singled out in the historical model above, the com-munity takes on many of the characteristics of the emerging image, and the transforming response to the signs of the times seems central to the revitaliza-tion. If the revitalization occurs midway during one of the major eras in the history of religious life identified earlier in this article, the revitalization takes on the characteristics of a reform with the reappropriation of the founding charism playing a central role. In either case the community experiences the revitalization as a second foundation. Personal transformation or conversion is central to revitalization. With personal transformation comes innovative insight and a new centering in the person of Christ. The innovative insight allows the transformed individuals within the community to develop critical awareness of the assumptions un-derlying the traditional meaning of the community and functioning of that community within the Church and the world. This innovative insight brings with it a focusing of energies through a new positive vision of what the com-munity should be in the future. The vision allows the emergence of a new theory which gives meaning to the experiences of individuals and the shared events lived within the community and spurs the community to building and creating its future. Such a new theory guides the community in the search for The Recovery of Religious Life / 707 and the invention of new models ~of living together as a community bound by. the evangelical conditions of discipleship in the service of the Church. A more complete sketch of the human dynamics of revitalization will be given in the last section of this article. The essential components of this dynamic, namely, insight and vision, and new theory and new models, are mentioned at this point to complete the picture of the life cycle of a religious community. Some limitations of this sociological model and the historical model of the previous section are given in the next section together with some generalizations that can be drawn from the models. IV. Some Limitations and Generalizations A. Limitations of the Models Before proceeding, some concluding and cautionary remarks must be made. Evidently the rapid overview of the history of religious life given in the first portion of this article should not be taken as anything more than a demonstration of how the evolution of religious life can be interpreted so as to fit the model of the five main eras that are being postulated in the proposed historical model. The account is far too compressed and over-simplified to provide an adequate and proi~erly nuanced telling of the story of religious life. For example, little attention was given to the Canons Regular, who constituted a significant portion of men religious from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. There was no discussion of the medieval military orders nor of Orthodox monasticism. A still more gaping lacuna is the almost complete absence of any analysis of the way women's religious life differed from or followed the same pattern as that of the men. It may be that the sources used in this study were not sensitive to the distinctive role women actually played in the evolution of religious life. On the other hand, it may be that up to the present time the trends of women's religious life have been very parallel to those in the men's orders. The models proposed for the evolution of religious life and for the life-cycle of a religious community are also both simplifications. Some might validly question, for example, whether there were just five major eras in the history of religious life and whether the transitions between the eras occurred as clearly as the historical model suggests. The description of the dominant image of religious life for each era is a simplification of what was in every case a rather complex phenomenon. Hopefully, the liberties that have been taken are justified by the intention of trying to synopsize the history of religious life in such a way as to make some tentative insights more easily accessible to someone who is not a professional historian. Similarly, the breaks between the successive periods in the life cycle of a religious community are nowhere near as clear-cut as the proposed sociological model suggests. In .history, breakdowns sometimes occur within one order in different geographical locales at different times. Revitalizations often occur in some places for an order, while it decays elsewhere. At times 708 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 there are orders in which the role of the founding person is rather minor and does not have the decisiveness described in the model. Some communities have been founded in rather modest historical circumstances that were not accom-panied by the profound inspiration described in the model. These and similar qualifications must be kept in mind when the sociological model is used to in-terpret the life cycle of any particular community. B. Generalizations The models presented in the previous sections suggest some generalized conclusions. These conclusions can be helpful in exploring the present crisis of religious life. The historical evidence suggests that there have been significant shifts in the dominant image of religious life across the centuries. These shifts seem to occur when there are major societal changes astir and when the Church is un-dergoing major changes. The first transition happened as the Roman Empire fell in the West and feudal Europe was beginning; at the same time the rift between western and eastern Christianity was starting. The second transition occurred as feudal Europe was giving way to medieval urbanization and as the Church was gathering all of Europe into the unity of Christendom. The third transition took place at the start of the modern period of Western Civilization as the Church underwent the shock of the Reformation. The fourth transition resulted from a direct attack of society on the Church as a whole and on religious life in particular. Admittedly each of these changes in the culture and the Church differed from one another in many respects. However, the pattern seems clear enough at least to permit one to ask whether perhaps another shift in the dominant image of religious life would happen if major changes in society and the Church should come to pass. Although religious communities have been founded in almost every cen-tury of Christian history, it seems that each major shift in the dominant image of religious life is heralded by some significantly new foundations which em-body a new image in an especially striking way. This could be said of the earliest Benedictine monasteries for the first transition, of the Franciscans and Dominicans for the second transition, of the Jesuits for the third transition, and of the plethora of 19th century foundations for the fourth transition. It also seems to be the case that many communities go out of existence at each transition. Those that survive either continue in a diminished form or somehow blend the new dominant image with the charism of their own foun-dation to get another lease on life. The mendicant orders, for example, grew numerically stronger during the Era of Apostolic Orders as they adapted their own special gifts to the new style of religious life. The culture of the high Mid-dle Ages was rapidly and irretrievably passing away, but the mendicants adapted and flourished. One might ask, then, if the Church would witness the death of many religious communities and the foundation of new and different ones if a shift in the dominant image of religious life were to occur. The remainder of this article will explore the plausibility of maintaining that The Recovery of Religious Life / 709 another major transition has in fact begun in the history of religious life. Should this hypothesis be true, it would be appropriate to pose questions about h6w religious life is dying and how a recovery and revitalization might happen. Another observation that suggests itself from this brief survey concerns the continuity that underlies the shifts of the dominant image of religious life. As the image evolves it continues to hold up the impelling ideal of a radical following of the conditions set forth by Christ for an evangelical discipleship embedded in a life of prayer and deep faith. While the contemporary religious would probably not feel called to take on the externals of the life of the Desert Fathers, he or she will surely understand and be drawn to the stark beauty of the life of radical discipleship that moved Anthony to withdraw into the desert. Similar remarks could probably be made about the ultimate aims of the first Franciscans and the first rugged band of Jesuits. Through all the twists and turns in the make up and style of religious life, there is a deep core of seeking union with Christ in a special and total way that endures century after century. A great deal of historical precedent would have to be explained away by anyone who would wish to maintain that religious life is about to disappear as a separate and distinguishable way of life in the Church. The historical pattern seems to be one of repeated recovery. The present moment is indeed a time of trouble for religious communities, but religious life as a whole will doubtlessly survive. Turning to the sociological model, some further generalizations can be made. In the evolution of a religious community the non-rational elements of transforming experience, vision, and myth play a central role. This is es-pecially true during the periods of foundation and revitalization. Although necessary for each period in the life-cycle of a community, the techniques of rationality (long-range planning, leadership training, etc.) will never be suf-ficient to found a religious community or to revitalize one. The renewed vitality that comes to some religious communities during the time of transition finds its source in plumbing the depths of.the mythic and non-rational and in-tegrating them with the more rational dimensions of human life. A central insight of the myth of original sin is that humankind is not capable of sustained development; breakdown and disintegration are ever-recurring manifestations of the human condition. Since religious men and women exist within the human condition, it should not be surprising that, from time to time, all religious communities experience an extensive period of significant breakdown and disintegration. These bleak realities should be em-braced with humble acceptance of th~ human condition and a faith-filled hope that the Lord will in time resurrect life-giving initiatives from the death-dealing processes of breakdown. V. Where Does Religious Life Stand Today? In the previous sections of this article, the history of the religious-life movement in the Church and of particular religious communities was ex-amined to determine the major factors within culture, the Church, and 710 / Review for Religious, Volume 34, 1975/5 religious communities themselves that significantly influence the evolution of this movement. Generalizations from the proposed models indicate that major. transitions are likely to occur in religious life when secular culture is in the midst of a major crisis, and when religious life has experienced a period of major breakdown. The factors can serve as a useful matrix for answering the question, "Where does religious life stand today?" As was mentioned in the in-troduction, the answer proposed in this article is that religious life is undergo-ing a pervasive transition that will last for the next twenty to twenty-five years and which will significantly change the style of life and service of religious communities. The plausibility of this assertion is developed in this section. A. Signs of Transition in Secular Culture Many writers have noted that contemporary culture is in the midst of a societal transition. Some compare the present time to the Renaissance. Others claim that the present multifaceted change is equal to if not greater in magnitude than the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Many strands of societal transition have been pointed out. Spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, psychological, political, economic, and many other crises in society have been described by writers from a wide range of disciplines. For the purposes of this article, a cluster of these difficulties, which might be broadly termed the socio-economic crisis, will be summarized below as a sample of the sort of comment on contemporary society being made today. Catastrophic events and critical trends are continually reported by the news media. These reports range from widespread famine in the Sahel and South Asia to the continued downward spiral of the national economy. Careful analysts and writers have noted that these events and trends are a manifestation of the parallel growth of a set of interrelated critical issues which they have designated as the "world problematique.''7 A list of the critical issues that make up the "world problematique" would include: Energy Problems: Runaway growth in domestic and worldwide use of energy; shortages and scarcity of energy; insufficient capital resources to develop new energy sources. Food Problems: Food supply unable to meet the demand for food; worsening of weather conditions through pollution; increasing food prices due to food scarcity and increasing cost and consumption of energy; deterioration of arable land through increased urbaniza-tion and ecological undermining; actual widespread famine; potential long term problems of hunger and famine. Pollution Problems: Rise of pollution-induced illness; exponential increhse in the pollu-tion of the air and seas; denuding of natural environment through strip mining. 7.Some sources used to examine the "world problematique" were Kenneth E. F. Watt, The Titanic Effect: Planning for the Unthinkable (Stanford, Conn.: Sinauer Associates, Inc.); Donella H. Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth (Washington: Potomac Associates, 1972); Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974); Lester R. Brown, In the Human Interest (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974); and Lester R. Brown with Eric P. Eckholm, By Bread Alone (New York: Praeger, 1974). The Recovery of Religious Life / 711 Economic Problems: Growing world inflation; market saturation (e.g. airplanes, elec-tronic equipment, automobiles); instability and manipulation of monetary system, lack of alternatives to growth economics; increasing gap between the "have's" and the "have not's." Work Problems: Increasing unemployment and underemployment; saturation of the labor market; decreased productivity; increasing alienation and dissatisfaction with work; depersonalization of work environments. Problems of Urban Areas: Deterioration of urban areas; increasing crime rates; in-creasing cost of essential urban services. Problems of International Order." Hazards of international competition and war; com-petitive economic policies. What makes the "world problematique" different from problems en-countered in previous eras is its complexity and the pervasive interrelationship of its elements. Hence, the "world problematique" is not amenable to normal methods of problem solving. Attempts to address such critical issues in a singular or joint fashion introduce fundamental dilemmas that do not appear resolvable within conventional modes of thought. Among such dilemmas which seem to be plaguing the contemporary politico-economic situation, four might be singled out: the dilemmas of growth, guidance, global justice, and social roles.8 These dilemmas are delineated more fully in Table 6. One may ask if these problems and dilemmas have not been present during most of the Industrial Era. Are not the problems of the 20's and 30's very much the same as those of the 70's and 80's? What makes the above mentioned problems and dilemmas different is that they have not been ameliorated through the use of conventional wisdom and standard problem-solving ap-proaches. In fact, one may argue that application of these approaches has led to many unanticipated and undesirable consequences. Resolution of the problems and dilemmas is dependent upon a thorough-going shift in social perceptions, involving restructuring of beliefs, images, and human aspirations at a fundamental level. B. Crisis in the Church and the Breakdown in Religious Life The Catholic Church in America has been profoundly influenced by con-temporary change. For at least fifteen years the Church has been experiencing a transition of its life. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1964) was a result of the early stages of this transition and a triggering event for its later stages. The Church began to open itself to a world which was undergoing a dramatic secularization. This opening up or aggiornamento had significant impact on all dimensions of Church life. Parish life and parochial education are no longer the only shapers of the values and beliefs of American Catholics. The once-clear norms and social roles ~vithin the Church no longer seem to serve their original purpose. For example, the Vatican's official position on birth 8The schematization presented in Table 6 is based on the work of Bill Harmon, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Stanford Research Institute. 712 / Review for Religious, I~'olume 34, 1975/5 TABLE 6: SOME DILEMMAS OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY Growth The fundamental "new scarcity" of fossil fuels, minerals, fresh water, arable land, habitable surface area, waste-absorbing capacity of the natural environment, fresh air, and food come from approaching the finite limits of the earth. These limits demand a radical slow down or leveling off in material.growth and energy-use curves of the past.' Yet, the present economic and political system is built around a growth hypothesis. The economic and political consequences of limiting growth appear unbearable. Guidance Dilemma Ecological considerations along with awesome power of modern technology to change any and all aspects of the human environment establish a mandate for greater guidance of technological and social innovation. Yet, the political price of such guidance is very high. Such guidance is perceived as con-trary to man's fundamental right to freedom and as an inhibition to economic growth. Global Justice Dilemma Further advances by the industrialized nations make the rich nations richer and the poor nations relatively poorer. The impressive ac-complishments of the industrial economy are largely built on a base of cleverness plus cheap energy, the latter from the world's limited stockpile of fossil fuels. Yet, the costs of not redressing these inequities may be serious political and economic world instabilities as well as widespread famine and inhuman suffering in the poorer nations. Social Roles Dilemma Present economic system is failing to provide Yet, the absence of satisfying and personally an adequate number of satisfying social roles meaningful roles for women, youth, the especially for women and minorities. The aged, and minorities along with worker employment market is saturated; there is a dissatisfaction in general results in in-need to keep youth and the aged out of the creased I~ersonal alienation and erodes labor market, the morale of the nation. control is considered unacceptableto an increasingly large number of Catholics. Difficulties are arising in the functioning of such Church structures as the priesthood and the traditional role of the laity and of such Church institutions as parishes, schoo|s, and hospitals. Their once-unquestioned role within the Church no longer seems to satisfy the needs of an increasingly large number of church members. This crisis and transition within the Church has had a dramatic effect on religious communities of women and men. Religious communities have begun to experience all of the signs of entering into the breakdown and disintegration period described earlier in this article. There has been a sharp decline in membership due to increased withdrawals and a decrease in new recruits. Re- The Recovery of Religious Life / 713 cent literature9 gives a statistical picture of this breakdown in the United States. - A recent National Opinion Research Center study indicated there is a larger relative number of resignees among those already established in church careers than in any other equivalent period of time since the French Revolution. - For the years between 1965 and 1972 66% of the yearly decrease in communities of religious women was due to dispensation or termination of vows. In communities of religious women the average annual net increase over these years was approximately 768 members, the average annual net decrease was 3841, with only one-third of that loss caused by deaths. - The total number of Sisters in 1974 had declined 17% from 1960 and 23% since their peak membership year in 1966. - The total number of religious Brothers in 1974 had decreased 12% since 1960 and 26.5% since their peak membership year in 1966. The purposes of religious communities which were once clear and widely understood have become vague and meaningless to some in the midst of the modern church crisis. The structures of authority and process of communica-tion and decision making within religious communities seem no longer to fit the needs of the individuals within the community or suit the evolving work of the communities. The processes of formation to religious community have sometimes become disorganized and seem to lack purpose. These and other signs indicate that the last fifteen to twenty years have been a time when most religious com-munities have begun to experience breakdown. This cluster of the signs of breakdown in virtually all communities seems to indicate that we are ap-proaching the end of another major era in the history of religious life. C. Restatement of the Bias This review of the transitions in secular culture as well as the current crisis of the Church allows us to use the historical and sociological models of the evolution of religious life and religious communities outlined in the previous sections to answer the question "Where does religious life stand today?" In the introduction of this article, an answer was given in what was called the fun-damental bias of the article, namely, that religious life in America is undergo-ing a profound transition, which will take another twenty or twenty-five years to run its full course. The arguments leading up to this bias can be set forth as follows: 1. The dominant image of religious life has undergone several major tran-sitions as religious life has evolved as a movement within the Church. 2. The occurrence of these major transitions is associated with a number 9Carroll W. Trageson and Pat Holden, "Existence and Analysis of the 'Vocation Crisis' in Religious Careers," (pp. 1-3) in Carroll W. Trageson, John P. Koval, and Willis E. Bartlett (eds.), Report on Study of Church Vo
This guide accompanies the following article: The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature, Compass 6/2 (2012): pp. 166–181, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2011.00440.xAuthor's introductionThe animal rights movement has been described as one of the most neglected and misunderstood social movements of our era. However, social movement scholars are beginning to realise the political and moral significance of the world wide animal protection movement at a time when nature itself has been included in the specialist field of environmental sociology. Just as people are beginning to see that nature matters and is not separate from society, nonhuman animals (hereafter animals) too are increasingly perceived as worthy of our respect and consideration. The long‐running animal protection movement which began in England in the 18th century is today better known as the animal rights movement. It is the men and women of this movement who, atypically for a social movement, are campaigning for a species that is not their own. The movement's theories and practices are important for what they do for animals and also because of what the animal rights controversy reveals about human beings.Author recommendsGarner, Robert. 1998. Political Animals: Animal Protection Policies in Britain and the United States. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.The book describes the progress made by the animal protection movement in the two countries where animal rights protests have been most prominent. The author presents a comprehensive examination of animal welfare policies in Britain and the US thus providing an informative comparative study of the movement's relationship with the state in these two countries. Garner's focus on policy networks corresponds to the sociologist's concept of social movement organizations. More than fifty such organizations balanced evenly between animal protectionists and animal‐user industries are discussed in the book. Political Animals provides an excellent introduction to the politics of animal rights, although missing in the accounts are the voices of the animal activists and their opponents. In the final analysis, it is the meaning activists attribute to their cause that drives the movement, a fact which Garner tacitly acknowledges.Imhoff, Daniel (ed) 2010. The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology with Watershed Media, Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.The Reader's subject – concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) – covers most of the topics relevant to factory farmed animals and is divided into seven parts: (1) The pathological mindset of the CAFO; (2) Myths of the CAFO; (3) Inside the CAFO; (4) The loss of diversity; (5) Hidden costs of CAFO; (6) Technological takeover; (7) Putting the CAFO out to pasture. The acronym CAFO suggests a bland, mundane practice and is therefore a name which the editor believes should be replaced by the more accurate label "animal concentration camps". The chapter titles indicate what is in store for the reader but the content is perhaps less confronting than the book's companion photo‐format volume of the same name. The reader is a very comprehensive survey of how living creatures are subjected to inhumane practices for their body parts by "corporate food purveyors" and is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future survival of all of the earth's species.Kean, Hilda. 1998. Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.In this attractive book, the historian Hilda Kean provides one of the most comprehensive and interesting surveys of the early animal protection movement in England, the birthplace of animal rights. Kean tells a compelling story of how and why people's attitudes and practices involving animals changed over the past two centuries. She attributes these changes largely to the seemingly simple idea of "sight", or how people were influenced by seeing for themselves how animals such as horses and dogs were ill treated in public spaces such as in streets and markets. Animals "out of sight" in vivisection laboratories and in abattoirs also came to the attention of the early animal protectionists, most of whom were women. The sight and spectacle of animal abuse turned hearts and stomachs once a light was shone on these everyday cruelties by the pioneers of animal rights in England. Kean's book is nicely illustrated in keeping with the theme of seeing animals in their various relationships with humans.Munro, Lyle. 2005. Confronting Cruelty: Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Leiden & Boston: Brill.For most people animal cruelty is understood as unspeakable acts perpetrated by warped individuals mostly against dogs, cats, birds and sometimes horses. The animal rights movement seeks to broaden the issue of animal cruelty to include the vast numbers of animals that suffer and die in "the animal industrial complex" of intensive farming, recreational hunting and animal research and experimentation. The book draws on social movement theory to explain how and why an increasing number of people in the UK, US and Australia have taken up the cause of animals in campaigning against the exploitative practices of the animal‐user industries. Essentially, the thesis is that animal abuse is constructed by the animal rights movement as a social problem (speciesism) on a par with sexism and racism. This is the first book in the Human and Animal Studies Series which currently lists about a dozen monographs published by Brill under the editorship of Kenneth Shapiro of the Society & Animals Institute in the US.Noske, Barbara. 1989. Humans and Other Animals: Beyond the Boundaries of Anthropology. London: Pluto Press.As an anthropologist, Noske brings a different perspective to our relationship with nature, especially in the long process of animal domestication. Her chapter on "the animal industrial complex" shows how both human and nonhuman animals suffer within this structure of domination; for example, slaughterhouse work takes a heavy toll on the meat workers while the animals experience atrocious pain and misery on the assembly line of mass execution. Noske's book is valuable for its broad treatment of animal‐human relations in which she describes cultural, historical, structural and sociological aspects of these relations particularly in America and Australia.Wilkie, Rhoda and Inglis David (eds.) 2007. The Social Scientific Study of Nonhuman Animals: A Five‐volume Collection–Animals and Society: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. (Vols 1–5), London: Routledge.This is a collection of 90 previously published articles and book chapters in approximately 2,000 pages on the social‐scientific study of animals. The papers range from the earliest in 1928 on "the culture of canines" to the latest in 2006 on "religion and animals." Three quarters of the papers were published in the last two decades and are derived from anthropology, sociology, psychology, geography, philosophy and feminist studies.Because Animals and Society is based mostly on work derived from more than 12 different specialist journals, it has a claim to comprehensiveness; however, the editors mention topics that are not covered in the collection: Ethical issues; Animal welfare; The characteristics of animal protectionists; "Wilderness"; The role of animals in the lives of children; and The animal rights movement. The main topics included in the collection provide a hint of its value to researchers:Vol I. Representing the animal (Introduction and critical concepts in the social sciences)Vol II. Social science perspectives on human‐animal interactions (I): Anthropology. Geography. Feminist studies. Vol III. Social science perspectives on human‐animal interactions (II): Sociology. Psychology. Vol IV. Forms of human‐animal relations and animal death – the dynamics of domestication: Human‐pet relationships. Human‐livestock relations. Animal abuse and animal death. Vol V. Boundaries and quandaries in human‐animal relations: Border troubles: are humans unique and what is an animal? The legal, ethical and moral status of animals. "The Frankenstein syndrome": animals, genetic engineering, and ethical dilemmas. NB. The above is a shorter version of my review in Society & Animals, 16. 91–93, 2008. I thank the journal for publishing the original review and for permission to include the above version in Sociology Compass.Online materialshttp://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2159904.htmThis is the story of a protest against the live animal export trade from Australia to the Middle East. The 7.30 Report of 11 February 2008, was one of several media stories on the cruelty involved in the transport and slaughter of cattle, goats and sheep which outraged thousands of Australians when they witnessed footage shot by animal activists. The four minute video recording provides commentary and images that explain why the live animal export trade is a "hot cognition" issue in Australia and the UK. More recently, in June 2012, the callous treatment of cattle in a number of Indonesian abattoirs became a major media story that prompted public outrage and calls for an immediate and permanent ban on the trade.http://www.sharkwater.com/For many people, sharks are the most feared of all creatures and also the most misunderstood. They have been called "the mother of otherness" and as a result when they are hunted and killed there is very little concern for their welfare. This groundbreaking film explains the importance of sharks to the ocean and seeks to dispel the main stereotype of the shark as the creature from hell. The film is the work of Rob Stewart whose lifelong fascination with sharks was the catalyst for his mission to save the great predator from extinction.http://www.wspa‐international.org/Regular internet users will probably have come across the advertisements from the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), particularly its campaign against the cruelty involved in bear dancing. The WSPA, as an international animal welfare organization, is one of a very select few animal and environmental organizations recognized by the United Nations. Another campaign which is featured on their website is "The Red Collar Campaign", the motto for which is "Collars not Cruelty". Viewers are warned that the two and a half minute video clip contains some confronting images of cruelty to dogs suspected of being infected by rabies. WSPA's objective is to end the brutality inflicted unnecessarily on thousands of dogs perceived as a human health and safety risk; its solution to the problem of rabies is simple, cheap and effective.http://www.awionline.orgThe Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is one of the most effective animal protection societies in the US. Its founder, the late Christine Stevens, worked most of her life as an advocate and lobbyist for animals. The AWI's attractive website provides many useful features such as the AWI Quarterly and details of its seminal campaigns which include research animals, companion animals, farm animals, marine animals and wildlife. Since it was established in 1951, the AWI has had access to the US Congress and in gaining the attention of powerbrokers, the organization has succeeded in securing animal welfare improvements that are legislated in law, which owes much to the work of Christine Stevens.http://www.league.org.ukHunting is a controversial issue in England which has developed into what is actually a class war between the aristocratic class and the "great unwashed". Founded in 1924, the League is virtually a household name in England. Its website contains some revealing film clips about the cruelty involved in the hunting of foxes, deer, rabbits and other animals in the English countryside. There is a great deal of information contained in the blogs and its FAQs as well as elsewhere on its website. Mention is also made of one of the latest hunting fads, "trophy hunting" which is apparently gaining popularity in some parts of the USA.Topics for lectures & discussionPart I: introduction and overviewWhat is the animal rights movement? Why do people campaign on behalf of a species that is not their own? How do individuals and social movements make their claims on behalf of nonhuman animals? These are some of the questions that would traditionally be posed in introducing the animal rights movement.ReadingMunro, Lyle. 2012. 'The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature'. Sociology Compass6(2): 166–81.Waldau's recent book is a good introduction to what the movement is all about:Waldau, Paul. 2011. Animal Rights: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.There are three main discourses on animal rights which provide insights into our constructions of "the animal": (1) Animals in this discourse are constructed as social problems (see Irvine, 2003 below for an example); (2) in this second discourse, animal defenders are demonised with labels ranging from "sentimental animal lovers" to "extremists" and even "terrorists" (see Munro, 1999 below for an example); (3) finally, the animal rights movement constructs our cruel treatment of animals as morally wrong and therefore deserving of the strongest condemnation (see Shapiro, 1994 below for an example). How and why people campaign against the exploitation of animals are issues explored in the following papers:Irvine, Leslie. 2003. 'The Problem of Unwanted Pets; A Case Study in How Institutions 'Think' About Clients' Needs'. Social Problems50: 550–66.Munro, Lyle. 1999. 'Contesting Moral Capital in Campaigns Against Animal Liberation'. Society & Animals7: 35–53.Shapiro, Kenneth. 1994. 'The Caring Sleuth: Portrait of an Animal Rights Activist'. Society & Animals2: 145–65.Part II: animal crueltyThis section includes some important contributions to explaining cruelty to animals.Agnew, Robert. 1998. 'The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social‐psychological Analysis'. Theoretical Criminology2: 177–209.Munro, Lyle. 1997. 'Framing Cruelty: The Construction of Duck‐Shooting as a Social Problem'. Society & Animals5: 137–54.D'Silva, Joyce and John Webster. 2010. The Meat Crisis: Developing More Sustainable Production and Consumption. London and Washington: Earthscan.Merz‐Perez, Linda and Kathleen Heide. 2004. Animal Cruelty: Pathway to Violence Against People. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Ltd.Ascione, Frank. 2008. 'Children Who Are Cruel to Animals: A Survey of Research and Implications for Developmental Psychology.' Pp. 171–89 in Social Creatures: A Human‐Animals Studies Reader, edited by Clifton, Flynn. New York: Lantern Books.Winders, Bill and David Nibert. 2009. 'Expanding "Meat" Consumption and Animal Oppression.' Pp. 183–9 in Between the Species: Readings in Human‐Animal Relations, edited by Arnold, Arluke and Clinton Sanders. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.Part III: social movement theory and animalsThere is a large literature on social movement theory with relatively little that refers to nonhuman animals. Some of those which do take up the issue are included below along with the following books that provide a general introduction to the study of social movements.Lowe, Brian and Caryn Ginsberg. 2002. 'Animal Rights as a Post‐Citizenship Movement'. Society & Animals10: 203–15.Jasper, James. 2007. 'The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements.' Volume 4 Pp. 585–612 in Social Movements: Critical Concepts in Sociology Volumes 1–4, edited by Jeff, Goodwin and James Jasper. London and New York: Routledge.Buechler, Steven. 2011. Understanding Social Movements: Theories from the Classical Era to the Present. Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers.Cochrane, Alasdair. 2010. Chapter 6 'Marxism and Animals.' Pp. 93–114 in An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory, edited by Cochrane's. Basingstoke Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Einwohner, Rachel. 2002. 'Bringing the Outsiders in: Opponents' Claims and the Construction of Animal Rights Activists' Identity'. Mobilization7: 253–68.Part IV: animal advocacy and activism: strategy and tacticsThe above readings reveal to some extent at least why people campaign against animal cruelty. In this section's readings, the focus is on how animal activists run their campaigns in the streets (grassroots activism) and in the suites (organizational advocacy).Carrie Freeman Packwood. 2010. 'Framing Animal Rights in the "Go Veg" Campaigns of US Animal Rights Organizations'. Society & Animals18: 163–82.Paul, Elizabeth. 1995. 'Scientists' and Animal Rights Campaigners' Views of the Animal Experimentation Debate'. Society & Animals3: 1–21.Upton, Andrew. 2010. 'Contingent Communication in a Hybrid Multi‐Media World: Analysing the Campaigning Strategies of SHAC'. New Media & Society13: 96–113.Munro, Lyle. 2001. Compassionate Beasts: The Quest for Animal Rights. Westport, CT: Praeger.Munro, Lyle. 2002. 'The Animal Activism of Henry Spira (1927–1998).'Society & Animals10: 173–91.Munro, Lyle. 2005. 'Strategies, Action Repertoires and DIY Activism in the Animal Rights Movement.'Social Movement Studies4: 75–94.Jasper, James. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Singer, Peter. 1998. Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement. Lanham MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers Inc.Part V: academic/activist collaborationShould academic teachers collaborate with activists in their campaigns? Like the church/state relations debate this is a controversial question since there are arguments both for and against academic involvement in political and social movements. Most of the readings in the original Compass article and below tend to see more benefits than costs to collaboration; however, higher education administrators don't like dissent and it is hard to imagine an academic holding down his or her job if they were seen to be working with animal activists on a particularly controversial campaign. It might be seen as acceptable if the collaboration was with the SPCA in the US or the RSPCA in Britain but not if the activists were affiliated with members of a radical animal liberation group. Furthermore, an academic‐animal activist who campaigned say against the practice of animal experimentation at his or her university would surely be dismissed or at least threatened with dismissal unless they cut their ties with outside activists.Burnett, Cathleen. 2003. 'Passion through the Profession: Being Both Activist and Academic.'Social Justice30: 135–50.Kleidman, Robert. 1994. 'Volunteer Activism and Professionalism in Social Movement Organizations.'Social Problems41: 257–76.Focus questions Is the animal rights movement a genuine social movement when nonhuman animals are widely understood not to belong to society as it is generally understood? How would you respond to the claim that cruelty to animals is our worst vice. From your experience of seeing animal rights protests either on television or as the real thing, what do you think are the dominant emotions exhibited by the campaigners and their opponents? From what you've read or heard or seen of social movement protests, do you believe the most effective strategy is non‐violence or violence; and which of these two strategies do you think is more acceptable for the animal protection movement to follow and why? Should academics who lecture on social movements practice what they preach? What are some of the main benefits and problems associated with academic analysts of social movements collaborating with grassroots activists? The animal rights movement has been described as one of the fastest‐growing social movements in the West – and one of the most controversial. What evidence is there for these claims? Seminar/project ideaPlease suggest an exercise to help bring the subject to life, appropriate either for undergraduate or graduate students, e.g. an assessment, a presentation, or other practical assignment.Project idea or presentation Compare and contrast the website of an animal welfare organization and an animal rights group in relation to (a) their objectives; (b) their most important campaign; and (c) their preferred overall strategies and tactics. Which of these organizations has the most potential in attracting new supporters and why? What advice would you give to these two organizations on how they might enhance their communicative effectiveness with the general public? (see Munro's Compass article for some clues). Do an oral presentation on a radical animal liberation group such as the Animal Liberation Front or SHAC in which you describe its stated objectives, its seminal campaigns, its preferred tactics and its communication strategy as indicated by the group's website. Explain how effective the group is in terms of improving the lives of animals and how the activists justify the use of violence in their campaigns.
Un viejo proverbio chino señala que "la puerta mejor cerrada es aquella que puede dejarse abierta". Efectivamente la transformación de China durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX grafica este dicho. De manera impensada para muchos, luego de casi tres décadas de férreo control estatal sobre la economía bajo el liderazgo de Mao Zedong, la dirigencia china que lo sucedió en el poder decidió hacia fines de los setenta "abrir una puerta bien cerrada" y emprender un ambicioso proceso de modernización, liberalización y apertura económica. De la mano de Zhou Enlai primero y Deng Xiaoping después, el Estado chino se embarcó en la tarea de modernizar dentro del país su sector agrícola, su estructura productiva, la ciencia y tecnología y la defensa nacional. El interés central detrás de esta transformación radicaba en acortar la brecha de desarrollo existente con los países más avanzados, situación que se reflejaba en el éxito económico de "vecinos" como Japón, Corea del Sur, Taiwán y Hong Kong. Para Deng, China sólo podría convertirse en una gran potencia a través de una política sistemática de modernización, con énfasis en el desarrollo económico y manteniendo la estructura de control político del Partido Comunista (Wilhelmy y Soto, 2005: 52). El desafío a superar consistía en dejar atrás una empobrecida, cerrada y estancada economía planificada y avanzar en la configuración de una economía competitiva. En la opinión del periodista Li Datong (2009), la política de reformas contó a grandes rasgos con dos etapas bien claras. En la primera, que se extendió de 1978 a 1989, el ímpetu de cambio fue puesto en la reducción de la pobreza rural y urbana. En la segunda, iniciada en 1992 con el famoso viaje de Deng al sur del país y culminada en el 2001 con el ingreso de China a la Organización Mundial de Comercio, el gobierno en estrecha alianza con sectores empresariales concentró esfuerzos en impulsar el crecimiento económico.Las principales medidas adoptadas consistieron en: la descolectivización de la agricultura y la autorización del uso privado de las tierras comunales (household responsibility system); el levantamiento de la prohibición para realizar actividades empresariales de índole privada; la apertura por primera vez desde la Revolución de 1948 al ingreso de capitales extranjeros; la creación de zonas económicas especiales y de apertura (existen actualmente una veintena, entre ciudades, provincias y áreas costeras); la privatización de numerosas empresas (a excepción de algunos grandes monopolios vinculados a energía y al sistema bancario); la descentralización del control estatal nacional hacia los gobiernos provinciales; la reducción general de aranceles y barreras comerciales; y el reconocimiento legal en 2005 de la propiedad privada.Estas reformas hicieron posible el denominado "milagro chino", la gran performance económica desatada a partir de 1978. Entre aquel año y el 2006 China mantuvo un promedio anual de crecimiento del 9,7%, tendencia que sólo se interrumpió tras los incidentes de la Plaza de Tiananmen en 1989 y que apenas se redujo en 1997 y 1998 durante la dura crisis asiática (Zhao, 2006: 3). Asimismo, mientras en los objetivos iniciales se esperaba cuadruplicar el PIB para comienzos del siglo XX, el desempeño real arrojó un impresionante crecimiento de trece veces del PIB de 1978 hacia el año 2006. En materia comercial, su comercio exterior se ha quintuplicado en los últimos diez años, mientras que su participación en el comercio mundial en ese mismo período se ha más que duplicado, llegando en 2007 al 9% de las exportaciones y al 6,8% de las importaciones globales. Además, China incrementó su penetración en los mercados de las economías desarrolladas y simultáneamente se transformó en un importante destino de exportación, especialmente para las economías de la región asiática, convirtiéndose en un nuevo eje del comercio mundial –segundo exportador y tercer importador en 2007–, disputando así el papel de Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y Japón (D'Elía et al., 2008: 67-8). Una de las principales fuentes de esta expansión comercial ha sido el creciente emplazamiento de firmas extranjeras en el país, las que se valen de los bajos costos de producción para sus operaciones. La participación de dichas firmas en las exportaciones chinas aumentó del 10% en 1990 a casi un 60% en 2004 (Blonigen y Ma, 2010: 475). Este fenómeno denominado "processing trade"explica que China se haya convertido en el principal receptor entre los países en desarrollo de inversión extranjera directa por primera vez en 1993 y uno de los tres primeros a nivel mundial entre 2003 y 2005 (Cheng y Ma, 2010: 545). Conjuntamente, el doble éxito comercial y en atracción de capitales apuntaló también las reservas internacionales. Mientras que en 1992 se registraron reservas por 19 mil millones de dólares, equivalente a un 4% del PIB, tan sólo quince años después éstas alcanzaron 1,4 billones, correspondiente al 50% del PIB (Truman, 2008: 169).A nivel doméstico, la principal transformación ha consistido en el establecimiento gradual de una "economía de mercado socialista". Su avance se evidencia en que hacia 1979 la totalidad de las industrias eran estatales o "colectivas" y el Estado controlaba los precios del 97% de los productos en circulación, mientras que hacia fines de la década de los noventa, menos del 30% de las empresas seguían siendo estatales y las fuerzas del mercado fijaban ya el 97% de los precios. Desde el 2001 estos márgenes se han mantenido mayormente constantes. Pero este ascenso económico posee una contracara de obstáculos, desafíos y debilidades bien marcados que pondrán a prueba la potencialidad de crecimiento a futuro. Por un lado, China es todavía un país pobre en términos de su ingreso per capita, estimado en aproximadamente U$S 3.000 anuales, lo que equivale sólo al 10% de los ingresos registrados en Estados Unidos y Europa. Este bajo registro se conjuga con una mayor desigualdad y una aguda concentración de los ingresos, siendo el 90% de la riqueza acaparada por el 1% más rico de la población (Datong, 2009). La razón detrás de éste pasivo social yace en las privatizaciones, la liberalización y el marcado contraste entre el interior del país y las más dinámicas zonas costeras e industriales —el 57% del PIB se produce en el este de China, un 26% en la región central y apenas el 17% en el oeste (D´Elía et al., 2008: 69). Consecuentemente, ello explica que el crecimiento de la economía esté principalmente impulsado por las exportaciones y la inversión más que por el consumo doméstico. Por el otro lado, los problemas ambientales se han vuelto verdaderamente acuciantes de la mano de este crecimiento. China ha reemplazado recientemente a los Estados Unidos como principal emisor mundial de gases de efecto invernadero. A causa del creciente parque automotriz, las industrias contaminantes y las numerosas plantas procesadoras de carbón, la calidad del aire se ha deteriorado en las principales ciudades. Así, por ejemplo, la concentración de partículas tóxicas inhalables en Beijing en el año 2008 superó en un 80% el estándar tolerable fijado por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (Jacobs, 2010). En las zonas rurales, la masificación del uso de fertilizantes y agrotóxicos para apuntalar la productividad de la agricultura ha contaminado buena parte de las cuencas hídricas.En el plano de los desafíos, debe sumarse que China no es una democracia. El sistema de gobierno es esencialmente autoritario, regido por actores que se imponen en contiendas intrapartidistas y burocráticas libradas a puertas cerradas en Beijing (Wilhelmy y Soto, 2005: 53). Lejos de ser China una "sociedad armónica", se han registrado al compás de las transformaciones importantes conflictos sociales con base en diferentes reclamos: mayor democratización, mejores condiciones de vida, reconocimiento de autonomía política en el caso del Tíbet, etc. Desde los años de Deng, la regla ha sido la aplicación de una política de "mano dura" para contener el disenso interno —como se evidenció en la plaza de Tiananmen en 1989. No obstante, este disenso ha ido en ascenso. En septiembre de 2003, Human Rights Watch informó que más de tres millones de personas se movilizaron en distintas protestas en sólo un mes y que, en más de cien casos a lo largo del país, los reclamos escalaron en violentos choques con las fuerzas de seguridad locales y la destrucción de edificios gubernamentales (Becker, 2006: 169). Por tanto, resta ver cómo el sistema político logra adaptarse a las radicales modificaciones sociales en curso y da cabida a nuevos actores en la lucha por el poder. A pesar de estos desafíos por resolver, existe un fuerte consenso mundial sobre el actual proceso de ascenso de China al status de gran potencia. La célebre predicción de Napoleón —"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world"—, parece estar siendo confirmada (Kynge, 2006). En efecto, "China is reemerging as a major power after one hundred and fifty years of being a weak player on the world stage—a brief hiatus in China's long history", de acuerdo con Susan Shirk (2007: 4), máxima responsable en el Departamento de Estado de las relaciones con China durante la administración Clinton. Si se considera su situación estructural, una estimación reciente del poder comprehensivo de China comparada con las otras grandes potencias del sistema internacional arroja los siguientes resultados. Allí se advierte que China es la única potencia con un status fuerte de poder en cada una de las dimensiones contempladas y por tanto la principal competidora estratégica detrás de la superpotencia estadounidense. Pero el nuevo protagonismo chino también se percibe de una manera más dinámica. Crecientemente el país empieza a desempeñar roles críticos en distintos asuntos de interés mundial, desde la no proliferación hasta el cambio climático, además de ser materia de controversia en Occidente en asuntos relacionados con la pérdida de empleos, déficits comerciales y derechos humanos. En la última década, además, China ha combinado su dinamismo económico con políticas pragmáticas de seguridad y defensa y un fuerte activismo diplomático, gracias a lo cual ha empezado a establecer sólidas relaciones no sólo en toda Asia sino también en Europa, África y Sudamérica, aprovechando en buena medida los "espacios" generados por la focalización de los Estados Unidos en las guerras de Afganistán e Irak y la lucha contra el AlQaeda (Gill, 2007: 1).En el caso particular de América Latina, el carácter actual de los vínculos con China se remonta a la finalización de la Guerra Fría. Fue entonces cuando la desideologización de la política exterior del gigante asiático y el auge del proceso de globalización brindaron un marco propicio para una fuerte expansión económica de las relaciones sino-latinoamericanas (Cesarín, 2006: 52). Algunas cifras ilustran el fenómeno. Las exportaciones de América Latina y el Caribe a China aumentaron en forma súbita desde los US$1.500 millones en 1990, a los casi US$3.000 millones en 1995 y US$5.400 millones en 2000, para crecer posteriormente un 42% anual entre 2000 y 2004 hasta llegar a superar los US$21.000 millones en 2004. En 2003, los recursos primarios representaban el 45,5% de la canasta (Davy, 2008: 4). Por su parte, las exportaciones chinas a la región durante la década de los 90 crecieron más de cinco veces, logrando un superávit comercial global que perduró hasta el 2002. Sin embargo, con los países ricos en recursos naturales como Brasil, Argentina, Chile y Perú, la balanza mercantil resultó deficitaria para Beijing (Cheng, 2006).El interés chino en los países del subcontinente se ha vuelto desde entonces más claro: América Latina constituye un importante reservorio de materias primas, alimentos y recursos naturales necesarios para la prosecución de su crecimiento —no debe perderse de vista que China importa el 30% del petróleo que consume, el 45% del mineral de hierro, el 44% de otros metales no ferrosos y una proporción cada vez más alta de productos agrícolas. El patrón de intercambio comercial y de inversiones en los últimos años refleja dicho interés: minería y forestación (Perú y Chile), pesca, agroalimentos y petróleo (Argentina y Venezuela), mineral de hierro y acero (Brasil), producción de alimentos (Brasil, Chile, Argentina y Perú) y minería (Perú, Colombia, Chile). (Cesarín, 2006: 52-3.) En efecto, la relativa bonanza económica latinoamericana de comienzos de siglo —en parte— se debe a la fuerte demanda china de este tipo de bienes y commoditiesque traccionó al alza los precios internacionales. Para algunos, esto representa una importante oportunidad de optimizar los procesos subregionales de integración e impulsar cambios en las estructuras productivas nacionales mediante la participación inversora de firmas chinas (Cesarín, 2005: 3). Pero esta situación, en principio favorable, amerita una reflexión cautelosa en la medida en que "el auge de los commodities encubre los riesgos inherentes de depender de un sector volátil y en gran medida poco calificado para el sostenimiento de un crecimiento económico a largo plazo y la prosperidad" (Davy, 2008: 2). En este sentido, China ofrece a la región oportunidades pero también desafíos: detrás de los cantos de sirena, se esconde el peligro de un comercio asimétrico que conduzca a la reedición de lazos de dependencia y a una inserción internacional de América Latina subordinada a los dictados de una gran potencia distante. Precisamente, el profesor Julio Sevares (2007: 12) ve en la relación económica Latinoamérica-China no una relación Sur-Sur, sino más bien el clásico esquema comercial Norte-Sur y el patrón inversor de tipo extractivo británico del siglo XIX.Con respecto estrictamente al plano político-estratégico, dos cuestiones deben considerarse. La primera es que China resulta para muchos de los liderazgos latinoamericanos un simpático ejemplo de éxito en materia de reformas dado el importante rol estatal en la conducción de la transformación económica. Representa así un exitoso experimento, distinto de las propuestas neoliberales que fracasaron en América Latina (Cesarín, 2010: 8). Y la segunda, es que la irrupción de China en la región plantea interrogantes sobre la eventual reacción de los Estados Unidos ante un eventual socavamiento de influencia en su "patio trasero". Se trata de un escenario que desde comienzos del siglo XXI se sigue con atención en las usinas de pensamiento estratégico en Washington. Allí se distinguen al menos dos posiciones: una, la de los decisores estadounidenses más temerosos que entienden a la nueva presencia china en la región como la movida inicial de una ofensiva diplomática a gran escala de Beijing para desafiar a los Estados Unidos en su propio hemisferio; y la otra perspectiva, más benigna, que percibe los crecientes vínculos como una oportunidad antes que una amenaza y como una manifestación natural de las necesidades energéticas y de recursos del país asiático sin miras explícitas de choque con la superpotencia (Roett y Paz, 2008: 1). Esta última visión es la que acepta la idea del ascenso pacífico ("peaceful rise") que ha publicitado Hu Jintao. De acuerdo con Zheng Bijian, uno de sus principales ideólogos, "China no tiene la intención ni de desafiar ni de subvertir el orden internacional político y económico ya existente (…). No buscamos la hegemonía ni en el pasado, ni ahora, ni nunca jamás en el futuro cuando hayamos alcanzado el desarrollo. Hemos convertido ya en una premisa básica de nuestro Estado la de no pretender nunca la hegemonía" (Bijian, 2005).La reemergencia histórica de China debe por tanto discurrir a través de la integración a las reglas de juego internacionales, a través del multilateralismo, la resolución pacífica de las disputas y la tolerancia hacia el resto de las naciones. En última instancia, la evolución hacia un abierto desafío estratégico entre los Estados Unidos y China o hacia una convivencia respetuosa entre superpotencias, dependerá del factor que prime en la interacción mutua: un juego de suma cero producto de las transformaciones estructurales en el sistema político internacional, o bien un juego de suma positiva resultado de intereses y percepciones convergentes.(1) El presente artículo es un fragmento de un capítulo de libro en elaboración sobre la inserción internacional de la Argentina entre el 2003-2007. *Candidato doctoral, Universidad Nacional General San Martín (UNSAM).Referencias bibliográficasBecker, Jasper (2006): Dragon Rising. An inside look at China today (Washington D.C.: National Geographic). 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