In this study, we present the experiences of three educational projects with over thirty years of pedagogical innovation in the Basque Country: ‘The Amara Berri System’, ‘Eskola Txikiak’ and ‘The Antzuola Project’. These include innovations with an inclusive focus as well as practices that affect the curriculum and school organisation for the purpose of satisfying community demands and fulfilling objectives related to diversity and school well-being. The results obtained in the fieldwork have encouraged us to think about how (...) barriers such as curriculum and school organization can be overcome through educational projects that cater to the diversity and needs of the educational community. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore the main concerns and attitudes Basque adolescents have regarding online privacy. It analyzes their motivations for sharing private information and the kind of information they share. Likewise, it examines whether they consider the potential consequences of revealing certain information online and analyzes if there are any differences between the motivations and attitudes of young people from Gipuzkoa and Labourd. Design/methodology/approach For this study, three methods were combined to collect the data in 17 schools (...) in the Basque provinces of Gipuzkoa and Labourd: a survey carried out among 1,133 students, out of which 242 also completed a diary and 482 took part in discussion groups. Findings The data from this research does not fully support the “youth cultures of disclosure” in the Basque Country; however, some of these practices have been observed. Originality/value Time spent online by adolescents has increased sharply in recent years. This increase has brought with it concerns about youth’s level of awareness regarding online privacy. This is the first cross-border study conducted in the Basque Country addressing this topic. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relationship between environment and political consciousness, articulating an argument that links the organic side and the economical level of environmentalist claims, and exposing some of the social movements and political positions that were coined in the Basque Country in the end of the 20 th century and beginning of the 21 st century. Some of the protests linked to environmental causes in the Basque Country fit with the narratives that give (...) access to the new century and describe the coming concepts in the form of advent with regards to notions like sustainability, organic, energy policies, post-ideologies and even the relationship between food and environment in more recent years. In this direction, environmental movements have succeeded in confusing the materialistic goals of their claims and the very materialism implicit in nature. Thus, I claim that these movements have complied from conservative positions rather than progressist positions. Therefore, there has been an asymmetry with the ideological portion of these claims and protests and the truly emancipatory goals of any progressist position. If the drive for sustainability can counter materialist and idealist proposals, we need to find a solution where “sustainable” means organic without the bodily part of the organic term itself. (shrink)

The marketplace has seen significant growth in the demand for ‘ethical’ behavior, and banks are seeking to leverage customers’ perception in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage. In consequence, the concepts of corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation are of vital concern for academics and managers in terms of their potential impact on customers. This study seeks to contribute to the literature by examining the mediating role of corporate reputation on the relationship between perceived corporate social responsibility and customer (...) loyalty. The study also takes into consideration the role played by bank type in the mediation effect. To achieve this aim, a study was performed comprising 572 personal surveys in the Basque Country. The results showed that corporate reputation partially mediated the relation between corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty. On the other hand, bank type is shown not to moderate the mediation effect. The results have important implications for practitioners wishing to manage their relations with customers. (shrink)

SummaryPedigree structures of 161 uncle/niece-aunt/nephew and 4420 first cousin consanguineous marriages registered during the 19th and 20th centuries in two large and very different Spanish regions have been analysed and their genetic consequences evaluated. The frequencies of the different pedigree subtypes within each degree of relationship were quite similar in both populations despite significant heterogeneity in inbreeding patterns. The mean X-linked inbreeding coefficient for each type of cousin mating was calculated and compared to that expected for autosomal genes. The effect (...) of genealogical structure on theFx/Fradio was compared to different cultural populations worldwide. Preferentiality and avoidance of close consanguinity along with specific types of pedigrees are discussed on the basis of premarital migration and sociocultural rules still deeply rooted in certain human groups. By admitting that the observedFxcoefficient is usually higher thanFin most human populations some remarks have been made in terms of population genetic risk. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century in the Spanish Basque Country, Basque nationalism has served as a unifying movement that encouraged women to participate in women’s associations. Women’s associations offered a metaspace in which public and private spheres overlap, where, women began to reconstruct meanings of nationalism and gender relations in distinct ways. As a result, the particular foci of these associations reflected each individual association’s specific understanding of gender relations and their relations to different interpretations (...) of Basque nationalism. This historical tradition has continued into the twenty-first century as women’s associations that are structured by distinct systems of gender relations provide a number of social services and educational services to promote gender equality. Through the examination of the metaspace of the women’s association Lanbroa, this article explores the ways in which the women’s movement and feminism have influenced the functioning of this association and the ways in which association members contest traditional Basque gender relations. (shrink)

The focus of this work is the analysis of changes in completed family size and possible determinants of that size over time, in an attempt to characterize the evolution of reproductive patterns during the demographic transition. With this purpose in mind, time trends are studied in relation to the mean number of live births per family (as an indirect measure of fertility), using family reconstitution techniques to trace the reproductive history of each married woman. The population surveyed is a Spanish (...) rural community called Lanciego, located at the southern end of the province of Alava (Basque Country). A total of 24,510 parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials made between 1800 and 1969 were examined to obtain the demographic data set. For each reconstituted family, the variables included in the study were the number of live births per family or family size (FAMS), year of marriage (YEAR), age at marriage of both partners (AMAN, AWOM), wife’s age at the end of marriage (WEND), duration of marriage (MARD), age at first maternity (A1CH), length of reproductive span (REPS) and number of children dying before their first anniversary (MINF). Through a principal component analysis, three factors were found that explained more than 75% of the total variance. Association of variables in factors I and III was particularly useful in characterizing the variability of mean family size in pre-transitional, transitional and post-transitional cohorts. During demographic transition, a decreasing trend is observed in the variables FAMS, REPS and MINF, while variables AWOM, AMAN, WEND and A1CH show a tendency to increase over the 20th century. Results obtained by multiple regression analysis confirm that the best predictors of family size (dependent variable) were REPS and MINF, which between them explained over 85% of the total variation in FAMS (R2=0·853). In Lanciego, birth control seems to be present on the evidence of an increase in age at first maternity and a decrease in age at last parturition, indicating that the beginning of the reproductive span is delayed and its end is brought forward. Interaction between family size and infant mortality is discussed in the light of various hypotheses, including replacement of descendants, the so-called biological effect and the theory of r and k selection. (shrink)

In this article I continue reading oral traditional poetry from a cognitive perspective. This time I use findings obtained empirically from my previous research on the living short improvisational poetic genre ayyu from Morocco (Gintsburg 2017, 2019a) and turn my attention to kopla zaharrak, another short oral improvisational poetic genre, which once existed in the Basque Country but is now extinct and almost forgotten. In order to better understand how this genre once functioned, I first apply to it (...) the notions of frames, or topics or themes, and scripts, or possible scenarios manifested at least partly in form of formulaic language, which are triggered by them. The analysis reveals that on the cognitive level kopla zaharrak offer a structure similar to the ayyu, where the first two lines work as a frame and the last two lines as a script. In the second part of my research, I compare examples of kopla zaharrak and ayyus and conclude that, despite obvious cultural and linguistic differences, the way both traditions make use of images of the natural world and connect them to human situations has demonstrable similarities. (shrink)

Background:The decision whether to initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation may sometimes be ethically complex. While studies have addressed some of these issues, along with the role of nurses in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, most have not considered the importance of nurses acting as advocates for their patients with respect to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.Research objective:To explore what the nurse’s advocacy role is in cardiopulmonary resuscitation from the perspective of patients, relatives, and health professionals in the Basque Country (Spain).Research design:An exploratory critical qualitative study was (...) conducted from October 2015 to March 2016. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.Participants:Four discussion groups were held: one with patients and relatives (n = 8), two with nurses (n = 7 and n = 6, respectively), and one with physicians (n = 5).Ethical considerations:Approval was obtained from the Basque Country Clinical Research Ethics Committee.Findings:Three significant themes were identified: (a) accompanying patients during end of life in a context of medical dominance, (b) maintaining the pact of silence, and (c) yielding to legal uncertainty and concerns.Discussion:The values and beliefs of the actors involved, as well as pre-established social and institutional rules reduced nurses’ advocacy to that of intermediaries between the physician and the family within the hospital environment. On the contrary, in primary health care, nurses participated more actively within the interdisciplinary team.Conclusion:This study provides key information for the improvement and empowerment for ethical nursing practice in a cardiac arrest, and provides the perspective of patients and relatives, nurses and physicians. (shrink)

Attempts to democratize the food system and make it more equitable through food sovereignty take many forms across space. In Cuba, food sovereignty is perceived as the promotion of small-scale farming methods informed by agroecology and permaculture. However, these practices are mediated by discourses of self-sufficiency in the context of the US blockade. Simultaneously, in Basque country, Spain, food sovereignty shapes community-supported agriculture initiatives, farmer union and cooperative-based work, and a deep appreciation for regional foods. In this context, (...) food sovereignty is perceived as part of the struggle to maintain Basque identity and autonomy. In this paper, I discuss how food sovereignty is defined and understood by outside actors who traveled to either Cuba or Basque country to understand how food sovereignty is being practiced in place. As educators, farmers, students, retirees, farmworker organizers, and activists meet in these spaces, I ask how do definitions of food sovereignty differ? I argue that food sovereignty ‘sits in places’ and travelers have difficulty discerning what food sovereignty is when confronted with unfamiliar practices. Findings suggest that such educational tourism is an attempt to create a meaningful space for dialogue about food sovereignty and as a touchstone it offers opportunities for participant discussions, however, understandings of food sovereignty are subject to confusion and alternate conceptions and thus, do not always travel well. (shrink)

The “Centro de Estudios Cientificos” of San Sebastian was established to palliate the absence of universitary studies in the Basque Country, in base of an idea suggested by J. Rey Pastor. It began itsactivities in 1932 and ended in 1936, because of Spanish Civil War. It was supported by the “Sociedad de Estudios Vascos” and sponsored by the “Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa” and the San Sebastian Council. In this paper, we describe and comment the different aspects relatives to (...) the CEC such as constitution, statutes, members, sections, courses, teachers, students, ... , and scientific journals supported by the CEC. (shrink)

The 1996 European Summer Meeting of the Association of Symbolic Logic was held held the University of the Basque Country, at Donostia (San Se bastian) Spain, on July 9-15, 1996. It was organised by the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) and the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Sciences of the University of the Basque Coun try. It was supported by: the University of Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unib ertsitatea, the Ministerio de Education y Ciencia (...) (DGCYT), Hezkuntza Saila (Eusko Jaurlaritza), Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, and Kuxta Fun dazioa. The main topics of the meeting were Model Theory, Proof Theory, Re cursion and Complexity Theory, Models of Arithmetic, Logic for Artifi cial Intelligence, Formal Semantics of Natural Language and Philosophy of Contemporary Logic. The Program Committee consisted of K. Ambos Spies (Heidelberg), J.L. Balcazar (Barcelona), J.E. Fenstad (Oslo), D. Israel (Stanford), H. Kamp (Stuttgart), R. Kaye (Birmingham), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian), D. Lascar (Paris, chairman), A. Marcja (Firenze), G. Mints (Stanford), M. Otero (Madrid), S. Ronchi della Rocca (Torino), K. Segerberg (Uppsala) and L. Vega (Madrid). The organizing Committee consisted of X. Arrazola (San Sebastian), A. Arrieta (San Sebastian), R. Beneyeto (Valencia), B. Carrascal (San Se bastian), K. Korta (San Sebastian), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian, chair man), J.C. Martinez (Barcelona), J.M. Mendez (Salamanca), F. Migura (Victoria) and J. Perez (Victoria). (shrink)

This series of images forms part of the ongoing project Soft Ground, Hard Light, which speculates on a multiscalar spatial ontology of photography emanating from the Arditurri silver mine complex in the Basque Country. Evoking the mountainous massif around Arditurri where silver ore and galena have been extracted since Roman presence in the area, the depicted topographies are, in fact, data transcriptions from atomic force microscopy (AFM) probing the analogue film stock of an early 1930s experiment in 3D (...) cinema, Cine en Relieve, by the Basque cinematographer Teófilo Mingueza. In contrast to optical or electron microscopy, AFM uses a scanning probe to physically touch the specimen, recording its surface undulations at the atomic scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre. As a haptic operation based on direct contact between instrument and sample, between apparatus and referent, AFM is literally a contact print, a ‘blind’ scan that senses not the visual content of the recorded image but ‘feels’ its underlying material substrate of silver nanoparticles within the 35 mm film emulsion. The resulting image assemblies visualize a topography resulting from the intra-action between the silver nanoparticles and the scanning probe as much as its transcription through the particular parameters afforded by the AFM analysis software. Hard Light, Soft Ground was initiated during an artist’s residency at Tabakalera Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia-San Sebastián, and is currently in production as part of the wider research project Esper Syndrome: Archaeotopologies of the Image at the Royal College of Art, funded by the AHRC through the London Arts & Humanities Partnership. With additional thanks to the Basque Film Archive and Gustavo Ariel Schwartz at the Materials Physics Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián. (shrink)

Eleven years after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, Spain’s position vis-à-vis Kosovo has not only not varied, but it has become stronger, turning Madrid into the leader of the Kosovo non recognizers club within the EU. This paper analyses Kosovo-Spain relations in the last eleven years. More specifically, the paper examines the reasons behind the non-recognition of Kosovo and the approach of the Spanish governments toward Kosovo’s statehood. This is followed by a thorough analysis on how Kosovo’s path for self-determination (...) played a major role in Catalonia’s quest for independence in 2017. The empirical research demonstrates that Spain’s main reason not to recognise Kosovo is based on the country’s internal dynamics; namely, Catalonia and the Basque country. Likewise, the paper argues that the Spanish governments throughout the last eleven years have created an analogy between Kosovo and Catalonia; not in their political statements, but in their political decisions, by worsening the almost inexistent diplomatic relations with Kosovo, when the Catalan path for independence was at its highest peak. By the same token, the paper reveals that this position was enhanced and driven by Catalan separatism, that continuously used Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence as a model to further their own path for self-determination. The data provided and analysed in this paper as well as the statements made are based on desk research and seven semi-structured interviews conducted in Prishtina, Brussels, Madrid and Barcelona in 2018. (shrink)

This book argues that nationalist violence in developed countries is the product of unresponsive political elites and nationalists blocked from attracting supporters through legal channels. Political elites are prone to ignoring a regional polity when their clout in that region is negligible and they do not rely on the region's support to maintain their positions of power. Conversely, when nationalists cannot make inroads through legal channels, incentives for violence are ripe. Thus, when nationalists in postwar Europe found elites unresponsive, it (...) was state repression that helped radicals build a new group of support around militant action. The larger this new constituency legitimizing violence grew, the longer the conflict lasted. The book elucidates this complex dynamic through a deft combination of theoretical modeling, statistical methods and comparative case studies from the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Northern Ireland, Sardinia and Wales. (shrink)

John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. As founding Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and Institute of Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, he has provided consultation and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. This new book represents his thinking and learning (...) over the past several years. He explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding by reflecting on his own experiences in the field. Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act - an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination.". (shrink)

Slow Food is an Italy-based international organization that aims to save the varieties, breeds, and foods threatened by the standardization and homogenization of agriculture resulting from the widespread use of conventional practices. Through an analysis of one of Slow Food’s projects, a Basque Presidium, this paper examines the effects of Slow Food’s efforts on the products, producers, and agrobiodiversity it is trying to save. Drawing upon Igor Kopytoff’s descriptions of commoditization as process, this paper argues that the products and (...) the values they embody, which Slow Food has identified for their singularity, are commoditized through a variety of mechanisms. This paper then argues that commoditization makes the endeavors of Slow Food resemble the conventional agricultural system it is trying to oppose, as well as undermining the very agrobiodiversity the organization seeks to protect. These effects create a disconnect between the organization’s goals and its actions on-the-ground, indicating that Slow Food is not as alternative as it claims to be. This paper ends by examining Slow Food’s role within the overall agricultural system, and suggests that the organization’s producers are important guardians of the global agrobiodiversity which conventional production erodes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Scale of the Nation in a Shrinking WorldJoan Ramon Resina (bio)The 1990s saw the rise of political issues that, although by no means new, generated a great deal of discourse based on a semantic rupture with the past. The need to inscribe political analysis with a feeling of historical acceleration was nowhere as patent as in George W. Bush's New World Order. Although the "New World Order" quickly (...) gave way to the euphemism "globalization," it soon became obvious that political agendas would change considerably as would the terms of engagement with realities that had once seemed straightforward and now appeared riddled with theoretical problems.Nationalism was salient among those realities. Although it had driven decolonization in the fifties and sixties and throughout the Vietnam era, it seemed to flare up roughly at the time when Bush pronounced the bipolar order dead. As the political map was being redrawn after the breakdown of the Soviet empire, other foci of political struggle caught the world's attention. National struggles in other regions were interpreted as collateral of that breakdown rather than long-standing symptoms of similar tensions at different scales. Once more, the European continent was caught in the incongruity of its historical processes. While Western Europe was cautiously advancing toward economic and political integration, Eastern Europe found itself returning from a "posthistorical" experiment in supranationalism to the "historical" horizon of polities being reconfigured according to such social tangibles as a common language and religion, a traditional relation to place, and shared identifying memories.Until the 1990s the West smugly believed that it had consolidated state borders around seemingly homogeneous societies. Cultural integration was flaky in spots (Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, Corsica); those resistances, however, were looked on mostly as archaic irrelevances bound to disappear. But as nationalism began to haunt the cozy dream of a posthistorical balance of power, nonchalance gave way to a glut of intellectual exorcisms meant to conjure the evil that had caught at Europe's edges. In this new context, the Balkans represented for Europe, in Žižek's words, "the peculiar status of a ghost that haunts it." If the Balkans "are always somewhere else, a little bit more toward the southeast" [3], in the 1990s the danger of Balkanization seemed ubiquitous. At the time, a true Balkan hysteria rang out in the most self-satisfied European nations. In France and Spain, long-standing conflicts between center and periphery were recast in terms of the horror seen on CNN. Europe spatialized its fears, turning geographic distance into a metaphor for the racism directed against its internal others.Europe's internal others did not consist only of immigrants from non-EU countries, for whom liberals always had a soft spot, but also of those peoples and territorial units capable and culpable of tearing admirable nations apart. It was in those territorial units, which had been incorporated but not assimilated in the course of nation-state building, that nationalism was "raising its ugly head." It was here that "'reflexive' Politically Correct racism" (Žižek) applied the Balkans metaphor, projecting every conceivable horror into the intentions of unsuspecting citizens. As Žižek observed at the time, "[t]he [End Page 46] Balkans constitute a place of exception with regard to which the tolerant multiculturalist is allowed to act out his/her repressed racism" [6]. This perverse acting out was all the more acceptable, inasmuch as the peoples subjected to the logic of displaced racism were after all white and developed, and thus free game for the tolerant multiculturalist, who could always bring forward less-developed regions as potential victims of the centrifugal region's egotism. When the Balkans war broke out in May of 1991, the first Western European reactions were predominantly pro-Serbian. Never mind that Slovenia and Croatia were pro-Western and democratic. Western intelligentsias accused them of pettiness and lack of solidarity and began to restrain their large-state bias only when Serbian annexationists directed their all-out war against Bosnian Muslims, who, although white and no less developed than their attackers, were, by virtue of their religion, a patent instance of otherness. Overnight politically correct racism swung from tolerance for... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the opinions of journalists and citizens regarding the interdependence of public media and the official sources of political power in Spain. Little research of this kind has been done in the Spanish context. Journalists and citizens representing four Spanish regions?Catalonia, Madrid, the Basque Country, and Andalusia?were questioned about their opinions regarding this interdependency. The methodology used in this research is based on quantitative techniques (surveys) and qualitative techniques (in-depth interviews and (...) focus groups). The results prove that the opinions of journalists differ from those of citizens for the majority of questions asked. Citizens are more inclined to follow directions from official sources than are journalists. The geographical background of the respondents proved to be a significant factor in terms of variation in answers. Journalists from Catalonia and the Basque country are much more reluctant to follow government directives on issues of counter terrorism or in cases of national emergency. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to understand and critically appraise science-based transgression dynamics in their whole complexity. It includes contributions from experts with different disciplinary backgrounds, such as philosophy, history and sociology. Thus, it is in itself an example of boundary transgression. Scientific disciplines and their objects have tended to be seen as permanent and distinct. However, science is better conceived as an activity that constantly surpasses, erases and rebuilds all kinds of boundaries, either disciplinary, socio-ethical or ecological. This (...) transgressive capacity, a characteristic trait of science and its applications, defines us as "knowledge societies." However, scientific and technological developments are also sources of serious environmental and social concerns. Contents Disciplinary Transgression of Boundaries - Extra-Disciplinary Transgression of Boundaries - Radical Transgression of Boundaries Target Groups Scientists and students of philosophy, sociology, history of science, and interdisciplinary fields such as technology assessment, sustainable development, science and technology studies - Practitioners in research management Editors Bettina-Johanna Krings (MA in sociology, political science and anthropology; PhD in sociology) is head of the research department "Knowledge Society and Knowledge Policy" at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Hannot Rodríguez (PhD in philosophy) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. Anna Schleisiek (Dipl.-Soz.) is doing research on the role of economic principles in the scientific practice of research teams for her PhD project in sociology. <. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people’s perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in an (...) urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020. The social restrictions imposed through national legislation divided the 69-day period into three phases. We collected observations, field audio recordings, photography, and diary notes on 50 days. Experts in soundscape and architecture were presented with the recordings, in randomized order, and made two separate perceptual analyses. One group rated the recordings for pleasantness and eventfulness using an adapted version of the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol, and a partly overlapping group annotated perceived sound events with free-form semantic labels. The labels were systematically classified into a four-level Taxonomy of Sound Sources, allowing an estimation of the relative amounts of Natural, Human, and Technological sounds. Loudness and three descriptors developed for bioacoustics were extracted computationally. Analysis showed that Eventfulness, Acoustic Complexity, and Acoustic Richness increased significantly over the time period, while the amount of Technological sounds decreased. These observations were interpreted as reflecting changes in people’s outdoor activities and behavior over the whole 69-day period, evidenced in an increased presence of Human sounds of voices and walking, and a significant shift from motorized vehicles toward personal mobility devices, again evidenced by perceived sounds. Quantitative results provided a backdrop against which qualitative analyses of diary notes and observations were interpreted in relation to the restrictions and the architectural specifics of the site. An integrated analysis of all sources pointed at the temporary suspension of human outdoor activity as the main reason for such a change. In the third phase, the progressive return of street life and the usage of personal mobility vehicles seemed to be responsible for a clear increase in Eventfulness and Loudness even in the context of an overall decrease of Technological sounds. Indoor human activity shared through open windows and an increased presence of birdsong emerge as a novel characteristic element of the local urban soundscape. We discuss how such changes in the acoustic environment of the site, in acoustic measurements and as perceived by humans, point toward the soundscape being a crucial component of a comprehensive urban design strategy that aims to improve health and quality of life for increasingly large and dense populations in the future. (shrink)

Methodological innovations have a special status in disciplinary histories, because they can be widely adopted and anonymised. In the 1950s, this occurred to Georges Laplace’s innovative use of 3-dimensional metric Cartesian coordinate system to record the positions of archaeological objects. This paper proposes a conceptual and social history of this process, with a focus on its spatial context, the Pyrenean region (Spain, Basque Country, and France). Main results of this research based on archives, publications, and bibliometric data, include: (...) 1) a critical discussion of the notions concerning authorship of such methodological innovations; 2) a presentation of the lesser-known aspects of Laplace’s method, showing its contribution to the abstraction and formalisation of archaeological observations and data recording; and 3) the identification of an international Pyrenean intellectual lineage of innovation regarding stratigraphy and excavation methods, from the late 19th century to the early 21th century. (shrink)

The article analyzes the four novels that Ángel García Ronda, politician and writer, has dedicated to ETA and to the situation experienced in the Basque Country as a result of terrorism. He is an important author for the knowledge of terrorism in literature, for the following reasons: his condition as born in San Sebastián in 1939, where he has lived all his life, the performance of positions in the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and in the Socialist Party from (...) Euskadi, having carried an escort for two decades, having suffered the murder of friends and acquaintances and, consequently, having extensive experience, public and private, of what happened in the Basque Country. We attend to the genesis, contents, intentionality and historicity of the tetralogy that the author has baptized as Áspera memoria. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Epistemic social oppressions such as ‘epistemic partiality’, ‘epistemic injustice’, ‘epistemic harms and wrongs’, ‘epistemic oppression’, ‘epistemic exploitation’, ‘epistemic violence’, or ‘epistemicide’ are terms with increasing theoretical importance and empirical applications. However, less literature is devoted to social strategies to overcome such oppressions. Here the Sorelian and Gramscian concept of social myth is considered in that sense. The empirical case is the myth of ‘The last Indigenous peoples of Europe’ present in the Basque Country, divided between France and (...) Spain and with a historical national culture under their statist powers. The myth has a renewal in a recent social movement, the Biltzarre platform and its Basque Cultural Instinct Team, currently followed through a Participatory Action Research. The results show how such social myth gives coherence and empowers the Basque identity against the loss of identity caused by the French and Spanish powers. Finally, progress is being made on how epistemic oppressons can end, ironically, because of the success of an epistemicide. Presumably, social myths counteract epistemic oppression, strengthening the social identity and self-esteem of the subject, as a form of empowerment in social and political issues. (shrink)

Often ‘nationalism’ and ‘having a state proper to the nation’ are considered as inseparable. Relatedly, when these thoughts are applied to the reality of sub-state nations, such as Flanders, Catalonia Basque Country and Québec, sub-state nationalism (SSN) and separatism seem to be conceptually entangled in their aim for an independent state. This chapter considers sub-state nationalism and sub-state separatism as conceptually distinct, and aims at examining the relationship between sub-state separatist political parties and immigration policies. This requires, on (...) the one hand focusing on the integration policies, given that often immigration policies with regard to admission and removal lies beyond the competence of sub-state nations. On the other hand, it focuses on the two major Flemish pro-independence parties, namely the Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), and Vlaams Belang (VB). While sub-state separatist movements appear to be particularly opposed to increasing immigration, they operate under a particular ‘legitimacy dilemma’ with its paradoxical tendencies to both exclude and include immigrants. The chapter will show contextually that even the relatively more inclusive political party positions, such as the ones taken by the N-VA, are not sufficiently inclusive, when the normative distinction between ‘cultural assimilation’ and ‘cultural integration’ is taken seriously. Theoretically, it will engage with a renowned articulation of the legitimacy dilemma offered by Will Kymlicka, to argue that it is not sufficient to account for the normative necessity to respect the ‘autonomy of immigrants’. As I will demonstrate, this has to do with the inability of the dilemma to distinguish sufficiently ‘cultural assimilation’ from ‘cultural integration’. In other words, on the one hand the chapter contributes to the apparent absence of strong defenses for ‘moral autonomy of immigrants, by describing what such an autonomy might imply for designing of integration policies. On the other hand, it critically assesses Flemish pro-independence parties’ concrete policies with respect to integration. By offering a contextual political theory on these issues, it offers an example of how a moral principle might be implemented, and serve as a critical focal point to evaluate public policies. (shrink)

Michael Marder, a well-known specialist in environmental philosophy and political theory, studied at universities in Canada and the United States, received a Ph. D. from the New School of Social Research in New York, and taught at the Universities of Georgetown, Saskatchewan, and Washington. He conducted research at the University of Lisbon and served as an associate professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh before becoming a research professor at the University of the Basque Country. M. Marder (...) is a member of the editorial board of journal «Telos» (New York), as well as the editor of four book series: «Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy», «Critical Plant Studies», «Future Perfect: Images of the Time to Come in Philosophy, Politics, and Cultural Studies» and «Palgrave Studies in Postmetaphysical Thought». Michael Marder works in the phenomenological tradition of continental philosophy. He is the author of books «Grafts: Writings on Plants» (2016), «The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness» (2016), «Heidegger: Phenomenology, Ecology, Politics» (2018) и «Dump Philosophy: A Phenomenology of Devastation» (2020). Most of his philosophical works are focused on constructing a concept in which plants are viewed as beings with their own form of subjectivity. He is best known for the monograph «Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life» (2013). Marder's book «The Philosopher’s Plant (Intellectual Herbarium)» (2014), from which the prologue «Philosophical Herbarium» and the first chapter «Plato's Plane Tree» are taken for translation, is devoted to the relationship between philosophy and plants. The author believes that philosophy did not pay due attention to plants, and seeks to fill this gap. The book contains twelve stories, each of which relates a famous philosopher to a plant or flower (Plato’s Plane Tree, Avicenna’s Celery, Kant’s Tulip etc.), which, according to Marder, allows a deeper understanding of his philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Today the definition of Spain as a national, historical and sovereign entity is in crisis. This situation has been reached because the Spanish left has assumed as its own many of the ideas about the concept of the Spanish nation of peripheral nationalisms. In this article we try to discover the causes of this identification through the study of the propaganda texts that the opposition to the Franco regime had on the national concept, rescued in the rulings of the Public (...) Order Court. In them we will observe how the opposition to Francoism in the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and the Canary Islands mixed Marxist and nationalist ideologies in their messages, but with great fundamental differences in each of these regions. Furthermore, we certify that the "Burgos Process" was the turning point that cemented the identification of the Spanish left throughout the country with the nationalist movements. (shrink)

By its very nature ethnography is an emergent methodology. To be ethical the ethnographer needs to manage research ethics in-situ. This need to manage ethical dilemmas as they arise often comes into conflict with increased ethical regulation and procedures from ethics review boards that require the researcher to foresee ethical quandaries before data collection commences. These regulations can constrain the emerging purpose of the study, evolving means of data collection and multifaceted ways of interacting with participants that are seen as (...) being the strengths of undertaking an ethnographic approach. 0The chapters in this volume problematise this tension and highlight the importance of managing ethics in-situ by reflecting on recently completed and current projects drawing out ethical dilemmas relating to data ownership, dissemination, representation, social justice and managing ethnographic studies in the midst of a global pandemic and Covid-19 lockdowns. 0Reflecting on these experiences of doing educational ethnography with children and young people, drawing on a diverse range of studies conducted in England, Scotland, South America, India, and the Basque Country, this volume argues that administrative and conceptual change is needed to ensure that ethics does not become a tick box exercise but that ethnographers commit fully to conscientiously managing ethics in-situ. (shrink)

This research is part of the last study Drugs and School IX developed in the Basque Country (Spain) by the Instituto Deusto de Drogodependencias (Deusto Institute of Drug Addiction) of the University of Deusto and the data gathered by means of cluster sampling in two stages. The sample is made up of N= 6.007 girls and boys ranging from 12 to 22 years of age in Secondary Education and the aim is to answer the following new research questions (...) based on those parameters: (1) describe the reality of drug consumption and some psychosocial variables in this sample, as well as analyse several relations between variables; (2) analysing the role of school well-being, self-esteem and self-concept regarding consumption; (3) taking a close look at the moderating role of age and gender on the relationship of school well-being, self-concept and self-esteem with consumption; and (4) understand the existing interaction between all these variables, studying the moderating role of self-esteem and self-concept in the influence of school well-being on consumption. Using a correlation, hierarchical regression and mediation analysis with SPSS (v. 26) and Amos (v. 26) applications, three main conclusions were reached. Firstly, that educational and academic well-being, academic self-concept and self-esteem seem to play the role of protecting factors in adolescence, while assertiveness is linked to a higher consumption level. Secondly, that academic self-concept has a mediating effect between well-being and consumption. Some of these relations are moderated by the variables of gender and age. Thirdly, that age and gender are very relevant sociodemographic variables that must be taken into account in order to understand this phenomenon. Age has shown its covariant effect, which is especially relevant in the influence of academic well-being measured as being held back years. It has also proved to be important in order to understand its experiential or experimental and transitory character. Moreover, significant differences in consumptions have been found based on gender. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to create and validate an instrument to measure the wellbeing of children in lockdown. As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the interest of maintaining social distancing, millions of people have been confined to their homes, including children, who have been withdrawn from school and barely able to leave their homes. Thus, it would be useful to evaluate, from a holistic perspective, the well-being of children under these challenging circumstances. The participants were (...) 1046 children 48.7% of which were boys and 50.7% girls, recruited in the Basque Country (Northern Spain). The survey, entitled, 'Well-being of Children in Lockdown" (WCL) is composed of six sub-scales: Emotions, Playful and creative activities, Education, Addictions, Routine, and Physical Activity. Exploratory factor analyses indicate that all the reliability indices were acceptable. The survey demonstrated adequate reliability (alpha=.804). We were thus able to confirm the validity of this simple instrument for evaluating the well-being of children aged between 4 and 12 years in lockdown situations.2. (shrink)

Introduction to the Special Issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics from EURSAFE 2010 Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s10806-012-9390-2 Authors Leire Escajedo San-Epifanio, Department of Constitutional Law and History of Political Thought, Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain Mickey Gjerris, Faculty of Science, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

The objective of this study is to analyze the role that peer support plays in the incidence relationships between sociometric popularity and general self-concept based on sociometer theory. A total of 676 randomly selected secondary school students from the Basque Country between 12 and 18 years of age participated voluntarily. All of them completed a sociometric questionnaire, the Family and Friends Support Questionnaire, and the Dimensional Self-concept Questionnaire. Several models of structural equations were tested. The results indicate that (...) sociometric popularity is linked to self-concept through the perceived social support of peers. These results are discussed within the framework of positive psychology and its practical implications in the school context. (shrink)

With obstacles at various levels of government, multi-level settings provide complex challenges for the implementation of gender mainstreaming. Policy transfer appears to hold some explanatory potential in these sorts of contexts; scholarship however, still tends to focus on single sources of influence – either European or domestic – and potentially misses the broader picture. This article revisits the classic question of who learns what from whom by addressing the implementation of gender mainstreaming in research policies in the Spanish regions through (...) the lens of policy transfer. Measures to tackle gender inequality in science have been developed at the EU, state and regional levels, thus enabling the three regions studied here – Galicia, the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands – to ‘borrow’ good practices from different layers of government. This article suggests that more nuanced frameworks, recognizing that multi-level settings are potential sites for complex lesson-drawing processes, are likely to offer greater explanatory depth. (shrink)

DISCOURSE, INTERACTION, AND COMMUNICATION Co-organized by the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science and the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language, and Infonnation (ILCLI) both from the University of the Basque Country, tlle Fourth International Colloquium on Cognitive Science (ICCS-95) gathered at Donostia - San Sebastian ti'om May 3 to 6, 1995, with the following as its main topics: 1. Social Action and Cooperation. 2. Cognitive Approaches in Discourse Processing: Grammatical and Semantical Aspects. 3. Models of Infonnation in (...) Communication Systems. 4. Cognitive Simulation: Scope and Limits. More tllan one hundred researchers from all over the world exchanged their most recent contributions to Cognitive Science in an exceptionally fruitful annosphere. In this volume we include a small though representative sample of tlle main papers. They all were invited papers except the one by Peter Juel Henrichsen, a contributed paper tllat merited tlle IBERDROLA - Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia: Best Paper Award, set up in ICCS-95 for the first time. (shrink)

Supported by the works of Mijail Bajtin, we approach the study of Patria respecting its identity as a literary work and, at the same time, integrating its unavoidable reference to the history of the Basque Country. The hypothesis is that Patria takes advantage of the resources of the literary genre to become a great dialogical novel, providing a valuable focus to the "great conversation" about ETA terrorism. To confirm this hypothesis, we analyze the macrostructure of the novel, as (...) well as the polyphony and dialogue in its various narrative voices, at the level of the microstructure of the story. These analyzes invite us to suggest the notion of mimesis of social validities to explain the type of "realism" that we can find in the novel. (shrink)

En este artículo nos centramos en la realidad de las jóvenes vascas afrodescendientes, en cuanto a sus vivencias y las dificultades que encuentran, a partir de cinco dimensiones como son; la familia y el tejido social, la educación, el trabajo, la identidad y la convivencia. Para ello, se ha utilizado una metodología cualitativa de investigación social. En concreto, se ha elaborado una encuesta discrecional formada por una muestra total de tres grupos de discusión. Los resultados de las cinco dimensiones analizadas (...) reflejan las dificultades que estas jóvenes están enfrentando en sus vidas. (shrink)

The vicissitudes of mathematical reason in the 20th century Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9556-y Authors Thomas Mormann, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EPU, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This research is part of a more extensive programme that deals with intercultural ethics from different perspectives. All of them share a common inspiration sprung from UNESCO’s Intercultural Ethics Project. The main goal of this paper consists in offering pragmatic/theoretical tools in order to analyse a cultural and political issue which is currently very important in Spain: the confrontation between those promoting Spanish national culture and those promoting the Basque one. I approach this confrontation in terms of discursive praxis, (...) reaching the conclusion that only if both groups are capable of self-understanding will they be capable of reciprocal-understanding, and only then will it be possible to maintain peace in our country. (shrink)

This research is part of a more extensive programme that deals with intercultural ethics from different perspectives. All of them share a common inspiration sprung from UNESCO’s Intercultural Ethics Project. The main goal of this paper consists in offering pragmatic/theoretical tools in order to analyse a cultural and political issue which is currently very important in Spain: the confrontation between those promoting Spanish national culture and those promoting the Basque one. I approach this confrontation in terms of discursive praxis, (...) reaching the conclusion that only if both groups are capable of self-understanding will they be capable of reciprocal-understanding, and only then will it be possible to maintain peace in our country. (shrink)

This research is part of a more extensive programme that deals with intercultural ethics from different perspectives. All of them share a common inspiration sprung from UNESCO’s Intercultural Ethics Project. The main goal of this paper consists in offering pragmatic/theoretical tools in order to analyse a cultural and political issue which is currently very important in Spain: the confrontation between those promoting Spanish national culture and those promoting the Basque one. I approach this confrontation in terms of discursive praxis, (...) reaching the conclusion that only if both groups are capable of self-understanding will they be capable of reciprocal-understanding, and only then will it be possible to maintain peace in our country. (shrink)

Throughout history, the public space in different towns and cities has been characterized by welcoming and favoring social and cultural encounters and exchanges. In turn, these urban fabrics have served to promote revolutions, changes, and social improvements. In the west countries case, the urban revolution has turned into a territorial expansion of democracy. Thus, structural social changes demanded by society have started from the squares and streets of numerous cities. Changes, which in many cases have been a real change. But (...) what happens when the vindication, fight or even revolution started from squares and streets serves to reverse all the democratic advances achieved This article analyzes the social demand phenomenon for independence in the Basque urban environments during the years 1969-2011. To do this, the methodology used is based on the academic and field review, characterizing the actions of independence and terrorism from an urban context through graffiti, murals, posters, and demonstrations. Thus, the neutrality of the public space progressively has been diminishing in the Basque urban environment until appropriating it. These aspects began to take relevance at the beginning of democracy. (shrink)