The regulatory structures underlying United States and European Union policies regarding genetically modified (GM) food and crops are fundamentally different. The US regulates GM foods and crops as end products, applying roughly the same regulatory framework that it does to non GM foods or crops. The EU, on the other hand, regulates products of agricultural biotechnology as the result of a specific production process. Accordingly, it has developed a network of rules that regulate GM foods and crops specifically. As a (...) result, US regulation of GM foods and crops is relatively permissive, whereas EU regulation is relatively restrictive. Why are genetically modified food policies in the United States and the European Union so strikingly different? In the light of the recent World Trade Organization dispute on agricultural biotechnology, it may seem that economic interests are the driving force behind policies. While they are certainly part of the picture, the issue is far more complex. This paper argues that three different elements help explain differences between US and EU GM food policies. First, an investigation of US and European policies of the 1970s and 1980s on recombinant DNA research and of events leading up to early GM food and crop regulation allows a deeper understanding of current policy. Second, scrutinizing underlying values and norms can uncover the beliefs that condition current GM food and crop policy. Third, an analysis of involved actors’ views and levels of success in influencing policy is essential to understanding US and EU policies. (shrink)

Considering the enormous outpouring of scholarly work on Schmitt over the last two decades, the absence of an adequate treatment in English of Schmitt's concept of history and the problem of secularization is quite surprising. After all, it is Schmitt himself who claims that “all human beings who plan and attempt to unite the masses behind their plans engage in some form of philosophy of history,” such that the attempt to make sense of Schmitt's program remains incomplete without a serious (...) treatment of his philosophy of history. This article is an attempt to address this problem by means of his exchange with Hans Blumenberg who, more than any other critic of Schmitt, was privy to the political intentions behind Schmitt's metaphorical use of theology. While their discussion is extensive and wide-ranging, I focus here on their diverging philosophies of history, precisely that aspect that is most relevant to gaining a more expansive understanding of Schmitt's arguments, and indeed the relationship between political thought and historical thought. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThis recent meeting covered non-bilaterian (e.g., cnidarians, ctenophores, and sponges) animals broadly, but with emphasis in four areas: 1) New genomic resources and tools for functional studies, 2) advances in developmental and regeneration studies, 3) the evolution and function of nervous systems, 4) symbiosis and the holobiome.

Recent trends in academic and professional legal communication worldwide have promoted significant changes to aim at operating successfully under current multilingual and multilegal contexts. The aim is to consider a kind of supranational legal discourse so as to minimize socio-cultural variants and to promote the pragmatic conditions for harmonized and ‘common sense’ legal practices without excluding potential reciprocal influences of or resistance to one hegemonic legal system upon others. In Brazil, the traditional ‘thinking like a civil lawyer’ culture still prevails (...) against a more global approach constraining the consolidation of the country’s role of major player in most global legal areas. In addition, the key tool required for achieving some sort of global legal status—Brazilian legal operators’ proficiency in legal English—has been barely considered in both academic and professional settings, particularly in legal translation. This study resorts to the linguistic anthropology concept of ‘entextualization’ to discuss the process of official translation in Brazil to render global legal genres. The comparative analysis between the original text in English and its official version in English focus on drafting consistency, the translator’s choice of some formal entextualization elements used in the process of translation and his/her authority as the entextualizing agent to legitimate text. (shrink)

Faith, Tsar and Fatherland is an exploration of how religious, political, and ethnic differences influenced war mobilization in Russia prior to, and during, the First World War. Through the narrative of a sacred union, the Russian Imperial government unified an otherwise divided country into one cohesive whole, fighting to protect the Fatherland. In the name of patriotism, historically marginalized groups such as Russo-German settlers and Russian Muslims set aside political, religious, and cultural differences to fight alongside ethnic Russians in one (...) unified effort to defeat the Central Powers. (shrink)

Conceiving sexuality as a sociohistorical construction, in this paper I reflect upon possible reconfigurations that neoliberalism allows, bearing in mind that it is a specific governmentality displaying a particular mode of subjectivization. The hypothesis I develop stresses that neoliberal governmentality provides new forms of living and experiencing sexuality, resignifying sexual practices to be either accepted or dismissed. Consequently, there are pleasures and sexual acts that become more tolerated, and that originate new rules. Departing from the premise that sexuality is determined (...) by pleasure and danger logics within which neoliberalism foregrounds new discourses, I aim to show the impact such new rules have on women. In these terms, the antivictim conception that some feminist sectors demand regarding sexuality, can orbit around the neoliberal discourse and hide the vindications of women who cannot choose the rejection of their victim position. Even if feminism is widely claiming for women’s reappropriation of their sexual pleasure, these demands are resignified by discourses that urge women to be responsible of themselves, leaving them defenseless in the face of the numerous hardships crossing sexuality as a whole. (shrink)

Physical education is often selected for applying multilingual initiatives through the use of the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. However, it is still unclear whether the introduction of such approach might entail losing Physical Education’s essence and distorting its basic purposes. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of CLIL on the Physical Education lessons. Given the purpose of this study, a mixed methodological approach based on a sequential exploratory design divided in two different phases (...) is used. We begin with an initial qualitative data collection (phase I) consisting in the analysis of interviews with 12 participants (8 teachers and 4 students). Based on its analysis, two foci are identified: social relationships and physical activity. Then, informed by the results obtained, a quantitative approach is used (phase II), differentiating these two sets of data to deepen on them. On one part, a sociometric questionnaire was applied to analyse the social relationships among CLIL students. On the other part, a quasi-experimental design (n = 49) was implemented using accelerometry to measure the MVPA of the PE sessions. Regarding physical activity, the results show that levels of MVPA are higher in the experimental group (CLIL) than in the control group showing light to the divergent viewpoints of interviewees. However, focusing on social relationships, the sociometric questionnaire results show that there were no statistical significative changes, although some signs of a slight effect on students’ relationships arise depending on their gender. Therefore, more research would be necessary to deepen on how CLIL affects in this regard. (shrink)

Partindo da idéia de que nos documentários feitos em primeira pessoa o diretor constrói uma personagem de si próprio, este artígo analisa esta “personagem” em dois documentários argentinos sobre as experiências traumáticas pós-ditadura: Papá Iván, de María Inés Roque (2000), resgata a história de seu pai Iván Roqué, morto pela ditadura militar; e Los Rubios (2003), de Albertina Carri, explora as sequelas deixadas em sua vida pelo desaparecimento seguido de morte de seus pais.

Tomás de Aquino es considerado, con razón, uno de los mejores exponentes de la aplicación rigurosa del método escolástico, tanto en lo relativo a la forma disputativa (la quaestio) cuanto en la organización sistemática del material teórico. Pero la obra tomasiana incluye también sus importantes comentarios, sobre todo a Aristóteles, que forman parte de su producción filosófica y teológica. El método expositivo es, por lo tanto, bastante variado y merece un análisis específico. En esta comunicación se tomarán dos ejemplos de (...) sendos modos de su método de producción teórica: la summa y la expositio, visualizando la Summa contra Gentes y la Expositio in Octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Se procura mostrar las líneas estructurales de dos formas diferentes y eventualmente complementarias: el modo derivativo y el modo analítico respectivamente, y de qué modo ambos se integran en el método disputativo. (shrink)

El comentario o la Física es representativo de dos rasgos fundamentales de todo su obro: repensar la sabiduría griega y orientarlo hacia su principal interés, las especulaciones científico- experimentales. La combinación de postulados epistemológícos aristotélicos con su personal concepción ontológico agustiniana neoplatonizonte (metafisica de la luz, teoría de la iluminación divina) da por resultado una obra original más que un comentario en sentido estricto. El libro VII, cuyo importancia radico sobre todo en la exposición de la prueba de la existencia (...) el primer motor, es analizado por Grosseteste no en este sentido, sino en unos breves notos no sistemáticas, vinculados a aspectos muy secundarios en el original, inspirados en parte en textos de Avicena y Averroes, y congruentes con sus intereses científicos. Se destocan cuatro aportes originales: 1. reducción de las cualidades sensibles a las táctiles; 2. teoría de lo semejanza de los formas como explicación de lo interacción sustancial; 3. reducción del estudio fisico o las propiedades; 4. análisis experienciol de las propiedades. (shrink)

Uno de los problemas más interesantes discutidos en el siglo xiii versaba sobte la delimitación epistemológica entre filosofía y teología. Destacamos a Roberto Grosseteste por ser uno de los últimos exponentes de la tradición monástica, al tiempo que plantea nuevos problemas. Su intuición acerca de la inconmensurabilidad entre el lenguaje filosófico y el teológico le llevó a postular los "credibilia" como una clace de proposiciones teológicas, por oposición a los "scibilia" de la filosofía .The epistemological delimitation between philosophy and theology (...) was one of the most interesting problems discussed in the Thirteenth Century. Discussions around the object of theology prove this. Among the authors in the first half of the two hundreds, Roberto Grosseteste shows a particular interest because he represents one of the last exponents of the monastic tradition, but already open to new problems. His - well founded- intuition of the incommensability of the philosophical and theological language takes him to postulate the “credibilia” as a proper kind of theological propositions, in opposition with the scibilia of philosophy . The first credibilia enunciated in the text revealed is the creation of nothingness, the importance of which lies in its contradiction with the Aristotelian physics a model of rational knowledge. Grosseteste assumes in this case the need of a rational process demonstrating its “credibility” defined in terms of “ probability”. (shrink)