Abstracts of papers


       

1- Carmen Diego. “Natural Disasters: PTSD Risk, Vulnerability, Resilience and Preventive Measures”.


Vulnerability and Resilience, both collective and individual, are fundamental dimensions of the socio-psychological component of exposure to natural disasters, describing the susceptibility degree of society and individuals and/or their ability of performing a positive reconstruction, overcoming, in short and long term, the impacts of a strong earthquake. Danger perception, public policies and readiness are factors which determine the degree of vulnerability. Furthermore, other factors are the population's general mental health and the strength and vitality of the network of relationships which support a community's psychological dynamics, before and after traumatic events. To ascertain the levels of anxiety and other psychological effects, which are direct and immediate consequences of a strong earthquake, consisting on the possibility of major aftershocks and the awareness of the challenges to face, will be particularly difficult, specially if this measurement is done using traditional methods of sociological research (for example, surveys and interviews). In fact, in order to guarantee precision, these evaluations must be carried out immediately after the earthquake, in a moment when the affected populations will, certainly, be less available or willing to participate. For this reason, we suggest the use of texts produced immediately after the earthquake (new communications, electronic messages, blogs) as a source of raw data for the sociological analysis. This requires a multidisciplinary approach, which includes computing science to explore the texts, statistical science to perform the data reduction and modelling, and sociological theory to interpret the results.


2- Catarina Gomes. “Power and memory: The Angolan post-colonial State in the narratives of young university students in Diaspora”.


This project is based on the issue of how Angola's political transition and the formal processes of democratization are addressed and considered by young university students in the Diaspora. Taking into consideration that the questioning and evaluation of these processes are not unfounded, the basic question is formulated as follows:
how does the complex social memory of power exercise in the Angolan post-colonial State conditions:
a. the evaluation of political transition and the formal processes of democratization.
a.1.At the level of present interpretation.
a.2. At the level of future perspective.
b. the formation of political subjectivity, power experience and public/political participation.


3- Gisele Wolkoff. “Identities in Poetry: public and private in comparison”.


This work intends to do a comparative discussion of both the representation and formation of identities present in the poetry of some Irish and Portuguese poets who write based on the experience of contemporaneity, which is considered as the post-1960 era, in Ireland, with the rise of female reintegration spaces in literary production, namely the poetic one, through a movement launched by writers like  Eavan Boland e Anne Le Marquand Hartigan and, in Portugal, the initial postprints of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andressen and the Three Maries, today repostulated by Ana Luísa Amaral and Helga Moreira. Thus, we will analyse, in a comparative way, how the public and private spheres are presented in intersection.


4- Jéssica Falconi. “Itinerary categories”.


In a epistemological perspective, marked by Said's reflection about the travelling of theories and their appropriation in different times and places, the goal is to discuss the possibility of mapping academic critique of the African Literature of Portuguese Language produced since the mid-1990's, focusing on the acceptance of categories established by Post-Colonial Studies.


5- Julia Garraio. “Hordes of rapists. The instrumentalization of sexual violence in the German anti-communist discourse of Cold War”.


In the German anti-communist discourse of Cold War, the image of the Red Army as a "horde of rapist" acted as an exclusion strategy to the formation of a European identity. Using a few texts about the escape and expulsion of Germans from Central and Easter Europe (Flucht und Vertreibung), I will attempt to demonstrate how the rape of German women by Red Army's soldiers at the end of Second World War were interpreted as a product of "Asian barbarity", which would prove opposite to a western and Christian European civilization. This kind of instrumentalization contributes not only to demonize the Soviet Union and Communism but also to foster the formation of an identity of the Federal Republic of Germany as an integrating nation of a Europe ruled by "western values".



6- Luciana F.M. Mendonça. “Fado, bohemia and quarter: notes on the music and identities of contemporary Lisbon”.


This paper is based on an ongoing research focused on the city of Lisbon and aims at reflecting about the role of Fado in the construction and promotion of urban cultural circuits, as well as their use as identity element by certain collective subjects. Although focused on the current dynamics of Lisbon Fado universe, mainly explored through a participant observation, the research attempts to relate contemporary practices and representations with the city's history.


7- Maria Isaura Rodrigues Pinto. "Brazil and Portugal: cordel literature, invisibility and monoculture of knowledge".


This work has the goal of addressing the interaction processes between Brazilian and Portuguese cordel literatures. The analysis intends to emphasize issues related to the ambiguity of treatment given to that production, both in Brazil and in Portugal, which, due to the commitment of "high culture", grants it a certain amount of prestige, being acknowledged as a cultural product, part of national traditions; on the other hand, considering the ruling of that class principles, logic of which results form the "monoculture of knowledge and accuracy of knowledge"(SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa), that cordel literature continues to be subjected to reductive appreciations based on criteria of value unrelated to its production, which results in forms of non-existence with concealment and discredit effects.



8- Michele Grigolo. “Towards a theory on human rights and cities”.


This paper presents the work developed at the Centre Interreligiós de Barcelona (Inter-Religious Centre of Barcelona: CIB), now called Oficina d’Afers Religiosos (Religious Affairs Office: OAR). CIB/OAR is the interface between the city's religious communities and, also, between the city departments and the native local population. This mediation is carried out within the framework of human rights established by United Nations documents and charters. CIB/OAR has been monitoring, for ten years, the distribution of religious communities throughout the urban territory, following the increasing migration to Barcelona. During this period, CIB/OAR has been involved in several matters, including the right of communities to religious observance at city squares, the construction of places of worship and public demonstrations. This paper analyses to what extend the text of human rights provide an adequate framework to the mediation of the above mentioned issues. It also approaches the inherent ambiguity of CIB/OAR's work: by monitoring religious communities, CIB/OAR is also contributing to the implementation of an emerging local security program.


9- Mihaela Mihai. “Emotion and Criminal Law”.

Although there is still much discussion whether "law and emotion" are distinct fields, we cannot deny that emotions and their relationship with the law institution have become prominent in legal studies. Sociologists have noted that this trend follows the "emotionalisation" of public discourse on crime in late modern societies. In the last decade, we have witnessed a broad investigation about how emotions - both individual and collective - influence law and vice-versa. In this developing literature, the role of emotions within criminal law has received a disproportionate attention. Sets of knowledge from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and sociology were used in order to, firstly, explain the different ways in which affection influences the criminal system and, secondly, defend the need to deeply reflect on the impact of emotional phenomena in justice.


This paper's goal is to perform a critical reflection about the main conceptualizations of the relationship between criminal law and human affections. By mapping the diversity of positions, I will show how a theoretical explanation of the nature of emotions determines the type of position adopted on the "faith" of emotions in the area of law.


My presentation will consist on two components: First, I will examine the main theoretical contributions about the status of emotions in the criminal procedure at the internal level. Then, I will analyse the emerging literature about the relevance of affection in extraordinary criminal procedures, after mass atrocities. By exploring the role and requirements of affection within these two contexts, I intend to offer a critical reflection to scholars interested in the controversial but extremely significant relationship between emotions and punitive institutions.


 

10- Silmara Cimbalista. “Corporate culture: its influence in the work and life of Portuguese motor vehicle sector workers”.


The context of world crises has been affecting deeply the world of work and its effects are influencing workers' daily life. The production organization, working environment and conditions are the expression of a company's culture values. Elements like the culture of excellence, aiming a greater productivity and consequent competiveness, mean more than just a theoretical construction of corporate culture, they significantly weigh in the worker's desired performance. We assume that the set of a company's culture values is expressed in elements capable of assigning meanings that build organizational identity, and act as communication and consensus elements, also being able to conceal and instrumentalize domination and assimilation relationships within the organization's interests. Based on interviews to Portuguese motor vehicle sector workers, we reflect on corporate culture and its influence on the workers' behaviour, changing their performance within the organization and interfering with their personal lives.


11- Valerio Nitrato Izzo. “Law, State and disaster politics - strategies of regulation and social vulnerability”.

The phenomenon of disasters constitutes one of the most dangerous threats which humanity will have to face in the 21st Century. However, there is still no theoretical and analytical framework prepared to the highly destructive potential of such events, namely the intersection between democracy and governance models, law, risk management and protection against social vulnerability. The State's ability to guarantee personal protection at the global context, with regulation policies and legal instruments, is, today, under transformation due to the processes of territorial risk extension, which are not exclusively limited to national borders, in a context of increasing, although incomplete, integration framework at the community, cosmopolitan and post-colonial level. Thus, this paper intends to analyse the relationship between law and disaster as the evolutionary focal point of contemporary legal forms and of the impact on risk prevention and management within modern societies.



12- Virgílio Amaral. “The ´República Case´and the Rhetoric of Political Discourse. A contribution to the analysis of Political Discourses in the Post-25 April 1974


The goal of this study was to understand, through the analysis of discursive practices present in the press, how two political groups (the Socialist Party,PS, and the Portuguese Communist Party, PCP) built the meaning of a Portuguese historical event - the conflict at the "República" newspaper, after the Revolution of 25th of April, 1974. Based on the assumptions of a "post-modern proposal" of rhetoric analysis of discourse (Billig, 1991; Castro, 2002; Potter, 1996), we carried out the analysis of a corpus composed of thirteen news released by each party's official newspaper ("Portugal Socialista” of PS and “Avante!” of PCP), in a total of twenty-six selected news, in the period between May and July, 1975. In the socialist discourse, the "República" case is built as rhetoric argument which invokes its object of opposition - the "totalitarianism" of communist action, promoting a mobilization which, in a context of electoral legitimacy, urges the people to fight for "freedom of speech" in Portugal, through a rhetorical generalization of the case. In the communist discourse, the rhetoric of conspiracy argument associated to a bipolarization of the political reality surrounding the "República" case serves the purpose of legitimating the "revolutionary action" in opposition to a "bourgeois freedom" The discourse analysis from a rhetoric perspective allowed to highlight the implicit character of reconstruction of the conflict's meaning, underlying the arguments presented by both political groups in opposition. At the centre of attention are the ideological differences and the country's political power exercise, aiming to persuade Portuguese people to legitimate one or the other proposal - in a context of conflict between legitimacies (electoral vs. revolutionary).