III Annual Cycle Young Social Scientists
2007-2008

Scientific Coordination: Marta Araújo, José Manuel Mendes e Marisa Matias

CONFERENCES

OCTOBER 24th, 2007
Claudia Pato de Carvalho – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Reinventing Identities and Reconfiguring Frontiers: The Role of Cultural Practices in the Creation of Citizenship. Examples of Three Case Studies in Urban Communities in Boston, USA
Comments by: Graça Capinha and Luciana Mendonça

Presentation
This presentation focuses, on one hand, on the role of cultural and artistic dynamics in the social revitalization of three urban communities in the Boston metropolitan area (USA). On the other hand, reflects on the importance of these dynamics in the creation of civic and multi-ethnic spaces of participation, In this manner, was is sought is reflection on the different types of citizenship in the three studied communities, namely Union Square (the Arts District case), Villa Victoria/South End (Grassroots movement case) and Jamaica Plain (The Community and Festivals Arts case).

Biographic note
Cláudia Pato de Carvalho is Associate Researcher at the  Centre for Reflective Community Practice (Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, EUA). She is presently conducting her Doctorate Degree Reinventing Identities and Reconfigurating Frontiers: the Role of Cultural Practices in the Creation of Citizenships, at FEUC in collaboration with the Centre for Reflective Community Practice (Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, EUA).

NOVEMBER 22th, 2007
Sandro Mendonça – Institute of Higher Education for Work and Business Sciences, Lisbon
Models of Innovation
Comments by:José Reis and Filipe Almeida

Presentation
At this conference shall revisit the manner in which the role of science regarding innovation has been defined during the last five decades, presenting the change of a linear model for a model of interpretation of chain links. Proposes a third generation model, which would summarize the on-going research on the nature of economically useful knowledge, the diversity of intervenients in the learning process and the results of the innovation. Even though the vision of chain links goes beyond the linear model when it insists that science is part of the process but not necessarily its initial step, presently we can sense the necessity of recognizing explicitly the dimension associated to the multiplicity of innovation actors and the broader institutional context in which distinct forms of learning occur. The reason is simple: almost every product with highly increase value incorporate elements of scientific knowledge. But science is merely one of different sources of knowledge that induce innovation based growth. Yet more attention shall be given towards the comprehension of markets and organizations.

Biographic note
Sandro Mendonça teaches at the Department of Economics, ISCTE and researches at Dinâmia/ISCTE and at SPRU, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. He studied Economics at the Higher Institute for Economics and Management, Universidade Técnica of Lisbon, and at the Erasmus of Roterdam University, having lectured at the School of Economics, Universidade Nova of Lisbon, and at the Higher Institute for Applied Psychology (ISPA). In his consulting activities he has interacted with several public and private entities, national and foreign, in areas such as social policy, innovation policy and strategic management. His research interests comprehend economy and management of innovation, public policy for science and technology, intellectual property, strategic prospective, measurement of techno-economic change, economic and business history.

DECEMBER 19th, 2007
Ana Elisa Cascão - King’s College, London, UK      
When Power and Water Come Together: How to Share International Water Resources?
Comments by: Paula Duarte Lopes and Marisa Borges

Presentation
International rivers flowupstream and downstream passing, crossing or even coinciding with the internationalborders of several States. Around 263 international hydrographical basins in the world are shared by two or more countries. These hydric resources serve several economic purposes – agriculture, industry, electricity production, tourism, services or domestic consumption – inter-state hydric management, institution creation, international law, political leaders image, religion, borders, etc. Political power and water cross each other in several frontiers!
During the last decades, several schools of International Relations have dedicated their studies to several international hydrographic basins, especially in the Mid-East and Africa. The realist schools tend to give particular focus to the possibility of “water wars” between states. The institutionalist schools came to revise the pessimistic discourse of realists in order to call attention towards the potentialities of “hydric cooperation”. Both schools tend to ignore an important factor in hydropolitical relations between riverain States – political power.
The aim of this presentation is to call attention to the importance of asymmetries of political power (coercive, negotial, discursive and structural power) between states that share hydrographic basins and to understand how these asymmetries condition hydric resource management. The role of the international community, namely bilateral agencies and international financial institutions, shall also be discussed. This discussion is guide by the theoretical framework “Hydro-Hegemony and Counter Hydro-Hegemony in transborder hydric basins”, that is presently being developed by the London Water Research Group – University of London. Examples of hydro-hegemonic situations in the Nile, Jordan and Tiger-Euphrates rivers shall be presented.

Biographic note
Degree in International Relations – University of Minho, Braga. Masters in African Studies – ISCTE, Lisbon (Thesis title: Conflict and cooperation in the Nile River Basin) Doctoral student at the Department of Geography King's College - University of London (Thesis title: Political Economy of Water Resources Management in the Eastern Nile River Basin) Field work carried out in Ethiopia, Sudan and also Egypt (where he presently resides.       

JANUARY 9th, 2008
Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos – Institute of Higher Education for Accounting and Administration, Porto Polytechnic Institute
Portuguese Folk Culture and the Discourse of Power: Moliceiro Practices and Representations
Comments by: António Sousa Ribeiro and Tiago Alves

Presentation
“Portuguese Folk Culture and the Discourse of Power: Moliceiro Practises and Representations” deals with an object and the discourse evoked by it, whilst representation, invention and reinvention of folk culture of a Portuguese region. However, this paper also intends to see through the object, that is, “to cross through [its] inopportune opacity”, as proposes Michel Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. This object is the Moliceiro boat from the Aveiro Ria which, more than a case of tradition versus modernity, constitutes a representation of the cultural identity of a community intimately tied to the lagoonar ecosystem. The Moliceiro-boat’s panels are thus intersemiotic symbolic representations of the values, practices and representations shared by the local community. The iconic texts and writings manifest in each boat are product of a network of political, ideological, social and economical circumstances, hardly recognized even by those that draw, paint and write (and live) under their influence. In the course of the 20th century, the Moliceiro and its panels participated in a complex dialectic between the representations of the official discourse and its real social, economic and symbolic function, generating an imaginary historic, an “inventory” (cf. Gramsci) that motivated, contextualized and sustained this unique form of folk art.

Biographic note
Clara Sarmento holds a doctoral degree in Portuguese Culture at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto. She is Associate Professor at the Higher Institute for Accounting and Administration of Porto (ISCAP), coordinating the Centre for Intercultural Studies. Distinguished with the 1993 “American Club of Lisbon Award for Academic Merit". Author of several books, articles and conferences, in Portugal as well as abroad, on Portuguese and Anglo-American Literature and Culture, and Culture and Gender Studies.

FEBRUARY 20th, 2008
Paulo Renato Cardoso - Centre for Philosophy, Lisbon University
The Undeconstructible Nature of the I-Process. Some Notes towards the Rennovation of Cogito
Comments by: Maria Irene Ramalho and António Carvalho

Presentation
The synchronic unity and diachronic identity of conscience impose themselves as fundamental issues at the centre of cognitive sciences, philosophy of spirit, ethics and lato sensu epistemology. Knowing if such a unity and identity are qualities absolutely real, merely strongly plausible functions or simply illusionary epiphenomenons, remains profoundly controversial and has immediate consequences in the manner by which one understand cognition and personality. The possibility of an objective system of knowledge, as well as a responsible system of actions, depends on a certain type of unified self-conscience. Nevertheless, this unified representational field or this subjective operations flux requires an activity, a process, by which the I is produced. Therefore a radically multiple or dissociated mind is a mind without I, and this lack of I destructurates (or even annihilates) not only cognitive processes, but also emotional and social ones. However, mental unity is possibly only the everlasting labour of self-unification and self-integration, whose subjective status bears an considerably ambiguous resemblance, for it may be described whether as a simple object of belief, an intellectual sentiment or an unconscient dynamism. Through the rereading of the notion of transcendental apperception in Kant and Fichte, as well as the conception of internal experience and self-conscience in Wittgenstein and W. James, we seek to interrogate the  significance of being an I and its pertinence towards the vast contemporary debate. 

Biographic note
Paulo R. C. Jesus (1974),holds a degree in Psychology at FPCE, University of Coimbra (2000), a doctoral degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences at EHESS, Paris with a thesis (guided by Prof. F. Gil) on the unity and identity of self-conscience in Kant (2006), professor of Psychology at Lusófona University, Porto (2006-07), member of a seminar on Kant and Freud at CIPh, Paris (since 2006), researcher at the Centre for Philosophy, University of Lisbon,(since 2006), visiting scholar at Columbia University and NYU (2007-08).

MARCH 12th, 2008
Vera Borges – Social Sciences Institute, Lisbon
Actors and Actresses on the Stage: Profession and Job Market
Comments by: Claudino Ferreira and Berta Teixeira

Biographic note
Vera Borges holds a Doctorate Degree in Sociology at EHESS and at FCSH-UNL. The thesis was guided by Pierre-Michel Menger and Luís Vicente Baptista. Actors and theatre groups in Portugal: Professional trajectories and Job market constitute the thematic of her doctoral thesis, defended in 2005. Author of Todos ao Palco! Estudos sociológicos sobre o teatro em Portugal (Celta, 2001) and, more recently, O mundo do teatro em Portugal: profissão de actor, organizações e mercado de trabalho. Presently developing research on young artists and their insertion in the Job market, at the Institute for Social Sciences (ICS -UL).

APRIL 16th, 2008
Susana Silva - Arts Faculty of Porto University and Research Centre for Social Sciences, Minho University
“Sow, later to Grow”: an Analysis of the Social Uses of Medically Assisted Procreation
Comments by: Tiago Santos Pereira and Susana Costa

Biographic note
Susana Silva holds a degree in Sociology of Organizations and a Master in Sociology at the University of Minho. She is finalizing her Doctorate Degree in Sociology at FLUP, within the project “Doctors, jurists and ‘laymen’: a study on social representations concerning medically assisted reproduction”. She has been distinguished with an honourable mention, Woman Research 2001 – Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos Award, with the master degree dissertation (“The frontiers of ambivalences: institutional control and power amongst female prostitution”). She is associate researcher at the Institute of Sociology, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto and associate member of the Research Centre for Social Sciences, Minho University.

MAY, 14th 2008
Isabel Estrada Carvalhais - Nucleus for Research into Political Science and International Relations, Minho University
European Citizenship: Shortcomings and Potentialities of its Project
Comments by: Elísio Estanque and António Farinhas Rodrigues

Presentation
After a brief presentation on European citizenship (EC), built around the  classic questions ‘why does it emerge’, ‘how does it emerge’ and ‘what rights does it bear’, the text launches itself in the analysis of an uneasiness that seems undissociated  as to the EC project while a space of European cultural identity  existence – an  identity that can be imagined as one, in its multiplicity of peoples  and histories, by the catalyzing power of the universality  of human Rights, or, rather, of the conviction of that  same universality.
Our disquiet resumes itself to what we identify as an incompatibility between the tradition of proclaiming human Rights as a brace of European political action and the reading that it seems to wage upon its relation with citizens of other countries. We find this reading well exemplified in the present legislative and discursive practice of the European Union (EU) as regards to the management of migratory fluxes that seek the communitary space.
By analysing the European logic subjacent to management of the migratory phenomenon, the text  focuses on the way that the former  reveals itself in the political operationalization of concepts such as illegal immigration, circular migration and good-neighbouring.
In short, the text seeks to emphasize the existence of a disturbing and continuous friction between two heritages constitutive of the ideological matrix of contemporary Europe: a heritage of humanistic and cosmopolitan ethic, and a bourgeois and colonizing ethic. Due to this matricial ambivalence and specially due to the shadow of the second heritage, the legitimacy of European politics concerning management of migratory fluxes and, in this line, the legitimacy of the actual EC while a cultural, social and political project of inclusion, are necessarily incomplete legitimacies.

Biographic note
Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations and Public Administration, and researcher at NICPRI – Political Science and International Relations Research Group, University of Minho.
PhD in Sociology (University of Warwick), Masters Degree in Sociology (University of Coimbra) and Degree in International Relations (University of Minho).

JUNE 25th, 2008
Rosa Monteiro – Miguel Torga Institute of Higher Education, Coimbra
State Feminism in Portugal
Comments by: Cecília MacDowell Santos and Tatiana Moura

Presentation
This paper aims to expose my exploratory reflections regarding Feminism of State in Portugal, a theme sparsely studied in this country and main object of my doctorate research in Sociology. I shall analyse and discuss the concept questioning the action that the Portuguese State has come to develop concerning the promotion of equality between men and women since 1970, year  that the Grupo de Trabalho para a Participação da Mulher na Vida Económica e Social [Work Group for Women Participation in Social and Economical Life] was created. This group was created in the midst of the Ministry of Corporations and Social Welfare, presided by Maria de Lourdes Pintassilgo, during a profoundly antifeminist dictatorship. It was the embryo of the Commission for Feminine Condition (institutionalized in 1977) that, in 1991, was called, Commission for Equality and Women’s Rights, and since 2007 Commission for Citizenship and Equality of Gender.
This Commission is the governmental organ for equality of men and women that has presented a greater continuance and stability pertaining to institutionalization and action in Portuguese democracy, in spite of the alterations observed in its designation. The precocity of this state action in Portugal is nevertheless curious and raises some questions as to the history of this institution and its relation with women’s movements in Portugal. I aim to question the role of the Portuguese State as regards to the integration and defence of an agenda that promotes equality between women and men.
The Research Network on Gender, Politics and the State (RNGPS) has contributed, in a decisive way, towards the comparative study of Feminism of State in several western countries, questioning the efficiency of state agencies of women on influence and policies productions, and in the representation and empowerment of women and feminist movements. Based on some of its analytical proposals, I seek to discuss the place and role of the Commission in the production of policies and in the representation of women movements in a framework of global governance.
Célia Valente has studied the Instituto de la Mujer (Spain) and, in a work on the Portuguese Commission, defends that “the relations between feminists of state and militants of a wide range of sectors of the women movements are, in general, frequent and cooperative in Portugal, and infrequent and antagonising in Spain”. This point of view is not followed by some Portuguese researchers and activists, as Virgínia Ferreira, Manuela Tavares and Madalena Barbosa, which present reasons for the fact these women organizations in Portugal have not constituted the pressure force that has determined/determines and influences the Feminism of State. If, on one hand, this is the consequence of the fragilities and short visibility of Portuguese women movements, on the other, it is also the result of a State that closes the cycle of political production in certain bodies essentially technical and bureaucratic, as some analysts consider the Portuguese State to be.
What I aim is to discuss this diversity of approaches towards the comprehension of the relation between State and feminism in Portugal.

Biographic note
Degree in Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra. Masters Thesis in Family and Social Systems intituled Working Mothers in face of the Intensive Maternalization Model, Quarteto Publishing House. Researcher within the II National Plan for Equality project, financed by CIG, responsible for the assessment of the Intervention area for Labour, Work and Maternity and Paternity Protection.