Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Review of the book by Narciso de Gabriel,  Xosé María Álvarez Blázquez, mestre republicano. Diario escolar e desterró (Vigo. Editorial Galaxia, 2019)

This critical essay is an extensive commentary-analysis of the work of historian Niall Ferguson entitled The Square and the Tower. Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook translated and published in Spanish in 2018. The book is located, according to its author, on an intermediate  path between dominant historiography, which has tended to underestimate the importance of networks, and conspiracy theorists, who usually exaggerate it. Its central purpose is to highlight the relevance that social networks have had and have in historical events and processes. The analysis carried out here is intended to unravel how this work is a good example, from the United States neoconservative field, of making a historic bestseller at the service of that ideology.

According to Levy-Leboyer (1997;54) the competences are “behavioral repertoires which some people control better than others and which makes them efficient in a particular situation”. These behaviors can be observed in people’s everyday working life as well as in evaluating situations. In all public organizations, the functionaries have the possibility of developing a functionary career which is related to a series of stages that a worker can go through during his/her working life. Due to this, the investigation aims to analyze the labor competences, recruitment and functionary career that exist within public services of the V region. And concluding that an urgent change must be done in the Administrative Ordinance; this means, modifying it in such a way that promotions are quicker, evaluations are carried out according to the work done, professional training is given to all the functionaries and based on topics which are useful for a future application, and finally, that state universities can have a greater autonomy than the one they have in their administrative and economic processes

Over the last century, companies have transcended the mere act of doing business and have progressively diversified their functions to other areas such as philanthropy, social activity, human rights and environmental care. This set has been defined as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This concept does not have a unique definition and is considered a voluntary and non-compulsive activity. It has received a new boost with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the great progress, the development of the discipline has been characterized by its complexity since its main characteristic is the heterogeneity of variables and actors to take into account. Consequently, gray areas and lagoons are perceived on which it is necessary to inquire. The result is that companies still hide behind the image of CSR to favor business growth.

The aim of this article is to analyze the uses of documentary informative cinema as a cultural artifact which was employed as a pedagogical device. To do so, we studied motion pictures filmed in Argentina and shown in Spain in the second quarter of the 20th century, in an attempt to understand how a symmetrical aesthetic is shaped to narrate the bodily practices of youth. Informative documentary cinema, especially newsreels, constituted a resource for mass communications. A familiarity can be observed between the Argentinean images analyzed between 1938-1955 in Sucesos Argentinos, with others made in the second quarter of the 20th century in Spain, through No-Do. In addition to economic, political and cultural influences, Argentina imported into Spain ways of narrating state-organized physical culture. Sheltered in a nationalist rhetoric characteristic of the interwar period and the Second World War, it can be affirmed that there was a transnational aesthetic of how to narrate correct corporal and cultural comportment. Through images that were projected in theaters in these countries, newsreel broadcasts simultaneously and homogeneously transmitted the same discourse –everything, to everyone, at the same time–, resulting in a true transnational pedagogy. In short, a pedagogy outside the school walls is studied through informative documentary film images from the second quarter of the 20th century that aimed to form bodies and sensibilities.

The purpose of this text is to approach an especially attractive territory, that of the Californias, which since its origins has been the setting for fascinating stories. These accounts have for the most part remained in the collective memory of the inhabitants of the region, constituting for them a source of pride and contributing to the imaginary inherent to the region’s name itself. The lore figures into the area’s changing cartographic expressions over  the centuries, belying the fixed, static image suggested by the crystallized iconographic representations of successive maps as well as the changing names of the region,and their obliviousness to the stories contained in them. Thus, this text delves into the dimensions of historical cartography and toponymy to examinethe case of the Californias, an instance that we suggest be integrated into the learning of geographical knowledge.

Este texto constituye un autoanálisis de la trayectoria intelectual que subyace en las investigaciones y publicaciones del autor sobre el espacio y la arquitectura escolares llevadas a cabo desde 1980 hasta la fecha. Dicho autoanálisis se divide en cinco etapas o fases en ocasiones superpuestas. Laprimera (1970-1982) lleva por título «Entre la praxis reflexiva y la reflexión teórico-práctica»; la segunda (1990-1995), «De la escuela graduada al espacio y la arquitectura escolar»; la tercera (1990-2000), «Espacio y tiempo escolares »; la cuarta (2000-2009), «Entre el análisis microfuncional, la larga duración y las revisiones historiográficas»; la quinta y última (2016-2020), «Revisiones, ampliación de trabajos anteriores y síntesis final»

Review of the book by Luigiaurelio Pomante, L'Università italiana nel Novecento. Nuovi itinerari storiografici e inediti percorsi di ricerca (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2020)