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

The aim of this article is to analyze the appropriation and inversion of motifs relating to the modern European conception of philosophy in Féng Yŏulán's A Short Story of Chinese Philosophy, in the context of the emergence of an intellectual movement in China that incorporated the practices, the language and ends of European philosophy and whose central concern was the problem of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy. The analysis of the argumentative method of Féng Yŏulán in this work highlights the strategic and provisional nature of the dichotomies, such as that between the philosophical and the religious or between the mystical and the rational, which have been the margin and the silhouette of the formation of an allegedly essential idea of philosophy in modernity. This conception of philosophy had a drastic impact on 20th century Chinese thought and continues to weigh heavily on the globally accepted conception of philosophy in the world today.

En este artículo se describen los cambios operados en las migraciones internacionales en África occidental y se identifican los principales países de emigración e inmigración de la región desde mediados de la década de 1970 hasta 2010. A partir de la crisis de 1973, en África occidental se incrementaron los emigrantes intercontinentales; por una parte, los países que eran receptores de inmigrantes intrarregionales comenzaron a perfilarse como emisores de emigrantes intercontinentales y, por otra, los países tradicionalmente de emigración buscaron cada vez más sus destinos fuera del continente. Actualmente, Francia sigue siendo el primer país europeo con el mayor número de inmigrantes de África occidental, pero a partir de la década de 1990, Estados Unidos y el sur de Europa (especialmente Italia y España) fueron viendo cómo aumentaban en sus países los inmigrantes procedentes de esta región africana.

Ruwan Bagaja by Nigerian writer Alhaji Abubakar Imam (1911–1981), was first published in 1934 and is considered a classic of modern Hausa literature. In his novel, Abubakar Imam takes up the popular theme of the mythical healing water of Bagaja, in a story that integrates themes from the Hausa oral tradition with elements derived from the Middle Eastern and European traditions. The Spanish translation of the novel’s opening chapter, “Alhaji in Search of the Water of Bagaja”, is presented here. Narrated in the first person, the text describes the first adventures of the protagonist, Alhaji Imam, outlining his history and psychology. The reader is immediately immersed in a world where friendship and deception, subordination and power, and the natural and super-natural are inevitably intertwined.

This is the first Spanish translation of Section VI of the Bower Manuscript, a collection of Sanskrit texts from the 4th to 6th centuries that includes works on medicine, divination and protection. The section presented here contains one of the oldest Sanskrit versions of the text known as Mahāmāyūrīvidyārājñīsūtra, The Sūtra of the Queen of Charms, the Great Peahen. This work represents a synthesis of different Buddhist apotropaic texts, framed in a narrative of protection against the venom of snakes, and crowned by a formula of power, a dhāraṇī, presented as a sonic instrument capable of exerting control over different types of entities. It represents an example of the interest of Buddhists to assert their sovereignty, not only over the realms of knowledge and liberation, but also over the powers of the world as a whole.

Inspired by the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly by Sara Roy’s “de-development” theory, this paper investigates how the sovereign ethno-nation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextualizing de-development theory within the broader discipline of developmental studies and outlining how de-development works in practice, we compare the political-economic conditions of Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan/Iran) with those of Palestine to underscore the key similarities and differences between these two cases.

This article presents the role of traditional and community authorities in Timor-Leste during the period of political transition from 1999 to the restoration of independence in 2002 and the first years of independence. It focuses on the legislative and administrative strategies to create a national electoral system trying to incorporate (or not) the traditional structures, specifically: the councils of Katuas (elders), the Suco councils, the Lian Nain and the Liurais in the democratic system of the nascent country and especially in the local and territorial administration. The political strategies and social dynamics in the formation of the electoral system and the modality that was chosen to incorporate the traditional authorities into the governmental power system are explained. A reflection is made on the different stages of the construction of the electoral system in the country in the successive elections of 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004/2005 and its relationship with traditional organizational systems. Some of the conflicts that arose when implementing imported systems that are alien to the cultural reality of the country are highlighted. This article is based on the experience of the author in Timor-Leste between 1999 and 2018 and the examination of legal and documentary sources.

Professional anthropological research in Timor-Leste, which started during the final years of Portuguese colonial rule, came to a halt after the Indonesian occupation. During this period, anthropological studies were mostly carried out under close supervision of the Indonesian state itself, mostly with the goal of ultimately legitimizing the occupation. With the restoration of independence and the return of sovereignty, there was a resurgence of anthropological studies which initially focused on work oriented to the design of reconstruction and development policies, as well as human rights. As the years have passed and with waning interest in Timor-Leste as a country reopened to research, other areas of study have emerged. This article surveys different research projects undertaken during the last twenty years of anthropological work in the country.

Federico Donelli. 2021. Turkey in Africa: Turkey’s Strategic Involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa. Londres: I. B. Tauris. 224 pp. Ebook (PDF) ISBN 9780755636990

The article examines the party system in Cape Verde, officially a multiparty state that in practice has a two-party system. The aim is to understand the stabilization of two parties, the Partido Africano da Independência de Cabo Verde and the Movimento para a Democracia, in the alternation of power even in the most recent legislative elections of 2016, the broadest party competition in the country’s political history. To this end, this discussion focuses on theoretical approaches to parties and party systems that allow us to understand this bipolarization. The analysis suggests that this practical effect makes a connection with the system of representation’s structure and also sheds light on political alignments at the parties’ origin.

The Vietnam War defined the historical and cultural sense of an era and produced a fertile literary movement that brought together true testimonies and reflections on the conflict, written by authors from various countries. The more realistic approach of the early texts has now been creatively combined with innovative literary mechanisms. An outstanding example is Kim Thúy’s Ru, a novel in which the author uses self-fiction and a hybrid narrative style that mixes prose and poetry in her exploration of the complex phenomenon of exile and uprooting. This article offers an in-depth analysis of this book, which contains valuable insights into historical, literary, social, and psychological issues.