Post-Franco Theatre

In the multiple realms and layers that comprise the contemporary Spanish theatrical landscape, “crisis” would seem to be the word that most often lingers in the air, as though it were a common mantra, ready to roll off the tongue of so many theatre professionals with such enormous ease, and even enthusiasm, that one is prompted to wonder whether it might indeed be a miracle that the contemporary technological revolution – coupled with perpetual quandaries concerning public and private funding for the arts – had not by now brought an end to the evolution of the oldest of live arts, or, at the very least, an end to drama as we know it

Debt, Equity and Hybrid Decoupling: Governance and Systemic Risk Implications

"We extend here our prior work, which focused on equity decoupling (Hu and Black, 2006, 2007, 2008), by providing a systematic treatment of debt decoupling and an initial exploration of hybrid decoupling. Equity decoupling involves unbundling of economic, voting, and sometimes other rights customarily associated with shares, often in ways that may permit avoidance of disclosure and other obligations. We discuss a new U.S. court decision which will likely curtail the use of equity decoupling strategies to avoid large shareholder disclosure rules. Debt decoupling involving the unbundling of the economic rights, contractual control rights, and legal and other rights normally associated with debt, through credit derivatives and securitisation. Corporations can have empty and hidden creditors, just as they can have empty and hidden shareholders. 'Hybrid decoupling' across standard equity and debt categories is also possible. All forms of decoupling appear to be increasingly common. Debt decoupling can pose risks at the firm level for what can be termed 'debt governance' - the overall relationship between creditor and debtor, including creditors' exercise of contractual and legal rights with respect to firms and other borrowers. Widespread debt decoupling can also involve externalities and therefore create systemic financial risks; we explore those risks." Copyright (c) 2008 Henry T. C. Hu Journal compilation (c) 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Here, There, Everywhere: The Ubiquitous Geographies of Heteronormativity

From its first tentative forays into questions of gay and lesbian residence, the discipline of geography has made increasingly important contributions to literatures on sexual identities, practices and politics. In this paper, I seek to highlight the breadth and depth of recent work on sexuality and space by exploring the contributions made by geographers to the theorisation of heteronormativity. Specifically, this paper explores how heterosexual norms are constructed ansd reproduced spatially, noting the increasing corpus of work which moves beyond examination of heterosexuality's Other (i.e. homosexuality) to consider the multiple desires and bodies that can be accommodated within the category ‘heterosexual’. Moving from urban to rural contexts, this paper hence reviews literatures detailing how particular heterosexualities are rendered normal and concludes that the literature is usefully shifting from a focus on identity and community to questions of practice and performance

Contract Farming in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Survey of Approaches, Debates and Issues

The paper provides a selective survey of the most significant literature on the rise of contract farming in developing countries, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The review of the literature illustrates ideological debates around the meaning and significance of contract farming and whether it is good or bad for small-scale farmers. The paper then divides the review of the literature into three key themes. First, it addresses the quantitative significance of contract farming in Africa, which may not be as important as it is often portrayed. Second, the paper highlights the substantial diversity of contract farming in Africa and problems with excessive generalizations. Third, it discusses the various drivers fuelling the spread of contract farming, which reflect new production conditions and existing constraints, tendencies and counter-tendencies, and both economic and political responses to changes in production and market conditions in the era of liberalization and globalization. The variety of drivers is substantial and defies generalizations about the emergence of contract farming. Finally, it briefly suggests research questions that tend to be absent in most of the literature on contract farming, and which are important in order to understand the current dynamics of agrarian change and transitions to capitalism in African countries

A brain network model for depression: From symptom understanding to disease intervention

Understanding the neural substrates of depression is crucial for diagnosis and treatment. Here, we review recent studies of functional and effective connectivity in depression, in terms of functional integration in the brain. Findings from these studies, including our own, point to the involvement of at least four networks in patients with depression. Elevated connectivity of a ventral limbic affective network appears to be associated with excessive negative mood (dysphoria) in the patients; decreased connectivity of a frontal-striatal reward network has been suggested to account for loss of interest, motivation, and pleasure (anhedonia); enhanced default mode network connectivity seems to be associated with depressive rumination; and diminished connectivity of a dorsal cognitive control network is thought to underlie cognitive deficits especially ineffective top-down control of negative thoughts and emotions in depressed patients. Moreover, the restoration of connectivity of these networks-and corresponding symptom improvement-following antidepressant treatment (including medication, psychotherapy, and brain stimulation techniques) serves as evidence for the crucial role of these networks in the pathophysiology of depression

Benito Pérez Galdós

In Galdós\u27 time, the tensions between such diverse phenomena as coins and credit, free trade and protectionist tariffs, factory work and domestic economy, masculine and feminine, and private and public exacerbated friction among peoples—those of pueblo and rural origins, whose voices rasped and whose bright colors raked the eye, and a nascent, insecure bourgeosie who, fearful of the masses, strove to imitate the aristocracy. Old and new converged also with the question of suffrage and citizenship to aggravate social malaise and political upheavals—Carlist wars, palace intrigues, the Revolution of 1868 and overthrow of Queen Isabel, the brief reign of Amadeo of Savoy, the aborted First Republic and the Bourbon Restoration (1875-1885), which reached Spain from England in the imported person of Alfonso XII. These turbulent events undergird the cultural, historical, and political events of the novels by Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) to be discussed in this chapter. Galdós is the author of seventy-seven novels, twenty-six original plays, and numerous occasional pieces, written between 1867 and 1920. These divide into two main categories: the historical and the contemporary social novels, now more appropriately described as novels of modernity The forty-six historical novels, called Episodios nacionales, make up five series, each consisting of ten interconnected novels, except the fifth series, left unfinished. The thirty-one novels of modernity, published between 1870 and 1915, also divide into two groups: Novelas de la primera época ( Novels of the Early Period, 1870–1879) and Las novelas de la serie contemporánea ( The Contemporary Social Novels, 1881–1915). The novels of the early period comprise Galdós\u27 first attempts at novel writing, as well as four so-called thesis novels : Doña Perfecta (1876), the sequel Gloria (1876–1877), Marianela (1878), and La familia de León Roch ( The Family of León Roch, 1878–1879). The next group of novels represents what Galdós called his segunda manera —his second style, a different kind of writing ... a more sophisticated and varied mode of narrative presentation