The regulations of honour: an attempt at a Weberian and anthropological enquiry through the prism of a Spanish trading group

Abstract: This paper is concerned with a rather neglected issue in sociological analysis: honour as a value and regulating principle of social life. The attempt is made to study honour from a perspective which pays attention to both the carriers of honour and the social order itself, its maintenance and reproduction. It focuses on a group of Spanish traders who were fervent Catholics who claimed and were reputed to be men of honour. The article shows that honour was incarnated in two external domains: the family house and lineage, providing status-honour, and the trading routes, which brought our group fame as courageous and trustworthy men. Engaging with contemporary debates, it is contended that neither trust nor ethics need be brought to the exchanges from the outside, as is the case with modern capitalist forms, for they are a function of personalised social bonding and embedded in honour itself. Abstract: Cet article traite d'un sujet plutôt négligé par l'analyse sociologique: l'honneur comme valeur et principe régulateur de la vie sociale. La perspective retenue considére les groupes porteurs de l'honneur et l'ordre social lui-même, son maintien et sa reproduction. L'article se centre sur un groupe de commerçants espagnols, catholiques fervents, qui se proclamaient et sont reconnus hommes d'honneur. L'article montre que l'honneur s'incarne dans deux domaines: la maison et le lignage familiaux, sources d'honneur comme statut, et les routes commerciales, qui conféraient au groupe une réputation d'hommes courageux et dignes de confiance. En lien avec les débats contemporains, nous soutenons qu'il n'y a ici nul besoin d'introduire dans ces échanges confiance et éthique, comme il le faut dans les formes capitalistes modernes. Ici, ils s'ancrent dans l'honneur même. Abstract: Diese Besprechung untersucht ein von der soziologischen Analyse vernachlässigtes Thema: die Ehre als Wert und Regelungselement des sozialen Lebens. Untersuchungsgegenstand: eine Gruppe spanischer Kaufleute, überzeugte Katholiken, die sich als Ehrenmänner bezeichneten und auch als solche betrachtet wurden. Die Ehre gründet sich auf zwei Bereiche: den Familienstamm, Ausgangspunkt für den Ehrenstatus, und die Handelsstraßen, die der Gruppe den Ruf von mutigen Männern und Vertrauensleuten einbrachten. Im Zusammenhang mit der gegenwärtigen Auseinandersetzung behaupten wir, dass im Austausch weder Vertrauen noch Ethik eingeführt werden müssen, wie es bei modernen Formen des Kapitalismus notwendig ist. Sie sind mit der Ehre verwurzelt

The sociological imagination and its promise fifty years later: Is there a future for the social sciences as a free form of enquiry?

This paper offers a restatement of Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and tries to judge whether its promise can be credibly renewed today by addressing the question about the present and future possibilities of the social sciences as free forms of enquiry. Relying on Weber, Mills and other thinkers, the paper sustains that the possibilities for a truly free social science essentially depend on three major ‘conditions’: the subjective stance or vocation, the sociological imagination proper, and an independent social science politics, conditions whose apt names can also be ‘love’, ‘insight’ and ‘courage’. An analysis of the presence and strength of each of these conditions in contemporary social science and in academia shows the magnitude of the task faced for the existence of a free social science

Audience on Stage: Performing the Eumenides or when the spectator turns into a character

Escenificar un coro en el teatro moderno es siempre un reto. Las preguntas sobre el papel y la fuente de autoridad de este elemento deben ser seriamente consideradas. Además de eso, la representación de una obra tan vinculada a sus propios días y tan políticamente cargada como las Euménides trae otra serie de desafíos. Este artículo se centrará en la transformación de la propia audiencia en un personaje en la escenificación de Euménides de Esquilo por el Teatro de Braga, Portugal, en 2012, incluida en una representación conjunta de toda la trilogía. Si las dos primeras obras utilizan el coro para establecer la conexión entre lo que ocurre en el escenario y la audiencia, la tercera pieza va un paso adelante y se integra a la audiencia en la propia obra. Mi objetivo es entender cómo funciona esto en la escenificación de la pieza y cómo eso permite leer de nuevo toda da la representación.Staging a chorus in modern theatre is always a challenge. Questions on the role and source of authority of this element need to be seriously considered. Above all, the performance of a play, so linked to its own days and so politically charged like the Eumenides, brings another set of challenges. This paper will focus on the transformation of the audience into a character in the staging of Aeschylus’ Eumenides by the Teatro de Braga in 2012, included in a performance of the complete trilogy. If the two first plays use the chorus to establish a connection between what is happening on stage and the audience, the third play goes a step forward and integrates the audience into the play. The aim of this essay is to understand how this works within the play, and how it shapes the reading of the performance

Time and method: After survival, for a renewed praxis of social theory

This paper is an intervention in the debate on Big Data or the digital. Recognising the importance of engaging with what has become known as Big Data, I seek to re-situate the Big Data issue in a different perspective and to disrupt the debate around it. The paper shows that the call to fully and inventively engage with the digital, or Big Data, is a strategic response which can be construed as a wager for the survival of academic sociology, and that underpinning such a wager there lies a rather coherent, but essentially unstated, vision which involves ontological and epistemological assumptions, and a whole stance. Once such assumptions are brought out through an ontological analysis, the paper is able to spell out the political stance within which the ‘politics of method’ advocated by many participants in the debate has to be situated, as well as to show how such politics overlooks the political economy of social data and displaces theory and critique. Even more importantly, the paper seeks to expound an alternative view. Thus, to the temporality of running after an endlessly changing time, it opposes the temporality of subjectivation. To the emphasis on method, it opposes a praxis, or a conduct of life – a praxis encompassing and appreciative of method and methodological inventiveness, but subordinating it to theory and more in particular to a Machiavellian social theory. Thus, to the risk of falling into resignation in view of the inevitability implied in the aforementioned ontology, the paper is also a call for a more combative social theory – one which is still able to feel disquiet in view of what is happening in our present times, but never abandons hope. Only such capacity for disquiet, for wonder and astonishment, it is argued, can provide the impulse for a renewal of social theory – the impulse which was at the origin of the discipline and has to be at the core of its renewal. The paper is thus an invitation to widen the Big Data debate and to seriously consider so far unexamined perspectives and possibilities

Tutoring and Mentoring

South African institutions of higher education (HE) have increasingly come under pressure to broaden access to historically under-represented groups who are often underprepared for tertiary education as a result of apartheid-era secondary schooling (White Paper, 2013). This has resulted in student enrolments becoming increasingly diverse with respect to racial, cultural, socio-economic and linguistic backgrounds (Underhill & McDonald, 2010). In an attempt to address these issues and promote increased throughput rates, institutions of HE have increasingly begun to introduce tutoring, including supplemental instruction (SI) and peer-assisted learning (PAL) and mentoring programmes

Guest Editorial

Tutoring and Mentorin

The medical controversies and doctors of the Portuguese Nation of Hamburg in the seventeenth century

UID/HIS/04666/2019Portuguese doctors in the Seventeenth Century followed the medical evolutions and disputes between the two great currents of medicine, namely the millenarian Galenic and Hippocratic medicine and the emerging medicine based on the principles of Paracelsus and Van Helmont. The Seventeenth Century marks precisely a turning point in medical thinking that some historians consider to have been a scientific revolution, but it is simultaneously a century of the diaspora of the new Christian-Portuguese doctors due to inquisitorial pressures. The Portuguese Nation of Hamburg hosted some of these doctors who were forced into exile and there stood out for their practice of medicine and for their contribution to the advancement of medical knowledge. The Portuguese doctors gained prestige among their peers with whom they exchanged missives and advised themselves, serving simultaneously the community as well as the principal princes and aristocrats. This success of Portuguese New-Christian doctors in the diaspora assured them a certain aversion on the part of the local doctors and gave rise to a series of controversies that spread by pamphlets. The Portuguese doctors were obliged to respond by letters and even printed works to face the discredit that many wanted to impute to them. The present study deals with the physicians of the Portuguese Nation of Hamburg and their contributions to the community and to the advancement of Medicine. At the same time, it seeks to verify the strategies of discrediting used and the capacity of response taken by individuals or by the community.publishersversionpublishe

Integración de la familia en los cuidados de enfermería: Perspectiva de los enfermeros y los estudiantes de enfermería

Enquadramento: A pertinência da integração das famílias nos cuidados de enfermagem permite a promoção, manutenção e recuperação da saúde das famílias. Objetivos: Identificar e descrever a perspetiva dos enfermeiros e estudantes de enfermagem sobre a integração das famílias nos cuidados de enfermagem. Metodologia: Estudo inferencial, transversal, numa população de enfermeiros e estudantes de enfermagem. Foi aplicada a escala Families Importance in Nursing Care – Nurses Attitudes (FINC-NA). Resultados: Amostra constituída por 164 indivíduos, dos quais 71 eram profissionais e 93 estudantes. A média da importância atribuída à família foi maior nos estudantes de enfermagem relativamente aos enfermeiros, sendo a diferença entre os dois grupos significativa. Na análise de regressão linear univariada as variáveis: Idade, Anos de experiência profissional e Formação na área da família parecem estar associadas à importância atribuída à família. Conclusão: Os estudantes atribuem maior importância à integração da família do que os enfermeiros. As variáveis Idade, Anos de exercício profissional e Formação na área da família, nos enfermeiros, associam-se a uma maior importância da integração da família.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

New ZnO-based core-shell nanostructures for perovskite solar cells

Perovskite solar cells are the emerging thin-film photovoltaics that has been most studied in the last decade, reaching record power conversion efficiencies close to those exhibited by silicon solar cells, which means a considerable breakthrough in photovoltaic technology. However, it has been found that in methylammonium lead halide perovskite devices, MAPbX₃, either the electron transport material or hole transport material, affects the perovskite material’s stability, compromising the perovskite device performance. Therefore, other alternatives should be considered to avoid the perovskite layer’s degradation, namely, the electron transport material employed in the perovskite solar cells. This PhD project aimed to develop nanostructures alternatives to the standard titanium dioxide (TiO₂) through ZnO-based nanostructures, using a low-cost and versatile technique such as pulsed electrodeposition, and applying them as the electron transport layer within perovskite solar cells. Well-aligned arrays of ZnO nanorods were produced by pulsed potentiostatic electrodeposition in aqueous media, under mild reaction conditions. Several modified substrates were evaluated for the growth of nanorods to optimise the nanorod diameter and vertical orientation. Using a TiO₂ intermediate layer as a template for the ZnO nanorods growth successfully allowed a decrease of the nanorod diameter, increased their spatial density, and increased the ZnO films’ chemical stability with time and under illumination. Also, it was verified that the pulsed electrodeposition conditions at which the nanorods grow, namely the pulse operational parameters, had a very appreciable impact on its optoelectronic properties. Several ZnO thin films prepared using different deposition media were studied to assess the influence of ZnO nature on the thermal stability of the MAPbI₃ perovskite. Some chemical groups attached to the ZnO surface affected the crystallization of the perovskite layer and accelerated its thermal degradation at the ZnO/perovskite interface. The ZnO@TiO₂ core-shell nanostructures were considered to prevent the perovskite instability issues when in intimate contact with ZnO. Despite the slight improvement in device performance using ZnO@TiO₂ core-shell nanorods, compared to ZnO nanorods, the morphological reproducibility of a TiO₂ shell that completely covers the ZnO surface is crucial to obtain higher photovoltaic performances