Portraits and Poses

The complex relation between gender and the representation of intellectual authority has deep roots in European history. Portraits and Poses adopts a historical approach to shed new light on this topical subject. It addresses various modes and strategies by which learned women (authors, scientists, jurists, midwifes, painters, and others) sought to negotiate and legitimise their authority at the dawn of modern science in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe (1600–1800). This volume explores the transnational dimensions of intellectual networks in France, Italy, Britain, the German states and the Low Countries. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from different spheres of professionalisation, it examines both individual and collective constructions of female intellectual authority through word and image. In its innovative combination of an interdisciplinary and transnational approach, this volume contributes to the growing literature on women and intellectual authority in the Early Modern Era and outlines contours for future research.

Society, Spatiality, and the Sacred

The Essay provides space for scholars to present peerreviewed research in a manner that uses data studies and critical reflection as occasions for advancing currents in the broader academic study of religion. In this issue, we have two contributions. Umur Ko?al revisits Jerusalem’s Western Wall and submits that a spatial approach can help scholars reconsider the complex relation of sites classified as sacred. And Matteo Di Placido takes yoga studies as an example of a Foucauldian discourse formation and considers the historical and political textures that appear when examined under the light of recent research in the discursive study of religion.

SOCIOLINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING LINGUISTIC CHARCTERISTICS OF UKRAINIAN, RUSSIAN AND SURZHYK IN UKRAINIAN MEDIA DISCOURSE

This article examines the widespread social perception of the linguistic characteristics of Ukrainian, Russian languages and Surzhyk, which is commonly known as a mixed language of the two. The aim of this article is to establish a common interpretation of their forms and uses from a sociolinguistic perspective to clarify their perceived valuation in the situation of language contact. We rely especially on the theories of sociolinguistic representations and language majoration and minoration, elaborated in the French sociolinguistics, which allows us to have a clear view of the dynamic system within the multilingual communities. This study gives a detailed analysis of journalistic articles dedicated to language issues in Ukraine published on the internet, for gaining a broad and topical sets of data. Our results show that there exists a complex relation between the mixed language and the two languages, where on the one hand Surzhyk is interpretated to be constructed from the Ukrainian and Russian languages, while on the other hand, the illiterateness of its speakers is emphasized. Furthermore, we see that speaking Surzhyk could in fact be more negatively perceived than speaking Russian, since it has the potential to pose a threat to the existence of the Ukrainian language.

Identities and Precariousness in the Collaborative Economy, Neither Wage-Earner, nor Self-Employed: Emergence and Consolidation of the Homo Rider, a Case Study

In recent years, courier and home delivery services have experienced extensive growth around the world. These platform companies, that operate through applications on smartphones, have experienced the benefits of the technological leap that has been produced by the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions on traditional commerce. This business model integrates novel elements that move away from a classic contractual relationship, employer-employee. They combine a strong cooperative culture, integrated by company values and principles that make the rider assume an identity that defines him/her as a worker and a member of a community. In addition, on the other hand, precarious working conditions, in which extreme competitiveness among colleagues and dependence on high standards of service compliance are encouraged. In Spain, there is a lack of research on the identity of workers in this type of platform. By means of in-depth interviews with drivers of two different companies in the Region of Murcia (Spain), the main objective of this article is to identify and describe the figure of what we define as homo rider, understood as a prototype individual in the context of contemporary labor relations, linked to the incorporation of new technologies for the intermediation and interconnection between people, goods and services. We approach to the socioeconomic spectrum and identity imaginary of the homo rider through two dimensions, material and ideological, to construct this broad, ambiguous figure between self-employment and wage-earner that would also represent a complex relation between precarious work and new technologies.

Reconstructing Pragmatism

The figure of Richard Rorty stands in complex relation to the tradition of American pragmatism. On the one hand, his intellectual creativity, lively prose, and bridge-building fueled the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism. On the other, his polemical claims and selective interpretations function as a negative, fixed pole against which thinkers of all stripes define themselves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether classical or “new,” Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a foil to justify their positions. The resulting divisions and internecine quarrels threaten to thwart and fragment the tradition’s creative potential. More caricatured than understood, the specter of Rorty is blocking the road of inquiry and future development of pragmatism. Reconstructing Pragmatism moves beyond the Rortyan impasse by providing what has been missing for decades: a constructive, nonpolemical account of Rorty’s relation to classical pragmatism. The first book-length treatment of Rorty’s intellectual debt to the early pragmatists, it establishes his selective appropriations not as misunderstandings or distortions but as a sustained, intentional effort to reconstruct their thinking. Featuring chapters devoted to five key pragmatist thinkers—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, and Jane Addams—the book draws on archival sources and the full scope of Rorty’s writings to challenge prevailing misconceptions and caricatures. By illuminating the critical resources, still largely untapped, that Rorty offers for articulating classical pragmatism’s ongoing relevance, the book reveals limitations in received images of the classical pragmatists and opens up new modes of understanding pragmatism and why it matters today.

Smartphone Use and Well-Being in Two Contexts

Excessive smartphone use is a growing concern in many societies around the world today. To date, attention has primarily been paid to psychological correlates of use, including well-being, with less work concentrating on the role that context plays in smartphone use. This was the goal of the current project. College student smartphone use was measured twice over 1 week in two contexts – a college campus and an outdoor camp – and participant well-being was measured using the SPANE. The findings indicate that daily smartphone use significantly decreased for camp participants and significantly increased for campus participants, and latency to use a phone upon waking significantly increased for camp participants but remained stable for campus participants. Additionally, waiting longer to use a phone upon waking at the end of the week significantly predicted reduced well-being but only for camp participants. Overall, these findings suggest that setting is an important contextual variable to consider when pursuing an understanding of the complex relation between smartphone use and well-being.

El Tribunal Especial para el Líbano y la sentencia Hariri. ¿Justicia selectiva?

The article analyses the complex relation between politics and justice in the international arena that is reflected in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The subject matters developed are its problematic establishment by means of Security Council resolution 1757 (2007) and its selective nature, as well as the legal-doctrinal dispute laid out in the Ayyash et al. case, also known as the Hariri case. It is stressed the importance of circumstantial factors, especially those triggered since 2004, with the aim to explain the internal division —with international protagonists— of the country into two blocks whose confrontation would serve as a pretext for starting-up a unique tribunal that would meet the interests of an international community captivated by the possibility of achieving a judicial terrorism sentence against Hizballah —and/or Syria— who was gathering momentum. The 2011 interlocutory decision of the Appeals Chamber seemed to reveal itself as a good omen in said direction when it stated the necessity to interpret the crime of terrorism established in article 314 of the Lebanese Criminal Code in accordance with an international crime of terrorism of customary nature. The revolutionary decision —together with the process that led to its publication— disclosed nevertheless, a certain hasty and opportunistic character, which the 2020 judgment finally rejected for being unnecessary and untrue. The article upholds that all the above has contributed to undermine the credibility of the Tribunal, which is a model of selective justice, and has demonstrated little deference towards the sovereignty of the Lebanese State.

Complex correlations between microstructure and magnetic behavior in SrFe12O19 hexaferrite nanoparticles

The magnetic properties of SrFe12O19 (SFO) hard hexaferrites are governed by the complex relation to its microstructure, determining their relevance for permanent magnets´ applications. A set of SFO nanoparticles obtained by sol–gel self-combustion synthesis was selected for an in-depth structural X-Rays powder diffraction (XRPD) characterization by means of G(L) line-profile analysis. The obtained crystallites´ size distribution reveal a clear dependence of the size along the [001] direction on the synthesis approach, resulting in the formation of platelet-like crystallites. In addition, the size of the SFO nanoparticles was determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis and the average number of crystallites within a particle was estimated. These results have been evaluated to illustrate the formation of single-domain state below a critical value, and the activation volume was derived from time dependent magnetization measurements, aiming to clarify the reversal magnetization process of hard magnetic materials.

García Márquez and His Precursors

This article is interested in writers and literary traditions that have influenced García Márquez, whether stylistically or structurally, culturally or historically, or all of these. The article pays attention to the author’s comments and his appropriations of specific precursors, especially as he acknowledges them in his autobiography Living to Tell the Tale (2002). It takes Jorge Luis Borges’s tack and suggests that the process of influence moves back as well as forward in time, that influence is reciprocal and precursors may be influenced by García Márquez as well as influencing him. Among the dozens of authors who both influence and are influenced by García Márquez are Faulkner, Kafka, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Spanish baroque poets and playwrights. The article also discusses the influence of his grandmother’s storytelling and the deeply embedded cultural influence of Catholicism in Colombia. By attending to García Márquez’s complex relation with his precursors, the article shows that one may justifiably speak of una tradición gabrielina.