Lengua y mercado en el mundo hispanohablante: un acercamiento al estado de la traducción literaria

This paper analyzes the status of literary translation in Spanish America and its conditions of production. Working with the Argentinean case as an exam-ple, we try to explain the logic of a cultural field strongly shaped by editorial globalization and economic dependency on the former home country. We discuss a number of theoretical issues related to the possible existence of a mega-polysystem linking the Spanish-speaking countries and their literary systems, as a way to approach the complex relations between a supraregional language and the national States sharing it. In this context, we analyze the unequal distribution of Spanish dialectal variations in the verbal market, and we examine the strategies that aim at resisting this kind of cultural dependency.

ELDERLY DEPENDENCY IN INDIA: FINDINGS FROM CENSUS DATA

The changing demographic profile resulting in ageing of population has thrown many new challenges in the social, economic and political domains in India due to the huge number of aged population. The economic support to the older persons is very much dependent upon the earning ability of the adults. The study mainly focuses on the quantum of dependency burden and assesses the dependency burden in relation to the prevailing economic situation. The old age dependency ratio (OADR) in India estimated as ratio of population 60+ to that of 15-59 years is found to be 0.14 and the old age economic dependency ratio (OAEDR) is much higher at 0.23. Both OADR and OAEDR is highest in Kerala followed by Punjab and Haryana among the major states in India. Elderly dependency is high in most of the states and the economy is not prepared to bear the burden. The Economic Dependency ratio is almost three times the total dependency when we add the number of non workers 15-59 years in the dependent group and eliminate non workers 15-59 years from the economically active group in India. The unemployment rates are found to be quite high in states where the elderly dependency burden is higher. Increased longevity demands higher savings rates to cater to the needs of the old-old group. So the benefit of having a large working age population remains to be tapped through creating more employment opportunities.

Towards a Left Secretariat for the Pacific

The Pacific Islands region occupies a vast ocean continent, consisting of a diversity of cultures. What draws the islands together is a shared experience of economic dependency and vulnerability driven by global warming, geopolitical competition, and class divisions. Together, these factors account for poor performance on a range of development indicators, including policy and inequality. It is in this context that Epeli Hau‘ofa has argued that the hoped-for era of autonomy following political independence has not materialised in the Pacific. In response, this paper explores the possibilities and potential aims of a Left secretariat in the Pacific. It aims to rethink political and economic autonomy in the Pacific by bringing together Left theory and practice with the history of Indigenous and class struggles.

Employee socio-economic dependency as an antecedent of abusive supervision in Russian business organisations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify previously unexamined predictors of abusive supervision (AS) that stem from socio-economic dependency of employees upon their direct supervisors.Design/methodology/approachUsing social exchange theory (SET) as framework, the author conducted empirical analysis that was based on survey data collected among 1,100 Russian white-collar private sector employees.FindingsThe results reveal the importance of organisation-level managerial practices which create employees' socio-economic dependency in predicting abusive supervision (AS). Significant positive predictions of AS in Russian business organisations are “accidental” and “zero-option” employment; getting a job through informal social contacts (“blat”); and dependence of wage upon personal relations with a supervisor. In turn, performance-based payment is the strongest factor that hinders AS. Taken together, these factors support one of the key assumptions of SET that control over valued resources creates imbalanced power relations, thus providing the fertile ground to the abuse of power.Practical implicationsFindings show that a transparent, performance-based system of payments, contributes to preventing AS by immediate supervisors. The author also provides arguments for reducing the economic and administrative power of line managers.Originality/valueThis study adds to the understanding of the role of managerial practices, which create socio-economic dependency of employees from managers, in predicting AS in organisations.

Belarusian Nationalism: Taking Stock of Its Accomplishments

Belarus is a country with a blurred identity that has not cut the umbilical cord connecting it with Mother Russia. According to a representative national survey of April 2020, only 25 percent of Belarusians would prefer to retain statehood and national sovereignty of Belarus even if their living standards worsen whereas 52 percent would opt for limited sovereignty if it is the price to pay for retaining or improving the quality of life. This may be the best-kept secret of Belarus and it has implications more serious than just economic dependency on Belarus’s eastern neighbor. Belarus used to be a contested borderland claimed by both Russians and Poles. Today, it is a country with two historical narratives and nation-building blueprints that have been confronting each other since the inception of the Belarusian national movement. While the neo-Soviet/Russo-centric narrative has held sway over the majority of Belarusians, the Westernizing narrative was hard-hit on several occasions but has been making headway since Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Pluses and minuses of two narratives and the attempts at bridging the gap between them are analyzed. There are essentially two kinds of divisions in Belarusian society: between the respective projects of nation-building and between Lukashenka loyalists and his detractors. These two divisions do not quite coincide, but there is a growing tendency to couch the ongoing political crisis in nationalist terms. The point is made that a lack of cohesive Belarusian identity is an existential threat to Belarusian statehood.

Gender-Focused Bilateral Aid in the Environmental Sector

According to feminist political ecology, women are uniquely and disproportionately affected by forest loss in many low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) because of gender divisions with regard to labor, land access, and forest resources. However, most macro-comparative theories of development (including economic dependency, ecological modernization, treadmill of production, world society, and neo-Malthusian theories) tend to ignore gender. We draw on ideas from feminist political ecology to examine how gender-focused bilateral aid in the environmental sector impacts forest loss from 2001 to 2015. To do so, we analyze data for 79 LMICs using ordinary least squares regression. We find that more gender-focused bilateral aid in the environmental sector is related to less forest loss. We also find support for economic dependency theory (more agricultural and forestry exports are related to more forest loss) and neo-Malthusian theory (more population growth is related to more forest loss). The main finding on bilateral financing supports the idea that gender should receive more attention in cross-national research, especially the integration of gender-related measures into analyses to refine and expand conventional macro-theories of development.

The Moderation of Frente Farabundo Martí Para La Liberación Nacional’s Economic Orientation in El Salvador, 2009-2019

Frente Farabundo Martí Para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) was a Marxist guerrilla group, known for its activities in the 1980s and 1990s to seize El Salvador’s government through war. Post-peace accords, FMLN transformed into an electoral political party and successfully won to lead the government of El Salvador in 2009-2019, but then they compromised their economic policies to suit neoliberalism. This article uses Gill and Law’s conceptualisation of the theory of direct and structural power of capital to explain the causes of FMLN’s neoliberalism-compromising economic policy adjustment in 2009-2019. This article finds that El Salvador’s social and political-economy historical dynamics, which were dominated by the bourgeoisie class since Spain’s colonisation, strengthened transnational capitalists and enabled them to directly penetrate El Salvador’s economy by forming and intervening in political parties, along with dominating the bureaucracy. The combination of these factors caused transnational capitalists to encourage neoliberal reforms which supported the development of the structural power: deindustrialisation, deagrarianisation, and decapitalisation; El Salvador’s economic dependency; dollarisation; and the hegemony of neoliberalism discourses. This article argues that FMLN regime’s economic moderation is caused by the El Salvador bourgeoisies’ strengthened position after neoliberal reforms, allowing them to determine FMLN’s policies through their direct and structural power.