The nexus of nationalism and internationalism: the journey of a “diplomat” after the galleons

After the galleons, Benito J. Legarda’s masterpiece on socioeconomic transformation after the galleon trade, has enriched our knowledge of the semi-open colonial economy in the 19th-century Philippine Islands, which witnessed the rise of nationalism at the end of that century. In this paper, I shed new light on the nature of the Ilustrados’ nationalism and their international activism by revisiting the life of the country’s “first diplomat”, Felipe Agoncillo, who battled in vain to achieve independence through a diplomatic channel. While class politics tends to be a focal point of the scholarly debate over the Ilustrados’ nationalism, this paper highlights the international dimensions of their advocacy. Agoncillo’s mission in the United States and Europe seems a reasonable option from our perspective, which has been shaped by the norm of modern diplomacy, but it was a risky adventure considering the overwhelming influence of imperialism. Why did Agoncillo conclude they had to send a mission? What kinds of negotiation strategies did they have? Combining Legarda’s global insights on the Philippines’ colonial economy with Agoncillo’s ideational and actual travel, this paper reveals how Philippine nationalism and internationalism created a nexus whose legacy exists in current Philippine diplomacy, one of whose achievements was the award of the arbitration case over the South China Sea in 2016.

The Myth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

This article argues that there is no such phenomenon as a Fourth Industrial Revolution. It derives a framework for the analysis of any industrial revolution from a careful historical account of the archetypal First Industrial Revolution. The suggested criteria for any socioeconomic transformation to be considered an industrial revolution are that it must encompass a technological revolution; a transformation of the labour process; a fundamental change in workplace relations; new forms of community and social relationships; and global socio-economic transformations. These transformations indeed characterise the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions. The aggregate of technical innovations in the latter is carefully examined, because this is a crucial part of determining whether we can meaningfully claim that a Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway. The article demonstrates that we cannot.

The hegemonic position of English in the academic field

English has achieved a hegemonic position in the field of science and technology and is gaining ground as the means of instruction in higher education. These developments have raised concern in numerous circles about the effects of the reduction of multilingualism in the academic fields, and some authors have warned against a possible scientific diglossia that might reduce all language but English to the status of non-academic languages. In this paper we argue that this approach is insufficient because it misses two fundamental points: on the one hand, it reduces the scientific field to only one of its dimensions, namely publication in scholarly articles, whereas academic life includes many other scholarly activities; on the other hand, the number of academic languages has actually increased in the last decades. Confronting these approaches, we propose to understand the aforementioned evolution in terms of a socioeconomic transformation which has triggered a number of new language choices. Plurilingualism has been a traditional feature of communities with an academic language, and we illustrate this plurilingualism with Catalan, a language that regained the status of academic language in the 1970s and is currently used side by side with Castilian and with English. To finish, some considerations are raised about the risk that English goes beyond its role of academic lingua franca and becomes appropriated as a legitimate vehicle of in-group interaction among members of other communities.

South African Legal Culture and its Dis/Empowerment Paradox

Twenty-five years since becoming a constitutional democracy, South Africa presents the perplexing paradox of arguably having the most progressive constitution in the world, marked by full-throated socioeconomic rights protection, while also being the most unequal country in the world. This chapter makes the argument that this alarming paradox can be at least partly understood in terms of a ‘dis/empowerment paradox’ endemic to South Africa’s legal culture. It takes a historical view of the formation and impact of South African legal culture and the various levels and ways in which the dis/empowerment paradox argued for has been, and continues to be, characteristic thereof. The chapter traces the contributions of the judiciary to shaping the country’s legally pluralistic culture over the course of history and into the present. It ultimately points to judicial complicity in restraining the full realization of freedom and justice under the law—both before and after the dawn of South Africa’s modern-day Constitution—by under-utilizing law’s potential for liberation. Tracing this historical arc is aimed at helping legal, anthropological, and wider readers not familiar with South Africa’s particular circumstances to better understand the concluding argument: namely, that the purported solution to South Africa’s problems described as ‘transformative constitutionalism’ presents notable pitfalls. While the chapter does not argue that the judiciary is solely, or even mainly, responsible for the dis/empowerment paradox of law, it does argue that the judiciary is somewhat complicit in the limited socioeconomic transformation seen subsequent to adoption of the country’s progressive Constitution.

Landscape change and vegetation history in the city of Lisbon during Roman times and the Early Medieval Period

Pollen and NPP analysis performed on the sedimentary deposits accumulated in the inter-tidal banks of the Tagus Estuary allow for the reconstruction of vegetation history and landscape changes that occurred in Lisbon from the 1st to the 6th century cal AD. The high chronological resolution of this investigation makes it possible to identify changes in human activities that took place during the Roman period and reveals the extent of land use in the 2nd century cal AD. However, the most considerable landscape transformation of this 600-year period dates back to the late 5th century cal AD, when significant deforestation and increasing human activity, particularly pasturing, spread throughout the territory. This feature bears witness to the outcome of a deep socioeconomic transformation following the disintegration of the Roman administration and sheds light on a poorly known period in this part of Iberia.

Venus and Mahrs

This chapter considers the impact of sweeping socioeconomic transformation on dating, sex, and marriage. Public interactions between men and women, including married couples, are heavily restricted in Qatar. This doesn’t stop young adults from hooking up surreptitiously, or gay and lesbian culture, which is illegal but as prevalent in Doha as anywhere else. The prohibitions related to dating contribute to high rates of marriage between first and second cousins, pairings that are typically arranged by families. The persistence of consanguinity in Qatar is partly explained by the historical connections between families and tribes in the Gulf. During the Bedouin era, weddings were modest events that reflected the dire circumstances of that time; today, these events are opulent fairy tales from Disney movies, with families competing to throw the “wedding of the year.” These dynamics are shaped by the ubiquity of Western popular culture, which venerates romantic love, and changing expectations about marriage. Drawing on elements of modern traditionalism, Qataris utilize an array of rhetorical and behavioral strategies that situate arranged, inner-family marriages as in step with contemporary ideals about matrimony.