Seminários GI

Economic Development and Democratization

We consider the relationship between economic development and political regime, tracing through the history of the debate amongst modernization theorists, its challengers, its revisionists, and the outright skeptics of any relationship. We acknowledge the importance of the contributions of those who argue that economic development causes democracies to emerge, as well as the importance of new work suggesting the entire relationship is spurious, driven instead by the specific country histories.

Defining Empires: The Spanish-Portuguese Conflict in the Americas (16th-19th Centuries)

From late fifteenth to the early nineteenth century, Spain and Portugal struggled to define the extension of their American domains. Having first secured papal bulls and having signed a bilateral treaty confirming, albeit with changes, a monopoly, for the next 500 years the monarchs, bureaucrats, experts, military men, religious personal and inhabitants of these two powers could not agree what this monopoly meant and how it was to be implemented. This indetermination led to a massive local involvement.

Transfigurations of Modern Time: The Cultural Economy of Creoleness in La Reunion

While an ambivalent concept emanating from various historical, political and academic realms, the idea of Creoleness has today widely entered the common sense and can be seen as formative of contemporary forms of social life in different places of the world. Creoleness appears here as a leitmotif of a modern mythical universe through which to think time and the mysteries of origin, as well the separations that mark contemporary society and to propose an outlook for the future.

Fome escondida. Consumos alimentares e bem-estar em Portugal nos meados do século XX

Actualmente, os padrões de consumo alimentar em Portugal estão em consonância com os que se verificam nos restantes países do Ocidente. Esta é uma convergência recente, que se consolidou a partir dos anos 70 do século XX. Nas décadas precedentes, enquanto a Europa superava os níveis de bem-estar anteriores à II Guerra e destruía excedentes agrícolas, em Portugal sentia-se carência quantitativa a qualitativa de produtos alimentares.

Moral Disengagement in the Context of Collective Violence

Emanuele Castano é doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade de Louvaina. Actualmente é professor no departamento de Psicologia da New School for Social Research, onde tem estudado o papel dos processos de identificação social e do sentido responsabilização na inferiorização de grupos minoritários. É neste contexto que estuda os actos de turtura e de massacre de civis.