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History of Time and Calendar in Japan

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During the workshop In Search of Interdisciplinary Dialogue, sponsored by the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) as part of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), several experts met in Tokyo on March 14 to discuss interdisciplinarity between different kinds of knowledge.

Abe: "Japanese punctuality is not restricted to trains."

Professor Masashi Abe, from the WIAS, has addressed aspects of the Japanese calendar and the relationship of the Japanese people with time. History of Time and Calendar in Japan was the title of the lecture, which focused on how the modernization of the calendar has transformed the temporal culture in Japan, leading to one of the most punctual people in the world.

Abe said that foreigners visiting Japan get very impressed by how everything there is timely. In fact, this is true. To confirm this assumption, one just has to cite the high-speed rail network (shinkansen) between Tokyo and Osaka as an example. Despite having a territory that is usually battered by earthquakes, the transport has an average delay of 30 seconds, according to the professor.

"But punctuality is not restricted to trains. The Japanese are also very punctual. People are always anxious not to be late to their appointments. In general, they arrive 10 or 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Therefore, time regulates the life of the modern Japanese citizen. But it has not been like this forever," said Abe. By the end of the 19th century or during the Edo Period (1603-1868), many Europeans visited Japan and always complained about the Japanese being late.

There was a reason for it. Ordinary citizens had no mechanical watches. The clocks of the temples or towers had to beat 12 times a day to announce time. Time was measured by incense clocks, never by mechanical ones. This was a type of clock traditionally used in China, and then adopted by Japan and some Asian countries. It consisted of burning incense that allowed to have an idea of minutes, hours or days at a particular rate of combustion.

In the Edo Period, day and night were sectioned into six parts, with each part of the evening having a different length in relation to the day. In addition, the duration of each period of time also changed depending on the different seasons. There was no precise division of seconds and minutes. The smallest unit of time was the shihamtoki, representing a quarter of a session (tokki), or approximately 30 seconds, said Abe.

The Japanese abandoned the traditional calendar and the old time system in 1872. The week was divided into seven days and the day into 24 hours. The smallest units of time such as minutes and seconds were also introduced.

"From that, through the educational, social and military systems, the Japanese began to be taught how to be punctual. Moreover, in the Meiji Era, citizens adopted mechanical watches," the professor said.

Abe also showed a brief history of the old systems used in a more distant past. During the Kofun Period (centuries 3-7) the Chinese calendar was introduced in the country. This system was used in China since the 2nd century B.C. In 554, a Chinese expert was sent to introduce the calendar among the Japanese. In 602, the Chinese calendar was taught to children of the Japanese elite. In 604, the system was being used on a large scale, introduced by Empress Suiko (554- 628). In 660, Emperor Tenchi reached to build a water clock. But to modern times, the Chinese system prevailed.

Biological clock and the relationship with the genes

Tahara studies oscillations of the biological clock in mice via a non-invasive method.

Circadian Clock System in Peripheral Tissues of Mice was the theme of the presentation by Professor Yu Tahara, also from the WIAS. Tahara presented the results of research conducted in the laboratory led by Professor Shigenobu Shibata at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Waseda University.

Tahara studies the expression of genes in biological clocks of mice. He has established a methodology to capture in vivo images from the bioluminescence in genetically modified tissues. A special high-resolution camera captures images of different tissues and organs.

His research group has developed an imaging protocol that easily measures the biological rhythms in individual mice in a non-invasive and longitudinal way. Thus, it is possible to detect the circadian oscillations (or biological rhythm) of tissues such as kidney, liver and submaxillary gland.

"It used to be necessary to sacrifice mice after an injection of luciferin in order to remove the tissues and carry out the analysis. Now this is no longer necessary. The method also allows longitudinal studies," he said. Luciferin is the substrate of luciferase, an enzyme capable of catalyzing biological reactions, transforming chemical energy into light energy. Thus, it is possible to record images of the behavior of cells and tissues of interest.

The researcher said that he puts the mice in a dark place and injects the enzyme every four hours throughout the day. After 10 minutes of each application he takes photos of the tissue, obtaining a series of images which indicate the increase and the decrease of biomass in different regions of the body according to the lightness at which the mice are submitted.

In this study, Tahara verifies the importance of light to the biological clock, or the incidence of what he calls "entrainment". The concept relates to adjusting the biological clock phases to different environmental conditions for the organism's survival. The researcher also studies the action of insulin, caffeine, physical exercise and stress on the circadian clock. Studies of insulin are associated with fish oil administration in the diet of mice. According to him, this improves the sensitivity of the metabolic substance.

The research has shown that caffeine has a high impact on the modulation of the biological clock, according to the scientist. The administration of caffeine in the morning showed no change of the biological cycle of mice compared to the control group. But eating at night before sleeping prolonged the awake cycle, ie, caused a delayed biological clock. The scientist cited research showing that this change also occurs in humans. "Coffee has the ability to wake up and also change the circadian clock. So the message is do not drink coffee at night before bed," he joked.

The effects of food on the biological clock make up a branch of study called chrono-nutrition. According to Tahara, research on nutrition conducted so far have focused on what and how much we eat, that is, the necessary items and the proper amount of food for each meal. "But now new research tell us when to eat, that is, the right time for meals. This is the new strategy with regard to nutrition," he said.

Tahara studied the same variables taking the age factor into account. With age there was a decrease of the REM-sleep period. The results also indicate that none of those factors influenced the biological rhythm of aged mice as much as food.

Akiyoshi has spoken of the relation of mathematics to other fields of knowledge, such as philosophy.

Brouwer's Intuitionism

The philosophy of mathematics from the point of view of Dutch mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1881-1966) was the subject presented by Professor Ryota Akiyoshi, from the WIAS.

In the lecture Truth and Time in Brouwer's Intuitionism, Akiyoshi analyzed the tension between what is mathematical truth and what is a mind construct. He explained conceptual problems on logic and philosophy, and interdisciplinary aspects.

According to the professor, the object of philosophy can be anything: language, knowledge, mathematics, physics, biology and so on. Mathematics or logic, therefore, have been a central topic in philosophy since Aristotle. With the development of language and, consequently, mathematics, philosophy of mathematics deals essentially with the origin of mathematical objects.

Platonism seeks to address this issue by showing that there is an abstract and immutable world that contains all the mathematical elements. As assumption, all mathematical objects already exist, but not all have been discovered yet. The role of the mathematician would be to find objects that have not been discovered yet in this abstract and unchanging world.

On the other hand, part of the mathematical community did not accept the ideas of Platonism and disagreed with classical mathematics. The antagonism to Plato was called constructivism, the intuitionism being the best known branch of this intellectual tradition. It was believed that a mathematical object exists from the moment when a mathematician can build it in their mind.

Professor Akiyoshi also showed some essential concepts of intuitionistic logic, including the sequence of choices and the notion of creative subject.

The theoretical discussion about fascism, the pacific but life-threatening resistance to Nazism in Germany during World War II and the ideals of the far-right parties and right-wing populism that emerged in the last decades, especially in Europe, were addressed on November 8, in a seminar with the participation of political scientists and specialists in German studies.

Organized by IEA's Research Group on Quality of Democracy Quality and the Martius Chair of German and European Studies, the meeting "Memory, Democracy and Resistance: Reflections on Nazi-fascism in Germany" marked the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, occurred between November 9 and 10, 1938, when Nazi paramilitary militias and other sympathizers of the regime murdered dozens of Jews, depreagating synagogues, houses and shops of the Jewish community in various parts of Germany.

Márcio Seligmann-Silva, from the Institute of Language Studies at UNICAMP and a member of IEA's Research Group on Human Rights, Democracy, Politics and Memory, started the discussion on the main theories about fascism, especially from the psychoanalytic point of view. The peaceful resistance of German groups against Nazism was the theme of Juliana Perez, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH). German political scientist Brigitte Weiffen, head of the Martius Chair, moderated the meeting and also commented on the presentation by her colleague Barbara Laubenthal, from the University of Texas.

Theories

According to Seligmann-Silva, some theories about fascism have been "originated from the historical experience of Nazi-fascism, and their ideas are surprisingly current." He took the analysis by Sigmund Freud in the essay "Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego," of 1921, as an initial reference. For him, Freud appropriated the thesis expressed by Gustave Le Bon in the book "Mass Psychology", of 1895, to disassemble it. "Le Bon's work was praised by Mussolini and Hitler. If he was concerned about how one can tame the blind and manipulative masses, Freud on the other hand would show that there was an authoritarian thought behind this political conception," said Seligmann-Silva.

For the speaker, Freud's text is a treatise on the 20th-century totalitarianism "even before one could glimpse that these regimes would change the face of the century." The essay "also helps us think critically about the current rise of fascism here and in the world," he added.

Another aspect of Le Bon's analysis that interested Freud has been the prestige that is projected on a leader, either by a magnetic charm or based on a name, goods and reputation, explained the exhibitor. "Freud also made a critical analysis of the ideas of William MacDougall and his book "The Group Mind," of 1920. For him, the mass would come from the 'principle of direct induction of emotion through the primitive sympathetic response'."

Márcio Seligmann-Silva: "All fascist dictators stem from the milieu of the little reactionary man."

Seligmann-Silva said that Freud saw a false explanation of the mass phenomenon based on a misleading notion of suggestion in both Le Bon and MacDougall. Freud posits the hypothesis that behind the collective soul there are the love relations: "As for Plato, for Freud it is love, Eros, who keeps the mass together." But outsiders, strangers "are not worthy of love or compassion." He cites Freud, for whom the "social feeling rests [...] in the reversal of a hostile feeling in a positive tone loop," and such inversion "seems to occur under the influence of an affectionate bond common to a person who is outside of the mass": the leader.

According to the speaker, Freud resumed his thesis of primeval horde that he had developed in "Totem and Taboo" in his essay. The almighty father of this horde would be an absolutely narcissistic figure, who only loved himself, said Seligmann-Silva. "On the other hand, the children who lived in sexual abstinence by imposition of the father created bonds with each other. The mass psychology, or the affective ties that linked these brothers, originated in the sexual jealousy."

Ten years after the essay by the founder of psychoanalysis, Wilhelm Reich published the essay "The Mass Psychology of Fascism." Seligmann-Silva commented that for Freud's "rebellious disciple," fascism is nothing more than the politically organized expression of the character structure of the average man. The regime is, in Reich's words, "the basic emotional attitude of the man oppressed by the machine's authoritarian civilization, with its mystical and mechanistic way of facing life."

Another point highlighted by the presenter is that for Reich the racial theory is not a product of fascism: on the contrary, fascism is a product of racial hatred and its politically organized expression.

Seligmann-Silva also quoted from Reich's 1942 text: "Fascist mentality is the mentality of the subjugated 'little man' who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time. It is not by accident that all fascist dictators stem from the milieu of the little reactionary man."

He explained that Reich associates the need for sexual repression to class divisions and the emergence of patriarchy. "Sexual policies respond to the interests of a minority by instituting the patriarchal family and marriage. The reproduction of society is associated with its socioeconomic and sexual structure. The family is the core of this construct. Hence in fascism we always witness this obsession with the family. It is the microstate. It is the basis of all ideology."

For Reich, the church only gives continuity to the work of the family, "hence its additional importance in the fascist states," added Seligmann-Silva.

The Geman middle class began to be studied by leftists after the crisis of 1929-32 and the 1933 elections, he commented. "National Socialism is nothing more than a middle-class movement, and its reactionary conservatism is hardly open to a policy of opposition."

In his effort to differentiate himself from the worker, the middle-class man can only rely on his family and sexual life, according to the Austrian psychoanalyst. "Their economic deprivation has to be compensated by sexual moralism," Reich wrote.

Seligmann-Silva added: "Moralism, a product of control biopolitics that makes the bodies docile, acts both in the material compensation of the middle class, which is empowered by an authoritarian moralism, and as a technique of dispersion of the opposition to the political and economic maneuvers."

Juliana Perez: "The full awareness of the White Rose members that their life was at risk precludes any banalization of the movement"

Resistance

However, anyone who imagines that there was no contest of Nazism among the Germans during the regime's very existence is misleading. In her exposition, Perez recalled some of the main resistance movements. She detailed the performance of the White Rose, mainly made up of students from the University of Munich.

Perez has coordinated the translation of the book "The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943", by Inge Scholl, with Tinka Heichmann, also a professor at FFLCH-USP. The release in Brazil was in 2013. The book presents letters, excerpts from the diaries and photographs of her brothers Hans and Sophia, members of the movement, as well as transcripts of the pamphlets produced by the group and reports on the trial and execution of the main activists.

The work on the translation led Perez "to think about the meaning of resisting and how this was possible in the Nazi context." She recalled that British historian Ian Kershaw, a specialist in Nazism, uses the term "dissent" to designate the least spectacular forms of resistance, but points out that "even actions that, from the current point of view, would not be characterized as resistance, were fought as such by the Gestapo, in a growing radicalization of violence."

Juliana said that it is important not to idealize the participants of the various resistance movements that emerged during the Nazi regime. "They included conciliators, heirs to the Weimar Republic principles, members of the military elite and people who today would be considered conservative." There are even references to a patriotic ideology similar to that of the National Socialist Party."

In the case of the White Rose, the participants were around 24 years old and had the "ingenuity in betting on the human freedom and the subjectivity of the human being". The core of the group, executed in February 1943, was constituted by four students and a professor of philosophy.

The group published seven pamphlets between June 1942 and January 1943, all of them with criticism of the Nazi regime and appeals to the moral conscience of the Germans. The language of the publications was determined by three factors: multiple authorship, recipients, and external circumstances. The seventh pamphlet was not even distributed and was used as proof for the death sentence of the movement's core.

"These students took full and complete responsibility for their actions and for their parents. It was a path of years of reflection, strong emotional bonds, and determining experiences, like the boys on the Russian front and Sophia as a nurse. The much they were risking their own life precludes any banalization of their movement."

Brigitte Weiffen: "It is not always easy to define the border between populism and extremism"

Current reality

The theme of Barbara Laubenthal's presentation, exposed by Weiffen with added personal comments, was "Right-wing populism after the Holocaust. The Alternative für Deutschland and the role of the past in German asylum policies."

According to the two researchers, right-wing populism has three main characteristics:

• anti-elitism: "political class" (considered as corrupt), "elite" or "establishment" versus "the people," whose only true voice is the populist movement / leader;
• antipluralism: populist actors claim to be the genuine representatives of a non-institutionalized, homogeneous, authentic, and (above all) moral population;
• building of the image of the enemy: identity and interests of the culturally homogeneous "people" versus the "others," usually minorities and immigrants, who would be favored by "corrupt" elites.

According to them, the assertion of these principles is based on the following strategies:

• breaking of taboos in discourse, calculated provocations, disregard of formal and informal rules (targeting the "politically correct") and personal insults;
• emotional appeals and exaggerations, alarmism;
• conspiracy theories;
• biologism or violent metaphors;
• use of rigid generalizations, distinction between "us" and "them";
• simplifications;
• demand for radical solutions.

Weiffen emphasized, however, that a distinction between populism and extremism must be made: "Certain populist positions fit into democratic freedoms, but when there is a devaluation of minorities and immigrants, when there is a call to violence, then the discourse is clearly crossed by extremism. It is not always easy to define the border between populism and extremism.

The presentation also discussed the presence of right-wing populism in the parliaments and governments of several European countries, and the profile of extreme right-wing parties on the continent, with an emphasis on the Alternative for Germany (AfD). According to Weiffen and Laubenthal, they use a reinterpretation of the Nazi period and distortions on national socialist actions to promote anti-immigration and Islamophobic ideas.

Photos: Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP

The analysis of relevant themes of the Brazilian social and political life in the last two centuries is the central aspect of the dossier "Bicentennial of Independence," present in the latest issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, a four-monthly publication of the IEA. The online version of issue #105 is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

Although the set of texts is not intended to review the historiography of Independence or to fill gaps pointed out by historians and other social scientists, aspects of this type are also present in the articles, says the editor of the publication, sociologist Sérgio Adorno.

The dossier is curated by three USP professors: Carlos Zeron, from the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), Alexandre Macchione Saes, from the School of Economics, Management, Accounting, and Actuarial Sciences (FEA), and Antônio David, from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA). They are authors of the opening article "3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022," which questions the revisions of the ideas of sovereignty and modernization in essayism and historical-economic thought.

Two main questions have motivated the curators in composing the set of texts: What makes the ideas of sovereignty and modernity unique in Brazilian society? How did the dialectic between modernity and tradition materialize in actions, government plans, public policies, social thought, science, culture, and education, and what are its consequences?

Based on these questions, the dossier explores "challenges and impasses, especially in the contributions that focus on paradoxes and antinomies of social thought in Brazil," explains Adorno. With this perspective, the essays address "the tensions between memory, politics, and the writing of history by highlighting different narratives about Independence as a fact and historical process." One of the texts with this concern is "Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later," by Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira, from USP's Paulista Museum.

In the article "State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy," Andre Botelho, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Grabriela Nunes Ferreira, from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), discuss decisive moments in which the relations between State and society were problematized, highlighting themes such as political centralization and decentralization, the adequacy of political institutions to the characteristics of society, and the confrontation of the democratic issue.

Close to the present, "2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles," by Camila Rocha, from FFLCH, and Jonas Medeiros, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), points out how the "crisis of the democratic pact of 1988 originated from new dynamics fostered by the Brazilian post-bourgeois public sphere itself, which developed in the midst of the national redemocratization process."

Commenting on the Brazilian reality of the last 20 years, Kabengele Munanga, a professor retired from FFLCH, reflects on issues regarding diversity. He highlights that conflicts are notably translated into racist and xenophobic practices that engender the violation of the human rights of different people and the resulting social inequalities. The question that arises, he says, is how to establish equity and equality of treatment "without first recognizing the collective existence of the bearers of differences and their identities."

The role of science in the constitution of the Nation and the contribution of the arts in the conformation of the so-called "late modernisms" are analyzed in the articles "The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future," by three researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), and "The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s," by Ivan Francisco Marques, from FFLCH.

Among the texts that discuss post-Independence historiography, the editor cites the "stimulating overview of reference works" present in the interview given to the curators by historian Carlos Guilherme Mota, also retired from FFLCH, and founder and first director of the IEA.

The dossier also brings together analyzes of facts and social processes relevant to the understanding of the Bicentennial. Among them, Adorno lists:

• the construction of the public sphere since 1822 and its current crises,
• the social dynamics that establish the existence of armed groups with hegemonic ambitions over territories, populations, and illegal markets,
• the destruction and degradation of national biomes, beckoning an environmental catastrophe,
• and the patterns of socio-spatial accumulation and segregation in São Paulo, leveraged by large-scale real estate operations.

Education

"Classics of Education" is the dossier that complements issue #105. According to Adorno, the articles address problems and dilemmas of contemporary education from a specific angle: "Books and authors that, when becoming 'classics' in this field, guided strategic themes for understanding relationships between actors, everyday school life, changing values, challenges in unique periods such as those of pandemics, and, above all, for the formulation of educational public policies."

The texts analyze aspects of works by Israel Scheffler, Maria Helena Souza Patto, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, José Mário Pires Azanha, John Goodlad, Michel Foucault, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, and Roger Chartier. The authors of the articles are researchers from UNIFESP, UFRJ, USP's School of Education (FE), the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE), Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU).

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Bicentennial of Independence

3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022 - Antônio David, Alexandre Macchione Saes, and Carlos A. de M. R. Zeron
Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later - Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira
State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy - André Botelho and Gabriela Nunes Ferreira
2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles - Camila Rocha and Jonas Medeiros
Country of the Future? Time Conflicts and Historicity in Contemporary Brazil - Rodrigo Turin
On "Misplaced" Concepts, Historiography, and Ideas - Carlos Guilherme Mota
The World and Diversity: Issues in Debate - Kabengele Munanga
Armed Domains and Their Criminal Governments: A Non-phantasmic Approach to "Organized Crime" - Jacqueline de Oliveira Muniz and Camila Nunes Dias
The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s - Ivan Francisco Marques
Brazil, 200 Years of Devastation: What Will Remain of the Country after 2022? - Luiz Marques
São Paulo: One Hundred Years of an urban Growth Machine - Mariana Fix and Pedro Fiori Arantes
The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future - Nísia Trindade Lima, Dominichi Miranda de Sá, Ingrid Casazza, and Carolina Arouca

Classics of Education

Convergences: Thinking about Teaching and Inequality with Scheffler, Patto, Bourdieu, and Passeron - Juliana de Souza Silva, Katiene Nogueira da Silva, and Renata Marcílio Cândido
“Thinking with” José Mário Pires Azanha about Elaborating Brazil’s Educational Future - Patrícia Aparecida do Amparo, Ana Laura Godinho Lima, and Denice Barbara Catani
Education, Society, and Democracy: John Goodlad’s Legacy - Domingos Fernandes
Michel Foucault in (De)formations: On the Classics and their Uses in the History of Education - José Cláudio Sooma Silva e José Gonçalves Gondra
Science, Evolution, and Education in Herbert Spencer - Décio Gatti Junior e Leonardo Batista dos Santos
Teaching Away from School: Essay on the Representations in E. Durkheim and R. Chartier - Roni Cleber Dias de Menezes e Vivian Batista da Silva

Discussions about sustainability and the planning of Brazilian cities, as well as historical studies on slavery, especially in colonial Brazil, are the main themes addressed in the 97th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, released this month. The online version (Portuguese only) is available at SciELO.

The articles in the dossier dedicated to urban studies have the participation of several researchers from the USP Global Cities Program, which is based at the IEA. The material includes an analysis of the urban-demographic patterns of the São Paulo State capital. According to the authors, the goal is to gain a better insight into the singularities of the city. One of the collaborating researchers of the dossier is sociologist Sérgio Adorno, who was responsible for editing a Estudos Avançados issue for the first time after replacing Alfredo Bosi.

In the article "Urban Sustainability: Conceptual Dimensions and Legal Implementation Instruments," the authors reflect on ways to implement public policies that aim the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Innovations and strategies for financing and developing the management of Brazilian cities are presented.

The dossier also addresses urban forests built by the Brazilian State and by activists, as well as technology as an ally of sustainability in solving everyday problems and city governance.

Slavery

The second dossier has been inspired by the seminar "Slavery of Body and Soul: Church, Political Power, and Atlantic-Mediterranean Slavery," which took place last April and was organized by IEA's Research Group Time, Memory, and Belonging. The articles analyze the view of Father António Vieyra and the position of the Catholic Church on slavery. Despite its redemptive discourse, the Church has accepted and integrated slavery into its doctrine and institutions, an inheritance from the Roman Empire, where it has been constituted.

"The Indians, the Amazon, and the Concepts of Slavery and Freedom," an article by Camila Loureiro Dias, seeks to show a broad approach to the notion of slavery in Brazilian history, highlighting that the trafficking of Africans was only one of the colonial forms of exploitation among others that involved the Indians of the Amazon region.

Literature, Current Affairs, and Reviews

The way how writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade has reacted to the repressive context of the Brazilian military dictatorship in some of his works is the subject of one of the essays in the "Literature" section of the new issue. According to the author, Fabio Cesar Alves, the analysis seeks to demonstrate how the poet was forced to deal with the state terrorism and political forces of the mid-1970s in a ciphered manner.

In the "Current Affairs" section, one of the discussions addresses the offenses of adolescents. According to the authors, Alysson Assunção Andrade and Jacqueline de Oliveira Moreira, offenses in the youth can be fed by a circuit of segregation and, sometimes, failed search for recognition. Another article deals with cyberbullying, its consequences for public health, and the mechanisms to prevent it.

The "Reviews" section closes the issue, featuring an analysis of the international insertion of Russia and president Vladimir Putin, and the self-fiction of writer Caio Fernando Abreu, among others.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

USP Global Cities

Marcelo Batista Nery, Altay Alves Lino de Souza, and Sergio Adorno
Carlos Leite, Claudia Acosta, Tereza Herling, Ligia Barrozo, and Paulo Saldiva
Debora Sotto, Djonathan Gomes Ribeiro, Alex Kenya Abiko, Carlos Alberto Cioce Sampaio, Carlos Arturo Navas, Karin Regina de Castro Marins, Maria do Carmo Martins Sobral, Arlindo Philippi Jr., and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge
Erica Moniz Ferreira da Silva, Fabiano Bender, Márcio Luiz da Silva de Monaco, Ana Katherine Smith, Paola Silva, Marcos Silveira Buckeridge, Paula Maria Elbl, and Giuliano Maselli Locosselli
Miguel Luiz Bucalem
Cláudia Terezinha Kniess, Alexandre de Oliveira e Aguiar, Diego de Melo Conti, and Arlindo Philippi Jr.
Tatiana Tucunduva Philippi Cortese, Sonia Viggiani Coutinho, Maria da Penha Vasconcellos, and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge

Slavery of Body and Soul

Alcir Pécora
Carlos Zeron
Marina Massimi
Caio C. Boschi
Camila Loureiro Dias
Emanuele Colombo

Literature

Simone Rossinetti Rufinoni
Fabio Cesar Alves
Eliane Robert Moraes
Gilmário Guerreiro da Costa
Sandra Soares Della Fonte

Current Affairs

Ana Lydia Sawaya, Anna Maria Peliano, Maria Paula de Albuquerque, and Semíramis Martins Álvares Domene
Alysson Assunção Andrade and Jacqueline de Oliveira Moreira
Jorge Shiguemitsu Fujita and Vanessa Ruffa

Reviews

Lenina Pomeranz
Erwin Torralbo Gimenez
Cristiane Rodrigues de Souza
Eduardo Veras
Caio Moraes Reis

Ricardo Ohtake, new holder of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science.

To address the trajectory of art and culture in Brazil from the post-Second War period until the crisis of 2016, and to analyze the current situation of institutions and activities in the field with prospects for the future, are some of the goals of the new holder of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, created in 2015 and officially launched in February 2016 by the IEA in partnership with Itaú Cultural. Architect, graphic designer and cultural manager Ricardo Ohtake took office on March 17, in a ceremony in the University Council Room that was attended by authorities, sponsors of the Chair, artists and scientists.

"The discussion of the future is what matters most, mainly because of the new political, social, economic, administrative and institutional situation in Brazil, which we know has created a legal anomaly in the country, provoking insecurity for the population and certain insecurity in the cultural environment", said Ohtake.

While opening the ceremony, Martin Grossmann, academic coordinator of the Chair, professor at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and former director of the IEA, welcomed the new holder and thanked the work done by diplomat and essayist Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, former national secretary of Culture and author of the bill to encourage culture that bears his name. During the inaugural year of the Chair, Rouanet developed the approximation between the borders of knowledge in the personal, institutional and scientific scopes, as he recalled in his speech.

The new activities will include the debate on the actions and the thinking of cultural leaders, and the participation of institutions in the development of the artistic and cultural field, in a reflection that will go back to the cultural history of Brazil, Grossmann showed.

Ohtake recalled the evolution of Brazilian society and mentality - including its typical contradictions and complexities with which "a modern and medieval country" was built - and related this trajectory to the steps taken by the country in the cultural and artistic fields.

He mentioned the beginnings of the cosmopolitanization of Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with the emergence of icons such as the Vera Cruz Cinematographic Company, the TBC Brazilian Theater of Comedy, art institutions, the Biennale and museums, among them the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), created by the coffee bourgeoisie.

To expose and develop his own trajectory as a cultural leader in the context of the city, the country and internationally will be one of Ohtake's pursued goals. He will also invite critics, cultural leaders, artists and historians to participate in debates and testimonials; approach the relationship between art and politics and the role of exhibitions in the art debate; and analyze the role of cultural leaders in the development of institutions and thinking.

The new holder intends to bring his experience of more than 50 years in this field. He has been Secretary of Culture of the State of São Paulo, Secretary of the Green and Environment of São Paulo, director of the São Paulo Cultural Center, and director of the Museum of Image and Sound and the Brazilian Cinematheque. He has lectured in several architecture, communications and plastic arts faculties and was curator of the Brazilian participation at the Architecture Biennale of Venice in 2010.

The Ohtake family is one of the most influential for the arts and architecture in Brazil. Ricardo Ohtake is son of artist Tomie Ohtake (1913-2015) and brother of architect Ruy Ohtake, who signs the project of the famous building that houses the Tomie Ohtake Institute. He has graduated from USP's Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), and currently directs the Tomie Ohtake Institute.

"If, on the one hand, cultural activity is always provided by very limited resources, on the other hand it always requires a lot of imagination and daring for propositions to be solved. The leader does not have to be an intellectual, but he must know where the concepts, the variations of approaches, the artists, the history of art, and also the engineering of the activities take place. As the resource is never enough, knowing how to give priorities and alternatives is fundamental to make sense of everything that is done," he said.

While reviewing his own career, Ohtake recalled his childhood, when he invented things and plays on the street in the 'Mooca' neighborhood, in São Paulo. "I realized with surprise that I internalized what critic Mário Pedrosa said in the 1950s to my mother: 'The key is to be original.' I understood that I always had to be original, not only in artistic creation."

From the left: Eduardo Saron, Ricardo Ohtake, José Roberto Sadek, Vahan Agopyan, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, Roberto Setúbal and Paulo Saldiva.

Tributes

The Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, created to foster interdisciplinary reflections on academic, artistic-cultural and social issues in the regional and global contexts, has been taking the form of an "experimental platform for freedom", according to Grossmann.

"If Rouanet practiced the permanent exercise of criticism by producers, and academic and cultural institutions during this period, Ricardo Ohtake intends to explore the experimental exercise of freedom, be it as a public figure, as a cultural manager, or through his wisdom and his constant thinking that produces an exemplary practice in the field of the arts and culture," said Grossmann.

In almost 12 months of activity as holder of the Chair, Rouanet has sought broad approximations and interactions in the epistemic, institutional or even personal fields, he showed. "The participation of so many colleagues in the effort to give prestige to other areas of knowledge, culture, arts, psychoanalysis, science and philosophy was an attempt to minimize the gap between the human sciences and other sciences," he said.

For Rouanet, the Chair has been a unique opportunity to deepen the effort to unify science a little more; an effort that was extended to the institutional field, with USP interacting with other institutions.

In the words of IEA's director Paulo Saldiva, the ceremony brings the symbolic sign of generosity and passion expressed in the "action of sponsors such as Itaú Cultural, or in the work of people like Ricardo Ohtake, who come to share their experience, teach and illuminate the spirit."

The Chair also celebrates the union between academia, artists, intellectuals and young people who could see the example of rare values such as leadership and enchantment, Saldiva said. "Values such as generosity, passion and enchantment for study are sorely lacking for our youth today. These are feelings that make things happen despite all the difficulties," he emphasized.

USP's Vice-President Vahan Agopyan has stressed the importance of interlocution between academia and external sectors provided by chairs and interdisciplinary instances as the IEA. "I often say that the IEA is the think tank of USP: a place for debates on cross-cutting themes and, as well as the chairs, capable of promoting interaction with society. Dialogue with society is a challenge of the 21st century for all universities, and with the support of Itaú Cultural we are managing to increase this interaction," said Agopyan.

Roberto Setúbal, executive president of Itaú bank, when speaking about the support for the Chair, preferred to recall his father's personality and his tradition of appreciation for culture, his career as an entrepreneur and an engineer graduated from USP's Polytechnic School (POLI). "Severe, firm and demanding, but always very open to dialogue and new ideas. A man of science and research - he has worked at the Institute of Technological Research (IPT). A mayor who created the São Paulo Secretariat of Culture, a gesture that made me very proud in my student days and that shows how he valued culture and was open to the new," he said.

Eduardo Saron, director of Itaú Cultural, recalled the important role of Ohtake in the democratization of culture and arts in Brazil. "The democratization of access to culture, so much discussed by managers in the country, is a theme that will remain for a long time. Art and culture are beyond the needs and rights of the citizen. If the artist thinks of art as a field of desires, managers and actors of cultural politics need to think about culture in this aspect. It is not a matter of democratizing access only. It is about autonomy and freedom of expression. Cultural democracy thinks and understands the individual as an actor of self; an autonomous citizen who has the right to freedom of expression; to see and experience all cultures," said Saron.

Professor Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), was invited to give the reception address to the honoree. She recalled the work done with Ohtake and the projects undertaken at the Tomie Ohtake Institute.

Lilia Schwarcz, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH): "Ricardo Ohtake has distributed gifts in the fields of art and culture".

"A visionary of the arts, an intellectual of culture, an academic of the world of museums, of the arts in the broad sense, he knows that culture is what it does. In Ricardo Ohtake's words, among the various ways of assessing the success of different art forms, there is a unifying question, which is the transformation that the viewer of art undergoes before a work, and the emotion that provides a new knowledge, a new sensitivity, and / or a new experience," said Schwarcz.

For Schwarcz, Ohtake has "distributed gifts": he has toured the fields of architecture, graphic arts, decoration, urbanism, drawing, theater, education, cinema, publishing, dance, photography and the plastic arts; he has made exhibitions, documentaries, film festivals; sponsored concerts; created drawings for many books. "He has inspired generations, having passed through numerous institutions until landing at the Tomie Ohtake Institute, which opened for all kinds of experimentation."

"It is impossible to meet Ricardo without being deeply affected by his history, his smile, his generosity, his very noisy silence, and his transforming affection. I congratulate USP for realizing that Ricardo is a born scholar in the sublime function of being a cultural multiplier, and thus an immense distributor of gifts, an intellectual open to diversity, plurality and equality in this unfortunately unequal country," said the professor.

The State Secretary for Culture of São Paulo, José Roberto Sadek, highlighted the important link between the university and society promoted by the Chair, and the promotion of non-polarized dialogue, treated with the complexity and nuances that the theme requires.

Yoshiyuki Suto, from the Nagoya University.

The Hellenistic world, regarded as the earliest age of globalization in human history, was discussed at the conference Articulating Time in the Hellenistic World, given by Yoshiyuki Suto, a professor of Ancient History and academic staff of the Center for the Cultural Heritage and Texts (CHT) at the Nagoya University..

The emergence of a multicultural society has imposed the need to synchronize calendars and to standardize documentary records and the dating of historical events. "The setting of time was closely related to the sense of social stability," said Suto during the Humanities / Social Sciences Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 10.

"We have agreed on the use of units such as hours, minutes, seconds and days to express time, but we do not think about the origin of these markers."

From the observation of the stars, the Egyptians have been the first to count annual periods and also the pioneers in creating 12 subdivisions of time based on seasons. Greek historian and geographer Herodotus wrote on this ability of the so-called "time masters" in 3 BC. "Their calculations are more accurate than those of the Greeks, who added an intercalary month every two years so that the seasons could coincide. The Egyptians counted 30 days for each of the 12 months, adding five days to the total of each year and thus the full circle of the seasons would coincide with the calendar," Herodotus wrote.

Suto has been specializing in the history of Egypt under the Ptolemaic dinasty. "It is interesting to observe not only the advanced knowledge of the Egyptians, but also the unique feature of that moment. During Hellenism there has been the first era of globalization in human history. The creation of huge empires and the division into large kingdoms features a totally different time in comparison to the previous one," he said.

This period was marked by the expeditions of Alexander the Great to Asia, by the first invasion of Rome in Eastern Greece and by the spread of the Greek language. Public announcements and historical events often needed to be recorded in more than one type of spelling or language, and considering the calendars adopted by different peoples, Suto said. Those were common public documents referencing reigns, bishoprics and other historical facts, accordingly to Sumerian, Egyptian or Greek calendars, to avoid mistakes about the date or the fact that they wanted to portray.

Thus, the time synchronization was necessary. In order to date documents, some important reference points have been used, such as the Trojan War, the Flood of Deucalion (the Greek Noah) or the Return of the Heracleidae. A more explicit time series was created from the Olympic Games in Athens. "The new benchmark was based on the list of Olympic winners," Suto said.

To show how time synchronization evolved between the different peoples of ancient history, Suto introduced two basic concepts related to time in history. The first concept compares progressive time and recurring time, where progressive time is connected to a linear chain of events between past, present and future, and recurring time is caracterized by a repeated cycle of events from period to period, such as celebrations. The second concept compares natural time and human time, where natural time is related to astronomical phenomena and nature, and human time is linked to cultural articulations and a personal interpretation of natural time.

Even in ancient societies, natural time did coincide with celebrations and human needs as harvesting and planting, for example. But it was during the Hellenistic period that the definition of beginning and end of basic chronological units occurred, as well as the synchronization of various human times and ways to denote human time in daily life, he said.

There was no way to articulate a unit of time that had more than one year. Besides, there were difficulties to distinguish one year from another in a chronologically progressive time. Initially, the way that was found to do this was giving the name of a magistrate or an elected priest to a year. "It has certainly avoided a lot of trouble, but it was not practical because these references did not give a sense of relative sequence in relation to the facts," Suto said.

The way to mark time progressed in the Hellenistic kingdoms, especially in the Ptolemaic Egypt, the most successful and enduring of them. An alternative system became better known: to count the year from the throne succession of each king. For example, the year of the coronation of Ptolemy I (305-4 BC) was called the Year I of Ptolemy of Egypt.

The establishment of the concept of regular years has not only contributed to the identification of a given year, but also of longer periods. "It allowed to articulate progressive time with the respective period of each king's domain," he said.

This was demonstrated in a 300-name-long king list graphed over a papyrus. The document, entitled Turin Royal Canon, dates from the time of Ramses II and brings the exact duration of each reign. It is unknown why it is the only list of kings of the Pharaonic period.

Ptolemy II, co-regent of his father, Ptolemy I Soter, introduced changes in the calendar. He tried to extend the year of his reign, considering the period during which he was co-regent. "The reason for this is unknown but it is believed that it has been an attempt to extend his authority over the legislators of other kingdoms," Suto said.

After all, the regular year system starting from the year in which a new king succeeded the former one resulted in a convenient way to determine the beginning and the end of each period, Suto said. Thus, the striking feature of the Hellenistic phase was not only the structural and cultural integration of the kingdom. There was also the important time synchronization that in previous periods was locally separated in different parts of the kingdom.

At first glance, memory seems something inert, stuck in the past - a memory of something that has happened and stopped in time. But a closer look reveals that memory is dynamic and connects the three temporal dimensions: evoked at the present, it refers to the past, but always views the future.

During their conference entitled ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, researchers Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, both professors at the University of Konstanz, addressed this dynamic character of memory. Jan spoke on the durability and symbolic aspects of cultural memory, emphasizing their role in the construction of identities, while Aleida prioritized contemporary historical narrative, focusing on mnemonic processes related to the formation of new nation-states.

The event, held on May 15 at IEA, opened the conference cycle ‘Spaces of Remembrance’, which the researchers uttered in the country from May 15 to 21 as part of the Year of Germany in Brazil. The cycle has been a realization of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Social and Cultural Mobility, with the support of IEA and other institutions.

Cultural memory

Jan made ​​a distinction between two types of memory: the communicative one, related to the diffuse transmission of memories in everyday life through orality, and cultural memory - in which the speech was focused - referring to objectified and institutionalized memories, that can be stored, transferred and reincorporated throughout generations.

Cultural memory is formed by symbolic heritage embodied in texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, objects, sacred scriptures and other media that serve as mnemonic triggers to initiate meanings associated with what has happened. Also, it brings back the time of the mythical origins, crystallizes collective experiences of the past and can last for millennia. Therefore it presupposes a knowledge restricted to initiates.

Communicative memory, on the other hand, is limited to the recent past, evokes personal and autobiographical memories, and is characterized by a short term (80 to 110 years), from three to four generations. Due to its informal character, it does not require expertise on the part of those who transmit it.

Identity

Jan pointed out the connections between cultural memory and identity. According to him, cultural memory is ‘the faculty that allows us to build a narrative picture of the past and through this process develop an image and an identity for ourselves’.

Therefore, cultural memory preserves the symbolic institutionalized heritage to which individuals resort to build their own identities and to affirm themselves as part of a group. This is possible because the act of remembering involves normative aspects, so that ‘if you want to belong to a community, you must follow the rules of how and what to remember’, as stated by the researcher.

He also highlighted that, by working as a collective unifying force, cultural memory is considered a hazard by totalitarian regimes. As an example, he mentioned the case of the Bosnian war, when Serbian artillery destroyed the Library of Sarajevo in an attempt to undermine the memory of the Bosnians and minorities in the region.

The goal, he said, was to make culture a blank slate so that it could be possible to start a new Serbian identity from scratch: ‘This was the strategy of the totalitarian regime to destroy the past, because if one controls the present, the past also gets under control, and if one controls the past, the future also gets under control’.

The past in focus

Aleida opened her conference calling attention to a characteristic phenomenon of the recent decades: a disbelief in the idea of ​​the future and the emergence of the past as fundamental concern. According to the researcher, from the 1980s, confidence in the future as a promise of better days lost power and gave rise to the restlessness before the past: ‘the idea of ​​progress is increasingly obsolete, and the past has invaded our consciousness’.

This phenomenon, she said, is the effect of the period of excessive violence of the 20th century and new problems faced by contemporary society, such as the environmental crisis, for example. But she cautioned that it is not mere nostalgia or rejection of modern times, since cultural memory is always directed to the future, ‘remembering forward, so to speak’.

Thus, memory appears as a device to protect the past against the corrosive action of time and to give subsidies for individuals to understand the world and know what to expect, ‘so they do not have to reinvent the wheel and start each generation from scratch’, as the researcher explained.

National memory

Based on the concept of ‘les lieux de mémoire’ (places of memory) prepared by the French historian Pierre Nora, Aleida talked about the changes that have taken place in the construction of national memory in the post- World War II and post-Berlin Wall.

Thinking from the case of France - a country that would be defined by the triumphant character of its people -, the concept of places of memory refers to concrete symbolic objects such as monuments, museums and archives, linked to a self-image of heroism and pride by the nations.

But for the researcher, this concept does not apply to the new nation-states that emerged after 1945 (post-colonial) and 1989 (post-Soviet). Unlike France, these countries are not constituted around the triumph but around the trauma generated by past events. Thus, at the time former colonies are elevated to the status of free nations and define their own identity, a memory marked by a history of violence, slavery and genocide arises.

According to Aleida, nations recall those wounds in an attempt to obtain, at present, an acknowledgment of the suffering and abuse they passed by. This type of memory, built on traumatic episodes, intensifies in the 1990s, when the testimonies of the victims gain ground and several museums and memorials dedicated to symbolically perpetuate the past human rights violations open around the world.

The case of Israel

When asked by Helmut Galle, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), about the construction of a memory of trauma linked to the holocaust in Israel, Aleida stressed the interval of time between the creation of the nation-state and the emergence of this memory.

‘This traumatic memory was not built immediately, but after a long latent period for a political reason: there was a new country to be built and a status of independence to be achieved’, she said, stressing that the concern at that time was to compose a heroic memory, and not giving space to the memory of the victims.

Jan completed stating that the goal of the state of Israel immediately after its establishment was to never be the victim again, while Germany’s was to never repeat the crimes committed in World War II again. ‘The recognition of the victims came later. The first idea was the 'never again' one', he said.

Risks and benefits

Aleida raised questions about the risks and benefits of the cultural memory derived from traumatic events: ‘Does this memory bring up an aggressive potential or does it result in greater respect and dialogue between neighbours?’; ‘Does it build a society that is more vengeful and more aware of its past?’; ‘Does it let the individual citizens more sensitive or insensitive to the violation of human rights or the condition of minorities?’.

The researcher concluded that cultural memory should not be understood as an unhealthy fixation to the past, but as a back-up, a kind of background necessary for society to build its future. But, according to her, this memory should be inspected critically, as any other.

Therefore, she said, we must take care that the negative past, once transformed into memory, does not wake the revanchism: ‘memory can be dangerous and destructive if it digs up anger willing to revise history’.

Lecturers

Aleida Assmann is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Konstanz. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Heidelberg and in Egyptology from the University of Tübingen. Her published papers cover fields such as Egyptology, English Literature and History of Literary Communication, but since the 1960's she has been working on memory theory. Her research focuses on cultural memory, with particular interest on the tensions between individual experiences and official memories of Germany's history in the post-World War II period.

Jan Assmann is Honorary Professor of Religious and Cultural Theory at the University of Konstanz, where he currently teaches, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, where he served until 2003. He holds a Dr. honoris causa title in Theology from the University of Münster. His publications cover the fields of Egyptology, focusing on interpretations of the origins of monotheism, Reception of Egypt in the European Tradition, History of Religion, Historical Anthropology and other topics. In recent years, he has been focusing on the dimension of cultural memory in a distant timeline, dating back more than 3000 years. From this, he seeks to understand the role of memory in disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

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German researchers talk about communicative and cultural memories

To present an overview of racism in Cuba and Haiti through a comparative approach is the goal of the panel ‘The Place of Race: Contemporary Caribbean Debates’, to be held on June 27 at the IEA with exhibitions by Rachel Price and Nick Nesbitt, both professors at Princeton University. The encounter will also count with the participations of Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, from Unicamp, as discussant, and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), as coordinator.

The event was organized by the IEA and RACA (Global Collaborative Network ‘Race and Citizenship in the Americas’) with the support of the Dean of Research (PRP) and the Dean of Culture and University Extension (PRCEU) of USP. The panel is part of the schedule of activities of the strategic partnership agreement signed by USP and Princeton University. The purpose of it is to allow teachers and students to develop collaborative activities of teaching and research with the institutional support of both universities.

The meeting will be broadcast live from IEA's Event Room at www.iea.usp.br/aovivo.

Present

The topic under discussion will be discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective, in order to consider the cultural, historical and political approaches of the issue. According to the members of RACA, this is an important discussion in the Brazilian social agenda, as ‘an activity aimed at understanding this phenomenon in countries with similar experiences - but at the same time profoundly different - can enrich the national debates’.

They underscore the relevance of the proposed debate, since the criticism towards the biological concept of race has not eliminated racism: ‘If today we do not believe in a more naturalized definition of the concept, it is known that a ‘social racism’ is still present in our everyday practices’.

Participants

Rachel Price is an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton University. She specializes in Latin American, and particularly in Cuban and Caribbean literature, culture, and media studies. Her book, ‘The Object of the Atlantic: Concretude 1868-1968’, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.

Nick Nesbitt is Professor in the department of French and Italian at Princeton University. He conducts research on the history of the black Atlantic with focus on recovery, narration and critic of discontinuous events, and concepts from the standpoint of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis). He is the author of ‘Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant’ (Liverpool 2013); ‘Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment’ (Virginia 2008); and ‘Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature’ (Virginia 2003).

Omar Ribeiro Thomaz is professor in the department of Anthropology and of the Graduate Programs in Social Anthropology and History of Unicamp. He was a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) for over ten years. His works are focused on the areas of Anthropology of War and Conflict, and African and Caribbean Social History. In recent years, he has been focusing on field research in countries marked by conflict or local rearticulations around the notion of post-war, such as Mozambique and Haiti.

Lilia Moritz Schwarcz is professor in the department of Anthropology at FFLCH. She worked as a researcher at the universities of Leiden (Netherlands), Oxford, Brown, Columbia and Princeton. Her research lies on the intersection between Anthropology and History, with emphasis on the Anthropology of African-Brazilian populations, markers of difference, and the history of the Brazilian empire. Among her main areas of interest there are social identity, slavery, ethnicity and symbolic constructions.

The debate on race and social mobility in the Americas

RACA is a cooperative initiative between Princeton University and USP directed to the involvement of American and Brazilian teachers and students in a series of events held in Princeton and São Paulo from September 2012 to August 2015. It seeks to comprehensively discuss the multiple aspects involved in the racial debate related to social mobility in the American continent.

Due to the multicentered nature of the network, studies promoted by it are eminently comparisons, having as main points of contrast the realities of Brazil, North America and the Caribbean.

The network is coordinated at Princeton by teachers Pedro Meira Monteiro (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages ​​and Cultures) and João Biehl (Department of Anthropology), and at USP by teachers Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (Department of Anthropology) and Antonio Sérgio Guimarães (Department of Sociology). Both in the United States and in Brazil, the researchers bring contributions from diverse fields such as Anthropology, Sociology, History, Language and Literature, Political Science, and African-American Studies.

Photos (from the top): Colby Brown, Sergio Delgado, Princeton University, Unicamp and courtesy of Lilila Moritiz Schwarcz

The purpose of the meeting is to compare the institutional design of Brazilian legislation and the different conjunctures of the economy and social relations in the country in a historical perspective, showing the links between the criminal and civil laws and the context in which they have been created.

As an example of these linkages, jurist Lenio Luiz Streck, exhibitor of the meeting, mentions the cases of the first and second criminal codes of the country, which have been designed to meet the interests of slaveholders and to "catch former slaves". He also mentions the establishment of the right to property, which would have been the result from claims of slavers.

According to the jurist, also professor of the Graduate Program in Law of the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) and prosecutor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the civil code has been created for “those who have”, while the criminal code has been created for “those who have not”, this being the institutional configuration that is responsible for the impunity of the Brazilian elite.

The panelists of the meeting will be Fernando Facury Skaff, professor of the Department of Economic, Financial and Tax Law of USP’s School of Law, and José Renato Nalini, judge of the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo and IEA’s former adviser. The mediation will be in charge of Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences and adviser at the IEA.

The debate will take place in the Amphitheatre Prof. Dr. Luiz Richid Trabulsi of the building ICB III at USP’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences.

Photos of the event

The analysis of the impacts of these facts is essential to the understanding of Brazilian and world history in the 20th century, but not less important are the activities scheduled to discuss dilemmas of the present and prospects for the coming decades in several areas.

Two initiatives will deal specifically with institutional aspects of USP and the IEA. One of them is the University Governance and Culture of Excellence programme proposed by former rector of USP and former director of the IEA Jacques Marcovitch. It will be a study on ten universities from ten different countries to which it is worth comparing USP.

The other initiative is the creation of the Group for Institutional Situation to debate the most relevant aspects of academic and management policies of the university and the IEA. The first meeting of the group took place on November 19 with the participation of members and former members of IEA’s board and research groups of the institute. At the time, they gathered to discuss the effects of the invasion and occupation by students of USP's administrative complex where the IEA is located.

A series of discussions organized by IEA’s Direction and visiting professor Bernardo Sorj will deal with the production of meaning in the current sociocultural context, which transfers a constant decision-making process to the individual in an environment where he or she confronts multiple values, many of which are contradictory. The series is entitled ‘Em Busca do Sentido Perdido: Diálogos Interdisciplinares sobre Ciência e Transcendência’ (‘In Search of Lost Sense: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence’) and foresees five meetings to be hold throughout the year: ‘A Ciência e o Politeísmo de Valores’ (‘Science and the Polytheism of Values’), ‘O Indivíduo no Ocidente’ (‘The Individual in the West’), ‘O Ser Humano e a Natureza‘ (‘The Human Being and Nature’), ‘O Ser Humano e a Técnica’ (‘The Human Being and Technique’) and ‘O Lugar das Artes na Produção de Sentido’ (‘The Place of the Arts in the Production of Meaning’).

The issue of Brazilian industrial competitiveness, a sensitive topic to economic performance and development of the country, will be discussed in a cycle with a still undefined format. The proposal was brought up by IEA’s board in 2013 and will be coordinated by advisors Roberto Mendonça Faria, from IEA’s São Carlos Center, and Guilherme Ary Plonski, from USP’s Polytechnic School (POLI) and the Faculty of Economics, Business and Accounting (FEA).

Two initiatives involve partnerships with foreign IASs, both of them members of the University-based Institute for Advanced Study network (UBIAS). Together with the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) of the University of Nagoya, Japan, the IEA-USP will start the Intercontinental Academy project, which will bring together around 15 young researchers from different areas of knowledge and universities to a collaborative and interdisciplinary study, under the guidance of three senior scientists, with workshops in São Paulo and Nagoya in 2015. The laboratory ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches for Global Challenges: Transatlantic Dialogues’ will be a partnership between the IEA-USP and the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Advanced Studies. The project will bring together British and Brazilian experts in studies to identify possible solutions for the challenges that cities and their residents will face in the coming decades.

Still in the international context, this summary of the agenda could not fail to highlight the possible presence of the renowned linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has been invited to give a conference at the IEA in April. It could be the second visit of Chomsky. He participated in the celebrations of the institute’s 10th anniversary in 1996. Back then, he gave two conferences, one on Linguistics and another one on the application of the Washington Consensus in developing countries, published in issue 29 of ‘Estudos Avançados’.

The main scheduled activities for 2014 set by research groups, chairs, visiting professors and the journal are listed below.

RESEARCH GROUPS

Amazon Transformation: History and Perspectives - Coordinator: Maritta Koch-Weser

In 2014 the group will continue to establish contacts with a view to developing the project of creating the Rainforest Continent Business School. The project schedule includes visits to the state of Amapá, after invitation by the state government, to the BNDES (national bank for development) in Rio de Janeiro, and to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, after invitation by Charles Noble, Secretary of Policy and Programmes for Research and Development at the ministry. The group will also continue the discussions originated in the meeting sponsored by FAPESP in North Carolina, as well as arrange meetings for the scientific committee and the work group of the project.

Nuclear Astrophysics - Coordinator: Mahir Saleh Hussein

From April 14 to 16, the group will promote the ‘Neutrino and Nuclear Astrophysics Workshop’, with the participation of group members and guests. From the group, the participants will be Pierre Descouvemont (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), Carlos A. Bertulani (Texas A&M University-Commerce, USA), Leandro Gasques (USP’s Institute of Physics - IF), Elcio Abdalla (IF), Michael Wiescher (University of Notre Dame, USA) and Ani Aprahamian (University of Notre Dame, USA). The guests will be Akif Baha Balantekin (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Alexis Day-Torres (Università di Trento , Italy) and Beatriz Barbuy (USP's Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences - IAG).

Logic and Theory of Science - Coordinator: Jair Minoro Abe

The group will hold another edition of the ‘Intelligent Computing Systems Workshop’, in addition to continuing with monthly seminars on paraconsistent annotated logic in Biomedicine, Robotics and Automation at USP’s Faculty of Medicine Oscar Freire Institute.

Quality of Democracy - Coordinator: José Álvaro Moisés

In February, the group will host Mino Vianello, from the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy, who will give a lecture on Gender, Power and Quality of Democracy. In the second semester, an international seminar on Access to Justice, Public Security and Quality of Democracy will be hold in partnership with the University of North Carolina, USA. The group will continue to organize events on research topics and books of some of their participants, and to publish texts at www.qualidadedademocracia.com.br. Another activity that will continue in the website is the series of interviews ‘A Qualidade da Democracia em Questão’, which has already set several personalities to be interviewed 2014: Mino Vianello, Francisco Weffort, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Celso Lafer, Bolívar Lamounier and Simão Schwartzman.

Intercultural Dialogues - Coordinator: Sylvia Dantas

The group plans to hold a series of conferences on ‘Challenges of Multiculturalism: Reality and Perspectives’. The goal is to initiate dialogues in the interdisciplinary field of pursuit of dialogue, expansion and articulation of outbreaks, contextualizing and strategies that enable greater rapprochement regarding the complexity of the factors that result from the contact between cultures and the dynamics of increasing intercultural contact, addressing ethnic minorities in the university and among exchange students, migrants, refugees and descendants, and mobility and internationalization of Brazilian universities.

Public Policies, Territoriality and Society - Coordinator: Neli Aparecida de Mello-Théry

The group will hold two international workshops in 2014: ‘Environment and Geomatics: Compared Studies France-Brazil’ in November 12-15 in Rennes, France, and ‘Climate Change, Energy Planning and Public Policy’, in partnership with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) in October.

Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology - Coordinator: Pablo Rubén Mariconda

In 2014 the group will continue the activities of the FAPESP’s Thematic Project ‘Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: the Relations between Science, Technology and Society’. Four seminars are already planned: ‘Humans and Animals: the Limits of Humanity’, under the coordination of Lorenzo Baravalle (UFABC) and Pablo Mariconda (IEA-USP); ‘Climate Change, Climate Panels and Economic Growth Model’, with six to eight meetings and coordination of Jose Correa Leite (IEA-USP) and Marcos Barbosa de Oliveira (IEA-USP); ‘Sustainable Forest Management and Stakeholder Values in the Relationship between Scientific Knowledge and Traditional Knowledge: the Value of Cooperation and Competition System’, with four to six meetings and coordination of Ana Teresa Reis da Silva (IEA-USP) and Pablo Mariconda (IEA-USP); and ‘Style of Scientific Thought’, having as coordinators Valter Alnis Bezerra (IEA-USP) and Otávio Bueno (University of Miami, USA). From March 10 to April 9, the group will host Helen Jerônimo, from the University of Lisbon, Portugal , who will give four conferences on Technological Risks: ‘Questioning Concepts of Risk and Uncertainty Regarding Issues of Scientific and Technological Base’, ‘The Scientific Examination: Specificities of Knowledge and Action’, ’When uncertainties are reduced to Risks: The Controversy Around the Hazardous Wastes in Portugal’ and ‘The Continuing Catastrophe: The Fukushima Accident and the uncertainties of Nuclear Power Plants’.

Environment and Society - Coordinator: Peter Jacobi

The group has proposed the following research topics for 2014: ‘Solid Waste’ (in March) - discussions on the need to oppose the incineration responses; ‘Water Governance and Transparency’ - presentation of research results; ‘Environment and the Frontiers of Knowledge’ - interdisciplinary debates; ‘Environment and Post-Normal Science’ (in May) - visit of a researcher of the Dutch Environment Agency; ‘Climate Change’ - monitoring of the situation on controversial topics in Brazilian environment policy; ‘Innovation in Environmental Governance’ - various themes regarding government, productive sector and society; and meetings with authors of books on environmental issues.

Nutrition and Poverty - Coordinator: Ana Lydia Sawaya

In 2014 the group will focus on the inclusion of content in their section on IEA's website. Another guideline is to deepen activities in partnerships with public bodies, in particular with São Paulo City Hall, whose first lady Ana Estela Haddad joined the group. Ana Estela is a professor of USP’s School of Dentistry and coordinator of the City Hall’s Early Childhood Policy. She has launched the ‘Cidade Carinhosa’ programme, aimed at children up to 6 years old.

Innovation and Competitiveness Observatory – Coordinator: Mario Salerno

The activities that have already been planned by the group are the preparation of a new edition of the EngenhariaData report, and the planning and execution of the ‘Trajetória’ project, which aims to recover and systematize information on the trajectory of engineers in the labor market, from studying to current activities. Four events are intended to be hold: the release of the EngenhariaData report and the launch of a new website; a seminar on public and private funding for the productive sector and innovation; a seminar on evaluation criteria in bidding for funding; and a seminar with the new Provost for Research on management project.

CHAIRS

UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Human Rights, Democracy and Tolerance

Throughout the year, the chair will hold the ‘City of Human Rights’ project in partnership with USP’s Maria Antonia Center. The project has been given a fund of R$ 180.000,00 after approval by the Provost for Culture and University Extension. In addition, the chair will hold discussions on three topics: Memory and Democracy, the 50th Anniversary of the Military Coup in Brazil, and Dignity and Intolerance.

Bernardo O'Higgins Chair

The chair, newly restructured, has already scheduled a workshop on Memory, Society and Culture to be organized by the IEA-USP and the Center for Social Sciences of the Universidad de la Frontera (UFRO), Chilean partner of USP in the agreement of the chair.

VISITING PROFESSORS

Massimo Canevacci, from the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy, will continue his project ‘Self-representation’.

Hugh Lacey, professor emeritus from Swarthmore College, USA, will work on the conclusion of the dossier ‘Technoscience’ and the Model of Interaction between Science and Values​​.

Bernardo Sorj will continue his research project ‘Middle East Conflict: Scope and Limits of Brazilian External Politics’ and will coordinate, together with the direction of the institute, the series of debates ‘Em Busca do Sentido Perdido: Diálogos Interdisciplinares sobre Ciência e Transcendência’ (‘In Search of Lost Sense: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence’).

‘ESTUDOS AVANÇADOS’ JOURNAL

In March, the launch event of issue 79 will take place. Its main dossier with be on public transport. In April, issue 80 will be released with a dossier on the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Brazil.

Historian Nicholas Sevcenko, a full professor at Harvard University and former professor at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), died at the age of 61 last Wednesday, August 13, as a result of a stroke.

Sevcenko also worked at the IEA-USP in the early 90s, when he joined the Study Group on Cultural History, having delivered the conferences and participated in various seminars.

At Harvard, Sevcenko has taught History and Culture of Latin America and Brazil. Throughout his career, he stood out by studies on Brazilian Culture, Literature, Art and the development of the country's major cities.

Sevcenko graduated in History from FFLCH-USP, where he also earned a Ph.D. (1981). From 1986 to 1990 he held a post-doctoral research in Cultural History at the University of London, where he had as fellow historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012). He became a full professor at USP in 1992.

Besides teaching at USP and Harvard, Sevcenko was also a professor at PUC-SP and UNICAMP, and columnist of the newspaper "Folha de São Paulo".

His major works are "A Revolta da Vacina" ("The Vaccine Rebellion") (1984), "Literatura como Missão" ("Literature as a Mission") (1985), "Orfeu Estático na Metrópole"("Static Orpheus in the Metropolis") (1992) and "A Corrida para o Século XXI" ("The Race for the 21st Century") (2001).

Photos (from the top): Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University; Mauro Bellesa/IEA-USP

The first meeting of the “Latin American Identities” conference cycle will focus on “The Latin America of Historians,” and will take place on April 15, at 4 pm, at the IEA’s Events Room. The lecturer will be historian Antonio Mitre, from the Department of Political Science of Minas Gerais Federal University (UFMG).

Panelists of the event will be historians Boris Fausto, of the International Situation Analysis Group (Gacint) of USP’s Institute of International Relations (IRI); Gabriela Pellegrino Soares, from USP’s School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH); and Guillermo Palacios, from Colegio de Mexico. The event is coordinated by political scientist Bernard Sorj, a visiting professor at the IEA.

The meetings of the Latin American Identities cycle will take place in the months of April, June, September and November 2015. According to Sorj, the goal of the cycle is not “affirm or deny the validity of the existence of a Latin American identity or of the Latin American dream of a ‘great motherland,’ but rather to understand how the idea of ​​Latin America was – and continues to be – built and disseminated, particularly by artists, intellectuals and social scientists.”

According to him, over the course of a long historical process, Latin America acquired multiple connotations associated with political, cultural and economic projects. Thus, the notion of a Latin American unity has become “part wishful thinking and part reality, partly political will and partly product of ponderous objective and dynamic factors.”

“When generalizations about Latin America emphasize unity, we find that they arise from an unawareness of the continent’s diversity. However, we must also acknowledge that the winds that blow in one country, even if they find different national conditions along the way, also affect with particular force the entire region,” he added.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

Photo: UFMG

The second edition of the Intercontinental Academia has already defined subject matter, dates and venues. The project, in two stages, will study human dignity: the first stage, from March 6 through 20, 2016, will take place in Jerusalem; the second, from August 1 through 12, in Bielefeld. The event will be organized by the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University Jerusalem (IIAS) and the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (Center for Interdisciplinary Research) at Bielefeld University.

Human dignity is the object of several research studies, in various disciplines, and will involve a debate on international terrorism, torture, civil war, data protection, poverty reduction and social security, minorities, and history of human rights, among others. During the conferences in Israel and Germany, participants will attend master classes with eminent scholars from these fields. Some lectures have already been defined: “The constitutional right to human dignity,” “Dignity as the core of human rights,” “Recognizing human dignity after its denial” and “Human dignity in religion.”

Confirmed speakers include Aleida Assmann, professor of English Literature at the University of Konstanz; Lynn A. Hunt, research professor and Eugen Weber endowed chair in Modern European History at the University of California; Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff, professor of Public Law at Bielefeld University and former justice of the German Federal Constitutional Court; Ralf Poscher, professor of Constitutional Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Freiburg; and Mordechai Kremnitzer, the Bruce W. Wayne professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and vice-president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute.

The Intercontinental Academia is an initiative of the UBIAS network, an international association that connects 34 university-based institutes for advanced study from 19 countries, and aims to promote networked research and develop new leaders. The first edition of the Academia, which discussed “Time,” is being organized by the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA-USP) and the Institute for Advanced Research at the Nagoya University. The first part was held in São Paulo from April 17 through 29 and the second is scheduled for March 2016, in Nagoya. Read about the São Paulo conferences here. Learn more about the project at <http://intercontinental-academia.ubias.net/>.

Registration

Young researchers wishing to take part in the Intercontinental Academia conferences on human dignity must undergo a careful selection process. Candidates may come from areas such as Law, Political Science, Sociology, Political Theory, History, Philosophy, Computer Science, Education, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Biology or Biogenetics. Participants must have reached the final phase of their PhD or post-doctoral work, and be fluent in English.

Candidates must present a cover letter on how they may contribute to the project, an updated résumé, and a letter of recommendation from an institute of advanced studies of the UBIAS network. In addition, they should provide a document summarizing their interest in the subject matter and their expectations for the project. Submissions should be made by e-mail (ica-jerusalem-bielefeld@uni-bielefeld.de) by August 31.

Fifteen participants will be selected at the end of the process. Part of the costs of accommodation and travel will be reimbursed.

Additional information about the second stage of the project is available at the website of the UBIAS network.

A trajectory linked to Brazil

Jeffrey Lesser has a proximate relationship to Brazilian history and is an unstopPable follower of life in the country. An example of this involvement is the article he wrote for CNN's website immediately after the demonstrations against the Brazilian government on August 16.

Lesser is currently Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Brazilian Studies, Director of Brazil Initiative and Head of the Department of History at Emory University, in Atlanta.

He obtained his Ph.D. in history at New York University, supervised by Brazilianist Warren Dean (1932-1994), who was a lecturer at the IEA-USP in the late 80s. Lesser became master through the American Civilization Program of Brown University, where he majored in political science.

Lesser has already been a professor at the University of Tel Aviv (Israel), at the USP, at the UNICAMP and at the UFRJ (Brazil), and at the Connecticut College, at the Occidental College and at Brown University (USA).

His most recent book is "Imigração, Etnicidade a Identidade Nacional no Brasil", which will be released still in 2015 by Editora Unesp (the original version in English came out by the Cambridge University Press in 2013).

Historian Jeffrey Lesser, from Emory University, wants to contribute with public health policies that combat infectious diseases through the analysis of historical and epidemiological data. This is how he sums up the research project that he intends to develop as the new visiting professor of the IEA-USP from October 1. Lesser's work will be linked to the Institute's research group on Intercultural Dialogues.

"Metropolis, Migration and Mosquitoes" will have Lesser and eco-epidemiologist Uriel Kitron as main researchers. Kitron will work from Emory University, of which he is also a professor.

According to Lesser, the project will provide alternative means for understanding and overcoming cultural barriers in health care. "We will use a new integrated approach to the humanities methods (historic analysis), and the natural and social sciences (ecology, epidemiology) to answer questions on immigration, diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and health outcomes," explains the historian.

The diseases chosen for the study are yellow fever, dengue and chikungunya, all three caused by viruses that have mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and Aedes albapictus as vectors. Lesser considers the project particularly important at this time due to the fact that São Paulo expects the arrival of chikungunya in the city this year.

They will research two areas of the city: Luz / Bom Retiro (with 70,000 inhabitants) and Liberdade / Cambuci (with 90,000 inhabitants). According to Lesser, these areas "have historically shown differences in the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases and the response to them."

These regions have been chosen because they are home to Brazilian immigrant and foreign immigrant communities. "In both regions there is an area considered by the general population as 'foreign' and socially upward and another one considered 'Brazilian' and socially stagnant," says Lesser.

In both regions there will be an examination of the ecology of diseases, demographic patterns and health discourses in cases of yellow fever (19th century), dengue (20th century) and chikungunya (21st century). Interdisciplinary methodologies derived from epidemiological ethnography of inhabited areas and approaches based on a system of historical and geographical information will allow to store and analyze geographic data from the past and simulate changes over time.

Brazilian historiography on the environment was structured as a field of thought and research in the late 20^th century. According to Silvia Helena Zanirato, member of IEA Research Group and professor of Environmental Management at USP’s School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH), the challenges posed by major social and environmental changes have forced History, as a science, to find new explanatory arguments for the historically acquired habits of social players in their interaction with the physical environment.

“The environment is essentially an interdisciplinary field of study and only the sum total of knowledge can help us overcome the environmental crisis. History’s role, in this context, is to seek to understand and explain the processes that have contributed to this crisis, which we know is based on the production and consumption system of the Modern Age,” says Zanirato, one of the coordinators of the seminar, who will take part in the debates on “Historical Knowledge and the Environment: Epistemological Considerations.”

She says that the academy has not been able to raise the awareness of the public at large of the severity of the socio-environmental problem. “More than discuss, we need to present other possibilities involving consumer habits, lifestyles and the means to move towards a less impacting society. I am aligned with the thought of Mercedes Pardo, for whom nature conservation condition is not mainly physical, but rather cultural,” explains Zanirato.

“Undeniably, after World War II, with the vertiginous expansion of the mass consumer society, the perception and a growing awareness of a complex interconnected phenomenon of global dimensions began to take shape. The problems intrigued historians, policy makers, scientists, artists and the general population,” says Paulo Henrique Martinez, a professor at Paulista State University (UNESP) in Assis, who will also be at the seminar.

Such phenomena, says Martinez, emerged in the industrialized countries of the northern hemisphere in the form of pollution, destruction of ecosystems and threats of extinction of the local fauna and flora. In poor countries, environmental problems arose in the form of epidemics, accelerated deforestation and degradation of environmental health in rural and urban areas – involving water resources and landfills, in particular – he says.

For Martinez, environmental history opens communication channels and creates situations for interdisciplinary dialogue, e.g., in studies of urbanization, family farming and public policies. However, interdisciplinary research still needs to go further. “We talk insistently about interdisciplinary research, but operationally we still have a long way to go. Everything remains more in the realm of rhetoric than of effective and concrete experiences and practices,” he believes.

For Janes Jorge, a professor at UNIFESP, Brazilian historiography maintains a constant dialogue with other areas of knowledge and an intense debate about the place that historical production occupies in thinking about the environment. Yet, there is still plenty to do in environmental history research and in the dissemination of the knowledge produced in this field, she says.

“I believe that public policies concerning water, waste, biodiversity, climate change and other environmental issues must converse with scientific knowledge. But the policies are still way too timid for the scale of the problem,” says Jorge.

Besides Zanirato, Martinez and Jorge, the seminar will be attended by Roger Domenech Collacios (UNESP), Dora Shellard Correa (UNIFIEO), Nelson Aprobato Filho (USP) and José Jonas Almeida (USP).