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

A group of political scientists, sociologists, journalists and social activists have gathered for a documentary that helps telling part of the story of the conquest of human rights in São Paulo. To be launched next December 10 on Videocamp (English subtitles available), the film ‘Human Rights Mapping’ brings together testimonies and images to show that many of the current rights are the result of demonstrations and interventions by the population on the streets of Brazilian cities, instead of State actions. Subtitles in English will be available.

Conceived by members of the UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Human Rights, Democracy and Tolerance, based at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA) of the University of São Paulo (USP), the documentary has been produced by Imagina Coletivo and directed by Tiago Pereira. It shows the relation of the city with the struggles for the recognition and effectiveness of the equality of race, sex, gender, the fight for the right to vote, the struggle for housing and freedom of expression, among others. The UNESCO Chair was active at the IEA from April 1996 to October 2014.

The 26-minute film splits the testimonies and reports into themes related to the right to the city, rights of migrants, non-racial, gender and sex discrimination, right to work, civil rights, the rule of law and freedom of expression.

In order to tell the stories and analyze the importance of preserving the memory of such movements, many specialists have been heard: jurist José Gregori; journalist Sérgio Gomes; physicist Dina Lida Kinoshita; the leader of the ‘Housing Movement of the Center’ (Movimento de Moradia do Centro – MMC), Luiz Gonzaga da Silva, known as Gegê; Letícia Cardoso and Marcelo Hotimsky, from the Free Pass Movement (Movimento Passe Livre); Paulo Illes, from the Center for Human Rights and Immigrant Citizenship; Douglas Belchior and Milton Barbosa, both representatives of the black movement; Marcos Tupã and Jerá Giselda, from the Tenondé Porã Indigenous Lands; Waldemar Rossi, speaking of the ‘Unified Workers' Central’ (Central Única dos Trabalhadores – CUT) and the Osasco Strikes; Maria Amélia de Almeida Teles, from the Women’s Union of São Paulo and the newspaper Brasil Mulher; 'Rebeca', from the ‘March of the Bums’ (Marcha das Vadias); Fernando Quaresma, president of the LGBT Pride Parade Association; Margarida Genevois, from the Justice and Peace Commission; Belisário dos Santos Júnior, talking about the Carandiru massacre; Inês Virgínia Soares, from the Federal Public Ministry; Célia Galvão Quirino, addressing the ‘Battle of Maria Antonia’; and Binho, from ‘Sarau do Binho’.

Sociologist Sergio Adorno, then coordinator of the UNESCO Chair, and political scientist Rossana Reis, coordinator and idealizer of the Human Rights Cartography project, are also in the film.

The film came to be in 2014 from a project with the same name that addressed issues related to the theme, seeking to sensitize society and attract their attention to human rights. From this idea, places that hosted such struggles and achievements in São Paulo were selected and cataloged on a digital platform (www.cartografiadh.iea.usp.br), which georeferences and presents tour itineraries by region and theme. For each selected landmark, there are reference texts, photographs and testimonies of journalists and social activists. The system also allows new locations to be added and thus encompass even more achievements.

Among the movements and fights presented both in the video and on the platform there are: Marcha das Vadias, Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado), CUT, Osasco Strikes, LGBT Parade, Justice and Peace Commission, UNEAFRO, Carandiru Massacre, ‘Battle of Maria Antônia’, Women's Union of São Paulo, Brasil Mulher, Tenondé Porã Indigenous Lands, Oboré, Ecumenical Act of 1975 in honor of Vladimir Herzog, Federal Public Ministry's Exposition ‘(Re) Knowing... To Never Forget!’ (‘(Re) Conhecer... Para Nunca Esquecer!’), Center for the Study of Violence (NEV), Demonstrations of June 2013, MMC, Kantuta Square and the Immigrants' March, ‘Sarau do Binho’ and the Assembly for the right to vote in the Anhangabaú Valley in the 1980s.

Production and direction

The choice of Imagina Coletivo, a non-profit organization, and Tiago Pereira for the production and direction of the documentary is in tune with the transforming character that the film seeks to have.

Pereira began his story in filming together with the birth of Imagina Coletivo, when the project Imagina na Copa was launched. It existed between 2012 and 2014. At that time, 75 web documentaries were produced in all 27 Brazilian states, telling stories of young people that act as transformers. He has also directed the short film Rolezinhos, which won as best film in the Social Vision category of the 2014 Entretodos Festival, and produced the film Guardiões de Santa Rosa in partnership with the Futura Channel.

Imagina Coletivo is currently working with social content production in different languages - workshops, courses and facilitation of meetings, and advice on mobilization, engagement and social entrepreneurship.

Financing and partnertships

The ‘Human Rights Mapping’ project was contemplated in the 2013 contest of USP’s Dean for Culture and University Extension, which financed the initiative, and had partnerships with the Maria Antonia University Center and the Federal Public Ministry. The recording of the testimonies was done with the support of TV Alesp (Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo), and the visual identity was developed by the 2012 group of Advertising of USP’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA), under the guidance of Professor Dorinho Bastos.

The Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Hannah Arendt Studies Center, the Rubens Paiva State Truth Commission of São Paulo, the Department of Political Science of USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and USP’s Postgraduate Program In Political Science have also supported the activities.

"No political action is as urgent these days as it is to aim at getting out of the economic crisis that afflicts Brazilian people," says Alfredo Bosi, editor of the Institute's journal 'Estudos Avançados'. This has been the motivation for the IEA to address the theme "Exits to the Economic Crisis" in its issue #89 (referring to January-April).

The journal's proposal was to put together a set of texts in which "proficiently competent economists set out their views and formulate viable short- or long-term proposals." Therefore, 'Estudos Avançados' counted on the collaboration of economist Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, professor emeritus of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo and former finance minister o Brazil, who was in charge of organizing the dossier.

There are 12 articles written by 13 economists. Bresser-Pereira opens the set with the text Como Sair do Regime Liberal de Política Econômica e da Quase-Estagnação desde 1990 ("How to Leave the Liberal Regime of Economic Policy and Near-Stagnation since 1990"). He proposes that Brazil adopts five "developmental measures": responsible fiscal rule, moderate interest, competitive exchange, social agreement and progressive taxes.

For Edmar Bacha, Director of the 'Casa das Garças' Institute of Economic Policy Studies, there is an "almost ignored" reason for the slow growth of the Brazilian economy since the 1980s: "the very low participation of Brazil in international trade." Former president of the National Bank for Development and member of the team that has developed the Plano Real, Bacha proposes that the country adopts an integration program and production chains in three prerequisites: reduction of the Brazil cost, changes in the exchange rate and trade agreements.

"There are several meritorious proposals from leftist currents to the end of the crisis," according to Leda Maria Paulani, a professor at USP's Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA), "but the country's problem today is of exhaustion, of the crisis of a rentier and financialized model which has already caused many losses to Brazil and Brazilians, particularly those of lower income." According to Paulani, former Secretary of Finance of the São Paulo City Hall, any measure adopted "without touching the institutional arrangement that has allowed the protagonism of the financial wealth and the imperatives of its valorization for almost three decades will be doomed to failure".

Several other actions are proposed in the other articles of the dossier, including the recovery of profit margins of non-financial companies, the continuity of monetary policy easing and the adoption of a tax on the export of commodities. The texts also discuss the causes and the evolution of the crisis, and the possible effects of measures that have already been adopted, such as Constitutional Amendment 95, which established a ceiling for public spending for 20 years.

Other themes

The second set of texts of the issue complements the dossier "Environmental Dilemmas and Frontiers of Knowledge", initiated in the previous issue. The thematic collection has been conceived by professors Pedro Roberto Jacobi and Leandro Luiz Giatti. Bosi emphasizes that "the texts add strategic measures and historical data that give new perspectives to the ecological militancy".

The humanities are contemplated with essays on aesthetics, cinema and literature. Among the discussed topics there are the works of writers Mário de Andrade and Ferreira Gullar, "central names of our fiction and our poetry," adds Bosi.

The issue also includes two articles commemorating the 30th anniversary of the IEA, celebrated in October 2016. Professor Carlos Guilherme Mota, the first director (1986-1988), addresses the history and initial years of the Institute. Professor Jacques Marcovitch, who succeeded Mota, highlighted programs and projects carried out during his administration (1988-1993) in line with the major national and international challenges of that time, such as the end of the Soviet Union, ECO 92, the new Constitution and the relations between capital and labor in Brazil.

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

Exits to the Economic Crisis

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira
Edmar Bacha
Leda Maria Paulani
Antonio Corrêa de Lacerda
Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho
Ricardo Carneiro
Fernando Ferrari-Filho
José Luís Oreiro
Ladislau Dowbor
Nelson Marconi
Francisco Eduardo Pires de Souza
Luiz Fernando de Paula and Manoel Pires

Environmental Dilemmas and Frontiers of Knowledge II

Wagner Costa Ribeiro
Luis Enrique Sánchez
Helena Ribeiro, Patrícia Constante Jaime and Deisy Ventura
Vânia Maria Nunes dos Santos and Denise de La Corte Bacci
Flávia Mendes de Almeida Collaço and Célio Bermann
Gerôncio Rocha
João Batista Pamplona and Maria Cristina Cacciamali
Crisla Maciel Pott and Carina Costa Estrela
Leandra Altoé, José Márcio Costa, Delly Oliveira Filho, Francisco Javier Rey Martinez, Adriano Henrique Ferrarez and Lucas de Arruda Viana
Claudio Luis de Camargo Penteado, Daniel Ladeira Almeida and Roseli Frederigi Benassi
Marla Weihs, Doris Sayago and Jean-François Tourrand

Art, Literature and Cinema

Deribaldo Santos
Érica Gonçalves de Castro
Noel dos Santos Carvalho and Petrônio Domingues
Priscila Figueiredo
Viviana Bosi

IEA - 30 years

Carlos Guilherme Mota
Jacques Marcovitch

Reviews

Ana Paula Tavares Magalhães
Ieda Lebensztayn
Rosana Morais Weg
Suely Aparecida de Lima and Felician Medino Abraham

In Brazil, half of the female university students has suffered harassment, and almost 30% of them have experienced sexual violence during the academic life. The alarming figures revealed by the 2015 survey by the Avon Institute / Data Popular show only one side of a cultural model that is reproduced in an environment that should be the place of difference and diversity. Instead of being a plural space, the university also reveals to be the place of the implied prejudice against women with regard to progression in the academic and scientific career, as demonstrated by the debate Women in University and Science: Challenges and Opportunities, held on September 15 at the IEA.

"Much of this discussion is associated with the power of women or with the conflict of power in relation to men and its social, cultural and political implications. In the private and public contexts, women are not willingly admitted in power domains. Even in large democracies of the 21st century, power relates to men," said the lecturer Leila Saadé, president of the RESUFF (Francophone Network of Women Responsible for Higher Education and Research).

The RESUFF's mission is to educate leaders and academics to question male-female inequality at universities, especially in access to positions of responsibility. It has been developing teaching modules on gender that offer training tools for professional and institutional strategies. The agency has also opened a call for proposals for a gender observatory at universities, which will work with a representative of the network in each participating university with the aim of consolidating data and indicators on women's participation in academic life.

As an expert in law and president of the Doctoral School of Law of the Middle East, Saadé addressed experiences in Lebanon and France on the issue of gender in academia and science. She also explored affirmative actions created by the Francophone University Association (AUF), which has been consolidating initiatives to promote women's access to positions of responsibility. The association, founded in Canada, funds university projects of teaching and research, and its headquarters is located in an office of São Paulo State University (UNESP), in São Paulo.

Vera Soares, from USP Mulheres (USP Women), and conferencist Leila Saadé

"We can not want a better world where half the population is in a hidden corner of the planet. If women are struggling to reach the summit of positions of responsibility we are offering a gift to democracy as we strive for the triumph of a set of values that have founded democracies, ie the principle of equal rights and opportunities," she said.

Physicist Caroline Carvalho dos Santos, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and coordinator of the university extension program Girls in Science, participated as a panelist. Moderation was in charge of Vera Soares, from USP Mulheres (USP Women).

The meeting has been organized by the Consulate General of France in São Paulo, the Institut Français in Brazil, USP Women and the IEA.

Shear effect

According to Saadé, 20% of the presidents in French university positions were women in 2008 and recently this ratio has halved. Eight years ago there were 58% of women enrolled in master's and bachelor courses, as well as 48% in PhD courses. Only 23% reached the position of university professor, showing that the higher the career level, the greater the shear effect. "Unfortunately, academia is deeply discriminatory against women and cultivates women's discrimination," she said.

The European average is no exception: only 9% of research management positions are occupied by women and only 11% of them are high academic responsibility positions.

In Lebanon, women represent 37% of academic researchers, and 11% of them work in engineering and technology. "We have asked for a national observatory in Lebanon to define gender indicators and structure inclusion strategies," said Saadé.

The shear effect has deep roots in stereotypes in which unfortunately even women themselves believe and reproduce, she said. "The L'Oreal Foundation has conducted a survey on the view that Europeans have of women in science and revealed that 67% believe that women are not qualified to occupy high positions in science. The reasons given for having that thinking are the lack of perseverance, practical spirit, rigor and scientific spirit, as well as rational and analytical mind. Women have the same view, which is the worst part. It is a universal vision. The same survey has been conducted among the Chinese, who reproduced the same responses. We are forced to admit that cultural factors and stereotypes play an important role in this view of women", she showed.

The researcher believes that it is possible to change that, even if a long way to go is necessary. First, one must create a network that encourages and supports female scientists besides consolidating data and indicators. "There is a lack of indicators. The figures are uncertain and often false. We need surveys on the real situation of women in science and academia so we can create action strategies," she said.

Besides consolidating indicators, the network proposed by Saadé will need to act to "break the vicious circle in which research projects are created and evaluated only by men, and in which only men are accepted."

A survey in France has shown that women coursing the last year of graduation in science had better terms than men and this proves that they have scientific spirit, Saadé explained. "So we need to leave solitude and silence by valuing women, their skills and their ego; give them the opportunity to fall in love with the sphere of science," she said.

Segregation by area

Carolina Brito: "There is a lack of female models in scientific high positions"

Physicist Carolina Brito, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), said that women suffer both vertical and horizontal segregations throughout their academic careers. The first one relates to the shear effect, while the horizontal segregation concerns the areas in which women do often not seek for positions due to pre-existing prejudices in career choices.

Brito showed data of the 2006 School Census, in which women were the majority in high school both in enrollment (54%) and as graduates (58%). Women also represented most of the students in Brazilian universities according to the 2012 data of the Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies (INEP). However, for each 100 graduate students, 15 graduated in engineering and mathematics, and only five women headed to the so-called hard sciences.

In the case of physics, segregation is even greater, showed Brito. If something like 30% of scientific initiation scholarships in physics go to women, only 15% of PhD scholarships and only 5% of A-level research scholarships remain with them.

Stereotypes, culture, and family and school influences play an important role so that women do not choose a scientific career, believes Brito, who also points to another important trend. "I insist on the lack of female models in scientific high positions. There are very few giving this example. Therefore, women do not see themselves in careers like that," she said.

Moreover, it is necessary to end scientific committees formed predominantly by men. The scientific committee of physics at the National Scientific and Technological Development Council (CNPq), for example, has only 10% of women in its composition. "The pharmacy case is even worse. Although the area has mostly women, the scientific committee at CNPq is 100% composed of men," she said.

The requirements for women are much higher. "In the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the male presence on the chairs is very strong. But if we analyze the profile of the occupants by choosing the criterion members under 35 years studying PhD, for example, we notice that among men 15% do not have a Research Productivity scholarship (PQ), and only 1% of women do not have a PQ. This shows that the criteria are more restrictive for women," said Brito.

Professor Marcos Nogueira Martins, director of USP's Institute of Physics (IF), showed some figures from a foreign institution to confirm that gender segregation occurs worldwide.

"At the University of Chicago, men make up 87% of the academic body. This is a global phenomenon. But in my academic experience, I do not notice any difference in ability between men and women, and I agree that there is a loss of talent by leaving women out. But it is difficult for a person to get interested in what they do not know or do not understand. Unfortunately, you can not make miracles with the education we have in Brazil," said Martins.

Photos: Marcos Santos/Jornal da USP and Leonor Calasans/IEA

José Teixeira Coelho Netto (left),
Jane Ohlmeyer and Guilherme Ary Plonski

It has been a while since it is rare to find research on natural sciences that does not involve interdisciplinary teams and the use of digital technologies. But the emphasis on these aspects is not exclusive of the natural sciences and is increasingly present in the social sciences and humanities.

The IEA hosted Jane Ohlmeyer, a professor of modern history and director of the Trinity Long Room Hub (TLRH), research institute of arts and humanities at Trinity College Dublin, on August 24, to address this issue.

The conference The Power of Interdisciplinary Research: the Example of Digital Humanities was coordinated by Guilherme Ary Plonski, deputy director of the Institute. The debater was José Teixeira Coelho Netto, coordinator of IEA's Computational Humanities Study Group.

This has been Ohlmeyer's sixth visit to Brazil. Her relations with USP are due to the interaction she has with the researchers of the W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH).

Ohlmeyer has reported her experience in a characteristic interdisciplinary work of what can be done in digital humanities: the project in 1641 Depositions, a collaboration of researchers from the arts, humanities, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Jane has also presented an overview of the TLRH.

Infrastructure and networks

Building a broad infrastructure for digital humanities in Ireland and in connection with the European landscape of the area has been a fundamental condition for the project's success, according to Ohlmeyer: "I realized that from the start, a decade ago."

She said that the digital humanities are well developed in Europe and that the reference is North America, which is "one step ahead".

One of the top 12 strategic infrastructures for research in digital humanities in Europe is the DARIAH-EH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities). "It is at the level of the CERN or the large telescopes supported by the European Commission, not in terms of resources, as they demand more, but in terms of policies in the scientific field. It is a research infrastructure federation across Europe."

According to Ohlmeyer, the Irish government has decided to support the digital humanities because there was lack of coordination and strategy in the area, which contrasted with the strong presence of information and communication technology companies in the country, such as Intel, Google, Twitter and IBM.

Besides the establishment of a coordination and the encouragement of a collaboration between research institutions, an engagement with European initiatives such as Dariah has been promoted, as well as the participation of the productive sector (the 1641 Depositions had the collaboration of IBM).

Ohlmeyer believes that researchers should pay attention to their new panorama in the humanities, taking the following items into account:

• the access to a wide range of primary sources, especially manuscripts and printed material;
• the access to knowledge, expertise, methodologies and practices in various areas;
• the adoption of standards and best practices;
• the possibility of preservation of information in the long term and in a sustainable manner;
• the conduction of experiments and innovation in partnership with researchers from multiple fields and disciplines.

Model

At the conference, Ohlmeyer used the 1641 Depositions as model case: "These documents are considered the most controversial of Irish history. It is a unique source of information about the causes and events related to the 1641 rebellion in Ireland against England, when tens of thousands of people died, and for the social, economic, cultural, religious and politic history of the country. "

According to her, the 31 volumes of manuscripts with 8000 testimonies of Protestant men and women about the events related to the rebellion have been kept for hundreds of years in the library of Trinity College Dublin. "No one had access to them. They were only used for anti-Catholic propaganda in the past." The testimonies deal with loss of property and possessions, military activity and the alleged crimes of the Irish rebels, including murders, imprisonments, beatings and even denudation of people.

The first finding of the project's team was that it would be necessary to obtain € 1 million to do it. The funds were obtained from the Irish government, British universities (Cambridge and Aberdeen) and the collaboration of IBM.

The project has provided care to the conservation of the manuscripts and their digitization, transcription, transformation into digital text and online publishing, "but since I do not fully trust in the digital world I have decided to also publish them on paper," said the researcher.

Ohlmeyer said that the project's implementation has been an exciting challenge for computer scientists, because "they love the challenge of working with what they call 'dirty data'. In the case of the manuscripts, the 'dirt' consisted of lack of consistency and predictability in everything (capitalization, punctuation, spelling, syntax and semantics).

Other features of the project, she said, were the fact that the domain of the area is restricted to historians of the 17^th century, without the participation of computer scientists and computational linguists, and the difficulty in capturing semi-structured, structured and unstructured data.

The project was attended by 17 experts in history, computing, physics, mathematics, linguistics, geography, literature, gender studies, librarianship, archival science and conservation, with the support of IBM, which provided a natural language analysis software.

Launched in 2010, the website of the project now has 23,000 registered users from all over the planet.

Ohlmeyer said that the 1641 Depositions became the leading project in digital humanities because it has been done at a high level. It has received various resources in Europe and has expanded to other projects in digital humanities. "The most important derived initiative is the Cultura program, which deals with the standardization of 17^th-century English texts and their adaptation to modern English. Another result was the presence of the project in classrooms. Several other research projects related to it have also been carried out and presented in various publications."

Lessons

According to the historian, the main lessons learned during the development of the 1641 Depositions project have been:

• technology is transformative but not a substitute for reading the document and its context;
• infrastructure and standards are of fundamental importance;
• we need to do something sustainable which can migrate, be updated and become accessible in the future, for it does not result in a digital warehouse;
• the system should be developed in a way as good as the data, for it does not perpetuate mistakes;
• agility in identifying data is essential to the formulation of new questions in a survey;
• reciprocity: it takes a great deal of respect, trust and dependence among experts from the different involved areas to build a project like this.

Debate

After the conference, Teixeira Coelho asked Ohlmeyer about the real changes that digital technologies promote towards the humanities in order to work and educate in the universities. She said she realized that digital humanities were something specific when the Trinity College Dublin began to quote them in ads for hiring professors. "I noticed that they were a specific area. Currently there are six professors who are digital humanists at the university."

Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA who coordinates the Research Group Permanent Forum - Cultural System Between Public and Private, commented on the problem of institutional assessment and researchers through their digital production: "USP promoted a process of evaluation in 2015 and the website of the IEA was not considered relevant by the people invited to evaluate the Institute. We are far from the moment when people will start using statistics for the evaluation of digital platforms." He asked Ohlmeyer to elaborate on this issue in relation to Ireland and Europe.

Ohlmeyer said that there is still the problem of evaluation of the production area for progression in the careers of researchers: "It is still made from printed material, with articles being evaluated by peer reviewers. Reviewers are not interested in digital publications. I think there is still a long way for these digital results start to be considered serious academic publications."

Arlindo Phillipi Jr., former Director of Evaluation at CAPES, commented on the growth in the number of proposals for interdisciplinary graduate programs in Brazil and how they are evaluated. For him, the difficulty is still the lack of qualified evaluators to analyze this type of proposal, although they are great specialists in their disciplines. "There is a continuing need to work with our colleagues, trying to insert the idea that what is at stake is to solve the problem we are going to analyze, and not the discipline that we are going to use. We need to check that subjects have to gather up to achieve a very well explained problem, how to find solutions to it and which multi or interdisciplinary strategy should be used."

"We have new doctors in Brazil with an interdisciplinary profile. They still face problems when competing for places in some universities, but as their presence is growing, we are reaching a new balance of powers. They have shown that it is possible to do good research within this new profile. The problem is that there are only a few interdisciplinary journals in the country."

In relation to interdisciplinary research, she said that there are two points to be analyzed. This kind of work takes time because it is not easy, so it deserves more understanding of development agencies, which need to allow more time for their implementation, especially for the presentation of results. The other point is the difficulty of evaluation: "We do not know how to evaluate an interdisciplinary approach; it is difficult to find someone who feels equally comfortable in various disciplines."

For Plonski, another vocabulary to address the issue might be necessary: "When using 'inter, multi and transdisciplinarity' we are still stuck in the paradigm, in the anchor of disciplinarity". He said that Simon Schwartzman argues that there are two modes of knowledge production: one of them is based on the paradigm of discipline and involves a specific agenda, stable groups, career plans, hierarchy and other factors; the other one is motivated by the problems to be solved and involves temporary groups, lead switching, no hierarchy and other components.

Anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, former visiting professor at the IEA, said that he had to change his research methodology with the Bororo Indians in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso because they are already used to using digital technologies. Given this degree of presence of these technologies in society, Canevacci asked Ohlmeyer if digital humanities will have an impact beyond the academic environment. For her, by observing Ireland and Europe, the digital humanities are becoming a part of the cultural heritage language. She cited the Cultura program as an example, which has the creation of internet tools to be used especially by museums and art galleries among its objectives.

Ohlmeyer has also been asked about the dilemma between using resources to conserve physical information sources (manuscripts, books, works of art) or their scan. For her, if there is no other choice, one should invest in preservation, as the material can deteriorate in five or ten years, getting inappropriate for scanning.

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP; Trinity College Dublin

The dossier resumes the discussion on unemployment begun in a previous issue with seven articles by historians, sociologists and economists. The opening article, by Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa, from USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB), outlines the general characteristics of the labour market formation process in Brazil. The panorama analyzed by Barbosa addresses the colonial period up to the end of the process of industrialization (1930-80).

The set of texts also analyzes specific issues such as labour in the Northeast of Brazil, the effects of economic recession, the reduction of social protection of workers and inequality in the gender division of labour.

The section "Energy and Environment" contains five articles on national energy programs and shows that "conviviality is not always easy to ecological ideals and growth policies," according to the journal's editor, Alfredo Bosi.

This second aspect is discussed in an article by Helena Margarido Moreira and Wagner Costa Ribeiro on the position of China in the negotiations on climate change. The authors comment that China seeks to ensure the principle of differentiated responsibilities and be classified as a developing country, avoiding compromising its domestic goals of economic development. The same section presents texts on the interaction of botany and geography with anthropological and environmental bodies.

The articles of the section "Culture and Politics" address controversial issues of social sciences today: multiculturalism seen from the universal and the particular dialectic perspective; the analysis of the June 2013 demonstrations in Brazil from the perspective of the political culture of consumption; the debate on the relationship between science, expertise and democracy; and the treatment given by the media to the Quotas Act. The section also brings a history of the 25 years of work of the Escola de Governo (School of Government), an institution dedicated to explain the working mechanism of political institutions and to cooperate with the correction of the course of the Brazilian political life, according to one of its founders, jurist Fábio Konder Comparato.

Texts that address the indigenous people Arara Karo, computational complexity, and books on Walter Benjamin and Haiti complete the issue.

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

Labour market

Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa
Monica Duarte Dantas
Vivian Chieregati Costa
Roberto Véras de Oliveira
Magda Barros Biavaschi
José Alcides Figueiredo Santos
Luiz Vicente Fonseca Ribeiro
Maria Cristina Cacciamali
Fabio Tatei
Luana Passos de Souza
Dyeggo Rocha Guedes

Energy and Environment

Edgar Antonio Perlotti
Edmilson Moutinho dos Santos
Hirdan Katarina de Medeiros Costa
Marcilei Andrea Pezenatto Vignatti
Luiz Fernando Scheibe
Maria Assunta Busato
Antonio Salatino
Marcos Buckeridge
Raquel Dezidério Souto
Helena Margarido Moreira
Wagner Costa Ribeiro

Culture and Politics

Celso Frederico
Isleide Fontenelle
Maya Mitre
Maria Salete Magnoni
Fábio Konder Comparato

Indigenism

Betty Mindlin

Computation

José Roberto Castilho Piqueira

Reviews

Fabio Mascaro Querido
Cristine Koehler Zanella

At the end of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) in Nagoya, on March 18, the 13 participants presented the details of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on "Time" they have been working on since the first phase of the project in São Paulo.

The MOOC is the practical activity that has been asked to the participants as outcome of the ICA and was inspired by conferences, debates and workshops on the subject "Time", held both in São Paulo and in Nagoya.

The MOOC will be called 'Frontiers of Time: Exploring the Last Great Mystery' and will be hosted at Coursera's database, an online course platform created by five major American universities, of which USP is a partner.

There will be five lessons plus a video about the production of the course. Each lesson will take about one hour and have a text with approximately 7,000 words. The topics of the classes will be:

1. Introduction: Aspects of Time

2. Is the Present Special?

3. Time, Change and Cultural Differences

4. Is Time Different for Humans and Non-Humans?

5. How Do We Evaluate Time?

Each class will be divided into thematic sections. The first of them (Introduction: Aspects of Time), for example, will have four sections: 1) What is Time? 2) How do we perceive time? 3) How Do We Think About Time? 4) How do we use Time?.

The scripts will be ready in June and the filming is scheduled for August. One of the proposals is that the filming - with the performance of some of the participants - occurs at the research base of USP's Oceanographic Institute in Ubatuba, on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. Other alternative locations for the class production will still be considered.

Photo: IAR / Nagoya University

Political scientist, philosopher and diplomat Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, former National Secretary of Culture and author of the cultural incentive law that bears his name, will give the inaugural conference of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, of which he is the first holder.

Rouanet will address the influence of modernity in the economic, political and cultural contexts through the ideas of sociologists Max Weber and Manuel Castells, and philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Modernity and its Ambivalences will take place on May 17, at 10 am, in the former University Board Room.

The debaters will be jurist Celso Lafer, former Minister of Foreign Affairs; philosopher Renato Janine Ribeiro, former Minister of Education and coordinator of the IEA's Research Group The Future Inquires Us; and sociologist Barbara Freitag, professor emeritus from the University of Brasília (UnB). The opening of the seminar will be attended by the president of USP, Marco Antonio Zago, by the director of the IEA, Paulo Saldiva, and by Eduardo Saron, director at the Itaú Cultural Institute.

A project of the IEA in partnership with the Itaú Cultural Institute, the Olavo Setubal Chair will be a space to discuss and promote activities related to the world of arts, with special focus on cultural management. Its goal is to foster interdisciplinary reflections on academic, artistic, cultural and social issues of regional and global scope.

The concept of modernity

According to Rouanet there are still doubts about the concept of modernity even though it is being discussed more than ever before. One of the definitions has been presented by sociologist Anthony Giddens: "Modernity refers to the ways of life and the social organization that emerged in Europe from the 18th century, and subsequently became global in their influence."

However, Rouanet believes that "if we want to give a concrete content to this mature chronological frame, we should go back to the classical analyzes of Max Weber," for whom modernity is the product of cumulative rationalization processes that occurred:

• economically – free mobility of production factors, wage labor, rational techniques of accounting and management, and continual incorporation of science and technology to the production process;
• politically – replacement of the decentralized feudal state by the centralized national state;
• culturally – secularization of traditional worldviews (Entzauberung) and their internal division into value spheres (Wertsphären): science, morality, law and art.
  

Rouanet seeks to integrate these Weberian categories in the context of Habermas's theory of communicative action. As a case study, he proposes the analysis of more abstract questions about books and their future prospects in the face of new technologies of information and communication, taking advantage of Castells's approach.

Photo: Cecília Bastos/USP

Kirill Thompson addresses the perception of time in consciousness.

Daoism, Zen, Time Awareness, and the Reality of Time was the title of the lecture given by Kirill O. Thompson, from the National Taiwan University (NTU), during the Humanities / Social Sciences Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 10.

An expert on neo-Confucian philosophy and Chinese philosophy, Thompson has examined the perception of time in the human consciousness according to Eastern traditions such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism, and compared this notion to the Western philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Taoism and Zen Buddhism are religious philosophical traditions of East Asia intended to reorient the common personal experience to a broader life experience. The consciousness of time is a part of that shift, said Thompson.

For Kant, time is not simply inserted in the experience: time is the very condition of the experience, the pure form of inner intuition. Time summarizes the flow or the pulse of consciousness and thus the mind synchronizes and applies this time to the world's events flow, said Thompson, who is a professor at the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, and serves as Associate Dean for Humanities at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IHS) of the NTU.

The German philosopher also conceptualizes the perception of objects as a basic experience that requires "time" to allow the mind to refer to memory and identify the object. Neurologically, this happens in a "self-centered" way because it is molded by mental filters. It is a sensory response that requires "time" to be filtered by personal experience, said Thompson.

The recognition or perception of objects or people is an experiential phenomenon reasoned by the Noumenon, which for Kant is inaccessible. The Noumenon (from the German Ding an sich, meaning "the thing itself") is the sphere of higher reality within the philosophic mind. It can also be understood as the essence of something or that what makes something what it is. The Noumenon exists in itself regardless of the conditions of the common experience phenomena, including time and space. In neurological terms the Noumenon is independent of mental filters of experience, said the professor.

Thus, the common experience is never a raw sensation; it is always conditioned by the forms of intuition and categories of understanding. The object, as a phenomenon, is seen in the context of subjective needs, desires, dislikes, goals or in addition to its own character and relationships.

According to the professor, the social sciences tend to value a self-centered point of view, referring rational interests as the great guide of ideal personal conduct. On the other hand, the Taoist response to existence is the negation of the ego and the dissolution of the mind filters.

Thus, the oldest Taoist text, the Laozi, challenges and refutes the independence and the ultimacy of objects, showing its origin from the non-being (invisible, formless) and mutual codependency. "But how could it be possible to experience that?," asked Thompson.

First, he said, we should note that the common egocentric experience is based on ego as a unified system or a set that brings together the expertise and its categories, and forms of intuition which filter and shape the experience. In this case, linear time is a condition for the exercise of memory, recalling past events and planing the sequence of future events.

In Taoism, the appropriation of time requires a "step back" in the common experience of being, and of its forms and categories of understanding. This involves a change of perspective, a general reorientation so that Laozi and Zen Buddhism can convey their message. The key is to relax and focus the mind through meditation.

One can directly see things as co-emerging and interdependent, according to Thompson. If this mindset - meditation - is successful, the result will be a dissolution of the intuition model, of the understanding categories, of the mind filters simultaneously including the dissolution of the ego, and of course of linear time. Meditation opens the path to be holistic and time gets suspended, said Thompson.

Thompson cited American neurologist James H. Austin, who engaged in holistic trial through Zen Buddhism. Author of Zen and the Brain, Austin seeks to relate the neural activity of the human brain and the practice of meditation. His book was awarded the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize in 1998.

"Austin underwent Zen Buddhist trial and tracked its impact on the neural processes during meditation. He confirmed that the internal neural metronome turns off in relation to clock time and thus time ceases. Such dissolution of the filters that connect the experience and divide subject and object open the path for a direct and holistic orientation," he said.

The sense of achronia (cessation of time, eternity) accompanies the deep kenshi and the satori experience when a person opens into the void. Thompson defines achronia as the absence of any sense of time during meditative detachment. It is not a sense of timelessness or loss of time.

The horizon of consciousness opens beyond all notions of previous limits. There are neither past nor present. This lack of time enters the nonverbal experience as eternity. Neurologically, this kind of orientation contrasts with the egocentric pattern of the Western experience outlined above.

In the allocentric experience - which has interests and considerations centered on the other, contrary to the egocentric orientation - the being can grasp objects as they really are. Instead of a subjective perception filtered by wants and needs, a person acquires an objective perception to themselves and to others.

When consciousness is freed from rigid categories and mental filters, the path will be open to more flexibility and fluidity in thought and action, which enhances creativity in the arts, in problem solving, in life management and in the field of ideas.

Ultimately, the Zen notion about the nature of Buddha in regard to "empty" and "enlightenment" complements Kant's Noumenon (Ding an sich), said Thompson. The philosopher's ideas are static and logically chained, and posit the object as it is, ie, prior to the intuition of taxes, categories and mental filters that shape the common experience.

In theory, the concept of the Noumenon (Ding an sich) encourages us to see through the phenomena as they primarily appear.

Linear time as pure form of inner intuition is a common experience condition. Given this form of intuition, the internal neural metronome follows the pulse and the flow of the experience from within, which also keeps us in sync with the flow of events in the world.

In contrast, at the deepest level of allocentric experience, when the ego is dissolved and the internal neural metronome stops, time is suspended. Therefore, time such as distance is related to the forms or time measuring systems, said Thompson.

Takehiro Ohya talks about the architecture implications for the jurisdictional field.

In cases of severe or fatal accidents, the victim's family would often like to turn back time to prevent the happening. But what if instead of going back in time societies and their institutions could count on environments able to avoid mistakes?

This proposal already exists on the so-callied choice architecture, a concept presented by Professor Takehiro Ohya, from the Keio University, during the Humanities / Social Sciences Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 10.

Ohya, who is a professor of jurisdictional law and an expert on philosophy of law, gave the lecture Time institutionalized and its transformation, showing some concepts of social control applied to the built environment. This is a kind of architecture theorized by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard University and creator of the creative commons licenses on the internet.

The choice architecture comes to how decisions are influenced by the way choices (things) are presented. This architecture can have a paternalistic bias or a libertarian paternalistic one, according to Ohya.

Bars that force people to walk in a particular place or direction, barriers in the subway or seats that do not allow people to lay down at airports are examples of the paternalistic bias because they give no choice to a person, cited Ohya.

On the other hand, he said, a diner could make healthy food more accessible and more visible at the expense of industrialized products. In this case, although the environment has an intervention by "positively influencing citizens in order to help them to take action for their own benefit," individuals are not prevented from eating whatever they want. The arrangement of food choices has the effect of reducing the consumption of "junk food" and increasing the consumption of healthy food.

According to the professor, there are four major forces that exert control in big societies: law, social conventions or traditions and religions, market and (most recently) architecture.

The physical environment influences decisions because the arrangement of things or the built structures can cause reactions in the use of a certain place, Oyha explained.

The choice architecture is based on the fact that we act intuitively or heuristically and not always behave as rational agents, Ohya said. In economic theory, the rational agent can be an individual or a firm that makes decisions with a view to their preferences and the efficient use of information. The aim is to rationalize their decisions to maximize costs, production, materials or other actions.

Social control through laws and rules is a further action and there may be those who are not able to be controlled by laws and rules (mentally or physically disabled ones, for instance), Ohya said. "On the other hand, one could argue that architecture could even control dogs and cats. But it can also not be effective in very specific cases," said the professor.

In social control through architecture there is no asymmetry before or after the action. It works regardless of age since social conditions remain the same. In the case of serious injury or loss of human life, the legislation of most countries assesses the value of life according to age and the ability to produce wealth that the person would still have. Therefore, in this case, the law is limited and asymmetric.

"The younger and the more you earn, the more you are worth. Does this mean that the life of a housewife or a worker, an elderly or a disabled one has no value? In this new social control model the asymmetry of time can disappear," Ohya said.

Photo: IAR/Nagoya

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.

The new issue (v. 13, No. 3) of Scientiae Studia, USP's Latin American Journal of Philosophy and History of Science, has been published. Seven articles comprise the book:

• Francis Bacon and the issue of human longevity, by Luciana Zaterka
• The idea of ​​nature for José Barbosa de Sá, with particular reference to plants, by Rafael Dias da Silva Campos and Christian Fausto Moraes dos Santos
• The alleged explanatory heteronomy of functional biology, by Gustavo Caponi
• Epigenesis and preformationism: X-rays of an unfinished antinomy, by Davide Vecchi and Isaac Hernández
• Natural selection and operant conditioning: a critique of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini's analogy, by Julio Torres Meléndez
• Othering, human biology and biomedicine, by Juanma Sánchez-Arteaga, Davide Rasella, Laia Ventura Garcia and Charbel El-Hani
• Controversies in climatology: the IPCC and the anthropogenic global warming, by José Correa Leite

The publication also features three reviews:

Supported by the IEA since the beginning of 2013, the journal has Professor Pablo Mariconda as editor. He is the coordinator of the Institute's Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology research group.

Scientiae Studia aims to make academic production in the fields of philosophy and history of science visible. Merging articles in Portuguese and Spanish, the journal pursues not only the dissemination of critical studies (historical, epistemological and ethical) on science and philosophy, but also a greater linguistic and cultural integration among the Latin American countries.

The journal can be purchased or read online.

The consequences of the Middle East conflicts put the impact of the astonishing figures of war and hunger refugees in evidence in the international agenda, with no similar situation in history.

The theme leads to the discussion of the principle of hospitality, defined by philosopher Jacques Derrida as the ability to receive the other as different, but essentially the same. It also raises a comparative analysis of the European and Brazilian reaction to the issue. The Challenge of Hospitality: Migrants and Refugees is the title of the debate to be held by the IEA on October 22, at 2.30 pm, in the Institute's Events Room.

This will be the second meeting of the Laboratory of Global Megatrends and Challenges to Democracy. The conference will have the coordination of Portuguese political scientist Álvaro de Vasconcelos, an assistant professor at the USP's Institute of International Relations (IRI), and the participation of Geraldo Adriano Godoy de Campos, a professor at the ESPM's course of international relations, and Sylvia Dantas, coordinator of the IEA's Intercultural Dialogues research group. The laboratory was started in June this year with the debate The Challenge of Identity-Based Nationalism.

"We have watched the drama of those who hoped to find refuge and hospitality and ended up finding walls, barbed wire, violence and mistrust in many countries that have 'fear of the other', especially Muslims and those who come from the Middle East," says Vasconcelos.

The war in Syria has forced four million people to leave the country and eight million to move internally. In addition to them there are war refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. Thus, the number of refugees in the world in 2014 reached 59.5 million according to estimates by the UN Refugee Agency.

The event will be broadcast live over the web.

Scholars show that Freud did not reduce his invention to a method of healing mental disorders. In his work, he has also focused on important works that addressed fields that were external to medical knowledge. Politics, however, ws included in his work with an indirect treatment, when the author addressed issues such as civilization, law or the libidinal foundations of leadership.

However, the scope of the unconscious theory on political matters has not been overlooked by the following generations. In fact, some schools of thought have been impacted directly by Freud's work, or even by its consequences and reinterpretations, such as those carried out by Jacques Lacan.

The explicit approach between contemporary political theory and psychoanalysis gets its first inspirations from the Frankfurt School: Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, besides Walter Benjamin.

The generation of French intellectuals of the 60s and 70s, among them Félix Guattari, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, takes up their essays and criticism in the possibilities of thinking with and against psychoanalysis.

Political thinkers like Cornelius Castoriadis, Ernesto Laclau, Norbert Elias, Slavoj Zizek and Zygmunt Bauman put the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan in the center of his works. Many of these writings would be impossible to be properly understood without the psychoanalytic knowledge.

Important similarities between the two fields have also been pointed out by Alan Badiou, Claude Lefort, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, among others.

Freud's estate was particularly vast and rich for political thought. Currently, one can say that Freud and psychoanalysis define ways of thinking politics within the political theory.

The panelists will seek to deepen and highlight important implications of these studies. Initially, the focus will be on the production of theorists known for their dialogues with psychoanalysis, including Norbert Elias and Walter Benjamin. This step will be completed by a conference and a round table on the thought of Hannah Arendt stressed at the thought of Freud and Lacan.

As future prospects, this meeting will seek to contribute to research on the psychoanalytic thought and its interface with contemporary political theory.

The organizers of the event are André Oliveira Costa and Gabriela Costardi.

Studies in this area, especially in the UK, Australia, the United States and sub-Saharan Africa, show that there is a diversity of social policies evolving to support these unpaid young care providers. However, it remains a hidden world which lacks global visibility and more knowledge on the theme.

Professor Saul Becker, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham and a specialist in this line of research, will address the theme at the conference Children Who Care – Global Perspectives on Children’s Hidden Care-Giving Roles within their Families, that will take place on October 21, in the IEA's Events Room, from 9.30 am to 12 pm. Ana Lydia Sawaya, coordinator of the IEA's Nutrition and Poverty Research Group and a professor at UNIFESP, will participate as a debater.

Becker's work has influenced the academic debate and the implementation of public policies and practices that are designed to meet the needs of young carers. In his speech, he will explore the hidden worlds of children who provide assistance and care to adults, showing how and why some countries have identified and legislated this role as that of a specific group that requires support and intervention. In most countries, these children and young people remain hidden, invisible and isolated, with negative consequences for their lives, families and society as a whole.

Studies in the area suggest that the informal care provided by the young in developed and developing nations can be located along a continuous flow of care. They also show that these young people have much in common, regardless of where they live or how the social security systems of their countries are developed. Thus, there is a global need for these young people to get recognized, identified, analyzed and assisted as a distinct group of "vulnerable children".

Through its Institute of Advanced Studies, the University of Birmingham is linked to the University-Based Institute of Advanced Studies (UBIAS), a network that brings together 34 institutes for advanced studies of the whole world. Created in 2010, it aims to promote the scientific exchange between generations, disciplines and cultures.