Journal articles on the topic 'Normativa beni culturali'

Il confronto, provocato da circostanze contingenti, tra Regno Unito e Italia, mette in evidenza un maggiore linearità e accessibilità delle norme che regolano l’invenzione di oggetti storici o archeologici nella normazione di Westminster. Non si deve sottovalutare l’importanza di prescrizioni facilmente reperibili e chiare: impedire totalmente la ricerca di testimonianze del passato è irrealistico, conviene fissare in maniera realistica le condizioni in cui questo può avvenire, incentivando chi faccia un ritrovamento a renderlo pubblico, sapendo di poter contare su un compenso e su un riconoscimento. La normativa italiana è in continua revisione, le politiche che ispirano la tutela dei beni culturali subiscono aggiornamenti e abbondano in misura e in dettagli. Orientarsi non è facile, le sanzioni per le infrazioni sono difficili da applicare, il commercio illegale finisce per essere redditizio.

Il saggio propone un'analisi storica degli interventi di promozione e tutela dei beni culturali a Catania nel secondo dopoguerra, periodo in cui sono emerse in maniera più dirompente le contraddizioni tra la tensione alla crescita economica, anche grazie a uno sviluppo edilizio spesso incontrollato, e la tutela monumentale, archeologica e paesaggistica, munita di strumenti normativi e tecnico-operativi.

Questo articolo vuole essere un contributo per cercare di applicare nel modo più corretto possibile il pensiero del Santo Padre espresso nell’Enciclica Evangelium Vitae (paragrafo n. 73) alla materia della procreazione artificiale umana con specifico riferimento alla situazione italiana. L’analisi si articola su tre fronti: giuridico, politico, educativo-culturale. Per quanto riguarda l’ambito della scienza giuridica, l’Autore, - dopo aver chiarito che “vuoto legislativo” non significa “vuoto normativo” - effettua un’opera di ricognizione per vedere quali sono le norme dell’ordinamento giuridico italiano che regolano oggi la nuova materia della procreazione artificiale. Questa “fotografia” è finalizzata a capire qual è il livello di miglioramento e di peggioramento giuridico introdotto da una ipotizzabile legge confrontando in questo senso la normativa vigente con la riforma approvata dalla Camera il 18 giugno 2002. L’indagine nel campo politico muove dall’intento di valutare il comportamento del parlamentare cattolico che intende modificare con una legge una situazione ingiusta già esistente. A tal fine vengono inizialmente ripercorse le tappe delle procedure dell’iter legislativo e poi vengono considerate le condizioni politiche che possono farlo progredire e giungere a compimento. Gli aspetti educativo-culturali riguardano l’esigenza di fare chiarezza in ordine ai valori in gioco nella loro interezza. In sostanza l’appoggio ad una legge “imperfetta” migliorativa dell’esistente e comunque espressione del massimo bene possibile raggiungibile nel dato momento storico, deve accompagnarsi ad un’opera di illuminazione delle coscienze. E’ questo compito soprattutto dell’azione pastorale della Chiesa, ma anche del parlamentare cattolico la cui posizione deve “essere chiara e a tutti nota”. Per questo, conclude Casini, “l’azione educativa non deve sentirsi estranea all’impegno per ottenere una legge, che, per quanto ‘imperfetta’, si muova nella direzione dello stesso valore che presiede al messaggio educativo e culturale. In definitiva spiegare anche le ragioni della legge ‘imperfetta’ i limiti e gli obiettivi finali irrinunciabili, è, anch’esso, un aspetto di rilevante significato educativo e culturale”.

Some regions in Indonesia such as West Sumatra, Yogyakarta, Jakarta and other regions, often found traditional Bendi transportation which is used to transport people or goods from one place to the agreed destination. Apart from functioning as a public transportation tool, Bendi also has an important role in tourism, which is used around to transport tourists both from within and outside the country. The activity carried out by Bendi can increase the income of the local people who use Bendi as a regional tourism promotion tool. How is the existence of a Traditional Transport Tool in the midst of modern transportation in Indonesia?; How is this traditional Bendi transport regulated in Indonesia’s national regulations? and What is the support of traditional Bendi transportation for regional economic development where its position is as a means of transportation? Is the subject matter in writing this paper. The research method used is normative, using secondary data and primary data as supporters, through interviews with some observers of traditional transport equipment. Then it will be analyzed descriptively. The conclusion obtained is that in a certain area, there are provisions for regional regulations that regulate the existence of these Bendi traditional transportation equipment, such as in the Yogyakarta area. Traditional Bendi transportation support as a supporter of the regional economy through tourism activities is very large, such as those found in the Yogyakarta area, where Bendi is always there to surround tourist areas that deliver domestic and foreign tourists in visiting tourist areas, as well as in West Sumatra, Padang, Bendi still exists even though it is rare, but it is still used as a tourism and cultural transport tool.

This study discusses the overview of Criminology Crime Against Scams Buy Sell Online. Who in real life is very rife due to the lack of security and surveillance conducted by public authorities, so that many victims of criminal fraud and selling online, supported and easy to commit a criminal act of buying and selling online with a variety of modes available. To resolve the problem it should be known what are the factors that caused the criminal act of buying and selling online in terms of criminology. And how do the efforts of law enforcement officers in dealing with criminal fraud and selling online. Writing of this method normative empirical research that aims to make the data in a systematic, factual, and accurate about the facts and what happens on the field sebenrnya. With a data sekuder and as a source of primary data. Factors that cause the Crime Fraud Buy Sell Online influenced by various factors such as economic factors, environmental factors, social and cultural factors, factors easily commit crimes of fraud and selling online, factor the lack of risk of being caught by

SummaryIn 1989, the age of power political realism ended. The conditions were set to replace the prevailing Hobbesian model of peace by deterrence with the considerably more challenging Kantian model of peace by right. If, however, Huntington's paradigm of fighting civilizations were right, we would have to forget Kant and remember Hobbes. Sober rationality, healthy distrust, striving for power accumulation and all the other instruments from the realist's toolbox of political prudence are very well suited to facilitate political self-assertion in an age of violently clashing cultures. However, this helplessness is not well grounded. Considering that from the very beginning liberalism is a theory of religious and ethical pluralism and well-experienced in dealing with problems of multiculturalism, it is at least possible to argue for a weak liberal universalism which provides normative foundations for a global order of peacefully living together. Of course, conceptual and moral modesty is crucial. If the human rights doctrine wants to defend its universal claim in the face of cultural diversity (which is defined as culturally different interpretations of a good, true and perfect human life), it has to restrict itself to the conditions of esse: the pre-cultural and sheer natural conditions of human being and human coexistence. However, the formulation of the conditions of bene esse (which enable human flourishing, let persons thrive and furnish human living with sense and significance) has to be left to culture and its authorities and belief systems which buttress a cultural constitution of meaning, both theologically and metaphysically. Traditional natural rights theory knew that both have to go together, and that the esse-enabling duties necessarily enjoy priority. No cultural conception of thriving life and existential significance can be accepted which contradicts the fundamental imperatives and conditions of pure human existence and coexistence.

The influence of globalization that occurs today has made information and communication technology became something very important for society because it presents a world without boundaries, distance, space, and time. This has made changes to the lifestyles of the people as well as changed the social, economic, cultural, security, and law enforcement. This research was conducted with the aim of describing the rights and obligations of the parties in an Instagram trade agreement and the legal consequences of negligence on an Instagram trade agreement. This research was conducted using normative legal research methods. The results of this study showed that the rights and obligations of the parties to the engagement on Instagram are regulated in the PK Law. Consumers and business actors have their respective rights and obligations. In addition, the legal consequences for a debtor/party who has the obligation to perform in the engagement but has committed negligence, namely: he must pay compensation suffered by the creditor/party who has the right to receive achievement (vide Article 1243 of the Civil Code); he must accept the decision of the engagement accompanied by payment of compensation (vide Article 1267 of the Civil Code); he must accept the transfer of risk from the moment of failure (vide Article 1237 paragraph (2) of the Civil Code); and he must pay court fees if litigated in court (vide Article 181 paragraph (1) HIR).

Recent anthropological scholarship on Islam has tended to carve out the ‘everyday’ as a space of Muslim life that has the potential to escape the normativity of religious discourses. In this paper, I discuss how the special issue edited by Di Puppo and Schmoller critically engages these debates by first moving the lens of attention from the religious to the ‘secular’ sphere as the source of normative discourse. The essays collected in the special issue focus indeed on the state’s and lay officials’ discourses in post-Soviet, self-declared secular Russia as the normative framework that defines much of the commitment and self-understanding of Muslims in the region. But the special issue does more. It also shows that far from remaining stalled in their own respective domains, normative discourses and ‘daily practices’ intertwine profoundly, as Muslims navigate through the normative dichotomies that are imposed on them by national and supranational global discourses. In the process, Muslims in post-Soviet Russia are able to bend these denominations to their needs, as they struggle to see legitimised their status of citizens belonging to a minority religious confession. In this vein, I conclude by suggesting that rather than reproducing static oppositions between the levels of discourse and that of practice, it is to the mutual interactions between the two and to the alternative possibilities that are disclosed by Muslim life within and without overdetermined limits that we have to turn when investigating the multiplicity and diversity of Islam in Post-Soviet Russia and beyond.

Il nefrologo, che si confronta con tutti i problemi inerenti all'insufficienza renale, è anche da sempre principale gestore della terapia emodialitica. Per tale motivo tocca al nefrologo, in prima istanza, occuparsi dell'accesso vascolare disponendone l'allestimento, la sorveglianza e la manutenzione a garanzia della possibilità di effettuare il trattamento sostitutivo. Rispetto a quanto avviene in altri paesi, in Italia l'attività dell'accesso non è ad oggi standardizzata né strutturata; ciascun centro dialisi si organizza in funzione delle capacità dei nefrologi ivi operanti e delle collaborazioni di altri specialisti presenti nell'ospedale, spesso senza un percorso strutturato e con modalità di intervento per lo più fondate sulla disponibilità personale e sul volontarismo. Partendo dalla storia dell'accesso vascolare in Italia, abbiamo individuato tre tipologie organizzative che correlano, da un lato, con il contesto storico in cui sono sorte e, dall'altro, con il progresso, in termini di dispositivi medici e competenze specialistiche, che ha via via modificato i comportamenti. Il modello organizzativo “primordiale” vede il nefrologo confezionare e correggere personalmente gli accessi disponibili in quell'epoca. Nel modello polispecialistico, che nasce successivamente, il nefrologo inizia a delegare ad alti specialisti, più competenti sul versante tecnico, singole fasi del lavoro; resta colui che inizia il percorso e detta i tempi ma perde, talora, il controllo della gestione complessiva. Nel modello strutturale integrato, ideale ma non ancora integralmente realizzabile, il chirurgo dedicato all'accesso dialitico ed il radiologo interventista interagiscono da vicino con il nefrologo, che funge da regista, coordinatore e amministratore di tutto il processo di gestione dell'accesso vascolare. La formazione culturale specifica e necessaria e la conoscenza del programma terapeutico complessivo sono condivise dal team dell'accesso. In tale modello integrato dovrebbero essere trovate soluzioni perché anche la responsabilità professionale ed il rimborso amministrativo risultino bene “integrate” tra i vari specialisti ed operatori sanitari che partecipano all'attività. Il rimborso a D.R.G. com'è attualmente regolato presenta incongruenze e può produrre effetti contrari alla migliore cura del paziente. Le Aziende ospedaliere attualmente non riservano all'accesso vascolare, parte irrinunciabile della terapia dialitica, l'attenzione necessaria e non comprendono come una corretta gestione del problema, fondata su percorsi organizzati, migliori la qualità di vita del paziente e contenga il costo assistenziale della dialisi. La gestione complessiva dell'accesso vascolare dialitico non può più fondarsi, attualmente, solo sulla “buona volontà” del nefrologo dializzatore, ma richiede regole strutturali. Pertanto andrebbero definite le motivazioni professionali mediante l'attribuzione di precisi compiti, con lo scopo di meglio identificare e minimizzare il “rischio organizzativo”. L'individuazione di meccanismi economico-organizzativi-normativi che privilegino anzitutto l'ottenimento del risultato e, a seguire, che premino il lavoro di tutta la squadra che l'ha generato è la condizione prima per creare il modello integrato. è più che mai tempo che l'accesso vascolare entri a pieno titolo nel sistema qualità della dialisi e per farlo, a nostro avviso, il modello organizzativo integrato è l'unica soluzione possibile.

1 Modo de enfoque do problemaTodo e qualquer estudo de direito há de partir não de análises pré-jurídicas ou sociológicas, mas é imperioso que seja ele perquirido à luz do Direito positivo. Despiciendo, daí, todo envolvimento com posições e estudos realizados em outros países, salvo para aprimoramento cultural. Evidente que a análise do Direito comparado passa a interessar se o direito alienígena possuir norma igual ou assemelhada à existente no Direito brasileiro. A menção retrospectiva do direito comparado resultaria inútil, da perspectiva de utilidade prática deste trabalho. Mesmo porque, como assinala Marcelo Caetano “há países onde o expropriado pode requerer a reversão ou retrocessão dos bens, restituindo a indenização recebida, ou o expropriante tem o dever de oferecer os bens ao expropriado mediante a devolução do valor pago" (Princípios fundamentais do Direito Administrativo, 1977, p. 468) enquanto que "noutros países entende-se que, em qualquer caso, a conversão dos bens desapropriados no montante da indenização paga é definitiva. Portanto, nunca haverá lugar a reversão ou retrocessão dos bens” (idem, ibidem). Afigura-se-nos dispensável e sem qualquer utilidade prática a apresentação de uma resenha da doutrina estrangeira a propósito do tema. Apenas será feita menção a alguns autores, na medida em que suas afirmações interessarem à análise. Observe-se, tão-somente que o direito de retrocessão em espécie é reconhecido em diversas legislações. Na Itália há previsão legal (art. 60 da Lei 2.359, de 25.6.1865) o mesmo ocorrendo na França (art. 54 do Dec. 58.997, de 23. 10. 58, que fixa o prazo de 10 anos a contar do decreto de desapropriação para que se requeira a retrocessão). Em Portugal há dispositivo semelhante (art. 8 º da Lei 2 .030, de 22.6.48); o que acontece também na Espanha (art. 54 da Lei de 15. 12. 54) e na Alemanha (Lei de 23. 2.57, em seu § 102) Demais de tal inicial observação, perigoso é o estudo de qualquer instituto jurídico atrelado à lei. Impõe-se a análise de determinado instituto a partir da Constituição. Daí inicia-se o estudo da retrocessão. 2 Desapropriação. Desvio de poderDispõe o § 22 do art. 153 da Lei Maior "que é assegurado o direito de propriedade, salvo o caso de desapropriação por necessidade ou utilidade pública ou por interesse social, mediante previa e justa indenização em dinheiro...”. Assegura-se o direito de propriedade que cede apenas, ante o interesse coletivo, representado pelo Estado. Ao mesmo tempo em que garante a propriedade, a Constituição assegura ao Estado o poder de retirá-la mediante desapropriação. Esta pode ser entendida como "o procedimento administrativo através do qual o Poder Público compulsoriamente despoja alguém de uma propriedade e a adquire para si, mediante indenização, fundada em um interesse público" (Elementos de Direito Administrativo, Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello, 1980, p. 188). Caracteriza-se a desapropriação pela retirada compulsória do bem do domínio particular, com sua transferência ao domínio público, sob fundamento de interesse público mediante indenização. O fulcro da permissão legal para a transferência do domínio é o interesse público, ou seja, finalidade prevista no próprio ordenamento jurídico a ser perseguido pelo Estado. Sob a rubrica interesse público albergam-se todos os conteúdos possíveis de utilidade coletiva desde que alcançados pelo sistema de normas (sob o rótulo interesse público acolhe-se a necessidade ou utilidade pública e o interesse social). O poder de desapropriação deflui do domínio eminente que possui o Poder Público sobre todas as coisas materiais e imateriais sujeitas ao âmbito espacial de validade do sistema jurídico. O poder de desapropriação pode ser decomposto em três aspectos: a) transferência compulsória de alguma coisa; b) mediante indenização e c) sob o fundamento de interesse público. A desapropriação, como forma originária de aquisição de domínio, implica na compulsoriedade da transferência do bem do domínio particular para o público. Sempre haverá indenização, devidamente apurada através do processo próprio ou mediante acordo de vontades. E, o que mais nos interessa, há que vir fundamentada em interesse público, sob pena de invalidade. A competência, no Direito, não é dada a qualquer título. Sempre é outorgada a determinado agente para que persiga interesses coletivos ou mais propriamente denominados públicos, sendo estes apurados pela análise de todo o sistema de normas. A visão completa da competência apenas pode ser entrevista, pois, em contraste com a finalidade descrita na norma legal. Desviando-se o agente administrativo dos fins que lhe foram traçados pelo sistema de normas, incide no desvio de poder (ou de finalidade, como dizem alguns). 3 Conceito de retrocessãoA retrocessão implica no direito do expropriado de retomar a propriedade do imóvel que lhe fora retirada compulsoriamente pelo Poder Público. Os léxicos consignam que "retrocessão é o ato pelo qual o adquirente de um bem transfere de volta a propriedade desse bem àquele de quem o adquiriu" (Novo Dicionário Aurélio, lª ed., p. 1.231). Assinala Oliveira Cruz que "a retrocessão é um instituto de Direito Público, destinado a fazer voltar ao domínio do desapropriado os bens que saíram do seu patrimônio, por efeito de uma desapropriação por utilidade pública" (Da desapropriação, p. 119). E, acrescenta que "a retrocessão tem, indiscutivelmente, uma feição real porque significa um direito que só se desliga do imóvel quando preenchidos os fins determinantes da desapropriação" (ob. cit., p. 121). Assim entendida a retrocessão, como defluente do próprio preceito constitucional que assegura a propriedade e resguarda sua retirada apenas e exclusivamente pela desapropriação por necessidade, utilidade pública ou interesse social, não há como confundi-la com a preempção ou prelação, ou assimilá-la a qualquer tipo de direito pessoal. A fixação de tal premissa é fundamental para todo o desenvolvimento do trabalho e para alicerçar as conclusões que serão apontadas ao final. Daí porque não se pode concordar com a assertiva feita por alguns autores de que se cuida de simples obrigação imposta ao Poder Público de oferecer ao ex-proprietário o bem que lhe desapropriou, se este não tiver o destino para o qual fora expropriado (Múcio de Campos Maia, "Ensaio sobre a retrocessão", in RDA, 34/1-11). Pela própria dúvida no conteúdo do conceito, já os autores manifestaram-se surpresos e a jurisprudência claudicou sobre a análise do tema. Muitos julgados, inclusive, chegaram a admitir a inexistência da retrocessão no Direito brasileiro. Mas, pela análise que será feita e pelas conclusões a que se chegará, ver-se-á não só da existência do instituto no Direito brasileiro, sendo despicienda a indagação do Direito Civil a respeito, defluindo o instituto da só análise do texto constitucional brasileiro. A retrocessão é mero corolário do direito de propriedade, constitucionalmente consagrado e decorre do direito emergente da não utilização do bem desapropriado para o fim de interesse público. Sob tal conteúdo é que o conceito será analisado. 4 Desenvolvimento histórico, no BrasilEm estudo sobre o aspecto histórico do desenvolvimento da retrocessão no Direito brasileiro Ebert Chamoun escreveu que o inc. XXII do art. 179 da Constituição do Império, de 25. 3. 1824 dispôs sobre a possibilidade da desapropriação. E a Lei provincial 57, de 18.3.1836 pela vez primeira cuidou da retrocessão, assegurando que, na hipótese de desapropriação caberia "recurso à Assembleia Legislativa provincial para a restituição da propriedade ... " A admissibilidade da retrocessão foi aceita pelo STF que assim deixou decidido: “que abrindo a mesma Constituição à plenitude o direito de propriedade no art. 72, § 17, a exceção singular da desapropriação por utilidade pública presumida, desde a certeza de não existir tal necessidade, o ato de desapropriação se equipara a violência (V) e deve se rescindir mediante ação do espoliado" (O Direito, vol. 67, 1895, p. 47). A referência é à Constituição republicana de 24.2.1891. Em sua Nova Consolidação das Leis Civis vigentes em 11 de agosto de 1899, Carlos de Carvalho escrevia o art. 855 "se verificada a desapropriação, cessar a causa que a determinou ou a propriedade não for aplicada ao fim para o qual foi desapropriada, considera-se resolvida a desapropriação, e o proprietário desapropriado poderá reivindicá-la". Diversas leis cuidaram do assunto, culminando com a edição do art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400) que dispôs: ''A União, o Estado, ou o Município, oferecerá ao ex-proprietário o imóvel desapropriado, pelo preço por que o foi, caso não tenha o destino para que se desapropriou". Criou-se, assim, o direito de preempção ou preferência, como cláusula especial à compra e venda. As Constituições que se seguiram igualmente asseguraram o direito de propriedade (a de 1934, no art. 113, 17; a de 1937, no art. 122, 14; a de 1946, no § 16 do art. 141). A Constituição de 1967 igualmente protegeu, juridicamente, a propriedade, permanecendo a garantia com a EC 1/69. 5 Hipóteses de retrocessãoO instituto da retrocessão foi bem analisado por Landi e Potenza quando escrevem que "fatta l'espropriazione, se l'opera non siasi eseguita, e siano trascorsi i termini a tal uopo concessi o prorogati, gli espropriati potranno domandare che sia dall'autorità giudiziaria competente pronunciata la decadenza dell'ottenuta dichiarazione di pubblica utilità, e siano loro restituiti i beni espropriati. In altri termini, la mancata esecuzione dall'opera dimostra l'insussistenza dell’interesse pubblico, che aveva determinato l'affievolimento del diritto di proprietà" (Manuale di Diritto Amministrativo, 1960, p. 501). Mas não é só a falta de destinação do bem a interesse público ou a não construção da obra para que teria sido o imóvel desapropriado que implica na possibilidade de retrocessão, afirmam os autores citados. Também no caso em que ''l'opera pubblica sia stata eseguita: ma qualche fondo, a tal fine espropriato, non abbia ricevuto in tutto o in parte la prevista destinazione" (ob. cit., p. 501). A retrocessão, pois, deflui, do que se lê da lição dos autores transcritos, na faculdade de o expropriado reaver o próprio bem declarado de utilidade pública, - quando lhe tenha sido dado destinação diversa da declarada no ato expropriatório ou não lhe tenha sido dada destinação alguma. De outro lado, esclarece André de Laubadere que "si l'immeuble exproprié ne reçoit pas la destination prévue dans la déclaration d'utilité publique, il est juste que le propriétaire exproprié puisse le récupérer. C'est l'institution de la rétrocession" (Traité deDroit Administratif, 6." ed., 2. 0 vol., p. 250). No direito brasileiro, os conceitos são praticamente uniformes. Eurico Sodré entende que "retrocessão é o direito do ex-proprietário de reaver o imóvel desapropriado, quando este não tenha tido utilização a que era destinado" (A desapropriação por necessidade ou utilidade pública, 1928, pp. 85-86). Firmino Whitaker afirma que "é direito que tem o ex-proprietário de readquirir o imóvel desapropriado mediante a restituição do valor recebido, quando não tenha sido o mesmo imóvel aplicado em serviço de ordem pública" (Desapropriação, 3ª ed., p. 23, 1946). Cretella Junior leciona que "é o direito do proprietário do imóvel desapropriado de reavê-lo ou de receber perdas e danos, pelos prejuízos sofridos, sempre que ocorrer inaproveitamento, cogitação de venda ou desvio de poder do bem expropriado" (Comentários às leis de desapropriação, 2.ª ed., 2.ª tiragem, 1976, p. 409). Fazendo a distinção prevista por Landi e Potenza, escreve Marienhoff que "la retrocesión, en cambio, sólo puede tener lugar en las dos siguientes hipótesis: a) cuando, después de la cesión amistosa o avenimiento, o después de terminado el juicio de expropiación, el expropiante afecta el bien o cosa a un destino diferente del tenido en cuenta por el legislador ai disponer la expropiación y hacer la respectiva calificación de utilidad publica; b) cuando efectuada la cesión amistosa o avenimiento, o terminado el juicio de expropiación, y transcurrido cierto plazo el expropiante no le dá al bien o cosa destino alguno" (Tratado de Derecho Administrativo, T. IV, 2ª ed., p. 369). Embora os autores costumem distinguir as hipóteses de cabimento da retrocessão, parece-nos que no caso de o Poder Público alterar a finalidade para que houvera decretado a desapropriação não existe o direito à retrocessão. Isto porque a Constituição Federal como já se viu, alberga no conceito "interesse público" a mais polimorfa gama de interesses. Assim, se desapropriado imóvel para a construção de uma escola, mas constrói-se um hospital, não nos parece ter havido "desvio de poder" ou de "finalidade". Simplesmente houve desvio do fim imediato, mas perdura o fim remoto. O interesse público maior, presente no ordenamento jurídico ficou atendido. Simplesmente, por interesses imediatos do Poder Público, mas sempre dentro da competência outorgada pela legislação, o agente entendeu de dar outra destinação à coisa expropriada. Em tal hipótese, não parece ter havido desvio de poder, hábil a legitimar a retrocessão. De tal sentir é Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello quando afirma "convém ressaltar enfaticamente, contudo, que a jurisprudência brasileira pacificou-se no entendimento de que se o bem desapropriado para uma específica finalidade for utilizado em outra finalidade pública, não há vício algum que enseje ao particular ação de retrocessão (tal como é concebida hoje), considerando que, no caso, inexistiu violação do direito de preferência" (ob. cit., p. 210). Cita o autor a jurisprudência mencionada (RDP, 2/213, 3/242 e em RDA, 88/158 e 102/188). A doutrina é remançosa em afirmar a possibilidade de ser o bem empregado em outra finalidade diversa da alegada no decreto expropriatório ou na lei, desde que também de utilidade pública (Adroaldo Mesquita da Costa, in RDA, 93 /377; Alcino Falcão, Constituição Anotada, vol. II, pp. 149/SO; Carlos Maximiliano, Comentários à Constituição Brasileira, 1954, vol. III, p. 115; Diogo Figueiredo Moreira Neto, Curso de Direito Administrativo, vol. 2, p. 116; Ebert Chamoun, Da retrocessão nas desapropriações, pp. 74 e ss.; Hely Lopes Meirelles, Direito Administrativo Brasileiro, 2.ª ed., p. 505; Pontes de Miranda, Comentários à Constituição de 1967, com a Emenda Constituição n.º 1, de 1969, T. V, pp. 445/6; Cretella Junior, Tratado de Direito Administrativo, vol. IX, pp. 165/6). A jurisprudência a respeito é farta (RTJ, 39/495, 42/195 e 57 /46). Mais recentemente decidiu-se que "não cabe retrocessão quando o imóvel expropriado tem destino diverso, vias de utilidade pública" (RDA, 127 /440). Poucos autores manifestam-se em sentido contrário, ou seja, pela inadmissibilidade de aplicação do destino do bem em outra finalidade que não a invocada no decreto ou lei que estipula a desapropriação (Hélio Moraes de Siqueira, A retrocessão nas desapropriações, p. 61 e Miguel Seabra Fagundes, Da desapropriação no Direito brasileiro, 1949, p. 400). Tais indicações foram colhidas na excelente Desapropriação – Indicações de Doutrina e Jurisprudência de Sérgio Ferraz, pp. 122/124. Já diversa é a consequência quando o imóvel não é utilizado para qualquer fim, ficando ele sem destinação específica, implicando, praticamente, no abandono do imóvel. Daí surge, realmente, o problema da retrocessão. Mas, emergem questões prévias a serem resolvidas. Como se conta o prazo, se é que há, para que se legitime o expropriado, ativamente? Em consequência da solução a ser dada à questão anterior, cuida-se a retrocessão de direito real ou pessoal, isto é, a não utilização do bem expropriado enseja reivindicação ou indenização por perdas e danos? Estas questões são cruciais e têm atormentado os juristas. Passemos a tentar equacioná-las. 6 Momento do surgimento do direito de retrocessãoEntende Cretella Júnior que há dois momentos para que se considere o nascimento do direito de ingressar com a ação de retrocessão. Mediante ato expresso ou por ato tácito. "Mediante ato expresso, que mencione a desistência do uso da coisa expropriada e notifique o ex-proprietário de que pode, por ação própria, exercer o direito de retrocessão" (Comentários às leis de desapropriação, p. 415) ou através de ato tácito, ou seja, pela conduta da Administração que permita prever a desistência de utilização do bem expropriado, possibilitando ao antigo proprietário o exercício do direito de preferência...” (ob. cit., p. 416). De igual teor a lição de Eurico Sodré, A desapropriação por necessidade ou utilidade pública, 2.ª ed., p. 289. A jurisprudência já se manifestou em tal sentido (RTJ, 57 /46). Ebert Chamoun (ob. cit., pp. 80 e ss.) entende que apenas por ato inequívoco da administração tem cabimento a ação de retrocessão. Jamais se poderia julgar pela procedência da ação que visasse a retrocessão, desde que o Poder Público alegue que ainda vá utilizar o bem. Afirma o citado autor que "é assim, necessário frisar que o emprego, pelo expropriante do bem desapropriado para fim de interesse público não precisa ser imediato. Desde que ele consiga demonstrar que o interesse público ainda é presente e que a destinação para esse escopo foi simplesmente adiada, porque não é oportuna, exequível ou aconselhável, deve ser julgado improcedente o pedido de indenização do expropriado, com fundamento no art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400)" (ob. cit., p. 84). De igual teor a lição de Pontes de Miranda (Comentários. T. V, p. 445). Celso Antonio Bandeira de Mello tem posição intermediária. Afirma que "a obrigação do expropriante de oferecer o bem em preferência nasce no momento em que este desiste de aplicá-lo à finalidade pública. A determinação exata deste momento há que ser verificada em cada caso. Servirá como demonstração da desistência, a venda, cessão ou qualquer ato dispositivo do bem praticado pelo expropriante em favor de terceiro. Poderá indicá-la, também, a anulação do plano de obras em que se calcou o Poder Público para realizar a desapropriação ou outros fatos congêneres" (ob. cit., p. 209). A propósito, já se manifestou o STF que "o fato da não utilização da coisa expropriada não caracteriza, só por si, independentemente das circunstâncias. desvio do fim da desapropriação" (RTJ. 57/46). Do mesmo teor o acórdão constante da RDA, 128/395. 7 Prazo a respeito. AnalogiaOutros autores entendem que há um prazo de cinco anos para que o Poder Público destine o imóvel à finalidade Pública para que efetuou a desapropriação. Assim se manifestam Noé Azevedo (parecer in RT 193/34) e Seabra Fagundes (ob. cit., pp. 397 /8). O prazo de cinco anos é já previsto na doutrina francesa. Afirma Laubadere que "si les immeubles expropriés n'ont pas reçu dans le délai de cinq ans la destination prévue ou ont cessé de recevoir cette destination, les anciens propriétaires ou leurs ayants droit à titre universel peuvent en demander la rétrocession dans un délai de trente ans à compter également de l'ordonance d'expropriation, à moins que l'expropriant ne requère une nouvelle déclaration d'utilité publique" (ob. cit., p. 251). Tal orientação encontra por base o art. 10 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6) que estabelece: "a desapropriação deverá efetivar-se mediante acordo ou intentar-se judicialmente dentro de cinco anos, contados da data da expedição do respectivo decreto e findos os quais este caducará". Claro está que não tendo a lei previsto o direito à retrocessão, o intérprete há de buscar a solução para o problema (interpretação prudencial) dentro do próprio sistema normativo, para suprir ou colmatar a lacuna (a propósito deste tema, especificamente, veja se nosso "Lacuna e sistema normativo", in RJTJSP, 53/13-30). Esta surge no momento da decisão. Como todo problema jurídico gira em torno da decidibilidade, admite-se a interpretação analógica ao se entender que o prazo para que o Poder Público dê ao imóvel destinação específica ou outra permitida pelo direito (finalidade prevista no ordenamento) igualmente será o prazo de cinco anos. Neste, caduca o interesse público. Daí legitimar-se o expropriado a ingressar com a ação de retrocessão. Caso se entenda da inadmissibilidade de fixação de prazo, deixar-se-á à sorte o nascimento do direito ou, então, como pretende Cretella Junior, à manifestação volitiva do Poder Público decidir sobre a oferta do imóvel a alguém, com o que caracterizaria expressamente a vontade de alienar ou dispor do imóvel. Nunca haveria um prazo determinado, com o que padeceria a relação jurídica de segurança e estabilidade. Permaneceria o expropriado eternamente à disposição do Poder Público e perduraria, constantemente, e em suspense, até que a Administração decida como e quando destinará ou desafetará o imóvel. A solução que se nos afigura mais compatível com a realidade brasileira é a de se fixar o prazo de cinco anos, por aplicação analógica com o art. 10, retro citado. Está evidente que a só inércia não caracteriza a presunção do desvio. Se a Administração desapropria sem finalidade pública, o ato pode ser anulado, mesmo sem o decurso do prazo de cinco anos. Mas, aqui, o fundamento da anulação do ato seria outro e não se cuidaria do problema específico da retrocessão. 8 Natureza do direito à retrocessãoDiscute-se, largamente, sobre a natureza do direito à retrocessão. Para uns seria direito pessoal e eventual direito resolver-se-ia em indenização por perdas e danos. Para outros, cuida-se de direito real e, pois, há possibilidade de reivindicação. Magnífica resenha de opiniões é feita por Sérgio Ferraz em seu trabalho Desapropriação, pp. 117/121. Dentre alguns nomes que se manifestam pelo reconhecimento de que se cuida de direito pessoal e, pois, enseja indenização por perdas e danos encontram-se Ebert Chamoun (ob. cit., p. 31), Cretella Junior (Tratado . . ., vol. IX, pp. 159, 333/4), Múcio de Campos Maia ("ensaio sobre a retrocessão ", in RT 258/49). A jurisprudência já se tem manifestado neste sentido (RDA, 98/ 178 e 106/157). A propósito da pesquisa jurisprudencial, veja-se, também, o repertório de Sergio Ferraz. A solução apontada pelos autores encontra fundamento no art. 35 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6) ao estabelecer que "os bens expropriados, uma vez incorporados à Fazenda Pública, não podem ser objeto de reivindicação, ainda que fundada em nulidade do processo de desapropriação. Qualquer ação julgada procedente, resolver-se-á em perdas e danos". Com base em tal artigo afirma Ebert Chamoun que "o direito do expropriado não é, evidentemente, um direito real, porque o direito real não se contrapõe, jamais, um mero dever de oferecer. E, por outro lado, se o expropriante não perde a propriedade, nem o expropriado a adquire, com o simples fato da inadequada destinação, é óbvio que a reivindicação que protege o direito de domínio, e que incumbe apenas ao proprietário, o expropriado não pode ter" (ob. cit., pp. 38/39). Mais adiante afirma que "o direito do ex-proprietário perante o poder desapropriante que não deu à coisa desapropriada o destino de utilidade pública, permanece, portanto, no direito positivo brasileiro, como direito nítido e irretorquivelmente pessoal, direito que não se manifesta em face de terceiros , eventuais adquirentes da coisa, nem ela adere, senão exclusivamente à pessoa do expropriante. Destarte, o poder desapropriante, apesar de desrespeitar as finalidades da desapropriação, desprezando os motivos constantes do decreto desapropriatório, não perde a propriedade da coisa expropriada, que ele conserva em sua Fazenda com as mesmas características que possuía quando da sua. aquisição" (ob. cit., pp. 44/45). Em abono de sua orientação invoca o dispositivo mencionado e afirma "quaisquer dúvidas que ainda houvesse acerca da natureza do direito do expropriado seriam espancadas por esse preceito, límpido e exato, consectário perfeito dos princípios gerais do nosso direito positivo, dispositivo que se ajusta, como luva, ao sistema jurídico brasileiro relativo à aquisição de propriedade, à preempção e à desapropriação" (ob. cit., p. 47). De outro lado, autores há que entendem cuidar-se de direito real. Dentre eles Hely Lopes Meirelles (Direito Administrativo Brasileiro, 2.ª ed., p. 505), Seabra Fagundes (ob. cit., p. 397), Noé Azevedo (parecer citado, in RT, 193/34), Pontes de Miranda (Comentários . . . ", T. V, pp. 443/6 e Vicente Ráo (O direito e a vida dos direitos, 2.ª ed., p. 390, nota 113). Apontam-se, também, diversos julgados (RDA, 48/231 e 130/229). 9 Crítica às posiçõesRealmente não se confundem as disposições do art. 1.149 com o art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400). O primeiro refere-se a pacto de compra e venda e tem por pressuposto a venda ou a dação em pagamento. Implica manifestação volitiva, através de contrato específico, em que se tem por base a vontade livre dos negócios jurídicos, assim exigida para validade do contrato. Já o art. 1.150 constitui norma de Direito Público, pouco importando sua inserção no Código Civil (LGL\2002\400) (Pontes de Miranda, Tratado de Direito Privado, T. XIV, 2.ª ed., § 1.612, p. 172). Em sendo assim, a norma do art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400) que determina o oferecimento do imóvel desapropriado ao ex-proprietário para o exercício do direito de preferência não está revogada. Mas, daí não se conclui que há apenas o direito de prelação. Diverso é nosso entendimento. Pelo artigo referido, obriga-se a Administração a oferecer o imóvel (é obrigação imposta à Administração), mas daí não pode advir a consequência de que caso não oferecido o imóvel, não há direito de exigi-lo. A norma não é unilateral em prol do Poder Público. De outro lado, surge a possibilidade de exigência por parte do expropriado. E a tal exigência dá-se o nome de retrocessão. Superiormente ensina Hélio Moraes de Siqueira que "entretanto, não é na lei civil que se encontra o fundamento da retrocessão. Aliás, poder-se-ia, quando muito, vislumbrar os lineamentos do instituto. É na Constituição Federal que a retrocessão deita raízes e recebe a essência jurídica que a sustém. Mesmo se ausente o preceito no Código Civil (LGL\2002\400), a figura da retrocessão teria existência no direito brasileiro, pois é consequência jurídica do mandamento constitucional garantidor da inviolabilidade da propriedade, ressalvada a desapropriação por utilidade e necessidade pública e de interesse social, mediante prévia e justa indenização em dinheiro" (ob. cit., pp. 76/77). Idêntico entendimento deve ser perfilhado. Realmente, despiciendo é que o art. 35 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6) tenha estabelecido que "os bens expropriados, uma vez incorporados à Fazenda Pública, não podem ser objeto de reivindicação, ainda que fundada em nulidade do processo de desapropriação. Qualquer ação, julgada procedente, resolver-se-á em perdas e danos". A lei não pode mudar a norma constitucional que prevê a possibilidade da desapropriação sob fundamento de interesse público. O interesse público previsto na Constituição Federal é concretizado através das manifestações da Administração, em atos administrativos, possuindo, como condição de sua validade e de sua higidez o elemento finalidade ("finalidade-elemento teleológico contido no sistema. Conjunto de atribuições assumidas pelo Estado e encampadas pelo ordenamento jurídico", cf. nosso Ato Administrativo, ed. 1978, p. 48). Destina-se a finalidade a atender aos interesses públicos previstos no sistema normativo. Há por parte do agente administrativo emanador do ato, a aferição valorativa do interesse manifestado no decreto. É pressuposto lógico da emanação de qualquer ato administrativo que a competência do agente seja exercitada em direção a alcançar os objetivos ou os valores traçados no sistema de normas. Tal aferição valorativa é realizada no momento da expedição do ato. No decurso de certo tempo, pode desaparecer o interesse então manifestado. Mas, tal reconhecimento do desinteresse não pertence apenas à Administração Pública, mas também ao expropriado que pode provocá-lo, mediante ação direta. A Administração Pública, pela circunstância de ter adquirido o domínio da coisa expropriada, não fica isenta de demonstrar a utilidade da coisa ou a continuidade elo interesse público em mantê-la. Desaparecendo o interesse público, o que pode acontecer por vontade expressa da Administração, ou tacitamente, pelo decurso do prazo de cinco anos, contados dos cinco anos seguintes à transferência de domínio, que se opera pelo registro do título aquisitivo, que é a carta de adjudicação mediante prévio pagamento do preço fixado, nasce ao expropriado o direito de reaver a própria coisa. Trata-se de direito real, porque a perquirição da natureza do direito não deflui do momento atual do reconhecimento da desnecessidade da coisa, mas remonta ao momento do ato decretatório da utilidade pública. Já disse alhures (Ato Administrativo, pp. 122 e ss.) que a nulidade ou o ato inválido não prescreve. No caso a prescrição alcança o expropriado no prazo de cinco anos, contados do término dos cinco anos anteriores ao termo final do prazo de presunção da desnecessidade do imóvel. Explicando melhor: o Poder Público tem cinco anos, contados da data da aquisição da propriedade, que opera pelo registro da carta de adjudicação no Cartório do Registro de Imóveis competente, ou mediante registro da escritura pública lavrada por acordo das partes, no mesmo Cartório, para dar destinação específica, tal como declarada no decreto expropriatório ou outra destinação, havida como de interesse público. Passado tal prazo, abre-se ao expropriado o direito de haver a própria coisa, também pelo prazo de Cinco anos, nos termos do Dec. 20.910/32 (LGL\1932\1). A propósito já se decidiu que "a prescrição da ação de retrocessão, visando às perdas e danos, começa a correr desde o momento em que o expropriante abandona, inequivocamente, o propósito de dar, ao imóvel, a destinação expressa na declaração de utilidade pública" (PDA, 69/ 200). Ausente a utilidade pública, seja no momento da declaração, seja posteriormente. o ato deixa de ter base legal. Como afirma José Canasi, "la retrocesión tiene raiz constitucional implicita y surge del concepto mismo de utilidade publica. No se concibe una utilidad publica que puede desaparecer o deformarse a posteriori de la expropriación. Seria un engano o una falsidad" (La retrocesión en la Expropiación Publica, p. 47). Rejeita-se o raciocínio de que o expropriado, não sendo mais proprietário, falece-lhe o direito de pleitear reivindicação. Tal argumento serviria, também, para &e rejeitar a existência de direito pessoal. Isto porque, se o ex-proprietário já recebeu, de acordo com a própria Constituição Federal a justa indenização pela tomada compulsória de seu imóvel, nenhum direito teria mais. Não teria sentido dar-se nova indenização ao ex-proprietário, de vez que o Poder Público já lhe pagara toda quantia justa e constitucionalmente exigida para a composição do patrimônio desfalcado pela perda do imóvel. Aí cessaria toda relação criada imperativamente, pelo Poder Público. Inobstante, a pretensão remonta à edição do ato. O fundamento do desfazimento do decreto expropriatório reside exatamente na inexistência do elemento finalidade que deve sempre estar presente nas manifestações volitivas da Administração Pública. Demais, cessado o interesse público subsistente no ato expropriatório, a própria Constituição Federal determina a persistência da propriedade. A nosso ver, a discussão sobre tratar-se de direito real ou pessoal é falsa. Emana a ação da própria Constituição, independentemente da qualificação do direito. Ausente o interesse público, deixa de existir o fundamento jurídico da desapropriação. Logo, não podem subsistir efeitos jurídicos de ato desqualificado pelo ordenamento normativo. Trata-se de direito real, no sentido adotado por Marienhoff quando afirma que "desde luego, trátase de una acción real de "derecho público", pues pertenece al complejo jurídico de la expropiación, institución exclusivamente de derecho público, segun quedó dicho en un parágrafo precedente (n. 1.293). No se trata, pues, de una acción de derecho comun, ni regulada por este. El derecho privado nada tiene que hacer al respecto. Finalmente, la acción de retrocesión, no obstante su carácter real, no trasunta técnicamente el ejercicio de una acción reivindicatoria, sino la impugnación a una expropiación donde la afectación del bien o cosa no se hizo al destino correspondiente, por lo que dicha expropiación resulta en contravención con la garantia de inviolabilidad de propiedad asegurada en la Constitución. La acción es "real" por la finalidad que persigue: reintegro de un bien o cosa" (Tratado de Derecho Administrativo, vol. IV, p. 382, n. 1.430). De igual sentido a orientação traçada no Novíssimo Digesto Italiano, onde se afirma que "per tale disciplina deve escludersi che il diritto alla retrocessione passa considerarsi un diritto alla risoluzione del precedente trasferimento coattivo, esso e stato definito un diritto legale di ricompera, ad rem (non in rem) (ob. cit., voce - espropriazione per pubblica utilità", vol. VI, p. 950). Recentemente o Supremo Tribunal Federal decidiu que "o expropriado pode pedir retrocessão, ou readquirir o domínio do bem expropriado, no caso de não lhe ter sido dado o destino que motivou a desapropriação" (RDA 130/229). No mesmo sentido o acórdão constante da "Rev. Trim. de Jur.", vol. 104/468-496, rel. Min. Soares Muñoz. 10 Transmissibilidade do direito. Não se cuida de direito personalíssimoAdmitida a existência da retrocessão no Direito brasileiro in specie, ou seja, havendo a possibilidade de reaquisição do imóvel, e rejeitando-se frontalmente, a solução dada pela jurisprudência de se admitir a indenização por perdas e danos, de vez que, a nosso ver, há errada interpretação do art. 35 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6), surge a questão também discutida se o direito à retrocessão é personalíssimo, ou é transmissível, causa mortis. Pela negativa manifestam-se Ebert Chamoun (ob. cit., p. 68), Eurico Sodré (ob. cit., p. 76), Hely Lopes Meirelles (ob. cit., p. 505) e Pontes de Miranda (ob. cit., p. 446). Em sentido oposto Hélio Moraes de Siqueira (ob. cit., p. 64) e Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello (oh. cit., p. 210). A jurisprudência tem se manifestado favoravelmente à transmissão do direito de retrocessão (RTJ 23/169, 57 / 46 e 73/155). Inaplicável no Direito Público o art. 1.157 do CC (LGL\2002\400). Disciplina ele relações de particulares, devidamente ajustado ao art. 1.149 que, como se viu anteriormente, cuida, também, de manifestações volitivas. Já, a desapropriação implica na tomada compulsória do domínio dos particulares, em decorrência de ato imperativo (tal como por nós conceituado a fls. 29 do Ato Administrativo). A imperatividade implica em manifestação de poder, ou seja, na possibilidade que goza o Poder Público de interferir na esfera jurídica alheia, por força jurídica própria. Já nas relações particulares, estão estes no mesmo nível; quando intervém o Estado o relacionamento é vertical e não horizontal. Daí porque o referido dispositivo legal não tem aplicação ao tema em estudo. O TJSP já deixou decidido que "os sucessores do proprietário têm direito de ser indenizados, no caso de o expropriante do imóvel expropriado não se utilizar deste, e procurar aliená-lo a terceiros, sem mesmo oferecê-lo àqueles (RT 322/193). Rejeitando, apenas o direito de preferência, de vez que entendendo a retrocessão como espécie de direito real, aceita-se a argumentação da transmissibilidade da ação. No mesmo sentido a orientação do Supremo Tribunal Federal (RTJ 59/631). As ações personalíssimas são de interpretação estrita. Apenas quando a lei dispuser que não se transmite o direito causa mortis é que haverá impossibilidade jurídica da ação dos herdeiros ou sucessores a qualquer título. No caso ora analisado, verificando-se da inaplicabilidade do art. 1.157 do CC (LGL\2002\400), percebe-se que defluindo o direito à retrocessão da própria Constituição Federal, inarredável a conclusão que se cuida de direito transmissível. 11 Montante a ser pago pelo expropriado, pela reaquisição do imóvelResta indagar qual o critério para fixação do montante a ser pago pelo ex-proprietário quando do acolhimento da ação de retrocessão. Inicialmente, pode-se dizer que o expropriado deve devolver o montante apurado quando do recebimento do preço fixado pelo juiz ou havido mediante acordo lavrado em escritura pública. Inobstante, se o bem recebeu melhoras que tenham aumentado seu valor, parece-nos que devam elas ser levadas em conta, para efeito de apuração do montante do preço a ser devolvido ao expropriante. O valor a ser pago, pois, será o recebido à época, por parte do expropriado acrescido de melhoramentos eventualmente introduzidos no imóvel, caso deste se cuide. 12 Correção monetáriaHá autores que afirmam que a correção monetária não fará parte do valor a ser devolvido, "in principio", pois, embora haja previsão legal de seu pagamento quando da desapropriação, há razoável fundamento de que se o Poder Público não destinou o imóvel ou deu margem a que ele não fosse utilizado, por culpa sua, de seu próprio comportamento, deve suportar as consequências de sua atitude. A Corte Suprema de Justiça da Nação Argentina prontificou-se pelo descabimento da atualização monetária, deixando julgado que ''en efecto, obvio parece decir que el fundamento jurídico del instituto de la retrocesión es distinto ai de la expropiación, como que se origina por el hecho de no destinarse el bien expropiado al fin de utilidad publica previsto por la ley. Si esta finalidad no se cumple, el expropiante no puede pretender benefíciarse con el mayor valor adquirido por el inmueble y su derecho, como principio, se limita a recibir lo que pagó por él" (Fallos, t. 271, pp. 42 e ss.). Outro argumento parece-nos ponderável. É que, a se admitir a devolução com correção monetária poderia facilitar a intervenção do Estado no domínio econômico, de vez que poderia pretender investir na aquisição de imóveis, para restituí-los, posteriormente, com acréscimo de correção monetária, com o que desvirtuar-se-ia de suas finalidades precípuas. Parece-nos, entretanto, razoável que se apure o valor real do imóvel devidamente atualizado e se corrija, monetariamente, o valor da indenização paga, para que se mantenha a equivalência econômica e patrimonial das partes. Há decisão admitindo a correção monetária da quantia a ser paga pelo expropriado (RDP 11/274) proferida pelo Min. Jarbas Nobre, do TFR. O valor do imóvel serviria de teto para o índice da correção. 13 Rito processualO tipo de procedimento a ser adotado nas hipóteses de ação de retrocessão previsto na legislação processual. É o procedimento ordinário ou sumaríssimo, dependendo do valor da causa. Não há qualquer especialidade de rito, de vez que independe de depósito prévio. Não se aplica, aqui, o procedimento desapropriação, às avessas. Isto porque, no procedimento de desapropriação há um rito especial e pode o Poder Público imitir-se previamente na posse da coisa, desde que alegue urgência na tomada e efetue o depósito do valor arbitrado. Tal característica do processo de desapropriação não está presente no rito processual da ação de retrocessão. Demais disso, a ação depende de prévio acolhimento, com produção de prova do abandono do imóvel, ou sua não destinação ao fim anunciado no decreto. 14 Retrocessão de bens móveisA desapropriação alcança qualquer tipo de coisa. Não apenas os imóveis podem ser desapropriados. Isto porque o art. 2.0 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6) dispõe "mediante declaração de utilidade pública, todos os bens poderão ser desapropriados pela União, pelos Estados, Municípios, Distrito Federal e Territórios”. Como assinala Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello "pode ser objeto de desapropriação, tudo aquilo que seja objeto de propriedade. Isto é, todo bem, imóvel ou móvel, corpóreo ou incorpóreo, pode ser desapropriado. Portanto, também se desapropriam direitos em geral. Contudo, não são desapropriáveis direitos personalíssimos, tais os de liberdade, o direito à honra, etc. Efetivamente, estes não se definem por um conteúdo patrimonial, antes se apresentam como verdadeiras projeções da personalidade do indivíduo ou consistem em expressões de um seu status jurídico, como o pátrio poder e a cidadania, por exemplo (ob. cit., p. 194). De igual teor a lição de Ebert Chamoun (ob. cit., 94). A lição do autor merece integral subscrição, por ser da mais absoluta juridicidade. A Constituição Federal assegura o direito de propriedade. A única limitação é a possibilidade de desapropriação, por parte do Poder Público. Mas, como a Constituição não limita a incidência da expropriação apenas sobre imóveis e a lei específica fala em "bens", entende-se que todo e qualquer direito pode ser desapropriado. Por consequência, qualquer bem pode ser passível de retrocessão (verbi gratia, os direitos autorais). 15 Retrocessão parcialCaso tenha havido desapropriação de um imóvel e parte dele não tenha aproveitada para a finalidade precípua declarada no decreto, surge a questão de se saber se o remanescente não utilizado pode ser objeto da retrocessão. Pelas mesmas razões expostas pelas quais se admitiu a existência da retrocessão no Direito brasileiro e cuidar-se de direito real, pelo qual o expropriado pode reaver posse e propriedade do próprio imóvel, admite-se a retrocessão parcial. 16 RenúnciaCaso o expropriado renuncie ao direito de retrocessão, nada terá a reclamar. Tratando-se, como se cuida, de direito patrimonial, é ele renunciável. Nada obriga a manter seu direito. Como salienta Ebert Chamoun, "a renúncia é plenamente eficaz. Uma vez que consta do instrumento de acordo dispositivo que exprima o desinteresse do ex-proprietário pelo destino que venha ulteriormente a ser dado ao bem e no qual se revele, claro e indiscutível, o seu propósito de renunciar ao direito de preferência à aquisição e ao direito de cobrar perdas e danos em face da infração do dever de oferecimento, o não atendimento das finalidades previstas no decreto desapropriatório, não terá quaisquer consequências patrimoniais, tornando-se absolutamente irrelevante sob o ponto de vista do direito privado" (ob. cit., p. 93). Embora não se adote a consequência apontada pelo autor. aceita-se o fundamento da possibilidade da renúncia. 17 Retrocessão na desapropriação por zonaNeste passo, acompanha-se o magistério de Celso Antônio Bandeira de Mello, segundo quem "é impossível cogitar de ação de retrocessão relativa a bens revendidos pelo Poder Público no caso de desapropriação por zona, quanto à área expropriada exatamente para esse fim, uma vez que, em tal caso não há transgressão alguma à finalidade pública em vista da qual foi realizada (ob. cit., p. 210). De igual teor a orientação de Ebert Chamoun (ob. cit., p. 96). E a posição é de fácil compreensão. O "interesse público", na hipótese, foi ditada exatamente para que se reserve a área para ulterior desenvolvimento da obra ou para revenda. Destina-se a absorver a extraordinária valorização que alcançará o local. De qualquer forma, estará o interesse público satisfeito. lnadmite-se, em consequência, a ação de retrocessão, quando a desapropriação se fundar em melhoria de determinada zona (art. 4.0 do Dec.-lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6)). A propósito os pareceres de Vicente Ráo (RDP 7 /79), Castro Nunes (RDP 7 /94) e Brandão Cavalcanti (RDP 7 /102). 18 Referência jurisprudencialAlém da jurisprudência já referida no curso da expos1çao da matéria, convém transcrever alguns acórdãos do STF que cuidam do assunto. Negativa de vigência ao art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400). "Não vejo na decisão recorrida negativa de vigência do art. 1.150 do CC (LGL\2002\400). De conformidade com a melhor interpretação desse dispositivo, o expropriante não está obrigado a oferecer o imóvel ao expropriado, quando resolve devolvê-lo ao domínio privado, mediante venda ou abandono" (RTJ 83/97. Também o mesmo repertório 56/785 e 66/250. Possibilidade do exercício da ação. "Se se verifica a impossibilidade da utilização do bem, ou da execução da obra, então passa a ser possível o exercício do direito de retrocessão. Não é preciso esperar que o desapropriante aliene o bem desapropriado" (RTJ 80/150). Destinação diversa do bem. "Incabível a retrocessão ou ressarcimento se o bem expropriado tem destino diverso, mas de utilidade pública" (RTJ 74/95; No mesmo sentido o mesmo repertório 48/749 e RDA 127 /440). Pressupostos da retrocessão. "Retrocessão. Seus pressupostos; devolução do imóvel ao domínio privado, · quer pela alienação, quer pelo abandono por longo tempo, sem destinação de utilidade pública. Ausência desses pressupostos. Ação julgada improcedente" (RTJ 83/96). Fundamento do direito à retrocessão. "Constituição, art. 153, § 22CC (LGL\2002\400), art. 1 .150. Desapropriamento por utilidade pública. Reversão do bem desapropriado. O direito à requisição da coisa desapropriada tem o seu fundamento na referida norma constitucional e na citada regra civil, pois uma e outra exprimem um só princípio que se sobrepõe ao do art. 35 do Dec.-Lei 3.365/41 (LGL\1941\6), visto que o direito previsto neste último (reivindicação) não faz desaparecer aqueloutro" (RTJ 80/139). Estes alguns excertos jurisprudenciais de maior repercussão, já que enfrentaram matéria realmente controvertida dando-lhe solução fundamentada. Há inúmeros julgados sobre o tema que, no entanto, dispensam transcrição ou menção expressa, pois outra coisa não fazem que repetir os argumentos já manifestados. Como se cuida de matéria controvertida e a nível de repertório enciclopédico, o importante é a notícia sobre o tema, sem prejuízo de termos feito algumas colocações pessoais a respeito. Nem tivemos o intuito de esgotar o assunto, de vez que incabível num trabalho deste gênero.

PurposeAs families engage in entrepreneurship, particularly in developing economies, women's engagement in such activities is subject to the traditional cultures, norms and values of the communities to which they belong. This paper aims to investigate how the socio-cultural context influences women's entrepreneurship as women engage in “family entrepreneuring”.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on an inductive qualitative approach to explore how multiple cultural, social and economic contexts encourage women's entrepreneurship and, thus, position them at the centre of family entrepreneuring within this community. Using snowballing techniques, we analyse narratives from 51 women entrepreneurs, generated through semi-structured interviews, to reveal key insights into the practice of family entrepreneuring.FindingsThe findings reveal the complex socio-cultural context within the “Adja” community, where polygamy, a traditional and cultural practice, enables the transfer of culturally and socially embedded informal knowledge. The study explains how women's entrepreneuring activities are supported by informal in-family apprenticeships, resulting in family members learning specific skills while also experiencing the feeling of belonging to the family. Showcasing the heterogeneity of contexts, particularly those found in Africa, this study challenges the normative view within the Global North and the dominance of the “heroic male” in entrepreneurship by showcasing how women (especially matriarchs) are significant actors in training other women, co-wives, daughters and relatives in family entrepreneuring.Originality/valueThus, this study contributes to the extant literature on family entrepreneuring by revealing an unusual case of women from polygamous families becoming the focal actors in family entrepreneuring activity and challenging the culturally ascribed gender roles to evolve into the breadwinners in their households, as well as focusing on how this process is driven by endogenous knowledge exchange.

Coffee changes people. Moreover, it changes the way they interact with their friends, their fellow citizens and their community. (Ellis 24) On my daily walk around the streets of my neighbourhood, I pass the footpath cafés that have become synonymous with the area. On this particular day, I take a less familiar route and notice a new, small café wedged between a candle shop and an industrial building. At one of the two footpath tables sit a couple with their young child, conveniently (for them) asleep in a stroller. One is reading the Saturday paper, and the other has her nose in a book—coffee, muffins, and newspapers are strewn across the table. I am struck by this tableau of domestic ease and comfort, precisely because it is so domestic and yet the couple and child, with all the accoutrements of a relaxed Saturday morning, are situated outside the spaces of the home. It brings to mind an elegant phrase of Robert Hughes’ about the types of spaces that cities need, where “solitudes may lie together” (cited in Miller 79). I could, of course, also have drawn my attention to other vignettes at the café—for example, people involved in animated or easy conversation—and this would support Hughes’ other dictum, that cities need places where “people can gather and engage in energetic discourse” (79), which is of course another way in which people inhabit and utilise the café. The ascendancy of the café is synonymous with the contemporary city and, as semi-public space, it supports either solitude—through anonymity—or sociability. “Having a coffee” is central to the experience of everyday life in cities, yet it is also an expression of intent that suggests more than simply drinking a café latte or a cappuccino at our favourite neighbourhood café. While coffee aficionados will go the extra distance for a good brew, the coffee transaction is typically more to do with meeting friends, colleagues or connecting with people beyond our personal and professional networks. And under the umbrella of these types of encounters sit a variety of affective, social and civil transactions. In cities characterised by increasing density and cultural difference, and as mobile populations move back and forth across the planet, how we forge and maintain relationships with each other is important for the development of cosmopolitan cultures and social cohesion. It is the contemporary café and its coffee culture that provides the space to support sociability and the negotiation of civil encounters. Sociability, Coffee, and the Café Café culture is emblematic of social and urban change, of the rise of food culture and industries, and “aesthetic” cultures. The proliferation of hospitality and entertainment industries in the form of cafés, bars, restaurants, and other semi-public spaces—such as art galleries—are the consumer-based social spaces in which new forms of sociability and attachment are being nurtured and sustained. It is hardly surprising that people seek out places to meet others—given the transformation in social and kinship relations wrought by social change, globalization and mobile populations—to find their genesis in the city. Despite the decline of familial relations, new social formation produced by conditions such as workforce mobility, flexible work arrangements, the rise of the so-called “creative class” and single person households are flourishing. There are now more single person households in Australia than in any other period, with 1.9 million people living alone in 2006. This figure is predicted to increase to 30.36 per cent of the population by 2026 (ABS). The rapid take-up of apartment living in Australian cities suggests both a desire and necessity for urban living along with its associated amenities, and as a result, more people are living out their lives in the public and semi-public spaces of cities. Maffesoli refers to restructured and emerging social relations as “tribes” which are types of “emotional communities” (after Weber) based upon the affective, life-affirming impulse of “being togetherness” rather than an outmoded, rationalised social structure. For Maffesoli, tribes have strong powers of inclusion and integration and people are connected by shared affinities or lifestyles. Their stamping ground is the city where they gather in its public and semi-public spaces, such as the café, where sociability is expressed through “the exchange of feelings, conversation” (13). In this context, the café facilitates a mode of interaction that is both emotional and rational: while there might be a reason for meeting up, it is frequently driven by a desire for communication that is underpinned by the affective dimension. As a common ritualistic behaviour, “meeting for coffee” facilitates encounters not only with those known to us, but also among relationships that are provisional and contingent. It is among those less familiar that the café is useful as a space for engaging and practicing civil discourse (after Habermas) and where encounters with strangers might be comfortably negotiated. The café’s social codes facilitate the negotiation of less familiar relationships, promoting a sociability that is not as easy to navigate in other spaces of the city. The gesture of “having coffee” is hospitable, and the café’s neutrality as a meeting place is predicated on its function as transitional or liminal space; it is neither domestic, work, nor wholly public space. Its liminality removes inhabitants from the potentially anxious intimacy of the home and offers protection from the unknown of public space. Moreover, the café’s “safety” is further reinforced because it is regulated temporally by its central function as a place of food and beverage consumption: it provides a finite certitude to meetings, with the length of encounter largely being determined by the time it takes to consume a coffee or snack. In this way, the possible complexity or ambiguity associated with meetings with strangers in the more intimate spaces of the home is avoided, and meeting in a café may relieve the onus and anxiety that can be associated with entertaining. Café culture is not a new phenomenon, though its current manifestation differs from its antecedent, the sixteenth-century coffee house. Both the modern café and the coffee house are notable as places of intense sociability where people from all walks of life mingle (Ellis 2004). The diverse clientele of the coffee house is recorded extensively in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and unlike other social institutions of the time, was defined by its inclusivity of men from all walks of life (Ellis 59). Similarly, the espresso bars of the 1950s that appeared in Europe, North America and to a lesser extent Australia became known for their mix of customers from a range of classes, races and cultures, and for the inclusion of women as their patrons (Ellis 233). The wide assortment of people who patronised these espresso bars was noted in Architectural Digest magazine which claimed the new coffee bars as “the greatest social revolution since the launderette in 1954” (Ellis 234). Contemporary café culture continues this egalitarian tradition, with the café assuming importance as a place in which reconfigured social relationships are fostered and maintained. In Australia, the café has replaced the institution of the public house or hotel—the “pub” in Australia—as the traditional meeting place of cultural significance. Not everyone felt at home, or indeed was welcomed in the pub, despite its mythology as a place that was emblematic of “the Australian way of life”. Women, children and “others” who may have felt or may have been legally excluded from the pub are the new beneficiaries of the café’s inclusivity. The social organisation of the pub revolved around the interests of masculine relationships and culture (Fiske et al.) and until the late 1970s, women were excluded by legislation from its public bars. There are many other socio-cultural reasons why women were uncomfortable in the pub, even once legislation was removed. By comparison, the café, despite the bourgeois associations in some of its manifestations, is more democratic space than the pub and this rests to some extent on a greater emphasis placed on disciplined conduct of its patrons. The consumption of alcohol in hotels, combined with a cultural tolerance of excess and with alcohol’s effect of loosening inhibitions, also encourages the loosening of socially acceptable forms of conduct. A wider range of behaviour is tolerated and sanctioned which can present problems for women in particular. The negotiation of gendered relationships in the pub is, therefore, typically of more concern to women than men. In spite of its egalitarianism, and the diversity of patrons welcomed, the café, as a social space, is governed by a set of rules that communicate meaning about who belongs, who doesn’t and how people should behave. The social codes inscribed into café culture contribute to the production and reproduction of different social groups (Bourdieu and Lefebvre) and are reinforced by the café’s choice of aesthetics. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital accounts for the acquisition of cultural competencies and explains why some people feel comfortable in certain spaces while others feel excluded. Knowledge and skills required in social spaces express both subtle and sometimes not so subtle hierarchies of power and ownership, cutting across gender, ethnic and class divisions. Yet despite this, the relatively low cost of obtaining entry into the café—through the purchase of a drink—gives it greater accessibility than a pub, restaurant, or any other consumer site that is central to sociability and place attachment. In cities characterised by an intensity of change and movement, the café also enables a negotiation of place attachment. A sense of place connectedness, through habitual and regular usage, facilitates social meaning and belonging. People become “regulars” at cafés, patronising one over another, getting to know the staff and perhaps other patrons. The semiotics of the café, its ambience, decor, type of food and drink it sells, all contribute to the kind of fit that helps anchors it in a place. A proliferation of café styles offers scope for individual and collective affinities. While some adopt the latest trends in interior design, others appeal to a differentiated clientele through more varied approaches to design. Critiques of urban café culture, which see it as serving the interests of taste-based bourgeois patterns of consumption, often overlook the diversity of café styles that appeal to, and serve a wide range of, demographic groups. Café styles vary across a design continuum from fashionable minimalist décor, homey, grungy, sophisticated, traditional, corporate (McDonalds and Starbucks) or simply plain with little attention to current décor trends. The growth of café culture is a significant feature of gentrified inner city areas in cities across the world. In Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in Australia, an inner-city youth entertainment precinct, many cafés have adopted a downmarket or “grunge” aesthetic, appealing to the area’s youth clientele and other marginal groups. Here, décor can suggest a cavalier disregard for bourgeois taste: shabby décor with mismatching tables and chairs and posters and graffiti plastered over windows and walls. Ironically, the community service organisation Mission Australia saw the need to provide for its community in this area; the marginalised, disadvantaged, and disengaged original inhabitants of this gentrified area, and opened a no-frills Café One to cater for them. Civility, Coffee, and the Café One of the distinctive features of cities is that they are places where “we meet with the other” (Barthes 96), and this is in contrast to life in provincial towns and villages where people and families could be known for generations. For the last two decades or so, cities across the world have been undergoing a period of accelerated change, including the rise of Asian mega-cities—and now, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population is urban based. Alongside this development is the movement of people across the world, for work, study, travel or fleeing from conflict and persecution. If Barthes’s statement was apt in the 1980s, it is ever more so now, nearly thirty years later. How strangers live together in cities of unprecedented scale and density raises important questions around social cohesion and the civil life of cities. As well as offering spaces that support a growth in urban sociability, the exponential rise of café culture can be seen as an important factor in the production of urban civilities. Reciprocity is central here, and it is the café’s function as a place of hospitality that adds another dimension to its role in the cultivation of civility and sociability. Café culture requires the acquisition of competencies associated with etiquette and manners that are based upon on notions of hospitality. The protocol required for ordering food and drink and for eating and drinking with others encourages certain types of behaviour such as courtesy, patience, restraint, and tolerance by all participants, including the café staff. The serving of food and drink in a semi-public space in exchange for money is more than a commercial transaction, it also demands the language and behaviour of civility. Conduct such as not talking too loudly, not eavesdropping on others’ conversations, knowing where to look and what to hear, are considered necessary competencies when thrust into close proximity with strangers. More intimately, the techniques of conversation—of listening, responding and sharing information—are practised in the café. It can be instructive to reprise Habermas’s concept of the public sphere (1962) in order to consider how semi-public places such as the café contribute to support the civil life of a city. Habermas’s analysis, grounded in the eighteenth-century city, charted how the coffee house or salon was instrumental to the development of a civilised discourse which contributed to the development of the public sphere across Europe. While a set of political and social structures operating at the time paved the way for the advent of democracy, critical discussion and rational argument was also vital. In other words, democratic values underpin civil discourse and the parallel here is that the space the café provides for civil interaction, particularly in cities marked by cultural and other difference, is unique among public amenities on offer in the city. The “bourgeois public sphere” for Habermas is based on the development of a social mode of interaction which became normative through socio-structural transformation during this period, and the coffee house or salon was a place that enabled a particular form of sociability and communication style. For Habermas, meeting places such as the urban-based coffee house were the heart of sociability, where conversational rules based on reasoned exchange were established; the cultivation of conversation was aimed at the dialogical egalitarian. Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere is essentially and potentially a political one, “conceived […] as the sphere of private people come together as a public” (Johnson 27). It refers to a realm of social life in which something approaching public opinion can be found. I am not claiming that the contemporary café might be the site of political dialogue and civic activism of the type that Habermas suggests. Rather, what is useful here is a recognition that the café facilitates a mode of interaction similar to the one proposed by Habermas—a mode of interaction which has the potential to be distinguished by its “open and inclusive character” (Johnson 22). The expectation of a “patient, willing comprehension of sympathetic fellows” (Johnson 23) refers to the cultivation of the art of conversation based on a reciprocity and is one that requires empathetic listening as well as dialogue. Because the café is a venue where people meet with less familiar others, the practice and techniques of conversation assumes particular significance, borne out in Habermas’s and Ellis’s historical research into café culture. Both scholars attribute the establishment of coffee houses in London to the development of social discourse and urban networking which helped set the ground for conversational rules and exchange and worked towards a democratic culture. In this context, values were challenged and differences revealed but the continued practice of conversation enabled the negotiation of such social diversity. Demonstrations of civility and generosity are straightforward in the café because of its established codes of conduct in an environment focussed upon hospitality. Paying for another’s drink, although not a great expense is a simple gesture of hospitality: “meeting for coffee” has become part of the lingua franca of workplace and business culture and relationships and is weighted with meaning. As cities grow in density, complexity and cultural diversity, citizens are adapting with new techniques of urban living. At a broad level, the café can be seen as supporting the growth in networks of sociability and facilitating the negotiation of civil discourse and behaviour. In the café, to act as a competent citizen, one must demonstrate the ability to be polite, restrained, considerate and civil—that is, to act in accordance with the social situation. This involves an element of self-control and discipline and requires social standards and expectations to become self-monitored and controlled. To be perceived as acting in accordance with the needs of certain social situations, participants bend, limit and regulate their behaviour and affects. In sum, the widespread take up of café culture, based on hospitality and reciprocity, encourages a mode of interaction that has implications for the development of a social and civic ethic. References Australian Bureau of Statistics. "1301.0–Year Book Australia." 2009. 31 Jan. 2012 ‹http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/0/916F96F929978825CA25773700169C65?opendocument› Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Ellis, Markum. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004. Fiske, J., B. Hodge, and G. Turner, eds. Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1962. -----. The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Johnson, Pauline. Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2006. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Maffesoli, Michel. Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Trans. D. Smith. London: Sage, 1996. Miller, George. “A City that Works.” Sydney Papers Spring (2001): 77–79.

We take as our subject what many would deem a waste of good celluloid: the degraded cultural form of the stoner film. Stoner films plot the experiences of the wasted (those intoxicated on marijuana) as they exhibit wastefulness—excessiveness, improvidence, decay—on a number of fronts. Stoners waste time in constantly hunting for pot and in failing to pursue more productive activity whilst wasted. Stoners waste their minds, both literally, if we believe contested studies that indicate marijuana smoking kills brains cells, and figuratively, in rendering themselves cognitively impaired. Stoners waste their bodies through the dangerous practice of smoking and through the tendency toward physical inertia. Stoners waste money on marijuana firstly, but also on such sophomoric accoutrements as the stoner film itself. Stoners lay waste to convention in excessively seeking pleasure and in dressing and acting outrageously. And stoners, if the scatological humour of so many stoner films is any index, are preoccupied with bodily waste. Stoners, we argue here, waste whiteness as well. As the likes of Jesse and Chester (Dude, Where’s My Car?), Wayne and Garth (Wayne’s World), Bill and Ted (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Jay and Silent Bob (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) make clear, whiteness looms large in stoner films. Yet the genre, we argue, disavows its own whiteness, in favour of a post-white hybridity that lavishly squanders white privilege. For all its focus on whiteness, filmic wastedness has always been an ethnically diverse and ambiguous category. The genre’s origins in the work of Cheech Marin, a Chicano, and Tommy Chong, a Chinese-European Canadian, have been buttressed in this regard by many African American contributions to the stoner oeuvre, including How High, Half Baked and Friday, as well as by Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and its Korean-American and Indian-American protagonists. Cheech and Chong initiated the genre with the release of Up in Smoke in 1978. A host of films have followed featuring protagonists who spend much of their time smoking and seeking marijuana (or—in the case of stoner films such as Dude, Where’s My Car? released during the height of the War on Drugs—acting stoned without ever being seen to get stoned). Inspired in part by the 1938 anti-marijuana film Reefer Madness, and the unintended humour such propaganda films begat amongst marijuana smokers, stoner films are comedies that satirise both marijuana culture and its prohibition. Self-consciously slapstick, the stoner genre excludes more serious films about drugs, from Easy Rider to Shaft, as well as films such as The Wizard of Oz, Yellow Submarine, the Muppet movies, and others popular amongst marijuana smokers because of surreal content. Likewise, a host of films that include secondary stoner characters, such as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, are commonly excluded from the genre on the grounds that the stoner film, first and foremost, celebrates stonerism, that is “serious commitment to smoking and acquiring marijuana as a lifestyle choice.” (Meltzer). Often taking the form of the “buddy film,” stoner flicks generally feature male leads and frequently exhibit a decidedly masculinist orientation, with women, for the most part reduced to little more than the object of the white male gaze.The plot, such as it is, of the typical stoner film concerns the search for marijuana (or an accessory, such as junk food) and the improbable misadventures that ensue. While frequently represented as resourceful and energetic in their quest for marijuana, filmic stoners otherwise exhibit ambivalent attitudes toward enterprise that involves significant effort. Typically represented as happy and peaceable, filmic stoners rarely engage in conflict beyond regular clashes with authority figures determined to enforce anti-drug laws, and other measures that stoners take to be infringements upon happiness. While Hollywood’s stoners thus share a sense of entitlement to pleasure, they do not otherwise exhibit a coherent ideological orthodoxy beyond a certain libertarian and relativistic open-mindedness. More likely to take inspiration from comic book heroes than Aldous Huxley or Timothy Leary, stoners are most often portrayed as ‘dazed and confused,’ and could be said to waste the intellectual tradition of mind expansion that Leary represents. That stoner films are, at times, misunderstood to be quintessentially white is hardly suprising. As a social construct that creates, maintains and legitimates white domination, whiteness manifests, as one of its most defining features, an ability to swallow up difference and to insist upon, at critical junctures, a universal subjectivity that disallows for difference (hooks 167). Such universalising not only sanctions co-optation of ethnic cultural expression, it also functions to mask whiteness’s existence, thus reinforcing its very power. Whiteness, as Richard Dyer argues, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. It obfuscates itself and its relationship to the particular traits it is said to embody—disinterest, prudence, temperance, rationality, bodily restraint, industriousness (3). Whiteness is thus constructed as neither an ethnic nor racial particularity, but rather the transcendence of such positionality (Wiegman 139). While non-whites are raced, to be white is to be “just human” and thus to possess the power to “claim to speak for the commonality of humanity” whilst denying the accrual of any particular racial privilege (Dyer 2). In refuting its own advantages—which are so wide ranging (from preferential treatment in housing loans, to the freedom to fail without fear of reflecting badly on other whites) that they are, like whiteness itself, both assumed and unproblematic—whiteness instantiates individualism, allowing whites to believe that their successes are in no way the outcome of systematic racial advantage, but rather the product of individual toil (McIntosh; Lipsitz). An examination of the 1978 stoner film Up in Smoke suggests that whatever the ethnic ambiguity of the figure of the stoner, the genre of the stoner film is all about the wasting of whiteness. Up in Smoke opens with two alternating domestic scenes. We first encounter Pedro De Pacas (Cheech Marin) in a cluttered and shadowy room as his siblings romp affectionately upon his back, waking him from his slumber on the couch. Pedro rises, stepping into a bowl of cereal on the floor. He stumbles to the bathroom, where, sleepy and disoriented, he urinates into the laundry hamper. The chaos of Pedro’s disrupted sleep is followed in the film by a more metaphoric awakening as Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong) determines to leave home. The scene takes place in a far more orderly, light and lavish room. The space’s overpowering whiteness is breached only by the figure of Anthony and his unruly black hair, bushy black beard, and loud Hawaiian shirt, which vibrates with colour against the white walls, white furnishings and white curtains. We watch as Anthony, behind an elaborate bar, prepares a banana protein shake, impassively ignoring his parents, both clothed in all-white, as they clutch martini glasses and berate their son for his lack of ambition. Arnold Stoner [father]: Son, your mother and me would like for you to cozy up to the Finkelstein boy. He's a bright kid, and, uh... he's going to military school, and remember, he was an Eagle Scout. Tempest Stoner [mother]: Arnold…Arnold Stoner: [shouts over/to his wife] Will you shut up? We’re not going to have a family brawl!Tempest Stoner: [continues talking as her husband shouts]…. Retard.Arnold Stoner: [to Anthony] We've put up with a hell of a lot.[Anthony starts blender] Can this wait? ... Build your goddamn muscles, huh? You know, you could build your muscles picking strawberries.You know, bend and scoop... like the Mexicans. Shit, maybe I could get you a job with United Fruit. I got a buddy with United Fruit. ... Get you started. Start with strawberries, you might work your way up to these goddamn bananas! When, boy? When...are you going to get your act together?Anthony: [Burps]Tempest Stoner: Gross.Arnold Stoner: Oh, good God Almighty me. I think he's the Antichrist. Anthony, I want to talk to you. [Anthony gathers his smoothie supplements and begins to walk out of the room.] Now, listen! Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you! You get a goddamn job before sundown, or we're shipping you off to military school with that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid! Son of a bitch!The whiteness of Anthony’s parents is signified so pervasively and so strikingly in this scene—in their improbable white outfits and in the room’s insufferably white décor—that we come to understand it as causative. The rage and racism of Mr. Stoner’s tirade, the scene suggests, is a product of whiteness itself. Given that whiteness achieves and maintains its domination via both ubiquity and invisibility, what Up in Smoke accomplishes in this scene is notable. Arnold Stoner’s tortured syntax (“that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid”) works to “mak[e] whiteness strange” (Dyer 4), while the scene’s exaggerated staging delineates whiteness as “a particular – even peculiar – identity, rather than a presumed norm” (Roediger, Colored White 21). The belligerence of the senior Stoners toward not only their son and each other, but the world at large, in turn, functions to render whiteness intrinsically ruthless and destructive. Anthony’s parents, in all their whiteness, enact David Roediger’s assertion that “it is not merely that ‘Whiteness’s is oppressive and false; it is that ‘Whiteness’s is nothing but oppressive and false” (Toward the Abolition 13).Anthony speaks not a word during the scene. He communicates only by belching and giving his parents the finger as he leaves the room and the home. This departure is significant in that it marks the moment when Anthony, hereafter known only as “Man,” flees the world of whiteness. He winds up taking refuge in the multi-hued world of stonerism, as embodied in the scene that follows, which features Pedro emerging from his home to interact with his Chicano neighbours and to lovingly inspect his car. As a lowrider, a customised vehicle that “begin[s] with the abandoned materials of one tradition (that of mainstream America), … [and is] … then transformed and recycled . . . into new and fresh objects of art which are distinctly Chicano,” Pedro’s car serves as a symbol of the cultural hybridisation that Man is about to undergo (quoted in Ondine 141).As Man’s muteness in the presence of his parents suggests, his racial status seems tentative from the start. Within the world of whiteness, Man is the subaltern, silenced and denigrated, finding voice only after he befriends Pedro. Even as the film identifies Man as white through his parental lineage, it renders indeterminate its own assertion, destabilising any such fixed or naturalised schema of identity. When Man is first introduced to Pedro’s band as their newest member, James, the band’s African American bass player, looks at Man, dressed in the uniform of the band, and asks: “Hey Pedro, where’s the white dude you said was playing the drums?” Clearly, from James’s point of view, the room contains no white dudes, just stoners. Man’s presumed whiteness becomes one of the film’s countless gags, the provocative ambiguity of the casting of a Chinese-European to play a white part underscored in the film by the equally implausible matter of age. Man, according to the film’s narrative, is a high school student; Chong was forty when the film was released. Like his age, Man’s whiteness is never a good fit. That Man ultimately winds up sleeping on the very couch upon which we first encounter Pedro suggests how radical and final the break with his dubious white past is. The “Mexicans” whom his father would mock as fit only for abject labour are amongst those whom Man comes to consider his closest companions. In departing his parents’ white world, and embracing Pedro’s dilapidated, barrio-based world of wastedness, Man traces the geographies narrated by George Lipsitz in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Historically, Lipsitz argues, the development of affluent white space (the suburbs) was made possible by the disintegration of African American, Chicano and other minority neighbourhoods disadvantaged by federal, state, and corporate housing, employment, health care, urban renewal, and education policies that favoured whites over non-whites. In this sense, Man’s flight from his parents’ home is a retreat from whiteness itself, and from the advantages that whiteness conveys. In choosing the ramshackle, non-white world of stonerism, Man performs an act of racial treachery. Whiteness, Lipsitz contends, has “cash value,” and “is invested in, like property, but it is also a means of accumulating property and keeping it from others,” which allows for “intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations” (vii-viii). Man’s disavowal of the privileges of whiteness is a reckless refusal to accept this racial birthright. Whiteness is thus wasted upon Man because Man wastes his whiteness. Given the centrality of prudence and restraint to hegemonic constructions of whiteness, Man’s willingness to squander the “valuable asset” that is his white inheritance is especially treasonous (Harris 1713). Man is the prodigal son of whiteness, a profligate who pours down the drain “the wages of whiteness” that his forbearers have spent generations accruing and protecting (Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness). His waste not only offends the core values which whiteness is said to comprise, it also denigrates whiteness itself by illuminating the excess of white privilege, as well as the unarticulated excess of meanings that hover around whiteness to create the illusion of transcendence and infinite variety. Man’s performance, like all bad performances of whiteness, “disrupt[s] implicit understandings of what it means to be white” (Hartigan 46). The spectre of seeing white domination go ‘up in smoke’—via wasting, as opposed to hoarding, white privilege—amounts to racial treason, and helps not only to explicate why whites in the film find stonerism so menacing, but also to explain the paradox of “pot [making] the people who don’t smoke it even more paranoid than the people who do” (Patterson). While Tommy Chong’s droll assertion that "what makes us so dangerous is that we're harmless" ridicules such paranoia, it ultimately fails to account for the politics of subversive squandering of white privilege that characterise the stoner film (“Biographies”). Stoners in Up in Smoke, as in most other stoner films, are marked as non-white, through association with ethnic Others, through their rejection of mainstream ideas about work and achievement, and/or through their lack of bodily restraint in relentlessly seeking pleasure, in dressing outrageously, and in refusing to abide conventional grooming habits. Significantly, the non-white status of the stoner is both voluntary and deliberate. While stonerism embraces its own non-whiteness, its Otherness is not signified, primarily, through racial cross-dressing of the sort Eric Lott detects in Elvis, but rather through race-mixing. Stoner collectivity practices an inclusivity that defies America’s historic practice of racial and ethnic segregation (Lott 248). Stonerism further reveals its unwillingness to abide constrictive American whiteness in a scene in which Pedro and Man, both US-born Americans, are deported. The pair are rounded up along with Pedro’s extended family in a raid initiated when Pedro’s cousin “narcs” on himself to la migra (the Immigration and Naturalization Service) in order to get free transport for his extended family to his wedding in Tijuana. Pedro and Man return to the US as unwitting tricksters, bringing back to the US more marijuana than has ever crossed the Mexican-US border at one time, fusing the relationship between transnationalism and wastedness. The disrespect that stoners exhibit for pregnable US borders contests presumed Chicano powerlessness in the face of white force and further affronts whiteness, which historically has mobilised itself most virulently at the threat of alien incursion. Transgression here is wilful and playful; stoners intend to offend normative values and taste through their actions, their dress, and non-white associations as part of the project of forging a new hybridised, transnational subjectivity that threatens to lay waste to whiteness’s purity and privilege. Stoners invite the scrutiny of white authority with their outrageous attire and ethnically diverse composition, turning the “inevitability of surveillance” (Borrie 87) into an opportunity to enact their own wastedness—their wasted privilege, their wasted youth, their wasted potential—before a gaze that is ultimately confounded and threatened by the chaotic hybridity with which it is faced (Hebdige 26). By perpetually displaying his/her wasted Otherness, the stoner makes of him/herself a “freak,” a label cops use derisively throughout Up in Smoke to denote the wasted without realising that stoners define themselves in precisely such terms, and, by doing so, obstruct whiteness’s assertion of universal subjectivity. Pedro’s cousin Strawberry (Tom Skerritt), a pot dealer, enacts freakishness by exhibiting a large facial birthmark and by suffering from Vietnam-induced Post Traumatic Stress disorder. A freak in every sense of the word, Strawberry is denied white status by virtue of physical and mental defect. But Strawberry, as a stoner, ultimately wants whiteness even less than it wants him. The defects that deny him membership in the exclusive “club” that is whiteness prove less significant than the choice he makes to defect from the ranks of whiteness and join with Man in the decision to waste his whiteness wantonly (“Editorial”). Stoner masculinity is represented as similarly freakish and defective. While white authority forcefully frustrates the attempts of Pedro and Man to “score” marijuana, the duo’s efforts to “score” sexually are thwarted by their own in/action. More often than not, wastedness produces impotence in Up in Smoke, either literally or figuratively, wherein the confusion and misadventures that attend pot-smoking interrupt foreplay. The film’s only ostensible sex scene is unconsummated, a wasted opportunity for whiteness to reproduce itself when Man sleeps through his girlfriend’s frenzied discussion of sex. During the course of Up in Smoke, Man dresses as a woman while hitchhiking, Pedro mistakes Man for a woman, Man sits on Pedro’s lap when they scramble to change seats whilst being pulled over by the police, Man suggests that Pedro has a “small dick,” Pedro reports liking “manly breasts,” and Pedro—unable to urinate in the presence of Sgt. Stedenko—tells his penis that if it does not perform, he will “put [it] back in the closet.” Such attenuations of the lead characters’ masculinity climax in the penultimate scene, in which Pedro, backed by his band, performs “Earache My Eye,” a song he has just composed backstage, whilst adorned in pink tutu, garter belt, tassle pasties, sequined opera mask and Mickey Mouse ears: My momma talkin’ to me tryin’ to tell me how to liveBut I don't listen to her cause my head is like a sieveMy daddy he disowned me cause I wear my sister's clothesHe caught me in the bathroom with a pair of pantyhoseMy basketball coach he done kicked me off the teamFor wearing high heeled sneakers and acting like a queen“Earache My Eye” corroborates the Othered natured of stonerism by marking stoners, already designated as non-white, as non-straight. In a classic iteration of a bad gender performance, the scene rejects both whiteness and its hegemonic partners-in-crime, heterosexuality and normative masculinity (Butler 26). Here stoners waste not only their whiteness, but also their white masculinity. Whiteness, and its dependence upon “intersection … [with] interlocking axes [of power such as] gender … [and] sexuality,” is “outed” in this scene (Shome 368). So, too, is it enfeebled. In rendering masculinity freakish and defective, the film threatens whiteness at its core. For if whiteness can not depend upon normative masculinity for its reproduction, then, like Man’s racial birthright, it is wasted. The stoner’s embodiment of freakishness further works to emphasise wasted whiteness by exposing just how hysterical whiteness’s defense of its own normativity can be. Up in Smoke frequently inflates not only the effects of marijuana, but also the eccentricities of those who smoke it, a strategy which means that much of the film’s humour turns on satirising hegemonic stereotypes of marijuana smokers. Equally, Cheech Marin’s exaggerated “slapstick, one-dimensional [portrayal] of [a] Chicano character” works to render ridiculous the very stereotypes his character incarnates (List 183). While the film deconstructs processes of social construction, it also makes extensive use of counter-stereotyping in its depictions of characters marked as white. The result is that whiteness’s “illusion of [its] own infinite variety” is contested and the lie of whiteness as non-raced is exposed, helping to explain the stoner’s decision to waste his/her whiteness (Dyer 12; 2). In Up in Smoke whiteness is the colour of straightness. Straights, who are willing neither to smoke pot nor to tolerate the smoking of pot by others/Others, are so comprehensively marked as white in the film that whiteness and straightness become isomorphic. As a result, the same stereotypes are mobilised in representing whiteness and straightness: incompetence, belligerence, hypocrisy, meanspiritedness, and paranoia, qualities that are all the more oppressive because virtually all whites/straights in the film occupy positions of authority. Anthony’s spectacularly white parents, as we have seen, are bigoted and dominating. Their whiteness is further impugned by alcohol, which fuels Mr. Stoner’s fury and Mrs. Stoner’s unintelligibility. That the senior Stoners are drunk before noon works, of course, to expose the hypocrisy of those who would indict marijuana use while ignoring the social damage alcohol can produce. Their inebriation (revealed as chronic in the DVD’s outtake scenes) takes on further significance when it is configured as a decidedly white attribute. Throughout the film, only characters marked as white consume alcohol—most notably, the judge who is discovered to be drinking vodka whist adjudicating drug charges against Pedro and Man—therefore dislodging whiteness’s self-construction as temperate, and suggesting just how wasted whiteness is. While stonerism is represented as pacific, drunkenness is of a piece with white/straight bellicosity. In Up in Smoke, whites/straights crave confrontation and discord, especially the angry, uptight, and vainglorious narcotics cop Sgt. Stedenko (Stacey Keech) who inhabits so many of the film’s counter-stereotypes. While a trio of white cops roughly apprehend and search a carload of innocent nuns in a manner that Man describes as “cold blooded,” Stedenko, unawares in the foreground, gives an interview about his plans for what he hopes will be the biggest border drug bust in US history: “[Reporter:] Do you expect to see any violence here today? [Sgt. Stedenko:] I certainly hope so.” Stedenko’s desire to act violently against stoners echoes mythologies of white regeneration in the Old West, wherein whiteness refurbished itself through violent attacks on Native Americans, whose wasteful cultures failed to make “civilised” use of western lands (Slotkin 565).White aggression is relentlessly depicted in the film, with one important exception: the instance of the stoned straight. Perhaps no other trope is as defining of the genre, as is the scene wherein a straight person accidentally becomes stoned. Up in Smoke offers several examples, most notably the scene in which a motorcycle cop pulls over Pedro and Man as they drive a van belonging to Pedro’s Uncle Chuey. In a plot twist requiring a degree of willing suspension of disbelief that even wasted audiences might find a stretch, the exterior shell of the van, unbeknownst to Pedro and Man, is made entirely of marijuana which has started to smoulder around the exhaust pipe. The cop, who becomes intoxicated whilst walking through the fumes, does not hassle Pedro and Man, as expected, but instead asks for a bite of their hot dog and then departs happily, instructing the duo to “have a nice day.” In declining, or perhaps simply forgetting, to exercise his authority, the cop demonstrates the regenerative potential not of violent whiteness but rather of hybrid wastedness. Marijuana here is transformative, morphing straight consciousness into stoner consciousness and, in the process, discharging all the uptight, mean-spirited, unnecessary, and hence wasteful baggage of whiteness along the way. While such a utopian potential for pot is both upheld and satirised in the film, the scene amounts to far more than an inconsequential generic gag, in that it argues for the disavowal of whiteness via the assumption of the voluntary Otherness that is stonerism. Whiteness, the scene suggests, can be cast off, discarded, wasted and thus surmounted. Whites, for want of a better phrase, simply need to ‘just say no’ to whiteness in order to excrete the brutality that is its necessary affliction and inevitable result. While Up in Smoke laudably offers a powerful refusal to horde the assets of whiteness, the film fails to acknowledge that ‘just saying no’ is, indeed, one of whiteness’s exclusive privileges, since whites and only whites possess the liberty to refuse the advantages whiteness bestows. Non-whites possess no analogical ability to jettison the social constructions to which they are subjected, to refuse the power of dominant classes to define their subjectivity. Neither does the film confront the fact that Man nor any other of Up in Smoke’s white freaks are disallowed from re-embracing their whiteness, and its attendant value, at any time. However inchoate the film’s challenge to racial privilege, Up in Smoke’s celebration of the subversive pleasures of wasting whiteness offers a tentative, if bleary, first step toward ‘the abolition of whiteness.’ Its utopian vision of a post-white hybridised subjectivity, however dazed and confused, is worthy of far more serious contemplation than the film, taken at face value, might seem to suggest. Perhaps Up in Smoke is a stoner film that should also be viewed while sober. ReferencesBill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Dir. Stephen Herek. Orion Pictures Corporation, 1989.“Biographies”. 10 June 2010 ‹http://www.cheechandchongfans.com/biography.html›. Borrie, Lee. "Wild Ones: Containment Culture and 1950s Youth Rebellion”. Diss. University of Canterbury, 2007.Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 17-32.Chavoya, C. Ondine. “Customized Hybrids: The Art of Ruben Ortiz Torres and Lowriding in Southern California”. 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Sensei claps his hands and calls “hai douzo!”, and it is as if I woke up from a daydream, though I wasn’t daydreaming. I’m sitting seiza (traditional Japanese kneeling posture) in an aikidō seminar taking place in Jerusalem. In the large mirror, which is installed on the opposite wall, I can see my friends sitting near me in a row that extends to my left and to my right. At the center of the hall, sensei is demonstrating a technique. We observe his physical movements closely, while at the same time we also follow his verbal explanations. Yelena, my colleague and student, is assisting him: as she attacks he performs the correct defensive set of movements. Sometimes his movements with Yelena strike me as so aesthetic, so beautiful, that I become emotional and my eyes become wet. “Hai douzo!” is a cue: we quickly rise from seiza and pair-up. Now it is for us to perform the technique that sensei has taught, attempting to do so as effortlessly and as perfectly as he has. In this paper I inquire into knowledge as a social, embodied and interactional accomplishment. Following phenomenological and interactional theories, I address knowledge not as an abstract notion that exists over and above felt experience and feeling persons, but as felt/sensed and situational action. Interactional studies and theories in particular (Dewey; Garfinkel; Goffman) have stressed not only how inspiring it can be to think with the body, rather than about it or perhaps without it altogether, but also how society and the social are interactional through and through. Further along these lines, social life is seen as essentially (re)assembled (Latour Reassembling), and is continuously (re)created in and through interconnected interactions.Many social theories of the twentieth century are of static nature. If Popperian science sought to ‘capture’, ‘isolate’ and ‘fix’ reality, even momentarily, in order to examine it in a laboratory (be it concrete or metaphorical), emerging mobile and non-representational sensibilities suggest that it is social science that should adapt rather than social life. The notion of mobilities for instance, rests on an approach “which is not limited to representational thinking and feeling, but a different sort of thinking-feeling altogether. It is a recognition that mobilities such as dance involve various combinations of thought, action, feeling and articulation” (Adey 149). Thrift’s non-representational theory too asks social science to move beyond the representational order and beyond acts of ‘interpretation’ of ‘reality-as-text’, and inquire instead into “skills and knowledges [people] get from being embodied beings” (Thrift 127). Latour appealingly suggests that, “to have a body is to learn to be affected, meaning ‘effectuated’, moved, put into motion by other entities” (How to Talk 205). The question then is how the body becomes what it knows, and how and where such skill-ful learning takes place, where, together, bodies learn to sense each other and interact in innovative ways, performing new somatic knowledges, sensitivities, and interactions. I use the notion of a kinesthetic community of practice to address these questions, and to inquire into the (inter-)somatic environments where knowledge is both embodied and performed. I suggest that somatic knowledge is gained within a community, whereby “[a]cquiring a body is thus a progressive enterprise that produces at once a sensory medium and a sensitive world” (Latour, How to Talk 207), can be observed in an instructive way. The point here is not only the social nature of knowledge, but also its somatic and performed nature; “The action of knowledge”, as Latour (Latour, How to Talk 214) puts it. With the performative turn, to which I wish to contribute, I contend that we find ourselves less in times of hermeneutics of interpretation, and more in times of intervention and performance.For the purpose of studying a community of kinesthetic practice, I reflect on an occasion of aikidō training, which took place during a seminar given by Doug Wedell sensei during June, 2010, in Jerusalem. More generally, Aikidō is a modern Japanese martial art, which was developed by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) during the 1920s and 1930s. The term’s meaning resides in the kanji: Ai (合) meaning blending or harmonizing; Ki (気) meaning spirit, vitality or energy; and Dō (道) meaning way and also ‘discipline of’ or ‘art of’. Hence literally the meaning of aikidō, which is told to newcomers and reiterated to experienced aikidōka (practitioners), is the way of blending and harmonizing with the energy. Indeed, aikidōka view accomplishing the state of aiki, or of “being (one) with” not as a means but as an ends; a case of perfect time and movement, the performance of which means that aggression and risk, pain and injury, have been avoided. Research into bodies and mobilities in aikidō is part of the larger inquiry into systems of embodiment in and of Eastern bodily arts and of course other systems of movements and mobilities. My personal association here concerns practicing aikidō for over two decades, mostly in the dōjō (training hall and community) affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Interspersed Embodied AutoethnographyThe ethnographic text below is what I call an interspersed autoethnography, referring to two points that characterize it as a research method. First, it is an autoethnographic text as it is composed from my own embodied and emotional perspective, as an experienced aikidō practitioner or aikidōka. It is not a typical ‘participant observation’ description because my aikidō practice is deeply personal and has commenced a few years before my practice in academic disciplines began. Articulating my aikidō practice is necessarily for me a personal matter, touching on meaningful social and spiritual nexuses. In doing so my pleasure is twofold, as I am able to bring together my aikidō and my academic life-spheres. Second, the term interspersed describes a reluctance on my behalf to write in a straightforward, seemingly unproblematic, ethnographic genre. While I am completely in accord with works which decenter positivistic scientific writing and offer reflexivity and personal voice (eg. Young), I nonetheless acknowledge the strong claim for authenticity made at times by neat ethnographic extracts ‘from the field’. My preference is for a hybrid text that conveys experience and bodily praxis as they unfold, allowing the interspersing of real-life activity with academic reflection. Such autoethnographic writing is a hybrid genre, simultaneously de- or re-contextualizing academic knowledge and illuminating it via my practice/knowledge of aikidō. Writing in the personal voice of the researcher’s body, and sense of embodiedness, has of course its own history within and outside academic communities. In the type or research produced by colleagues who work on bodily practices and somatic communities, addressing one’s own body is inevitable. The more recent voices in this tradition remind us that “[s]ocial scientists who have gotten deeply involved in kinesthetic cultures have discovered they can analyze cultural information recorded in their own bodies” (Samudra 667). The interspersed embodied autoethnography offered in this paper aims to do just that, to share an embodied experience of actual aikidō training. Your Hands. Extended.Now Doug Wedell sensei slightly bows in my direction, and I, sitting seiza, immediately bow back and run to assist him. He faces me and extends both of his hands forward slightly. This marks for me an invitation. It is an opening, a cue marking that something is (already) going on between us. When Doug sensei raises his hands slightly and extends both of them forward a tension is established, and now it is my turn: I rush in the direction of his hands, seeking to grab both of them with mine. The grab is a type of an attack called ryotedori (lit. in Japanese ‘two-hand-grab’). My hands are extended as my body moves forward, focusing on grabbing Doug’s extended arms powerfully. I would have liked at this point to write that I am experiencing a ‘Zen state of mind’ and that my mind is clear of thoughts, and there are no words humming in me; or that I am experiencing a sensation of ‘flow’. But, alas, the fact is that I am thinking, and quite intensely. More accurately, I am speculating and wondering what will happen to me/my body as my arms approach sensei’s extended arms. Surely, I will not be able to grab his hands, and before physical contact between our limbs will materialize, he will move away swiftly and evade my approach. In terms of the discourse of the Martial Arts, I’m thinking about the technique that Doug sensei might perform with/on me, which will shape our expected embodied interaction. Not so much thinking as sensing: I imagine embodied possible trajectories that might span out from when and where our hands will nearly touch. As I rush in sensei’s direction I’m also aware of my breathing and sweating (both seem too heavy to me, and I repeatedly remind myself that I need to work out more often), of the coolness of the tatami (mattresses) under my feet, and somewhere in the back of my mind I’m concerned that I haven’t arranged my white training shirt (the thick training wear called gi) tidily enough. I’m also registering an anxiety. It has to do with the possible consequences of the technique that he will execute: will it be painful? Will I be hurt? Do I know that technique? Will I perform competently when he executes it? (I wouldn’t want to disappoint him, and in addition there are people watching us). Once, in a seminar in another style of aikidō, the Sensei smacked me on the tatami so powerfully and painfully that my eyes immediately filled with tears, but I bowed and said “domo arigato Sensei!” (“thank you very much, teacher”). Storming at Doug sensei, then, is not without words and many sensations, it is the easy part of this tango; the unexpected moments are very brief and amount to the actual duration of the performance of the technique. In this demonstration, Doug sensei is nagè or the one who performs the technique. In the capacity of teaching a technique, defined as a series of interactional moves that affects the attacker and neutralizes the threat embodied in the attack, nagè is the one exhibiting the technique for students and others to see and learn (which in the martial arts essentially means to try to repeat and imitate). Everyone’s eyes are set on nagè, sometimes with a technical gaze that seeks to unravel the proficient skills he is demonstrating (“how did he move his legs, did you get that? That was subtle!”), and sometimes with an impressionistic gaze that is inspired with his mastery of Ki, and how he connects and blends so effortlessly and effectively with the uke, who is presently myself (“wow, you can really see the Ki”). In aikidō, uke’s role – which I am now embodying – is mainly helping nagè perform the technique correctly, and in the case it is also clearly a demonstration. This is done by approaching Doug sensei (‘attacking’) energetically and effectively. I am generating motility and extending not only my arms and my body in the direction of sensei’s arms and body, but I am also ‘extending Ki’, an intention, an orientation, an invisible energy. Paraphrasing the ethnomethodological dictum “seen but unnoticed” (Garfinkel), for aikidōka Ki is the reverse: noticed but unseen. In fact, it is precisely the noticing of and awareness to Ki that makes a person into an aikidōka; into a member of a community of kinesthetic practice. The notion of community of practice has much more to do with learning in real-life situations and interactions, rather than in classroom contexts where knowledge is commonly presented in an abstracted and decontextualized form. Yet in aikidō training it could be said that “a community of practice is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 464). I add the notion of a kinesthetic community of practice to these practices. Following Samudra, I acknowledge that kinesthetic sensitivities and sensibilities are essential in and for martial arts in general, and more prominently for aikidō. The practice that defines the community, then, has to do with developing and enhancing kinesthetic sensitivities.Rushing at sensei Doug, I’m imagining what might/will happen to my body and where will it go. Ryotedori tenchi-nagè (lit. two-hand-grab heaven-and-earth-through) engulfs one possibility, whereby sensei will side-step a little and then raise one hand and lower the other – a movement which will have a particular effect on my body: my feet will be in the air, my body will be more or less horizontal to the tatami, and I will then fall and land on my back. Or he might do a ryotedori enkei-nagè (two-hand-grab circular-throw), whereby he will side-step and then quickly lower and raise his body in a graceful yet abrupt dipping movement, while performing a vertical circular motion with his hands. In this case my body will rhythmically follow his body’s movements, bend and straighten a little and finally bend again beyond my ability to maintain stability. At this point I will lose my balance and fall, either forward or backward, depending on the fleeting subtleties of a particular occasion. Or sensei might choose to do ryotedori irimi-nagè (two-hand-grab forward-thrust), or ryotedori shiho-nagè (two-hand-grab four-directions-throw), which is one of his favorites and one of my most dreaded techniques… My mind is conjuring these associations of names and movements, of techniques and somatic trajectories. Which are now coupled. There is nothing more that I can do about all of this at this stage, besides what I am already doing, which is storming at Doug sensei and committing an “attack”, not allowing my hesitations, anxieties and visualizations to interfere or distract my motility. I know that regardless of the specific technique that he will eventually perform, I will not be able to actually capture his hands, and it is precisely this time-space interval which is the creative opportunity for nagè to execute the technique at the ideal timing. He will begin the technique just before I capture his hands. Not too far or too early; not close or too late. In precisely the right time. What is left for me now to do as uke-in-interaction is to allow my body to be centered and relaxed; try to keep my body attentive and reactive and least rigid as possible, which are the somatic-kinesthetic qualities that ukemi – doing uke – demands (to my understanding). Indeed, as I close in on sensei’s hands, about a foot away or so, at the exact point where I cannot anymore retract my movement, he begins moving. He slides unnoticingly sideways and his hands do a similar motion to that of tenchi-nagè, but not precisely. It’s a different technique: I think it’s ryotedori zepo-nagè (two-hand-grab forward-throw). His sidestepping draws my body low and near his body quickly and powerfully. I’m inside a whirlpool and now really do not have time to ponder or simulate trajectories. There is a split of a second there that the air is drawn out of my lungs. My hands follow sensei’s hands attentively, and my body stays ‘with’ my hands, connected to his movements. Everyone is observing sensei; the nagè. The uke is perceived as a helper; a sideshow. Yet my skills are developed and subtle, and as nagè performs various movements swiftly and minutely, my limbs and body must reflect these movements in a highly attuned manner. My movements are as swift and minute as his. Otherwise, the connection will be asynchronous and uke will fail to follow or be engaged by nagè’s technique. Uke’s embodied abilities (acquired skills) at following through nagè’s leads allows uke’s body to move in a fashion that reflects nagè’s movements in a magnified way. Observers’ correct gaze then should not be set only or even primarily on Nagè, the ‘performer’; it should include the uke, which supplies a type of an embodied mirror to or echo of nagè’s movements. I identify with Samudra’s (671) observation, that “[k]nowing the structure of movement is not the same as experiencing the sensation of movement, however. After more than two decades of training, I know when I am executing a besi correctly: not by the shape of the form but by subtle sensations.” Uke is attending to nagè. It is less a matter of attacking the nagè, if attack is taken simplistically to mean striking/kicking/grabbing the other. More dialectical and interactional, in the nagè-uke dyad the uke supplies the gesture of the audience. Uke audiences nagè – the latter must appreciate (must have acquired the sensitivities and the ‘taste’ to appreciate) nagè, hence to audience nagè and complement her. If we take the notion of audience not as a passive receptor, but as an active, committed and engaged actor, then uke is an active and involved audience. This is how art is consumed, and indeed at stake here is a martial art. The next thing I feel are a variety of sensations, taking place more or less at the same time in different bodily parts, both at the skin level and inside the body. Then my body is suspended in mid-air: two feet up in the air and for a distance of some nine feet. Thanks to Doug sensei I’m micro-flying. This is the last part performed by uke: after the attack and after nagè has performed the technique, uke must make sure that she or he are unharmed while taking the appropriate fall. Relieved, I land softly on the tatami. Conclusions I could have concluded by saying that as it takes two to tango, it also takes two to perform an aikidō technique. But this would have been an over-simplification. It takes two roles to perform a technique, that of the nagè and that of the uke, and in addition it also takes a community of kinesthetic practice in order to learn to perform ‘doing being a nagè’ and also ‘doing being a uke’ (following Garfinkel). It might take two to tango but it takes more (inter)connections and more (inter)actions to learn to tango. Moreover, it is never completely clear, nor can it ever be, whether the occasion at hand is that of learning (training, rehearsing) or that or performing (accomplishing). When I rush at Doug sensei during a seminar class, it seems like a performance: students and others are watching and taking pictures, and the seminar is video-recorded and then uploaded to YouTube and to our websites. But at the same time I am also thinking of the practice I gained with ‘doing being a uke for/with Doug Sensei’. So any performance is also a training session, a rehearsal for an occasion that is known or unknown but nonetheless anticipated. And of course vice versa: every training session or rehearsal is also a performance; an aesthetic and meaningful interaction that stands for itself. In these occasions, kinesthetic and somatic knowledge is simultaneously created, shared, and performed, as are also the sensitivities and sensibilities that are acquired and required in order to reciprocate it; to ‘understand it’ via mobilities. With the interspersed autoethnography presented I have sought to show how, in Latour’s terms, the body learns to be affected with and to the uke in the uke-nagè dyad in aikidō. The skills and sensitivities in and of aikidō are learned through the roles performed during actual practice. What is called ‘the work of the uke’, or ukemi, is an ongoing process of acquiring and refining skills in and for interaction. ReferencesAdey, Peter. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy. New York: Henry Holt, 1920.Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. "Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice." 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