Books on the topic 'Virtual capital'

A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has also proved to be the most influential work in social science in the twentieth century; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. Millions of readers this century have treated Capital as a sacred text, subjecting it to as many different interpretations as the bible itself. No mere work of dry economics, Marx’s great work depicts the unfolding of industrial capitalism as a tragic drama - with a message which has lost none of its relevance today. This is the only abridged edition to take account of the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867, excerpts from a new translation of ‘The Result of the Immediate Process of Production’, and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.

The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction explores both the nature of virtue in general and specific kinds of virtues. These include the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and the theological virtues, as well as the capital vices. From the philosophy of Aristotle and Confucius, to the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli, and many more, fascination with the virtues has endured and evolved to fit a wide range of cultural, religious, and philosophical contexts through the centuries. This VSI examines the role of the virtues in the moral life, their cultivation, and how they offer ways of thinking and acting that are alternatives to mere rule-following. It also considers the relationship of the virtues to one’s own emotions, desires, and rational capacities.

The humanist perception of fourteenth-century Rome as a slumbering ruin awaiting the Renaissance and the return of papal power has cast a long shadow on the historiography of the city. Challenging the view, this book argues that Roman political culture underwent dramatic changes in the late Middle Ages, with profound and lasting implications for the city's subsequent development. The book examines the transformation of Rome's governing elites as a result of changes in the city's economic, political, and spiritual landscape. It explores this shift through the history of Roman political society, its identity as an urban commune, and its once-and-future role as the spiritual capital of Latin Christendom. Tracing the contours of everyday Roman politics, the book reframes the reestablishment of papal sovereignty in Rome as the product of synergy between papal ambitions and local political culture. More broadly, it emphasizes Rome's distinct role in evolution of medieval Italy's city-communes.

Many call Vrindavan the spiritual capital of India, for it’s long been recognized as the playground where Krishna spends his eternal youth. Today, however, the world is gobbling it up. Delhi’s sprawl inches closer day by day—half the town is a vast real-estate development—and the waters of the Yamuna are too polluted to drink or even bathe in. Temples now style themselves as theme parks, and the world’s tallest religious building is under construction in Krishna’s pastoral paradise. What happens when the Anthropocene Age makes everything virtual? What happens when heaven gets plowed under? Like our age as a whole, Vrindavan throbs with feisty energy, but is it the canary in our collective coal mine? This book lays bare the glories and struggles of Vrindavan today—its waters and its thirst, its widows and its women, its newcomers (like ISKCON), and its old hands. It shows us the real Vrindavan—a parable of Hinduism in rapid change.

This is a book about worldschooling and the families who educate their young children while traveling the world. Adopted primarily by white, middle-class parents from the Global North, worldschooling represents a new kind of life strategy, one that starts with seeing the world as their children’s classroom, but extends to the way worldschoolers parent, perform family life, work digitally and remotely, create communities online and on the road, and negotiate a sense of belonging and global citizenship on the move. While worldschooling appears to be a countercultural practice, it is actually emblematic of the mobile lifestyles that are becoming more common in contemporary society as individuals search for the “good life” in uncertain times. Based on a “mobile virtual ethnography” of traveling families, the book illustrates how this mobile lifestyle project is interwoven with the new individualism of late modernity, the new technical and economic arrangements of neoliberal capitalism, and the new uncertainties of life in a risk society. Each chapter details the strategies worldschooling parents deploy to live a good and morally justifiable life under the turbulent conditions of late modernity while preparing their children to thrive in an uncertain future. This analysis reveals that mobile lifestyles do not transcend social hierarchies, but introduce new mechanisms of distinction. Instead of transmitting economic capital to their children, worldschooling parents secure their children’s position of privilege in an uncertain world by equipping them with new forms of social, emotional, and cultural capital derived through mobility.

This chapter explores several ways in which humility is conducive to human flourishing. It claims that humility is rational, benefits its possessor, and contributes to its possessor being good qua human. It considers the relationship between humility and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, as well as its connections to the cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance. It argues that humility plays a key role in the process of theosis. It also argues that humility prevents (or at least hinders) vice in human beings, in particular the seven capital vices of envy, vainglory, sloth, avarice, anger, gluttony, lust, and the primary capital vice, pride.

The volume explores the everyday security practices of various people in Kyrgyzstan that feel threatened on the grounds of their ethnic belonging, gender or sexual orientation. In doing so, it provides a bottom-up perspective of security and insecurity in Kyrgyzstan, which differs from more state-centric and elitist accounts on this subject. Case studies include the Uzbek and the Lyuli minorities in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, young women in the capital city of Bishkek, ethnically mixed couples and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Each case applies ethnographic methods to follow individuals in their everyday lives and asks how they deal with the various insecurities they face. The volume studies security in cafes and restaurants, in kindergartens and schools, public transport, bazaars, taxis, virtual chat rooms and nightclubs. It argues that seemingly trivial aspects of everyday life, such as food and music, children's education or romantic first love, are important to gaining a more comprehensive picture of what security in Kyrgyzstan is all about. All contributions apply the analytical concept of securityscapes. The volume should be of relevance to scholars and students from social anthropology, security studies, gender studies and queer studies with an interest in Central Asia.

The introduction discusses why dealing with insolvent banks is fundamentally different from dealing with insolvent commercial companies. In ordinary corporate insolvency practice, commercial companies can be allowed to continue to operate while insolvent, by suspending payments on their financial liabilities while continuing to make payments on their commercial liabilities. This allows them to be reorganized or recapitalized rather than liquidated, which almost always results in better recoveries for their creditors, including their financial creditors. The problem in applying this model to a bank is that with a bank there is no meaningful distinction between financial and commercial liabilities. Virtually all bank liabilities are financial liabilities. Instead, the important distinction for banks is between long-term unsecured debt and other capital structure liabilities on the one hand, and short-term unsecured debt and other operating liabilities on the other. Banks can be allowed to continue operating after they reach the point of insolvency if their capital structure liabilities are made subordinate to their operating liabilities in advance. If that has been done, payments on their capital structure liabilities can be suspended while payments on their operating liabilities continue to be made after they reach the point of insolvency and they can be recapitalized (made solvent again) by converting their long-term unsecured debt into equity. This approach should stem runs, avoid contagion and preserve their critical operations for the benefit of the economy as a whole, and also result in better recoveries for all creditors, including the holders of their capital structure liabilities, compared to an immediate liquidation.

As Russian business emerged from collapse and mafia-style capitalism in the 2000s, the surviving oligarchs set their sights on the global market. As they entered the field of global capitalism, they learned the norms and business practices of Western capital, including corporate social responsibility. One corporation, Oleg Deripaska’s En+ Group, emerged as the primary corporate sponsor for Baikal environmentalism. Activists were ambivalent about the relationship, but accepted the money and donned the corporate logo. In so doing, these two generalizable power holders enacted a trade: money for virtue. Not only does such an interaction bolster the capacity of civil society, it also ensures its independence—only an independent civil sector can garner virtue and possess it in such a quantity to trade. Moreover, such a trade is superior to En+’s in-house attempt to create public will, because concern for the company’s image exceeds concern for environmental outcomes.

Evangelical spirituality had implications for both felons and philosophers. Convictions about the psychological depth and comprehensiveness of God’s law led evangelicals to minister to those who were condemned and imprisoned by the law. The evangelical message of law and gospel was tested when confronted by the desperate condition of the capital convict. This is evident in the prison ministry of John Wesley and Charles Wesley, and other lay Methodists, especially at Newgate prison in London, and also in the response of the Dissenters Philip Doddridge and Benjamin Fawcett to condemned criminals. Intellectually, John and Charles Wesley and Henry Venn offered a deontological ethics grounded in evangelical spirituality, and Jonathan Edwards challenged dominant ideas in moral philosophy by showing that true virtue was deeper and more comprehensive than natural virtue. It required the grace of conversion and the presence of God who was always first and last in any moral considerations.

This chapter examines seven critical approaches to global politics: Marxism, Critical Theory, constructivism, feminism, postmodernism, postcolonial theory, and green theory. In their book The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels address the implications for global order of the rise of capitalism and the role of the bourgeoisie as controllers of capital. Their ideas have had a major influence on critical approaches to virtually all aspects of both domestic and global politics. The chapter considers some major strands of Marxist-influenced theory of direct relevance to global politics, including dependency theory, world-system theory, Gramscian theory, and Frankfurt School theory. It also discusses gender theory and compares postmodern/poststructural approaches to global politics with Critical Theory and constructivism in International Relations.

El libro está integrado por nueve ensayos que invita al lector interesado en los temas migratorios a reflexionar sobre los grandes desafíos que enfrentan Centroamérica y México en su relación con Estados Unidos en tiempos de extravío, de crisis civilizatoria. El sujeto migrante es visto como un problema al que es necesario detener y deportar. Es una persona que, paradójicamente, es tratada como no-persona por considerarse potencialmente peligrosa para la seguridad nacional, y por la cual se crean dispositivos para impedir su tránsito y arribo al lugar elegido: Estados Unidos. Proliferan cada vez más retenes, estaciones migratorias, cuerpos de seguridad especializados, muros físicos y virtuales, aviones no tripulados y vehículos que forman parte de esa maquinaria para contener la migración. El sistema instituido en contra de la migración irregular ni siquiera reconoce que la migración es consustancial a la naturaleza del sistema económico y social, que la migración laboral sigue al capital y que el capital se beneficia extraordinariamente del trabajo mal pagado y precario. Los artículos que integran esta obra muestran y demuestran que a pesar de todas las políticas hasta hoy implementadas para detener a los migrantes, el fenómeno sigue y, por lo mismo, es deseable y urgente ensayar nuevas formas, como en el caso de América del Sur, para procurar medidas efectivas para evitar el calvario que sufren los migrantes en su peregrinar a Estados Unidos.

If Hedley Bull came back today and revised his most famous book, he would likely devote a chapter to the economic forces that transformed our world during the past four decades. Among other systemic changes, the radical unleashing of finance and the partial return of a pre-1914 economic ideology justifying open and integrating capital markets might surprise an advocate of the virtues of the states system. But by following Bull’s reasoning, his model of empirical observation, and his underlying moral sensibilities—as well as suggestions from his constructive critics—this essay traces the emergence since the late 1970s of a variegated global capacity to assess systemic financial risks, design collaborative policies to prevent systemic crises, and manage them when they nevertheless occur. The challenge of deeply legitimating that nuanced and complex capacity remains, which, as Bull anticipated, means that considerations of justice must soon be addressed.

This chapter examines the 1920s as an era, specifically as the Prohibition era, and looks at how certain aspects of the decade famously came to define the character of the city of Chicago. After all, Chicago, literally the world’s capital of saloon culture, was where the battle of the wets and the drys was most conspicuously fought during the thirteen years till Repeal. Democracy trains people to choose their lives, for good or ill, and a sumptuary law virtually forces a free people to rebel. The 1920s was a rebellion decade generally. Moreover, there was jazz, the greatest portmanteau concept in the history of the American language. “Jazz” meant everything that was new, dangerous, delicious, and liberating. Jazz was the opposite of the ice-cream social and the sermon. Yes, it was music, but, even more, it appeared to be anything community leaders warned would bring down society.

This chapter focuses on transnational networks of Pentecostal practice. It explores the use of “Pannkotis” to identify musical practice among a variety of Haitian churches, including some tied historically to Protestant and Pentecostal organizations in the United States. It also discusses the author’s roles as a Western ethnomusicologist and a Pentecostal believer, reflecting on the power shifts in transnational engagement that shared faith can engender: the author was often not only a learner about Haitian Pentecostals themselves, but also a religious learner with them; at other times, by virtue of the “portable” religious capital of the author’s status as a Pentecostal minister, he was placed as a musical and religious teacher. The chapter points provocatively to the discontinuities the author experienced as an ethnomusicologist because of the understandings and beliefs he shared as a coreligionist with Haitian Pentecostals.

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter focuses on the rights and liabilities of a shareholder which are the incident of the general nature of a share, as well as his particular rights and liabilities by virtue of owning a particular type or class of share. It first considers the legal nature of a shareholding and the different types of share capital and typical class rights of a shareholder, as well as the statutory procedure required of a company before it can effect a variation of shareholders’ class rights. Examples of classes of shares are then given, and preferential rights attached to preference shares are discussed. The chapter concludes by looking at European Union initiatives on shareholders’ rights.

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter focuses on the rights and liabilities of a shareholder which are the incident of the general nature of a share, as well as his particular rights and liabilities by virtue of owning a particular type or class of share. It first considers the legal nature of a shareholding and the different types of share capital and typical class rights of a shareholder, as well as the statutory procedure required of a company before it can effect a variation of shareholders’ class rights. Examples of classes of shares are then given, and preferential rights attached to preference shares are discussed. The chapter concludes by looking at European Union initiatives on shareholders’ rights.

This chapter looks at the history and fundamental elements of resolution authority as it has been developed and used in the United States. The goal of resolution authority in the United States has been to deal with failed banks and other financial institutions in a manner that stems runs, avoids contagion and preserves critical operations, the same goal as deposit guarantee schemes. First introduced in the United States in 1933 as part of the deposit insurance programme for banks, resolution authority was originally little more than the method by which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation honoured its obligations to insured depositors before evolving to its current state. Resolution authority, as conceived in the United States, has two principal components—the core resolution powers and the claims process. The core resolution powers consist of the authority to quickly separate the assets and viable parts of a failed bank's business (the good bank) from its capital structure liabilities (the bad bank), so that its critical operations are preserved and runs and contagion are avoided. It is virtually always completed in the United States over a weekend commonly known as resolution weekend. The claims process involves determining the validity and amount of the claims of individual holders of capital structure liabilities in accordance with ordinary principles of due process and distributing the residual value of the good bank to such holders in satisfaction of their claims. The claims process typically takes at least six to nine months to be completed in order to comply with ordinary principles of due process for potential claimants.

Morality and the Movies presents the ideal introduction to philosophical ethics for film lovers. Dan Shaw uses a series of sixteen popular films, including Hotel Rwanda, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, Dead Man Walking and Full Metal Jacket, to illustrate all the major ethical theories and key contemporary moral issues. The book provides a brief summary and philosophical interpretation of each film, with reference throughout to primary philosophical sources. A unique pedagogical feature is that each chapter begins with a five-step summary of the theoretical position in question and a critical evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses through a specific film. Topics covered include: - divine authority - the social contract - moral relativism - virtue ethics - freedom and determinism - euthanasia - capital punishment - war and terrorism - abortion - business ethics Ideal for undergraduate students coming to philosophical ethics for the first time, this book utilizes popular film to introduce a central topic in the study of philosophy.

Decades after the publication of his key works, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of education remains the object of persistent misunderstanding. A coherent account of this work must distinguish, at minimum, two phases to Bourdieu’s thoughts on education. During the early period, Bourdieu asserted the salience of both self-selection and institutional selection in shunting students into class destinations that echoed their class origins. However, these works were uniformly devoted to identifying the peculiarities of the (then) contemporary French system, considered to be an exemplar of a distinct (“traditionalistic”) institutional form. In contrast, Bourdieu’s later work sought to develop a model of the relation between education and social inequality that had significant cross-national scope. This work de-emphasized the role of self-selection, and developed a substantially more nuanced account of the relation between education and social mobility. What Bourdieu terms the “scholastic mode of reproduction” in this period denotes a system in which children from the upper reaches of the class structure are systematically advantaged in the pursuit of social rewards by virtue of their inherited cultural capital, yet nevertheless face a real risk of downward mobility. For this reason, we term it a theory of “imperfect social reproduction.”

A comienzos del nuevo milenio, El Fondo Monetario Internacional recomendaba la flotación libre del tipo de cambio, pero en América Latina varios bancos centrales se reservaron la facultad de comprar o vender dólares, al mismo tiempo que fijaban la tase de interés, Y algunos de ellos aprovecharon el largo período de altos precios de las commodities y fuertes ingresos de capital para acumular grandes reservas internacionales. Gracias a estas reservas y a la flexibilidad cambiaria, la gran recesión global de 2008 no tuvo mayores repercusiones en la región. ¿Puede concluirse de esta experiencia histórica que las economías latinoamericanas han encontrado la mejor forma de insertarse en la globalización financiera? Evitar las crisis que asolaron a los países en desarrollo en los primeros treinta años de globalización financiera —donde imperaban los regímenes de tipo de cambio fijo— es una gran virtud, pero la región sufrió también un proceso de desindustrialización, asociado a este prolongado periodo de apreciación de sus monedas. Los artículos incluidos en este libro analizan las políticas aplicadas durante el período 2000-2015 por los bancos centrales de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México, Perú y Venezuela, y discuten las posibles alternativas.

The Governor’s Dilemma develops a general theory of indirect governance based on the tradeoff between governor control and intermediary competence; the empirical chapters apply that theory to a diverse range of cases encompassing both international relations and comparative politics. The theoretical framework paper starts from the observation that virtually all governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. But governors in indirect governance relationships face a dilemma: competent intermediaries gain power from the competencies they contribute, making them difficult to control, while efforts to control intermediary behavior limit important intermediary competencies, including expertise, credibility, and legitimacy. Thus, governors can obtain either high intermediary competence or strong control, but not both. The empirical chapters demonstrate that the competence–control tradeoff, and the governor’s dilemma, are common conditions of indirect governance, whether governors are domestic, international, or supranational, democratic or authoritarian; and whether governance addresses economic, security, or social issues. The empirical chapters analyze the operation and implications of the governor’s dilemma in cases involving the governance of violence (e.g. secret police, support for foreign rebel groups, private security companies), the governance of markets (e.g. the Euro crisis, capital markets, EU regulation, the G20), and cross-cutting governance issues (colonial empires, “Trump’s Dilemma”).

The aim of the e-book is to present the theoretical, cognitive and practical aspects of the essence and complexity of operational management in a production company. The presented modern production methods together with the challenges and problems of contemporary enterprises should better help to understand the issues of sustainable development, with particular emphasis on waste. The book consists of six chapters devoted to relevant and topic issues relating to the core business of an industrial enterprise. Chapter 1 The nature of the industrial enterprise is an introduction to further considerations and deals with the essence of the basic aspects of the company. Both popular and less known definitions of an enterprise, its features, functions and principles of operation are presented. An important part of the chapter is the presentation and formulation of strategic, tactical and operational goals. Moreover, the division of enterprises is presented with the use of various criteria and the features of the industrial market, which make it distinct. Chapter 2 The operational management evolution and its role in the industrial enterprise discusses the evolution and concept of production and operational management. The management levels were also presented, indicating their most important functions. An integral part of the chapter is the essence of the production system, viewed through the prism of the five elements. Chapter 3 Functions and role in operations management presents the issues concerning the organization of production processes, production capacity and inventory management. This part also presents considerations on cooperation and collaboration between enterprises in the process of creating value. Chapter 4 Traditional methods used in operational activities focuses on methods such as benchmarking, outsourcing, core competences, JIT, MPR I and MRP II, as well as TQM and kaizen. Knowledge of these methods should contribute to understanding the activities of modern enterprises, the way of company functioning, the realization of production activities, as well as aspects related to building a competitive position. Chapter 5 Modern methods used in production-operations management discusses the less common and less frequently used production methods, based on a modern and innovative approach. In particular, it was focused on: Shop Floor Control and cooperative manufacturing, environment-conscious manufacturing (ECM) and life-cycle assessment ( LCA), waste management and recycling, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), virtual enterprise, World Class Manufacturing (WCM), Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and House of Quality (HOQ), theory of constraints (TOC), Drum Buffer Rope (DBR), group technology (GT) and cellular manufacturing (CM), Demand Chain Management and competitive intelligence (CI). In the last section discusses: the role of sustainable statistical process control and Computer-Aided Process Planning in context formatting of information management. Chapter 6 Problems of sustainable development and challenges related to production and operations management describes the problem and challenges related to production and operations activities. In particular, attention was paid to the threats related to changes in global warming, the growing scale of waste, or the processes of globalization. It was pointed out that the emerging problem may be both a threat and a chance for the development of enterprises. An integral part of the chapter are also considerations on technical progress, innovation and the importance of human capital in operational activities.

A prática da participação política digital com a apropriação do Facebook e Twitter em estratégias políticas eleitorais A cada quatro anos, os brasileiros vão às urnas eleger seus representantes a prefeito e vereadores. Um passo importante no exercício da cidadania e na renovação das esperanças por uma nação mais desenvolvida nos âmbitos social, econômico e político almejado por cada voto computado. A decisão sobre a quem depositar nossas expectativas não é tarefa fácil. Envolve, sobretudo, uma análise crítica dos programas de governo, da vida pregressa e das propostas de cada concorrente. Apesar de ainda existir uma certa apatia por parte dos cidadãos em relação à política, percebe-se que, por outro lado, em pleno século XXI, a comunicação sobre as práticas que envolvem as discussões e o métier nesse campo encontra terreno fértil em diferentes espaços públicos. Nesse sentido, na questão da busca pela informação, o cidadão tem, além das mídias tradicionais (jornal, rádio e televisão), um novo aporte tecnológico que é a internet. O que difere a web dessas outras mídias é justamente a possibilidade de produção de conteúdos sobre política pelos públicos (antes restrita aos profissionais da mídia de massa) e a capacidade de interação, de conversação digital, não-física entre candidatos e eleitores. Com isso, as práticas entre esses atores sociais convergem na mesma direção, com produção e difusão de conteúdo. Nesse processo, eleitores passam a ser colaboradores no jogo político quando divulgam ideias e opiniões dos candidatos de sua preferência para seu grupo social. No cerne desse contexto virtual e de disputa política, cabe ressaltar a participação dos cidadãos em sites de redes sociais, como Facebook e Twitter. Estas plataformas constituem espaços públicos que permitem a expressão e troca de opiniões, a interação entre os participantes e a divulgação de informações. Na propaganda eleitoral, o uso desses dispositivos integra as estratégias das campanhas e o seu dinamismo na questão tempo-espaço propicia agilidade na comunicação de conteúdos e a possibilidade de diálogo entre os que disputam uma eleição e os votantes. A adoção de sites de redes sociais como um novo canal de divulgação e promoção de propaganda política foi experimentada nas campanhas norte-americanas em 2008. No nosso entendimento, no Brasil, Facebook e Twitter foram significativos para potencializar as estratégias de campanha eleitoral em 2012. O Twitter teve um papel relevante ao pautar a mídia tradicional e, já em 2010, quando foram eleitos presidente, senadores, governadores, deputados federais e estaduais, complementou significativamente as ações de campanhas políticas digitais (OLIVEIRA, 2011). Nas eleições de 2012, a primeira de âmbito municipal com a apropriação de sites de redes sociais para APRESENTAÇÃO propaganda política, o Facebook foi considerado o que mais os candidatos a prefeituras brasileiras utilizaram para disseminar suas campanhas (AGGIO; REIS, 2013). A autorização dada pela Justiça Eleitoral brasileira para utilização da internet nas disputas políticas consta na Lei nº 12.034, de setembro de 2009, que reformulou conceitos sobre as bases da regulamentação da propaganda eleitoral na rede. A partir de então, os candidatos passaram a ter liberdade total para utilizar blogs, mensagens instantâneas e sites de redes sociais. Com a autorização da Justiça Eleitoral para a utilização dessas plataformas virtuais em propaganda política, candidatos a cargos eletivos buscaram o apoio de agências de comunicação para divulgar suas ações de campanha e escolher estratégias de marketing eleitoral visando otimizar suas imagens frente a públicos diversificados. Apesar do uso do site de rede social Orkut nas eleições de 2004, a regulamentação específica para o uso da internet em campanhas eleitorais é direcionada ao pleito de 2010 (pois antes a web era utilizada segundo a legislação de rádio e televisão) ou focada em campanhas online realizadas em outros países. Trata-se de mais uma oportunidade, para quem pleiteia um cargo político, de expressar ideias e propostas, de divulgar o ritmo cotidiano de campanha, além de compartilhar fatos e acontecimentos e, principalmente, dialogar e interagir com um público disposto a consumir informação política. Este livro, fruto de estudos desenvolvidos durante o mestrado no Programa de Pós-graduação em Estudos da Mídia da UFRN, apresenta o contexto de campanhas e estratégias eleitorais adotadas pelos postulantes à Prefeitura do Natal (RN) ao incorporar os sites Facebook e Twitter como possíveis espaços de disseminação de informação política e interação com eleitores. Com isso, buscamos compreender as práticas de participação e de comunicação dos candidatos a prefeito e eleitores em plataformas de redes sociais virtuais nas Eleições 2012, considerada a primeira de âmbito municipal a se apropriar desses meios para propaganda política. Também procuramos verificar a maneira pela qual se concretizou o relacionamento entre os que disputaram a cadeira do executivo municipal potiguar em 2012 e seus eleitores. Além disso, a obra busca analisar quais foram os tipos de questionamentos e demandas direcionados aos candidatos e qual foi o posicionamento adotado ao responder os comentários deixados nas postagens. Outro enfoque deste trabalho é verificar a frequência com que os concorrentes se comunicaram com seus eleitores e que tipo de informação política foi disponibilizado nessas redes. Podemos inferir que a chegada das campanhas eleitorais ao ciberespaço e seu uso na esfera política foram, inicialmente, de desconhecimento para os candidatos porque exigiram, como acreditamos que ainda continuam exigindo, mais engajamento, formação e capacitação para entender a funcionalidade e o potencial das redes sociais virtuais. Às vezes, mesmo os profissionais contratados e especializados no desenvolvimento de estratégias que objetivam conquistar a opinião pública não conseguem atender as expectativas de determinados candidatos, que por desconhecimento sobre o uso desses dispositivos, acreditam ser tarefa fácil garantir uma quantidade significativa de visualização das publicações e alcance das páginas. Numa campanha eleitoral, candidatos têm como uma das metas falar para um maior número de pessoas possível e conquistar a maior votação que puderem. Portanto, utilizam de todo o aparato técnico e tecnológico para atingir tal premissa. Os usuários precisaram de tempo para se adaptar às novas práticas de comunicação e interação oriundas desses ambientes digitais. Tempo para conhecer as funcionalidades dessas mídias e de familiarização com as linguagens e o novo contexto. A mudança social que emerge da reconfiguração das práticas de comunicação para o espaço público digital não depende especificamente dos meios, que são condição necessária, mas não suficiente para se alcançar essa mudança. Os próprios usuários, participantes ou agentes sociais que utilizam a mídia digital também têm comprometimento com essa mudança. Mesmo com a expansão de canais participativos, ainda cabe o questionamento sobre os efeitos políticos provenientes da comunicação digital. Ainda que existam mais espaços de expressão e discussão destinados aos eleitores, a contrapartida comunicacional do candidato é relevante, no sentido de que este leve em consideração as mensagens e contribuições enviadas por aqueles que escolhem quem irá representá-los na esfera municipal de governo. O que os cidadãos esperam, com a internet, é ter voz ativa e suas opiniões potencializadas em processos de tomada de decisão. Nas campanhas eleitorais isso não é diferente. O cidadão quer ser ouvido, quer ter sua participação valorizada nos espaços de redes sociais, quer se comunicar e interagir com seus candidatos. Ele quer a oportunidade de cobrar, fiscalizar e monitorar diariamente as ações de representantes eleitos pelo povo. Do outro lado, candidatos têm a oportunidade de disponibilizar, de forma constante, informações que estejam imbuídas de teor relevante politicamente e que possam propiciar diálogos com os eleitores no atendimento às demandas, no esclarecimento de dúvidas e na tessitura de comentários acerca do conteúdo publicado nos perfis virtuais. As práticas de comunicação vivenciadas no universo online são contemporâneas e as transformações oriundas do uso de tecnologias digitais na vida social, cultural, econômica e política ainda não são conhecidas em sua totalidade, nem mesmo a extensão dos graus de efeitos e consequências provenientes do seu uso, que dependem do modo como as pessoas as apropriam e para qual finalidade. Os pensamentos otimista e pessimista acompanham o incremento das tecnologias digitais na comunicação humana. O fato é que na política, a incorporação dessas ferramentas virtuais no escopo das estratégias de campanhas online é recente. Por isso, esta obra, diante da efervescência do cenário político brasileiro, busca tratar das práticas comunicativas estabelecidas entre candidatos e eleitores na realidade virtual. No que se refere a campanhas eleitorais, especialmente as de partidos pequenos, que dispõem de poucos recursos financeiros e de pouco espaço para visibilidade de suas ações, a internet e os sites de redes sociais são um instrumento de baixo custo. São espaços onde as informações podem ser difundidas em diferentes formatos (vídeos, fotos, links, texto) e propícios para discussões públicas. Em relação a 2010, podemos inferir que no Brasil, em 2012, as redes sociais foram utilizadas na propaganda política eleitoral e ganharam mais força nas eleições municipais para prefeito e vereadores em 5.565 municípios. Natal, capital do Rio Grande do Norte, com 528.364 eleitores, foi uma dessas cidades em que a campanha eleitoral também se projetou nas redes sociais. Seis candidatos disputaram os cargos à Prefeitura e 489 concorreram às 29 vagas disponíveis na Câmara de Vereadores. Nesta obra, o leitor poderá vivenciar e compreender como as práticas de comunicação, participação e interação foram concebidas no Facebook e Twitter pelos candidatos Carlos Eduardo (PDT), Fernando Mineiro (PT), Hermano Morais (PMDB), Robério Paulino (PSOL), Rogério Marinho (PSDB) e pelos eleitores potiguares. Nesta perspectiva, apresentamos um esboço da estrutura deste livro. Nossa abordagem, portanto, começa com uma discussão dos principais conceitos que norteiam esta análise. O primeiro capítulo versará sobre o tema da internet e da esfera pública, partindo das definições sobre o que é a esfera pública. Consideramos o ambiente online como um ambiente possível de aglutinação de uma esfera pública política, e das mudanças nesse contexto. Já o segundo capítulo abordará o tema central da análise desta obra, que é a participação política. Nele, trataremos dos conceitos de participação, do interesse pelo processo político e de algumas experiências participativas online. Outro conceito que é pertinente ao tema deste livro se refere à questão da visibilidade política no meio digital e da interação em ambientes midiáticos. Além disso, neste tópico será abordada ainda a questão da abrangência do Facebook e do Twitter no Brasil, suas características como meios de comunicação e particularidades da conversação nessas plataformas. A seguir, no quarto capítulo, nos dedicamos a explicar os procedimentos adotados para análise das práticas de participação entre candidatos e eleitores nas mídias sociais. No quinto capítulo serão apresentados os resultados desta análise qualitativa do conteúdo coletado no Facebook e no Twitter dos candidatos, com base em referenciais teóricos, o que nos possibilitará tecer comparações sobre o modo com que cada um se apropriou dessas plataformas e as formas de uso no marketing eleitoral, nas práticas de comunicação das ações de campanha e na interação. Ao mesmo tempo, analisaremos os questionamentos de eleitores endereçados aos candidatos.

El presente libro Análisis de Política Educativa: teorías, enfoques y tendencias recientes en la Argentina es un producto de la reflexión, análisis y discusión colectiva del equipo de la cátedra de Historia, Política y Gestión del Sistema Educativo. En este sentido, la cátedra recupera y se inscribe en dos grandes tradiciones intelectuales, por un lado, aquella que como señalamos antes entiende la política educativa y la historia de la educación como campos académicos especializados que se enriquecen en el diálogo hacia adentro del conjunto de sub-disciplinas educativas y hacia afuera con el resto de las ciencias sociales, y por otro, se reconoce como parte sustativa de la formación docente de los distintos profesorados de la Facultad cuyos conocimientos y saberes como decía el viejo Emile Durkheim (1992) procuran desentrañar la “génesis histórica” de nuestras instituciones educativas e introducir a los futuros profesores en los “grandes problemas que suscitan la enseñanza que tienen a su cargo” (pag. 28). Desde esta perspectiva, el libro que estamos presentando tiene como primer y principal destinatario a los alumnos cursantes de la cátedra que provienen de las carreras del Profesorado en Biología, Física, Matemática, Química, Letras, Sociología, Filosofía, Geografía, Bibliotecología y Ciencias de la Información, de Inglés y Francés y sus respectivos traductorados. Los aportes de diferentes saberes y trayectorias disciplinares que traen los estudiantes constituyen un capital valioso que, a través de la discusión e intercambio, permiten generar una experiencia pedagógica altamente enriquecedora. Asimismo, nos plantean un desafío en virtud de que la mayoría de los estudianes no cursaron materias de área socio-histórica y política de la educación. Pensando en nuestros alumnos y también en los jóvenes graduados de las distintas carreras que quieren iniciarse en la investigación de la política educativa y/o la histórica del sistema educativo, el libro y cada uno de los capítulos que lo componen procuran por un lado, ofrecer una visión panorámica de una problemática específica, y por otro lado, presentar y desarrollar un cierto bagaje de herramientas conceptuales y perspectivas teóricas. Lejos de una mirada estática, cada uno de los capítulos recupera la propia historicidad de los procesos, políticas y fenómenos analizados.

La minería es una de las actividades económicas más antiguas de la humanidad. A grandes rasgos consiste en la exploración y extracción de recursos minerales no renovables presentes en el suelo o el subsuelo en la forma de yacimientos, los cuales al ser transformados pueden emplearse en un extenso campo de aplicaciones de la vida cotidiana (tales como la industria eléctrica, automotriz, química, alimentaria; así como en la construcción, el transporte, la salud y la fabricación de armamento, etc.). Esta actividad suele ir de la mano con el desarrollo tecnológico, y dados sus múltiples campos de aplicación en algunos países es y seguirá siendo una actividad económica importante. En efecto, algunas organizaciones internacionales la han considerado como uno de los indicadores básicos de las posibilidades de desarrollo económico de una localidad, región o país. En efecto, la experiencia de países en los que la minería es una actividad económica importante como es el caso de Australia, Estados Unidos, Canadá y algunos países nórdicos como Finlandia, Suecia y Noruega es una muestra de ello. En Chile la minería ha representado entre el 9% y el 16% de su Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) en la última década. En efecto, gracias a su gran riqueza en recursos naturales, la minería en Chile reviste una innegable importancia. Tanta, que el país es reconocido como potencia minera a nivel mundial, siendo la explotación de la minería del cobre una de sus principales actividades económicas.Al ser la explotación del cobre un importante motor de la economía del país, históricamente ha estado rodeada de demandas sociales, de acuerdo con las cuales la participación de las empresas mineras debería verse suficientemente reflejada en el aspecto fiscal y en otros aspectos de la vida de todos los chilenos, más aún si se considera que la Constitución Política de la República, concretamente en su artículo 19, Nº 24, inciso 6º, consagra el dominio absoluto, exclusivo, inalienable e imprescriptible de todas las minas para el Estado. En virtud de este argumento, muchas han sido las discusiones que han rodeado a la actividad minera; habiéndose instalado por mucho tiempo la percepción de que las empresas mineras privadas no contribuyen tanto como podrían a través del pago de sus tributos. Por esta y otras razones la tributación minera en Chile no ha estado exenta de cuestionamientos, fundamentalmente desde dos perspectivas diferentes.Una que preconiza la existencia de un régimen especial de privilegio o fomento, que pondría en duda si la contribución que por vía fiscal realizan las empresas dedicadas a este sector es realmente adecuada a sus características, ingresos, y al impacto que causan al medio ambiente, entre otros aspectos; con lo cual, no sólo se estarían vulnerando los principios tributarios y los del régimen constitucional del dominio minero, sino que además se estaría restando importancia a otros aspectos vitales para la coexistencia de la minería como actividad económica fundamental de Chile y un medio ambiente sano. En contrapartida, otro punto de vista aduce que es necesario mantener una “discriminación positiva” o bien un régimen especial, pero que incentive la inversión privada, a través del establecimiento de beneficios, tasas de imposición bajas, así como de normas que garanticen la estabilidad jurídica, que comprenda las particularidades de la “propiedad minera” y las fases de la actividad, que cuente con una escasa o nula variación fiscal, que brinde celeridad a la aprobación de los proyectos mineros y resulte atractivo para la inversión extranjera. Todo lo anterior, estaría justificado en los excesivos riesgos, elevada cuantía de las inversiones falta de capital nacional para invertir en el sector, largos plazos de los proyectos, el hecho de que, pese a sus efectos o impactos, la minería es una actividad económica necesaria, y las pocas probabilidades de éxito que rodean a esta actividad. Lo dicho lleva necesariamente a preguntarse desde otro punto de vista, si suponiendo que fuese necesario el mantenimiento o en su caso el diseño o la instauración de un régimen especial que grave a la actividad minera, por sus particularidades ¿Debería ser este más o menos oneroso que los regímenes regulares aplicables al resto de los contribuyentes? ¿Por qué? ¿El marco constitucional actual permite que existan regímenes tributarios especiales? ¿Cuáles son los fundamentos que justifican la existencia de un régimen especial para la minería? en ese sentido: ¿Qué es lo que puede gravarse?