Archivo del autor: Alvaro Roman

Kaplan

Las teorías sociales tienden a ser lineales. Describen una serie de incidentes y procesos que conducen hacia un fin definible. Sin embargo, el mundo se caracteriza por la simultaneidad: incidentes y procesos muy diferentes que ocurren al mismo tiempo llevan a fines distintos. Así pues, en el mejor de los casos, una teoría social es un fracaso útil; en vez de demostrar su punto de vista, da a las personas una nueva perspectiva de los acontecimientos, haciendo que vean lo conocido bajo un prisma desconocido (Kaplan, 2002: 201-202).

— Kaplan, R. D. (2002). El retorno de la antigüedad: la política de los guerreros. Barcelona: Ediciones B.

Jessop

Ideologically, liberalism claims that economic, political, and social relations are best organized through formally free1 choices of formally free and rational actors who seek to advance their own material or ideal interests in an institutional framework that, by accident or design, maximizes the scope for formally free choice (Jessop, 2002: 453).

1 I use the concept of “formal freedom” here to draw an implicit contrast with the lack of full substantive freedom due to the multiple constraints that limit free choice. The institutionalization of formal freedom is nonetheless a significant political accomplishment and a major element in liberal citizenship, as well as a precondition for market economies.

— Jessop, B. (2002). Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: a State–theoretical perspective. Antipode 34(3), 452-472.

MacMillan

La Gran Guerra estalló cuando el heredero al trono austro-húngaro, el archiduque Francisco Fernando y su esposa Sofía fueron asesinados en Sarajevo por nacionalistas serbios. Austria pidió entonces ayuda a su aliada Alemania para cargar contra Serbia. Rusia salió en defensa de Serbia con el respaldo de Francia. Austria declaró la guerra a Serbia, y Alemania a Rusia y Francia, que pidió a su vez auxilio a Gran Bretaña. Cuando Alemania invadió la neutral Bélgica, Gran Bretaña irrumpió a su vez en un conflicto que se extendió por Europa como una catástrofe inusitada. Y todo se escapó de control en sólo 37 días.

— Margaret MacMillan, ‘1914 nos enseñó que no hay que esperar a la guerra para construir la paz‘.

Espacios políticos y prioridades de desarrollo

Espacios políticos y prioridades de desarrollo: transformaciones territoriales en un contexto glocal
Álvaro Román

Departing from an assessment of the pertinence of the concept of territory in the analysis of spatial changes, the notion of space is applied to understand how different actors taking part in several networks and scales affect the articulation of development priorities of a specific scale. Concept of decision is used to comprehend the participation of those actors as a continuous process of choosing social relations to deploy. Discourses are seen as interpretations of the reality elaborated to explain decisions, whose authors pretend to get legitimated by the rest. An approach of political spaces integrates these concepts in a theory of power which understand it as a mechanism to select decisions. In this work these processes are analyzed in regard of salmon aquaculture and forestry in Southern Chile.

It is remarkable that successful strategies are related with actors who use their resources to achieve networks at several scales, whilst those who orient their relations to just one scale will hardly impose their own priorities. Capital is still an important resource in terms of influence, but it is not the only one; in example, access to media also plays a relevant role. From these strategies follows that having access to resources is not enough to network successfully, but they are valuable only if they are used to lead in power relations.

Román, Á. (2013). Espacios políticos y prioridades de desarrollo: transformaciones territoriales en un contexto glocal. Anales de la Sociedad Chilena de Ciencias Geográficas 2012, 252-258.

Download pdf (in Spanish) from Sochigeo.

¿Son nuevas las ruralidades de Chiloé?

¿Son nuevas las ruralidades de Chiloé? Transformaciones territoriales y la “modernización” de los modos de vida rurales
Jonathan Barton, Álvaro Román, Alejandro Salazar & Bernardita McPhee.

The debate on new rurality, particularly in more developed countries, has addressed changes in agricultural production patterns and proceses of diversifcation. While in some areas there has been a shift to agribusiness, in others there has been a movement towards more diversification of activities in rural contexts. These changes have implied transformations in residential typologies (and even rural gentrification), new productive activities (e.g. tourism and energy) and improvements in social, road and telecommunications infrastructures. The dominant argument poses that traditional rurality, based on agriculture, does not explain well the diversity of contemporary rural livelihoods and associated socio-spatial changes. These “new ruralities” mark a paradigm shift in defining rural areas and their potentialities (Kay, 2008; PNUD, 2008). However, there is a counter-argument that rurality was always diverse given their local contexts and historical dimensions of subsistence and exchange. It is likely that interpretations of these changes in different rural contexts are divergent. However it is important to understand contemporary processes and how they are shaping new rural livelihoods that in turn shape rural quality of life and landscape transformations.

Barton, J., Román, Á., Salazar, A. & McPhee, B. (2013). ¿Son nuevas las ruralidades de Chiloé? Transformaciones territoriales y la “modernización” de los modos de vida rurales. Anales de la Sociedad Chilena de Ciencias Geográficas 2012, 197-203.

Download pdf (in Spanish) from Sochigeo.

Edmundson

Moral powers are normally exercised for reasons. One might concoct a recherche´ example in which a moral power is exercised just for the sake of exercise, but normally moral powers are exercised in order to further some end. We promise things, for example, to please or to accommodate others, or perhaps to motivate ourselves to do what we have other reasons to do. But the reasons for action that are the upshot of the exercise of a moral power persist even when it is discovered that the reasons for which the power was exercised are not as had been supposed (Edmundson, 2010: 182).

— Edmundson, W. A. (2010). Political authority, moral powers and the intrinsic value of obedience. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 30(1), 179–191.