Daniel Lopez

The global environmental and social-economic crises of industrialized agriculture have led to the emergence of agroecology as an alternative approach aiming to increase the ecological, social and economic sustainability of agri–food systems. The ‘multi-level perspective’ is now a widely used framework to understand and promote the upscaling of local innovation niches, such as agroecology, to broader scales, thus reconfiguring the dominant socio-technical regimes. Additionally, emergent ‘hybrid forums’ can provide a space between niche and regime where niche innovators can become important actors in scaling up and out emergent innovations. In this paper, we examine a university training program, to better understand its role as a ‘hybrid forum’. Our analysis focuses especially on how the program, as an example of a hybrid forum, worked to reconfigure practices, concepts, and tools of local development practitioners. We also assess to what extent the program contributed to transitioning local development institutions toward agroecology. An online survey and in-depth interviews were carried out to determine how the training program has impacted the student’s opinions and their respective institutions. The results show that most of the students consider that they have acquired new theoretical frameworks and useful methods to re-framing their local development projects, that new alliances with multi-actor networks have been perceived, and that some internal changes of the local development practices have taken place. We conclude that the training program, as a hybrid forum, is capable of outscaling niche innovations through linkages with different kind of actors both from the niche and the regime. Political changes in the socio-technical landscape level offer an opportunity to amplify the impact of the innovations which are being generated by those multi-actor networks, but with a limited multi-level impact as far as institutional regime-actors not aligned with agroecological transition keep the most of the competencies on agri–food systems.

Over the last few decades, the Internet has brought about a myriad of benefits to almost every aspect of our daily lives. However, malware attacks have also widely proliferated, mainly aiming at legitimate network users, resulting in millions of dollars in damages if proper protection and response measures are not settled and enforced. In this context, the paper at hand proposes MalSEIRS, a novel dynamic model, to predict malware distribution in a network based on the SEIRS epidemiological model. As a result, the time-dependent rates of infection, recovery, and loss of immunity enable us to capture the complex dynamism of malware spreading behavior, which is influenced by a variety of external circumstances. In addition, we describe both offensive and defensive techniques, based on the proposed MalSEIRS model, through extensive experimentation, as well as disclosing real-life malware campaigns that can be better understood by using the suggested model.

De forma progresiva y paulatina, pero aparentemente inevitable, el desarrollo de la robótica avanza y se integra cada vez más en nuestras vidas. A diferencia del enfoque industrial, concebido para entornos cerrados y predecibles, la robótica interactiva opera en entornos abiertos, complejos y caóticos en los que el ser humano pasa a estar en el centro del diseño. Esta transición, de lo industrial a lo personal, pero también a lo social, amplía el alcance de la investigación tradicional a múltiples disciplinas y trae consigo nuevos desafíos tanto éticos como tecnocientíficos. Lo que se pretende en este artículo es, precisamente, realizar una cartografía de los mismos a partir de un diálogo con sus protagonistas. Para este propósito, a nivel conceptual, partiremos de una metáfora característica a la hora de plantear dimensiones básicas de un robot, esto es, asumir que, al igual que nosotros, estos sienten, piensan y actúan. Así, desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar, trazaremos una narrativa que muestra las posibilidades y las limitaciones de este enfoque a la vez que ilustra sus implicaciones.

The global environmental and social-economic crises of industrialized agriculture have led to the emergence of agroecology as an alternative approach aiming to increase the ecological, social and economic sustainability of agri–food systems. The ‘multi-level perspective’ is now a widely used framework to understand and promote the upscaling of local innovation niches, such as agroecology, to broader scales (e.g., regional, national, international), thus reconfiguring the dominant socio-technical regimes. Additionally, emergent ‘hybrid forums’ can provide a space between niche and regime where niche innovators can become important actors in scaling up and out emergent innovations. In this paper, we examine a university training program (Postgraduate Diploma in Local Agroecological Dynamization at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), to better understand its role as a ‘hybrid forum’. Our analysis focuses especially on how the program, as an example of a hybrid forum, worked to reconfigure practices, concepts, and tools of local development practitioners. We also assess to what extent the program contributed to transitioning local development institutions toward agroecology. An online survey (n = 46) and in-depth interviews (n = 16) were carried out to determine how the training program has impacted the student’s opinions and their respective institutions. The results show that most of the students consider that they have acquired new theoretical frameworks and useful methods to re-framing their local development projects, that new alliances with multi-actor networks have been perceived, and that some internal changes of the local development practices have taken place. We conclude that the training program, as a hybrid forum, is capable of outscaling niche innovations through linkages with different kind of actors both from the niche and the regime. Political changes in the socio-technical landscape level offer an opportunity to amplify the impact of the innovations which are being generated by those multi-actor networks, but with a limited multi-level impact as far as institutional regime-actors not aligned with agroecological transition keep the most of the competencies on agri–food systems.

En este artículo nos proponemos caracterizar el modo paradójico y excéntrico de indagación filosófica propio del filósofo francés Michel Foucault. Esto se hará en tres momentos: en el primero, se formula el lugar que ocupan el poder, la subjetividad y la verdad en el periplo intelectual de este autor. En este sentido, la tarea filosófica del pensador francés es, por un parte, la de comprender de qué modo han sido producidos nuestros modos concretos de vivir, creer y pensar y, por otra, la de crearnos a nosotros mismos como una obra de arte; en el segundo, se propone la paradoja y la rareza como notas características de sus investigaciones, y cuya imagen que más las ejemplifica es la del cangrejo. Para explicar este carácter paradójjico son ilustrativos tanto el ejercicio de investigación del historiador Paul Veyne como el estilo singular del pintor René Magritte. Finalmente, y en el tercero, se plantea el elogio a la franqueza efectuado por Michel Foucault, cuya figura emblemática es la del parresiastés. Por eso, una característica paradójica de la personalidad de Foucault puede analizarse en uno de los términos que acuña: el de parresiastés, porque tal noción, entraña el riesgo para sí mismo que comporta el decir “esto”, “aquello” o “lo otro”, pues se trata de un decir franco, libre que adopta la forma de la crítica hacia sí mismo y hacia otros. En suma, la investigación paradójica y “rara” del pensador francés que procede por rupturas y discontinuidades conduce a entender nuestro presente y aquello que somos dentro de una perspectiva crítica que pregunta por las tecnologías y dispositivos políticos de poder que históricamente han contribuido a forjar nuestra subjetividad.

Chagas disease or American trypanosomiasis is an important health problem in Latin America. Due to the mobility of Latin American population around the world, countries without vector presence started to report disease cases. We developed a deterministic compartmental model in order to gain insights into the disease dynamics in a scenario without vector presence, considering congenital transmission and transmission by blood transfusion. The model was used to evaluate the epidemiological effect of control measures. It was applied to demographic data from Spain and sensitivity analysis was performed on model parameters associated with control strategies.

This article reports on ethnographic research into the practical and ethical consequences of the implementation and use of telecare devices for older people living at home in Spain and the United Kingdom. Telecare services are said to allow the maintenance of their users’ autonomy through connectedness, relieving the isolation from which many older people suffer amid rising demands for care. However, engaging with Science and Technology Studies literature on “user configuration” and implementation processes, we argue here that neither services nor users preexist the installation of the service: they are better described as produced along with it. Moving beyond design and appropriation practices, our contribution stresses the importance of installations as specific moments where such emplacements take place. Using Etienne Souriau’s concept of instauration, we describe the ways in which, through installation work, telecare services “bring into existence” their very infrastructure of usership. Hence, both services and telecare users are effects of fulfilling the “felicity conditions” of an achieved installation.

I reconstruct Lukács’s immanent critique of German Idealism, found within his essay ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’ (in History and Class Consciousness), in order to foreground his philosophical reflection on the concepts of mediation, logic, genesis and praxis. I situate this reflection within his philosophy of praxis as a whole before highlighting the dialectical development of these terms within it. They are posited initially as abstract, methodological demands and are subsequently concretised and enriched, via Lukács’s critical evaluation of the antinomies he discovers in Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. My reconstruction is both exegetical and critical. I demonstrate that Lukács’s concept of praxis (as the culmination of mediation, logic and genesis) is explicitly intended to both bear the weight of Hegel’s Absolute and overcome it. On this basis, I propose a novel immanent critique of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis, suggesting that while Lukács wishes his concept of praxis to express a living, present and ontologically novel truth, his insight is won – in the fashion of Hegelian philosophy – after the historical event upon which it is built, as a philosophical reflection. Lukács’s self-contradiction is that while he regards his philosophy of praxis as having overcome speculative, Hegelian philosophy, in fact, the position he generates remains firmly but unconsciously within it. Consequently, Lukács’s philosophy of praxis possesses a theological dimension and must be regarded as an example of the kind of ‘conceptual mythology’ he sought to overcome.

Dada la abundante literatura no sólo filosófica, sino también la proveniente de otras disciplinas como la sociología, las ciencias políticas, la medicina, la educación, entre otras que abordan el fenómeno de la biopolítica, este artículo realiza una visión de conjunto por algunas “recepciones” acerca de dicho problema: los Governmentality Studies y algunos filósofos analíticos; el escenario francés y el despegue de la biopolítica en España; la biopolítica negativa y afirmativa; los registros de la biotecnología y la bioética y, por último, la recepción en América latina. Este itinerario, sin pretender ser exhaustivo, permite determinar el carácter transdisciplinario, variopinto, pero también empírico de la “biopolítica”. Asimismo, deja abierta la discusión al hecho de que usualmente se la concibe erróneamente como si se tratara de una esencia o sustancia.

In this article I propose to analyze the link between two unlike authors both in the method and in the object of his investigations. The above mentioned link centres that both approach the problem of the administration of the life, in such a way that I will emphasize that both in arendt and in Foucault there is implicit the “political discovery of the life”. To account for this, this reflection is structured in three stages: I first outline the problem of “biopolitics” within modernity also propose the main arguments in arendt and Foucault lead to «political discovery of the life»; after I expose, without pretending to exhaust them, some affinities between both authors face the issue of “biopolitics”; finally, and thirdly, pointed strategies that French thinker like German-Jewish thinker display face increasing life management: «the aesthetics of existence» and «political singling».

Hannah Arendt estudió en su tesis doctoral el amor en Agustín de Hipona. El obispo argelino destacó el amor al prójimo como vía de encuentro con Dios, ya que el anhelo del pensador cristiano era la civitate Dei. Arendt, quince siglos después, secularizó el concepto y elaboró una teoría política basada en el amor al mundo, a la vida y a los hombres. Para ello desarrolló diversos conceptos, entre los que se encuentran la acción, la natalidad y la política, que simultáneamente requieren elementos como la pluralidad, la novedad o la libertad. Por ello, el amor es un concepto clave en su obra, a pesar de que insistiera en que se trata de una fuerza apolítica y antipolítica.

Este artículo tiene por propósito analizar el poder en Michel Foucault, entendiendo por este un concepto operativo, esto es no temático, irreductible a una mera teoría. Propongo leer el poder en términos de un caleidoscopio que en el autor francés es un dispositivo móvil en el que el cuerpo y la ley, la vida y la muerte, entran en una oscilación o pendularidad incesante. Por lo tanto, cuando se afirma que el poder es un «caleidoscopio magnífico» no es en tanto forma de representación, pues ello supondría una concepción sustancialista del mismo, sino en su “funcionamiento real”. Para llevar esto a buen puerto, establezco dos momentos: en el primero, presento las concepciones tradicionales del poder a las que el filósofo francés asesta un fuerte golpe. En el segundo, planteo, al hilo de entender el poder como caleidoscopio, cinco notas características de éste.

A new political technology emerged at the heart of Modernity, a machine called bio-power. In fact, preserving living beings is to be ensured by power. This essay aims to describe the main features of this technology of power, beginning with an initial sketch on Michel Foucault's method—a nominalist one—, followed by an examination of three perspectives on power and, finally, showing how something like an explosion and a quick development of several technologies subjugating bodies and controlling population were imposed during the classical period

Kilimanjaro is a paradigmatic mountain, if any is. Consider atom Sparky, which is neither determinately part of Kilimanjaro nor determinately not part of it. Let Kilimanjaro(+) be the body of land constituted, in the way mountains are constituted by their constituent atoms, by the atoms that make up Kilimanjaro together with Sparky, and Kilimanjaro(–) the one constituted by those other than Sparky. On the one hand, there seems to be just one mountain in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro. On the other hand, both Kilimanjaro(+) and Kilimanjaro(–)—and indeed many other similar things—seem to have an equal claim to be a mountain: all of them exhibit the grounds for something being a mountain—like being an elevation of the earth’s surface rising abruptly and to a large height from the surrounding level,1 or whathaveyou—; and there seems to be nothing in the vicinity with a better claim. Hence, the problem of the many.

Timothy Williamson famously offered an argument from these Tarskian principles in favor of bivalence. I show, dwelling on (Andjelkovic & Williamson, 2000), that the argument depends on a contentious formulation of the Tarskian principles about truth (and falsity), which the supervaluationist can reject without jeopardizing the Tarskian insight. In the mentioned paper, Adjelkovic and Williamson argue that, even if the appropriate formulation seems to make room for failure of bivalence in borderline cases, this appearance is illusory, once one grants an independent further principle involving biconditionals. I finally argue that the formulation of this is, however, contentious in a similar manner.

What different relativist claims about a given domain are to be distinguished? Which of them is best placed to account for intuitive facts about disagreement in that domain? In a recent paper in this journal, ‘Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism’ (2004), Max Kölbel distinguishes two forms of relativism, andargues that one of them, indexical relativism, faces problems in accounting for disagreement. In the first part of this discussion I present my own taxonomy of relativist positions in a given domain, which is based on David Lewis’s 1980 essay, and I compare it with Kölbel’s and other recent suggestions. In the second part, I argue that the presuppositional defence of indexical relativism against related objections that I have elaborated elsewhere is also effective against Kölbel’s recent charges.