Jose Lopez

El proceso general de aceleración social que caracteriza estructuralmente a las sociedades tardomodernas tiene un impacto considerable en la mayoría de las prácticas sociales cotidianas. Este número especial se propone examinar los efectos de la aceleración social sobre las prácticas sociales desde una doble perspectiva: descriptivo-explicativa y normativo-ética. En este artículo introductorio, los editores sientan las bases teóricas del número. Antes de presentar brevemente las contribuciones del volumen, se exponen los conceptos clave que lo estructuran —a saber, «aceleración social», «prácticas sociales», «crítica normativa» y «orientaciones éticas»— y se analizan sus interrelaciones.

El elemento dominante de las tradiciones religiosas proféticas de Occidente es de naturaleza histórico-institucional y dogmática. En estas tradiciones, para Harold Bloom, Dios encarna la absoluta transcendencia y algo radicalmente externo al yo. Una vía alternativa, ha existido y pervive de forma pluriforme en esas mismas tradiciones, solapada bajo sus manifestaciones místicas, “el camino de la gnosis”. Esta gnosis, que ha pervivido durante dos mil años, puede definirse como la aceptación y el conocimiento del Dios que hay en el interior del ser humano. Nuestro objetivo en este artículo es abordar críticamente esta concepción bloomiana de la gnosis y su aplicación, como modelo hermenéutico, a su interpretación de la “religión americana”, la “fe religiosa estadounidense”, una ‒supuesta‒ fe sincrética, milenarista y del retardo, donde el medio divino se funde en la cotidianeidad del individuo, en la libérrima interioridad del yo.

Student performance and its evaluation remain a serious challenge for education systems. Frequently, the recording and processing of students’ scores in a specific curriculum have several flaws for various reasons. In this context, the absence of data from some of the student scores undermines the efficiency of any future analysis carried out in order to reach conclusions. When this is the case, missing data imputation algorithms are needed. These algorithms are capable of substituting, with a high level of accuracy, the missing data for predicted values. This research presents the hybridization of an algorithm previously proposed by the authors called adaptive assignation algorithm (AAA), with a well-known technique called multivariate imputation by chained equations (MICE). The results show how the suggested methodology outperforms both algorithms.

The text analyses how the use of certain expressions linked to Spanish Transition in political debate has served to demonstrate the extent to which confrontation over the legacies of that historical process forms part of an ideological conflict to this day. Two conceptual expressions, employed for different ends, serve to channel and concretize these proposals: the first is the regime of 78, while the other expression examined is the second transition. Analysis of the two expressions serves to confirm how the different ways of viewing the Transition have been pushing back the possibility in Spain of considering this process as one of those interpretations of the past on which nations are secured, providing citizens with a shared explanation of their present.

Despite its growing strategic importance, the concept of Corporate Environmental Reputation (CER) still lacks a specific definition and content delimitation in the literature. This fact, together with its difficult differentiation from other similar constructs, hides the key role of this construct in the connection between management and environmental studies and in the development of corporate environmental management strategies. To address this issue, in this research, we develop a literature review on CER conceptualisation, operationalisation and measurement, and analyse its main effects on firm competitiveness and performance drawing on the Institutional Theory and the resource‐based view. As a result, we propose a CER definition, highlighting its main characteristics and drivers and delimitating it in relation to closely related concepts such as green corporate image and corporate environmental legitimacy.

This paper proposes a categorization of political action that entails three key elements. The first involves the tension between politics and the political sphere, and deals with the conflictive tendency of practices and logics that seek to establish an order in contrast with others that seek to undermine it. The second element refers to changes in the borders that define the sphere of that which is social-naturalized and that which is political-controversial. The third element, the political event, refers to the moment of political production in which these two extremes are simultaneously intertwined and subverted. Finally, we offer some implications of the recognition of the “impossibility of fullness” as an essential aspect of all that is political, including politics itself

La participación educativa, distinta de la política, debe estar fundada en un serio compromiso con los ideales emancipatorios de la cultura : el diálogo racional, la formación personal y el triple proyecto de descubrir la verdad, realizar la justicia y disfrutar de la belleza. La libertad es en la educación una meta que exige tutela. Analizamos a continuación los principales obstáculos que debilitan la participación o dificultan dicho compromiso: el efecto de la retórica de los Medios, la degradación de la tolerancia en complicidad y descuido; así como los prejuicios que explican la anorexia espiritual e intelectual de nuestra época. Al final, se esbozan, como remedios, algunas líneas de actuación

Primo Levi has emerged as one of the most incisive and humanly candid intellects among those writers who experienced the Holocaust and survived to tell about it. His classically concise, sober and lean style is reflective of a mind that insists on being guided by reason and civility. To express himself in a rational, clear and composed manner signified for Levi a moral victory over the Shoá and gave and additional dimension of validity to his own survival. Leviʼs insistence on the writer as witness and communicator, like the definition of the artist as builder of alternative worlds, retains some coherent vision of the social order and mandated relationship between history and art. In his finals years, his sense of despair and disillusion is also reflected by his increasing references to the black holes, and image he uses metaphorically to express the dark void of recent history and the charge of no-meaning and death in human life

Plurality and divergence of opinion, based on freedom of thought and information, are nowadays broadly recognized as requirements for the healthy performance of a democratic society. The aim of this chapter is to take this idea somewhat further by characterizing the agents of such performance. We do so by highlighting a culture of risk with respect to the Science and Technology System. In our view, risk culture implies having a skeptical awareness grounded on sound information towards science and technology, combining an overall positive attitude and awareness of their limitations and threats, and adapting one’s behavior accordingly. We argue that risk culture is a key element for democratic governance in contemporary risk societies with increasingly pressing technical issues open to social debate. Accordingly, we first review the concept of risk culture within the framework of scientific and technological culture, and then proceed to examine the role of this risk culture in social engagement. Finally, we reflect on some challenges of the implications of risk culture for the relation between society, science, and technology.

Our paper carries out a reading of the Abraham ibn Daud's Book of Tradition, with the purpose of showing the suggestive theological-political intuitions that this singular medieval chronicle contains. Putting the emphasis in diachronic hermeneutics, more that in an archaeology of the ideas, we want to investigate if the historical vicissitudes of the Iberic Jewish communities, their community controversies, as well as their permanent religious and identity self-reflection, can provide relevant elements to an understanding of the present.

Como resultado de búsqueda y recuperación de información registrada en documentos de archivos, libros, revistas y otras fuentes, se confeccionó una obra de referencia, donde se registran pequeñas biografías de 19 camagüeyanos que se desempeñaron como médicos cirujanos, médicos y cirujanos romancistas en los siglos XVIII y XIX. Se dan a conocer los antecedentes que sirvieron de motivación a la realización del estudio y se explica el radio de acción, en el aspecto asistencial, de los que ostentaban estas categorías profesionales. Los datos obtenidos a partir de las fuentes consultadas, fueron el punto de partida para la confección de un material que informa el quehacer de los profesionales de la salud de la región camagüeyana en esa época y que se espera sea de interés y utilidad a los interesados en el tema As a result of the search and collection of information registered in documents, books, magazines and other sources, a reference paper that presents the biographies of 19 Camagüeyan medical surgeons, doctors and surgeons that lived in the XVIII and XIX centuries was made. The antecedents that served as motivation to the realization of the study are made known and the action radius is explained, taking into account their role in medical assistance. This comprises all those that had the above-mentioned professional categories. The data obtained from the sources consulted, constituted the starting point for the making of a material that informs about Camagüeyan health professionals of that time. It is also expected that this scientific paper is of interest and utility for those interested in this topic.