Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais
Eurozine
Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais
2010-02-25
Abstracts Revista Crítica 85 (2009)
José Reis
The narrow straits of the Portuguese economy: employment, production, businesses and markets
This text begins with the theoretical conviction that diversity is an essential feature in the organisation of economies, thereby distancing itself from the globalist views that have predominated in the social sciences. The Portuguese economy is analysed in terms of what is considered to be one of its central features -- extensive use of the labour force. Following this, it is argued that availability of labour has not led to good business management, since innovation and inclusion are lacking. Labour is, therefore, the basis of growth, but not of fair redistribution. The dilemmas faced by the Portuguese economy are additionally affected by what takes place in its limited export markets.
Antônio Ioris
National development and management of water resources in Brazil
The management of water resources is related not only to the allocation, use and conservation of water, but also to broader issues of national development and political representation. The Brazilian experience, from colonial times to the recent phase of economic liberalisation, vividly demonstrates that historico-geographic complexity. During the period of concerted development, based on import substitution, large hydraulic infrastructure works were built in order to support urban and agro-industrial expansion. The high environmental cost and the insufficiencies of those initiatives started to demand more stringent mitigation and regulatory measures. However, the new legal framework introduced in 1997, despite some discursive and symbolic changes, mostly reproduced the same elitist and technocratic rationality of the past. Effective alternatives to water management problems require more democratic and equitable processes, which are inevitably associated with deeper social changes.
Elsa Lechner
Migration, biographical research and social emancipation: towards an analysis of the impact of biographical research with migrants
This article focuses on the personal and collective impact of biographical practices involving migrants. Taking as its starting point an anthropological research study on identity processes associated with immigration (Portuguese nationals in France), which focused on the suffering and resilience of migrant patients at cultural psychiatric sessions (Portugal), and on the basis of experience in group biographical work (UNEB, Brazil), the article explores the formative, transformative and emancipatory effects of biographical practices. It offers theoretical, methodological and socio-political reflections on biographical work with migrant populations. In addition to analysing the effects produced by biographical research, it also proposes consciously bringing researchers and laymen together with a view to creating a civic epistemology or, in other words, the co-production of knowledge and the construction of social cohesion.
Mauro Serapioni
The assessment of quality in healthcare: theoretical and methodological reflections for a multidimensional approach
Despite growing interest in recent years, the concept of quality represents a challenge for the majority of actors working in healthcare. Supported by a review of the international literature on the subject, this article proposes to contribute towards defining a proposal for quality assessment that is consistent with the conceptual and methodological complexity of the subject. To this end, after introducing the first sociological studies of users of public services and discussing the three stages in the development of quality in healthcare, it will analyse certain key questions that should guide healthcare assessment. Following this, a definition of Œmultidimensional¹ quality is presented, which identifies the main interest groups acting within the healthcare system, and some strategies for drawing together the plurality of viewpoints are outlined. To conclude, the article suggests some directions for future work in this field.
Tiago Correia
The reconceptualisation of modes of healthcare production within the context of the Portuguese hospital reform
This article focuses on the recent reforms that have taken place in the Portuguese hospital sector, namely the implementation of New Public Management principles, a political option that is neither innovative nor exclusive to Portugal. Given the trend towards adopting a business model for state hospitals, the objective is to understand to what extent these reforms affect the public provision of healthcare. The opening up to market rules and, consequently, to competition between public providers as well as between public and private providers, links this business model to the commodification of public provision of healthcare. Although the end of the public mode of healthcare production is not at stake, the article presents evidence that appears to prove that these reforms are conceptually affecting the state mode of healthcare production defined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos in 1987, blurring some of the dividing lines associated with the capitalist mode of healthcare production.
Paula Abreu
The phonographic industry and the recorded music market -- a long misunderstanding
Drawing on research into the Portuguese phonographic industry, this article addresses the crisis which the industry is currently facing, with the aim of showing how the history of the phonographic field has, from the outset, been defined by various doubts and uncertainties emerging from disputes over a number of objects. It also shows that these doubts have always led to the reinvention of the conventions that have shaped the activities of this organisational and commercial field.
On the basis of an analytical perspective that draws on the theoretical contributions of institutionalist economic sociology (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Fligstein, 1996 and 2001) and the economics of conventions (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991 and 1999; Thévenot, 2002), it discusses the dilemmas experienced by the industry, exploring the hypothesis that these have emerged as a result of the different orders of scale mobilised to coordinate activities in the phonographic field.
Nuno Medeiros
Prescriptive and strategic actions: publishing as social space
The aim of this article is to contribute towards an understanding of publishing as a complex social space. This social space is composed of a group of agents that are active constructors within the sphere of ideas and written culture through a prescriptive and selective framework for interventions relating to books, infusing them with distinctive identities that extend beyond the text in the strict authorial sense. In addition, the field of publishing and the agents working within it are part of broader processes which organize a specific industry, and which are governed by interests associated with the establishment of markets for cultural goods. This latter aspect is reflected in the market-related strategies which underlie the activity of mediating and prescribing meaning.
J. Ramalho, I. Rodrigues, J. Conceição
Industrial restructuring, trade unions and territories -- political alternatives during times of crisis in the ABC region in São Paulo, Brazil
This text discusses the social and political effects of economic crises and transformations on the history of industrial districts formed from the concentration of large companies and their offshoots, namely in terms of networks of small and medium-sized businesses. Taking as an example the trajectory of the main Brazilian industrial district, consolidated from the mid-20th century onwards into the so-called ABC region, and within the context of a country in search of a manufacturing role, the goal is to extend the debate on the role of territories and their social actors, particularly workers and trade unions, during production and employment crises that are related to the dynamics of production chains in a globalised economy.