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VIA Num. 5 / January'08

Summary

Editorial

Miquel Calsina

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Developing leadres? Developing countries?

Henry Mintzberg

Right from the start, VIA journal has directed its attention to reflecting on the social and political leadership of countries. In this case, Professor Mintzberg, based on his experiences in a country such as Ghana and its entrepreneurial spirit, introduces us to an issue and debate that is far from secondary: can leadership be developed? In other words, can a model of leadership be created with imported techniques, ignoring or disregarding the conditions, history, tradition or possibilities or capabilities of a specific country or society? In this case, we have preferred to continue using the term develop due to its broader connotations, especially those related to process. Mintzberg questions whether, in this case, the paradigm of globalisation has actually resulted in us forgetting, or not taking sufficiently into account, the autochthonous conditions specific to each context that lead to economic development and encourage good leaders to emerge.

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The second cold war

Vicenç Villatoro

Following the end of the Cold War, and after more than a decade without a newly established framework to understand and measure international reactions and movements, has a new paradigm emerged that can explain international relations? This article states that, today, two new blocks can be discerned. On the one hand, the author talks of recomposing what might be called the western block, between Europe and the United States and overcoming the profound disagreements arising as a result of the war in Iraq. On the other hand, another block is also starting to take shape, a network that is not exactly homogeneous but consists of regimes ruled by highly diverse ideological movements such as Islamism, Populism and Late Communism, but which nonetheless share an anti-western stance and a common desire: opposition to the United States. Are we heading for an order dominated by a new cold war dynamic between these two opposing blocks?

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On the idea of respect

Josep M. Esquirol

Paying attention is an existential attitude that is radically opposed to indifference, today forming the basis of the lack of political commitment and citizens’ involvement, that of the indifference, so to speak, that dominates our societies. Careful consideration not only awakens perception and the moral sense of things but is also related to respect. Treating someone or something with respect, claims the author of this article, means treating them with consideration. Or, to put it another way, paying careful attention to what is around us will very probably lead us to discovering what is worthy of respect. An attentive look will allow us to grasp any vulnerability, harmony or secret and, consequently, will open us up to the sense of respect. This is the fundamental insight to be found in this reflection.

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The need for roots and nation: Simone Weil's Civic Project

Josep Oton

This article explains some of the ideas and conclusions of Totalitarisme, arrelament i nació en l’obra de Simone Weil (Totalitarianism, the Need for Roots and Nation in the Work of Simone Weil), the title of the essay for which Josep Otón was awarded the Serra i Moret Prize in 2006. The author investigates how Weil reformulated the concept of nation and patriotism, based on her own personal experience with the problems and events of her time, which she experienced intensely. To do so, this French thinker of Jewish origin starts with the term enracinement or the need for roots, a concept on which she constructs her "civic proposal" of the nation. Based on the fact that an individual needs roots, and faced with an absolutist and totalitarian experience, Weil opts for a conception in which collectiveness becomes a means whereby a person can freely and creatively develop an instrument at the service of each human being.

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Catalanism: A place in Europe?

Joan F. Mira

Where should we place the roots of the pro-European stance that is so unmistakably professed by cultural and political Catalanism? The author of this article claims that the European-ness of Catalans is mainly due to their desire to assert a specifically Catalan, rather than Spanish character, as well as to their reactive desire to separate themselves from a sphere of identity and belonging that has, historically, had little appeal or prestige, especially because the model of identity established is very distant and different to that of Europe. Feeling more European than the Spanish has been both a means and way of finding a place with more positive and prestigious connotations. However, we should note that these comparisons may by now have lost the objective basis that they had a hundred years ago. And, these days, the way in which the European Union has been constructed, in institutional terms, no longer corresponds with the pro-European intensity of some of the nations that do not have a state.

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The Teheran-Caracas Axis: Tensions between being and wishing to be

Marc Bou

The aim of this article is to highlight the basis supporting a "bilateral strategic alliance" between the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez and the Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The author attempts here to analyse the participants, and also the contradictions, of both countries, as well as identifying some of the implications of a Teheran-Caracas alliance for political and international relations that, a political and ideological cocktail containing diverse components and traditions, while also examining the historical reasons and situations that may justify this, which is likely to have significant repercussions at a global level, as well as the model of international relations that is being established.

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Religion as the spotlight for the 1936 revolutionary violence in Catalonia. Facts and refelections

Jordi Albertí

In this article, and presenting specific cases, the author of El silenci de les campanes (2007) (The Silence of the Bells) states that the religious repression carried out by the revolutionary squads was a fact, from the military rebellion of 18th July 1936 on. Despite the fact that the beginning of the war, the revolutionary process and repression of a significant part of Catalan society all happened simultaneously is an element that still hinders an in-depth analysis, to a great extent, in his article Albertí explains his hypothesis that this repression, concentrated particularly between July and December 1936 in Catalonia, was in response to a premeditated plan that had actually been defined before the military uprising began; a violent repression, particularly affecting priests, religious orders and followers of the Catholic church. The author states that, even though Franco's regime established a dictatorship that was responsible for thousands of summary executions, we should not allow this to prevent us from approaching this tragedy objectively.

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Toward the learning region

Richard Florida

In the new era of knowledge-intensive global capitalism, regions are becoming key centres in the creation of knowledge and learning, and in this respect are becoming learning regions. Learning regions work as focal points to capture and deposit knowledge and ideas and provide the necessary environment and infrastructure for the circulation of knowledge, ideas and learning. In fact, and in spite of continual predictions of the end of geography, regions are becoming significant forms of economic and technological organisation, on a worldwide level. In spite of the fact that this text can now almost be considered a classic in territorial theory, we have deemed it appropriate to reproduce it here in Catalan, as it still has a valid and substantial contribution to make, that have had such an influence on many of the last ten years.

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Risk Territories

Pere Torres

Risk territories are those options for using territory that magnify factors that might endanger quality of life, prosperity or the very services provided to people by the area. The following are risk territories: territories that are disconnected, both from a physical point of view and also in terms of the circulation of ideas, as well as amorphous territories that, without their own personality, cannot provide any added value; and also idealised territories, in which the belief that they should ideally remain separate from what they really are can reduce their potential or misguide the policies applied to them. Whatever the case, risk territories are unsustainable from any point of view. To avoid them, a perspective of observation and analysis is required that will integrate rather than fragment.

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Hyper-territories, multi-cities, geo-urbanities

Manuel Gausa

The city can no longer be considered from either a single model or as a single, more or less ideal, place. Today we have to understand the city as a complex process, evolving, mutable, relational, many-sided and diversified. A process constructed out of individual and combined movements and events, isolated or combined, which in turn summon up multiple realities in constant interaction. This is therefore a notion of city that is close to what we might call a multi-city. In other words, a plural, intertwined and yet discontinuous structure; a city that reveals itself to be a poly-territory, and can be seen as a new kind of relational and inter-urban geography, which the author of this article calls a network geo-urbanity.

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The metamorphose of territory: new mobilities, new inequalities

Laurent Davezies / Pierre Veltz

This article uses the French case to highlight the three large movements that summarise social and economic geography's profound transformation over the last fifty years. First of all, it should be noted that differences between the regions in France have largely disappeared, while inequalities have become greater at the level of cities and local territories. On the other hand, increased mobility has accentuated the phenomena of the population belonging to more than one territory and, at the same time, has created new inequalities. Finally, a new division is emerging between a France consisting of immense agglomerations, fully involved in the game of world economic competition, and a France that basically lives off the income from redistribution.

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Nicolas Sarkozy: Letter to the educators

Nicolas Sarkozy

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Remarks on Nicolas Sarkozy's letter to French educators

EDU 21

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