VIA Num. 9 / April'09

Editorial

Àngel Castiñeira

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The Iranian revolution, thirty years on

Fred Halliday

Iran’s Islamic revolution, which culminated in early 1979 with the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeynî and his allies, was one of the most dramatic, unexpected and, in terms of its consequences, important events of the second half of the twentieth century. The revolution marked a turning point in the history of the whole region, as it brought down one of the West’s closest and most powerful allies, led to an eighty degree turn in the geo-strategic map of the Middle East and put an end to almost two thousand years of monarchy in the country. It was also a watershed for the foreign policy of the United States and foreshadowed the long conflict with the Islamic world, both with Iran and Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, which for the next three decades would cause headaches for US presidents, seriously damaging their reputations, from Carter and Reagan to Clinton and George W. Bush. At the same time, and in marked contrast to the ethnic revolutions and conflicts taking part in other parts of the world, Iran distanced itself from the Cold War. The political slogan of the Ayatollah was Neither West nor East and, in a country that had been occupied, albeit without provocation, by Russia and the United Kingdom in the two world wars, the nationalist refusal to side with one or the other in the Cold War led to another notable shift in the region.

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Lévi-Strauss: the anthropology of la pensée sauvage or la pensée sauvage of anthropology

Manfred Díez

On 28 November 2008, Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the most important intellectual references of the twentieth century, turned a hundred. To celebrate such an important date, the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, one of the world’s most prestigious collections of books in French, decided to publish the key works of the most renowned anthropologist of modern times. Tristes tropiques (1955), Le totémisme aujourd’hui (1962), La pensée sauvage (1962), La Voie des masques (1975), La Potière jalouse (1985) and Histoire de Lynx (1991) are some of Lévi-Strauss’ texts that La Pléiade republished in a single two thousand page volume. This publishing event acknowledges the prime importance represented by the centenary of the father of ethnographic structuralism, as La Pléiade rarely publishes books by living authors. This article provides a masterly examination of his life and work.

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A synoptic approach to Darwin’s bicentenary

Ramon Parés

Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, a town in the west of England, and his bicentenary is being commemorated this year, a date around which many acts and debates have been programmed, also in Catalonia. Catalonia already commemorated the centenary of his death, back in 1982; an occasion when more was said and written about Darwin had been in the whole of the previous century. The author of this article reviews the main contributions and influence of Darwinism in contemporary scientific thought in general and with regard to biology in particular.

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Family policies in France

Bruno Le Maire

The French MP, Bruno Le Maire, former head of the cabinet of the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, assures us in this talk that the keys to the success of family policies are unanimity and consensus among all political forces, both on the right and the left. This factor of unity has provided France with some of the continent’s most solid family policies and the highest birth rate in Europe. The author takes a detailed look at the different types of benefits and tax exemptions that are available to families in France.

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Family policies in Germany

Iris Bethge

Along with Japan, Germany is the country with the world’s fastest aging population. That is why, explains Iris Bethge, the German Federal Government is promoting policies aimed at boosting the birth rate, and are also taking measures aimed at making family life much easier, for all types of families. In this respect, Bethge informs us that active policies have been implemented to help achieve a work-life balance and that these are starting to produce the first results. For the first time since 2000, she says, the country’s birth rate has increased. On the other hand, and unlike what is happening in many European countries, immigrant women in Germany are having fewer children than native German women. The reason, according to the author of this talk, is that Germany is a country in which it is very expensive to bring up a large family. To improve this situation, one of the policies that has had the greatest effect on the recent increase in the birth rate is parent benefit, which was set up by the German government two years ago, and means that that when a couple has a child, the mother will receive 67% of her net salary for a period of fourteen months.

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Family policies in Denmark

Jesper Brask Fischer

The development of a significant network of nurseries, partially by public funds, has been one of the key factors in the boosting of the birth rate in Denmark over recent years. During this talk, transcribed by VIA, the head of the Family and Welfare Department of the Ministry of Social Welfare in Denmark states that this network guarantees nursery places for 95% of Danish children aged between one and six, allowing women to work, while someone else looks after their children properly. Danish women, he says, have more children because the government ensures they can continue to enjoy good social conditions. To achieve the current birth rate of 1.9 children per woman (very close to the highest rate in Europe, which is held by the French with an average of 2.1 children), Fischer points out that, in Denmark, in addition to investing a lot of money in nurseries, they have also implemented a number of other public policies to help stimulate the birth rate. Moreover, apart from a high level of commitment to a worklife balance, in this small northern European country other challenges have also been dealt with, such as the needs of new family models in a country where there are more and more single-parent families as a result of the fragmentation of the traditional family structure.

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Family policies in Catalonia

Lluís Flaquer

In this talk Flaquer argues that access to housing and the structure of the job market are the main obstacles hindering maternity and the formation of new families today. The author, one of the leading experts in Catalonia in the sociological theory of the family, new ways of living together and family policies, states that if these obstacles are not overcome, no matter how many family policies are developed, the problem of low birth rate in Catalonia, which is far lower than most other European countries, will not be resolved. This Catalan sociologist also states that, in spite of the demographic rise over the last few years due to immigration in Catalonia, the reproductive practices of immigrant women quickly become aligned with those of native Catalan women, resulting in a drop in the number of children they will have. Flaquer also claims that the Spanish system of family benefits is not only insufficient and inadequate but seriously lacking in equity in terms of territory and class.

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Local policies to support families

Cristina Brullet

Various sociological studies show that, in spite of the changes and transformations undergone by personal relations in a globalised, post-industrial society, the family continues to be one of the main structures for nurture and remains the prime framework for social relations throughout the lives of individuals, even though their system of internal relationships and obligations may change greatly. The family, one of the most important key institutions for generating and consolidating social cohesion, requires the attention of experts and the effective support of all administrations. Councils and local bodies can also play an important role in this respect. The so-called time policies which the author refers to are an example of this.

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The emergence of new family models

Lluís Sáez

The process of individualisation forms the basis of the great social transformations that have taken place in the West and that define the shift from modern societies to postmodern societies. Some of the key social institutions, including the family, have had to find models that are more in line with the new realities and requirements. We are living in a society where everything changes very quickly. People also change and their needs also change. In this context, few things last a whole lifetime and people attempt to successively adapt to their circumstances. According to the author, the flexibility of the current family model leads to both formal and relational diversity in an attempt to respond to this plurality of situations and the needs of the individual.

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Family and religion today: towards an invisible socialisation?

Jordi Collet i Joan Estruch

The family is a key institution in the socialisation of individuals, i.e. in transmitting certain values and attitudes towards life and the world. This article deals with, from the point of view of the sociology of religion, the role played by the family in socialisation and in transmitting a certain faith or belief in a time characterised by pluralism and religious privatisation, on the one hand, and the growing secularisation of our societies on the other.

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