VIA Num. 12 / April'10

Editorial

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Democracy in the Internet era

Manuel Castells

The media are essential to the health of democracy because, among other reasons, they encourage political debate, take objection to the actions of public authorities, give voice to different points of view and generate opinion and criticism among the citizenry. And yet, as Professor Castells points out, the area of socialised communication, far from being neutral, is strongly conditioned by business and political interests. According to the author, this mediatisation of politics has corrupted the democratic process through the use of scandals to erode the credibility of political adversaries. The logical consequence has been to provoke an increased lack of interest in the political class and the parties. However, with the revolution represented by the internet and mobile communication networks, the media’s monopoly over information should come to an end. Citizens, increasingly more informed and better organised, are no longer merely the receivers of news, having also become producers and transmitters of messages. And this forces governments and representatives to engage in politics and relate to citizens in a different way.

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The quality of latin american democracies

Mikel Barreda

The processes involved in the transition towards democracy in southern Europe and Latin America captured the interest of many social scientists in the 1980s. The four volumes compiled by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead entitled Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (1986) and the book by Samuel P. Huntington The Third Wave of Democratization (1994) are both fine examples of this. Now, some twenty years later, the focus of academic attention has turned to the characteristics, the «yield», of these democracies. In other words, issues related to the transition towards and consolidation of democracy have given way to attempts to measure the quality of that democracy. In fact Professor Barreda applies this new perspective to Latin American democracies, tackling the concept of democratic quality, identifying the main dimensions and, through quantitative analysis, attempting to determine the quality of the region’s political systems. The findings suggest that the quality of democracies varies drastically from country to country, something that, as highlighted by the author himself, can be explained by structural, institutional and socio-cultural factors and, in particular, by the country’s earlier democratic experience.

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Barack Obama, Chinaand India

Jaume Giné

Among other things 2009 will be remembered for three important events: Barack Obama took over the reins of a superpower, devastated by a far-reaching economic crisis; China, which celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the proclamation of the Popular Republic in 1949, accelerated its relentless rise to a position of global power; and India confirmed its role as another key player, with a desire to exercise its growing authority on the international stage. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new world order is emerging and its centre is gravitating towards Asia-Pacific, with China and India, one third of humanity, establishing themselves as the main engines of the global economy. The latest worldwide financial crisis has accelerated this transfer of power from West to East. Within such a changing context, Barack Obama will prioritise relations of all kinds with Asia while the EU, virtually absent in Asia, continues to wander through a maze of political and economic uncertainty, Democracy is losing its grip on the Asian continent, as the Chinese model of capitalism, bereft of political pluralism, continues to achieve high levels of economic growth. Within such a complex context, the role that could be played in Asia by a democratic country such as India and the evolution of its political and economic relations with the USA, China and Japan take on great geostrategic relevance.

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Abortion: the state of affaires

Núria Terribas

The discussion on abortion presents a debate that is both legal and moral. Current legislation, pursuant to the latest rulings handed down by the Constitutional Court, restricts the right to life to the already born individual while, nevertheless, still protecting the unborn baby. Within a legal context, which mainly recognises the right to abort, legislation to date has focused on providing legal cover for the restricted practice of abortion, and yet has not been capable of containing a whole number of medical actions and personal decisions; so that we might say there is a veritable abuse of law in its application. This is clear as soon as we realise that 97% of the cases are based on a supposed risk to the mother’s mental health. We have therefore arrived at a tacit acceptance of the phenomenon, beyond any need to require a cause for the action, reduced to a mere administrative requirement. The new bill attempts to resolve this by introducing new decriminalising circumstances and yet, in the author’s opinion, it is a long way from resolving the basic elements, both cultural and in terms of medical practice, on which this debate needs to focus.

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Baltasar Porcel and the spiritual architecture of Catalonia

Juan Pedro Quiñonero

Based on the notion of spiritual architecture as proposed by the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, Juan Pedro Quiñonero, within the context of reflection on the fundamental De la inexistencia de España (Of the inexistence of Spain), tests an interpretation of the moral depth that are explored by the literature of Baltasar Porcel, concluding that it is all the result of a desire to reconstruct a besieged spiritual body. From articles on his posthumous work, including novels and other books by Porcel, the journalist Quiñonero places this Mallorcan author within a cultural tradition that associates Llull with Pla, rooted in a Mediterranean that has become a space for coexistence among men facing the moral devastation in which Spain has been immersed, from the time when the ethic and aesthetic of the picaresque became hegemonic.

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The true challenges of ecologism

Pere Torres

Environmental awareness began with tough opposition to the industrial economy due to its externalities. Over time, this confrontation between ecologism and industrialism, which are irreconcilable, gave way to third ways that strove for compatibility between the generation of wealth and protection of the environment, a movement that has become widespread in the last two decades. Now, however, another focus is emerging: it is no longer a question of achieving an economy that does not harm the environment but of constructing an economy that benefits it. This text reviews the main ideas that have presided over this ideological evolution.

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Essence and form of fears in hypermoddernity

Francesc Torralba

Fear is not an exclusive trait of today’s citizens. It is, in any case, a characteristic passion of the human condition, related to uncertainty and the awareness of one’s own fragility and finite essence, something that man has always attempted, in many different ways, to overcome. Nevertheless, while fear has always existed, currently it has a physiognomy and forms that are different from those of other historical periods. We might say that the reasons for our fear are different. In this article, Professor Francesc Torralba reviews what are known as «hypermodern forms of fear», some of which, he warns us, have always coexisted, insofar as they constitute the other side of the coin in the contingent structure of human beings. The author focuses on describing the current characteristics of the fear of death, of the unfamiliar, of technology, of failure, of freedom and of being alone. For this passion, which emerges when we are faced with a predictable evil, he proposes that we should reclaim and update the meaning given by the classics of two fundamental virtues: audacity and strength.

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Feras and anxiety, before and now

Guillem Pailhez

Without a shred of doubt, an exhaustive examination of the analysis of fears in our society also requires a contribution from psychiatry and psychology. Doctor Pailhez states that, even though they may seem new, the fears that form the basis of our characteristic 21st century anxieties and phobias are similar to those of other times. Fears continue, changing pathologies because they are, in fact, always related to the symbols of our times. Beyond this –he states– the fear of anxiety itself, the fear of fear as we might call it, can be considered, along with the fear of corporal indisposition, as one of the attitudes most typical of our times. In short, this article tackles fundamental issues and debates regarding the need, historically expressed by medicine, to place the causes of fear and of anxiety within the body itself.

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Fear of loosing status

Jordi Busquet

We live in a time of far-reaching social transformations that are, as stated by some analysts, the root cause of the feeling of uncertainty that is currently shared by a large majority of individuals in our environment. Uncertainty combined with disquiet, also in terms of the capacity to consolidate one’s social position or a certain status. If, to this changing era, we add the conditioning factors and consequences of the current economic crisis, this mood is even more evident. The author of this article investigates this hypothesis by using some of the most outstanding contributions from sociological theory, from Alexis de Tocqueville and Thorstein Veblen to C. Wright Mills and Pierre Bourdieu, of whose work he is one of the leading experts in Catalonia. In short, «status anxiety» is part and parcel of the existence of anxious, reflexive modern man, aware of the fragile and changing nature of his position in the social world. Furthermore, it is also typical of democratic societies in which there is social mobility, particularly those in which, during the most recent period of consumerist boom, a great deal has been spent on goods related to position or distinction.

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Fear and the restriction of fundamental rights

Marc García

The rise in international terrorism has led to a constant trickle of legal initiatives that have served to expose an old democratic debate: the relation of the communicating channels between the concepts of freedom and security. The author, from a legal, yet also from a sociological, perspective explains the common traits of this new contemporary fear, the terrorist threat, and its legal response: the creation of a penal subsystem centred on the personal characteristics of the perpetuator of the crime rather than on the circumstances that explain the fact per se. This is a tendency, he claims, that is not riskfree and that affects the very basis of our state of law as well as evidencing a failed political response to the new contemporary fears, the offspring of international terrorism.

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Fear of others

Joan Carrera

In our increasingly multicultural societies, reflections on identity are often camouflaged by the phenomenon of fear of others. As simplistic notions regarding concepts as complex as those of race, ethnic roots or nation have gradually, over the centuries, become dismantled, the author invites us to take a look at identity by focusing on the idea of a union of individuals identified with the community. Within the current context, fear of others is often a reflex action on the part of a society that, seeing itself reflected in the groups of new arrivals, becomes aware of the lack of solidity in its own fundamental values. Far from an assimilation-based model of immigration, that is destined to disappear, the author defends a model of coexistence based on dialogue, mutual knowledge and the construction of a shared future. To achieve this objective, he says, we do not need to give up a minimal, shared civic space but must build bridges between individual rights and the sense of a shared community.

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