Desde su breve cuento “No le digas que la quieres” hasta su última obra En el cielo con diamantes (2007), Senel Paz no ha dejado de recorrer un mundo poblado de personajes que de un cuento a una película y de un film a una novela siempre están en devenir. David, Miguel, Diego, Vivian, Nancy, Ismael, etc. no dejan de resurgir tanto en Una novia para David, como en el cuento El Lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo que dio (...) origen a Fresa y chocolate. Esas figuras constantemente en evolución se van amoldando a los relatos tanto escritos como filmados. Las fronteras entre cuento y película tienden así a borrarse dejando un lugar para formas mixtas de personajes, a veces sin cuerpo –las figuras de papel y tinta– a veces fantasmas –las siluetas de la pantalla cinematográfica. Estos deslices progresivos e incesantes de los deseos se abren continuamente hacia territorios inconclusos, porosos y continuamente abiertos. (shrink)

"Medio euro por kilo recolectado de fresa o espárrago. Es lo que cobran unas 50 mujeres de Rumanía, Polonia y Ucrania empleadas en la localidad francesa de Brunath, a unos 20 kilómetros al oeste de Estrasburgo" (Francia, 2009) "las víctimas viajaban engañadas en cuanto a las condiciones de trabajo que tendrían que realizar y, sobre todo, en relación a las cantidades económicas que debían devolver a la organización n concepto de gastos de viaje" (España, 2010) "los jefes de la (...) organización disponían de pizarras colgadas de la pared donde, a modo de planning, aparecían los nombres de jóvenes y el lugar en el que se hallaban en cada momento" (España, 2011) "Seis mujeres, entre ellas, una menor de edad, realizaban actividades sexuales y convivencia con los clientes; el dinero lo entregaban al dueño del bar" (México, 2011). (shrink)

Because organic certification standards institutionalized a product-based rather than process-based definition, certified organic produce can be grown on large-scale industrial monocrop farms. Besides toxicity of inputs, these farms operate in much the same way as conventional production. Scholars emphasize the fact that labor rights have been left out of certification criteria, and because of that, organic farms reproduce the same labor relations as conventional. Empirical studies of organic farm labor, however, rely primarily on the perspective of farmers. In this study, (...) I ask the farmworkers themselves how harvesting on organic farms compares to conventional, and found that working in organic negatively impacts farmworker livelihoods. Qualitative interviews with 36 strawberry harvesters in Oxnard, California reveal that farmworkers make more money in conventional strawberry production because of the interaction between wage structure and size of the berry. Conventional strawberries are larger and therefore fewer of them fill up a box. Farmworkers routinely pick more boxes in conventional than in organic, thus earning more, since under the piece rate system, farmworkers are paid per box. With short-term economic survival rather than long-term occupational health concerns in mind, strawberry harvesters would rather work on conventional farms because “la fresa orgánica es más chiquita”. (shrink)

By analysing three works of fiction set in Havana, Fresa y Chocolate by Tomas Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabi, Retour à Ithaque by Laurent Cantet and Viva by Paddy Breathnach, we propose to study the Cuban capital as a sick body, as an architecturally, economically, politically and socially dilapidated organism. Its citizens struggle to survive, lacking basic necessities and trapped under a claustrophobic political and social surveillance, which the film directors convey through the use of a variety of (...) aesthetic devices. There is a form of symbiosis between Havana and its inhabitants. The characters are confined in a labyrinth of alleys, stairs and narrow corridors, enveloped in a nocturnal atmosphere. The constricted arteries through which they move show that the body of Havana lacks oxygen. Its inhabitants need to find spaces to breathe and to express their authentic selves, to regenerate. This space is to be found behind Havana’s façades, behind its closed doors and even on a roof-top terrace. These private spaces reveal the dual nature of the city and its people, and constitute pockets of liberty as well as places of catharsis. The external façade presents a socially acceptable figure while covering and protecting the authentic self. The private spaces provide the physical and mental oxygen that the soul of Havana needs to survive. It is here that individual liberties flourish, allowing rights to be asserted, and art to be both preserved and created. The premise of a spiritual transformation begins to take form. (shrink)

Festschrift in honor of 60th birthday of Āgamānaṅdasvāmikaḷ, 1896-1961; collection of his speeches and writings on Vedanta and other aspects of Hindu philosophy.

Of all the arguments for the existence of God, the argument from design is in many respects the most impressive, as everyone remarks that Kant remarked. Certainly it is an argument which seems to have appealed to the popular imagination and even today does not lack philosophical proponents. The purpose of the present paper is to examine a recent formulation of the argument. In particular I shall be concerned to bring into the open its dualist assumptions and to show how (...) these militate against its general plausibility. (shrink)

We have to distinguish between the scientific revolution which was bound on the work of Copernicus and the cultural-ideological changes that have accompanied and framed this revolution. The "Copernican" revolution was in the beginning a constituent of cultural and ideological changes at the end of Renaissance but it became a scientific revolution only with Galilei and Kepler. This was the first scientific revolution which inagurated the internal dynamics of the scientific development. A necessary condition of that revolution was the incorporation (...) of a consistent physical dynamics into astronomy. This happened with the formulation of Kepler's laws and the Galilei's postulates of relative movements, the law of inertia and of free fall, which are valid for all physical cosmos. (shrink)