Although Kenya is often considered an African success story, its political climate became increasingly repressive under its second president, Daniel arap Moi. Widner charts the transformation of the ...Kenya African National Union (KANU) from a weak, loosely organized political party under Jomo Kenyatta into an arm of the president's office, with "watchdog" youth wings and strong surveillance and control functions, under Moi. She suggests that single-party systems have an inherent tendency to become "party-states," or single-party regimes in which the head of state uses the party as a means of control. The speed and extent of these changes depend on the countervailing power of independent interest groups, such as business associations, farmers, or professionals. Widner's study offers important insights into the dynamics of party systems in Africa.
In May 2009, the Sri Lankan army overwhelmed the last stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-better known as the Tamil Tigers-officially bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil ...war. Although the war has ended, the place of minorities in Sri Lanka remains uncertain, not least because the lengthy conflict drove entire populations from their homes. The figures are jarring: for example, all of the roughly 80,000 Muslims in northern Sri Lanka were expelled from the Tamil Tiger-controlled north, and nearly half of all Sri Lankan Tamils were displaced during the course of the civil war. Sharika Thiranagama'sIn My Mother's Houseprovides ethnographic insight into two important groups of internally displaced people: northern Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims. Through detailed engagement with ordinary people struggling to find a home in the world, Thiranagama explores the dynamics within and between these two minority communities, describing how these relations were reshaped by violence, displacement, and authoritarianism. In doing so, she illuminates an often overlooked intraminority relationship and new social forms created through protracted war.In My Mother's Houserevolves around three major themes: ideas of home in the midst of profound displacement; transformations of familial experience; and the impact of the political violence-carried out by both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state-on ordinary lives and public speech. Her rare focus on the effects and responses to LTTE political regulation and violence demonstrates that envisioning a peaceful future for post-conflict Sri Lanka requires taking stock of the new Tamil and Muslim identities forged by the civil war. These identities cannot simply be cast away with the end of the war but must be negotiated anew.
Cada vez con mayor rotundidad se puede afirmar que la humanidad está experimentando hoy día su presente distópico y que se encuentra inmersa en las, cada vez más evidentes, «consecuencias de los ...excesos del desarrollismo contemporáneo», utilizando la expresión que el propio Ángel Esteban emplea en el prólogo (2023: 11) del sexto volumen de la colección Hybris que aquí se comenta.1 Esta circunstancia viene reflejada en las constantes crisis de tan distinta índole que la humanidad global se enfrenta: climáticas, financieras, pandémicas y un largo etcétera que condiciona el modo de vivir y de sobrevivir, configurando unas subjetividades que, tomando de nuevo a Ángel Esteban, «inciden en el destino de los pueblos y del planeta con un componente distópico que invita a la reflexión colectiva» (2023: 11). Se trata de apuestas literarias que pretenden denunciar el deterioro físico medioambiental, explicar las derivas de las actividades y comportamientos humanos, así como invitar a la reflexión sobre posibles soluciones de la situación actual que amenaza al ser humano y a su modo de vida. En este sentido, las utopías pasan a tener dos puntos de vista según el lado del océano en las que son interpeladas: la significación cambia según nativos o europeos, ya que para los primeros será un sentimiento de pertenencia y de identificación y, para los segundos, un lugar viable de explotación. Este «panorama desolador» tiene su impronta en la manifestación literaria desarrollando mundos distópicos de cargada crítica social y reflexión ética, moral y ecológica sobre el avance tecnológico. La extensa aportación de Ángel Esteban sirve como un buen asiento de estado de la cuestión que contextualiza esmeradamente las distintas formas de expresar el fin del mundo que se analizan en los bloques siguientes compuestos por siete artículos cada uno de ellos. Ambas ficciones cuestionan sobre la «supremacía generalizada y masiva de la tecnología y capitalismo global» que abre interrogantes «de naturaleza ética, política y social ... focalizando la atención en el ser humano, sus sentimientos, su vida real» (2023: 49). En el primer caso, se da voz a «la palabra silenciada por derrota histórica» (2023: 69) y, en el segundo, da cuenta «de la descomposición del tejido social y de la derrota de los modos sutiles de existencia no-antropocentrada» (2023: 80), siendo el Gran Chaco esa «zona sacrificada» a lo largo de la historia en ambos casos. Rosabetty Muñoz, Bárbara Délano y Begoña Ugalde cuyo vector común es el de constituirse como sujetos femeninos visionarios y transgresores que expresan el apocalipsis que supone la degradación del tejido social, la violencia de género como eje central y, en última instancia, la propuesta más esperanzadora sobre un postapocalipsis dentro de un espacio rural que se entrega sin resistencia al caos para hallar «la posibilidad de un nuevo comienzo» (2023: 149). Las propuestas narrativas de estas escritoras dejan al descubierto la complejidad de la masa social que vive sumida en un «enjambre carnavalesco» homogeneizador y, aun así, encuentra formas de resistencia como «una forma de luchar por la identidad del ser ante la tiranía del número y el conteo» (2023: 189).
We show that individuals’ macroeconomic expectations are influenced by their socioeconomic status (SES). People with higher income or higher education are more optimistic about future macroeconomic ...developments, including business conditions, the national unemployment rate, and stock market returns. The spread in beliefs between highand low-SES individuals diminishes significantly during recessions. A comparison with professional forecasters and historical data reveals that the beliefs wedge reflects excessive pessimism on the part of low-SES individuals. SES-driven expectations help explain why higher-SES individuals are more inclined to invest in the stock market and more likely to consider purchasing homes, durable goods, or cars.
It is now well established that globular clusters (GCs) exhibit star-to-star light-element abundance variations (known as multiple populations, MPs). Such chemical anomalies have been found in ...(nearly) all the ancient GCs (more than 10 Gyr old) of our Galaxy and its close companions, but so far no model for the origin of MPs is able to reproduce all the relevant observations. To gain new insights into this phenomenon, we have undertaken a photometric Hubble Space Telescope survey to study clusters with masses comparable to that of old GCs, where MPs have been identified, but with significantly younger ages. Nine clusters in the Magellanic Clouds with ages between similar to 1.5 and 11 Gyr have been targeted in this survey. We confirm the presence of MPs in all clusters older than 6 Gyr and we add NGC 1978 to the group of clusters for which MPs have been identified. With an age of similar to 2 Gyr, NGC 1978 is the youngest cluster known to host chemical abundance spreads found to date. We do not detect evident star-to-star variations for slightly younger massive clusters (similar to 1.7 Gyr), thus pointing towards an unexpected age dependence for the onset of MPs. This discovery suggests that the formation of MPs is not restricted to the early Universe and that GCs and young massive clusters share common formation and evolutionary processes.
Abstract
We have recently shown that the ∼2 Gyr old Large Magellanic Cloud star cluster NGC 1978 hosts multiple populations in terms of star-to-star abundance variations in N/Fe. These can be seen as ...a splitting or spread in the subgiant and red giant branches (SGB and RGB) when certain photometric filter combinations are used. Because of its relative youth, NGC 1978 can be used to place stringent limits on whether multiple bursts of star formation have taken place within the cluster, as predicted by some models for the origin of multiple populations. We carry out two distinct analyses to test whether multiple star formation epochs have occurred within NGC 1978. First, we use ultraviolet colour--magnitude diagrams (CMDs) to select stars from the first and second population along the SGB, and then compare their positions in optical CMDs, where the morphology is dominantly controlled by age as opposed to multiple population effects. We find that the two populations are indistinguishable, with age differences of 1 ± 20 Myr between them. This is in tension with predictions from the asymptotic giant branch scenario for the origin of multiple populations. Second, we estimate the broadness of the main-sequence turn-off (MSTO) of NGC 1978 and we report that it is consistent with the observational errors. We find an upper limit of ∼65 Myr on the age spread in the MSTO of NGC 1978. This finding is in conflict with the age spread scenario as origin of the extended MSTO in intermediate-age clusters, while it fully supports predictions from the stellar rotation model.
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