62 c
publications
● América Latina y
la Unión Europea. Estrategias para una asociación necesaria. Christian Freres and José Antonio Sanahuja (eds.) Editorial Icaria. After three decades of relations, Latin America and the European Union have decided to forge a “strategic association” to promote democracy, social cohesion and economic development. However, both regions are immersed in processes of review of their models of integration. In this context, Latin America seems to lose value as a partner for an EU facing the demands of expansion and the difficulties of maintaining its economic and social “model”. At the same time, Latin America is dealing with a period of political and economic changes and the debate over whether to form closer ties with the United States or pursue the new project of a Union of South American Nations. From this perspective, the twenty analysts from both regions participating in this book discuss the role of the bi-regional relationship between the European Union and Latin America, and the current validity of strategies drawn up several years ago. In doing so, they identify the limitations and obstacles of the European-Latin American relationship, but also propose an ambitious and at the same time pragmatic strategy to give the “strategic association” a new impulse and ensure that it makes a significant contribution to the common goals of democracy, human rights protection,
the fight against poverty, and international peace and security shared by the two regions. ● Comunicación y
Desarrollo. Pasos hacia la coherencia. Raquel Martínez-Gómez and Mario Lubetkin. Ediciones Comunicación Social. This book is a
compilation of talks and debates from the conference held at Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP) in Santander in the summer of 2009, and represents above all a union of wills, a dialogue between equals, a need to share, and an attempt to build a space for reflection on theories and practices. It addresses the very nature of communication for development as a process that enables the application of knowledge resulting from the sum of our abilities and facilitates inclusive consensus. Communication is at the heart of cooperation for development, and so the consideration of a Spanish communication strategy requires reflection on the role that communication should play in the coordination of and the search for agreements, particularly bearing in mind the wealth of players that it involves. ● El Estado social.
Ignacio Sotelo. Editorial Trotta. In spite of the formal equality imposed by the State, with the development of capitalism comes an increase in real inequities. The survival of the system necessitates the
control of these inequities within reasonable terms, but the efficiency of the productive order forces a growing division of labor that brings with it increasing social inequality. Viewing the Welfare State as a compromise between formal equality and real inequality, this book by political science professor Ignacio Sotelo examines its origins in the philosophy and social practice of the 17th and 18th centuries and its full development from the end of the 19th century up to the 1980s, to conclude with a formulation of the adverse factors faced by the Welfare State in the current crisis of the production model.
and literary creation. Its protagonists, Filomena Really and her neighbor Dora, learn to weave their tales together to form the web of their story, the story that they would have liked to have lived. And it is this that has enabled them to forget the generation gap that separates them and the rush of the outside world. Exchanging their memories, the two women recover small forgotten stories, while dreaming and inventing others.
● La corrupción de la
democracia. José VidalBeneyto. Los libros de la Catarata
● La señora Really y
otros sueños por soñar. Lola Millás. Editorial Planeta
The second novel by Lola Millás constitutes a toast to friendship, on the passage of time and the need to make the most of every moment and every experience that arises when you know how to listen and to allow life to surprise you. It is also a reflection on the imagination
The texts making up this work by the late José VidalBeneyto have been subjected to a thorough redrafting process to produce, as the author asserts in the introduction, “an instrument of attack, a weapon of war.” A weapon of war against the threats and hazards that may bring down the pillars of our collective existence, especially dangerous at a time when corruption has placed us in a position of helplessness. This corruption perverts the nature and the purpose of political life,