Media, informação e literacia: rumos e perspetivas

Media, informação e literacia: rumos e perspetivas reúne um leque diversificado de olhares e de vozes sobre a relação entre Media, Informação e Literacia, na tentativa de documentar rumos e discutir perspetivas aparentemente triunfantes no contexto internacional e num horizonte interdisciplinar. No seu conjunto, esses contributos alimentam o acidentado, mas vital debate sobre o impacto das alterações sociais e tecnológicas no conceito de literacia e o lugar das literacias nas sociedades democráticas.

Ciência da Informação: visões e tendências

Ciência da Informação: visões e tendências reúne um leque diversificado de olhares e de vozes sobre a Ciência da Informação. Docentes e investigadores de universidades de cinco países, Portugal, Brasil, Espanha, Alemanha e México exploram e problematizam as origens, a evolução, os fundamentos teóricos e epistemológicos da área científica, enquanto ciência pura (visões – diferentes enfoques / perspetivas) e aplicada (tendências – o que vai sendo seguido, ganhando corpo e materialidade). No seu conjunto, esses contributos alimentam o vital debate sobre o impacto das alterações sociais e tecnológicas no conceito de informação, no ensino e investigação em Ciência da Informação, e no importante papel da informação nas sociedades democráticas.

Charting African Prosperity Gospel economies

This article maps the vital debate on Prosperity Gospel in Africa and its relevance for socioeconomic change. Prosperity Gospel centres mainly on speech acts surrounding faith, wealth and victory, combined with ritual enactments around secondary evidences of divine blessings. Claiming this-worldly success and material well-being as signs of grace it has captured public spheres and has created African religio-scapes of prosperity. The survey on the socioeconomics of African prosperity-oriented Pentecostalism firstly traces the historic genealogy of Prosperity Gospel as transposable message. It appears as a generic formula in paradigmatic reinventions of Pentecostalism in post-second and/or cold war America and in its globalisation in postcolonial Africa. The double resignification of Pentecostal theology - a rereading of ‘mammon’ alongside a new ethic of being in the world - relates to the question of socioeconomic agency. Academic discourse connects Prosperity Gospel social capital with interpretations of its ritual texture thriving around rituals of tithings and offerings. Prosperity Gospel economies are profiled as forms of sacral consumption or sacrificial economy, or else as Pentecostal kleptocracy. Contrarily Prosperity Gospel is portrayed as a variant and porter of African social change. The contextualisation of Prosperity Gospel highlights diverse social agency in different milieus. Rural and peri-urban theologies of survival differ from urban progressive and metropolitan business management Prosperity Gospel. The findings defy generalised views on Prosperity Gospel socioeconomics. African Prosperity Gospel indicates a transformative potential in immediate social relationships, whereas claims of impacting structural parameters of society remain, with a few exceptions, part of Pentecostal imagination.

Polarization and American Political Development

One of the most fertile areas of research has been the question of why the American political system has polarized so sharply over the past four decades. The academic debates about polarization have largely been carried out by mainstream scholars of political behavior and institutions. Scholars of American Political Development (APD) have a major opportunity to participate in a vital debate about the emergence of a central feature of the contemporary American system while mainstream scholars should come to appreciate that one cannot easily develop explanations for dynamic change with static models of institutions and behavior. This chapter reviews the literature on polarization to introduce scholars of APD to debates about the measurement of polarization and its causes Also areas in which our knowledge about polarization can be improved by historical–institutional analysis are identified.

“Modifying the Traditional for the Good of the Whole”: Commentary on State-Building and Bureaucracy in Nassau, Baden, and Saxony in the Early Nineteenth Century

The three articles of this symposium contribute to a vital debate about the nature of modern German politics. The works by Barbara Anderson, Loyd Lee, and Lawrence Flockerzie discuss the political culture upon which the post-Napoleonic reconstruction of Germany rested. This political culture transcended the conventional concepts “liberal” and “conservative.” It was based on bourgeois ideals.