Spain (Mediterranean Studies)

The present paper aims to study slave labour in the Crown of Castile in late Middle Ages and early Modern period. It is structured in three parts: 1. slave labour: concept, method and sources; 2. slave labour in urban context; 3. slave labour in rural economy. It has taken into account more than 150 municipal ordinances from all throughout the territory, helping to define the geography of slavery in Castile and the extent of its economic role in the overall Castilian economy. The result strongly discusses generally accepted assertions and establishes new points of view that aim to help rethinking and reshaping late medieval and early modern European slavery.

The present paper analyzes the meanings of the term "Spagna" (Spain) in Italian sources from the 12th to the 14th centuries, from a geographical and a political point of view, studying chronicles, diplomatic, literary and economic documents. It results a very complex image in which Spagna could refer either to the Iberian Peninsula, to al-Andalus and to the Crown of Castile, taking the battle of the Navas de Tolosa as a turning point in the political meaning.

One of the most salient features of the Medieval Mediterranean is that it was a zone of intense interaction and long-term co-habitation of members of various ethno-religious communities whose relations are usually conceived of as fundamentally adversarial. Nevertheless, Christians, Muslims and Jews not only lived alongside each other but amongst each other in both the Christian- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean, even during the era of the Crusades. Typically, such relationships have been presented as either fundamentally hostile, or cordial, and as related to the “tolerance” that host cultures were inclined to demonstrate as a consequence of their own religious orientation. By contrast, this paper takes a phenomenological approach by focusing on a specific manifestation of this interaction: the emergence of out-group political elites in confessionally-defined societies. Through the medium of three case studies – a powerful Jew in Islamic Spain, a powerful Muslim in Norman Sicily and a powerful Coptic Christian in Fatimid Egypt – it demonstrates that the status of minority elites was related to concrete political circumstances grounded in the particular environment of the region, and that, in spite of cultural differences that might have distinguished them, these societies developed near-identical strategies for engaging with minority elites. The language of religious polemic, exclusion and marginalization was not absent, but it tended to serve as a post factum rationalization for repression, rather than a cause, and tended to be deployed decisively only in certain circumstances. This provides new insights not only into Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, but the nature of Mediterranean history and society.

In the face of crusades, conversions, and expulsions, Muslims and their communities survived to thrive for over 500 years in medieval Europe. This comprehensive new study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cook- ing, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Brian Catlos com- pares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, Southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms, and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society, and their sense of themselves as Muslims and as members of multi-confessional societies. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation, and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish soci- eties in which they lived.

From CORINE data we can observe the changes in Spanish urban areas over the period 1987-2006, in which the so-called Spanish Housing Bubble took place. The most remarkable feature in that period is that urban sprawl grew more than compact cities, because of a change in the residential pattern of a significant part of the Spanish population. In the Canary Islands and in most of the Mediterranean coast, especially in Costa Blanca, this change of urban pattern from compact to sprawl is linked to migrants from western and northern Europe coming to Spain because of its dry and sunny climate and making their first or second homes here.

""Resumen

Desde los países occidentales, y más concretamente desde España, se han elaborado una serie de racionalizaciones idealizadas respecto al escenario en que se desarrolla el contexto preadoptivo del/la menor, de modo que las explicaciones sobre las circunstancias que en China conducen a la decisión de no criar a un/a hijo/a biológico/a y el hecho de que este/a menor entre en el programa de adopción internacional suelen estar muy estandarizadas.
Sin embargo, dos años de trabajo de campo en China, han sacado a la luz muchas otras casuísticas que normalmente no se contemplan en los discursos hegemónicos y que sin embargo son las más comunes. En este contexto, trataré de presentar brevemente algunos de los procesos de circulación de menores que se están dando actualmente en China para ilustrar diferentes partes del contexto preadoptivo.

Abstract

From western countries and more specifi cally from Spain, we elaborate some ideal rationalizations about how the pre-adoptive context unfolds during the first years of life of the minors who will be adopted. In this way, we believe, the circumstances that lead a Chinese family to decide to “give up” a child or not to raise him/her are very standardized.

Nevertheless, two year of fi eldwork in China helped me to point out a lot of different situations that the hegemonic points of views usually do not take on account even though they are the most common. In this text, in order to illustrate different parts of the preadoptive context, I will try to present very briefl y some of the processes of circulation of minors that nowadays are occurring in China.""

""Supported by a four-year Doctoral Fellowship for Formation of Researchers from the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain and building on approximately five years of MS and PhD research –that include more than two years of intensive fieldwork in a central province in China - and one-on-one conversations and relationships with adoptive parents, birth parents, adoptees, government officials, NGO administrators and other relevant actors (including Chinese orphanage caretakers, illegal mid-wives and child traffickers), my project purports to address these blind spots in the Transnational Adoption research by inquiring not only into the pre- but also in the post-adoption contexts stretching between China (the world’s leading donor) and Spain (Europe’s leading recipient).

It is the first systematic, in-depth ethnographic analysis of the various ways in which Chinese children born outside the One Child Policy– mostly unregistered, and thus “hidden” and devoid of legal rights, - circulate between households, families, and private and public welfare institutions both inside China and abroad. Through ethnographic fieldwork and historical inquiry into the cultural roots of these practices, my dissertation analyzes the ways in which these traditional systems of "protection of minors" have been competing and cooperating with each other depending of the interests of their actors and the historical context. Furthermore, it links these protection systems to today’s actual patterns of institutionalization and circulation of minors focusing on the changes brought about by the Reform Era and the introduction of China’s Transnational Adoption Program as well as the entrance of international actors, resources, perceptions and transnational practices. Moreover the dissertation analyzes how the child-circulation paradigm has been constructed from the Spanish perspective, emphasizing the needs and interests derived from our particular demographic and socio-economic context, and digs into the imaginaries that have allowed the development and the stability of the Chinese Transnational Adoption Program.

In doing so, I create a rich picture of the cultural and ethical complexities involved, contribute to the global debate on the role of TA in protecting children and allow for more self-reflexive and culturally aware practices.""

Ens proposem analitzar la pràctica escolar diària en algunes escoles seleccionades com a casos d'estudi en diferents llocs del món (Espanya, Estats Units, Perú, Àustria i Bolívia) per tenir un marc de referència ampli i poder comparar pràctiques des d'una perspectiva antropològica.