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Retail payment systems play an important role in the smooth functioning of any economy, and thus any inefficiency in the retail payments market can send negative effects cascading throughout the financial realm. The World Bank Global Payment Systems Survey 2010 has shown that inefficiencies persist in the payment systems of many middle-income and low-income countries, with cash continuing to be the most widely used instrument for small-value payments. A number of issues are responsible for this pattern, and the lack of a coherent, holistic strategy for the development of retail payment systems is among the most common. The lessons learned during more than a decade of World Bank Group technical assistance, along with the research findings of other international and national agencies, have been merged into a comprehensive package for the development and reform of the national retail payments system: a) developing a comprehensive national retail payments strategy aims to provide public authorities and market participants with detailed guidance on how to develop and implement a comprehensive, strategic retail payments reform ; b) a practical guide for retail payments stocktaking identifies a methodology for undertaking a detailed stocktaking of a countrys retail payments landscape; c) from remittances to m-payments: Understanding alternative means of payment within the common framework of retail payments system regulation explores the development of a normative framework to underpin an efficient retail payments industry, including the so-called innovative payment mechanisms; and d) innovations in retail payments worldwide: a snapshot: outcomes of the global survey on innovations in retail payments instruments and methods 2010 presents the results of the first World Bank survey among central banks that collected information on innovative retail payment products and programs.

Lesotho is a small landlocked country with a homogenous population of 2.1 million. Lesotho's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was 1,023 dollars and gross national income (GNI) per capita was 1,080 dollars in 2010. The country also faces numerous challenges to its social and human development. In this context, more attention on the role and quality of public investment is warranted. To improve public accountability and transparency, the Government of Lesotho (GoL) introduced the automated integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) in April 2009. The study directly responds to an explicit request of technical assistance from the ministry of finance and development planning (MoFDP) and aims at supporting the GoL in its major reform efforts to enhance the efficiency of public investment management (PIM) and increase the "value for money" in capital spending. The overarching objective of this study is to support the GoL in its efforts to prioritize public resource allocation and enhance efficiency in capital spending, with the ultimate goal of contributing to improved governance, service delivery, and economic growth. The work is aligned with the World Bank country assistance strategy (CAS) 2010 to 2014, in particular its first pillar on fiscal adjustment and public sector efficiency. This report emphasizes the complementary aspects of the institutions, incentives, capacity, and process-related constraints to the functioning of PIM. The focus of this report will also complement ongoing public financial management (PFM) support by other development partners. The report is presented in four chapters, which are organized as follows: chapter one offers a macro-level country analysis; chapter two presents recent trends in public investments; chapter three focuses on institution mapping and the diagnostic assessment of the PIM system; and chapter four concludes with policy implications.

The chief purpose of this handbook is to provide government lawyers with a framework to evaluate the quality of a country's investment legislation (if it exists) and how the legislation relates to its investment policy and investment incentives. More specifically, it deals with creating new and reforming existing investment legislation in developing and transition economies in furtherance of the World Bank Group's (WBG's) mandate to promote private investment - domestic and foreign - in those economies. Handbook appendices contain drafting guidelines and checklist of issues that foreign direct investment (FDI) laws should include and that countries can use when drafting investment legislation. The report is structured as follows: chapter one defines key terms about investment law reform in an effort to clarify terminology and concepts and show how they are related. Chapter two examines how widespread investment codes are and explains their utility and limitations. Chapter three provides recommendations on the structure of investment legislation and the key provisions to be included such as definitions, investors' guarantees, incentives, framework for investment promotion, and transitional provisions. Chapter four discusses the fundamental issue of investor entry, in particular the conditions under which foreign investors can invest including sectoral restrictions, limitations on foreign ownership, authorization and screening, minimum investment, and performance requirements. Chapter five discusses key investor guarantees including fair and equitable treatment, national treatment, most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment, protection against expropriation, guaranteed convertibility and repatriation of profits, and settlement of disputes. Chapter six looks at the issue of investment incentives, (fiscal incentives in particular) and their effectiveness. Chapter seven summarizes key aspects of investment promotion to guide legal drafters, should policymakers want the investment code to set out the basic framework of investment promotion. Chapter eight presents the various phases of investment law reform projects, from the government's request for assistance with legislation to the delivery of a project plan. Chapter nine identifies some of the challenges in preparing an investment code and the support that governments may need until the law is promulgated. Chapter ten discusses the monitoring and evaluation (M and E) of investment law reforms, including the key indicators involved in a desk review and medium- and large-scale projects.

Infrastructure plays a key role in promoting economic growth and opportunities.In particular, the efficient provision of basic infrastructure services, like water and sanitation, is a key ingredient in fostering a country's social and economic development. Previous studies have found that infrastructure has a positive impact on output, and can improve economic opportunity, including health and education for the poor, particularly in developing countries. In Argentina, a 2005 study, found that child mortality fell by 8 percent in areas that had experienced improved coverage and quality of basic water and sanitation through utility reform, with most of the reduction occurring in low-income areas where the water network expanded the most. More generally, Fay and Morrison found that allowing the poorest quintile in developing countries the same access to basic services as the richest quintile would reduce child mortality by 8 percent and child under development by 14 percent. Calderon and Serven also found a significant positive impact of infrastructure access and quality on overall inequality. Furthermore, the book sheds some light on how to address the main challenge for the future which may be to attract specialized operators to the smaller municipalities which do not currently have them. For that purpose in Colombia, for example, over the last two years, the policy framework has been focused on promoting the sector's development, by using the departments as the intermediate institutional level between the National Government and the municipalities, to formulate programs with regional impact and promote comprehensive investment plans.

This paper analyzes how investment incentives may or may not be used to foster private investment, particularly in developing countries. As practitioners and policymakers can attest, political economy exerts a powerful influence on incentives. Many incentives especially generous ones have persisted because of lobbying by special interests and politicians' need to curry favor. Yet little research has been done on how political economy affects incentive policy. Second, the paper sheds light on the role that political economy plays in the popularity of incentives and the related shortcomings. Incentives are sometimes used to dole out favors to investors, so investors who benefit from incentives resist attempts to eliminate them. This paper suggests a way to tackle such problems. Third, the paper compiles good practices on managing and administering incentives in developing countries, drawing on government and private sector experiences. Finally, the paper provides policymakers with a framework for analyzing the efficacy of investment incentives based on the sector and level of development involved, and suggests reforms for moving toward best practice.

Earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies, which reduce national and global economic welfare and contribute to global inequality and poverty, have been undergoing reform since the 1980s. Using the linkage model of the global economy and modifications to the pre-release of version 7 of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) protection database for 2004, this paper seeks to compare the effect of those reforms to date with those that would come from removing remaining agricultural and trade policies. Two sets of results are thus presented: one showing the effects of policy reforms between 1980-84 and 2004, the other showing what the removal of remaining distortions as of 2004 could be. Both sets of results indicate improvements in the real value of agricultural output and exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes in most developing country regions despite the adverse effect on the international terms of trade for some developing countries that are net food importers or are enjoying preferential access to agricultural markets of high-income countries. Landowners in those high-income countries still offering their farmers price supports could readily afford to compensate them from the benefits of removing remaining agricultural protectionism.

The paper focuses its analysis on the last three decades of the twentieth century. The basic assumption is that Egypt's economic performance during this period was less than satisfactory compared with the most successful examples in the far East and elsewhere. The paper also assumes that Egypt's initial conditions at midcentury compared favorably with the winners in the development race at the end of the century. Egypt has achieved positive progress, no doubt, yet compared with the higher performers in Asia, and given its favorable good initial conditions, the record seems quite mediocre. By mid-twentieth century, Egypt's agriculture had almost reached its limits. Egypt, therefore, faced a new challenge: a need to transform itself into an industrial society. This objective was only partially achieved. The paper identifies three interrelated factors that helped hinder Egypt's accession to a new industrial society. The first factor is a strong state and a weak society. An authoritarian state that in its endeavor to preserve its prerogatives had to give up good governance practices and limit the creative initiative of the individuals. The second factor is a semi-rentier economy. The availability of windfall revenues not only reduced the pressure for change but also promoted a new rentier mentality that undermined the emergence of an industrial spirit. The third factor is an inadequate education system. This system failed to provide the proper skills and values required for the industrial society. These factors, moreover, are interdependent and reinforce each other.

Nigeria's long-run growth performance has been extremely poor. Between 1960 and 2000, real income per capita grew at only 0.43 percent per year. The situation improved between 2001 and 2006 when real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 4.2 percent. This paper demonstrates that the superior growth performance during 2001-06 is largely attributable to the impact of better leadership and economic policy making. The improved performance of the economy after 2003 arose from implementing a comprehensive economic reform program focusing on four main areas: macroeconomic reform; structural reform; governance and institutional reform; and public sector reform. The reforms, backstopped by improved oil revenue management, monetary policy implementation, and debt management, improved overall macroeconomic policy making. This resulted in real GDP growth averaging 7.1 percent per year between 2003 and 2006, an inflation rate of 10 percent in 2006, foreign exchange reserves of US$45 billion in 2006, and total external debt of only US$5 billion in 2006. Clearly, between 1960 and 2000, Nigeria's policy choices were poor, and the reforms that sought to correct them were plagued by inconsistencies, policy reversals, and lack of coherence. In contrast, due to good leadership, the reforms adopted in 2003 were consistent and have been implemented in a coherent manner.

Jackie's Experiential Learning in Jack Gantos' Dead End In Norvelt Rheza Arief Dwi Piscesa English Literature Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya rheza.arief@gmail.com Hujuala Rika Ayu, SS., MA. English Department Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya ayuhujualarika@yahoo.com Abstrak Pembelajaran adalah suatu proses mengakuisisi sebuah pengetahuan. Karakter utama di novel ini, Jackie Gantos, mendapatkan berbagai macam ilmu melalui pengalaman, belajar, atau dengan diajarkan oleh orang lain. Di Dead End in Norvelt, proses pembelajaran yang banyak terjadi didapatkan melalui pengalaman. Jackie Gantos mendapatkan pengetahuan melalui pengalaman, hal ini dapat dianalisa menggunakan Kolb's experiential learning. Kolb's experiential learning adalah sebuah metode pembelajaran dengan cara mewariskan pengetahuan secara langsung melalui pengalaman ke dalam diri seseorang tersebut. Tujuan dari thesis ini adalah untuk memperlihatkan proses dari experiential learning di dalam hidup Jackie dan menemukan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi Jackie dalam usahanya untuk mengaplikasikan experiential learning dalam kehidupannya di kota Norvelt. Dengan memunculkan proses experiential learning, dapat diketahui bagaimana sebuah pengalaman diwariskan kepada orang lain serta faktor apa yang memunculkan experiential learning. Setelah experiential learning terjadi, Jackie mendapatkan banyak sekali pengetahuan, contohnya cara menggunakan senjata dengan aman, sejarah dari kota Norvelt, idealism dari seorang Eleanor Roosevelt dan lain lain. Proses mendapatkan pengetahuan ini tampak dalam tabel pembelajaran Kolb's dan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi terjadinya proses experiential learning dari Kolb's adalah social interaction dan self-realization. Kata Kunci: experiential learning, social interaction, self-realization. Abstract Learning is the acquisition of knowledge. The main character, Jackie Gantos, obtained skills through experience, study, or by being taught. In Dead End in Norvelt, most of the process of learning obtained through experience. Jackie Gantos' gaining knowledge through experience is analyzed by using Kolb's experiential learning. Kolb's experiential learning is a method of learning by inheriting the knowledge directly through experience that happened in a person. The objective of this thesis are to reveal the process of experiential learning in Jackie's life and finding factors that triggers Jackie's effort of applying experiential learning in his life in Norvelt. By revealing the experiential learning process, it can be found out how an experience is passed on to others and the factors that triggers experiential learning. After the experiential learning happened, Jackie gain knowledge on many things such as gun safety, history of Norvelt, Eleanor Roosevelt idealism and etc. This process of gaining knowledge is depicted through Kolb's learning table and the factors that trigger Kolb's experiential learning are social interaction and self-realization. Keywords: experiential learning, social interaction, self-realization. INTRODUCTION Learning is a process of acquiring knowledge through study. This process of learning usually occurs between students and lecturers in a formal educational school. Educational School gives courses and inheriting skillssuch as Physics, History, Chemist, Math and Language from teacher to children. There is also another way to learn something to gain knowledge and increase our understanding about the world. This way of learning is different from the original way of learning such as studying in a school and comprehend the knowledge that our teacher gives. For example, a farmer boy learn how to plough and plant seeds by seeing his father working at the field. After the boy grew up and strong enough, his father ask the boy to help him work at the field. His father showed him how to plough land, watering the field and keeping away birds from destroying the field. This boy gain knowledge through a different method than the original method of studying which is reading books and attending school. The way of the boy learning through experience, from the events of learning through his dad and working to help his dad, is the experiential learning. Experiential learning is a process of gaining knowledge through experience. This knowledge is a result from the combination of grasping and transforming the experience itself. This theory is a well-known model in education. David Kolb in his book, Experiential Learning Theory, presents a cycle of four elements to define the theory. Experiencing problem, observing the critical problem, making a concept of abstract to solve the problem, and actively experimenting to solve the problem. This process leads to a further critical reflection about the experiment and the result of the experiment. This learning theory is a development of various studies regarding to the cognitive development by Jean Piaget and philosophical perspective of pragmatism by John Dewey. Dewey's philosophical perspective of pragmatism is conveyed in his statement based on Kolb's: " If one attempts to formulate the philosophy of education implicit in the practices of the new education, we may, I think, discover certain common principles … To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity ;to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world … I take it that the fundamental unity of the newer philosophy is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education." (1938, pp.19, 20) Based on the statement by Dewey, Piaget developed this philosophy and researched Dewey's perspective into a new method to differenciate the actual learning experience as a set of educational method which invoke a knowledge that build through a relation of experience and education. Piaget's theory describes how intelligence is built through experience. He defines that intelegence is not an innate internal characteristic of the individual but comes alive as a product of the interaction between the person and his or her environment and action is the key point for Piaget. A person who does experiment gathers experience and gains knowledge through the process. In this case, experiential learning studies the process of transforming the experience into a certain knowledge. Just like the saying of Julius Caesar, "Experience is the teacher of all things." (40s BC, Commentaries on the Civil War, 2. 8), this process of experiential learning can be found mainly in the character of Jack Gantos in Jack Gantos' "Dead End in Norvelt".Jackie Gantos, the main character, living his life of summer days in Norvelt and experiencesmany things through his adventure. Summer days are his moments of hunting season with his dad, helping Miss Volker writing obituaries for the local paper, examining dead body in a Morgue which Bunny's dad work, investigating the whereabout of Mrs. Dubicki. This actions is the sets of events that can be analyzed as a process of experiential learning of Jackie in the novel. Jackie is always curious about many things, that is why he always gets into trouble. He is a good boy, but his action sometimes make his mom got a headache. This because Jackie always gets a nosebleed everytime he gets too excited, which is his mother always worried about. His adventure in Norvelt somewhat he must complices with his nosebleed problem. In his adventure, Jackie experiences many things, he knows how to safely lock the gun to prevent it blasts accidentally by learning it from his hunting experience with his dad. He also learn how to write using a typewriter while helping Mrs. Volker to write her obituaries for the local paper. This process of learning gains him knowledge through experience that happened through his adventure. It is a concrete fact that people do learn from their experience and for nontraditional students such as minorities, the poor, and mature adults – experiential learning has become the method of choice for learning and personal development. (Kolb, 1984: 3) John Byran Gantos, Jr., better known asJack Gantos(born July 2, 1951) is anAmericanauthor ofchildren's booksrenowned for his fictional characterJoey Pigza, a boy withattention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD). Gantos has won several literary awards, including theNewbery Honor, thePrintz Honor, and theSibert Honorfrom theAmerican Library Association, and he has been a finalist for theNational Book Award. His latest book,Dead End in Norvelt(2011) won the 2012Newbery Medal. Jack Gantos received both hisBFAand hisMAfromEmerson College. While in college, Gantos began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book,Rotten Ralph. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He was a professor of creative writing and literature (1978–95) and a visiting professor at Brown University (1986), University of New Mexico (1993) and Vermont College (1996). He developed master's degree programs in children's book writing at Emerson College and Vermont College. Jack Gantos writing career began when he work together on picture books in college with his illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Gantos cares so much about children by publishing dozens of book regarding to picture books for kids. In his last novel Dead End in Norvelt, he creates a master copy of his childhood life into a dazzling novel that easy to understand with a portion of historical value to give an early history lesson to children. The main point of this study is the experiential learning that Jackie Gantos experience in his hometown of Norvelt. His dad is a former WWII soldier, he kept possession of many memorabilia such as Japanesse rifle and other stuff of war. This interacts Jackie to play with his stuff such as Japanesse rifle and pretend to acts like Jackie is in a war that is played on the screenplay over the neighbor. The story of the novel continue about Jackie's adventure in his town and learning experience on events such as helping writing historical obituary for Miss Volker, and secretly build an airplane in his garage with his dad. Gantos' novel Dead End in Norvelt focused more on the life of Jackie Gantos that happened in Norvelt at summer of 1962and the social interaction that happened between him and the people in Norvelt. It leads to a great adventure of him, this makes Jackie learns about many topic that he experiences in his life. Jackie lives for a time in Norvelt, a real Pennsylvania town created during the Great Depression and based on the socialist idea of community farming. Jackie's summer of 1962 begins badly: plagued by frequent and explosive nosebleeds, Jackie is assigned to take dictation for the arthritic obituary writer, Miss Volker, and kept alarmingly busy by elderly residents dying in rapid succession. Then the Hells Angels roll in. Gore is a Gantos hallmark but the squeamish are forewarned that Jackie spends much of the book with blood pouring down his face and has a run-in with home cauterization. Gradually, Jackie learns to face death and his fears straight on while absorbing Miss Volker's theories about the importance of knowing history. Based on the explanation above, this study would like to discuss on Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory by focusing on Jackie Gantos character. And this experiential learning theory will guide us on how to elaborate the process of learning by experience that happens in Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt by examining Jackie Gantos character and his social interaction with the people of Norvelt. RESEARCH METHOD This study takes the data source of a novel Dead End in Norvelt, written by Jack Gantos which is published in New York by Farrar Straus Giroux, with ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3 in 2012. To collect the data, the first step is Extensive Reading. Extensive reading is denoted as reading the text of novel extensively in order to collect the data of analysis, such as narrations, monologues, dialogues, quotations, and so forth. After collecting the data by reading extensively, the second step is intensive reading. This step is used in order to reveal the hidden idea of the novel which is related to the data. After finding the hidden idea of the novel, the next step is classifying the data through the novel which needed in analyzing the data, such as speech, actions, characters, behavior, attitudes, and thoughts. The third step is observation the data. This step is the most important step because this step is used in order to find out the experiential learning. In Dead End in Norvelt, The main character Jackie experiences many things that gain him knowledge throughout the novel. Therefore, the experiential learning is very appropriate to be applied to this study. Last but not least, it reaches the final process of collecting data, which is placing the classified data into the table. It is done to simplify in reading the data for the purpose of doing analysis. After finding the experiential learning through the events that correlate Jackie with the major characters based on the novel, the last step is data analysis. This step attempts to answer the questions subsequently based on the statement of the problems by using relevant theory. Besides, this step also uses the data of the novel Dead End in Norvelt which consists of monologues, dialogues, and quotations. The first statement of problem is the occurance of experiential learning. The depiction of experiential learning is using the theory of Kolb. This depiction can be seen on the events that correlate Jackie with other main characters inside the novel. The second statement of problem is the factors that causes Jackie to apply experiential learning in his life which gain him knowledge through experience with other. The factors will be analyzed by using the theory of Rummels. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING Experiential learning is a well-known model in education. Kolb's experiential learning theory defines experiential learning as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience." (1984:38) Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (1984:42) presents a cycle of four elements: The cycle begins with an experience that the student has had, followed by an opportunity to reflect on that experience. Then students may conceptualize and draw conclusions about what they experienced and observed, leading to future actions in which the students experiment with different behaviors. This begins the cycle anew as students have new experiences based on their experimentation (Oxendine, Robinson and Willson, 2004). Although this continuum is presented as a cycle, the steps may occur in nearly any order. This learning cycle involves both concrete components (steps 1 and 4) and conceptual components (steps 2 and 3), which require a variety of cognitive and affective behaviors. Experiential learning can exist without a teacher and relates solely to the meaning of making process of the individual's direct experience. However, although the gaining of knowledge is an inherent process that occurs naturally, for a genuine learning experience to occur, there must exist certain elements. According to Kolb, knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences. He states that in order to gain genuine knowledge from an experience, certain abilities are required: • The learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience; • The learner must be able to reflect on the experience; • The learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience; and • The learner must possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience. Experiential activities are among the most powerful teaching and learning tools available. Experiential learning requires self-initiative, an "intention to learn" and an "active phase of learning". Kolb's cycle of experiential learning can be used as a framework for considering the different stages involved. Jennifer A. Moon has elaborated on this cycle to argue that experiential learning is the most effective when it involves: 1) a "reflective learning phase" 2) a phase of learning resulting from the actions inherent to experiential learning, and 3) "a further phase of learning from feedback". This process of learning can result in "changes in judgment, feeling or skills" for the individual and can provide direction for the "making of judgments as a guide to choice and action". Most educators understand the important role of experience in the learning process. The role of emotion and feelings in learning from experience has been recognised as an important part of experiential learning.While those factors may improve the likelihood of experiential learning occurring, it can occur without them. Rather, what is vital in experiential learning is that the individual is encouraged to directly involve themselves in the experience, and then to reflect on their experiences using analytical skills, so they gain a better understanding of the new knowledge and retain the information for a longer time. Reflection is a crucial part of the experiential learning process, and like experiential learning itself, it can be facilitated or independent. Dewey wrote that "successive portions of reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another", creating a scaffold for further learning, and allowing for further experiences and reflection. This reinforces the fact that experiential learning and reflective learning are iterative processes, and the learning builds and develops with further reflection and experience. Facilitation of experiential learning and reflection is challenging, but "a skilled facilitator, asking the right questions and guiding reflective conversation before, during, and after an experience, can help open a gateway to powerful new thinking and learning". Jacobson and Ruddy, building on Kolb's four-stage Experiential Learning Model and Pfeiffer and Jones's five stage Experiential Learning Cycle, took these theoretical frameworks and created a simple, practical questioning model for facilitators to use in promoting critical reflection in experiential learning. Their "5 Questions" model is as follows: • Did you notice.? • Why did that happen? • Does that happen in life? • Why does that happen? • How can you use that? These questions are posed by the facilitator after an experience, and gradually lead the group towards a critical reflection on their experience, and an understanding on how they can apply the learning to their own life. Although the questions are simple, they allow a relatively inexperienced facilitator to apply the theories of Kolb, Pfeiffer, and Jones, and deepen the learning of the group. SOCIAL INTERACTION According to R.J. Rummel (1976: Chapter 9 : Social Behavior And Interaction) , social interactions are the acts, actions, or practices of two or more people mutually oriented towards each other's selves, that is, any behavior that tries to affect or take account of each other's subjective experiences or intentions. This means that the parties to the social interaction must be aware of each other--have each other's self in mind. This does not mean being in sight of or directly behaving towards each other. Friends writing letters are socially interacting, as are enemy generals preparing opposing war plans. Social interaction is not defined by type of physical relation or behavior, or by physical distance. It is a matter of a mutual subjective orientation towards each other. Thus even when no physical behavior is involved, as with two rivals deliberately ignoring each other's professional work, there is social interaction. Moreover, social interaction requires a mutual orientation. The spying of one on another is not social interaction if the other is unaware. Nor do the behaviors of rapist and victim constitute social interaction if the victim is treated as a physical object; nor behavior between guard and prisoner, torturer and tortured, machine gunner and enemy soldier. Indeed, wherever people treat each other as object, things, or animals, or consider each other as reflex machines or only cause-effect phenomena, there is not social interaction such interaction may comprise a system; it may be organized, controlled, or regimented. According to Arnold W Green in his book Sociology an Analysis of life in Modern Society, Social interaction is "…the mutual influences that individuals and groups have upon one another in their attempts to solve problems and in their striving toward goals. Social interaction discloses the concrete results of striving behavior upon roles, statuses, and moral norms" (Green, 1964: 57) There are two types of social interaction, structured and unstructured. Structured social interaction is guided by previously establishing definitions and expectations, owing either to familiarity with the other as a person, as among family and friends, or to knowledge of the others formal position, as between lawyer and judge in court room proceedings, unstructured encounters lack prior expectations and must be defined as required in the course of action. Although at a proposition of intimate relationships are highly structured even the most familiar partners and friends remain capable of unpredictable and novel responses in relationships infact the most interesting trends and associates are those who widely improvise. Conversely rarely do we find a situation completely lacking in structure. Even two strangers come from quite diverse backgrounds, their interactions of likely to be governed by norms of physical safety, age, sex, etc. Thus special interaction may be viewed as partly governed by pre-established rules and expectations and as partly inventive, interpretive and improvisational. TYPES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION According to Chris Levy (earthlink.net: ch.4, 2), Social interaction is divided into five points: a. Exchange: The process in which people transfer goods, services, and other items with each other. Exchange is a social process whereby social behavior is exchanged for some type of reward for equal or greater value. b. Competition: Process by which two or more people/groups attempt to obtain the same goal. Scarce resources are unequally distributed. This concept is very familiar and important to Americans considering the idea of competition is built in to our economy and society. Yet, the jury is still out whether this competition produces the assumed results of the "best rising to the top" c. Cooperation: The process in which people work together to achieved shared goals. Usually this involves the giving up of individual goals for group goals d. Conflict: The process by which people attempt to physically or socially conquer each other. Although war is the most obvious example of this, this is done most often in social situations (ex. politics, threats, etc.) e. Coercion: Process by which people compel other people to do something against their will – based ultimately on force. The state usually handles this through official means (police, army, etc.) but individuals use it in social situations as well (parents, friends, lovers – sex) f. No one type of interaction describes social reality – it involves a mix and match of different ones. SELF-REALIZATION Self-realization is a concept where people realize on their own regarding a certain event that perceived through their behavior. Mortimer Adler defines self-realization as freedom from external coercion, including cultural expectations, political and economic freedom, and the freedom from worldly attachments and desires etc. (1958: 127, 135, 149). This concept is the opposite of social interaction because self-realization occur without any social interaction. The person is free to realize his own potential by absorbing the knowledge through his own way, for example reading books, without any interference from other person. PARADIGM OF ANALYSIS The analysis will utilize Kolb's experiential learning to classify the events into two triggering factors of experiential learning, social interaction and self-realization. The classification will further explain the process of gaining knowledge. The table of Kolb's experiential learning is used to reveal the process of learning that a person went through. The process of a person learning through experience consists of Experience phase, Critical Reflection phase, Abstract phase, Active Experimentation phase and reach into a further Critical Reflection to adjust the knowledge that gained through the process. The social interaction and the self-realization is used as a triggering factor of experiential learning process. THE DEPICTION OF JACKIE GANTOS' EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING Elaborating event in the novel to show the depiction of Jackie's effort in applying experiential learning is an important process. Before elaborating the event, knowing Jackie's character first is essential. The knowledge regarding Jackie's character is important because it is used as a guidance to define the social interaction between Jackie and other character in the event, to understand Jackie relation with others, and to understand the experiential learning process. Jack is a teenager in Norvelt around age of 11 to 12, He is a curious person, a rebel, nose bleeder, a book-worm, helpful to others and also full of action. These characteristics are described throughout the novel as Jack likes to read history when he was at home. His adventures rotates about the stories in Norvelt, how he spent his summer holiday at home grounded because of gun accident and helping Miss Volker out with her obituary thing. Jack is the main character that is full of action through all the novel. Based on Kolb's experiential learning model, Jackie's character experience and learn about many things that happens in his life, especially through his social interaction with others as one of the factor to trigger experiential learning. This experiential learning process appears in events that related to Jackie's action with other character, creating a situation which lead to a learning comprehension through experience. In this section, the events will be distinguished into the most unique event showing Jackie's learning through experience. This unique event will focus on Jackie's interaction with some of the most important characters in the novel, Jackie's parent, Miss Volker, Mr. Spizz, Bunny, and Mrs. Dubicky. THE EVENTS OF JACKIE'S PARENT There are several events that involve Jackie with his parents in the novel. Some of them can be classified as unique, one of them is about the Money and Barter concept. Norvelt is a community town based on barter or trading skills with neighbors. Norvelt is created to solve Great Depression problem. At that time, money is hard to get and crops prices fell so low so business all over town is bankrupt. The concept of Money and Barter shows differences of ages between Jackie's mom in the past and present time. This event happened between Jackie and his Mom when they visit the doctor to examine Jackie's nose problem. Jackie learn about the concept of Money and Barter from the conversation with her mom which happened while Jackie is on his way home. The concept of Money and Barter is one of the unique values of knowledge that Jackie experiences in the novel. The other unique event Jackie's experience with his Dad regarding gun safety that he experienced in the past. This event is important since it builds Jackie's character to be aware and always caution regarding gun safety. To describe the social interaction happened in the event, knowing the character of Jackie's parent character is compulsory. The character of a person can define the social interaction that occur between him and other people. In a family relation, social interaction that mostly happened is cooperation between family and also conflict which bonds family members. Jackie's Mom is a caring, loving mother but is also strict about the rules at home. She forbids Jackie to play with dangerous things like guns and stuffs from the Japanese war that Jackie's dad kept at basement. "Well, don't hurt yourself," Mom warned. "And if there is blood on some of that stuff, don't touch it. You might catch something, like Japanese polio." (Gantos, 2012: 1) Her love for Jack is strong even though Jack does things that make her mad like blasting the rifle or mowing the corn row. She always reminds him to be careful because of his nosebleed problem. She's afraid that her son has iron-poor blood he may not be getting enough oxygen to his brain. (Gantos, 2012: 3) Meanwhile Jackie's dad is a former war soldier, a hardworking father, and a loving and adventurous man. He learns almost everything from his dad. No wonder Jack is so hyperactive. Jackie's Dad is also a collector. He keeps stuff from the Japanese War era to make profit when it is valuable enough. This can be seen in the quotation below. … in fact, he never let me play with it, because as he put it, "This swag will be worth a bundle of money someday, so keep your grubby hands off it."(Gantos, 2012: 1) As the story goes, Jackie will get involved in something more than just a rifle to be blasted. MISS VOLKER'S EVENTS Miss Volker is a medical examiner of the town and also the chief nurse in town. Her job is to take notes of the people health records and writes people obituary as they are passed away. Unfortunately her hands are not as good as her youth. So she asks Jackie's mom to send Jack to help her with her writing. The job was a tribute of duty from Eleanor Roosevelt and also her way to thank Mrs. Roosevelt for building Norvelt into a friendly community town. "When Mrs. Roosevelt hired me to be the chief nurse and medical examiner of this town I was given a typewriter so I could keep health records on the original two hundred and fifty families. Now it's my closing tribute to Mrs. Roosevelt that I write their final health report – which, in this case, would be their obituary…" (Gantos, 2012: 16) Miss Volker important is the main point of the novel and her relation with Jackie as her scribe invoke Jackie's learning phase in experiential learning. By helping her to write obituary, Jackie finds many things that he doesn't know before and some of the most important and unique event that binds Jackie with Miss Volker are the Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism and also the history of Norvelt. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism is conveyed through Miss Volker speech when she was dictating Jackie to write the obituary of Mrs. Dubicki. The event gives a unique description regarding Eleanor Roosevelt's thought and idealism of a strong community based town to start a helping neighborhood so people doesn't have to depend on money which is hard to get in Depression era. She made sure that the community had real houses which include bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom with bathtub. When the government reacts to this idea, they try to reject the plan by calling it luxury living. But Mrs. Roosevelt defended the plan by saying that this is not living in luxury but it is called living with dignity. (Gantos, 2012: 88) The other event is learning about the history of Norvelt. The basic role of society is by knowing your own neighborhood history. In this novel Jackie learnt about Norvelt history from many different perspectives but most of them came from Miss Volker's obituary dictation. The most important dictation is the one when Miss Volker does the obituary for Mrs. Bloodgood because it reveals the story of how the Norvelt name truly came and also the story of equality behind the making of Norvelt as one of the role model for every town in the United States of America. MRS. DUBICKI'S EVENTS Mrs. Dubicki is the old woman at the house of C-27. She is a loner and a grumpy person. There was a time when Mr. Spizz hands her ticket for having an old shabby house, she chase him with her husband's double-barreled shotgun. "This is her house," she said. "She hasn't painted it since 1934. I like Mrs. Dubicki because that busybody Spizz gave her a ticket for having a shabby-looking house and she chased him off the property with her dead husband's double-barreled shotgun." (Gantos, 2012: 47) After Jackie visited her in a disguise with Miss Volker to check about her, she reveals her polite side and also a loving grandparent since she didn't want to miss her grandson's birthday on July third. The appearances of Mrs. Dubicki in this novel is important because she plays an important role in helping Jackie learns about disguising skill, driving skill and also Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism has been described on the above section, it also correlates Jackie with Mrs. Dubicki since he learnt about Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism on the dictation of Mrs. Dubicki obituary. Eleanor Roosevelt is fond of Jeffersonian principle that later shaped the planning of Norvelt. She also agrees to Jefferson that every American should have a house with fertile property to be used as a farming site so when money was difficult to come by, a man and woman could always grow crops and have enough food to feed their family (Gantos, 2012: 97). Regarding Jackie's driving skill and his disguising skill, he learnt about all that when he was accompanying Miss Volker on an investigation on Mrs. Dubicki's missing a church appointment which then create a rumor of Mrs. Dubicki already resting in peace at her home. That's why Jackie tries to disguise himself to avoid a false information and he can get away without having to worry about trespassing someone else house. MR. SPIZZ'S EVENTS Mr. Spizz's events are considered important because Mr. Spizz works for the Norvelt Public Good whose objective is to create a law abiding situation for the good of the neighborhood. Mr. Spizz is a man who feel that he is the most important man in the town, he acts like a sheriff regardless his appearance running around in a giant tricycle. He secretly love Miss Volker since 1912, sending her a box of chocolate every week. …. It read, I'm still ready, willing and waiting. Your swain since 1912 with the patience of Job. – Edwin Spizz." (Gantos, 2012: 9) He usually looks bossy, law abiding man as he is strict about rules like grass tall law and house paint job law of the community. He always sticks to the rules and always reminded people in the neighborhood. Mr. Spizz's events is considered important since Jackie always met Mr. Spizz in the crime scene of the death of old women. But some of the most important events are Jackie's deal with Mr. Spizz and the murderer of old women. In Jackie's deal with Mr. Spizz, Jackie helps Mr. Spizz to buy a tin can of 1080 poison for an exchange of forgetting the gutter weed ticket fine and also ending the runway zoning law problem that Mr. Spizz wrung about with Jackie's Dad airplane project. The other event is the murderer of old women. This event takes place at the end of the novel when Mr. Spizz confessed to Miss Volker regarding the murderer that he has done in Norvelt. Jackie found out the story after saving Miss Volker from the basement. The social interaction happened in the events that include Mr. Spizz are coercion and conflict. This happened because Jackie always clashes with Mr. Spizz in one way or another. The example is the gutter ticket and Jackie's Dad runway. BUNNY'S EVENTS Bunny is a close friend of Jackie. She is a small, funny, brave and sometimes freaky girl with an enormous energy among her. … Bunny was a girl the size of one of Santa's little helpers. She was so short she could run full speed under her dining room table without ducking. She'd take double position at shortstop and second base… Because she grew up in a house full of dead people she wasn't afraid of anything." (Gantos, 2012: 27) She is not an ordinary girl, regarding the fact that her daily routine was watching her dad prepare the dead. Her dad, Mr. Huffer is the man who prepares dead body before burial. He owned the only funeral parlor in town. The events that correlate Jackie with Bunny is unique. The conversation related to the unique preparation of the dead for funeral give Jackie knowledge. He gain the knowledge that to prepare dead body you must sew the mouth shut so it doesn't open again. Other example of the event is the Hufferville plan. Jackie found out the plan after meeting up with Bunny to accompany her fire patrol duty. The plan give Jackie the knowledge that Mr. Huffer tried to expand his business to another kind of business, which is a plan to build a new town on the land of Norvelt by buying all the land and moving the old house to another location. The social interaction that mostly happened between Jackie and Bunny are cooperation, coercion and also conflict. These social interaction mostly happened in a close friend relationship and it is natural to have a coercion and conflict in this kind of relationship. THE INFLUENCING FACTORS OF JACKIE'S APPLYING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN HIS LIFE To find out the elements of experiential learning the analysis will be divided into two different factors. The first one is the analysis which use social interaction found in the conversation between Jackie and other characters and the action that happened between Jackie and other characters that create an experience reward to be learned by Jackie. The second one is the analysis which doesn't involve any social interaction at all. So in this second analysis Jackie gain experience through his own critical thinking which can be called self-realization. This analysis will focus on Jackie's experience in reading history books and Jackie's thought. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INVOLVES SOCIAL INTERACTION The analysis will be divided into two parts, the conversation part between Jackie and other character in the novel and the other is Jackie's actual experience throughout the novel. The experience can be classified according to the type of social interaction that has been described in chapter two above. Conversation is the basic social interaction that happened between people in life. Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette. It is a polite give and take of subjects thought of by people talking with each other for company (Conklin, 1912: 22). Conversation used as a tool to deliver thought of a person to another person. Occasionally, the conversation consist of small talk but it also may consist of something intelligent for example a conversation about history fact, which appears a lot in this novel, and other information on special topic such as war experience. In this part, the conversation will be focused on Jackie's conversation with other characters in the novel that generalize in some specific topic conveyed through the event. The first event considered an important experience learning is the conversation related to Eleanor Roosevelt and her Idealism. This event give Jackie knowledge on Eleanor Roosevelt's historical background in building Norvelt and also her Idealism through her point of view. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism of living in dignity and living without fear of having no money conveyed in Norvelt town. It is originally her idea to build a community town that release the wrath of economic depression by sustaining life through helping each other out. Jackie learns this through several conversation portrayed inside the novel. Norvelt originally comes through a mind of Eleanor Roosevelt. The mind of having a community based town to increase the standard living of the coal miners. The first conversation about Eleanor Roosevelt appears between Jackie and Mr. Fenton. I had asked Mr. Fenton about it and he said he wanted a hundred bucks because it had historic value. "Eleanor Roosevelt was driven around Norvelt in it," …. Every time her name was mentioned everything went up in price, which was so backward because she wanted everything to go down in price. (Gantos, 2012: 21) Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to build a strong community within Norvelt, to start a helping neighborhood so people doesn't have to depend on money like they used to. Since the great depression era, Norvelt becomes a model community to start living in a better standard. This can be seen in the next quotation. "But Godmother Roosevelt came to the rescue. She made sure people had real houses - little New England-style houses – and they had bedrooms and a living room and a useful kitchen and a bathroom with a bathtub, and even a laundry room with washing machine. The government called this luxury living. But Mrs. Roosevelt called it living with dignity." (Gantos, 2012: 88) Eleanor Roosevelt fought for the people, to make sure they had a deserved place to live in. She especially fond of the principle of Thomas Jefferson the third President of USA that every American should have a house enough to plant their own food in their property. This is to maintain that when money was hard to get, they can still living by growing crops to feed their own family. This is also depicted in the quotation below when Miss Volker is making the obituary for Mrs. Dubicki. "Mrs. Roosevelt was especially fond of a Jeffersonian principle that shaped the planning of Norvelt. Jefferson believed that every American should have a house large enough piece of fertile property so that during hard times, when money was difficult to come by, a man and woman could always grow crops and have enough food to feed their family. Jefferson believed that the farmer was the key to America and that a well-run family farm was a model for a well-run government. Mrs. Roosevelt felt the same. And we in Norvelt keep that belief alive." (Gantos, 2012: 97) Jackie learns a bit of history of Norvelt and also the principal idea of Eleanor Roosevelt that wants to bring Norvelt family into a role model for every town in the United States. This intelligence came from a conversational subject between Jackie and Mr. Fenton and also Jackie and Miss Volker. The process of experiential learning can be seen on the table below. The event between Jackie and Bunny is the preparation of a dead man. In this event, Jackie learns about how the dead being prepared for the last tribute. This event occurs in a conversation between Jackie and Bunny while they were playing baseball on the field. Bunny was asking about Jackie's doing obituary for Mrs. Slater for the paper. She think that it was well written. So she gives Jackie a gift, dentures from Mrs. Slater funeral preparation. Jackie was surprised to know that Bunny had Mrs. Slater dentures. He thought that it was buried with Mrs. Slater body. Then Bunny tells him a story about how to prepare a dead body for funeral viewing. "You don't know anything about preparing dead people for a viewing," she bragged. "If you'll notice, the stiffs are always displayed with their mouths closed because my dad has to sew their mouths shut. If they don't have real teeth you just sew their gums together which is actually easier, so we keep the dentures. Dad saves them because when he gets a boxful he donates them to the retirement home and some of those old people reuse them." "You really have to sew the mouth shut?" I asked. That stunned me. It seemed so brutal. "With an upholstery needle and twine," she added, knowing she was making me nervous. "It's like sewing up a turkey after you stuff it, is how my dad puts it." (Gantos, 2012: 30) Bunny tells him about how his dad sews the dead's mouth to prevent them from opening. And she also tells him about how the dentures are being kept. Because if someone doesn't have teeth it is easier to sew the gum where the teeth belong rather than to keep the dentures inside. The dentures will be donated to the old house to be reused by seniors. Bunny also describes the sewing session was like sewing up turkey for Thanksgiving. Imagining it was already too much for Jackie as his nose starting to bleed. This makes Bunny curious and ask Jackie about what happened to his nose. And then Jackie tell Bunny about how his sickness correlated on all things, fear, excited, startled, imagining scary stuff and etc. I felt my blood surge like a tidal wave toward my face. "Are you always like this?" she asked, and pointed her stubby hand at my nose. "Yes," I croaked, and wiped away a few drops of blood. "You should see a doctor," she advised. "It's nothing," I said. "I have a very sensitive nose. Anything makes it bleed." (Gantos, 2012: 30) This event helps Jackie to understand more about how to prepare dead body for a funeral. It also helps him to share his problem about his nose to Bunny. It makes Jackie feels comfortable even though he had nose that bleeds a lot. The event of preparing dead body can be disassembled through the table below: Experience Bunny tells Jackie about how to prepare dead people for funeral viewing Critical Reflection Bunny reflected on the event in past about his dad sewing the dead's mouth Active Experimentation Bunny tell Jackie that the process of sewing the mouth was just like sewing up turkey Abstract Bunny explain further about how the dentures are being kept if the body doesn't have teeth Further Critical Reflection Jackie knew about how to prepare dead men. And Bunny knew about Jackie's sickness and what triggers his nose to bleed. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING WITHOUT SOCIAL INTERACTION This part of analysis will conveyed events that happens in the novel which involving Jackie as the only person who experience it. It occurs without any social interaction with other character. Self-realization is a concept where people realize on their own regarding a certain event that perceived through their behavior. Mortimer Adler defines self-realization as freedom from external coercion, including cultural expectations, political and economic freedom, and the freedom from worldly attachments and desires etc. (1958: 127, 135, 149). In this novel, the self-realization comes into the mind of Jackie Gantos who realize his action and try to comprehend the effect of his action. The first event that reveal the concept of self-realization is the event of Jackie's rifle. In this part of the story, Jackie is playing with his dad rifle. The old Japanese rifle is still working well, so even though Jackie knew it was dangerous he still plays with it but he let loose the ammo clip to make sure it was not blasting accidentally. I lifted the rifle again and swung the tip of the barrel straight up into the air. I figured I could gradually lower the barrel at the screen, aim, and pick off one of the Japanese troops. With all my strength I slowly lowered the barrel and held it steady enough to finally get the ball centered inside the V, and when I saw a tiny Japanese soldier leap out of a bush I quickly pulled the trigger and let him have it. BLAM! The rifle fired off and violently kicked out of my grip. It flipped into the air before clattering down across the picnic table and sliding onto the ground. … (Gantos, 2012: 4) Based on the narration above, there are no social interaction that happened. According to R.J. Rummels, social interaction requires a mutual orientation. (Hawaii.edu, pars 8) This mean that there must be two or more person available in the interaction and they must be aware of each other. So the text above only represent experiential learning. It only happened because of Jackie's action, playing with his Dad's Japanese rifle. There is no other person involved in and there are on mutual orientation happened. The elaboration of the theory can be seen below on the table. Active Experimentation The rifle's blasting a bullet through the neighborhood yard Abstract Jackie aiming his rifle and pull the triggers like an actual soldier Experience Jackie playing with rifle Critical Reflection Jackie watching war movie and pretend to be a soldier Further Critical Reflection Jackie confuse and try to comprehend about what happened to the gun, why did it blast off and try to be more safe with gun in the future The table explains about how Kolb's experiential learning theoryworks in this novel. Experience is the first event that take notice of Jack playing with his Dad Japanese rifle. Critical Reflection tells us about Jackie's thought about his new toy by watching a war movie and pretend to be a soldier. Abstract is the conceptualization of Jackie's thought about being an actual soldier by aiming his rifle and pull the triggers as if he is in war. Then the Active Experimentation shows the cause of Jackie's action for playing with his gun. At last Jackie made another further Critical Reflection by showing his confusion about the matter and try to comprehend about what happened to the gun, why it blasted off and he will try to be more careful with gun in the future. The War concept is the next event that appear as a self-realization of Jackie. War is a devastating event. Jackie's dad is a former marine in World War II so when Jack was digging the bomb shelter he usually asked about war stuff to his dad. In chapter 9, Jackie asked his Dad about war. "Hey, Dad" I called behind him as he walked toward the tractor. "Which do you think is more deadly? Past history or future history?" He didn't even slow down to think about it. "Future history." He yelled back without hesitation. "Each war gets worse because we get better at killing each other." (Gantos, 2012: 52) Jackie then think about his dad statement and began to comprehend about war in the past such as the quotation below. That sounded so true. At first caveman bashed each other's heads in with rocks and sticks. By the time of the Crusaders it was long swords and arrows, and at Gettysburg they were blasting each other to bits from cannons filled with lead balls, iron chains, railroad spikes, and door knobs. And atomic bombs made future wars look even more hopeless. (Gantos, 2012: 52) He then think about the result of a nuclear war, the effect on earth and also the animals and human being after the radiation take effect. No humans will survive. All the animals will die. Fish will rot in acidic water. All vegetarian will wilt in the polluted air. There will be nothing left but enormous insects the size of dinosaurs. (Gantos, 2012: 52) Jackie then continue to march on his job to dig a bomb shelter. Knowing that the future might get worse than he thinks and the only hope for survival might be by building cities underground just like his Dad used to say that the army built one to protect the president and all the self-important government people. Jackie self-realization appear in the event after his dad tell him about how future war is more deadly because we get better in killing people. He then began to think about the war, how it effects on human life. Another war concept appear in Miss Volker dictation about Mrs. Vinyl when she entered the history part regarding the Hiroshima incident. " … Most people think that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was necessary for ending the war." She continued. "And there is some truth to that, given that the Japanese were prepared to fight to the last person to protect their country. But what the atomic bombing of Hiroshima should teach everyone is that you don't win the war by being more moral or ethical or nicer or more democratic than your enemy. And God has nothing to do with winning or losing. … You win a war by being tougher and meaner and more ruthless than your enemy. You beat, burn, and crush them into the ground. This is the historic rule of winning a war. …" (Gantos, 2012: 126) But in this part Jackie learn by listening to Miss Volker speech about the obituary, which is not his own self-realization. So, this analysis regarding the Hiroshima incident will not appear in the experiential learning because the table will only focus on the self-realization part of Jackie's thought about the war. Actual Experimentation Jackie then think about how the caveman fight, and goes throughout history until the atomic incident Experience Jackie digging a bomb shelter he then asked his dad about the war Critical Reflection His dad then answer without doubt that future history is more deadly Abstract His dad give a clear perspective about how war in the future is more deadly by giving statement that people get better at killing people in the future Further Critical Reflection Agreeing his dad, he continued to dig for bomb shelter in hope for a future save compartment when they enter the future history war. CONCLUSION Based on the recent analysis, the result can be concluded that experiential learning appear through events that Jackie's going through in his summer holiday in Norvelt. Those event occured between Jackie and other characters in the novel. Jackie's parents, Miss Volker, Mr Spizz, and Bunny are some of the most important characters that build Jackie's intellectual mind. Experiential learning occured because of the influencing factors, the social interaction that happened between Jackie and the other characters in the novel and also Jackie's self-realization. The first conclusion is concerning about how the experiential learning happened. The experiential learning appeared because of the events that depict the learning process between Jackie and other characters in the novel. The experiential learning is represented through the Kolb's experiential learning table so the process of experiential learning can be seen clearly. The experience table shows the event of social interaction between Jackie and the other characters, or the event of self-realization by Jackie himself. These experience table then proceeds into a critical reflection of the problem and encourages Jackie to think about the event which stimulate an abstract conceptualization of the event. Jackie then actively experimented on the abstract that he created from the previous table, to gain a concrete experience which then enabled him to get knowledge regarding the matter. Jackie then created a further reflection of the experience, and think about the result of the experience. This further critical reflection create a scaffold for further learning, and allow for further experiences and reflection.Critical reflection reinforces the fact that experiential learning and reflective learning a

DIRECT FEEDBACK STRATEGY IN THE TEACHING OF WRITING Army Vista Casmi Septianik English Education Department, Language and Art Faculty, Surabaya State University. email: armyvistacs@yahoo.co.id Prof. Dr. Susanto, M.Pd. English Education Department, Language and Art Faculty, Surabaya State University. Abstrak Penelitianinibertujuanuntukmendiskripsikanpenerapanstrategi Direct Feedback oleh guru untukmengajarmenulispadasiswakelassepuluh di sekolahmenengahatas Surabaya.Dalam proses pengajaranmenulisini guru menggunakanempattahapdalampenerapanstrategi Direct Feedback. Merekaadalahtahapperencanaan, penyusunan, pengeditan, danhasilakhirterbaru.Padatahapperencanaan, guru memberikanpenjelasandanpengungkapanpendapattentangapa yang akan di lakukandalampelajaranmenuliskepadasiswa. Setelahitu guru memintakepadasiswauntukmerencanakandanmenuliskan ide secarabebas yang berkaitandengan topic teks recount dalampengajaranmenulis. Dalamtahap yang keduayaitupenyusunan, guru memintakepadasiswauntukmengembangkan ide merekakedalamsuatuparagraf.Kemudiansetelahsiswaselesaimengembangkan ide dalamparagraf, guru memintasiswauntukmengkoreksikembalitulisanmerekadengancaradikoreksiolehtemansebangku. Tahap yang ketigaadalahtahapdalampengeditan.Dalamtahapini guru memberikanpengkoreksiandarihasiltulisansiswasetelahmendapatkanpengkoreksianolehtemansebangkudenganmenggunakan Direct Feedback strategibaiksecaralisanatautulisan.Yang teakhiradalahtahaphasilakhirterbaru.Dalamtahapini guru memintasiswauntukmengumpulkanhasilakhirtulisanmerekasetelahmendapatkankoreksidaritemansebangkudan Direct Feedback dari guru dalampertemuanberikutnya. Penelitimenggunakandeskriptifkualitatifdalamdesainpenelitian, karenatujuandaripenelitianiniadalahuntukmenggambarkankegiatan guru selamapelaksanaan Direct Feefbackstrategidalampengajaranmenulis.Penelitihanyamemilihpadasalahsatu guru bahasainggris yang mengajar di sekolahmenengahatas di salahsatukota di Surabaya. Data dalampenelitianinidiperolehdarihasilobservasi yang menggambarkanpenerapan Direct Feedback strategidalambentukpengkoreksiantulisansiswa.Data di analisisuntukmenjawabsemuapertanyaanpenelitian.Penulismenulissemuainformasitentangsegalasesuatu yang terjadiselama proses kegiatanbelajarmengajardalambentukcatatan yang panjang. Hasildanpembahasanadalah, pertamaadalahtahappenerapan Direct Feedback strategihanyaterfokusdalam proses kegiatanbelajarmengajar. Dalamtahapinipenerapan Direct Feedback dibagimenjadiempattahapanyaitutahapperencanaan, penyusunan, pengeditan, danhasilakhirterbaru.Dalampemberian feedback guru menggunakanempatperandalam proses iniyaitu guru sebagaipembacaataupartisipasi, sebagai guru menulisataupenuntun, sebagaiahlitatabahasa, dansebagaipengkoreksi. Dalamtahap yang keduaadalahtahappenerapan Direct Feedback strategiuntukmengkoreksitulisansiswadalambentukkesalahantatabahasa.Dalamsesiini, guru masukdalamtahappengeditandanmelakukanperannyasebagaiahlitatabahasa.Yang ketigaadalahtahappenerapan Direct Feedback strategiuntukmengkoreksitulisansiswadalambentukperbendaharaan kata.Dalamsesiini, guru masukdalamtahappengeditandanmelakukanperannyasebagaipengkoreksi.Padatahapankeempatatauterakhiradalahtahappenerapan Direct Feedback strategiuntukmengkoreksitulisansiswadalambentukpenggunaanparagrafing, pengejaan kata dan capitalization.Dalamsesiini, guru masukdalamtahappengeditandanmelakukanperannyasebagaipengkoreksi. Dari hasil proses kegiatanbelajarmengajarmenulistersebut, penulisdapatmenarikkesimpulanbahwa Direct Feedback strategisesuaiuntuksiswadalamkegiatanbelajarmengajarmenuliskarenadenganstrategiitu guru dapatmembantukesulitansiswasepertimembantumengurangikesalahansiswadalamkegiatanmenulis. Saran bagi guru adalahuntuklebihsadardalampenggunaanwaktudanbagipeneliti lain dapatmelakukanpenelitianserupadalamaspek lain danbisamenggunakanpenambahanpemberian feedback dalamkategorikontendanorganisation. Kata Kunci: Direct Feedbcak, Strategi, KegiatanMenulis. Abstract This study aims to describe the application of the strategy of Direct Feedback by teachers to teach writing to the students in the tenth grade of high school in Surabaya. In the process of teaching writing the teacher uses four stages in the implementation of Direct Feedback strategy. They are planning, drafting , editing , and the latest final versions. In the planning stage, the teacher gives an explanation and brainstorming to the students regarding what they are going to do in writing lessons. After that, the teacher asked the students to plan and write their ideas freely that are related to the topic in teaching writing of recount text. In the second stage, is drafting activity. Here the teacher asked the students to develop their ideas into a paragraph. Then, after the students finished developing their idea into a paragraph, the teacher asked the students to re- writing their work by using peer correction. The third stage is editing. In this stage the teacher gave the students' correction of their work after getting friends correction inpeer correction with the Direct Feedbackstrategy either in orally or in writing. For the last stage is final version. In this stage, the teacher asked the students to submit their final product after getting corrections from their friends and Direct Feedback from the teacherin the next meeting. The researcher used a descriptive qualitative research design, because the purpose of this study is to describe the activities of the teacher during the implementation of the Direct Feefback strategies in teaching of writing. The researcher chooses the one of English teacher who teachesin high school in one of the cities in Surabaya. The data in this study weretaken from the observation that illustrates the application of direct feedback correction strategy in the form of student writing. The data were analyzed descriptively to answer the research questions. The writerwrote all the information about everything that happened during the teaching and learning process in the form of long notes. The results and discussion are, in the first stage of the implementation ofDirect Feedback strategy is only focused in the process of teaching and learning activities. In the implementation of Direct feedback is divided into four stages, they are planning, drafting, editing, and the last final version. In providing feedback the teacher use four roles in this process, they are the teacher as reader or participation, as teacher writing or guide, as a grammarian, and as a evaluator. In the second stage is the implementation stage of the Direct Feedback strategies for correcting students' writing in the form of grammatical errors. In this term the teacher in editing stage and she act her role as grammarian. The third is the implementation stage of the Direct Feedback strategies for correcting students' writing in the form of vocabulary. In this stage the teacher in editing stage and she act her role as evaluator. In the fourth and final stage is the implementation stage of the Direct Feedback strategies for correcting students' writing in the form paragrafing usage , spelling words and capitalization. In this stage the teacher in editing stage and she act her role as evaluator. From those results of the process of teaching-learning in writing, the writercan draw the conclusion that Direct Feedback strategy is appropriate for the of students in learning activities because the teacher can help the student's difficulties such as helping to decrease the students'mistakes in their essays. Suggestions are to the teacher and other researchers. For the teacher has aware to time and for other researchers who will conduct this similar studies but in other aspects they can use the additional corrections of feedback on the content and organization categories. Keywords: Direct Feedback, Strategy, Writing Activities. Introduction In Merrill's Component Display Theory verifies feedback as the most important part in Secondary Presentation feedback may takes place during practice and/or elaboration stages. (Merrill 2002) states that feedback has also been long acknowledged as the most essential form of learner guidance. To confirm further of the important position of feedback, Andrews and Goodson (1980) state that feedback is included in one of the purposes of systematic instructional design that is to improve evaluation process "by means of the designated components and sequence of events, including feedback and revision events, inherent in models of systematic instructional design". In this case, feedback as strategy applied by the teacher is the important position to improve the students evaluation or when teaching learning process during practice and revisions in class. Feedback is also an important component of the formative assessment process. Here, formative assessment gives information to teachers and students about how students' writing relate to classroom learning goals. One of the strategies use by the teacher in giving formative assessment is by using direct feedback. Direct feedback is a strategy which provides feedback to students to help them correct their errors by providing the correct linguistic form or linguistic structure of the target language (Ferris, 2006). This technique requires the teacher to give direct comment or answer to the student when noticing a grammatical mistake made by crossing out an incorrect or unnecessary word, phrase, or morpheme; inserting a missing or expected word, phrase, or morpheme; and by providing the correct linguistic form above or near the erroneous (Ellis, 2008 ; Ferris, 2006). Bitchener et al., (2005) and Ferris (2003) add that Direct feedback is usually given by teachers, upon noticing a grammatical mistake, by providing the correct answer or the expected response above or the linguistic or grammatical error. From those statements, direct feedback can be used by the teacher to help the students' difficulties such as using appropriate, accurate and complete responses, correct spelling and punctuation, ensuring minimum word limit, grammatical accuracy, range of sentence structure, and range of vocabulary in writing activity. Direct feedback as a strategy is appropriate for students in beginner level or in situation when the students get errors in their works that are not easy to do self-correction such as sentence structure and word choice, or it can be useful when the teachers want to direct the student attention to their error patterns that require the student correction. The effectiveness of direct correction has been proven on several previous studies. Chandler (2003) reported the results of her study involving 31 ESL students on the effects of direct and indirect feedback strategies on students' revisions. She found that direct feedback was the best way for producing accurate revisions and preferred by the students as it was the fastest and the easiest way for them to make revisions. Others, the most recent study on the effects of direct corrective feedback involving 52 ESL students in New Zealand was conducted by Bitchener and Knoch (2010) where they compared three different types of direct feedback (direct corrective feedback, written, and oral metalinguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback and written metalinguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback only) with a control group. They found that each treatment group outperformed the control group and there was no significant difference in effectiveness among the variations of direct feedback in the treatment groups. From the above statements, it can be concluded that direct feedback is effective to be used in teaching writing. Although direct feedback is effective to be used, there is a difficulty when the teacher uses it in large class environment. The teacher needs much time to give feedback to the students. Clements et al. (2010) state that direct methods in providing feedback do not tend to have results which are commensurate with the effort needed from the teachers to draw the students' attention to surface errors. From the information above it can happen because the teacher doesn't give students an opportunity to think or to do anything. Therefore to overcome the above problem, the teacher needs to understand the writing steps to avoid time-consuming. Writing should be taught in a specific time in order to enable the students to write an acceptable English composition. Then, in teaching writing, the teacher can focus either on the product of writing or on the writing process itself (Harmer, 2001:257). It means that, the teacher can manage the students written by using three steps before teaching writing because by doing that the teacher can more focus on the product or the process of writing itself. Here there are three steps in writing, they are: In the pre-writing, whilst-writing, and post-writing. In the pre-writing, the teacher asks the students to: select the topic, provide specific amount of time needed to complete their writing task, brainstorm their ideas, and organize their outline. In the whilst-writing, the teacher asks the students to make draft and ask them to submit their work when they finish. In post-writing, the teacher gives the students revision regarding their work. By understanding the preceding steps, the teacher can manage the time during teaching learning activity. In one of the school in Surabaya, there is a teacher who use direct feedback strategy to teach writing. In her result, she finds advantages by using direct feedback as a strategy to teach writing, such as the students get creative, enjoy, and enthusiastic. By this method, the students become creative it is showed when the teacher revises the student's work. The teacher finds that the students frequent to use new words. Moreover, the students feel enjoy when the teacher revise their work without looked nervous. The last, the students are eager to ask and re-write their revision. Although there are several advantages, the teacher does not give further explanation how to use the technique in teaching learning activity. Brookhart (2008) states that giving feedback is crucial aspect in the writing process because it plays a central role in learning this skill. Thus, from the information above, the researcher is interested to conduct research about the use direct feedback strategy to teach writing. From the information above, the most three problematic grammatical errors made by the students are prepositions, text, and past tense verbs (Bitchener et al., 2005; Ellis et al., 2008; Sheen, 2007). Most of the student's mistakes in writing is about grammar. It is the teacher role to use strategy in direct feedback because it will be useful to use it to reduce or help the students' mistakes in writing skill. One topic about student' views toward the teacher feedback on their written errors showed in studies: Chenowith, Day, Chun, &Luppescu (1983); Cohen (1987); Cohen &Cavalcanti (1990); Ferris (1995); Ferris & Roberts (2001); Ferris et al. (2000); Hedgcock&Lefkowitz (1994); Komura (1999); Leki (1991 ); Radecki& Swales (1988); and Rennie (2000). It has consistently reported that students want such error feedback. This is the teacher's advantages, because most of students want such error feedback from the teacher. The teacher can give the students' stages of process writing feedback in revising and editing stages. According to Ferris and Roberts (2001), the most popular type of feedback is underlining with description, followed by direct correction, and underlining is the third. That's kinds of ways make the teacher to get much attention from the students in applying direct feedback strategy in teaching of writing. The phenomena shows that most teachers prefer focus on the product of writing to focus on the process of writing. As a result, the competition that the students write is poor in terms of the overall categories in ESL Composition Profile including content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. It occurs since the teacher does not provide guidance through the process of writing and considers writing as a finished piece of competition. In fact, writing is not only the matter of composition as a finished piece of writing, but also the evaluation of the writing process. Therefore, in order to enable the students to write an acceptable English composition, the teacher has better focus on the process approach in which the process of writing is involved. Process approach is considered as the appropriate method to teach writing in which it pays serious attention to the various activities which are believed to promote the development of skilled language use (Nunan, 1991:86). Furthermore, Raimes in Richars (2005:305-509), in principled process approach, the product of writing, accuracy, and grammar are important. It shows that if the teacher focuses on the process of writing when he or she teaches writing, it does not mean that he or she merely focuses on the writing process itself, but also on the quality of the final product. Therefore, the process of writing is considered as the appropriate method to teach writing since it enables the students to write an acceptable English competition. From those, the researcher tends interested to observe this phenomenon by emerging a question that is "to what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback in writing?" The researcher was trying to analyze the activities during the teaching and learning process that using Direct Feedback as strategy. According to those reasons the researcher did a research according to the following research questions To what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's grammatical errors in writing? To what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's vocabularies in writing? To what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's mechanics in writing? This study is conducted to describe only focused on the implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching of writing. Writing is a part of learning process besides listening, speaking, and reading. According to Petty and Jensen (1980:399) writing is an activity that creates ideas or opinions in a composition by using writing convention: it is ideas though, feeling expressed in written way. This is in line with Nunan (2003:88) views that writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to the reader. It means that writing is combination of some words to deliver the ideas in written language. Besides that, writing is also a language skill that is used to communicate indirectly. It means that the written language is not used to communicate face to face. According to Broughton et al (1980), writing is different from speaking because it involves an activity that is both private and public. here it means writing is considered a private activity because when the writer write or arrange a composition, he or she works individually, but it is also considered as a public activity because the result of his or her writing is intended for an audience. Others, according to Boughy (1997), writing is considered as a tool for the creation of ideas and the merger of the linguistic system by using it for communicative objectives in an interactive way. From this opinion writing indirectly the successful transmission of ideas from a writer to a reader via text and this exchange of information becomes an effective means to motivate and encourage the development of the students in language skills. Harmer (2007: 325-327) stated that there are four stages in the writing process: they are planning, drafting, editing, and final version. In this study the researcher will use Harmer' concept: Planning In the planning stage the teacher arranges the students to plan their work before making a draft by exploring the ideas and information regarding the topic. Reading and discussing, thinking critically and interpreting, and brainstorming are examples of exploring. Boas (2011) says that planning stage is used for brainstorming ideas which are related to their lives and what they want to write.Moreover, in planning the teacher encourage the students to make an outline that includes thesis statement and supporting ideas which then are developed into an essay. Drafting The second stage is draftingwhere the students develop the outline into a whole essay. In this stage, the teacher asks the students to write anything on their mind to compose the essay in form of the rough draft without thinking the regularity of their writing. Editing The third stage is editing, where the students revise their rough draft. In editing, the teacher encourages the students to revise their draft by considering several aspects, such as: the relevancy between thesis statement and the topic, the topic paragraph should be used in beginning of the paragraph, and the content should relate with the thesis statement. Or also the students can check the content, grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, and so on.Moreover, producing a cohesive another coherent essay is a must and can only be done by enlarging the argument or opinion, and ideas to make an elaborate explanation that is coherent from one to another. Final Version The last one is final version, where the teacher asks the students to compose their draft carefully, find, and edit their grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors before submitting their work. In this stage, the teacher must ensure the students that their final works are free from previous errors since it can affect the content of their final product. But the students still have chance to rethink what they have written and go back to editing stage or even planning stage. Like Harmer (2012:129) states that writing stages are like writing cycle, if it is necessary to add ideas or edit their writing, we can go back to the previous stage or stages. But if it does not need to edit, the students can do their writing final version. Feedback can be classified according to the following: The performer (the provider) of feedback (teacher, peer, self and CALL Computer Assisted Language Learning), the timing of feedback (delayed and immediate feedback) and the form of feedback (direct and indirect feedback), the method of performance of feedback (oral and written feedback), the concentration on a specific item in feedback (grammar, spelling and etc.), the stage of process writing feedback and the effect of feedback (feedback in revising, editing stages). The purpose of this study will be explained to two types of the teacher's written feedback. Here the types, they are: Direct and Indirect feedback. The first type of the teacher's written feedback is direct feedback. Danny and Randolph & Karen (2010) Altena& Pica (2010) Direct teacher feedback simply means that the teacher provides the students with the correct form of their errors or mistakes whether this feedback is provided orally or written. It shows them what is wrong and how it should be written, but it is clear that it leaves no work for them to do and chance for them to think what the errors and the mistakes are. The second type of the teacher's written feedback is indirect feedback. In this type, there are two types of feedback coded indirect feedback and uncoded indirect feedback. As for the first type "coded indirect feedback", the teacher underlines the errors or mistakes for the students and then the teacher writes the symbol above the targeted error or mistake and then the teacher gives the composition to the student to think what the error is as this symbol helps the student to think. In the second type, the uncoded indirect feedback, the teacher underlines or circles the error or the mistake and the teacher doesn't write the correct answer or any symbols and the student thinks what the error is and corrects. Teacher is one of the sources of feedback. In providing feedback, writing teachers have at least four roles: as a reader or respondent, as a writing teacher or guide, as a grammarian, and as an evaluator. As Keh (1990) and Hedgcock and Leftkowitz (1996) suggest at least four roles that writing teachers play while providing written feedback to students: a reader or respondent, a writing teacher or guide, a grammarian, and an evaluator or judge. For the first roles, is about the teacher as a reader or as a respondent. In this role, the teachers respond to the content and they may show agreement about an idea or content of the text. Teachers may provide positive feedback such as "You made a good point" or "I agree with you" without giving any suggestion or correction. The second is the teacher as a writing teacher or as a guide. That is, teachers may show their concern about certain points or confusing or illogical ideas in students' text. In this case, teachers still maintain their role as a reader by only asking for clarification or expressing concerns and questions about certain points in the text without giving any correction. They may, however, refer students to strategies for revision such as choices of problem solving or providing a possible example. The third is the teacher as a grammarian. The teacher writes comments or corrective feedback with reference to grammatical mistakes and relevant grammatical rules. Teachers may provide a reason as to why a particular grammatical form is not correct or not suitable for a certain context such as choice of tense, use of article, or preposition. In this case, the teacher may also give elaborate explanation of grammatical rules to help students improve their text. As a grammarian, teacher can provide different function and strategies of feedback. One of the functions of feedback is to provide error correction or corrective feedback. Corrective feedback generally aims at addressing grammatical errors on students' writing. In addressing grammatical errors on students' writing, teachers can employ different strategies of providing feedback such as direct feedback strategy. Direct feedback, which is a strategy to help the students correct their errors by providing the correct form of the target language. Teacher feedback can also be provided with explicit corrective comments, that is by not only indicating an error but also providing the correct form with explicit grammatical explanation or linguistic rules of the target language. The last in fourth roles, is the teacher as an evaluator or judge. It is very common that many writing teachers may act only as an evaluator whose main role is to evaluate the quality of students' writing as an end product of a writing process (Arndt, 1992) and grade students' writing based on their evaluation. Discrepancies in findings, or in interpreting these findings, have sparked a debate in the last 15 years on whether corrective feedback is effective or ineffective. The debate was initiated by Truscott (1996) who unalterably holds that feedback, in the form of grammatical error correction, is neither effective nor useful, and even harmful for student learning. Therefore, he suggests that corrective feedback should be abandoned. In contrary, Chandler (2003) and Ferris (1999) argue that corrective feedback is effective and helpful in reducing the errors on students' essays. More recent studies also lend support, providing evidence in favor of corrective feedback Bitchener (2008); Bitchener et al. (2005);Ellis et al. (2008). Based on the findings of their studies, they maintain that teacher corrective feedback is effective and helpful for students in improving grammatical accuracy in writing their essays. From the above informations, it can be concluded that direct feedback is effective to be used in teaching writing. Teaching writing using direct feedback is considered as an important since it gave the teacher chances to increase the students ability in writing by using learned-centered style. Since previous statements have considered that learned-centered style in form of peer or group work is preferred than compositions because it offers interaction and sharing ideas between students. However, before implementing the strategy the teacher should make the process steps before starting applying direct feedback as strategy in teaching writing. The implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text should include writing process; they are planning, drafting, editing, and final version Harmer (2007: 325-327). Based on those concept, the implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text in the class have some activities to do. They are: The teacher explains the nature of recount text, it start from the purpose, the function, the generic structure, and the language features to the students by some modification by using brandstorming or etc. The teacher also gives example of recount text to the students in order to make the students understand with the teacher's explanation and example of how to make mind mapping. The teacher gives the students some topics to write recount text. The teacher asks the students to make such like mind mapping as the planning stage. The students make mind mapping to write down their ideas they want to write it individually. After the students make mind mapping on their recount text, the teacher asks them to exchange their work in pairs. They can give comments, questions, suggestions, and corrections about the content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic on their partner mind mapping to compose into recount text draft. Then each student can write their recount text draft based on their friend questions, suggestions, comments, and corrections. The next activity is sharing. In this case, the teacher calls some students randomly one by oneto come forward to show their recount text by writing their text into white board. Therefore, the other students get patient too and also learn which one is not appropriate word, the mechanics, or the content by giving comments orsuggestions. And the most necessary, the teacher givesDirect Feedback to their recount text. Teacher gives direct feedback by giving explicit corrective comments, symbols, or underlining. Ellis et al. (2006) suggest that explicit corrective comments can take two forms: (a) explicit correction in which teacher response clearly indicates what is incorrect and provides the correct form, or (b) metalinguistic feedback which explains grammatical or linguistic rules. Lyster and Ranta (1997) define metalinguistic feedback as "comments, information, or questions related to the well-formedness of the learner's utterance without explicitly providing the correct form" (p. 47). Finally, the students submit their recount text result as the final version to the teacher on the next meeting. METHODS Based on the research problems and the objective of the study, the researcher used descriptive qualitative method. Descriptive qualitative studies simply describe phenomena. Descriptive method describes and interprets what exists.The purpose of this study is to describe to what extent the teacher applies direct feedback to correct student's grammatical errors in writing, to describe to what extent the teacher applies direct feedback to correct student's vocabularies in writing, and to describe to what extent the teacher applies direct feedback to correct student's mechanics in writing. According to Cohen, et al (2007:461), the aims of descriptive qualitative are to describe, to summarize, to prove, to examine the application and to operate the same problems in different contexts. The purpose of this study is to describe the teaching learning process in the form of words not in the form of numbers, because this study is descriptive qualitative. Moreover, Bogdan and Biklen (1992:28) state that the data collected should be in the form of words or pictures rather than numbers. The data in this study described in the form of words, sentences, or paragraphs to describe the implementation, the students' responses, and the students recount writing text result using Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text.Descriptive qualitative method means that the researcher only goes to the field, finds some data, states research question, collect some data, analyze the data and finally reports it. The data is the problem which is found in the field. The problem means that the condition found in the field is not like the condition expected. The subject of the study is an English teacher who teach in a high school of Surabaya. The researcher chose the subject because one of the teachers had implemented Direct Feedback method in the teaching writing in her class.Cohen, et al (2007:461) states that descriptive qualitative focuses on smaller numbers of people than quantitative research.Therefore, the researcher only chooses an English teacher who teaches English in X-IPA 10 class. The setting of the study was the place where the researcher conducted the study. The researcher was conducting the study at SMAN 15 Surabaya which is located in Jl. Menanggal selatan no. 103 Surabaya, the class of X-IPA-10 year 2013 and 2014. These class consist of 36 students, 16males and 20females. This research conducted in the classroom where the teacher hadusedDirect Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text. Furthermore, the classroom is provide by facilities which support the learning activivities, such as White board, LCD, AC, Computer, sound, television and a laptop. The students have arranged the chairs and tables well in order to make them study easily. Data is very important for this study because from by using data the researcher knew the result of her study through this data, and the data were answer the research questions. In this study the researcher do not use questionnaire, it is to avoid dishonesty and to anticipate that the subjects would not complete the questions. The data of the study taken from the teaching learning process that done by the teacher who using direct feedback as strategy in teaching writing in the classroom. To get the data, the researcher wrote field notes to observe the teacher's activities when giving direct feedback in the teaching and learning process. The data represented in the post activity of the teacher when giving the students direct feedback while learning in the classroom. There were three kinds of qualitative data to answer the research questions of this study. The first data were the description of teachers' expressions and comments while giving correction about grammatical errors and direct feedback to the students. (1) (1) Teacher : Teacher : Okay, I will check the Savira's text. By the way, for the grammatical errors she did some mistakes. For example: in the first paragraph line 1 "I had a terrible and tiring day last weekend", here (a) it should be omitted. In paragraph one Line 2 "In the morning, I was waking up at 5 a.m. and prayedsubuh", if in the beginning you use waking as a verb so second verb prayed should be using (–ing) to. So it should be praying. Next, in line 5 "we must joined" it should be write "join", because must be followed by Verb1. Last, in line 11 you wrote "my other key" it should be used "the". Next, for Afanin's text. Okay you did same with Safira's text in grammatical errors. For example: you wrote "after that, me and my mother cooked some food for lunch", it should be used we. Then for the sentence "I went to bookstore to boughtsome book", it should be buy because you have use went as your verb. Last for "I do my homework" it should be written did. These data were used to answer the first research question "to what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's grammatical errors in writing?". The second data were the description of teachers' expressions and comments while giving correction about vocabularies and direct feedback to the students. (2) (2) Teacher : Teacher : And for vocabulary, it just for the first paragraph line 3 "I accompanied my mother (.)to shop" between my mother and to it should be add "go". For the last paragraph, "InSunday morning" remembers it should be on just like Ataya did before. But, so far I think your word choices were good. And talk about "like yesterday" I think it should be wrote the day before. This is correction for your vocabulary. It is also in sentence "I accompanied my mother to (.) the market" here it should be add go to, and also like we went (.) to the mall" it should be added go. These data were used to answer the second research question "to what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's vocabularies in writing?". The third data were the description of teachers' expressions and comments while giving correction about mechanics and direct feedback to the students. (3) (3) Teacher : Teacher : So the last correction is about mechanics. It showed in line 16 "I was watching television" it should be added (a) between watching and television. "I was watching a television". Over all your writing are good Safira. So keeps on this track but you can explore more. Okay, that's very good. Okay then, pay attention to the mention things like "some vegetables, like carrot , tomato, spinach , onion , garlic , ginger , curcuma, and many more and also bought some fish, shrimp, and chicken."Here you have decided space from kind of vegetables itself and others thing. You should write some vegetables, they are likes carrot, tomato, spinach, onion, garlic, ginger, curcuma, etc. We also bought more, such as fish, shrimp, and chicken. And for your mechanics, there are lot mistakes about your punctuation. Such like in the first paragraph "last weekend ( , ) I had a lot of activities". You used comma but you add space after weekend, it should be not space after weekend. Double space is not necessary guys. So the good one is like last weekend, I had a…. Okay, for your right spelling and capitalization are good, but please pay attention about your punctuation and your paragraphing.yah? Is it clear for you guys? These data were used to answer the third research question "to what extent does the teacher apply direct feedback to correct student's mechanics in writing?". The source of data for this study was the teacher who use direct feedback strategy to correct the students mistakes in the teaching and learning process. Data collection technique means how the researcher collects data. In this study the researcher collected the data by conducting observation field notes as a qualitative. Bogdan and Biklen in Moleong (2005: 209) stated field note is written note about what was heard, seen, thought and had been around in order to collect as well as reflect the data in qualitative research. Here, the researcher done non-participant observation. It means that she does not participate directly and influence in the teaching and learning process. The writer wrote all of information about everything that happening during the teaching and learning process in the form of long note. Here is the observation that was done by the teacher: Observation, in this research the researcher used observation field notes. She used this observation because she wanted to find out the application of the teaching and learning process in the classroom of their recount writing. The researcher did this observation by writing and record all of the activities of the teacher and the students while direct feedback is implemented. In this research, all the data obtained through observation field notes were analyzed inductively in order to answer research questions stated in chapter one. After collecting the data then the researcher did the next step, that was analyzed the data. This is the qualitative study thus the data analyzed inductively, in words rather than in numbers. The steps of data analysis have done during the data collection technique: 1) Organized the data during the observation, and then decided what have to be reported. 2) After analyzing the data, the researcher described the data by classifying them into parts based on the problems of the study. 3) The researcher tried to make conclusion. They showed whether the use of direct feedback strategy was suitable or not with the theory. In addition, by analyzing the data obtained, the researcher was written and recorded the teacher activity when direct feedback strategy is applied in the classroom. It included the teacher correction about grammatical errors, vocabularies and mechanics. RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS The result and discussions is the answer of the problems based in introductions. The data were taken through the observation and only focused on the teacher activities during the implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in the teaching and learning process. The Implementation of Direct Feedback Strategy The data were obtained through the observation that was focused in the teachers' activities during the implementation of direct feedback strategy in the teaching and learning process. The implementation of the research was done only in one meeting. The implementation of Direct Feedback strategy method was divided into four stages, they are planning, drafting, editing, and final version. Then in providing feedback, the teacher at least has four roles such as a reader or respondent, as a writing teacher or guide, as a grammarian, and as an evaluator. The observation was conducted on September 30th, 2013. The subject of the study is an English teacher who teaches in a high school of Surabaya. The researcher chose the subject because one of the teacher's had implemented Direct Feedback method in the teaching writing in her class. Therefore, the researcher only chooses an English teacher who teaches English in X-IPA 10 class. Actually there were 36 students in this class, but three students were absent without any reason or information. Therefore, there were 33 students who consist of 16 male's students and 20 female's students in class X-IPA 10. The teacher started the class with opening session, for instance, greeting the students, checking the attendance list, and asking the students to prepare the lesson. The teacher did not introduced the researcher in front of the students, because of the teacher did not need the students to feeling nervous or uncomfortable if she explained about the researcher who want to record the activities in the beginning until the end of the lesson. The Applying of Direct Feedback Strategy to Correct Student's Grammatical Errors in Writing The result from the observation show that the teacher had been explained the student mistakes' about grammar. It showed when the teacher gives feedback with explicit corrective comments; she was not only indicating an error but also providing the correct form with explicit grammatical explanation or linguistic rules of the target language. As Ellis et al. (2006) suggest that explicit corrective comments can take two forms: (a) explicit correction in which teacher response clearly indicates what is incorrect and provides the correct form, or (b) metalinguistic feedback which explains grammatical or linguistic rules. So, here the teacher has applied direct feedback as strategy in writing to correct the student's grammatical errors. In the previous studies that providing explicit corrective comments through explanation of grammatical rules or metalinguistic information is advantageous for students in the long run, that it raises students' grammatical awareness, and engages students in problem-solving activities to discover the correct forms see Bitchener et al (2005), Ellis et al. (2006), Ferris &Hedgcock (2005), Nagata (1997), Varnosfadrani&Basturkmen (2009). The findings of the current study, in line with other previous studies, clearly indicate that teacher corrective feedback is useful and effective in helping ESL/EFL students in reducing their grammatical errors not only in subsequent revisions but also in the new essay. Furthermore, providing teacher corrective feedback in the form of indirect feedback followed by direct feedback accompanied with explicit corrective comments help students correct their grammatical errors more effectively than other feedback strategies, especially compared to direct feedback strategy. By doing so, the students got the essay way to edited or revised their works because they got some corrections and suggestions from their friends in pairs and from the teacher when the teacher gave them direct feedback. Jacobs et al (1997:20) says that the students can share to the other groups in front of the class and the students can edit their recount text writing depend on their friends comments, suggestions, corrections about the content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic in writing recount text. The Applying of Direct Feedback Strategy to Correct Student's Vocabularies in Writing Based on the result which are gained from the analyzed of data,the teacher had took examples from Safira and Afanin Text's. It showed that the teacher had corrected the students' mistakes' about vocabularies. In vocabulary component, those were two students who considered as write less mistakes in their writing text. As (Ellis, 2008; Ferris, 2006), stated that direct feedback may be done in various ways such as by striking out an incorrect or unnecessary word, phrase, or morpheme; inserting a missing or expected word, phrase, or morpheme; and by providing the correct linguistic form above or near the erroneous form, usually above it or in the margin. It means that, the teacher had correct the students' mistakes by doing some ways to correct their vocabularies, such as by striking out an incorrect or unnecessary word, phrase, or morpheme; and inserting a missing or expected word, phrase, or morpheme. It is been shown when the teacher corrects Safira's text. She corrected her mistakes by inserting a missing word. And from Afanin's text, she gave by striking out an incorrect or unnecessary word like yesterday to be the day before. From the above correction, it is clear that the teacher applied direct feedback strategy to correct the students' vocabularies by using that ways. So that is the essays way to encourage the students to get the motivation because the teacher not only giving them such corrective correction but they also know what else their mistakes by using self-correction in the next time. The Applying of Direct Feedback Strategy to Correct Student's Mechanics in Writing In these criteria, the students had few errors of spelling, capitalization, and paragraphing. It means that the students were occasional errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing but the meaning was not obscured. From the data analyzed indicate that the teacher correct the students' mistakes in term of the mechanics. After the teacher giving those students text's direct feedback correction, she always asked to the students any question or also suggestion. Based from those results which are gained from analysis of the data, the researcher concluded that the teacher did her implementation of direct feedback strategy method that was divided into four stages, they are planning, drafting, editing, and final version. Also in providing feedback, the teacher at least did her four roles such as a reader or respondent, as a writing teacher or guide, as a grammarian, and as anevaluator. From those, it can be concluded that the teacher had applied Direct Feedback to correct the student's essays that includes three elements; they are grammatical errors, vocabularies, and mechanics. Ideally, the teacher feedback should address to all aspects of student texts such as content, ideas, organization, rhetorical structure, grammar, and mechanics. Because it will consume much time, so the teacher only focused to correct on the students grammatical errors, vocabularies and mechanics. It was supported by Ferris (2003b) notes that teachers' priorities for student writing as well as feedback provision have changed over time from focusing mostly on sentence-level correction as reported in the 1980s Cumming (1985), Kassen (1988), Sommers (1982), Zamel (1985) to more aspects of student writing including ideas, organization, grammar, and mechanics in the 1990s Ferris (1995-1997), Ferris, Pezone, Tade, &Tinti (1997) Kepner (1991), Hedgcock&Lefkowitz (1994). However, providing comprehensive or unfocused feedback on all errors on students' writing can be time-consuming and exhaustive for both teachers and students because it corrects all of the errors in students' work and can be considered extensive Ellis, Sheen, Murakami, & Takashima (2008). By doing these strategy, the teacher had find out that most of the students were did mistakes in the grammatical errors. But, for the vocabularies and mechanics, the students did fewer mistakes in their essays. CONCLUSSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion In this study, there are two conclusions got from the result of the study that are obtained from the observation, they are: (1) Direct feedback strategy can be used as teaching technique in teaching writing recount text to the tenth grade students of SMAN in Surabaya. The implementation of direct feedback as strategy in teaching writing of recount text divided into four stages, those are: Planning stage, in planning stage the teacher had given brainstorming and arranged the students to plan their work by exploring the ideas and information regarding to the topic. The teacher also had encouraging the students to make an outline that included thesis statement and supporting ideas which were developed into an essay. As Boas (2011) states that planning stage is used for brainstorming ideas which are related to their lives and what they want to write. Drafting stage, in drafting stage the teacher had asked the students to write their ideas into the essay in form of draft. This stage where the students developed the outline into a whole essay. Editing stage, in editing stage before the teacher gave direct feedback; she had corrected the student's essay and let the students to change their works in pairs. Because in this term, the students had a chance to discuss and get comment or suggestion from their partner Jacobs et.al (1997:14). After that, the teacher applied direct feedback strategy by giving some correction from the student's essay one by one in front of the class. Final version stage, in final version the teacher had given the students direct feedback and the students had shared their draft in front of the class. It included feedback from the teacher and from the students; comments or suggestions. Then the teacher let the students had to edit and submit the final version of their recount text on next meeting. (2) The use of Direct Feedback strategy could help the tenth grade students of SMAN in Surabaya in learning writing recount text. It showed from the editing stage, when the teacher applied Direct Feedback to correct the student's essays in front of the class that includes three elements; they were grammatical errors, vocabularies, and mechanics, she found out that most of the students did the same mistakes. It came from the grammatical errors. For the vocabularies and mechanics, the students did fewer mistakes in their essays. The students also were getting enthusiastic when the teacher asked them to write a recount text based on the theme and their own experience, because the students could be more focus in writing recount text than usual (Kagan, 2004). As a result, direct feedback strategy was appropriate for the students in teaching and learning writing. Because the students usually got errors in their works and they were not easy to do self-correction such as sentence structure or word choice. From those, by using direct feedback the teacher could help the student's difficulties such as using appropriate, accurate and complete responses, correct spelling and punctuation, ensuring minimum word limit, grammatical accuracy, range of sentence structure, and range of vocabulary in writing activity. And by using direct feedback the teacher could decreasing the students' mistakes in writing activity. As noted by Cardelle and Corno (1981), the more feedback students receive, the better they understand what they need to do to correct their mistakes. It also prove by Kulhavy (1977) the understanding of why they make mistakes and how to correct such mistakes helps students correct their mistakes and increase their achievement. It means that the student who receives feedback would have information about which parts of their texts need to be corrected and improved. Carless (2006) confirms that students who receive feedback during the writing process have a clearer sense of how well they are performing and what they need to do to improve. As feedback is meant for helping students narrow or close the gap between their actual ability and the desired performance Brookhart (2003). Teachers are responsible for helping students develop their ability to reach their learning goals through teachers' feedback. Suggestion Based on the data interpretation and the previous conclusion, the researcher has some suggestions to the teachers and the other researcher. The researcher constructs her suggestions as follows: (1) The teacher has to minimize the time consuming when she check the attendance the students. It means that the teacher should not call the student's name one by one. (2) In the process of teaching, the teacher should know and understand the students' characteristics. It means that the teacher does not give the students too much explaining or reminding them. (3) The researcher would like to invite next researchers who conduct the similar study to make improvement on this study, such as using the same field but different subjects. It means they can use the other subjects. (4) For the teacher and other researcher, the writer suggest to gives feedback for correct the content and organization. REFERENCES Arndt, V. (1992). Response to writing: Using feedback to inform the writing process. In M. N. Brock and L. Walters (Eds.), Teaching composition around the Pacific Rim: Politics andpedagogy (90-116). Avon, UK: Multingual Matters. Altena, l& Pica, T. (2010). The Relevance of Second Language Acquisition to Written Feedback on Advanced Second Language Writing. Unpublished PhD, University of Pennsylvania.3414220. Bitchener, J. (2008). Evidence in support of written corrective feedback. Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 17, 102-118. Bitchener, J., & Knoch, U. (2009). The relative effectiveness of different types of directwritten corrective feedback. System, 37, 322-329. Bitchener, J., & Knoch, U. (2010). The Contribution of Written Corrective Feedback toLanguage Development: A Ten Month Investigation. Applied Linguistics, 31(2),193-214 Bitchener, J., Young, S., & Cameron, D. (2005). The effect of different types of correctivefeedback on ESL student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 191-205. Carless, D. (2006). Differing perceptions in the feedback process. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 219-233. Chandler, J. (2003). The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in theaccuracy and fluency of L2 student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing,12, 267-269. Cramer, S., et al. (2008). Online or Face-to-Face? Which Class to Take. Voices from the Middle, (2), 25. Elashri, I. I. (2013). The Impact of the Direct Teacher Feedback Strategy on the EFL Secondary Stage Students' Writing performance. Mesir: Mansoura University. Ellis, R., Sheen, Y., Murakami, M., & Takashima, H. (2008). The effects of focused andunfocused written corrective feedback in an English as a foreign language context.System, 36, 353-371. Ferris, D. (2003b). Responding to writing. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Exploring the dynamics of second language writing, (pp. 119-140). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ferris, D. R. (2004). The "Grammar Correction" debate in L2 writing: Where are we, and where do we go from here? (and what do we do in the meantime…?). Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 13, 49-62. Ferris, D. (2006). Does error feedback help student writers? New evidence on the short- and long-term effects of written error correction. In K. Hyland and F. Hyland (Eds.), Feedback in second language writing: Context and issues (pp. 81-104). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ferris, D. R., & Hedgcock, J. S. (2005). Teaching ESL composition: Purpose, process, and practice (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Fourth Edition, UK: Cambridge. Jacobs, G. M., Curtis, A., Braine, G., & Huang, S. Y. (1998). Feedback on student writing: Taking the middle path. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7(3), 307-317. Jacobs, H., Zinkgraf, S., Wormuth, D., Hartfiel, V. F., & Hughey, J. (1981). Testing ESLComposition: A practical approach. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Lee, I. (2003). L2 writing teachers' perspectives, practices and problems regarding errorfeedback. Assessment Writing, 8, 216-237. Keh, C. L. (1990). Feedback in the writing process: A model and methods for implementation.ELT Journal, 44(4), 294-304. Lee, I. (2008). Understanding teachers' written feedback practices in Hong Kong secondaryclassrooms. Journal of Second Language Writing, 17, 69-85. Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form incommunicative classrooms. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 37-66. Merrill, D. M. (1994). Instructional design theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: EducationalTechnology Publications. Merrill, D. M. (2002). Instructional strategies and learning styles: Which takes precedence?In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design andtechnology (99-106). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Nunan, D. (. (2003). Practice English Language Teaching. New York: Mc. Graw Hill Education. Othman, N.B. (2005). Feedback Lesson on Writing Assessment with Four Different Scoring Strategies. Malaysia: Pendidikan Sultan Idris University. Purnawarman, P. 2011. Impacts of Different Types of Teacher Corrective Feedback in Reducing Grammatical Errors on ESL/EFL Students' Writing. Virginia: Polytechnic Institute and State University. Randolph, T & Lea, K. (2010).A study of Teacher Feedback in Small Groups with Weekly Writing Assignments. Unpublished, Ed.D. Dissertation, Trevecca Nazarene University, 3413061. Sujoko. 1989. Error Analysis. Surakarta: Sebelas Maret University Press. Taken from http://www.whitesmoke.com/the-stages-of-writing, Retrived July 26, 2013 at 12.20.p.m.

Alexander Dugin on
Eurasianism, the Geopolitics of Land and Sea, and a Russian Theory of
Multipolarity







IR has long been regarded as an
Anglo-American social science. Recently, the discipline has started to look
beyond America and England, to China (Theory Talk
#51, Theory Talk
#45), India (Theory Talk
#63, Theory Talk
#42), Africa (Theory Talk #57, Theory Talk
#10) and elsewhere for non-Western
perspectives on international affairs and IR theory. However, IR theorists have
paid little attention to Russian perspectives on the discipline and practice of
international relations. We offer an exciting peek into Russian geopolitical
theory through an interview with the controversial Russian geopolitical thinker
Alexander Dugin, founder of the International
Eurasian Movement and allegedly an important
influence on Putin's foreign policy. In this Talk, Dugin—among others—discusses his Theory of a Multipolar
World, offers a staunch critique of western and liberal IR, and lays out
Russia's unique contribution to the landscape of IR theory.




Print version of this Talk (pdf) Russian version




What, according to you, is
the central challenge or principle debate within IR and what would be your
position within this debate or towards that challenge?



The field of IR is extremely interesting and multidimensional.
In general, the discipline is much more promising than many think. I think that
there is a stereometry today in IR, in which we can distinguish a few axes
right away.



The first, most traditional axis is realism – the English school
– liberalism.



If the debates here are exhausted on an academic level, then on
the level of politicians, the media, and journalists, all the arguments and
methods appear new and unprecedented each time. Today, liberalism in IR
dominates mass consciousness, and realist arguments, already partially
forgotten on the level of mass discourse, could seem rather novel. On the other
hand, the nuanced English school, researched thoroughly in academic circles,
might look like a "revelation" to the general public. But for this to happen, a
broad illumination of the symmetry between liberals and realists is needed for
the English school to acquire significance and disclose its full potential.
This is impossible under the radical domination of liberalism in IR. For that
reason, I predict a new wave of realists and neorealists in this sphere, who,
being pretty much forgotten and almost marginalized, can full well make
themselves and their agenda known. This would, it seems to me, produce a
vitalizing effect and diversify the palette of mass and social debates, which
are today becoming monotone and auto-referential.



The second axis is bourgeois versions of IR (realism, the
English school, and liberalism all together) vs. Marxism in IR. In popular and
even academic discourse, this theme is entirely discarded, although the
popularity of Wallerstein (Theory
Talk #13) and other
versions of world-systems theory shows a degree of interest in this critical
version of classical, positivistic IR theories.



The third axis is post-positivism in all its varieties vs.
positivism in all its varieties (including Marxism). IR scholars might have
gotten the impression that postmodern attacks came to an end, having been
successfully repelled by 'critical realism', but in my opinion it is not at all
so. From moderate constructivism and normativism to extreme post-structuralism,
post-positivistic theories carry a colossal deconstructive and correspondingly
scientific potential, which has not yet even begun to be understood. It seemed
to some that postmodernism is a cheerful game. It isn't. It is a new
post-ontology, and it fundamentally affects the entire epistemological
structure of IR. In my opinion, this axis remains very important and
fundamental.



The fourth axis is the challenge of the sociology of international
relations, which we can call 'Hobson's challenge'. In my opinion, in his
critique of euro-centrism in IR, John M. Hobson laid the foundation for an
entirely new approach to the whole problematic by proposing to consider the
structural significance of the "euro-centric" factor as dominant and clarifying
its racist element. Once we make euro-centrism a variable and move away from
the universalistic racism of the West, on which all systems of IR are built,
including the majority of post-positivistic systems (after all, postmodernity
is an exclusively Western phenomenon!), we get, theoretically for now, an
entirely different discipline—and not just one, it seems. If we take into
account differences among cultures, there can be as many systems of IR as there
are cultures. I consider this axis extremely important.



The fifth axis, outlined in less detail than the previous one,
is the Theory of a Multipolar World vs. everything else. The Theory of a
Multipolar World was developed in Russia,
a country that no one ever took seriously during the entire establishment of IR
as a discipline—hence the fully explainable skepticism toward the Theory of a
Multipolar World.



The sixth axis is IR vs. geopolitics. Geopolitics is usually
regarded as secondary in the context of IR. But gradually, the epistemological
potential of geopolitics is becoming more and more obvious, despite or perhaps
partially because of the criticism against it. We have only to ask ourselves
about the structure of any geopolitical concept to discover the huge potential
contained in its methodology, which takes us to the very complex and
semantically saturated theme of the philosophy and ontology of space.



If we now superimpose these axes onto one another, we get an
extremely complex and highly interesting theoretical field. At the same time,
only one axis, the first one, is considered normative among the public, and
that with the almost total and uni-dimensional dominance of IR liberalism. All
the wealth, 'scientific democracy', and gnoseological pluralism of
the other axes are inaccessible to the broad public, robbing and partly
deceiving it. I call this domination of liberalism among the public the 'third
totalitarianism', but that is a separate issue.





How did you arrive at where
you currently are in your thinking about IR?    




I began with Eurasianism, from which I
came to geopolitics (the Eurasianist Petr Savitskii quoted the
British geopolitician Halford Mackinder) and remained for a long
time in that framework, developing the theme of the dualism of Land and Sea and
applying it to the actual situation That is how the Eurasian school of
geopolitics arose, which became not simply the dominant, but the only school in
contemporary Russia. As a professor at Moscow State University, for six years I
was head of the department of the Sociology of International Relations, which
forced me to become professionally familiar with the classical theories of IR,
the main authors, approaches, and schools. Because I have long been interested
in postmodernism in philosophy (I wrote the book Post-philosophy on the subject), I paid special attention to
post-positivism in IR. That is how I came to IR critical theory,
neo-Gramscianism, and the sociology of IR (John Hobson, Steve Hobden, etc.). I came
to the Theory of a Multipolar World, which I eventually developed myself,
precisely through superimposing geopolitical dualism, Carl Schmitt's theory of the Grossraum, and John Hobson's critique of
Western racism and the euro-centrism of IR.





In your opinion, what would
a student need in order to become a specialist in IR?



In
our interdisciplinary time, I think that what is most important is familiarity
with philosophy and sociology, led by a paradigmatic method: the analysis of
the types of societies, cultures, and structures of thought along the line
Pre-Modernity – Modernity – Post-Modernity. If one learns to trace semantic
shifts in these three epistemological and ontological domains, it will help one
to become familiar with any popular theories of IR today. Barry Buzan's (Theory
Talk #35)
theory of international systems is an example of such a generalizing and very
useful schematization. Today an IR specialist must certainly be familiar with
deconstruction and use it at least in its elementary form. Otherwise, there is
a great danger of overlooking what is most important.



Another very important competence is
history and political science. Political science provides generalizing,
simplifying material, and history puts schemas in their context. I would only
put competence in the domain of economics and political economy in third place,
although today no problem in IR can be considered without reference to the
economic significance of processes and interactions. Finally, I would earnestly
recommend to students of IR to become familiar, as a priority, with geopolitics
and its methods. These methods are much simpler than theories of IR, but their
significance is much deeper. At first, geopolitical simplifications produce an
instantaneous effect: complex and entangled processes of world politics are
rendered transparent and comprehensible in the blink of an eye. But to sort out
how this effect is achieved, a long and serious study of geopolitics is
required, exceeding by far the superficiality that limits critical geopolitics
(Ó Tuathail et. al.): they stand at the beginning of
the decipherment of geopolitics and its full-fledged deconstruction, but they
regard themselves as its champions. They do so prematurely.





What
does it entail to think of global power relations through a spatial lens ('Myslit prostranstvom')?  



This is the most important thing. The
entire philosophical theme of Modernity is built on the dominance of time. Kant
already puts time on the side of the subject (and space on the side of the
body, continuing the ideas of Descartes and even Plato), while Husserl and Heidegger
identify the subject with time altogether. Modernity thinks with time, with
becoming. But since the past and future are rejected as ontological entities,
thought of time is transformed into thought of the instant, of that which is
here and now. This is the basis for the ephemeral understanding of being. To
think spatially means to locate Being outside the present, to arrange it in
space, to give space an ontological status. Whatever was impressed in space is
preserved in it. Whatever will ripen in space is already contained in it. This
is the basis for the political geography of Friedrich Ratzel and subsequent geopoliticians. Wagner's Parsifal ends with the words of
Gurnemanz: 'now time has become space'. This is a proclamation of the triumph
of geopolitics. To think spatially means to think in an entirely different way
[topika]. I think that postmodernity has already partly arrived at this
perspective, but has stopped at the threshold, whereas to cross the line it is
necessary to break radically with the entire axiomatic of Modernity, to really
step over Modernity, and not to imitate this passage while remaining in
Modernity and its tempolatry. Russian people are spaces [Russkie lyudi prostranstva],
which is why we have so much of it. The secret of Russian identity is concealed
in space. To think spatially means to think 'Russian-ly', in Russian.





Geopolitics
is argued to be very popular in Russia nowadays. Is geopolitics a new thing,
from the post-Cold War period, or not? And if not, how does current
geopolitical thinking differ from earlier Soviet (or even pre-soviet)
geopolitics?



It is an entirely new form
of political thought. I introduced geopolitics to Russia at the end of the 80s,
and since then it has become extremely popular. I tried to find some traces of
geopolitics in Russian history, but besides Vandam, Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, and a few
short articles by Savitskii, there was nothing. In the USSR, any allusion to
geopolitics was punished in the harshest way (see the 'affair of the
geopoliticians' of the economic geographer Vladimir Eduardovich Den and his group).
At the start of the 90s, my efforts and the efforts of my followers and
associates in geopolitics (=Eurasianism) filled the worldview vacuum that
formed after the end of Soviet ideology. At first, this was adopted without
reserve by the military (The Military Academy of the General Staff
of the Armed Forces of Russia), especially under Igor Rodionov. Then,
geopolitics began to penetrate into all social strata. Today, this discipline
is taught in the majority of Russian universities. So, there was no Soviet or
pre-Soviet geopolitics. There is only the contemporary Eurasian school, which
took shape at the end of the 80s. Foundations
of Geopolitics was the first programmatic text of this school, although I had
published most of texts in that book earlier, and some of them were circulated
as texts in government circles. Recently, in 2012, I released two new
textbooks: Geopolitics and The Geopolitics of Russia, which
together with The War of Continents
are the results of work in this field, along four axes. 





In
your book International Relations, not
yet published in English, you set out your Theory of a Multipolar World as a
distinct IR theory. What are the basic components of the Theory of a Multipolar
World—and how is it different from classical realism?



In order to be understood
and not get into the details, I can say that the Theory of a Multipolar World
seriously and axiomatically adopts Samuel Huntington's thesis about the
plurality of civilizations. Russia has its own author, who claimed the same
thing more than a hundred years ago: Nikolay Danilevsky, and then the Eurasianists.
However, everything starts from precisely this point: civilization is not one,
but many. Western civilization's pretension to universalism is a form of the
will to domination and an authoritarian discourse. It can be taken into account
but not believed. It is nothing other than a strategy of suppression and
hegemony. The following point follows: we must move from thinking in terms of
one civilization (the racism of euro-centric versions of IR) to a pluralism of
subjects. However, unlike realists, who take as the subject of their theory
nation-states, which are themselves products of the European, bourgeois, modern
understanding of the Political, the Theory of a Multipolar World proposes to
take civilizations as subjects. Not states, but civilizations. I call them
'large politeiai', or civilizations, corresponding to Carl Schmitt's 'large
spaces'. As soon as we take these civilizations—'large politeiai'—as subjects,
we can then apply to them the full system of premises of realism: anarchy in
the international system, sovereignty, the rationality of egoistic behavior,
etc. But within these 'politeiai', by contrast, a principle more resembling
liberalism, with its pacifism and integration, operates, only with the
difference that here we are not talking about a 'planetary' or 'global' world,
but about an intra-civilizational one; not about global integration, but about
regional integration, strictly within the context of civilizational borders.
Post-positivism, in turn, helps here for the deconstruction of the
authoritarian discourse of the West, which masks its private interests by
'universal values', and also for the reconstruction of civilizational identity,
including with the help of technological means: civilizational elites,
civilizational media, civilizational economic algorithms and corporations, etc.
That is the general picture.





Your
theory of multipolarity is directed against the intellectual, political, and
social hegemony of the West. At the same time, while drawing on the tools of
neo-Marxist analysis and critical theory, it does not oppose Western hegemony
'from the left', as those approaches do, but on the basis of traditionalism (Rene
Guenon, Julius
Evola), cultural
anthropology, and Heideggerian phenomenology, or 'from the right'. Do you think
that such an approach can appeal to Anglo-American IR practitioners, or is it
designed to appeal mainly to non-Western theorists and practitioners? In short,
what can IR theorists in the West learn from the theory of multipolarity?



According to Hobson's
entirely correct analysis, the West is based on a fundamental sort of racism.
There is no difference between Lewis Morgan's evolutionistic racism
(with his model of savagery, barbarism, civilization) and Hitler's biological
racism. Today the same racism is asserted without a link to race, but on the
basis of the technological modes and degrees of modernization and progress of
societies (as always, the criterion "like in the West" is the general measure).
Western man is a complete racist down to his bones, generalizing his
ethnocentrism to megalomaniacal proportions. Something tells me that he is
impossible to change. Even radical critiques of Western hegemony are themselves
deeply infected by the racist virus of universalism, as Edward Said showed with the
example of 'orientalism', proving that the anticolonial struggle is a form of
that very colonialism and euro-centrism. So the Theory of a Multipolar World
will hardly find adherents in the Western world, unless perhaps among those
scholars who are seriously able to carry out a deconstruction of Western
identity, and such deconstruction assumes the rejection of both Right
(nationalistic) and Left (universalistic and progressivist) clichés. The racism
of the West always acquires diverse forms. Today its main form is liberalism,
and anti-liberal theories (most on the Left) are plagued by the same
universalism, while Right anti-liberalisms have been discredited. That is why I
appeal not to the first political theory (liberalism), nor the second
(communism, socialism), nor to the third (fascism, Nazism), but to something I
call the Fourth Political Theory (or 4PT), based on a
radical deconstruction of the subject of Modernity and the application of
Martin Heidegger's existential analytic method.



Traditionalists are brought
in for the profound critique of Western Modernity, for establishing the
plurality of civilizations, and for rehabilitating non-Western (pre-modern)
cultures. In Russia and Asian countries, the Theory of a Multipolar World is
grasped easily and naturally; in the West, it encounters a fully understandable
and fully expected hostility, an unwillingness to study it carefully, and
coarse slander. But there are always exceptions.





What
is the Fourth Political Theory (4PT) and how is it related to the Theory of a
Multipolar World and to your criticism of the prevailing theoretical approaches
in the field of IR?



I spoke a little about this in the
response to the previous question. The Fourth Political Theory is important for
getting away from the strict dominance of modernity in the sphere of the
Political, for the relativization of the West and its re-regionalization. The
West measures the entire history of Modernity in terms of the struggle of three
political ideologies for supremacy (liberalism, socialism, and nationalism).
But since the West does not even for a moment call into question the fact that
it thinks for all humanity, it evaluates other cultures and civilizations in
the same way, without considering that in the best case the parallels to these
three ideologies are pure simulacra, while most often there simply are no
parallels. If liberalism won the competition of the three ideologies in the
West at the end of the 20th century, that does not yet mean that
this ideology is really universal on a world scale. It isn't at all. This
episode of the Western political history of modernity may be the fate of the
West, but not the fate of the world. So other principles of the political are
needed, beyond liberalism, which claims global domination (=the third
totalitarianism), and its failed alternatives (communism and fascism), which
are historically just as Western and modern as liberalism. This explains the
necessity of introducing a Fourth Political Theory as a political frame for the
correct basis of a Theory of a Multipolar World. The Fourth Political Theory is
the direct and necessary correlate of the Theory of a Multipolar World in the
domain of political theory.





Is
IR an American social science? Is Russian IR as an academic field a
reproduction of IR as an American academic field? If not, how is IR in Russia
specifically Russian?



IR is a Western scientific discipline,
and as such it has a prescriptive, normative vector. It not only studies the
West's dominance, it also produces, secures, defends, and propagandizes it. IR
is undoubtedly an imperious authoritarian discourse of Western civilization, in
relation to itself and all other areas of the planet. Today the US is the core
of the West, so naturally in the 20th century IR became more and
more American as the US moved toward that status (it began as an English
science). It is the same with geopolitics, which migrated from London to
Washington and New York together with the function of a global naval Empire. As
with all other sciences, IR is a form of imperious violence, embodying the will
to power in the will to knowledge (as Michel Foucault explained). IR in Russia remains purely
Western, with one detail: in the USSR, IR as such was not studied. Marxism in
IR did not correspond to Soviet reality, where after Stalin a practical form of
realism (not grounded theoretically and never acknowledged) played a big
role—only external observers, like the classical realist E.H. Carr, understood
the realist essence of Stalinism in IR. So IR was altogether blocked. The first
textbooks started to appear only in the 90s and in the fashion of the day they
were all liberal. That is how it has remained until now. The peculiarity of IR
in Russia today lies in the fact that there is no longer anything Russian
there; liberalism dominates entirely, a correct account of realism is lacking,
and post-positivism is almost entirely disregarded. The result is a truncated,
aggressively liberal and extremely antiquated version of IR as a discipline. I
try to fight that. I recently released an IR textbook with balanced (I hope)
proportions, but it is too early to judge the result.





Stephen
Walt argued in a September
article in Foreign Policy that Russia 'is nowhere near as threatening as the old Soviet
Union', in part because Russia 'no longer boasts an ideology that can rally
supporters worldwide'. Do you agree with Walt's assessment?



There is something to that. Today, Russia
thinks of itself as a nation-state. Putin is a realist; nothing more. Walt is
right about that. But the Theory of a Multipolar World and the Fourth Political
Theory, as well as Eurasianism, are outlines of a much broader and large-scale
ideology, directed against Western hegemony and challenging liberalism,
globalization, and American strategic dominance. Of course, Russia as a
nation-state is no competition for the West. But as the bridgehead of the
Theory of a Multipolar World and the Fourth Political Theory, it changes its
significance. Russian policies in the post-Soviet space and Russia's courage in
forming non-Western alliances are indicators. For now, Putin is testing this
conceptual potential very gingerly. But the toughening of relations with the
West and most likely the internal crises of globalization will at some point
force a more careful and serious turn toward the creation of global alternative
alliances. Nevertheless, we already observe such unions: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, the Eurasian Union—and they require a new
ideology. Not one like Marxism, any universalism is excluded, but also not
simple realist maneuvers of regional hegemons. Liberalism is a global
challenge. The response to it should also be global. Does Putin understand
this? Honestly, I don't know. Sometimes it seems he does, and sometimes it
seems he doesn't.





Vladimir
Putin recently characterized the contemporary world order as follows: 'We have entered a period of differing interpretations and
deliberate silences in world politics. International law has been forced to
retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. Objectivity and
justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary
interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms. At the same
time, total control of the global mass media has made it possible when desired
to portray white as black and black as white'. Do you agree with this
assessment? If so, what is required as a response to this international
situation?



These are true, but rather
naïve words. Putin is just indignant that the West establishes rules in its own
interests, changes them when necessary, and interprets allegedly 'universal
norms' in its own favor. But the issue is that this is the structure of the
will to power and the very organization of logo-phallo-phono-centric discourse.
Objectivity and justice are not possible so long as speech is a monologue. The
West does not know and does not recognize the other. But this means that
everything will continue until this other wins back the right to recognition.
And that is a long road. The point of the Theory of a Multipolar World is that
there are no rules established by some one player. Rules must be established by
centers of real power. The state today is too small for that; hence the
conclusion that civilizations should be these centers. Let there be an Atlantic
objectivity and Western justice. A Eurasian objectivity and Russian justice
will counter them. And the Chinese world or Pax Sinica [world/peace: same word
in Russian] will look different than the Islamic one. Black and white are not
objective evaluations. They depend on the structure of the world order: what is
black and what is white is determined by one who has enough power to determine
it.





How
does your approach help us understand Russia's actions on the world stage
better than other IR approaches do? What are IR analyses of Russia missing that
do not operate with the conceptual apparatus of multipolarity?



Interesting question. Russia's behavior
internationally is determined today by the following factors:



First,
historical inertia, accumulating the power of precedents (the Theory of a
Multipolar World thinks that the past exists as a structure; consequently, this
factor is taken into account from many sides and in detail, while the
'tempocentrism' (Steve Hobden, John Hobson) of classical IR theories drops this
from sight. We have to pay attention to this especially taking into
consideration the fact that Russia is in many ways still a traditional society
and belongs to the 'imperial system' of IR.) There are, besides, Soviet inertia
and stable motives ('Stalinism in IR');



Second,
the projective logic of opposition to the West, stemming from the most practical,
pragmatic, and realist motivations (in the spirit of Caesarism, analyzed by
neo-Gramscians) will necessarily lead Russia (even despite the will of its
leaders) to a systemic confrontation with American hegemony and globalization,
and then the Theory of a Multipolar World will really be needed (classical IR
models, paying no attention to the Theory of a Multipolar World, drop from
sight the possible future; i.e., they rob themselves of predictive potential
because of purely ideological prejudices and self-imposed fears).



But if an opponent underestimates you,
you have more chances to land an unexpected blow. So I am not too disturbed by
the underestimation of the Theory of a Multipolar World among IR theorists.





In
the western world, the divide between academia and policy is often either
lamented ('ivory tower') or, in light of the ideal of academic independence,
deemed absent. This concerns a broader debate regarding the relations between
power, knowledge and geopolitics. How are academic-policy relations in Russia
with regards to IR and is this the ideal picture according to you?



I think that in our case both positions
have been taken to their extreme. On one hand, today's authorities in Russia do
not pay the slightest attention to scholars, dispatching them to an airless and
sterile space. On the other hand, Soviet habits became the basis for servility
and conformism, preserved in a situation when the authorities for the first
time demand nothing from intellectuals, except for one thing: that they not
meddle in socio-political processes. So the situation with science is both
comical and sorrowful. Conformist scholars follow the authorities, but the
authorities don't need this, since they do not so much go anywhere in
particular as react to facts that carry themselves out.





If
your IR theory isn't based on politically and philosophically liberal
principles, and if it criticizes those principles not from the left but from
the right, using the language of large spaces or Grossraum, is it a fascist theory of international relations? Are scholars who characterize your thought as 'neo-fascism',
like Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov, partially correct? If not, why is that characterization
misleading?



Accusations of fascism are simply a
figure of speech in the coarse political propaganda peculiar to contemporary
liberalism as the third totalitarianism. Karl Popper laid the basis for this in
his book The
Open Society and its Enemies, where he reduced the critique of
liberalism from the right to fascism, Hitler, and Auschwitz, and the criticism
of liberalism from the left to Stalin and the GULAG. The reality is somewhat
more complex, but George
Soros,
who finances Umland and Shekhovstov and is an ardent follower of Popper, is
content with reduced versions of politics. If I were a fascist, I would say so.
But I am a representative of Eurasianism and the author of the Fourth Political
Theory. At the same time, I am a consistent and radical anti-racist and
opponent of the nation-state project (i.e. an anti-nationalist). Eurasianism has
no relation to fascism. And the Fourth Political Theory emphasizes that while
it is anti-liberal, it is simultaneously anti-communist and anti-fascist. I
think it isn't possible to be clearer, but the propaganda army of the 'third
totalitarianism' disagrees and no arguments will convince it. 1984 should be
sought today not where many think: not in the USSR, not in the Third Reich, but
in the Soros Fund and the 'Brave New World'. Incidentally, Huxley proved to be
more correct than Orwell. I cannot forbid others from calling me a fascist,
although I am not one, though ultimately this reflects badly not so much on me
as on the accusers themselves: fighting an imaginary threat, the accuser misses
a real one. The more stupid, mendacious, and straightforward a liberal is, the
simpler it is to fight with him.





Does
technological change in warfare and in civil government challenge the
geopolitical premises of classical divisions between spaces (Mackinder's view
or Spykman's) heartland-rimland-offshore continents)? And, more broadly
perhaps, does history have a linear or a cyclical pattern, according to you?



Technological development does not at all
abolish the principles of classical geopolitics, simply because Land and Sea
are not substances, but concepts. Land is a centripetal model of order, with a
clearly expressed and constant axis. Sea is a field, without a hard center, of
processuality, atomism, and the possibility of numerous bifurcations. In a
certain sense, air (and hence also aviation) is aeronautics. And even the word
astronaut contains in itself the root 'nautos', from the Greek word for ship.
Water, air, outer space—these are all versions of increasingly diffused Sea.
Land in this situation remains unchanged. Sea strategy is diversified; land
strategy remains on the whole constant. It is possible that this is the reason
for the victory of Land over Sea in the last decade; after all, capitalism and
technical progress are typical attributes of Sea. But taking into consideration
the fundamental character of the balance between Leviathan and Behemoth, the
proportions can switch at any moment; the soaring Titan can be thrown down into
the abyss, like Atlantis, while the reason for the victory of thalassocracy becomes the source of its
downfall. Land remains unchanged as the geographic axis of history. There is
Land and Sea even on the internet and in the virtual world: they are axes and
algorithms of thematization, association and separation, groupings of resources
and protocols. The Chinese internet is terrestrial; the Western one, nautical.





You
have translated a great number of foreign philosophical and geopolitical works
into Russian. How important is knowledge transaction for the formation of your ideas?



I recently completed the
first release of my book Noomachy,
which is entirely devoted precisely to the Logoi of various civilizations, and
hence to the circulation of ideas. I am convinced that each civilization has
its own particular Logos. To grasp it and to find parallels, analogies, and
dissonances in one's own Logos is utterly fascinating and interesting. That is
why I am sincerely interested in the most varied cultures, from North American
to Australian, Arabic to Latin American, Polynesian to Scandinavian. All the
Logoi are different and it is not possible to establish a hierarchy among them.
So it remains for us only to become familiar with them. Henry Corbin, the French
philosopher and Protestant who studied Iranian Shiism his entire life, said of
himself 'We are Shiites'. He wasn't a Shiite in the religious sense, but
without feeling himself a Shiite, he would not be able to penetrate into the
depths of the Iranian Logos. That is how I felt, working on Noomachy or translating philosophical
texts or poetry from other languages: in particular, while learning Pierce and
James, Emerson and Thoreau, Poe and Pound I experienced myself as 'we are
Americans'. And in the volume devoted to China and Japan, as 'we are
Buddhists'. That is the greatest wealth of the Logos of various cultures: both
those like ours and those entirely unlike ours. And these Logoi are at war;
hence, Noomachy, the war of the
intellect. It is not linear and not primitive. It is a great war. It creates
that which we call the 'human', the entire depth and complexity of which we
most often underestimate.





Final
question. You call yourself the 'last philosopher of empire'. What is
Eurasanism and how does it relate to the global pivot of power distributions?



Eurasianism is a developed worldview, to
which I dedicated a few books and a countless number of articles and
interviews. In principle, it lies at the basis of the Theory of a Multipolar
World and the Fourth Political Theory, combined with geopolitics, and it
resonates with Traditionalism. Eurasianism's main thought is plural
anthropology, the rejection of universalism. The meaning of Empire for me is
that there exists not one Empire, but at minimum two, and even more. In the
same way, civilization is never singular; there is always some other
civilization that determines its borders. Schmitt called this the Pluriverse
and considered it the main characteristic of the Political. The Eurasian Empire
is the political and strategic unification of Turan, a geographic axis of history
in opposition to the civilization of the Sea or the Atlanticist Empire. Today,
the USA is this Atlanticist Empire. Kenneth Waltz, in the context of neorealism
in IR, conceptualized the balance of two poles. The analysis is very accurate,
although he erred about the stability of a bipolar world and the duration of
the USSR. But on the whole he is right: there is a global balance of Empires in
the world, not nation-States, the majority of which cannot claim sovereignty,
which remains nominal (Stephen Krasner's (Theory
Talk #21) 'global hypocrisy'). For
precisely that reason, I am a philosopher of Empire, as is almost every
American intellectual, whether he knows it or not. The difference is only that
he thinks of himself as a philosopher of the only Empire, while I think of
myself as the philosopher of one of the Empires, the Eurasian one. I am more
humble and more democratic. That is the whole difference.





Alexander Dugin is a Russian philosopher,
the author of over thirty books on topics including the sociology of the
imagination, structural sociology, ethnosociology, geopolitical theory,
international relations theory, and political theory, including four books on
the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. His most recent books, only available
in Russian at the moment, are Ukraine: My
War and the multi-volume Noomachia:
Wars of the Intellect. Books translated into English include The Fourth Political Theory,
Putin vs. Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed
From the Right, and Martin Heidegger: The Philosophy of
Another Beginning.






Related links





Who is Alexander Dugin? Interview with Theory Talks editor Michael Millerman (YouTube)
TheFourth Political Theory website (English): 
Evrazia.tv
(Russian) 
Evrazia.tv
(English) 
Geopolitics.ru
(English version)
InternationalEurasian Movement (English version)
Centerfor Conservative Studies (Russian)

Print version of this Talk (pdf) Russian version

The research analyses the role that law and the state of exception have played in the development and transformation of the Colombian state. This research shows, on the one hand, the enormous amount of research that has been carried out on the legal and political situation in Colombia and, on the other hand, the lack of a clear analysis of the relationship between law, violence and the state of exception. This relationship is transcendental if one seeks to understand the transformation of current states. For this reason, the thesis is built around the link between law and violence, which is manifested in the rule of law-state of exception dichotomy. This allows us to understand the development of Janus states, i.e. highly repressive and violent constitutional regimes. The case of Colombia exemplifies the situation of a Janus state that establishes the protection of rights, respect for the law and democracy as the foundation of its institutions, while at the same time coexisting with armed conflict, state violence and social inequality. This disconnect between, on the one hand, institutions and legal guarantees and, on the other hand, the application of law and reality, is neither uniform nor absolute. On the contrary, it is fragmentary and relative because it depends on the territory and the way in which power relations intervene in the articulation of the political and legal order. In order to understand the nature and character of a state such as the Colombian state, a characterization of legal and political normality and exceptionality was developed that includes the flexibility and fluidity of power relations, without resorting to closed definitions that are problematic when analyzing social phenomena. In such a way that this analysis allows for a discussion of the transformation undergone by various states in general. In this sense, the thesis goes beyond the conventional legal definitions of the state of exception, since it is possible to construct a broad analysis thanks to the study of major authors. However, as the research progressed, it became clear that it was necessary to construct, firstly, a characterization that would make it possible to study the various manifestations of exceptionality, both extreme and moderate, and secondly, a differentiation between normality and legal and political exceptionality. Two tasks that could not be achieved without the help of various theories that, beyond their differences, coincided in studying the relations between law, politics and violence. Taking these elements into consideration, the thesis poses two key questions. Firstly, it seeks to establish what was the mechanism or phenomenon that allowed legal exceptionality, concretized in the indiscriminate use of the state of exception, to continue during legal normality, and secondly, it seeks to determine what is the characterization of normality and legal and political exceptionality in Colombia? The answers to these questions are structured throughout the three parts of the thesis by means of two analyses, on the one hand, the theoretical analysis in which the characterization of normality and legal and political exceptionality is constructed in a general way and, on the other hand, the historical-legal analysis that aims to articulate this characterization with the specific case of Colombia. These analyses are in constant tension, which enriches the research and the debate. The first part of the paper provides a general characterization of normality and exceptionality structured around five fundamental elements. First, the characterization is permeable to social phenomena. Secondly, the analysis is based on a value judgement that must be located in a specific space, i.e. it is a judgement that indicates whether a phenomenon is favorable or unfavorable for the development of social life, which is located within the republican tradition and the rule of law. Thirdly, the characterization indicates that not everything that escapes normality is harmful, since the tensions between the normal and the abnormal often allow institutions to adapt. Fourthly, the characterization admits levels and variations because it does not respond to ideal models. Therefore, for there to be legal normality, it is not necessary for all law to be applied, since it is a recognized fact that normative systems function through the administration of illegalities. Fifthly, the categories of normality and exceptionality allow for a critical analysis of constitutional states. From this general characterization carried out in the first part of the thesis, the second part of the thesis seeks to characterize the normality and exceptionality of the Colombian state. To achieve this objective, firstly, the legal regime of the state of exception in Colombia is studied; secondly, an assessment of the role of the three branches of public power in relation to the state of exception is carried out; thirdly, symptomatic phenomena of the process of exceptionalities of law are analyzed; and fourthly, the characterization of the Colombian case is structured. Finally, in the third part of the thesis, a study is made of two presidential periods in which manifestations of the state of exception, the process of the exceptionalities of law and political exceptionality can be appreciated. These periods were chosen because they represent key moments in Colombia's recent history in which the manifestations of exceptionality were extreme. The articulation of the three parts of the thesis makes it possible to characterize Colombia's legal and political normality and exceptionality, hence some key elements stand out. Firstly, it is important to point out that legal exceptionality during the period of the 1886 Constitution, especially throughout the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by the instrumentalization of the state of siege as a form of government. It was used to restrict citizens' rights, exclude fundamental issues for the community from democratic debate and impose a political and economic project. Subsequently, the legal normality established by the 1991 Constitution did not mean a break with the process of exceptionalities of law, although it did mean a break with the tendency to maintain the state of emergency permanently. This assertion is based on the fact that the constitutional and democratic order was altered by the process of the exceptionalities of law. This was manifested through phenomena such as constitutional reformism and the fetishism of the law, which allowed the political order to continue despite the instrumental ineffectiveness of the legal order. And the alternative orders that were maintained and generated hybridizations with the state legal order. In this scenario, legal normality fulfilled the function of concealing both the hybridizations between the state legal order and the alternative orders and the spaces of political exceptionality. Secondly, the process of the exceptionalities of law is integrated into political normality as a mechanism for preserving and opposing changes that alter the status quo of political power. This process can thus be said to affect political normality from the top down when political power promotes a raison d'état in which derivative interests take precedence over formal interests. This transformation was achieved through the development of a set of exceptional techniques such as clientelism, political violence and corruption that ended up influencing institutionalist and social life. Likewise, the process of exceptionalities was structured from the bottom up through micro-level power relations in which exceptional forms and alternative orders emerged and permeated the state's legal and political order. Thirdly, the historical fragmentation of the state is also part of the political normality that originates in the selective strengthening and differentiated presence of state organization. Similarly, state weakness is another distinctive feature that is reflected in the state's extreme dependence on politico-economic elites. However, this weakness contrasts with the macro-level stability of the state, which is based on factors such as the elites' ability to adapt clientelist and landlord structures to the demands of the capitalist system. Fourthly, in political normality, two facets of the state can be identified: on the one hand, a democratic state that guarantees real political competition, the rule of law, the continuity of the economic system and formal equality of access to income distribution, and, on the other hand, an exclusive and fragmented state that is guided by derivative ends, leading to the concentration of political power, capital and land in the hands of an elite. Fifth, political exceptionality is characterized by its intermittency, since it is not a generalized phenomenon that affects the entire territory, and by the predominance of political exceptionality in the dominant sense. Sixth, it is important to highlight two conclusions that emerge throughout the thesis. The first is that violence has both a destructive and a constructive capacity that allows it to shape power relations, as can be seen in the emergence of alternative orders. And the second is that the boundaries between legal exceptionality and political exceptionality are not absolute, i.e. a process of constant exceptionalities of law can give way to the emergence of spaces of political exceptionality. In sum, the research allows us to understand the transformations of Colombia's legal and political order without falling into superficial assertions that categories it simply as dictatorial or guarantees. On the contrary, the thesis seeks to show precisely the historical, legal and political particularities. In this sense, the research contributes to the debate on the role of the state, law and violence in today's societies. These societies are facing great challenges without adequately dimensioning the profound transformations that the legal and political orders have undergone in recent decades. ; La thèse chercher à comprendre le rôle du droit et de l'état d'exception dans le développement et la transformation des États actuels et en particulier de l'État colombien. Cette thèse a amené à découvrir, d'une part, l'énorme travail de recherche qui a été mené sur la situation juridique et politique de la Colombie et, d'autre part, l'absence d' analyse mettant clairement en évidence la relation entre le droit, la violence et l'état d'exception. Une relation qui s'avérait transcendantale lorsqu'il s'agit de chercher à comprendre la transformation des États. Pour cette même raison, la thèse est construite autour de la relation qui existe entre droit et violence, lien explicite dans la dichotomie État de droit-État d'exception. Ceci permet de saisir la mise en place d'États Janus, c'est-à-dire de régimes constitutionnels hautement répressifs et violents. Le cas colombien illustre la situation d'un État Janus qui établit la protection des droits, le respect de la loi et de la démocratie comme fondement de ses institutions, tout en coexistant avec le conflit armé, la violence étatique et les inégalités sociales. Cette déconnexion entre, d'un côté, les institutions et les garanties juridiques et, de l'autre, l'application du droit et la réalité, n'est ni uniforme ni absolue. Au contraire, elle est fragmentaire et relative puisqu'elle est fonction du territoire et de la manière dont les relations de pouvoir interviennent dans l'articulation de l'ordre politique et juridique. Afin de pouvoir comprendre la nature et le caractère d'un État comme l'État colombien. Cette recherche a opéré une caractérisation de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique qui inclurait la flexibilité et la fluidité des relations de pouvoir, sans recourir à des définitions hermétiques toujours problématiques pour l'analyse de phénomènes sociaux. De sorte que la thèse permettra d'ouvrir le débat sur les transformations enregistrées par la Colombie, mais aussi plus généralement par divers autres États. En ce sens, cette thèse va au-delà des définitions juridiques conventionnelles sur l'état d'exception puisque, grâce à l'étude des grands auteurs, nous parvenons à élaborer une analyse approfondie.Toutefois, à mesure qu'avançait la recherche, devenait de plus en plus évidente la nécessité de construire, en premier lieu, une caractérisation qui permettrait d'étudier les diverses manifestations de l'exceptionnalité, aussi bien extrêmes que modérées, et, en second lieu, une différenciation entre normalité et exceptionnalité juridique et politique. Deux tâches irréalisables sans recourir à diverses théories qui, par-delà leurs différences, se rejoignent pour étudier les relations entre droit, politique et violence. Compte tenu de ces éléments, la thèse pose deux questions clés. En premier lieu, nous cherchons à déterminer le mécanisme ou le phénomène qui a permis que l'exceptionnalité juridique concrétisée par le recours indiscriminé à l'état d'exception puisse se poursuivre pendant la normalité juridique. Et, en second lieu, nous prétendons déterminer comment se caractérisent la normalité et l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique en Colombie. Les réponses à ces deux questions occupent les trois parties de la thèse et reposent sur le fondement de deux analyses. D'une part, l'analyse théorique sur laquelle est construite la caractérisation de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique de manière générale et, d'autre part, l'analyse historico-juridique qui prétend appliquer cette caractérisation au cas spécifique de la Colombie. Ces analyses sont en tension constante ce qui enrichit la recherche et le débat. Pour commencer, la caractérisation générale de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité est construite autour de cinq éléments fondamentaux. En premier lieu, la caractérisation est perméable aux phénomènes sociaux. En second lieu, l'analyse part d'un jugement de valeur qui doit se situer dans un espace concret. Il s'agit, en effet, d'un jugement qui indique si un phénomène est favorable ou non au développement de la vie sociale, tel qu'il est entendu au sein de la tradition républicaine et de l'État de droit. En troisième lieu, la caractérisation indique que tout ce qui est soustrait à la normalité n'est pas préjudiciable puisque, souvent, les tensions entre normal et anormal permettent d'adapter les institutions. En quatrième lieu, la caractérisation présente des paliers et des variations car elle ne répond pas à des modèles idéaux. Par conséquent, pour qu'il y ait normalité juridique, il n'est pas nécessaire que s'applique l'intégralité du droit, car c'est un fait avéré que les systèmes normatifs fonctionnent au moyen de la gestion des illégalismes. Et, en cinquième lieu, les catégories de normalité et d'exceptionnalité permettent de mener une analyse critique des États constitutionnels. À partir de cette caractérisation générale de la première partie de la thèse, la seconde partie cherche à caractériser la normalité et l'exceptionnalité de l'État colombien. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous étudions en premier lieu le régime juridique de l'état d'exception en Colombie. En second lieu, nous faisons le bilan du rôle des trois branches des pouvoirs publics en relation avec l'état d'exception. En troisième lieu, nous analysons des phénomènes symptomatiques du processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit et, en quatrième lieu, nous mettons en évidence le cas colombien. Finalement, dans la dernière partie de la thèse, nous nous livrons à une étude de deux périodes présidentielles qui nous permettent d'apprécier des manifestations de l'état d'exception, du processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit et de l'exceptionnalité politique. Nous avons choisi ces périodes car elles représentent des moments clés de l'histoire récente de la Colombie pendant lesquels les manifestations de l'exceptionnalité ont été extrêmes. L'articulation des trois parties de la thèse permet de caractériser la normalité et l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique de la Colombie. C'est pour cela que nous reprenons certains éléments clé. En premier lieu, il convient de signaler que l'exceptionnalité juridique pendant toute la durée de la Constitution de 1886, notamment pendant les années 70 et 80, s'est caractérisée par l'instrumentalisation de l'état de siège comme forme de gouvernement. L'état de siège a été utilisé pour restreindre les droits des citoyens, exclure du débat démocratique des matières fondamentales pour la communauté et imposer un projet politique et économique. Postérieurement, la normalité juridique instaurée par la Constitution de 1991 n'a pas constitué une rupture avec le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit, mais avec la tendance à maintenir l'état d'exception de manière permanente. Cette affirmation s'appuie sur le fait que l'ordre constitutionnel et démocratique a été altéré par le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit. Ceci a été illustré par des phénomènes comme le réformisme constitutionnel et le fétichisme de la loi qui permettaient la continuité de l'ordre politique, malgré l'inefficacité instrumentale de l'ordre juridique. Et, de même, par les ordres alternatifs qui se sont maintenus et ont généré des hybridations avec l'ordre juridique étatique. Dans ce scénario, la normalité juridique a eu pour fonction d'occulter les hybridations entre l'ordre juridique étatique et les ordres alternatifs, aussi bien que les espaces d'exceptionnalité politique. En second lieu, le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit s'intègre à la normalité politique comme un mécanisme qui permet de conserver et de s'opposer aux changements qui altèrent le statu quo du pouvoir politique. Nous pouvons ainsi affirmer que ce processus affecte la normalité politique de haut en bas lorsque le pouvoir politique encourage une raison d'État où priment les intérêts dérivés sur les intérêts formels. Cette transformation est devenue effective grâce à la mise en place d'un ensemble de techniques exceptionnelles comme le clientélisme, la violence politique et la corruption qui ont fini par influer sur l'institutionnalité et la vie sociale. De même, le processus d'exceptionnalisation s'est structuré de bas en haut grâce aux relations de pouvoir au niveau micro d'où ont surgi des formes exceptionnelles et des ordres alternatifs qui se sont infiltrés dans l'ordre juridique et politique étatique. En troisième lieu, la fragmentation historique de l'État relève aussi de la normalité politique qui tire son origine du renforcement sélectif et de la présence différenciée de l'organisation étatique. De même, la faiblesse étatique est un autre trait distinctif qui se reflète dans la dépendance extrême de l'État par rapport aux élites politico-économiques. Toutefois, cette faiblesse s'oppose à une stabilité de l'État au niveau macro dont le fondement réside dans des facteurs comme la capacité des élites d'adapter les structures clientélistes et celles des propriétaires terriens aux exigences du système capitaliste. En quatrième lieu, dans la normalité politique on peut identifier deux facettes de l'État avec, d'un côté, un État démocratique qui garantit un vrai affrontement politique, le maintien en vigueur du droit, la continuité du système économique et l'égalité formelle d'accès à la distribution du revenu et, de l'autre, un État exclusif et fragmenté guidé par des fins dérivées provoquant la concentration entre les mains d'une élite politique des capitaux et des terres. En cinquième lieu, l'exceptionnalité politique est caractérisée par son intermittence puisque ce n'est pas un phénomène généralisé qui affecte tout le territoire. Enfin, en sixième lieu, il convient de mettre en exergue deux conclusions qui s'imposent tout au long de la thèse. La première est que la violence a une capacité destructive et une capacité constructive qui lui permet de façonner les relations de pouvoir, comme nous le voyons avec l'éclosion des ordres alternatifs. Et la seconde est que les limites entre l'exceptionnalité juridique et l'exceptionnalité politique ne sont pas absolues, ce qui signifie qu'un processus constant d'exceptionnalisation du droit peut permettre l'apparition d'espaces d'exceptionnalité politique. En résumé, cette recherche permet de comprendre les transformations de l'ordre juridique et politique de la Colombie, sans tomber dans des affirmations superficielles qui l'assimilent à un ordre dictatorial ou soucieux de garanties. Au contraire, la thèse cherche à montrer de manière précise les particularités historiques, juridiques et politiques. En ce sens, la recherche alimente le débat sur le rôle de l'État, du droit et de la violence dans les sociétés actuelles. ; (DROI - Sciences juridiques) -- UCL, 2021

The research analyses the role that law and the state of exception have played in the development and transformation of the Colombian state. This research shows, on the one hand, the enormous amount of research that has been carried out on the legal and political situation in Colombia and, on the other hand, the lack of a clear analysis of the relationship between law, violence and the state of exception. This relationship is transcendental if one seeks to understand the transformation of current states. For this reason, the thesis is built around the link between law and violence, which is manifested in the rule of law-state of exception dichotomy. This allows us to understand the development of Janus states, i.e. highly repressive and violent constitutional regimes. The case of Colombia exemplifies the situation of a Janus state that establishes the protection of rights, respect for the law and democracy as the foundation of its institutions, while at the same time coexisting with armed conflict, state violence and social inequality. This disconnect between, on the one hand, institutions and legal guarantees and, on the other hand, the application of law and reality, is neither uniform nor absolute. On the contrary, it is fragmentary and relative because it depends on the territory and the way in which power relations intervene in the articulation of the political and legal order. In order to understand the nature and character of a state such as the Colombian state, a characterization of legal and political normality and exceptionality was developed that includes the flexibility and fluidity of power relations, without resorting to closed definitions that are problematic when analyzing social phenomena. In such a way that this analysis allows for a discussion of the transformation undergone by various states in general. In this sense, the thesis goes beyond the conventional legal definitions of the state of exception, since it is possible to construct a broad analysis thanks to the study of major authors. However, as the research progressed, it became clear that it was necessary to construct, firstly, a characterization that would make it possible to study the various manifestations of exceptionality, both extreme and moderate, and secondly, a differentiation between normality and legal and political exceptionality. Two tasks that could not be achieved without the help of various theories that, beyond their differences, coincided in studying the relations between law, politics and violence. Taking these elements into consideration, the thesis poses two key questions. Firstly, it seeks to establish what was the mechanism or phenomenon that allowed legal exceptionality, concretized in the indiscriminate use of the state of exception, to continue during legal normality, and secondly, it seeks to determine what is the characterization of normality and legal and political exceptionality in Colombia? The answers to these questions are structured throughout the three parts of the thesis by means of two analyses, on the one hand, the theoretical analysis in which the characterization of normality and legal and political exceptionality is constructed in a general way and, on the other hand, the historical-legal analysis that aims to articulate this characterization with the specific case of Colombia. These analyses are in constant tension, which enriches the research and the debate. The first part of the paper provides a general characterization of normality and exceptionality structured around five fundamental elements. First, the characterization is permeable to social phenomena. Secondly, the analysis is based on a value judgement that must be located in a specific space, i.e. it is a judgement that indicates whether a phenomenon is favorable or unfavorable for the development of social life, which is located within the republican tradition and the rule of law. Thirdly, the characterization indicates that not everything that escapes normality is harmful, since the tensions between the normal and the abnormal often allow institutions to adapt. Fourthly, the characterization admits levels and variations because it does not respond to ideal models. Therefore, for there to be legal normality, it is not necessary for all law to be applied, since it is a recognized fact that normative systems function through the administration of illegalities. Fifthly, the categories of normality and exceptionality allow for a critical analysis of constitutional states. From this general characterization carried out in the first part of the thesis, the second part of the thesis seeks to characterize the normality and exceptionality of the Colombian state. To achieve this objective, firstly, the legal regime of the state of exception in Colombia is studied; secondly, an assessment of the role of the three branches of public power in relation to the state of exception is carried out; thirdly, symptomatic phenomena of the process of exceptionalities of law are analyzed; and fourthly, the characterization of the Colombian case is structured. Finally, in the third part of the thesis, a study is made of two presidential periods in which manifestations of the state of exception, the process of the exceptionalities of law and political exceptionality can be appreciated. These periods were chosen because they represent key moments in Colombia's recent history in which the manifestations of exceptionality were extreme. The articulation of the three parts of the thesis makes it possible to characterize Colombia's legal and political normality and exceptionality, hence some key elements stand out. Firstly, it is important to point out that legal exceptionality during the period of the 1886 Constitution, especially throughout the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by the instrumentalization of the state of siege as a form of government. It was used to restrict citizens' rights, exclude fundamental issues for the community from democratic debate and impose a political and economic project. Subsequently, the legal normality established by the 1991 Constitution did not mean a break with the process of exceptionalities of law, although it did mean a break with the tendency to maintain the state of emergency permanently. This assertion is based on the fact that the constitutional and democratic order was altered by the process of the exceptionalities of law. This was manifested through phenomena such as constitutional reformism and the fetishism of the law, which allowed the political order to continue despite the instrumental ineffectiveness of the legal order. And the alternative orders that were maintained and generated hybridizations with the state legal order. In this scenario, legal normality fulfilled the function of concealing both the hybridizations between the state legal order and the alternative orders and the spaces of political exceptionality. Secondly, the process of the exceptionalities of law is integrated into political normality as a mechanism for preserving and opposing changes that alter the status quo of political power. This process can thus be said to affect political normality from the top down when political power promotes a raison d'état in which derivative interests take precedence over formal interests. This transformation was achieved through the development of a set of exceptional techniques such as clientelism, political violence and corruption that ended up influencing institutionalist and social life. Likewise, the process of exceptionalities was structured from the bottom up through micro-level power relations in which exceptional forms and alternative orders emerged and permeated the state's legal and political order. Thirdly, the historical fragmentation of the state is also part of the political normality that originates in the selective strengthening and differentiated presence of state organization. Similarly, state weakness is another distinctive feature that is reflected in the state's extreme dependence on politico-economic elites. However, this weakness contrasts with the macro-level stability of the state, which is based on factors such as the elites' ability to adapt clientelist and landlord structures to the demands of the capitalist system. Fourthly, in political normality, two facets of the state can be identified: on the one hand, a democratic state that guarantees real political competition, the rule of law, the continuity of the economic system and formal equality of access to income distribution, and, on the other hand, an exclusive and fragmented state that is guided by derivative ends, leading to the concentration of political power, capital and land in the hands of an elite. Fifth, political exceptionality is characterized by its intermittency, since it is not a generalized phenomenon that affects the entire territory, and by the predominance of political exceptionality in the dominant sense. Sixth, it is important to highlight two conclusions that emerge throughout the thesis. The first is that violence has both a destructive and a constructive capacity that allows it to shape power relations, as can be seen in the emergence of alternative orders. And the second is that the boundaries between legal exceptionality and political exceptionality are not absolute, i.e. a process of constant exceptionalities of law can give way to the emergence of spaces of political exceptionality. In sum, the research allows us to understand the transformations of Colombia's legal and political order without falling into superficial assertions that categories it simply as dictatorial or guarantees. On the contrary, the thesis seeks to show precisely the historical, legal and political particularities. In this sense, the research contributes to the debate on the role of the state, law and violence in today's societies. These societies are facing great challenges without adequately dimensioning the profound transformations that the legal and political orders have undergone in recent decades. ; La thèse chercher à comprendre le rôle du droit et de l'état d'exception dans le développement et la transformation des États actuels et en particulier de l'État colombien. Cette thèse a amené à découvrir, d'une part, l'énorme travail de recherche qui a été mené sur la situation juridique et politique de la Colombie et, d'autre part, l'absence d' analyse mettant clairement en évidence la relation entre le droit, la violence et l'état d'exception. Une relation qui s'avérait transcendantale lorsqu'il s'agit de chercher à comprendre la transformation des États. Pour cette même raison, la thèse est construite autour de la relation qui existe entre droit et violence, lien explicite dans la dichotomie État de droit-État d'exception. Ceci permet de saisir la mise en place d'États Janus, c'est-à-dire de régimes constitutionnels hautement répressifs et violents. Le cas colombien illustre la situation d'un État Janus qui établit la protection des droits, le respect de la loi et de la démocratie comme fondement de ses institutions, tout en coexistant avec le conflit armé, la violence étatique et les inégalités sociales. Cette déconnexion entre, d'un côté, les institutions et les garanties juridiques et, de l'autre, l'application du droit et la réalité, n'est ni uniforme ni absolue. Au contraire, elle est fragmentaire et relative puisqu'elle est fonction du territoire et de la manière dont les relations de pouvoir interviennent dans l'articulation de l'ordre politique et juridique. Afin de pouvoir comprendre la nature et le caractère d'un État comme l'État colombien. Cette recherche a opéré une caractérisation de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique qui inclurait la flexibilité et la fluidité des relations de pouvoir, sans recourir à des définitions hermétiques toujours problématiques pour l'analyse de phénomènes sociaux. De sorte que la thèse permettra d'ouvrir le débat sur les transformations enregistrées par la Colombie, mais aussi plus généralement par divers autres États. En ce sens, cette thèse va au-delà des définitions juridiques conventionnelles sur l'état d'exception puisque, grâce à l'étude des grands auteurs, nous parvenons à élaborer une analyse approfondie.Toutefois, à mesure qu'avançait la recherche, devenait de plus en plus évidente la nécessité de construire, en premier lieu, une caractérisation qui permettrait d'étudier les diverses manifestations de l'exceptionnalité, aussi bien extrêmes que modérées, et, en second lieu, une différenciation entre normalité et exceptionnalité juridique et politique. Deux tâches irréalisables sans recourir à diverses théories qui, par-delà leurs différences, se rejoignent pour étudier les relations entre droit, politique et violence. Compte tenu de ces éléments, la thèse pose deux questions clés. En premier lieu, nous cherchons à déterminer le mécanisme ou le phénomène qui a permis que l'exceptionnalité juridique concrétisée par le recours indiscriminé à l'état d'exception puisse se poursuivre pendant la normalité juridique. Et, en second lieu, nous prétendons déterminer comment se caractérisent la normalité et l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique en Colombie. Les réponses à ces deux questions occupent les trois parties de la thèse et reposent sur le fondement de deux analyses. D'une part, l'analyse théorique sur laquelle est construite la caractérisation de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique de manière générale et, d'autre part, l'analyse historico-juridique qui prétend appliquer cette caractérisation au cas spécifique de la Colombie. Ces analyses sont en tension constante ce qui enrichit la recherche et le débat. Pour commencer, la caractérisation générale de la normalité et de l'exceptionnalité est construite autour de cinq éléments fondamentaux. En premier lieu, la caractérisation est perméable aux phénomènes sociaux. En second lieu, l'analyse part d'un jugement de valeur qui doit se situer dans un espace concret. Il s'agit, en effet, d'un jugement qui indique si un phénomène est favorable ou non au développement de la vie sociale, tel qu'il est entendu au sein de la tradition républicaine et de l'État de droit. En troisième lieu, la caractérisation indique que tout ce qui est soustrait à la normalité n'est pas préjudiciable puisque, souvent, les tensions entre normal et anormal permettent d'adapter les institutions. En quatrième lieu, la caractérisation présente des paliers et des variations car elle ne répond pas à des modèles idéaux. Par conséquent, pour qu'il y ait normalité juridique, il n'est pas nécessaire que s'applique l'intégralité du droit, car c'est un fait avéré que les systèmes normatifs fonctionnent au moyen de la gestion des illégalismes. Et, en cinquième lieu, les catégories de normalité et d'exceptionnalité permettent de mener une analyse critique des États constitutionnels. À partir de cette caractérisation générale de la première partie de la thèse, la seconde partie cherche à caractériser la normalité et l'exceptionnalité de l'État colombien. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous étudions en premier lieu le régime juridique de l'état d'exception en Colombie. En second lieu, nous faisons le bilan du rôle des trois branches des pouvoirs publics en relation avec l'état d'exception. En troisième lieu, nous analysons des phénomènes symptomatiques du processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit et, en quatrième lieu, nous mettons en évidence le cas colombien. Finalement, dans la dernière partie de la thèse, nous nous livrons à une étude de deux périodes présidentielles qui nous permettent d'apprécier des manifestations de l'état d'exception, du processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit et de l'exceptionnalité politique. Nous avons choisi ces périodes car elles représentent des moments clés de l'histoire récente de la Colombie pendant lesquels les manifestations de l'exceptionnalité ont été extrêmes. L'articulation des trois parties de la thèse permet de caractériser la normalité et l'exceptionnalité juridique et politique de la Colombie. C'est pour cela que nous reprenons certains éléments clé. En premier lieu, il convient de signaler que l'exceptionnalité juridique pendant toute la durée de la Constitution de 1886, notamment pendant les années 70 et 80, s'est caractérisée par l'instrumentalisation de l'état de siège comme forme de gouvernement. L'état de siège a été utilisé pour restreindre les droits des citoyens, exclure du débat démocratique des matières fondamentales pour la communauté et imposer un projet politique et économique. Postérieurement, la normalité juridique instaurée par la Constitution de 1991 n'a pas constitué une rupture avec le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit, mais avec la tendance à maintenir l'état d'exception de manière permanente. Cette affirmation s'appuie sur le fait que l'ordre constitutionnel et démocratique a été altéré par le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit. Ceci a été illustré par des phénomènes comme le réformisme constitutionnel et le fétichisme de la loi qui permettaient la continuité de l'ordre politique, malgré l'inefficacité instrumentale de l'ordre juridique. Et, de même, par les ordres alternatifs qui se sont maintenus et ont généré des hybridations avec l'ordre juridique étatique. Dans ce scénario, la normalité juridique a eu pour fonction d'occulter les hybridations entre l'ordre juridique étatique et les ordres alternatifs, aussi bien que les espaces d'exceptionnalité politique. En second lieu, le processus d'exceptionnalisation du droit s'intègre à la normalité politique comme un mécanisme qui permet de conserver et de s'opposer aux changements qui altèrent le statu quo du pouvoir politique. Nous pouvons ainsi affirmer que ce processus affecte la normalité politique de haut en bas lorsque le pouvoir politique encourage une raison d'État où priment les intérêts dérivés sur les intérêts formels. Cette transformation est devenue effective grâce à la mise en place d'un ensemble de techniques exceptionnelles comme le clientélisme, la violence politique et la corruption qui ont fini par influer sur l'institutionnalité et la vie sociale. De même, le processus d'exceptionnalisation s'est structuré de bas en haut grâce aux relations de pouvoir au niveau micro d'où ont surgi des formes exceptionnelles et des ordres alternatifs qui se sont infiltrés dans l'ordre juridique et politique étatique. En troisième lieu, la fragmentation historique de l'État relève aussi de la normalité politique qui tire son origine du renforcement sélectif et de la présence différenciée de l'organisation étatique. De même, la faiblesse étatique est un autre trait distinctif qui se reflète dans la dépendance extrême de l'État par rapport aux élites politico-économiques. Toutefois, cette faiblesse s'oppose à une stabilité de l'État au niveau macro dont le fondement réside dans des facteurs comme la capacité des élites d'adapter les structures clientélistes et celles des propriétaires terriens aux exigences du système capitaliste. En quatrième lieu, dans la normalité politique on peut identifier deux facettes de l'État avec, d'un côté, un État démocratique qui garantit un vrai affrontement politique, le maintien en vigueur du droit, la continuité du système économique et l'égalité formelle d'accès à la distribution du revenu et, de l'autre, un État exclusif et fragmenté guidé par des fins dérivées provoquant la concentration entre les mains d'une élite politique des capitaux et des terres. En cinquième lieu, l'exceptionnalité politique est caractérisée par son intermittence puisque ce n'est pas un phénomène généralisé qui affecte tout le territoire. Enfin, en sixième lieu, il convient de mettre en exergue deux conclusions qui s'imposent tout au long de la thèse. La première est que la violence a une capacité destructive et une capacité constructive qui lui permet de façonner les relations de pouvoir, comme nous le voyons avec l'éclosion des ordres alternatifs. Et la seconde est que les limites entre l'exceptionnalité juridique et l'exceptionnalité politique ne sont pas absolues, ce qui signifie qu'un processus constant d'exceptionnalisation du droit peut permettre l'apparition d'espaces d'exceptionnalité politique. En résumé, cette recherche permet de comprendre les transformations de l'ordre juridique et politique de la Colombie, sans tomber dans des affirmations superficielles qui l'assimilent à un ordre dictatorial ou soucieux de garanties. Au contraire, la thèse cherche à montrer de manière précise les particularités historiques, juridiques et politiques. En ce sens, la recherche alimente le débat sur le rôle de l'État, du droit et de la violence dans les sociétés actuelles. ; (DROI - Sciences juridiques) -- UCL, 2021

La palabra "pampa" en el sudeste de América del Sur se refiere a las amplias llanuras, a veces levemente onduladas, cubiertas de pastizales. Las pampas junto con otros pastizales de similares características abarcan parte de las provincias políticas de Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, La Pampa, Misiones, San Luis, Santa Fe en la República Argentina, el estado de Rio Grande do Sul y áreas pequeñas de los estados de Santa Catarina y Paraná en la República Federativa de Brasil, los departamentos de Misiones, Itapuá, Paraguarí y Caazapá en la República del Paraguay y toda la República Oriental del Uruguay. El enorme territorio abarcado por estos pastizales, con más de 760000 km2, lo convierte en uno de los mayores y más variados del mundo, con gradientes climáticos, edáficos y topográficos amplísimos y distintas unidades de vegetación. Diversas comunidades edáficas, como bosques, selvas marginales, vegetación casmófita y comunidades psamófilas, se intercalan en esta matriz de pastizales conformando "islas" y corredores biogeográficos. Los pastizales de las pampas y campos constituyen ambientes muy frágiles. Las invasiones biológicas en las planicies y el desplazamiento de la fauna y flora más delicada ya se advertían desde el siglo XIX. Los pastizales pampeanos constituyen la zona de producción agrícola-ganadera más antigua de Argentina y han sufrido gran pérdida de paisajes, hábitat y biodiversidad naturales por los cambios de uso de la tierra. Lo que antes era una matriz de pastizal natural con parches de cultivo, se transformó en una matriz de cultivo de la cual paulatinamente han desaparecido los parches de pastizal natural. Esto pone en riesgo la sobrevivencia de flora y fauna nativa por la destrucción, fragmentación o pérdida de calidad del hábitat original, la introducción de competencia de animales domésticos, la caza y la contaminación con agroquímicos. A pesar de estas problemáticas solo está protegida una proporción ínfima de los pastizales pampeanos. Los pastizales pampeanos han sido delimitados biogeográficamente como Provincia Pampeana (PP) por autores como Cabrera y Willink en 1973, Soriano et al. en 1992 y Morrone en 2014, con divergencia de opiniones en cuanto a los límites de la PP y de sus unidades internas denominadas distritos. Por ejemplo, algunos consideran que el límite oeste de la PP está dado por el inicio de los bosques de la Provincia del Espinal mientras que otros consideran que el Espinal forma parte de la PP. También algunas comunidades edáficas como los bosques y humedales del sistema fluvial del Plata, las dunas costeras marinas, o las sierras de Ventania, han sido objeto de discusión por su difícil ubicación biogeográfica en los distritos de la PP dado que su biota es muy diferente a la de los pastizales. Algunos autores incluso sugirieron la posibilidad de que pertenezcan a otras provincias biogeográficas. Para superar todas estas limitaciones se propone en esta tesis una nueva delimitación de la PP y de sus distritos, y la identificación de áreas de la PP que sean prioritarias para su conservación. Para la delimitación de la PP y sus unidades se propuso un nuevo abordaje que implica tratar los taxones por separado: (1) analizar la distribución de los taxones animales y vegetales netamente pampeanos, es decir, de pastizales y bosques xerófilos (Espinal), estén presentes o no también en las comunidades edáficas; (2) analizar la distribución de los taxones animales y vegetales que habitan exclusivamente las comunidades edáficas. Posteriormente, se integran los resultados en un esquema de regionalización. Para la conservación de áreas prioritarias se utilizó el mapa de Áreas Valiosas de Pastizal (AVP´s) en el que se ubican las áreas de pastizal en buen estado de conservación de la región. Los objetivos de esta tesis son: 1) Definir y delimitar la provincia Pampeana (PP) como un área de endemismo (ADE) mediante la superposición de la distribución geográfica de sus taxones endémicos. 2) Establecer distritos biogeográficos como ADE menores anidadas dentro de la PP sobre la base de métodos biogeográficos basados en la división del área de estudio en polígonos (Análisis de parsimonia de endemismos, Análisis de agrupamientos, NMDS). 3) Establecer el grado de pertenencia de ciertas comunidades edáficas de la PP (e.g., bosques y humedales de la Baja Cuenca del Plata, dunas costeras marinas, sierras de Ventania) y otras áreas problemáticas (caldenal y brazo de pastizales Puntano-Pampeanos) sobre la base del método de superposición de sus taxones endémicos y el análisis de la proporción de corotipos. 4) Integrar toda la información obtenida en los ítems anteriores (e.g., nueva regionalización, endemismos, conexión entre las poblaciones, fragilidad ecológica, grado de fragmentación de ciertos ambientes) para identificar si existen ADE que quedan fuera del sistema actual de áreas protegidas en la PP. Las hipótesis que sustentan esta tesis son: 1. La superposición de la distribución geográfica de diversos taxones permite establecer un ADE que se corresponde con la unidad biogeográfica denominada Provincia Pampeana (PP). Los límites de esta ADE no necesariamente coinciden en toda su extensión con los esquemas biogeográficos vigentes. 2. Los métodos biogeográficos basados en polígonos permiten establecer ADE menores que se corresponden con unidades biogeográficas dentro de la PP (distritos, subdistritos, sectores). Los límites de estas ADE no necesariamente coinciden en toda su extensión con los esquemas biogeográficos vigentes. 3. El método biogeográfico de superposición permite establecer que algunas comunidades edáficas actualmente incluidas en la PP están más relacionadas con otras provincias biogeográficas y, por lo tanto, deberían ser excluidas de la PP. 4. Toda la información obtenida en este estudio es relevante para fijar los objetivos de conservación de futuras áreas protegidas y para establecer áreas que son prioritarias para conservar. Algunas de estas áreas no están contenidas dentro del sistema actual de áreas protegidas. La primera etapa del trabajo consistió en un análisis exhaustivo de las principales regionalizaciones previas de la PP para delimitar el área inicial de estudio, la cual se subdividió en 217 hexágonos de 50 km de lado. Utilizando criterios muy rigurosos, se seleccionaron los taxones a utilizar en la tesis: plantas vasculares, insectos, arácnidos y vertebrados. Se recopiló la información distribucional de los taxones seleccionados a partir material bibliográfico, bases de datos, ejemplares de colecciones y numerosos viajes de campo incluyendo lugares poco explorados. En cada uno de esos datos se aseguró la confiabilidad de la identificación taxonómica. En total se compilaron 2449 registros de 208 taxones que sirvieron para construir la matriz básica de datos de hexágonos por especie. La matriz se analizó con métodos biogeográficos modernos que emplean polígonos: a) métodos jerárquicos como Análisis de Simplicidad de Endemismos y Análisis de Agrupamientos; y b) métodos no jerárquicos de ordenación como Escalado Multidimensional no Métrico (NMDS, nonmetric multidimensional scaling). En los dos casos se usó el programa de computación R v. 4.0.2. A estas técnicas se sumó el método de superposición que consiste en el solapamiento de las distribuciones geográficas de especies sobre un mapa para reconocer las áreas de coincidencia entre dos o más de ellas. En la segunda etapa, se evaluó qué áreas de la PP tienen escasa protección de su biodiversidad. Para ello se mapearon las unidades preexistentes de conservación de la biodiversidad de los sistemas nacionales o provinciales de áreas protegidas en la PP, se las comparó con el mapa de distritos y subdistritos que resultó de los pasos anteriores y se evaluó en qué zonas haría falta establecer más unidades de conservación. Para evaluar cuáles son las áreas prioritarias para la conservación de la biodiversidad en la PP, se utilizó el mapa de Áreas Valiosas de Pastizal (AVP´s) en el que se ubican las áreas de pastizal en buen estado de conservación de la región. Se señalaron: A. Aquellas AVP´s ubicadas en hexágonos de mayor riqueza de endemismos (hexágonos con registros de más de diez especies de las que fueron utilizadas en la matriz básica de datos. B. Las AVP´s ubicadas en hexágonos en donde se registran microendemismos. Se consideró que una especie es microendémica en los casos en que la distribución geográfica es de menor extensión areal que el hexágono en el que se ubica. Las AVP´s que cumplen con los dos criterios, A y B, se consideran de mayor prioridad que las que suman solo uno de ellos o ninguno. Los resultados arrojaron una nueva delimitación de la PP, con tres distritos biogeográficos y 11 subdistritos: Provincia Pampeana Distrito Pampas Argentinas Subdistrito Pampeano Occidental Subdistrito Pampa Deprimida e Interserrana Subdistrito Pampa Pedemontana Subdistrito Pampa Ondulada y Entrerriana Subdistrito Pampa Cordobesa Distrito Uruguayo-Mesopotámico Subdistrito Campos Gaúchos Subdistrito Cuchilla de Haedo Subdistrito Campos Australes Subdistrito Campos Misionero-Correntinos Subdistrito de los Ñandubayzales Subdistrito del Espinal Perideltaico Distrito Dunas Atlánticas Este nuevo esquema fue comparado con las regionalizaciones anteriores, con la historia geológica y climática y con la ecología de la región, hallando similitudes y diferencias con los autores previos. Desde el punto de vista de la conservación de la biodiversidad, se detectaron AVP's con un alto número de taxones endémicos: los pastizales de Chasicó a Villa Iris, la Laguna Salada Grande de Madariaga (Buenos Aires), Cerrilladas – llanura periserrana del Sistema de Tandilia (Buenos Aires), el Refugio de Vida Silvestre Morro Santana (Rio Grande do Sul), los Campos de la frontera oeste (Rio Grande do Sul) y los Pastizales intersticiales del litoral del Río Uruguay (Uruguay). Estas áreas poseen pastizales bien conservados, alta riqueza de endemismos pampeanos y especies microendémicas. Al comparar las áreas resultantes con el actual mapa de áreas protegidas de la PP, se halló que estas últimas son insuficientes y no representan adecuadamente la biodiversidad de esta provincia. Existe actualmente un mayor énfasis en la protección de humedales mientras que la biota de la PP, en su mayoría, no es una biota de zonas húmedas, sino que está adaptada a la estacionalidad hídrica y térmica, y en algunos casos a los incendios periódicos. ; The word "pampas" in southeastern South America refers to the wide, sometimes slightly undulated plains covered with grasslands. The pampas along with other grasslands of similar characteristics cover part of the political provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, La Pampa, Misiones, San Luis, Santa Fe in Argentina, the state of Rio Grande do Sul and areas of the states of Santa Catarina and Paraná in Brazil, the departments of Misiones, Itapuá, Paraguarí and Caazapá in Paraguay and the entire Uruguay. The enormous territory covered by these grasslands, with more than 760,000 km2, makes it one of the largest and most varied in the world, with very wide climatic, edaphic, and topographic gradients and different vegetation units. Diverse edaphic communities, such as forests, marginal forests, casmophyte vegetation and psamofilic communities, are interspersed in this matrix of grasslands, forming "islands" and biogeographic corridors. The grasslands of the pampas and fields constitute very fragile environments. Biological invasions and the displacement of the most delicate fauna and flora had already been noticed since the 19th century. Pampa grasslands constitute the oldest agricultural-livestock production area in Argentina and have suffered great loss of landscapes, habitat, and natural biodiversity due to changes in land use. What was previously a natural grassland matrix with crop patches, has been transformed into a crop matrix from which the natural grassland patches have gradually disappeared. This puts the survival of native flora and fauna at risk due to the destruction, fragmentation, or loss of quality of the original habitat, the introduction of competition from domestic animals, hunting and contamination with agrochemicals. Despite these problems, only a tiny proportion of the Pampas grasslands are protected. The Pampean grasslands have been biogeographically delimited as Pampean Province Pampeana (PP) by authors such as Cabrera and Willink in 1973, Soriano et al. in 1992 and Morrone in 2014, with differing opinions regarding the limits of the PP and its internal units called districts. For example, some consider that the western limit of the PP is given by the beginning of the forests of the Espinal Province, while others consider that the Espinal is part of the PP. Also, some edaphic communities such as the forests and wetlands of the Río de La Plata system, the coastal marine dunes, or the Ventania mountain ranges, have been the subject of discussion due to their difficult biogeographic placement in the districts of the PP since their biota is very different from that of the grasslands. Some authors even suggested the possibility that they belong to other biogeographic provinces. In order to overcome all these limitations, a new delimitation of the PP and its districts is proposed in this thesis, together with the identification of areas of the PP that are a priority for their conservation. For the delimitation of the PP and its units, a new approach was proposed that involves treating the taxa separately: (1) to analyze the distribution of Pampean animal and plant taxa, that is, of grasslands and xerophilous forests (Espinal), whether they are present or not also in the edaphic communities; (2) to analyze the distribution of animal and plant taxa that exclusively inhabit edaphic communities. Subsequently, the results are integrated into a regionalization scheme. For the conservation of priority areas, the map of Valuable Grassland Areas (AVP's) was used, in which the grassland areas in a good condition of conservation in the region are located. The objectives of this thesis are: 1) To define and delimit the Pampean Province (PP) as an area of endemism (ADE) by overlapping the geographical distribution of its endemic taxa. 2) To establish biogeographic districts as minor ADE's nested within the PP on the basis of biogeographic methods based on the division of the study area into polygons (Parsimony analysis of endemicity, Cluster analysis, NMDS). 3) To establish the degree of belonging of certain edaphic communities of the PP (e.g., forests and wetlands of the Lower Plata Basin, coastal marine dunes, Sierra de Ventania) and other problem areas (caldenal and Puntano-Pampean grasslands) on the basis of the method of superposition of their endemic taxa and the analysis of the proportion of chorotypes. 4) To integrate all the information obtained in the previous items (e.g., new regionalization, endemisms, connection between populations, ecological fragility, degree of fragmentation of certain environments) to identify if there are ADE's that fall outside the current system of protected areas in the PP. The hypotheses that support this thesis are: 1. The overlapping of the geographical distribution of multiple taxa allows establishing an ADE that corresponds to the biogeographic unit called Pampean Province (PP). The limits of this ADE do not necessarily coincide completely with current biogeographic schemes. 2. Polygon-based biogeographic methods allow establishing smaller ADEs that correspond to biogeographic units within the PP (districts, sub-districts, sectors). The limits of these ADE's do not necessarily coincide completely with the current biogeographic schemes. 3. The biogeographic method of overlapping allows establishing that some edaphic communities currently included in the PP are more related to other biogeographic provinces and, therefore, should be excluded from the PP. 4. All the information obtained in this study is relevant for setting the conservation objectives of future protected areas and for establishing priority areas to conserve. Some of these areas are not contained within the current system of protected areas. The first step of this work consisted of an exhaustive analysis of the main previous regionalizations of the PP to delimit the initial study area, which was subdivided into 217 hexagons of 50 km on each side. Using very rigorous criteria, the taxa to be used in the thesis were selected: vascular plants, insects, arachnids, and vertebrates. The distributional information of the selected taxa was compiled from the literature, databases, collection specimens and numerous field trips including poorly explored places. In each of these data, the reliability of the taxonomic identification was ensured. In total, 2449 records of 208 taxa were compiled that were used to build the basic matrix of hexagons by species. The matrix was analyzed with modern biogeographic methods that use polygons: a) hierarchical methods such as Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity and Cluster Analysis; and b) non-hierarchical ordering methods such as Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS). In both cases, the R v. 4.0.2. computer program was used. It was also employed the overlapping method that consists of superimposing the geographic distributions of species on a map to recognize the coincident areas of two or more of them. In the second step, the areas of the PP that have little protection of their biodiversity was evaluated. The pre-existing units of biodiversity conservation of the national or provincial systems of protected areas in the PP were mapped, they were compared with the map of districts and sub-districts that resulted from the previous steps, and it was evaluated in which areas it would be necessary to establish more conservation units. To evaluate which are the priority areas for the conservation of biodiversity in the PP, the map of Valuable Pasture Areas (AVP's) was used, in which the grassland areas in good conservation status of the region are located. There were highlighted: A. Those AVP's located in hexagons with the highest endemic richness (hexagons with records of more than ten species). B. AVP's located in hexagons with microendemisms. A species was considered as microendemic when its geographic distribution area is minor than the hexagon in which it is located. The AVP's that meet the two criteria, A and B, are of higher priority. The results yielded a new delimitation of the PP, with three biogeographic districts and 11 sub-districts: Pampean Province Distrito Pampas Argentinas Subdistrito Pampeano Occidental Subdistrito Pampa Deprimida e Interserrana Subdistrito Pampa Pedemontana Subdistrito Pampa Ondulada y Entrerriana Subdistrito Pampa Cordobesa Distrito Uruguayo-Mesopotámico Subdistrito Campos Gaúchos Subdistrito Cuchilla de Haedo Subdistrito Campos Australes Subdistrito Campos Misionero-Correntinos Subdistrito de los Ñandubayzales Subdistrito del Espinal Perideltaico Distrito Dunas Atlánticas This new scheme was compared with previous regionalizations, with the geological and climatic history and with the ecology of the region, finding similarities and differences with previous authors. From the biodiversity conservation point of view, the AVP's with a high number of endemic taxa were detected: the grasslands from Chasicó to Villa Iris, the Laguna Salada Grande de Madariaga (Buenos Aires), Cerrilladas - periserrana plain of the Tandilia System (Buenos Aires), the Morro Santana Wildlife Refuge (Rio Grande do Sul), the fields of the western border (Rio Grande do Sul) and the interstitial grasslands of the Uruguay River coast (Uruguay). These areas have well-preserved grasslands, high richness of pampean endemisms and microendemic species. When comparing the resulting areas with the current map of protected areas of the PP, it was found that the latter are insufficient and do not adequately represent the biodiversity of this province. There is currently a greater emphasis on the protection of wetlands while the PP biota, for the most part, is not a hygrophylous biota but is adapted to hidric and thermal seasonality, and in some cases to periodic fires. ; Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo

Social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups, together with public policy and management objectives. The essay indicates and discusses the most important contemporary problems, solving of which requires social innovations.

Social innovations precondition the progress of civilisation. The world needs not only new technologies, but also new solutions of social and institutional nature that would be conducive to achieving social goals.

Social innovations are experimental social actions of organisational and institutional nature that aim at improving the quality of life of individuals, communities, nations, companies, circles, or social groups. Their experimental nature stems from the fact of introducing unique and one-time solutions on a large scale, the end results of which are often difficult to be fully predicted. For example, it was difficult to believe that opening new labour markets for foreigners in the countries of the European Union, which can be treated as a social innovation aiming at development of the international labour market, will result in the rapid development of the low-cost airlines, the offer of which will be available to a larger group of recipients. In other words, social innovations differ from economic innovations, as they are not about implementation of new types of production or gaining new markets, but about satisfying new needs, which are not provided by the market. Therefore, the most important distinction consists in that social innovations are concerned with improving the well-being of individuals and communities by additional employment, or increased consumption, as well as participation in solving the problems of individuals and social groups [CSTP, 2011]. In general, social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups together with the objectives of public policy and management [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017]. Their implementation requires global, national, and individual actions. This requires joint operations, both at the scale of the entire globe, as well as in particular interest groups.

Why are social innovations a key point for the progress of civilisation? This is the effect of the clear domination of economic aspects and discrimination of social aspects of this progress. Until the 19th century, the economy was a part of a social structure. As described by K. Polanyi, it was submerged in social relations [Polanyi, 2010, p. 56]. In traditional societies, the economic system was in fact derived from the organisation of the society itself. The economy, consisting of small and dispersed craft businesses, was a part of the social, family, and neighbourhood structure. In the 20th century the situation reversed – the economy started to be the force shaping social structures, positions of individual groups, areas of wealth and poverty. The economy and the market mechanism have become independent from the world of politics and society. Today, the corporations control our lives. They decide what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do [Bakan, 2006, p. 13].

The corporations started this spectacular "march to rule the world" in the late 19th century. After about a hundred years, at the end of the 20th century, the state under the pressure of corporations and globalisation, started a gradual, but systematic withdrawal from the economy, market and many other functions traditionally belonging to it. As a result, at the end of the last century, a corporation has become a dominant institution in the world. A characteristic feature of this condition is that it gives a complete priority to the interests of corporations. They make decisions of often adverse consequences for the entire social groups, regions, or local communities. They lead to social tensions, political breakdowns, and most often to repeated market turbulences. Thus, a substantial minority (corporations) obtain inconceivable benefits at the expense of the vast majority, that is broad professional and social groups. The lack of relative balance between the economy and society is a barrier to the progress of civilisation.

A growing global concern is the problem of migration. The present crisis, left unresolved, in the long term will return multiplied. Today, there are about 500 million people living in Europe, 1.5 billion in Africa and the Middle East, but in 2100, the population of Europe will be about 400 million and of the Middle East and Africa approximately 4.5 billion. Solving this problem, mainly through social and political innovations, can take place only by a joint operation of highly developed and developing countries. Is it an easy task? It's very difficult. Unfortunately, today, the world is going in the opposite direction. Instead of pursuing the community, empathic thinking, it aims towards nationalism and chauvinism. An example might be a part of the inaugural address of President Donald Trump, who said that the right of all nations is to put their own interests first. Of course, the United States of America will think about their own interests. As we go in the opposite direction, those who deal with global issues say – nothing will change, unless there is some great crisis, a major disaster that would cause that the great of this world will come to senses.

J.E. Stiglitz [2004], contrary to the current thinking and practice, believes that a different and better world is possible. Globalisation contains the potential of countless benefits from which people both in developing and highly developed countries can benefit. But the practice so far proves that still it is not grown up enough to use its potential in a fair manner. What is needed are new solutions, most of all social and political innovations (political, because they involve a violation of the previous arrangement of interests). Failure to search for breakthrough innovations of social and political nature that would meet the modern challenges, can lead the world to a disaster. Social innovation, and not economic, because the contemporary civilisation problems have their roots in this dimension.

A global problem, solution of which requires innovations of social and political nature, is the disruption of the balance between work and capital. In 2010, 400 richest people had assets such as the half of the poorer population of the world. In 2016, such part was in the possession of only 8 people. This shows the dramatic collapse of the balance between work and capital. The world cannot develop creating the technological progress while increasing unjustified inequalities, which inevitably lead to an outbreak of civil disturbances. This outbreak can have various organisation forms. In the days of the Internet and social media, it is easier to communicate with people. Therefore, paradoxically, some modern technologies create the conditions facilitating social protests. There is one more important and dangerous effect of implementing technological innovations without simultaneous creation and implementation of social innovations limiting the sky-rocketing increase of economic (followed by social) diversification. Sooner or later, technological progress will become so widespread that, due to the relatively low prices, it will make it possible for the weapons of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons, to reach small terrorist groups. Then, a total, individualized war of global reach can develop. The individualisation of war will follow, as described by the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck.

To avoid this, it is worth looking at the achievements of the Polish scientist Michał Kalecki, who 75 years ago argued that capitalism alone is not able to develop. It is because it aggressively seeks profit growth, but cannot turn profit into some profitable investments. Therefore, when uncertainty grows, capitalism cannot develop itself, and it must be accompanied by external factors, named by Kalecki – external development factors. These factors include state expenses, finances and, in accordance with the nomenclature of Kalecki – epochal innovations. And what are the current possibilities of activation of the external factors? In short – modest. The countries are indebted, and the basis for the development in the last 20 years were loans, which contributed to the growth of debt of economic entities. What, then, should we do? It is necessary to look for cheaper solutions, but such that are effective, that is breakthrough innovations. These undoubtedly include social and political innovations. Contemporary social innovation is not about investing big money and expensive resources in production, e.g. of a very expensive vaccine, which would be available for a small group of recipients. Today's social innovation should stimulate the use of lower amounts of resources to produce more products available to larger groups of recipients.

The progress of civilisation happens only as a result of a sustainable development in economic, social, and now also ecological terms. Economic (business) innovations, which help accelerate the growth rate of production and services, contribute to economic development. Profits of corporations increase and, at the same time, the economic objectives of the corporations are realised. But are the objectives of the society as a whole and its members individually realised equally, in parallel? In the chain of social reproduction there are four repeated phases: production – distribution – exchange – consumption. The key point from the social point of view is the phase of distribution. But what are the rules of distribution, how much and who gets from this "cake" produced in the social process of production? In the today's increasingly global economy, the most important mechanism of distribution is the market mechanism. However, in the long run, this mechanism leads to growing income and welfare disparities of various social groups.
Although, the income and welfare diversity in itself is nothing wrong, as it is the result of the diversification of effectiveness of factors of production, including work, the growing disparities to a large extent cannot be justified. Economic situation of the society members increasingly depends not on the contribution of work, but on the size of the capital invested, and the market position of the economic entity, and on the "governing power of capital" on the market. It should also be noted that this diversification is also related to speculative activities. Disparities between the implemented economic and social innovations can lead to the collapse of the progress of civilisation.

Nowadays, economic crises are often justified by, indeed, social and political considerations, such as marginalisation of nation states, imbalance of power (or imbalance of fear), religious conflicts, nationalism, chauvinism, etc. It is also considered that the first global financial crisis of the 21st century originated from the wrong social policy pursued by the US Government, which led to the creation of a gigantic public debt, which consequently led to an economic breakdown. This resulted in the financial crisis, but also in deepening of the social imbalances and widening of the circles of poverty and social exclusion. It can even be stated that it was a crisis in public confidence. Therefore, the causes of crises are the conflicts between the economic dimension of the development and its social dimension.

Contemporary world is filled with various innovations of economic or business nature (including technological, product, marketing, and in part – organisational). The existing solutions can be a source of economic progress, which is a component of the progress of civilisation. However, economic innovations do not complete the entire progress of civilisation moreover, the saturation, and often supersaturation with implementations and economic innovations leads to an excessive use of material factors of production. As a consequence, it results in lowering of the efficiency of their use, unnecessary extra burden to the planet, and passing of the negative effects on the society and future generations (of consumers). On the other hand, it leads to forcing the consumption of durable consumer goods, and gathering them "just in case", and also to the low degree of their use (e.g. more cars in a household than its members results in the additional load on traffic routes, which results in an increase in the inconvenience of movement of people, thus to the reduction of the quality of life).

Introduction of yet another economic innovation will not solve this problem. It can be solved only by social innovations that are in a permanent shortage. A social innovation which fosters solving the issue of excessive accumulation of tangible production goods is a developing phenomenon called sharing economy. It is based on the principle: "the use of a service provided by some welfare does not require being its owner". This principle allows for an economic use of resources located in households, but which have been "latent" so far. In this way, increasing of the scope of services provided (transport, residential and tourist accommodation) does not require any growth of additional tangible resources of factors of production. So, it contributes to the growth of household incomes, and inhibition of loading the planet with material goods processed by man [see Poniatowska-Jaksch, Sobiecki, 2016]. Another example: we live in times, in which, contrary to the law of T. Malthus, the planet is able to feed all people, that is to guarantee their minimum required nutrients. But still, millions of people die of starvation and malnutrition, but also due to obesity. Can this problem be solved with another economic innovation? Certainly not! Economic innovations will certainly help to partially solve the problem of nutrition, at least by the new methods of storing and preservation of foods, to reduce its waste in the phase of storage and transport. However, a key condition to solve this problem is to create and implement an innovation of a social nature (in many cases also political). We will not be able to speak about the progress of civilisation in a situation, where there are people dying of starvation and malnutrition.

A growing global social concern, resulting from implementation of an economic (technological) innovation will be robotisation, and more specifically – the effects arising from its dissemination on a large scale. So far, the issue has been postponed due to globalisation of the labour market, which led to cheapening of the work factor by more than ten times in the countries of Asia or South America. But it ends slowly. Labour becomes more and more expensive, which means that the robots become relatively cheap. The mechanism leading to low prices of the labour factor expires. Wages increase, and this changes the relationship of the prices of capital and labour. Capital becomes relatively cheaper and cheaper, and this leads to reducing of the demand for work, at the same time increasing the demand for capital (in the form of robots).

The introduction of robots will be an effect of the phenomenon of substitution of the factors of production. A cheaper factor (in this case capital in the form of robots) will be cheaper than the same activities performed by man. According to W. Szymański [2017], such change is a dysfunction of capitalism. A great challenge, because capitalism is based on the market-driven shaping of income. The market-driven shaping of income means that the income is derived from the sale of the factors of production. Most people have income from employment. Robots change this mechanism. It is estimated that scientific progress allows to create such number of robots that will replace billion people in the world. What will happen to those "superseded", what will replace the income from human labour? Capitalism will face an institutional challenge, and must replace the market-driven shaping of income with another, new one. The introduction of robots means microeconomic battle with the barrier of demand. To sell more, one needs to cut costs. The costs are lowered by the introduction of robots, but the use of robots reduces the demand for human labour. Lowering the demand for human labour results in the reduction of employment, and lower wages. Lower wages result in the reduction of the demand for goods and services. To increase the demand for goods and services, the companies must lower their costs, so they increase the involvement of robots, etc.

A mechanism of the vicious circle appears

If such a mass substitution of the factors of production is unfavourable from the point of view of stimulating the development of the economy, then something must be done to improve the adverse price relations for labour. How can the conditions of competition between a robot and a man be made equal, at least partially? Robots should be taxed. Bill Gates, among others, is a supporter of such a solution. However, this is only one of the tools that can be used. The solution of the problem requires a change in the mechanism, so a breakthrough innovation of a social and political nature. We can say that technological and product innovations force the creation of social and political innovations (maybe institutional changes). Product innovations solve some problems (e.g. they contribute to the reduction of production costs), but at the same time, give rise to others.

Progress of civilisation for centuries and even millennia was primarily an intellectual progress. It was difficult to discuss economic progress at that time. Then we had to deal with the imbalance between the economic and the social element. The insufficiency of the economic factor (otherwise than it is today) was the reason for the tensions and crises. Estimates of growth indicate that the increase in industrial production from ancient times to the first industrial revolution, that is until about 1700, was 0.1-0.2 per year on average. Only the next centuries brought about systematically increasing pace of economic growth. During 1700- 1820, it was 0.5% on an annual average, and between 1820-1913 – 1.5%, and between 1913-2012 – 3.0% [Piketty, 2015, p. 97]. So, the significant pace of the economic growth is found only at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Additionally, the growth in this period refers predominantly to Europe and North America. The countries on other continents were either stuck in colonialism, structurally similar to the medieval period, or "lived" on the history of their former glory, as, for example, China and Japan, or to a lesser extent some countries of the Middle East and South America. The growth, having then the signs of the modern growth, that is the growth based on technological progress, was attributed mainly to Europe and the United States.

The progress of civilisation requires the creation of new social initiatives. Social innovations are indeed an additional capital to keep the social structure in balance. The social capital is seen as a means and purpose and as a primary source of new values for the members of the society. Social innovations also motivate every citizen to actively participate in this process. It is necessary, because traditional ways of solving social problems, even those known for a long time as unemployment, ageing of the society, or exclusion of considerable social and professional groups from the social and economic development, simply fail. "Old" problems are joined by new ones, such as the increase of social inequalities, climate change, or rapidly growing environmental pollution. New phenomena and problems require new solutions, changes to existing procedures, programmes, and often a completely different approach and instruments [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017].