Suchergebnisse

The present text has as objective not only to define the concepts of "moral", "ethics" and "aesthetics of existence", in the periods studied by Michel Foucault, but also to capture their significant differences, in view of the orientation towards the possibility of an ethical-political in and of the present time. Such arche-genealogical studies of Classical Greece (4th century BC), of the Greco-Roman period (1st and 2nd century AD) and of Christianity (3rd and 4th centuries AD), show that these concepts maintain their mark, by the use of techniques aimed at achieving temperance and an increasing and detailed care of itself. The stylization of life gained forms of the most varied in this historical process, based on practices that sometimes approached the moral attitude of the ethical attitude. This flexibility of the uses of concepts, consequently of historical and cultural practices, brings in Foucault the opening of thought in the search for a political attitude towards acts, thoughts and freedom.

AbstractThis research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the "Campanha do Trigo" (Wheat Campaign) in Portugal, which began in 1929. It is commonly understood that the excessive expansion of wheat crops during the fascist "Estado Novo" (New State) regime led to the degradation of soils in the southern half of Portugal. This relationship, however, has never been questioned before. This article extends the narrative back into the last half of the nineteenth century in search of the origin of processes that gradually intensified throughout the country. In short, expansion of the cultivated area in association with the inadequate intensification of crop rotations over about 80 years, from the 1870s onward, including in non-wheat areas, strongly accentuated soil erosion and made organic fertilization progressively less effective. These transformations were only partially offset by chemical fertilization. Nitrogen and phosphorus were the key factors in this historical process. Focusing on the cultivation system and soil dynamics allows the successive integration of various kinds of historical evidence and sources. From an environmental question—why did agricultural soil degrade?—this article explores soil degradation over time and space, and assesses its social and biophysical impacts. At the same time, it addresses the history of agriculture in Portugal and its disciplinary foundations.