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The linguistic phenomenon of ambiguity is concrete in the speech of those who speak any language and, by providing a duplicity of meanings, it usually generates doubts in the receiver of the statement. Thus, the second interlocutor takes more time to process the information and make the appropriate correlations. The objective of our reading comprehension study was to test the hypothesis that there is a syntactic function and position preference when there are ambiguous sentences formed by a temporal clause and a main clause with a null pronoun. These experimental sentences have both female and male proper nouns as subject and object. In this off-line experiment, ten English language students answered a Google Forms form with the same experimental sentences (16) and other distractors (32), in order to check their syntactic preferences between subject and object. As a result, it can be said that the null pronouns' correlference was mostly with the subject of the subordinate clause in canonical position. We conclude, therefore, that there is a compatibility of results with the predictions made by the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH) based on Carminati (2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to understand the status of the body in the work The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, more specifically in chapter 1 of the first volume, “the data of biology”. If it is true that the description of the body is not enough to define what a woman is - allowing the French philosopher to move away from determinism and essentialism -, it is also true that it is a fundamental element for the understanding of the women. Thus, we will try to demonstrate that, in Beauvoir’s existentialist moral, the body neither determines nor is forgotten, but constitutes itself as being, at the same time, a thing of the world and a point of view about the world, facticity and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For philosophical hermeneutics, understanding is a universal phenomenon, which, therefore, is not restricted to procedural rules or any method. However, the former faces a problem when, on the one hand, it pretends to be a non-methodical way of understanding and, on the other hand, at the same time, it defends some "rules" for a proper understanding. That said, this article aims to elucidate this ambiguity and to show some possible consequences. First, we briefly show the argument in defense of the universality of hermeneutics and, therefore, how the natural sciences would be implied by it. Next, we point to some of the normative aspects that seem to compose the understanding phenomenon, as presented to us by Gadamer. Finally, we conclude that a dialogue between philosophical hermeneutics and the natural sciences is necessary not only for interpretative purposes, overcoming possible conflicts and contradictions of this philosophy, but also for contributing to scientific activity in general, making it - perhaps - more conscious and vigilant about its historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main features of José Saramago's fictional prose is the reflection on the use of language and, in particular, the lexicon. No other recent Portuguese author has or has had such an evident and reiterated concern. In Saramago's works, we find at each step an author that is concerned to explain to the reader the use of a certain word, reflecting on its origin and semantic peculiarities. Many of these reflections may be considered part of what in linguistics is known as implicit lexicography (VERDELHO, 1995), which refers to the act of recording, in the text itself, lexicographic or dictionarystyle definitions. Implicit lexicography occurs whenever an author presents a definition of a word or expression, with the aim of clarifying its meaning or avoiding ambiguity. The objective of this study is to identify in José Saramago's fictional works the passages in which the author presents lexicographic definitions. Such definitions are well-marked in the text and are easily distinguished from the rest of the discourse, although they are also part of it. The second term of the definition is often introduced by the verbal form é ('is'), as in «um machuco é um chaparro novo», although the author makes use of other expressions: quer dizer ('that is to say'), isto quer dizer ('this means'), isto é ('that is'), significa ('it means'), maneira de dizer ('another way of saying'), para quem não saiba ('for those who don't know'), etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the vast musical work of Francisco Mignone, there are seventy-four pieces written for two pianos. As piano I, integrate this collection not only his own compositions, but pieces for solo piano by other composers as Ernesto Nazareth, Zequinha de Abreu, Waldemar Henrique, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez. To compose this repertoire, Mignone used Funcional Juxtaposition as a working strategy, combining existing musical ideas from his colleagues with his own inventive process: the two pianos perform original pieces that dialogue and combine, can be performed as solo pieces. This compositional method sometimes confers functional ambiguity to the pieces, offering possibilities of individual interpretation to the parts originally composed by Mignone, and, when juxtaposed in duo, they are interpreted simultaneously. Through this paper we intend to reveal and argument how Mignone manipulated part of his work and illustrate the understanding of juxtaposition as a compositional strategy and interpretation of the repertoire in focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I propose a discussion on the problem of the imputation of immoral decisions in Kant's practical philosophy. Firstly, I argue that this problem is a consequence of an ambiguity in Kant's conception of the "subjective constitution" of the human will, named impure or rationally imperfect, and of the cooperation of rationality and sensibility in the authorship of its choices. This ambiguity leads to the insolvable hermeneutical dilemma between a will that is responsible for choices made by its natural impulses and a pure will (practical reason) that deliberately chooses against reason in the form of immoral agency. Secondly, I expose and confront the popular solution that takes the imputation of immoral actions as a pseudo-problem and embraces a definition of human freedom -- as the power of choice for or against morality -- that Kant explicitly rejects and must reject, due to his own theses in his major grounding works on morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the hypothesis of parameters for the expression of comparison and degree constructions discussing data from Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Beck et alii (2009) and Beck, Oda and Sugisaki (2004) propose three parameters: i) the language has degree predicates (DSP -- Degree Structure Parameter); ii) the language has or does not have binding of degree variables in the syntax (DAP -Degree Abstraction Parameter); and iii) the language has a syntactic degree argument filled (DegPP -- Degree Phrase Parameter). Languages with negative setting in the DSP do not show any degree construction at all, especially comparative constructions with an expression like "more". The DAP explains structures with binding of degree variables in the syntax, like comparative clauses with scope ambiguities. At last, there is the impossibility of filling the syntactic degree argument of gradable adjectives with measure phrases (cf. *2 metros alto/2 meters tall). This fact is explained by a negative setting in the DegPP. It is shown that BP receives positive setting in the first ones but negative setting in the last. It is also discussed degree interrogatives and measure phrases like 2 metros de altura "2 meters of height". The paper concludes that these structures should be better discussed to understand their place in the degree parameter hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural relations between Portugal and Latin America revolve around a long history of dependence that, especially from the 20th century onwards, became a reciprocal dialogue for the literature of both regions. A high point of this dialogue is found between Latin American magical realism and Portuguese literature after the Carnation Revolution (1974). This text proposes to analyze two novels from these literary traditions: O senhor presidente (1946), by Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Memorial do convento (1982), by José Saramago, aiming to understand the configuration of the categories of the sacred and the profane in the conceptual mesh of narratives. An anthropological perspective is adopted to understand the sacred/profane dyad while holding to assumptions dear to the tradition inaugurated by Émile Durkheim and explored by R. Caillois and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It was found that O senhor presidente (1946) maintains an ambiguity between essence and appearance in the configuration of the sacred and profane system, destabilizing a fixed logic of relations between the categories. The system of sacred and profane in Memorial do convento (1982) undergoes a process of inversion operated primarily in the voice of the narrator. This inversion is related to the two narrative planes that intertwine and oppose each other in the same contextual background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we present a critical overview of the various investigations carried out to date on the subject/object asymmetry in the comprehension of relative clauses in Spanish. We review the findings reached so far through different experimental techniques and offer an overview of what these discoveries contribute to the discussion of the main theoretical proposals on sentence comprehension. We focus on four aspects of relative clauses in Spanish that can enrich the hypotheses that we have so far: (i) the structural ambiguity, (ii) the variety of relative types in Spanish (headed, false-free and free), (iii) the order of constituents and (iv) the animacity information and the gender, number and case of the nominals of the relatives. Thus, we try to identify what we know, what remains to be understood, and what are the most relevant directions of research in Spanish in order to inform contemporary theoretical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering all its elements, cinema is perhaps the most complete artistic form of communication since it simultaneously encapsulates visual, musical, and linguistic components. Hal Ashby’s film, Being there, precisely addresses this linguistic dimension by asking: to which extent are our linguistic interactions grounded upon misunderstandings? The film, based on the novel of the same title by Jerzy Kosiński, is grounded in a diegetic structure that addresses issues of misinterpretation in verbal language and the role of phenomena such as polysemy and metaphor in these misunderstandings and various linguistic interactions. This text attempts to analyze, by following the character of Chance (the gardener) and his interactions with the remaining characters, especially on a linguistic level, how the film introduces the relationship of personal cognitive frameworks that construct us as human individuals and how these are expressed by the verbal language, especially by the metaphorical process. Finally, the study examined how utterly unequal and misleading frameworks may still work in parallel universes of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The game established by the narration in O irmão alemão, by Chico Buarque (2014), motivates the discussion about the aesthetic- narrative procedures that establish the enunciative ambiguity. For, we contextualize the notion of author, based on Chartier (1999), Sartre (1999), Darnton (2010) and Foucault (2009), to develop an analysis from the perspective of topics such as "author's death" (BARTHES, 2012; COMPAGNON, 2010), "author-creator" (BAKHTIN, 2011) and "author function" (FOUCAULT, 2009). Studies by Lejeune (2014) and Ricouer (1993) support the debate about the intertwining of autobiographical and fictional aspects in the narrative plot. In the narrative plot, the writer becomes narrator and reader, co-author, modifying himself through the reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the Tennessee Williams's Japanese phase (1957-1969). Therefore, it focuses on the influence of playwright Yukio Mishima, the Noh and Kabuki Theatres, and the countercultural aesthetics of off and off-Broadway in the late plays. In this way, the article contextualizes the set of works from that period, in addition discuss the circumstances of social, historical, cultural, and biographical context of the playwright. It also identifies expedients that made them distinct from those plays most celebrated: self-destruction, cannibalism, extreme violence, and death. That said, we conclude that Williams develops a narrative that explores emptiness, stillness, silence, incompleteness, ambiguity of life and death, oriental culture and doctrines, in addition to metateatrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to investigate the extent to which curricular practices are innovative and provide the improvement of teaching-learning processes. For this, we will make a theoretical foray on autonomy and the role of the teacher in the elastic and innovative management of the curriculum. Thus, we privilege the bibliographic collection and the questionnaire, which were applied to the teachers. Although exceptional cases of teachers are recognized who, by their own daring, try to adopt new ways of organizing and managing the curriculum, the results obtained show some conceptual ambiguities, and allow us to infer that the number of teachers who know, use and build the skills is still insignificant their own margins of autonomy, conditioned the development of innovative curricular practices and consequent improvement of learning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze, from the experimental methodology, the variation between te and lhe clitics as direct object. Some studies claim that lhe, originally a dative clitics of 3SG, is reinterpreted in Brazilian Portuguese as an accusative of 2SG, e.g.: "Eu lhe vi" after expansion of você form in the pronominal system (Ramos 1999; Almeida 2009; Souza 2014). Thus, lhe vary with te at accusative context. To analyze the cognitive counterpart of this variation, I developed a self-paced reading test, applied to participants of two Brazilian States (Rio de Janeiro and Ceará). In the experiment, I tested some recurrent assumptions in literature about the topic: (i) the referential ambiguity of clitics lhe and (ii) the diatopic conditioning about the use of lhe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates some ambiguities present in Max Weber's conception of modernity, especially concerning the centrality of reason as an analytical category and as a model of social practices. For this, the arguments of the text have as their starting point a constructionist conception of modernity which argues that the sociological and philosophical theories of modernity are self-descriptions that modern thinkers have made of modernity. The discussion is also supported by the presupposition that the Weberian conception of modern rationalization is due to a certain excess of positivation of rationality over irrationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article indicates traces of the pneumatology of Paul Tillich according to the study of the fourth part of his Systematic Theology, Life and the Spirit, where the author approaches the correlation between the ambiguity of life and the symbolic response of a theology of the Spirit. Firstly, the anthropological foundations are set for a theology of the irit. Then, the Presence of the Spirit of God is approached regarding space and time, historical mediations, and within the eschatological dynamic of already and not yet. Finally, before concluding with the indications of a necessary theological discernment, the Spiritual Presence is reflected upon the paradox of Churches and the appeal to open to dialogue with other religions and other ways of believing and living, where the Spirit of God works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial and continuing teacher training was instituted as an educational policy under Law No. 11,502 of July 2007; The creation of the Federal Education Network is part of the actions proposed for offering this training. This article aims to reflect on the initial teacher education proposed by the Federal Institute of Paraná (IFPR). Pedagogical Projects of Degree Courses (PPCs) in Chemistry and Physics of IFPR are analyzed through concepts of the Critical Theory of Society. These projects present ambiguities that permeate the perspective of human formation in the context of the developed industrial society, referring to the understanding of the limits of training for autonomy in a heteronomous context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to pursuit some of the transformations on the concept of cinema, to which the notions of art, market, industry, and author were aggregate during the 20th century. From the silent film, we allude to the first attempts of "cultural elevation" of the cinematographic form and, among those, to the theoretical propose of Ricciotto Canudo, who attributed to cinema the double condition of scientific and esthetic event. We also describe the authorial ambiguity of the classic Cabiria, today credited to Giovanni Pastrone while, in the past, it was credited to Gabriele D'Annunzio. Then, we point to the affirmation of the art-industry binomial in the theoretical discussions made by the Cahiers du Cinéma and the Nouvelle vague, indicating its reverberations in the underground and New Hollywood cinema of United States. Based on those premises, we show Alberto Moravia's critical resistance to the conciliation between art and market, signalizing the dichotomy between what he considered author cinema (made by Morrissey, Markopoulos, and Warhol) and commercial cinema (made by Kubrick, Coppola, Altman). By the end, we confront Moravia's to Jameson's thinking, observing the confluence of both around the idea of reification, a mark of the consumer society pictured by Andy Warhol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color vision deficiency, popularly known as color blindness, affect a portion of the population. They affect the ability of individuals to differentiate between colors and, consequently, to interpret information associated with color-coding. Based on this problem, an exploratory research was carried out, with a qualitative approach, in which we evaluated the perception of color information contained in packages. The strategy used was the technical analysis, performed by the researchers, using a color blindness simulator. Changes were observed in the levels of red, green and blue (RGB) images, with important modifications in the hue, saturation and brightness (HSB), decharacterizing the original chromatic design. The use of color blindness simulation allowed the identification of possible noises and ambiguities in the packaging interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the function of Revelation 1:7 to the mission motif in the book of Revelation. The main thesis is that Revelation 1:7 sets the tone for this theme in the entire book. The placement of the conflated quotation of Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10 in the prologue introduces a deliberate dualism calling the nations to repent or receive the coming judgment. The difficulty is in the interpretation of the prophecy of Zech. 12:10. The notion that this prophecy delineates the future of the nations in foreseeing their eschatological mourning in repentance is not widely accepted by scholarship. In the OT context of Zech. 12:10 and in its use in the Second Temple Judaism literature, the tone of judgment is altogether absent. The eschatological mourning in repentance of all the tribes of Israel is then universalized to all the tribes of the earth in the NT quotations of Zech. 12:10. Rev. 1:7 introduces four important missional themes, namely, the fulfillment of the Abrahamic blessing, the final procession of the nations to Zion, the urgent call to repentance, and a dualistic tendency of a victorious and a suffering Church in the mission-to-the-nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the perspectives by Bello (1841), Reichenbach (1947), Comrie (1990) and Rojo and Veiga (1999) on the reference point are applied to 350 data of subjunctive imperfect from 60 sociolinguistic interviews present in the Sociolinguistic Atlas of the AMREC region. The proposal is to: demonstrate to what extent these perspectives approach or distance themselves; empirically prove the application of the proposals, through qualitative-quantitative analysis; attest that time is a discursive category. Thereunto, similarities are observed in terms of explanatory power, logical resources and correlation between time and tense. The main difference resides in the vision of temporality: logical or discursive ones. Regarding to the data, 116 smples are ambiguous, if we consider Bello (1841), Reichenbach (1947) and Comrie (1990) proposals. By Rojo and Veiga (1999) proposal, because it is recursive and goes beyond sentence, it dissolves ambiguity and these data are analyzed discursively as previous or posterior or co-temporal to the reference point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of error and truth in art must be put in different terms from those that would be considered in science. Imaginative intervention necessarily leads to this difference. Hence a possible opening for a hermeneutic interpretation, whose progressivity, derived from the so-called hermeneutical circle, becomes reconcilable with an interpretative fluidity which, in the poetic word, respects its ambiguity, that is, the polysemous nature that so often is recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze some syntactic and semantic properties of free relatives and wh subordinate interrogatives, both proper and improper, developing Brito (1991), Brito & Duarte (2003), Móia (1996), Veloso (2013), Matos & Brito (2013), Mioto& Lobo (2016), correlating them with the way Óscar Lopes described these constructions; we highlight structural and semantic ambiguity of some of wh constructions. We argue for the existence of several types of free relatives, mainly ones with definite, universal and indefinite meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the results of two pretests of the perceived truth of statements about different topics. The goal of this work is to find statements that are considered ambiguous in regard to truthvalue, showing the relevance of this kind of stimuli to study biases in the perception of truth. The statements were pretested with two Portuguese samples and had two different criteria to define ambiguity. In the first pretest, a set of true statements were evaluated in a scale of truth probability and these evaluations were contrasted with those of the false version of the same statements (by altering a small detail in the true statement). Here, ambiguity was defined by both versions of a statement being evaluated as equally true/false. In the second pretest, statements were categorized in a "true/false" dichotomy and evaluated only in their true or false version. Here, ambiguity was defined equal proportions of participants that considered a statement true and participants that considered it false. Some of the ambiguous statements were pretested regarding the degree of "amusement" they promote, to control for the possible interference of affective reactions in their judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim is to discuss the film Certified copy, by Abbas Kiarostami, by initially observing some premises: the narrative ambiguously articulates semantic nuances of the expression "faithful copy" in terms of both artistic and human relations; the narrative substantially invests in stylistic strategies, as, for instance, laconism, discontinuity, and parallelism, which endow the story with uncertainty, indetermination and ambiguity. The film displaces the notions of authenticity and copy from the artistic context (mimesis) to that of human subjectivity, and, by doing that, it surprises, challenges and de-stabilizes the spectator in his/her attempt at interpretation. In Certified copy, because of the metafictional game, we are all the time induced to reflect critically, so as to take aesthetic advantage of what is not shown and said but has fundamental relevance in the film's significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the analysis of how, the literary project of Mia Couto, in O Outro Pé da Sereia, there is a questioning of time and ancestry from the aesthetic construction of space. There are, in the novel, specifically in Chapter "A travessia do tempo", metaphors able to suggest the scenario of conflicts, and their erasures arising, caused by the restaging of ancient rituals in the family Rodrigues. Such erasures are made explicit from quite ambiguous situations experienced by the main characters of the novel, Constance and Mwadia, mother and daughter, inside the mother's house, privileged space to serve as a stage to the more ambiguous conflicts. Situation that metaphorizes the current condition of Mozambique. To support this study, the works of Assman, Gamma-Khalil, Bhabha, Braunstone and Bachelard were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the influence of Resource-based Socio-environmental Strategy (RBSS) on causal ambiguity. From the perspective of the Resource-based View of the Firm (RBV), causal ambiguity works as an isolation mechanism that prevents imitation by competitors. The RBSS was operationalized by the following constructs: social orientation, stakeholder engagement, environmental improvement, and human capital. Data were analyzed using linear regression. We found that the hypotheses concerning Social Orientation and Stakeholder Engagement were partially supported, whereas the ones concerning Environmental Improvement and Human Capital were not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Italian writer Italo Svevo (1861-1928), today is world known above all for his third and most famous novel, A consciência de Zeno (Confessions of Zeno/ Zeno's conscience), published in 1923. This novel is characterized mainly by the multiplicity of their voices, the great invention of Svevo, as noted by Lavagetto (2004). The present study aims to demonstrate that this narrative multiple and "slippery" always creates ambiguity in reports narrated, this being intensified by irony, that in turn, acts as one of the founding principles of the duality perennially presented in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the origins of the Donatist controversy as a memory reconstructed in later contexts or, inversely, as a set of facts which, although obscure, could be reconstituted through a critical reading of sources. But the ambiguities in the perceptions of African Christians that were already present at the beginning of the schism and that contributed to the construction of these divergent memories must also be considered. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the different uses of rumours at the outbreak of Donatist controversy and understand the process that raised these stories to the status of beliefs that justified and delimited the identity boundaries between African Christians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the most important results, though partial, of a wider research. This research is articulated around a central question: What is the status of subjectivity in Paul Ricoeur's work? The notion of subjectivity is here confined to notions of selfhood and sameness and the problem is stated from an ambiguity marked in the distinction between the former and the latter. This status is then investigated from the contribution Ricoeur's philosophy of will may offer to the problems generated by the distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethicality of business behaviors has been under scrutiny with the recent financial scandals and corporate and employees' practices. In this study, based on data collected by survey, we compare the ethical perceptions of Portuguese (N=109) and Brazilian (N=190) business students, given a set of scenarios presenting unethical business and commercial practices. The tests use two cultural dimensions: tolerance to ambiguity and anticipations of future consequences as predictors of ethical propensity. The results denote significant differences across countries on the three dimensions, and the Brazilian are more tolerant to ambiguity and more conscious of the future consequences of their acts but also more prone to unethical behaviors. The perspective of short term gains seems to override the ambiguity and the medium and long term risks entailed in unethical behaviors. We conclude with a broad discussion and avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find the human being normally absorbed by the power of mass, impersonal, fugitive from himself. According Heidegger's diagnostic, he hides himself from finitude, temporality, through a constant engagement favored by falatory, curiosity and ambiguity. A return to itself requires the courage to the radical loneliness, the insurmountable finiteness that characterizes human existence. The capacity of loneliness creates the conditions for each one to take his own life as a project, with responsibility. We suggest that education should become a factor which helps to ensure everyone to be unable to singularize himself and be free from the massified imperatives of market logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exegesis seeks to understand how to interpret biblical ambiguities, especially in narrative texts of the Old Testament. The author seeks to show how and why the text of Judges 19 has been greatly debated in academic circles by examining different ambiguities of the text. There are many omissions of the narrator of Judges 19 that might be confusing to the 21st century reader, such as: a subjective vagueness, the anonymity of the characters, and an apparent moral silence. Thus, the author also seeks to show subsequently that, by interpreting the text of Judges 19 with the principles of narrative selectivity and of the near and far contexts in mind, the ambiguities and omissions fit together perfectly in the intended meaning in a text that speaks primarily of the absence of a king for Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "strategic design" has been used in various contexts, creating ambiguities that are linked to the fact that the very term "strategy" has a broad meaning, with different nuances. Initially treated in business administration, the study of strategies was eventually extended to other areas, along with the use of strategic planning in new environments, such as institutional ones. The vision of strategy in design followed this expansion and now also covers systemic visions, aiming not only the development of enterprises, but the search for sustainability. This article seeks to clarify the different approaches of strategic design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the so called New Law of Drugs (Law 11.343/06) – that abolished the confinement as a punishment for drug users caught in the act – the public opinion, at least in the first moment, adopted the idea that the Brazilian legal-criminal order would be heading towards less conservative forms of dealing with this complex question. However, what researchers dedicated to the subject have had the chance to notice is that this provoked an endorsement claiming for such issues to be decided, as usual, on the streets, if one may use the expression. And in this particular case, depending on the social origin (let us say so) of those caught using drugs (and not the Law), the treatment given by the policemen could vary from extortion (in the case of middle-class users) to the application of physical and moral punishments (when dealing with poor people or those living in favelas). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "versions" or "variants" has been crucial in the analyses of oral traditions. When dealing with Central African narratives of State foundation, however, the use of versions as somewhat rigid and self-contained texts leads to the emergence of apparently inconsistent and contradictory statements. Africanist historians assume that these statements should be questioned for "accuracy" and "authenticity"; structuralists reduce these inconsistencies to rather static oppositions. Both approaches, I hope to demonstrate, risk to obliterate the extreme complexity, richness and, above all, overwhelming suppleness of these narratives. A presentation of the account on the foundation of kingship as told by the Aruwund of the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows that this oral tradition should be better understood as a "constellation" of what will be called "minor narratives", recalled upon or else omitted to convey different levels of specificity and diverse symbolic emphases to the narrations. This, together with the fluidity conferred to the relationships among Ruwund titleholders by the classificatory nature of the system of "perpetual kinship", accounts for many of the apparent contradictions and makes Ruwund ideological thought a ground constantly open to different claims and interpretations. The reading of the material presented suggests paradox, ambiguity and fluidity as intrinsic qualities of these narratives and the mechanisms upon which symbolic thought is built. In doing so, this article aims at steering away from both historical approaches and the fixity of the dichotomous models so often applied to the analysis of symbolism and oral tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to describe the trajectory of gender in the social sciences, starting with the resistance which the concept encountered in the various disciplines, leading on to the ambiguity with which the topic was dealt with by the various feminist tendencies, and culminating in the development of post-modern feminist theory in the 90's. Looked at with this type of approach, which has been built up from a critical appreciation of scientific practice in the past, the object of study has shifted from the sexes themselves to the processes whereby differences between them are constructed.