Volume (7): Issue (3)

Throughout the period of nearly two decades nicknamed the long sixties, youth practices and speeches obtained their own autonomy and frequently reached the top of radical criticism regarding the socio-economic, cultural and political models that were in place. Mainly spreading from universities, these dynamics articulated themselves at certain times quite significantly with specificities according to each country’s own reality. This article intends to testify to the main characteristics of the student protests that took place in Portugal in the final years of the Estado Novo (New State, 193274) and also to note the distances and approaches between these student movements and those that were developing during that time in the democratic western countries.

The 1980s developed the sociology of the body and the sociology of emotions. Both thematise embodiment and argue that traditional specialised social theories are not useful in understanding body or emotion as social study objects. My proposal is to consider a review of classic sociological intuitions about embodiment, taking into account the new understanding of cerebral neurobiology of emotions and feelings, personal and social. The present article refers to a study of Damasio’s theory applying to social emotions, developing it to look at sociological fields, as politics of modernity. Human are mutable beings according to our special genetic ability to adapt. We adapt, as people and groups, by conquering nature, but also by transforming our bodies, our minds and our souls in manners we feel and know to be useful for each occasion. The social study of human feelings (the key of human transformism out of reductionist rational choice theory) is not only a new subject: it is a proposal for a theoretical turn in social theory. To do that we can take the same path of neural biology proposed by Damasio.

In this article, an assessment is made of media images and representations of immigration and ethnic minorities in Portugal, focusing on the late-1990s and the early years of the 21st century. Globalisation factors and the European context are considered, as well as the specifics of Portugal, with the major representation/construction and presentation cycles being introduced. The role of the press is underlined, although the main focus is on Portuguese television’s role in the creation of stereotypes of immigrant communities. The coverage of these themes is being analysed by Portuguese and European regulators through the implementation of scientific studies and training programmes for journalists.

This paper delves into the background of the formative dynamics of the 13th Constitutional Government led by the socialist Antnio Guterres and aims primarily at providing insight into the genuine criteria governing Guterres’s selection of ministers and portfolio allocation. It will also shed light upon the background causes leading to the six reshuffles that the cabinet went through in its lifetime. This work argues that Guterres’s selection of ministers was a priori conditioned by the dynamics and success of the Estados Gerais. Eventually, however, it came to obey a tripartite formula the formula of the three Ps: old pals, party allies and prominent independents. With the unfolding of the governmental mandate, as the meritocratic logic underlying that formula exhibited major limitations, the process of de-selection of ministers led to the retrenchment of the distinguished independents in favour of the party allies within the cabinet.