Erasmus- Destino que escolheria

Apesar de fazer Erasmus não pertencer aos meus planos actuais, por várias razões externas, se tencionasse estudar fora do país, a minha escolha seria, sem dúvida, Espanha. A cidade que me deixa deslumbrada, visita após visita, ano após ano, é Granada. Conheço Granada desde os meus "pequenos" cinco anos, e, inexplicavelmente, cada vez que regresso aos mesmos locais, o brilho parece ser maior. As ruas repletas de pessoas, pouco afectadas pelo frio que se faz sentir, a alegria constante e contagiante dos habitantes, a vastidão de história que esconde aquela cidade do Sul de Espanha...O tempo parece escasso quando apreciamos a beleza do Alhambra ou da Catedral, construída no século XVI. Esta é a descrição da cidade que me toca o coração. Até me sinto um bocado espanhola!






Joana Teixeira, nº49393

If everyone consumed like the Flemish, there would be 5 of our worlds needed

The Flemish have a medium ecological footprint of 9 hectares, 40% more than in 2010. This increase of 40% is due to the possibility of having more detailed studies made about it, and so they are getting better at reaching the truth.

Belgium is doing worse in decreasing their ecological footprint than their neigbour countries. French people have 5,2 hectares, Germans 6,1 hectares, Netherlanders 6,7 hectares and the Brittish 5,9. This is mostly because buildings in Flanders are older and because they drive their cars with no one with them to work. Flemish eat diferente too, they consume a lot of vegetable oils and eat a lot of fish with high ecological footprints.

I am curious about how this is in other countries too, so feel free to comment.

Naomi Seys

Pluri-identidade

 Na última aula discutimos sobre como cada pessoa detém não apenas uma identidade, mas várias e como a sociedade de cada país vê e “aceita” cada uma dessas identidades.

 Em primeiro lugar, debatemos sobre os tipos de identidades de género (sexual). Chegamos à conclusão que geralmente as pessoas só identificam dois dos três tipos de género, isto é, para nós uma pessoa nasce homem ou mulher ponto! Esquecendo-nos assim daquelas pessoas que nascem com ambos os sexos, os intersexuais. Concluímos também, que apesar de vivermos numa sociedade que defende a igualdade entre géneros esta ainda não foi alcançada, pois o género masculino ainda detém um papel dominante na sociedade e que existe uma grande desigualdade entre estes dois géneros e o terceiro, uma vez que o último nem é reconhecido como tal pela sociedade.

 Em segundo lugar, discutimos como a orientação sexual é vista e aceite pela sociedade, a orientação que é mais aceite na sociedade portuguesa é a heterossexualidade, a homossexualidade, bissexualidade e transexualidade ainda não são bem aceites pela sociedade; concluímos também que muitas das vezes os próprios governos não dão os mesmos direitos aos seus cidadãos com orientações distintas da suposta “normal”, pois em alguns países estes ainda não podem casar-se, e noutros apesar de poderem casar não podem adotar em conjunto, como é o caso de Portugal.

 De seguida, falamos sobre como a sociedade vê cada faixa etária. A meu ver, os adultos são a faixa etária dominante na sociedade portuguesa, quanto aos idosos e as crianças desempenham um papel mais submisso na sociedade. O papel do idoso na sociedade portuguesa sofreu mudanças drásticas, se no tempo dos nossos pais e avós os idosos eram visto como figura de respeito, autoridade e sabedoria, atualmente toda essa caracterização do idoso desapareceu, hoje em dia são muitas das vezes menosprezados e vistos como um “fardo” pela sociedade.  

 A identidade étnica e racial também foi um dos temas abordados, remetendo-nos para tópicos como o racismo e a xenofobia. A meu ver, a sociedade portuguesa ainda é um tanto ou quanto racista e xenófoba, já não tanto com as pessoas de origem negra, apesar de ainda existir, mas mais com a etnia cigana e com os emigrantes de leste da europa. Penso que grande parte do xenofobismo e racismo que existe actualmente é criado, fundamentado e alimentado pelos estereótipos que existem sobre certas comunidades, etnias e raças, nem sempre correspondendo a verdade.

 Quanto à temática “identidade religiosa”, em Portugal a religião da maioria da população, cerca de 81%, é a religião Católica, mas existem muitas mais religiões em Portugal como é o caso da religião Judaica, Islâmica, Budista, Evangelista, entre outras. Sendo maioria da população católica, grande parte dos feriados que existem em Portugal estão ligados à religião católica, apesar do nosso estado considerar-se laico, ou seja, sem religião. Quanto as restantes religiões, não são muito abordadas na sociedade, muitas vezes temos conhecimento da sua existência, mas não conhecemos as suas tradições e costumes.

 O último tópico debatido foi a identidade de classe, em Portugal o escalão social de cada individuo é determinado pelo seu rendimento económico. Antes da crise económica existia, por assim dizer, três tipos de classes com a crise económica deixou de haver classe média, grande parte da dita “classe média” passou a pertencer à classe baixa, existindo assim actualmente apenas duas classes.

 Em suma, não detemos apenas uma identidade, mas várias sendo estas aqui apresentadas apenas algumas delas; não devemos esconder ou ocultar nenhuma das identidades que nos caracterizam, apesar de serem aceites ou não pela sociedade, pois ao faze-lo estamos a esconder parte de nós.

The diversity of identities between cultures

In the previous lesson (in the 31st Octuber 2014), we had talk about seven themes that some of them are different between cultures, some are not. The diferences between gender identitiy, the first topic to be analysed, are some, in every country. We have Men, Women and in some cases a person who is men and women at the same time, called “afroditas”. The first dominates the second although through times the dominance became smaller. Women have gained some equality but not enough to stand the position of men in the society. The second topic was the sexual identity. The heterossexual is considered “normal” worldwide and the homossexual, the bissexual and the transgener are not equaly seen as the first, being sometimes discriminated by those who are “normal”. Another topic was the Age. There are the young ones, the adults and the seniors. For some countries like Czech Republic or Latvia the old people are respected, threaten the way that they deserve. But we get into a conclusion that the age hierarchy in Portugal its a little bit different. The adults are in the highest point in our imagine pyramid and below we have the children and the seniors, being the last, sometimes victim of abuse and despised. Racial and Ethnical identities were also a theme to discuss. There are the caucasian people, the black people, asian people, and the east folk associated to the gypcies. In general, everyone agreed that the gipsians are in the last stand, and this happens beacause, being a nomad folk, the relationships between the native locals are few. In the portuguese case, as well as western countries,  people are mainly  caucasian and black. The religious point is also an important one. In Portugal and Spain the main religion is the Catholicism or Christianism., and in Brasil we have also the Evangelist. Christianism domains and the Judaism, the Protestant, the Hinduism, and Budism follows next. The crisis of society standard was the last point to be seen. It is divided in every country by three steps: poor people, media class people and rich ones. But in Portugal now there are only two steps: the poor and the rich.

Every culture, this one influenced by the past,  covers every diversity that exists in a determinated  country. Some things are equal such as the gender identity or the Racial/Ethnical identity and some are not such as the religious identity and the class identity. Diversity is the part of change and we need to accept it.

Perception of various identities models in the Czech Republic

In terms of gender identity, I think women and men are almost equal in our country. We have many "self-made women" who show that we are as good as men even in doing business and "men things". However there is apparently still a difference in salaries according to gender, people say. It`s hard to find out because we don`t speak much about our incomes, we pretend that the conditions are equal but I heard some stories proving the opposite. It was very interesting note from Rossy who mentioned than in the Czech Republic, women have just one surname - given by the father. We don`t take mother`s surname and when we marry, we usually overtake our husband`s surname. This could be a sign of men-dominance in our country and probably it really is - a tradition revealing from values of our society, however I don`t feel that way. I don`t feel oppressed by men because I`m having my father`s name, and I probably will overtake my husband`s surname when I marry and I will be happy to do that, because for me it`s an honour, a sign of love - I`ll be happy that there is someone who wants to connect his life with mine "forever" by having the same surname. And it also makes sense in terms of logic - when there is a new marriage, there is soon gonna be a new family, so you have to have 1 name, under which the family will be united.
But yes, men might be still a step ahead women in Czech hierarchy.
Besides these two main genders, we don`t talk much about transgenders in the Czech Republic. Me myself, I don`t know any (but I know some transvestites) and about intersexuals I`ve heard in the last lesson of Intercultural Communication for the first time. But it`s probably truth that society itself wants to remain "bi-gender", may be because we are scared of uncertainty - of our lack of knowledge about intersexual people.

Sexual identity is in the Czech Republic very interesting topic now. We are experiencing increasing number of homosexuals, mostly homosexual men. In my opinion almost every third man is gay and almost every handsome man is homosexual. That makes me worry a little because if this trend continues, humans/or at least Czechs will be in extinction. Nowadays many high posts in companies are occupied by gay men (or Slovaks .. or combination...) and we say "a pink Mafia" runs Prague, because we believe they intentionally want to stay together so they help each other to get to the highest posts, and discriminate heterosexuals. But this is just in term of fields/areas I`m living/working in - communication, media, business, politics, dancing. It`s probably a very different situation in terms of craft or engineering professions.
The worst position in this hierarchy is in my opinion settled by bisexuals and transsexuals because none of the dominant group understands them. :)

Concerning age I must admit, that there is strong discrimination of old people in our country, when comes to politics and elections. The old people tend to vote communists for some reason and we all are affraid that they could bring them back. You know, there are more and more older people so their vote is very powerfull and when going to the history - the reason why we experienced a communism regime was that we ourselves actually voted for them... Also there is opinion among adults and young people that we earn our money for their pension and we already know that there will be no money for our pension when we get old. So there is this kind of animosity among us.
On the other hand, comparing to Portugal, we treat also our children bad way. We don`t treat them as equal ones, but rather as a burden or just as those who need to listen to our commands - there is usually a strong hierarchy, so the best position in Czech Republic has been occupied by "adults".

Last identity I would like to comment is the racial/ethnical identity. We say, Czechs are xenophobic and racists but there is many people different races and nationalities living in Prague or other cities freely and happily. The issue is everytime only concerning economy - "immigrants take our jobs"-beliefs and this kind of stuff. We are very hostile to Ukrainian, Russian and Slovak people but they still belong to our prevailing caucasian race. However we admire Asian people at some point - we admire their hard-workingness/diligence. But there is one race/nation we really don`t like - the gypsies. On one hand most Czech people don`t agree with discrimination of black people in United States but just little number of these ones realizes, that we act completely the same towards our gypsies. Romany nation is apparently having hard times in every country. I`m sorry for them, I wouldn`t like to be in their position. But they also sometimes don`t behave well to us, of course that`s also true. When I think about it, there might be some common animosity against nomadic nations by the society. It`s not just gypsies but also the Sami people, etc. May be we like to settle down, to have our region/territory and we don`t understand and try to push out people who don`t want to live the same. Who knows. But in my opinion, gypsies has the worst position in the world in every country comparing to other races or ethnics...

Equality in identities?

In all different cultures people have different ways of thinking about the world and the other people they live with. We all know that everyone has their own culture, their own identity, but how does that reflect on how people think of each other? Are we all equals?

In our identity, we have a lot of separate identities. Some of these are gender, sexual, age, racial/ethnic, religion and class identities. As we all compare our definitions of these, we find some interesting notions of what we think are the major and the minor identities.

Comparing gender identities, we found that most of us think that “Men” still have a bigger and more important state then “Women”, but we all seemed to forget one other gender, “Intersexual”. Seen that we all forgot about it, this is the minor gender identity in our culture. We all did know about this gender, so why did we forget it? Mainly because it is kept quiet. We are not taught about it in school and it does not come to us as something normal. It is a real problem though, because these “Intersexual” people become “Men” or “Women” at birth, by choice of their parents or the doctors. The procedure is immediately done and, when those babies grow up, they might feel like they should have been something else, maybe a man instead of a woman.

As for sexual identities, we agreed that there are three: “Heterosexual”, “Homosexual” and “Bisexual”. We also agreed that the major identity was the “Heterosexual” and the minor “Bisexual”. There is still this hierarchy about sexuality because it still does not come as normal, “it should not happen in the natural world” that, for example, two men become a couple. Also, I believe it is because the two minor sexualities still do not have the same rights as the major, in terms of marriage and adopting children. School is also an important method for to start accepting all sexualities.

I believe that in Portugal, in terms of age, the elderly are more respected than adults or children. Everyone has to respect the elderly because they have lived the most and are the most tired and need to be put first. Children, on the other hand, are seen as trouble makers and therefore disrespected by the rest. They are always the ones who did wrong. I don’t agree with this idea, I think it is a stereotype and a bad one. Not everyone is the same.

As we looked at the other identities, Caucasian is still the major identity, as opposed to Black or gypsies. The Catholic Church is still viewed as the biggest religion with the most followers, even though there are many others. Last, the richest people are the ones everyone looks up to, they are the ones who can do the most, as other class identities are minor in our culture.

In sum, what we think of people depends on how we see the different identities. They are stereotyped, and it will be hard to change that. Making an equal world in terms of identities is important. It will be hard, and maybe not even possible.

Courage to be yourself in Latvia

Last time we talked about identity´s models. One of those was sexual identity. As I emphasize last time – in Latvia pubicly annoyncing that You are homosexual is a big step in her/his social life and most of the time reaction from society is negative.

Just recently (yesterday) there was a case, which is now widly discussed in Latvia and in Europe as well. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs has revealed he is gay in a tweet posted in English to his 14,000 followers. And here is his tweet “Our country has to create a legal status for all kinds of partner relationships, and I will fight for this. I know that there will quickly be mega-hysteria, but #proudtobegay. ”

This has really made as he said “ mega-hysteria” , bacause now mostly everyone has some kind of reaction or opinion. News are full of this announcement (actually not only latvian news). This has been posted in English as well. The president of Estonia as well as lithuanian foreign minister expressed their support in the step of latvian foreign minister.

But what I want to talk about is the reaction of society. Many describes minister`s step as courage, heroism, historical moment, step to tolerance. It made me think if it is really like that – to be Yourself in Latvia You have to have courage?

So as You can guess if You are heterosexual or so it called straight in Latvia, you are in higher position as homosexuals or so it called gays.

Of course from my point of view I hope that this will change. Because I realise how serious it is if in media You can read about latvian archbishop saying so mean thing “ Homosexual relationships are destroying our human identity”

I really hope that this situation is not the same in your countries and citizens can express their identities in any way they want.


You can read more here: 

About minister´s announcement
 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2824574/Latvian - Foreign- Minister- Edgars- Rinkevics- comes-gay-Twitter.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/06/gay-rights- in -eastern - europe-just-took- a-big-step-forward/

About archibishop´s announcement
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/latvian -archbishop- homosexual - relationships- are-destroying - our- human - identi

Duas linguas numa mesma região

Traz falar nas aulas sobre a identidade cultural e depois de visionar algumas partes do film fracés, saiu numa das escenas como uma das estudantes falaba sobre porque se falaba catalan e não só espanhol, ja que isto afastase da idea de mentalidade europeia.

Dende a minha propia experiencia acho que ista ideia esta errada. Eu nasci na Galicia, onde temos duas linguas oficioais: o galego e o castelan. Para min as duas são iguais e usoas sen ter preferencia por ninguma delas, não tenho problema em trocar de uma para a outra. As duas são utilizadas em todos os contextos e ligares na Galicia, ainda que as veces o castelan esta por encima do galego debido a ideas como as que fala a actriz do film. Por isso os galegos nos meu caso, o os catalans ou os vascos defendemos tanto a nosa lingua propia, porque se ja somos poucos falantes se o deijamos de fazer porque a gente de fora não a entende esta ira desaparecendo co paso dos anos, como que tamen iremos perdendo parte da nosa cultura e sobre todo da nosa identidade.

Finlmente só dizer que Galicia pertence a Espanha, e esta a Europa pelo que falar galego tamen faz parte de Europa e da mentalidade e do sentimento europeio.