Indonesia has been implemented decentralization era since 2001 in order to increasing local empowerment and local capability. During this period central government gave a all of the authority to the local government excepted authority for the political, finance,national defence, justice and religion. Beside gave the authority to the local government, central government also gave the source of the financing to the local government to meet the money follows function principle. Financial stability is the most important things on the monetary area. Many theorytical background described that decentralization have relation with the local financial stability.Using statistic approach (panel data) we could be proved that decentralization have negative relation with the local financial stability and also the other variable such as population, GRDP, constriction price index and volatility of money
Kaylash Chaudhary, Ansgar Fehnker, Jaco van de Pol, Mariëlle Stoelinga
Bitcoin is a popular digital currency for online payments, realized as a decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin keeps a ledger of all transactions; the majority of the participants decides on the correct ledger. Since there is no trusted third party to guard against double spending, and inspired by its popularity, we would like to investigate the correctness of the Bitcoin protocol. Double spending is an important threat to electronic payment systems. Double spending would happen if one user could force a majority to believe that a ledger without his previous payment is the correct one. We are interested in the probability of success of such a double spending attack, which is linked to the computational power of the attacker. This paper examines the Bitcoin protocol and provides its formalization as an UPPAAL model. The model will be used to show how double spending can be done if the parties in the Bitcoin protocol behave maliciously, and with what probability double spending occurs.
Future factory production and assembly environments require smart automation and are controlled by a massively increasing number of computers with sensorial feedback from machines, parts, products, and humans, consisting of a wide variety of different networked devices and software programs, which can be considered as one big use case of pervasive and cloud computing with vanishing boundaries between the computing and the environment, and with a strong focus on decentralized distributed computing and information storage. These new complex information processing architectures are composed of hierarchical network graphs, and require some kind of self-organization and adaptability to overcome single-point of failure and robustness constraints. The data acquired from machines and sensitive products or parts are growing at a fast rate, leading to a large data volume that must be handled distributed with pre-processing, map- and reduce, and filtering algorithms. Mobile Agents can be deployed in such large-scale and hierarchical network environments crossing barriers transparently, for example, industrial manufacturing and assembly environments, the Internet, Sensor Networks, and Cyber-Physical Systems. The networks can consist of high- and low-resource nodes ranging from generic computers to microchips, and the supported network classes range from body area networks to the Internet including any kind of sensor and ambient network. Mobile Agents can perform distributed computation in an autonomous manner.In this work Agents are represented by mobile program code that can be modified at run-time by the Agents themselves. The presented approach enables the development of sensor clouds and smart systems of the future integrated in daily use computing environments and the Internet. Agents can migrate between different hardware and software platforms by migrating the program code of the agent, which embeds the control state and the private data of an agent, finally encapsulated in self-initializing and self-containing code frames.This cross-platform interoperability is ensured by a modular and scalable Agent Processing Platform. The entire information exchange and co-ordination of Agents with other Agents and the environment is performed by using a Tuple Space database, unifying the platform and architecture specific data representation. The Tuple Space is used for any kind of information exchange including program code and directory and file system services mapped on the Tuple Space. Beside architecture specific hardware and software implementations of the agent processing platform, there is a JavaScript (JS) implementation layered on the top of a distributed co-ordination and management layer including distributed file and name services. The JS platform enables the integration of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) in Internet server and application environments (e.g., WEB browser). Agents can migrate transparently between different classes of computing devices and environments, ranging from hardware-level sensor networks (embedded in technical structures) to WEB browser applications or network servers without any required transformation.
Abstract This paper is an analysis of the role reputation plays in the Deep Web using data from the Internet black-market site, The Silk Road. This encrypted online marketplace employed cryptocurrency and functioned over the Tor network. Utilizing a modeling technique, informed by trade auction theory, we investigate the effect of seller reputation. Analysis of the seller's reputation gives us insights into the factors that determine the prices of goods and services in this black marketplace. Data on cannabis listings is parsed from the Silk Road website and covers an 11-month time period, from November 2013 to October 2014. This data demonstrates that reputation acts as a sufficient self-enforcement mechanism to allow transactions. These findings exemplify the robustness of spontaneous order with respect to the Deep Web as an emergent marketplace.
The need to protect our cultural heritage was stressed on revitalization of historical city centers in communities. The main aim of this research is to attract finance and activities to the historical city centers through the citizens and municipalities participation while cities expanded their boundaries toward suburban areas. Today the main problems which facing to the most historical city centers, is loss of their centrality through effect of urbanization on any point of the cities which is the most important issue on neglect and abandonment of the historical central area by decentralizing living, commerce and public areas. This article evaluate the ways in which city center revitalization can be effect on vitality and viability of the central area in case of Naghshe Jahan square which situated at the center of Isfahan city, Iran. Constructed between 1598 and 1629, it is now an important historical site, and one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
Bitcoin was created in 2009 to serve as a virtual currency system outside the controls of the government or a central bank. Since then, both the cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology have attracted significant attention worldwide. Several companies already accept payment for goods and services in Bitcoin, with the attraction being low processing costs and ease of use in cross-border transactions.
Can the parties to a conctract agree that the consideration should be paid in bitcoins? Or will this obligation be qualified as the delivery of 'objects'?
Bitcoin is defined as digital money within a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network. It is a hybrid between fiat currency and commodity currency without intrinsic value and independent of any government or monetary authority. This paper analyses the question of whether bitcoin is a currency or an asset and, more specifically, what is its current usage and what usage will prevail in the future, given its characteristics? We analyse the statistical properties of bitcoin and find that it is essentially uncorrelated with traditional asset classes such as stocks, bonds and commodities, both in normal times and in periods of financial turmoil. The analysis of transaction data of bitcoin accounts shows that bitcoins are mainly used as a speculative investment and not as an alternative currency and medium of exchange. Bitcoin is still small relative to the size of other asset classes and, thus, does not pose an immediate risk for monetary, financial or economic stability.
We introduce LOCATHE (Location-Enhanced Authenticated Key Exchange), a generic protocol that pools location, user attributes, access policy and desired services into a multi-factor authentication, allowing two peers to establish a secure, encrypted session and perform mutual authentication with pre-shared keys, passwords and other authentication factors. LOCATHE contributes to: (1) forward secrecy through ephemeral session keys; (2) security through zero-knowledge password proofs (ZKPP), such that no passwords can be learned from the exchange; (3) the ability to use not only location, but also multiple authentication factors from a user to a service; (4) providing a two-tiered privacy authentication scheme, in which a user may be authenticated either based on her attributes (hiding her unique identification), or with a full individual authentication; (5) employing the expressiveness and flexibility of Decentralized or Multi-Authority Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption, allowing multiple service providers to control their respective key generation and attributes.
The Bitcoin system is an anonymous, decentralized crypto-currency. There are some deanonymizating techniques to cluster Bitcoin addresses and to map them to users' identifications in the two research directions of Analysis of Transaction Chain (ATC) and Analysis of Bitcoin Protocol and Network (ABPN). Nowadays, there are also some anonymization methods such as coin-mixing and transaction remote release (TRR) to cover the relationship between Bitcoin address and the user. This paper studies anonymization and de-anonymization technologies and proposes some directions for further research.
In recent years, global governance institutions have operationalized their commitment to the right to health by advocating for universal health coverage (UHC) – particularly in the Global South. UHC aims to develop health systems that are efficient, well staffed, and capable of providing affordable and appropriate medical care and essential medicines to rich and poor alike (World Health Organisation, 2014). The political priority afforded to this goal is driven by an acknowledgement that people in wealthy and poor countries alike are priced out of the “market” for health care. This has caused concern because of the negative economic effects associated with inadequate access to care. Academic research and scholarly rhetoric often justifies UHC on the grounds that it will strengthen the economic position of households (particularly households living below or just above the poverty line) and contributes to the growth prospects of national economies (World Health Organisation Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, n.d.). UHC is thus framed as an investment in human capital: Healthier citizens are more productive citizens. They are more capable of investing in their own well-being, and that of their dependents, through participation in the labor market rather than relying on public assistance. Why is it problematic to justify UHC, and health promotion more generally, on the basis of its economic value, that is, on the basis of the contributions it makes to growing markets and improving economic productivity? Research on the reconfiguration of welfare regimes in the Global North suggests that globalization is undermining their social, political, and economic foundations. These countries – much like their counterparts in the Global South – are experiencing a rise in unemployment, coupled with an increase in flexible and precarious work. Globalization has also been associated with an increase in human migration from the Global South to the Global North and within the Global South. As a result, states are simultaneously faced with increased demands for welfare from the unemployed and the working poor, an erosion of their tax base, and increasingly heterogeneous societies. States are responding to these changes by adopting welfare policies that expand the influence of market actors and market logics on social welfare. Consequently, decisions about how to define and promote the public good are increasingly made in a decentralized fashion by private actors operating in households or markets rather than in democratic political institutions. For example, in many countries, access to public assistance is now contingent on welfare recipients' efforts to find employment (i.e., the shift from welfare to “workfare”) and pay for basic services, on private and public sector providers' ability to provide social services efficiently and cost effectively, and on the state's ability to efficiently coordinate interactions between citizen consumers and social services providers (Roche, 2002). Advocacy for UHC reflects these political and normative shifts. It de-emphasizes the importance of collective democratic decision-making about how the health needs of populations should be addressed. Instead, public institutions are primarily responsible for solving a “technical” problem: financing health consumption for all. As public institutions become more focused on policing health financing, they reduce the services they provide and, in so doing, strengthen the market power of private players (Global Health Watch, 2014). Private actors – philanthropic foundations and for-profit providers of medical services, health insurance, and medicines – now routinely constrain the ability of governments to decide the terms on which the right to health should be advanced. Their influence is legitimated by the World Bank and IMF austerity policies that frame debt repayment and economic growth as the direct and primary responsibilities of democratic governments. Although governments in the Global South are particularly vulnerable to these pressures, similar pressures are present in the Global North – as demonstrated by private sector opposition to Obamacare (Kirsch, 2013) and patent law reform in South Africa (De Wet, 2014). In contrast, these institutions frame the obligation to promote the social dimension of citizenship as something that can be outsourced to private actors and/or achieved through market logics. Additionally, the value of social policies is often justified in economic terms, for example, in terms of their ability to improve the productivity of worker citizens and the revenues of public and private sector service providers. This discourse de-emphasizes the intrinsic value of formal and substantive equality and meaningful participation in collective decision-making about the public good. Political institutions feature in it primarily as mechanisms that mediate the efficacy of investments in health care. Their significance is determined by their ability to maximize returns on investments in health (Jack and Lewis, 2009). What are some of the consequences of advancing the right to health in this manner? Research shows that the shift from universalistic welfare regimes to regimes that target “especially vulnerable” or “especially deserving” populations undermines social solidarity by stigmatizing welfare recipients as people who violate the liberal ethos of contemporary welfare states. Vulnerable populations (e.g., non-citizens, people of color, indigenous peoples, working class women, and able-bodied unemployed people) are stigmatized as being reluctant to (or incapable of) succeeding in market societies on their own “merit” and as unfairly benefiting from welfare policies that advance their particularistic group interests rather than overall well-being (Brown, 2003). The low social status of these groups obstructs their ability to access appropriate and effective medical care, even when it is available at no or little cost to patients (Bassett, 2015). Globalization is a politically and socially mediated process. The harmful effects of globalization on social inclusion, and the limits of the policy responses to these dynamics, point to the urgent need for collective action and research aimed at addressing the dimensions of globalization that undermine the social determinants of health by privatizing, stigmatizing, and instrumentalizing the management of health – and in some cases, life itself. Collective action is needed to democratize decision-making about health care at the local, national, and global levels in a meaningful way to foster social solidarity and address status inequalities that lead to disproportionate rates of illness and death among stigmatized social groups and to politicize the priority placed on economic growth, given its sometimes harmful effects on human and planetary health. Global Challenges is a journal that welcomes scholarly contributions on these tough issues and insightful commentary that points toward strategies for addressing them.
To strengthen the anonymity of Bitcoin, several centralized coin-mixing providers (mixers) such as BitcoinFog.com, BitLaundry.com, and Blockchain.info assist users to mix Bitcoins through CoinJoin transactions with multiple inputs and multiple outputs to uncover the relationship between them. However, these mixers know the output address of each user, such that they cannot provide true anonymity. This paper proposes a centralized coin-mixing algorithm based on an elliptic curve blind signature scheme (denoted as Blind-Mixing) that obstructs mixers from linking an input address with an output address. Comparisons among three blind signature based algorithms, Blind-Mixing, BlindCoin, and RSA Coin-Mixing, are conducted. It is determined that BlindCoin may be deanonymized because of its use of a public log. In RSA Coin-Mixing, a user's Bitcoins may be falsely claimed by another. In addition, the blind signature scheme of Blind-Mixing executes 10.5 times faster than that of RSA Coin-Mixing.
The investments of Caixas and Institutos de Aposentadoria e Pensões (CAP and IAP) in homes of Natal, between the decades of 1930-60, helped to boost up the local real estate market in consolidation at the time. Inserted in the first national policy on social housing in the country, these operations have demanded the creation of a wide qualified organizational structure, which would be from the "Central Offices" of Rio de Janeiro to the decentralized units of the federal states. The professionals linked to the Local Agencies have developed, on this matter, from activities related to the design and construction of residential complexes, to the daily study of financing proposals in isolated units. As from these studies, the evaluation of shelters was essential to the effectiveness of the policy, resulting in the production of data on the market value of the properties by observing and issuing judgments upon the living quarters of different social groups. Given these considerations, the aim here is to contribute to the understanding on how to operate these real estate actions in the legitimization of boundaries about the urban space and dwellings available to workers in Natal. Therefore, the views of the city and constructions expressed by the evaluating engineers in their technical reports have been taken as the focus. Being the main primary sources of work, these reports are part of the edifices process of CAP/IAP regarding Natal, whose content is systematized in the database "Enterprises", the HCUrb Research Group. In addition, there were used local newspapers at the time and interviews with professionals as complementary sources. It was found that, in general, the evaluations have configured – in a more everyday dimension of bureaucratic routines - a vehicle, among others, circulating ideas about "home" within the social security institutions, being imbued with assumptions historically constructed about the "modern habitat". Filled in loco, the reports expose the clash between modernizing ideals in vogue and clear limitations in the city scenario at the time. Fragmented images of the town are given to read through the labels assigned to the evaluated sites – these being coated of certain "scientific" character - which both legitimated and contributed to the dynamics of appreciation/depreciation of the soil and to the socio-spatial differentiation. Contradictions were evident in the endorsement given by the technicians when financing of admittedly precarious homes for insured disadvantaged categories at the local level - such as industrial workers - while strict regulations were imposed to new construction, designed, above all, to better paid categories. By identifying raters engineers as urban agents, members of a technical-focused operating system for safety and efficiency in the real estate investments of those authorities corporatist, it is desired the usefulness of further studies on these characters, their training, professional activity and participation in the construction of discourses and practices of intervention about the city and its buildings, discussing individual and grouped interests that were left behind.
Craig K. Elwell, Margaret Murphy, Michael V. Seitzinger
This report has three major sections. The first section answers some basic questions about Bitcoin and the operation of the Bitcoin network and its interaction with the current dollar-based monetary system. The second section summarizes likely reasons for and against widespread Bitcoin adoption. The third section discusses legal and regulatory matters that have been raised by Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Digital forensics must constantly adapt to new technological developments. The advent of Bitcoin is such a development. Bitcoin represents a new model for financial transactions. In many cash transactions between strangers, the underlying model is parties-unknown/transaction-unknown. There is no ledger record of the transaction. In contrast, PayPal illustrates the parties-known/transaction-known model. An intermediary will record both items of information. Bitcoin differs from both of these models; Bitcoin uses a parties-unknown/transaction-known model. The Bitcoin block chain records the transaction, but the user’s Bitcoin address is not expressly tied to an identity. Thus, Bitcoin users enjoy pseudo-anonymity.As the recent experience with Silk Road demonstrates, there is a downside to this pseudo-anonymity. Precisely because of that feature, Silk Road served a marketplace for vendors to sell illegal narcotics, forged identifications, and other illicit goods and services. Given that danger, law enforcement authorities have a felt need to develop techniques to penetrate the pseudo-anonymity. To do so, they have turned to digital forensics experts.This article evaluates two techniques that have been proposed for this purpose. The first is traffic analysis. This technique relies on the entry nodes that users employ to access the Internet. The second is transaction graph analysis. This technique clusters transactions to identify natural chokepoints in the Bitcoin economy, that is, service islands where, for example, the user might convert Bitcoins to fiat currency. The chokepoints becomes a target for a law enforcement subpoena to learn the user’s IP address. After describing each technique, the article assesses the research conducted to date. In particular, the article reviews Alex Biryukov’s research into traffic analysis and Sarak Meiklejohn’s work with transaction graph analysis. The article applies the standards announced in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993) to determine whether, given the available data, expert testimony based on either technique would be admissible today. The article explains that it is doubtful whether testimony based on either technique would survive a Daubert admissibility challenge. The article concludes that further research is needed to enable law enforcement authorities to effectively penetrate the pseudo-anonymity of the new parties-unknown/transaction-known model.
Ittay Eyal, Adem Efe Gencer, Emin Gün Sirer, Robbert van Renesse
Cryptocurrencies, based on and led by Bitcoin, have shown promise as infrastructure for pseudonymous online payments, cheap remittance, trustless digital asset exchange, and smart contracts. However, Bitcoin-derived blockchain protocols have inherent scalability limits that trade-off between throughput and latency and withhold the realization of this potential. This paper presents Bitcoin-NG, a new blockchain protocol designed to scale. Based on Bitcoin's blockchain protocol, Bitcoin-NG is Byzantine fault tolerant, is robust to extreme churn, and shares the same trust model obviating qualitative changes to the ecosystem. In addition to Bitcoin-NG, we introduce several novel metrics of interest in quantifying the security and efficiency of Bitcoin-like blockchain protocols. We implement Bitcoin-NG and perform large-scale experiments at 15% the size of the operational Bitcoin system, using unchanged clients of both protocols. These experiments demonstrate that Bitcoin-NG scales optimally, with bandwidth limited only by the capacity of the individual nodes and latency limited only by the propagation time of the network.
<p>Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual crypto currency that has attracted attention from technologists, economists, consumers, regulators, black marketeers, venture capitalists and Wall Street commentators to name a few. While many debate issues such as whether or not bitcoin is money, how might it ultimately be regulated and whether or not it represents a truly disruptive innovation, this paper examines the current landscape of bitcoin and identifies some of the early adopters and significant events that have contributed to this unfolding phenomenon.</p>
The Indonesian government imposed a policy of regional autonomy with the aim to facilitate local governments regulate local affairs independently. Denpasar City is one of the areas that implement decentralization policy and requires a lot of funds to finance local development. The biggest potential held in the Denpasar area of financing comes from tax expenditures hotels and restaurants and are expected to provide the largest contribution in the PAD. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of tax collection rate hotels and restaurants and their contribution to PAD Denpasar. Methods of data collection in this study is the observation nonparticipant. The variable in this study is the ratio of the effectiveness and contribution analysis. Data analysis in this study is a quantitative analysis. Based on the analysis, the average effective tax collection hotels and restaurants in the city of Denpasar years 2009-2013 amounted to 113.54 percent categorized as very effective, and the average contribution of tax revenue hotels and restaurants in the city of Denpasar in 2009 to 2013 by 32 , 27 percent of the category quite well.
<p>In the future, the urban area will be the area that gets more complex, covered by a variety of social, economic and environment arising from population growth in the region and in line with the dynamics of globalization, democratization and decentralization. The purposes of this study is to describe and analyze the dynamics of land use and growth in the area for 1 (one) a decade in Bandar Lampung.</p><p> This research is a descriptive study using documentation for secondary data obtained from the BPS at two (2) different time points (t0 and t1). The analysis model used to assess the focus of research using quantitative analysis <em>Location Quotient</em> (LQ) and <em>Shift-Share Analysis</em> (SSA).</p><p> The results showed that: (1) During a decade in Bandar Lampung has occurred the utilization land for industrial use; settlements and services were increasingly widespread. While the use of land that is not cultivated; swamps and forests tend to be diminishing at a rate; patterns and impact varied in each parts of the city; (2) For almost a decade of economic growth in Bandar Lampung supported by sectors of the economy outside agriculture and mining and quarrying. While in the long term competitiveness of economic growth in the city was supported by the agricultural sector; Non-oil processing industry; and finance, leasing and services company. And the third (3) factors of economic growth, population growth and government policy in the form of spatial planning as well as the entry into force of the market mechanism was a trigger factor that reflected changes in land use in urban areas.</p><p> The suggestions and recommendations as well as follow up on the policy implications that can be done in Bandar Lampung, including : changing the necessary incentives and dis-incentives policy in controlling land utilization, giving the opportunity cost that owned land resources, both economic and non -economic. Additionally, in efforts to achieve sustainable urban development, expansion of public access required in determining the allocation of land use and the provision of public space is increasingly widespread and qualified as a form of services provided by the municipality to citizens.</p>
Open access
Economic Growth and Fiscal Policies
Agriculture and Agroindustry Studies
Community-based Tourism Development and Sustainability
Background Task-shifting has been implemented in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and increasingly in Europe. A cross-country comparison of task-shifting has been lacking across Europe. We assessed task-shifting practices in Europe and other OECD countries, and secondly, performed correlation analyses with OECD data. Methods A survey was developed, pilot tested and sent to 109 country informants in 39 countries covering Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (response rate 85.3%). Country informants were chosen based on a pre-defined set of criteria. Countries levels of implementation was correlated with OECD secondary data: physician and nurse ratios, education, and primary mode of financing (fee-for-service vs other). Results Eleven countries have implemented extensive task-shifting (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, US, UK (England, Wales, N. Ireland, Scotland), Finland, Ireland), measured by authority to diagnose, refer, treat and prescribe. However, countries' levels of regulation and financing varied, as did training requirements. The majority of countries showed emerging, yet limited task-shifting where nurses took up some advanced roles within confined boundaries. Five countries did not implement task-shifting. Conclusions Countries most advanced showed variations of the regulatory contexts, which may impact on nurses' practice patterns. Countries with decentralized regulation resulted in uneven levels of implementation, posing barriers to an efficient use of this workforce. Countries in early development stages focused primarily on adapting training capacity. From an international and especially, EU perspective, harmonizing competencies and training – in those countries showing similar levels of advanced practice – will be an important step to ensure the quality of care, avoid potential skill-loss and facilitate the recognition of education in increasingly connected labor markets. Key messages Task-shifting from physicians to nurses is an increasing workforce trend in Europe, however, extent of task-shifting and levels of implementation vary An enabling policy context involves up-to-date regulation, quality education pipeline and a supportive financing structure
Erika Pani is Research Professor at El Colegio de México’s Centro de Estudios Históricos, where she has taught since 2009. She is the author of Para mexicanizar el Segundo Imperio: El imaginario politico de los imperialistas (El Colegio de México, 2001) and Para pertenecer a la gran familia mexicana: Procesos de naturalización en el siglo XIX (El Colegio de México, 2015), and co-editor, with Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, of Centenarios: Conmemoraciones e historia oficial (El Colegio de México, 2012). In today’s world … the market is king, and it demands technicians, not humanists. “Can you figure out the price of a call option by using the Black-Scholes formula? You can’t, but you have read all of the University of Chicago’s Great Books? Congratulations. Please leave your résumé with the secretary, and we will call you if there is an opening in another department that calls for knowledge of Plato or Spinoza.” Leo Zuckermann1 To the pessimist, Mexico seems to embody the dire consequences of the “worldwide crisis in education” that Martha Nussbaum, among others, has decried. Despite its proud tradition in literature and the arts—Juana Inés de la Cruz and Octavio Paz, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo—numbers suggest that Mexico has become a cultural wasteland. Studies assessing student performance show consistently poor results: the country ranked 107th out of 108 in UNESCO’s reading index, with a per capita average of 2.8 books read a year, and reading is a “life-long habit” for no more than 2 percent of the population.2 Those dismayed by this “silent catastrophe” see it as a scourge of the times, a product of the decline of education, of a growing “Internet culture,” and of neoliberalism’s “massive” disdain for the humanities and its myopic obsession with efficiency, usefulness, and public spending cuts.3 In a country in which the last ten years have been marred by unimpressive economic performance, drug-related violence, and political gridlock, some argue that non-scientific, non- professionalizing disciplines such as literature, philosophy, history, and the arts are frivolous luxuries of yesterday’s spendthrift state. Others see the “crisis” of the humanities, despite its transnational nature, as another symptom of the nation’s declining health. The polemic surrounding the humanities needs to be placed in historical perspective. This cursory survey of the situation in Mexico is woven around the words and perceptions of those who, for almost two hundred years, have thought about and fought over the humanities as academic disciplines, cultural expressions, and symbolic battlegrounds. In clarifying what is at stake today, it is less important to put out the alarmists’ fires than to understand the part that the humanities have played in the densely intertwined, contentious debates over education and culture, the role of the state, and the future of the nation that have punctuated Mexican history. For more than three centuries, the humanities were the foundation of higher education in New Spain. Courses of secondary education built around Latin grammar as a model for good writing, clear thinking, and elegance of expression formed the core preparation, under the purview of ecclesiastical institutions, for all men of letters and science: clergymen, lawyers, doctors, and artists. When, in the eighteenth century, enlightened Europe wrote about the barbarism and degeneration of the New World, the creole letrados of New Spain could point to the vigor and sophistication of their humanist tradition as proof that the Americas enjoyed a degree of civilization equal, if not superior, to that of the Old World.4 At the end of the colonial period, conceptions of the humanities’ importance began to shift under the pressure caused by the fear of imperial decline and the struggle for modernity.5 Half a century later, they would fall victim to fierce political strife. After the break with Spain in 1821, Mexico’s politicians hailed education as the key to a more modern, civilized, prosperous nation. Projects for universal basic education inevitably fell short in the face of chronic instability and insufficient funds, but the modernizers fared better in the realm of higher education. The new constitutional governments—which needed well-trained young men who would be responsive to local interests, not the ambitions of the former viceregal capital—founded and funded “literary institutes” or “institutes of arts and sciences” in various state capitals. It was, nonetheless, control rather than content that distinguished the colonial system from the new approach. The institutos’ programs differed little from those of their predecessors; they continued to include Latin grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, Church history, civil and canon law, and theology, even as new subjects such as mathematics, experimental sciences, and modern languages were introduced. Religious education, on the other hand, did not remain entrenched in the old ways, and seminaries were eager to buy the latest textbooks and scientific apparatus.6 Nevertheless, as the striving for “material progress” and a lack of funds and qualified teaching personnel bolstered the growing conviction that other types of knowledge were more practical and useful than the old humanist core, the more traditional—and more religious—elements progressively fell away. Theology gave way to secular history, if cast in a providential mold and “universal” rather than national in scope, with authors such as Thucydides and Herodotus being unavoidable references. Latin and Greek were replaced by the “cultivated languages of Europe.”7 The institutos also provided ambitious and talented young men unconnected with traditional elites—such as future president Benito Juárez and the noted journalist, politician, and novelist Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, who were both born poor in remote Indian communities—with an alternative to the seminary as a vehicle for social mobility, giving them the social capital and credentials that enabled them to enter the political fray, usually as liberals intent on shaking up the old order.8 On the other hand, history, geography, literature, and the arts came out of academic cloisters and the tertulias of wise men, finding their way into newspapers, literary associations, and private homes. Those yearning for an efficient modern state also sought to fashion the emotional underpinnings of a national community, united by love of country and elevated by “culture.” With the commitment and sense of urgency of those who hoped their periphery would be seen as part of the center, they held up “the public’s” knowledge and good taste in literature, music, and painting as the most convincing proof that Mexico was a “civilized” nation.9 Prominent public figures published literary reviews with the hope of instilling in Mexico’s youth— particularly its young women—knowledge of the country’s territory, history, architecture, resources, and population, through “picturesque, curious, and instructive amenidades [amenities].”10 The music scene was equally vibrant. In 1854, in the midst of the rebellion that would eventually bring an end to Antonio López de Santa Anna’s seventh and final term as president, opera buffs in Mexico City attended eighty performances.11 “Although the Mexican people’s degree of civilization could not be described as perfect,” the influential liberal ideologue José María Luis Mora wrote with great optimism in 1836, there had been tremendous improvement. With the proliferation of newspapers and theater groups, and a piano in every middle-class parlor, “the elemental principles of the sciences, arts, and trades have become all too common … Understanding, imagination, sentiment, and language have all been enriched.”12 The great conflagration that split the country in two at mid-century (1855–1867) confirmed the de-centering and opening up of the humanities. In 1855, at the fall of Santa Anna’s dictatorship, the young liberals who moved to center stage in national politics embarked on the task of destroying the country’s colonial legacy. They wanted to get rid of corporate privileges, outdated forms of taxation, and cumbersome forms of property. They also sought to break the Church’s hold over Mexicans’ hearts, minds, and destinies through education. The Royal and Pontifical University, founded in 1551, was closed; the 1857 constitution proclaimed freedom of education and established that the conditions and prerequisites of professional degrees were a matter of federal law. This radical project was condemned by the Church, and triggered the fierce opposition of conservatives, militant Catholics, some regional strongmen, and most officers in the standing army. The country sank into civil war. The coalition that rose up in arms against the constitution was defeated on the battlefield at the end of 1860. The monarchical experiment on which conservatives had pinned their last hope disappeared with the exceptional circumstances that had engendered it—the U.S. Civil War and Napoleon III’s project for a French protectorate in North America. In many ways, Mexico’s Second Empire showed that, at least on some fronts, the conservatives’ battle had already been lost. The imperial government, impelled both by the hopes of the Mexican imperialistas and by the inclinations of the emperor, Maximilian von Hapsburg, envisioned a vigorous system of national public education, conceived in opposition to the old “Spanish” humanist model. It would train fewer priests and lawyers and more engineers.13 Also, considering, perhaps, that “national culture” was too important to be left solely in the hands of civil society, the imperial government undertook wide-ranging projects for artistic and scientific development. It put up statues to insurgent leaders, designed museums, commissioned historical paintings, founded an Imperial Academy of Sciences and Literature, and enacted a conciliatory version of Mexican history in public celebrations.14 Most of these projects remained on the drawing board at the time, but would be taken up later, recast in decidedly liberal tones, by the governments of the last third of the nineteenth century. After 1867, triumphant to education as an for and The of the would to read and the of liberal and This of through education remained despite three of and economic and a in government spending on education the last of government, over percent of to and two out of every ten could The less more for higher education was more With the in Mexico City and some state professional degrees in architecture, and In the nation’s the federal government founded the which the nation’s future political a secondary education on a of and scientific In a country that had been by a civil and with it sought to a common a common and a sense of in the words of and literary and was little for the humanities, the country’s old of in this conceived in the for all higher they were seen as the of and as such were almost history, and to a in the of languages were as Church disciplines were into as of was for that which was a “the social of to more literary and subjects into the the last of the In the words of the and a and good sense at the of by a and Nevertheless, literature, the arts, and history in the mold less as of and than as for the of the nation’s and in its and Mexican and who had the of Mexico to the of the in with a In textbooks and public the national historical could the of triumphant which a from struggle against the through the of and José María the War of to to French conservatives up as the of their alternative of what was good and could usually be The basic and of the liberal version would the that the that had engendered and literature in for higher education, they public by giving to a nation that was into its In as part of its the government founded a its for the did little more than the of Mexico professional and It was to Mexico’s as a modern and could perhaps, be read as a that had moved the that had the liberals to its Nevertheless, a the the and civil on for more than ten In the midst of the education and were as on which a new would be The of the humanities in Mexico’s would be by the and of their Antonio José Luis and At the of the century, this of young men had the and of the of these of the sought to literature, philosophy, and the to higher education, and to them with “the For the of the humanities in both the and the of their content and in the and they in their In a and from over for the humanists. the of “the of could “the universal of from in the from the of the the of the or the Despite their and good the years of the did not for the and to the they had most were the middle-class by which out its more and in had a of education, intent on the and knowledge that would the young to the of the humanities had a in this it was they were in philosophy, history, and literature could be continued at little In politics came to the of the government, and of the University, and of education. the for a little over a year, in and the of from to the national language and literature up by at the for Studies in the and built a for the of culture, on and as a for the to more than as a of the nation’s future leaders, its was with about the future of than with the of In the the of and With at the the of undertook a of The federal government in and an of authors to be published in and The of public in over to that their could and the was held up as proof of Mexicans’ and the government of the of music, and of and literature were seen as of for a as in a by and at the the humanities were seen as and were a for ambitious The that to the and over the the of higher education and the of “national culture” not as a of the state, but also as a of and political Despite and the to and higher education it came to funds, in the the federal government began to and academic and cultural The on the would be by such as the and the In the state the academic of the In the it would the and funds for the of history, and The task of these modern was to be at and would the of the would the of its and would both bring to the the nation and the of Indian into In the a of percent of the federal on education, culture, and the of in to and and arts, and to them to “the public in and the and would be by the of the Second who were into the de a cultural founded in to the and humanists. In to them to the Mexican academic and the of the the of the and up a of at other academic that for almost The the of a young cultural de and en la gave of In the de El Colegio de México, an to teaching and it was to Mexico’s it was that it would on the humanities, “the for the social The for and the of this for a for and their of letters up as has their and for the of almost an for for the to a state that was and at the through and were to a and to for and were for in the of the of in both and and by the in young of the surrounding Mexican In the realm of philosophy, the of the José who had over the University of undertook to particularly to its and its as had the of public education and on “universal” had for for the in and and in the and young by They in their of that was an in a world with no over They wrote about the of being about the and that a of and had the national eventually its in the words of of its more the is a could be with a engendered of the most books in Mexican literature, Octavio El de la perhaps, this also about the of an old tradition that had been from for almost a century of its to the in Antonio and that had and a the of the Mexico’s even as and were hailed as the nation’s and the humanities remained on the of higher education. the of Paz, and it was a rather of For the most these had With the of philosophy, the of the world was not the of the The humanities in a country where those a education were already a percent of those at the University in were of the their had to percent by In they percent of in education in the the state that had also that Mexico’s future in of the humanities, future to be almost to education, were in a market that knowledge and rather than liberal both and the humanities to be rather than The humanities’ the was to their market and lack of among but perhaps, to the way they were conceived by In a in for the time, being a could be a it was for those who wanted to the humanities to their or the humanities imagination, good but no of scientific in the words of José Luis did for El de la the humanities’ them to the and the as in the way that a figure inevitably of the of the that could about of and To for their the humanities needed to be bolstered by the of “the most and and the of the century, and a professional academic but it has remained and Mexico’s public In to literature, philosophy, and history their confirmed their The that the humanities could become the core of a education that would with common of a of cultural as had in the U.S. War University, was envisioned in The about by the did to those The student which was by the government, the more of the This to a of higher education, in both of and of with to this of and but did not its basic The humanities, as disciplines in of and remained the purview of the even if their were and The but of higher education in Mexico the of the if that it was in the of a and its in the were by economic and political crisis in the For more than a federal government in higher education by an average of percent a the of the century, the of economic and in world and a to calls for the of public education. In with the of Latin a state that no to its sought to the and of higher to and the and efficiency, and to of To it sought to and of that were and was the of have been and their They have not been to the humanities. The and by disciplines are not even by or in percent of were in humanities in the of many have and for or are designed around the that Mexican they are to the core are taught by the and a The importance to has for the Nevertheless, the of the state with academic the for and founded in to the has to the of both with those in the its are on on and its on for by the of the sciences, and over over and over and over and over the and social percent of the of of in the they have had to the of their disciplines in an with a language that is not their It is that the men and who most the most and of language and thought have been in the of their At they have the of the those not the of that the of the but not particularly convincing that the humanities better who on the that them … and and and who, the midst of the crisis and of time, be a little At these have the on the humanities as the product of a by that against … on and to market and the of such as the In the over the of in secondary education, by a that did not include it as a in have their of the with the of corporate and other humanities be taught by of by the country’s and public of and the and José “the of all thought the humanities were and tradition the the humanities have many important to in In at the University of Luis for the in against those who thought of it as and outdated hoped to the that the education of as with the of the humanities, did not of or a but established an did not the of or but the to for their They provided for which that there was for every that was on In of the humanities, that, as has about the they are both and than academic disciplines, which their In two hundred years, the humanities in Mexico from the foundation for all higher education to its despite the of an artistic and literary tradition public importance has been since the nineteenth century. After Mexico’s Church and state to the and to the humanities’ being out as for higher they were replaced by the more and more useful After the in the of a state that Octavio described as a the humanities were seen as for the of the and as for its They the of a and culture, and from the and of academic even as their to their as The history of the humanities has been by their as as by academic and the for the humanities’ in debates about education, and also for their useful as an expression of the nation’s its its as a put the of the into perspective. The humanities are the key to they have both a practical and a to and and and elegance of the humanities to from a that is and the and of in an in which become they a to and to the humanities to and the and literary and will have a to this if they not on their and they to their as more than and what has described as the opposition the practical and the will be if they remain in yearning for a the state was less and more and to be as good but the to for and to Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, and the
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