Portuguese Journal of Social Science - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2017

Plant circulation in Portuguese America and Independent Brazil was significantly indebted to the French colonial network, during the Napoleonic wars as well as from 1815. French Guiana, that share borders with Brazil, was under many circumstances a strategic element for the transfer and the acclimatization of exotic plants in Americas. Exchanges of seeds and natural products could be spontaneous or intentional. From the last decades of the eighteenth century, the role of botany became more evident in regard to plant transfers. The French naturalist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire collaborated to establish a type of botanical knowledge that, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, became a requirement for anyone who would identify, classify or acclimatize plants.

This article argues that the strengthening of an Atlantic-based economy was the driving force of scientific development in the Portuguese empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As a response to the structural crisis that distressed the Portuguese empire in the second half of the eighteenth century, a network of military institutions of higher technical and scientific education was established, first in Lisbon and later in Rio de Janeiro. State initiative was thus crucial in the modernizing process of the Luso-Brazilian empire. This produced profound consequences in the shaping of its scientific and technical framework. In particular, it resulted in the militarization of ‘Portuguese’ science, in the promotion of an applied science and in the social impact of a conception of the concept of the scientist as a military and practical man.

This article presents a general outline of the growing interest in medicinal waters and spas in Portugal during the eighteenth century, with special emphasis on the theoretical attitude and practice of the medical community and the ruling classes regarding mineral waters and on the development of the main institutions dedicated to hydrotherapy, trying to interpret the obstacles that prevented a more general social acceptance of spas and a greater adherence of physicians to therapeutic use of mineral waters in Portugal in this period.

The eighteenth century met a growing interest in the production of scientific instruments (mathematical, astronomical, nautical and philosophical) offering the means to achieve new physics concepts and greater precision, offering answers to some of the big questions, such as the shape of the Earth and longitude at sea. International scientific programmes promoted the production, acquisition and perfection of instruments and the progressive dissemination of experimental physics education set the tone for these instruments. The connections between instrument makers and the gentry in relation to these instruments produced or constituted important influences that were previously almost unthinkable. The spread of scientific instruments developed in close connection between producers and recipients, with the global spread of major scientific quests to solve and naturally with the impact Newtonian physics and experimental philosophy acquired at the time. J. H. de Magellan, who had a particular interest in and knowledge of scientific instruments, was actively engaged in this process of dissemination across Europe. After spending twenty years in London he could accept the demands of the Iberian courts for instruments that would allow them to carry out their work in South America.

The National Education Board (JEN – Junta de Educação Nacional) was created in 1929 during the Military Dictatorship. The purpose of this organization, much favoured by some sectors of Portuguese academiaf and intellectual elite, was the renewal of scientific, pedagogical and national economic policies. Following the example of similar international institutions, such as the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (JAE) of Spain, JEN put in place a set of articulated practices – scholarships at home and abroad, the funding of research centres and the organization of cultural expansion services – targeting the scientific updating and a greater dissemination of Portuguese culture internationally.

This article deals with the activities of the opposition in Czechoslovakia to the Portuguese New State government during the 1950s to 1970s. It focuses on the most important personalities living in the country and explores their encounters with the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. The article also analyses the approach of the Czechoslovak government towards the Portuguese activists and the assistance is offered to Portuguese emigrants in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR – Československá Socialistická Republika). Special attention is paid to the meeting of representatives of the Portuguese opposition in Prague in January 1964, and to the perception these Portuguese residents had of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. It follows the activities of the remaining emigrants in Czechoslovakia up until the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974. Finally, the author describes the relations between both countries on cultural exchanges and Portuguese students in Czechoslovakia after 1974.

The protection of nature and biodiversity has been gaining importance in public opinion. Nevertheless, the implementation of conservation policies has experienced some public resistance, along with low levels of public involvement. This lack of public interest in and support to conservation may be related to citizens’ images of nature.

In this article, we examine the commonsensical image of nature and its conservation according to two dimensions: cognitive beliefs and normative ethics. This image of nature was examined through a series of focus-group discussions with members of the general public in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area – Portugal and reflects the commonsensical perceptions of what nature conservation is.

The results suggest that, although the participants were not familiar with scientific terminology, they hold rich, mental and social representations about nature and biodiversity. We present a conceptual framework that reflects participants’ overall image of nature as the basis of human life and, above all, as a source of multiple goods that ensure human beings’ survival, which characterizes the common-sense view of nature as largely anthropocentric.

Our work provides policy-makers, planners and managers with a framework that reflects lay people’s perceptions of nature and biodiversity conservation that are instrumental in identifying conservation priorities, appropriate goals and suitable measures while ensuring communication between science and society.