El lagarto en la roca: 1 (Narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

They tend to go sour and turn on their own people and lands, along with despoiling all around. Multiple murders to capture and keep thrones. The decadence of wasteful consumption: Germany built concentration camps, where they sent many of their own people. Perverted power run amok. We have the horror of the Republican Administration stealing and caging the children of asylum seekers. The irony of the United States of America turning on immigrants now! The time for that would have been when the first ships arrived on her shores. But in the apocryphal stories they told us as schoolchildren to build our identity as Americans, the native peoples here welcomed the fleeing Pilgrims with open arms.

Another part of the irony lies in the fact that much of what we now call the USA was previously owned by other countries. Sure, incoming numbers have to be limited for a country to remain optimally functional, but we can address this global problem without reverting to inhumane ways. Remember, this country was founded on revolution against tyranny. In fact, their highly functional governance structure informed the basis of our current Constitution.

We in the Industrial Growth Society still have much to learn from native peoples, especially regarding skill with relationships. What we can do to foment revolution now in the face of increasing horrors; our strongest resistance, I think, is to be kind to one another. We must firmly oppose what is happening, of course; we must dare to speak out fiercely — AND we must do it in a way that is honorable, even noble.

They got all the money. So we must not unconsciously buy in to the casual cruelty, mockery and stupidity that is leaching like a miasma out of our highest office. We must not replicate that cancer further. Instead, we must consciously choose to embody kindness, generosity, and humor. To assume that most people are basically good, and doing their best, even when they screw up or have an opinion that makes you want to scream.

To listen, and not only with the ears, with the heart too. To openly care for one another and the earth. To make choices that are right and aligned with greater good, despite what the despots want. The good news is, this sort of resistance is happening, and not only on an individual level. I gain hope from watching hundreds of cities and businesses openly state that they will continue to work according to the Paris Accord for Climate Change, despite what noise to the contrary comes out of the White House.

They recognize the way the wind is blowing; they recognize that dialing down reliance on dwindling fossil fuels is the way that their businesses will be able to continue in a global marketplace which is, by the way, dependent on a finite globe. Acting in accord with our long-term means is just good business. Rome fell, and so could we. We can see the struts shivering now. This country can let go of Empire leanings and go forward into being a single, beautifully functioning collective of states, counties, towns, and neighborhoods.

If we begin to see ourselves not as isolated autonomous individuals who must fearfully look out for Number One but more as a strong community looking out for the common good of all, and of our lands not as plunderable resources for private corporate gain but as commons for all, and we act accordingly, then we have a chance.

Happy Interdependence Day, human family. Enjoy those firecrackers invented by the Chinese, hotdogs invented by the Germans, and tortilla chips and salsa invented by the Mexicans. While driving to the party, let someone into your lane ahead of you. Earth Pledge poster from Earthpledge. Map of earlier US borders was a comment from vierotchka on https: If you know, please tell me so I can give credit. If you are the artist and would prefer I not share your work here, please contact me and I will respect this.

I was sad to hear that writer Ursula K. LeGuin died last night. I got to meet her once, when she was GoH at a conference of the Mythopoeic Society, and found her to be as stunningly present and wise in person as on the page. But that was just a mild fangirl moment: We rarely get the chance to know and understand the influences we have had on the lives of others. Yet it turns out to have had a profound impact on them. This is just such a story. She had also founded the Tolkien Society, a haven for the brilliant weirdos who otherwise would likely have no home in high school society at all and may even have dropped out.

Honor students who loved science fiction and fantasy: She took us all in and gave us not only alternate worlds to inhabit, but a real-life community to go there with in a creative way that had us all laughing and reveling in our weirdness instead of drowning in it and then squelching it for survival. We built a dragon float for Homecoming, complete with steam that shot out in the general direction of the football team. It teaches insecure kids about the need to care about others. What greater lesson could there be? It made many of us into activists. This story, Omelas, moves her.

She had taught it dozens of times already, but every time, she told me later, she had cried. This was no different. She got to the end, and not only teared up, she struggled to control her tears so much that she could not keep reading. Her head was down as she held the book loosely in her left hand and tried not to sob. Adolescents struggle with their own turbulent emotions, so a teacher openly showing hers like that?

The class sat there semi-frozen, looking at her fixedly or darting glances at one another out of the corners of our eyes. Burnett to pull it back together, the silence in the room grew uncomfortable. In fifth and sixth grades, the world got to me and I cried every day from a feeling of impotent agony. It began in math class, where the cruelty from Dean, the blond freckled kid in the desk next to mine, was strongest. Turning the pain inward like so many girls do instead of outward like Dean was doing, I began to physically hurt myself every day.

In a visible way, which of course made things far worse. This duck-and-cover practice meant repeatedly confronting its inherent idea that we might never get to grow up. That we were all at the mercy of powerful men at the helm of our countries; men who might be, or get, mad enough to push that button. And when you look at the world that way, why would anything matter? Since we might never get to have a grownup life or career anyway, why not just read comic books and climb trees while you can?

Why not just do anything you want while you can, and damn the rest of the world? I mean one beyond the heart, which knew all along and had been crying for that; she offered a reason that I could articulate in order to then reason with others. So I thought her tears for injustice unspeakably beautiful. She dared to face the situation, which is the first stage of changing it. She faced it with not only her mind, but also with full, brave heart and spirit.

And she was teaching us how, too. So when the feeling in the room began to grow too uncomfortable, I got up from my seat and walked to the front of the room, where I gently took the paperback book from her hands. Finding the last line she had read, I read it aloud again to orient everyone and then kept going with the story from there, reading it aloud for the class until the end.

I then closed the book, quietly placed it near her on her table, and returned to my seat. Burnett looked up through her tears and smiled a thank-you. In a few moments, after blowing her nose, she pulled herself together enough to lead a moving discussion about the story and its lessons regarding what is truly important; about to best live as a full human being.

Lessons that few high school teachers dare to touch, let alone from a place of deep personal authenticity. Deep, vital questions that can impact a student for life. The only reason I remember this story is that Burnie told it again numerous times over the years. How my kindness at age 14, in the face of widespread potential disapproval from my peers, had moved her. How that act had demonstrated, in a small way, the principles the story was trying to teach. This friendship lasted more than forty years, until her death a few months ago, and was one of the greatest blessings of my entire life.

In my later teens and early 20s, it brought me a whole larger community of kind nerds, with whom I still remain emotionally close even though I now live in a different state. She saved the brilliant weirdos like me, and I in particular have LeGuin, in part, to thank for it. It opens doors to discuss the needs and wants of the individual vs.

Meaning of "taxonómico" in the Spanish dictionary

The outer and inner ramifications of each choice to act or not make for juicy discussion. LeGuin loved Taoism, as do I, and her themes often speak of the balance inherent in that philosophy and in ecological reality. I still call upon it in times of need. May it serve you in turn. Only in silence the word, only in dark the light only in dying, life: Farewell to two bright spirits that have enhanced this world by their embodied sojourns here. Maybe offering useful suggestions to their future authors? We writers can hope….

Collared Sparrowhawk image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Image of Ursula K. LeGuin sourced from http: Women and women-identified folks: Want to renew your spirit on a beautiful gentle river, including an overnight solo between just you and the spirits of the land? All ages, ability levels and backgrounds are welcome. A workshop that encourages dancers to play in both dance roles is a fun opportunity that also helps evolve the skill of your dancers.

We first provide swapping principles. When considering role swapping, the first thought that arises might be the simple puzzle of body mechanics in the various moves. But first and foremost in community dancing is actually the need for consideration for good dance etiquette. Etiquette is the art of making someone else feel comfortable, and this includes not only obtaining consent from your partner, but also being aware of the expectations of the entire dance line.

Always dance with respect for your neighbors. Just as the elderly or disabled may need shorter, gentler swings, attention and courtesy must be given to each person encountered when swapping. Link to the full article , including a list of swappalicious moves and a three-part workshop you can try out with your own local dancers: Please let us know your thoughts by posting in the Comments below.

Also, if you try the workshop, let us know how it works out for you. For minimal cost, you can order the buttons for distribution. I won't pay to have ads removed, so sometimes they appear at the end of my posts. I do not sanction this, nor do I receive kickbacks from any ads here. To help revolt, please don't buy the stuff. Articles , Spiritual Ecopsychology — BrujaHa 6: Un Semestre En Hawaii: En palabras de Heighton: Otra vez, lo viejo se vuelve lo nuevo: Reflejo La idea de ofrecer algo de antemano para mantener el balance tiene mucho sentido.

El activista Pualani Kanahele describe la pena que causan los observatorios a los hawaianos nativos: Animismo para el Siglo La trama de la vida. Devall, Bill y George Sessions. La Isla de la Mente. Arts , Recipes — BrujaHa Pour onto butter in pan. Add the berries on top of the batter. Bake minutes at high altitude. Serve with cream, if you like. Or on its own. Betty Williams , collective , empire , fourth of july , Germany , individual , interdependence , Nobel , Paris climate agreement , revolution , Rome.

We writers can hope… Further Resources: Click to read Ursula K. Right now, you can read it as a PDF here. But please do yourself and her family a favor and go buy the book too. Or another one by her. Announcements , Spiritual Ecopsychology — BrujaHa Green River , guiding , rites of passage , river , solo , The River's Path , trip , women. Even at that much shadowed occultation, the sun offered a surprising amount of light.

Synonyms and antonyms of taxonómico in the Spanish dictionary of synonyms

The profound takeaway I got is this: Arts , Dance — BrujaHa Welcome to the online home of Tina Fields. Join other followers. If this site is interesting or useful to you, please drop a tip in my virtual hat. Adventures with Elderly Parents Dreams at Caliban, Prospero, and the Animate World. An Oral History Welcome to Indigenize!

The furnishing of the halls also became problematic: See Forgan , Naylor , Outram for discussions about spaces in natural history museums. Drawing made by Diego Villanueva, reproduced in Villena et al. Shelves and cabinets, jars and vessels, contributed to the transformation of things into museum objects.

A public library was also allocated. The original plans for one or two halls for duplicates, for instance, had not been realized and this caused storage problems as objects arrived. Many duplicates were placed in the display halls, meaning that various pieces of the same species were put on display, objects were stored in the private apartments, or remained in boxes — such as a collection of instruments that arrived from London, or the crates of mineral productions arriving from Chile and Peru at the turn of the century and stored in the cellars of the Retiro palace.

When the building finally was completed after the war with the French in the mid s, however, instead of housing the natural sciences, Fernando VII decided that it should be a museum of art. The floors could not always hold the weight of large, heavy objects, sometimes architects had to inspect the premises in order to judge their placing. In the s the entire floor in the mineral hall had sunken and the museum had to close until improvements had been made.

The unglazed tiles in the halls with birds, sea- productions and insects stirred up large amounts of dust during the hours of public visits, damaging fur and feathers. See Lafuente b, Forgan Beckman shows how scientists throughout 16 years debated the layout for a new Swedish Museum of Natural History, completed in Stockholm Their daily life practices could also, albeit rarely, damage the building.

Construction workers, while rehabilitating the above mentioned leakage, came across various plant pots on the roof. According to the workers, the placing of the pots was partly responsible for the damages. Further, the director had been notified by the caretaker of the San Fernando Academy that Bru used to light up a brazier on the roof during winter, which implied a severe fire hazard.

Adding to this, the lads assisting Bru in his work as dissector were regularly going out on the roof. Bru even dried his laundry there. The building was not just a container for museum practices; it formed part of, and was affected by, these practices. The next section discusses the opening of the Cabinet as a public space. The 11 of February the opening of the cabinet was announced in la Gazeta, quoted in Villena et al. One hundred posters and three hundred entrance tickets had been distributed in advance, as a precaution to ensure that not too many showed up.

The question of guarding the halls related to the visitors. Between and , two incidents concerning lower-rank visitors are registered. Moreover, he feared the possibility of something similar happening in the hall which contained the gem stones. Soldiers were only allowed to enter in groups together with a sergeant, but it was regularly noticed that once within the Cabinet, the groups dissolved and the soldiers moved around unaccompanied.

The guarding caretaker had disclosed the man, and he was put in prison. These incidents cannot reflect characteristics of the museum visitors. The travel writer Fischer wrote how: The travelers have left traces in their travel logs. The nobility, clergy, and high officials are visible in the archival sources, if not so much as visitors, so as contributors to the inflow and shaping of objects at the museum.

The common visitors, on the other hand, have left very few traces. Thousands visited the museum on November 21, The whole broad street of Alcala is spread before me like an immense square The matin bell announces the early mass — the streets become more animated. Veiled women in black, men in long brown cloaks with redesillas wearing their hair in a kind of net-work hanging low down their back.

Now the goat-keepers with their little herds enter the gates, crying Milk! Who will have any? There I see market women pass by with their asses loaded with vegetables, bakers with bread in carts Soon the whole street resounds with the various cries of numberless criers. Hard smoked sausages from Estramadura! Olives, olives, from Seville!

Milk, rolls, fresh and hot! Pomegranates, pomegranates, from Valencia! Link also mentioned the garment, in a description of the populace and how they dressed: In practice, access could be difficult. It was almost impossible to obtain entrance tickets for the British Museum in the first decades after its opening in the s. The Cabinet of Physics and Natural History in Florence opened its doors in , allowing common and decently dressed people in the morning, while the intelligent and curious could enter in the afternoon.

In this practice was abolished and all visitors were admitted at the same time. Museum rules of proper clothing and conduct connects with discussions about museums as places for disciplining and surveillance. See Hooper- Greenhill , Bennett Noyes discusses the majismo as resistance to enlightenment ideas. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes The tapestries were hung in the private chambers at the Royal Palace. See Medina , ch. One could also think that, as the fashion became assimilated by the elite it would no longer be considered as provocative as it was in the mid s when the museum rules were set, and that the headwear had become more accepted at the turn of the century.

The testimonies from the travelers depict how common people were allowed at the museum. Hence it is much frequented. The opening hours of the museum may indicate that it could have been difficult for working people to visit the museum. The Cabinet was open two days a week, during working hours, and it was closed during the siesta. The museum management suggested that the entrance rules should be sharpened during that particular day, to provide a more tranquil environment for the visit.

Common people, then, seem to have had both the opportunity and the acceptance to enter as visitors to the Cabinet. This impression also corresponds with the descriptions in the travel-logs. In a degrading satirical style he described the disgust and fear he had felt while visiting the museum: This renders it very unpleasant to the decent part of the company; for we were fearful of leaving something behind us, and still more fearful of taking something away.

Conclusion Space come into being through practices. Madrid was the seat of the court, a European capital and the centre of the Spanish empire. The Cabinet came to form part of a rhetorical, symbolical shaping of Madrid, a process in which public utility, scientific progress, imperial dignity and royal glory were chief motivations for Bourbon reform.

Equipped with preconceived ideas about backwardness, religious superstition and laziness, travelers enacted Madrid. Travelers experienced and could testify about a well- functioning infrastructure. Many took a stroll on the Paseo del Prado, a new and important public space, contemplating the populace as well as religious practices. In this encounter with the tangible, ideas could sometimes be reconsidered, or they could remain the same.

The Cabinet was allocated in a former city palace in the core of the reformed city; it was public space, a working place and a private home. The projecting of the museum interiors took an unforeseen turn with the death of the head architect. The building was also the private home of members of the staff, and their use of it could sometimes inflict damages both on the building and the collections. The coexistence of different kinds of spaces within one building could be problematic. When the Cabinet opened its doors to the public, it became a success.

While visitors of rank have left traces in archives and in travel logs, the lower rank visitors have left very few. Rules intended to discipline the audience formed an essential part of the shaping of the Cabinet as public space. Such rules concerned opening hours and standards of dress and conduct. The populace had access to the museum, not only hypothetically but also in practice.

The building, its physical limitations, the rules set, the people inhabiting it — all participated in the making of the museum space. Madrid and the Goyeneche palace, as enacted spaces, formed part of the practices and the networks through which museum objects came into being. The following three chapters explore how museum objects were being done.

This chapter explores how objects were gathered at the Cabinet, about different kinds of networks that channeled objects towards the centre, and about how cycles of accumulation were initiated and maintained. At the outset there was no flow of objects, and the Cabinet did not even have a physical place.

How did the museum act at a distance in order to create cycles of accumulation that ensured the delivery of objects? Did it become an authoritative center of calculation that managed to impose its interests upon outside actors or should it be seen as a more flexible centre? In chapter one, three different ideas of a centre were outlined, all questioning the relation between authority and accumulation, these will serve here as a basis for discussion.

The first consists in looking into connections between the center and its superiors, the absolutist king and his government. The second approach maintains the concept of a network center, striving for authority, but at the same time it pays less attention to the element of successful calculation. A third way is to look into specific cases in order to investigate the direction of and the motivation for the flow, instead of assuming that cycles always started and ended at the center. Some of the ground-breaking texts within actor-network theory discuss how the local and the global are associated, and how actors around the globe were connected through larger or smaller networks.

Objects were transformed when actors at different places interacted, whether they were located on different continents or in different parts of Madrid. One important inflow-practice relied on a centuries-long practice of knowledge gathering within the imperial bureaucratic apparatus, and in the first part of this chapter I will discuss an instruction sent out in to representatives of the Spanish crown in all territories.

Throughout three paragraphs I will discuss the different ways in which the museum took advantage of this long-standing imperial practice administratively and economically controlled by ministers, by connecting to various actors in order to create overlapping cycles Latour , Law , see also Callon Collectors were nominated to gather specimens for the museum, Cristobal Vilella based at Mallorca was among these. The triangular relation between the museum and the crown, as two different centers, and the collector will be discussed in the second part.

The most important sources for exotic animals were the royal estates and parks in or close to Madrid. Efforts of creating and upholding networks for delivery of carcasses from these estates will be treated in the third part. Here, the crown and its large governmental apparatus was serving both as a contributor as well as an overlapping center holding the ultimate authority over the museum, a factor that could make the network both less and more efficient depending on the carcass in question and the juggling of actors.

Also, networks located at the margins of the royal and governmental sphere were important. Private collectors associated with the emerging bourgeoisie, noblemen and clergy were important contributors for the museum. In the fourth part the work that had to be done by the museum in order to maintain a network based on voluntary contributions in order to assure the donation of a singular Icelandic spar from a nobleman, military officer and aficionado in Vitoria, will be discussed.

Imperial Practices of Knowledge-gathering. See Constantino , Cowie a: Hecha de orden del Rey N. It was an inscription device whose purpose was to discipline the vision of and impose the methods of the centre upon local officials in order to direct and control their ways of seeing and handling objects of natural history. What things were interesting and where could they be found?

The instruction named hundreds of desired specimens, mostly natural objects but also curiosities of art, and where these could be found around the world. How to catch a butterfly without damaging it, how to skin, de-flesh and stuff a quadruped? The document explained how to collect, preserve and prepare objects for transport. The instruction, as mentioned, formed part of a long-standing Spanish imperial tradition, but it also formed part of the abounding literature on and instructions describing curatorial practices within eighteenth-century natural history.

There were two centers, not one. The cycle of accumulation resulting from the instruction was controlled by the minster of the Indies and the minister of the state: However, the instruction had been planned and edited by the museum director; his words gave direction to the imperial bureaucrats that went out to collect all over the empire. If the ministers found it opportune to assign some of the incoming specimens elsewhere, they had every liberty to do so.

The instruction as a combined effort corresponded with the period of greatest intensification in the bureaucratic efforts to encontraren en las Tierras y Pueblos de sus distritos, a fin de que se coloquen en el Real Gabinete de Historia Natural que S. The pages long Instruction, as published in the Mercurio Historico, followed the three kingdoms of nature. The five first pages described specimens from the mineral kingdom, then an entire twenty-one pages treated the animal kingdom, then followed three pages about the plant kingdom.

One page was dedicated to fossils, and about half a page to curiosities of art.

Seven pages were describing methods on how to collect, preserve and prepare the specimens for transport. As compared to later directors, he was by far the most efficient in connecting to outside contributors and in this way he assured a substantial inflow to the museum. There were two centers involved in this inflow-practice. Even though the instruction was controlled by the crown and the two ministers, there were various ways for the museum to take advantage of the document in order to pursue its interests — interests not always corresponding with those of the governmental apparatus.

This the museum did even before the instruction was actually published, when it was merely an idea and a plan. Defining the Centre s Interests. Where can one find the rock named Opal? The request gained weight by its connection to the imperial practice of knowledge-gathering, as he was asking for advice on behalf of the crown. Among other things, he informed the director about the opal: It is very common in Peru and there are no tombs or huacas of the ancient Indians where one does not find this stone.

Llano Zapata sets up a connection between three points, or places. Two of them were literary places, pointing towards the third, physical place. The Greek classical knowledge about the Opal and the reference to Isidore of Seville were abstract, literary places that lead into the third, material place, where the opals actually could be found: The point here is not to sketch out the dispute of the new world, rather it is to show how Llano Zapata by describing the opal and by referring to his book presented a particular translation of American nature.

Familiar with both new world natural history and the classical corpus of European literature, Llano Zapata offered a translation of the opal that created connections between the old and the new world. Does the center of calculation become less centered? If the sketching out of this central document, defining core interests of the museum, came into being and depended upon the collaboration of outside actors, this could be correct to assume. Now the museum knew things about the opal that had been unknown to it previously. This information about the opal was used in the instruction when it was published a couple of years later: There are assured news that one has brought it from Peru; but one ignores from what part.

Likewise one knows that the Opals have been found in the tombs of the Incas. The instruction was a practical guide for collectors and such information was of little use. This fascination is mostly uttered as practical information combined with an enhancement of the singularity of a species, for instance in terms of beauty or sound. One such description was of a species of butterflies in the Amazonas river: Tambien se sabe que se encontraron Opalos en los sepulcros de los Incas. Knowing various names it would be easier to find the bird, particularly since there existed no universal agreement about the naming of natural specimens.

He had to find a way to write the future museum things so that these could be brought closer, made familiar and finite. This doing was influenced by a pride over imperial, American nature colored by the dispute of the new world. Their claimed raucous voices were discussed by Hegel, and although this was some decades after the distribution of the instruction, it can still be illustrative of how Europeans perceived American nature.

He also argued that the voice was replaced with the metallic splendor of color. If Alvarado was a patriot, and if he wanted to contribute to the enlightenment of the nation, then he should provide objects for the museum. In the Royal Cabinet true patriotism and enlightenment could be realized and displayed. Second, he referred to the future royal orders of providing objects for the museum, as part of a bureaucratic imperial practice well- known to Alvarado since he was a high official, with this he implied that once the instruction was distributed Alvarado would in fact have an obligation to contribute.

And third, by promising rewards. Eager to demonstrate his competence within natural history, Alvarado spoke about his private collection of fossils, and he also recommended an acquaintance of his, Dr. Which he did; the first consignment Callon Among the objects Alvarado sent, various were probably items he already had been in possession of as a private collector and aficionado. He was born into a noble and successful family, his father was governor of Popayan and Callao, his mother was the Countess of Cartago, while his younger brother was elected rector at the University of San Marcos in Alvarado was married to the daughter of the Marquis of Ovieco, Admiral Blas de Lezo, one of the major strategists and commanders of the Spanish Armada.

Alvarado went to Spain as a young man where he engaged in a political and military career, holding posts in various places of the Spanish empire. In he was given the title Field Marshal. What was going on then? The first page of the catalogue sent by Alvarado to the Royal Cabinet. In contrast to the idea of an authoritative center imposing its interests, this can be seen as a way to recruit Alvarado by underscoring their common acquaintances and shared milieu, and thus activating a more symmetrical relation. The brother-in-law functioned as a personalized connector.

All three of them were of Creole origin, all three of them enjoyed high positions in the royal apparatus. And the general commander did pick up on this personal connection, he even elaborated it further by referring to their shared American background. He slightly altered the proposed connection, however, adding their shared Creole ancestry to the picture.

Both of them, then, added a personal element to their connection. Two equals; together they participated in the enlightenment of the nation. According to Latour, everything that enhances the mobility, the stability or the combinability will be welcomed and selected if it accelerates the cycle of accumulation. But, in the case of Alvarado the instruction had not been published, it did not yet exist, it was merely a plan.

• !
• .
• Tourismus in ländlichen Räumen der Entwicklungsländer (German Edition)?
• Catherine Tekakwitha (French Edition)!
• .
• .

So the connection cannot have been realized due to the instruction as a real, technical inscription device. Rather, it was a felt desire to contribute, to dedicate oneself to practices characterized by patriotism and enlightenment of the population. By including feelings of patriotism and dedication to the enlightenment project as a vehicle that makes objects travel with ease, then the connection between the centre and the local actor has to be redefined into a Latour This will change the idea of a centre of calculation.

The objects will actually flow more easy without coercion or one sided-persuasion inside networks where voluntary contributions based on a patriotic spirit comprise the principal motor. The symmetry does not at all reduce the inflow, rather the cycle of accumulation is triggered by it.

The centre one sees here, then, is not one that exercises power and authority in an explicit way. Rather it is a centre seeking to establish associations based on symmetry and shared interests in the museum project — since this is understood as a basic condition for enhancing the enlightenment project of knowledge and education. To create a personal link through shared background and motivations was an efficient way of converting the recruitment into a joint venture, to make it the successful outcome of efforts from both parties. An efficient way of creating such symmetry was to make the connection personal and close.

The four-phased scheme makes the investigator focus on the centric actor and enhances the dimensions of persuasion and managerialism — while negotiations and the motivations of the recruited actors are pushed into the background. Within the managerial model the actor may participate voluntarily or enslaved, but the main point is still to understand how the centric actor manages to impose and diffuse its own interests with accumulation as a result.

The concept of a center of calculation has been criticized for not being capable of considering different interests of the participants. Furthermore, such corresponding interests are probably crucial in order to understand the rise of the public museum dedicated to the common good and education of the public. The idea of a museum functioning as an authoritative center imposing its defined interests upon the outside correspondents and donors seems to contradict a fundamental aspect of eighteenth- century collectionism, that voluntary contributions and gifts, which formed part of other strategies, were essential in upholding the new public museums.

The idea of voluntariness united the two actors. However, this does not mean that they were not simultaneously assuring their own interests, and indeed within a more flexible model, one can also allow the actors to have different interests. He mentioned how he had talked to the brother-in-law, but not by coincidence or by courtesy only. He did the same thing, used the same strategy, towards many potential contributors. This was one very efficient way of ensuring the inflow of objects.

On the other hand, and for Alvarado, his partaking probably had positive effects in his hierarchical ascendency and position at court. The consignments he sent were not destined directly for the museum, but to the minister of the state. This made his contributions visible for Carlos III, who a couple of years later granted him the title of Marquis.

The existence of different interests does not mean that shared interests cannot exist at the same time, differences does not necessarily reduce the importance of voluntariness. The instruction published four years later, could be seen as a one-time request having effect during a limited period. In the Alvarado case, the museum used the planned instruction as a tool to create a potentially more efficient personalized network, in terms of both quality and durability. It was a way to profit from the forthcoming instruction, and it gave the museum control.

The next discussion concerns how the instruction, after publication, continued to circulate among learned aficionados not formally connected to the museum. This meant that the museum could rely on an army of potential collectors that, although unstable due to its obligations elsewhere, remained important for the accumulation. Verde sent two documents: Through these two documents he offered not only the stone figure itself, but also a ready-made translation of it, an entire interpretative package.

Of the stone figure, he wrote that it was: However, the island had only recently been discovered, so it was not an easy task to trace the origin of the figure. I have not engaged in finding out where the island is geographically situated, or its present name. Verde informed about the longitude and latitude of the island in his letter to the museum, so it would not be difficult to localize it.

He joined the first inhabitant and built a small chapel. The specific history of the figure began in when a squadron corporal had found it. The inhabitants had told him that monuments and idols accidentally had been found on at least two occasions. The third way of making a centre more flexible, described in chapter one, could be of use here: At Santa Catalina, he had the power to take the figure, and to translate it in the way he thought best.

He offered a ready-made translation and a suitable museum object to the Cabinet. This he did by showing how a string of ignorant people had handled not only the figure, but in general, all ancient monuments at the island without esteeming their value. Unlearned Portuguese, a superstitious Indian population, fierce outlaws, and their possibly mixed descendants, frightened by the items or ridiculing them, had thrown the antiquities into the sea due to their lack of knowledge.

Now it would, if it was considered worthy by the museum director, be put on display in the museum. Verde had connected the general history of the Portuguese conquest and settlement of the island with the specific history of the figure, through the retelling of the treatment of antiquities. Verde had been able to see what others before him had not been able to see: He elaborated on this by placing the monument into a discussion about the development of mankind, a discussion known to the eighteenth-century learned naturalist. Verde lamented that after the discovery of the Indies no one had dedicated themselves to this branch of natural history: What gave him the ability to translate the stone figure differently than the others who had encountered it?

Verde did not mention his lending from Ulloa. Action is always dislocated and translated, it always contains an overflow suggesting a direction out of the local towards other places and other times. Together these two plug-ins enabled his translation of the monument. Verde held his identity and came to the island in his capacity as an infantry captain, partaking in the conquest.

His identity as captain the plug-in connected him to the imperial, political and military strategies and gave him the capacity to act with authority on the island. Representing the Spanish empire he was probably even looking for evidence that could justify the conquest: Verde related to texts and knowledge originating at the imperial center without saying so explicitly.

This is the other plug-in. He was familiar with the imperial practice of sending objects to the center, he knew that the museum accumulated antiquities from the ancient Indian cultures. He himself, as a travelling infantry captain, was in no position for mounting a private collection, but he wanted to see it in hands that would estimate it. Another important source when Verde elaborated upon the difference between the primitive and the civilized, as well as when he stated that there was a lack of knowledge about antiquities as a branch of natural history, was Latour What occurred to Verde when he encountered the stone figure, then, holding the identity of military officer and as an aficionado familiar with the inflow practice of the museum and with contemporary learned discussion, was to take it in order to donate it to the museum.

Through the conquest of the island and its antiquities, Spain also proved its right to dominate the place, according to Verde. What kind of center does one see here? The offer was received without any previous contact or request. This points to a characteristic of the plug-ins, since, according to Latour, domination is not transported but translated through the plug-ins.

The use of plug-ins is not the same as being dominated by other places. Domination changes and becomes something else. Verde used these plug-ins as his own property; he did not even mention the instruction. Neither did he mention how he used points from Ulloa, who was not only the author of the Noticias Americanas, but also had been the director of the precursor cabinet that Verde was criticizing for lack of interest in American antiquities. Verde acted as if he was completely independent of the museum, yet he did exactly what the museum wanted.

The center did not persuade nor coerce. Neither did the museum appear as a centre striving for power and authority — this was no longer necessary since the outside actor had transformed and translated the museum interests, he made them his own, and integrated them with the interests he had to champion as an infantry captain. See also Brading The news about the monument was received with high interest at the Cabinet.

Verde was independent of the museum, and there was no need for a stable, continuous relation between the two parties. Rather, the connection could be actualized, come into life again, if Verde once more should come across another interesting object. The relation between Verde and the museum depended on whether he found suitable objects for the museum. If a center has many unstable and unsafe connections such as this one, then in sum they may represent a more stable and safe inflow-practice.

And this competent, independent and flexible group of satellites could be important for economical reasons. Persons who received their salary from elsewhere within the state apparatus, and who traveled to places where they could use time in order to find interesting pieces for the museum, could be important contributors. In this way the museum could act at a distance, since its interests travelled all over the world together with aficionados employed elsewhere that kept their eyes and ears open. It is difficult to estimate how many contributors there were, or the importance of their contributions; but nevertheless it was a potential effect of the networks assuring inflow to the Cabinet.

The center at work here, then, was both an indirectly-authoritative and passive one. It was indirectly authoritative since its practices and interests were distributed and working within loosely connected actors as plug-ins, but it was also passive since it could do nothing more than wait for the contributions from this voluntary, competent army of potential collectors.

Three cases connected to the instruction have been discussed, all three relating to the Cabinet as a center. The instruction formed part of the abounding curatorial literature circulating in Europe in the eighteenth century, as well as it and the cycle of accumulation it stimulated formed part of an imperial practice of knowledge-gathering. However, alongside the ministerial control, the instruction could be used in order to create parallel overlapping networks, more controlled or at least more overlooked by the museum director.

In the next section, a cycle consisting of three actors will be discussed. This, however, did not mean that engaging Vilella was a bad decision for the museum; throughout a quarter of a century he sent in large quantities of birds and sea-productions as well as a series of paintings, and he was by far the most active individual collector of the Cabinet. Since Vilella was hired for a long period of time, one can also see how the connections changed, how the positions of all three actors were redefined over time, and thus how the museum as a centre also took its shape and changed throughout these decades.

For instance, it was important to treat the birds correctly so that moths and worms were avoided. For this he should make a powder consisting of pepper, tobacco and camphor. However, there was no communication between the two centers, at this point, about how the triangle should be defined. He also asked for advice about how to proceed with particular specimens. And it would not always be clear, when damages occurred, whether these could be blamed on Vilella. Vilella, in turn, assured that he had done everything in the prescribed way and that he would keep on doing it as he was told.

Once more, the Majorcan assured that he had done it exactly as he had been told. In , Vilella had managed to catch two large dolphins, even larger than the ones he had prepared at an earlier point. These would be much better specimens for the museum, he suggested. However, there was another centre at work here — this goes for all the inflow practices, but it becomes particularly visible in this case.

Vilella, the collector out in the field, responded to two centric actors, the Cabinet and the Crown, in Madrid. In these cases, the second centre primarily would be informed about what was going on. Each time a consignment was sent off to Madrid, or each time problems involving other issues than the merely conservational ones occurred, the important association would be with beween Vilella and the Prince, through his personal secretary.

Commonplace issues in these cases were decisions about the use of money, appointment of assistance or the use of royal property. In the spring of Vilella asked for permission to use a house at the dockyard, a royal property used by fishermen. There he would have easy access to the sea, and he could work and store specimens. Once installed in the house he acquired a small boat and the collection of fishes and shells in the nearby coves and beaches was facilitated.

The navy superintendant in Palma, Joseph de Carchena, and Antonio Recondo, another local collector, were ordered and hired to assist Vilella. These orders did not pass through the museum but were made by the crown. However, this collaboration turned out to be rather problematic, and Vilella tried to use his relation with the museum in order to affect the authorities at court.

This he did cleverly, by implicating a twofold problem. According to Vilella, Carchena was not at all happy about his obligation to assist in the collecting, and he did all that he could to acerbate the working conditions at the sea-house, the result being that it became almost impossible for Vilella to work. As he presented the problem, it was one that called for responses from both centers: Vilella deployed the same strategy concerning his pension, that had been decided by the King and which, according to Vilella, was much too low.

The Majorcan, with many years of museum experience, even came up with ideas and suggestions. These Indian models would be convenient to place in the hall of treasures, where one already had placed two Chinese models. The contact between the centers mostly was of an informative character, they operated with a division of labor, and did not act as a united authority, which meant that Vilella could, or had to, juggle between the two centers. The triangular relation, however, gradually changed and the two centric actors became more coordinated.

Recondo had been competing for the position as collector at Majorca. However the director had to turn him down, since he was not in a position to make such decisions see ref. Now, without a patron, Vilella only responded to the minister of the state and the museum — and these two were more united in terms of the centric interests.

In , Vilella sent a list of fishes he planned to prepare to Floridablanca. The minister discussed the issue with the museum vice-director Clavijo and they agreed that it was necessary to stem the flow of consignments from the Balearic collector. During the s only three consignments from Vilella are registered. The first one resulted in the agreement of stemming the flow, the second consignment was a series of minerals that he actually had been ordered not to send but that still arrived, and the third one was a box of maritime products. Having the earlier discussions in this chapter in mind, this case demonstrates how voluntariness and patriotism as chief vehicle for associating with the museum was not possible for everyone.

Vilella had solicited to come to Madrid in order to present his paintings for Carlos IV, his former patron. Still life with fish, porgy and dogfish. Here it looks more like a centre of calculation, at least in matters that directly concern its field of expertise: It gave orders and reprimands, it specified methods and oversaw how almost all objects were handled by the Majorcan.

It has become particularly clear how the museum depended upon the crown in administrative and economical matters, but also how dialogues and collaboration came about after the initiative of the minister of the state. The fact that he was asked about this shows, not how the division of labor that had been practiced until then was dissolved, but rather that one saw the need for both parties engaging in dialogues about important issues.

The centers became closer, and in this case with an unfortunate result for Vilella. The crown with its governmental apparatus, however, was not merely a corresponding or overlapping center for the museum. It was also among the most important contributor in terms of objects while being chief authorities.

This contributed to the multifaceted museum shape and unforeseeable cycles of accumulation: Animals from the Royal Estates Networks connecting the museum with the royal gardens, menageries, and parks were important for ensuring a supply of exotic animal carcasses. Many ended up in the museum in their afterlife: Many of these had arrived as diplomatic gifts from other sovereigns to the King, or from viceroys or governors in overseas dominions, others still were results of expeditions or instructions. Carcasses sent from distant places had often been prepared by unskilled dissectors, often making identification of the species difficult.

Some specimens arrived destroyed, rotten or moth-eaten. It was complicated, however, to make a smooth and well-functioning network through which carcasses could move from the estates to the museum. When a reindeer died at the Royal palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in October , its remains were sent to the museum on the orders of the Count of Floridablanca. The reindeers had been transported from Sweden on a frigate headed for Morocco, a gift circulating within a network of dynastic politics, and one intended to placate Carlos III; the frigate would have to dock at a Spanish port on its course, and the relation between Sweden and Morocco involved trade of weapons.

From there, the reindeer delegation consisting of an escort from the Spanish cavalry, a Swedish official, and a Lappish couple, escorted the animals on a three-week journey to the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid. The dry and hot summer climate of the plains of Andalusia and La Mancha, however, was too hard on the animals.

The first animal died when they reached Cordoba, and after having arrived in Madrid, others fell sick and died. The survivors were taken to the royal estate of San Ildefonso near Segovia, which had a milder climate than the capital. This did not help much, though, and in October the last reindeer died and its remains were then destined to the Cabinet of Natural History. The reindeers, as far as can be ascertained, were the first of their species ever to reach as far south as Spain.

In the Vilella case, two centers acted towards a third actor, the collector in Majorca. Here, the royal apparatus manifests itself as precisely that, an apparatus, a complex assemblage of actors pointing to multiple places and handling many issues, including administration of an entire empire. The royal apparatus was both a contributor to the museum, and the core of an entire empire.

Ideally, the raw material for two exemplars, one stuffed and one skeleton, should be brought to the Cabinet. Cavallero was aware of this, but the employee who skinned and cleansed the carcass was not. The official who had given the orders for sending the reindeer remains to the museum, was not aware of what was happening on in the stable, nor of the need for cleaning a reindeer carcass immediately after death.

Additionally, no one had thought to send the carcasses of the six reindeers which had previously died to the museum. A well- functioning network for the flow of carcasses did not exist, nor did a network for the distribution of information about the animals kept in the gardens and parks or about what kind of deliveries they could expect in the future. The museum was informed only about the delivery of individual, dead animals.

The museum director wanted to know, for instance, whether there were more reindeers at La Granja, since in that case he could at least hope for a skeleton to be mounted at the museum in the future, but he was informed that there were not. In order to better understand why and how this was the case, this apparatus must be explained more in detail. He was told this would be impossible unless it was approved of by the Duke of Losada.

This was illustrated by the arrival at the museum later that year, of a bird from the park in the outskirts of the capital. Seemingly, the Duke of Losada had to give his approval for every dead animal that was to be sent, which meant that carcasses would continue to arrive destroyed and damaged if, for instance, the Duke was out of town or had more urgent matters to attend.

This complicated the cycles of accumulation. It seemed impossible for the museum to have its interests integrated into the many royal subsections, and the bureaucratic hindrances made it difficult to reach and inform the people actually handling the specimens. To Make an Elephant Flow A much more efficient way of handling a carcass is exemplified by the case of an Asian elephant who died at the royal estate in Aranjuez in November It was a docile and obedient animal, until the summer of , when it demonstrated uncontrollable rage and caused considerable damage to its stable.

As a result, the King ordered that he should be tied by his feet. Simultaneously, another Asian elephant was on its way to Spain; Carlos III had requested the governor-general of the Philippines to find him another exemplar. There is no information in the archive about how the first elephant died in Aranjuez, but its death probably occurred the same day that the new elephant arrived, leaving the question of whether the troublesome elephant was put to death by royal orders open for speculation.

Carlos III orders were for the elephant to be stuffed and displayed at the museum. In each of the letters he insisted on the same procedure: One can also imagine that his insisting letters to Floridablanca were a way of demonstrating his position as museum director for the minister and the Aranjuez staff, incorporating the elephant work, even though it was performed at Aranjuez, into the domain of the museum expertise. Mounting an elephant takes a lot of time, and the work done at the royal estate was only preparatory.

In a letter to the director, Bru described the progress after a couple of days working on it. The bones are being cooked and cleaned, this is the task of some caretaker. I have made a drawing with all of its measures and equally I am making another one of its anatomy for the mounting of the bones. Bru underscored how he was doing it all on direct royal orders. He also added that he was given all the assistance he needed. Due to the constant occurrence of matters to which your assistance is indispensable, I commission you all that I can to procure to shorten all the possible your stay, doing in that estate only what is indispensable to do there with the elephant and leave all the remaining to do it at this Royal Cabinet.

Los guesos se estan cociendo y limpiando esto es obra de algun cuidado. Another message, expressed between the lines rather than explicitly, was that as a museum dissector the museum building, rather than the stables at the royal menagerie was the proper place for him to perform his tasks. By bringing the elephant remains quickly to the museum, they would be taken out of unlearned hands, and the director could then supervise and control the work.

There seems to have been a latent tension between the two, an interpretation that has its foundations in an incident four years earlier. He is a valenciano [from Valencia] that says it all. Noviembre , Diciembre , Enero Me parece como a Vm. Es valenciano, eso le basta. When Bru eventually returned to Madrid, he brought some stuffed animals from the royal palace.

Bru ensured the inflow, but his conduct also made the connections between court and the museum even more complex and diffuse.

Juan Marsé

Should not the director ideally be in charge of such contact with the court? This was the normal procedure, but Bru, who had been assigned as dissector by the King, seems to have occupied an in-between position. Formally, he was the Cabinet dissector. But he also occasionally served as a dissector at court, when it suited the majesties. This in-between position made it possible for him to combine the two roles. The court was the most important place for professional and hierarchical ascent.

In this case, the court as a contributor functioned with ease, and the carcass was handled perfectly from the moment the elephant died. While being an object-provider, however, the crown was also the superior of both the dissector and the director. The center seemed to be disintegrating. A lack of unity resulted both from orders received from the court as the superior centre, and from individuals striving for their own interests. If one compares the elephant incident with the problematic flow of birds from Casa de Campo, in which the large number of people involved complicated the museum work, the difference is evident.

In Aranjuez, not only Bru, but others, ranging from the King, the minister of the state, the governor and personnel, all the way down to the stable lads and transporters were involved in making decisions, writing letters, cleaning skin, boiling bones, and finally, raising the kilogram skin 28 arrobas , the even heavier bones and the intestines into the transporting carriage for delivery to Madrid.

And as will be shown in chapter four, this all arrived in a perfect state, fit for the production of the two required exemplars. In this case, it becomes clear how the explicit royal orders regarding the elephant led to efficient handling and processing. It seems the only way to make these cycles efficient was through direct royal orders, as in the case of the elephant.

In the last section of this chapter I shall return to the kind of center that depended upon voluntary, patriotic contributors, and investigate the work that had to be done inside these networks in order to maintain the inflow. To maintain a network based on voluntariness. He described its characteristics, such as its weight of approximately libras, and offered it as a gift to the museum. He declared that it was a singular rock that ought to be in the museum: The Marquis of Montehermoso was an aficionado of natural history, a member of the Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country, and he knew the value of the rock he was offering.

So how could he be sure that they would do it this time? However, this was a flexible practice, and in particular cases the names could be put on the object — in the case of the spar, Montehermoso could expect his name to be displayed with the rock since it was a singular specimen. He had another rock, though, which he offered to the Marquis. When he could not assist with the purchase of the Labrador rock, he instead offered the Marquis another one, similar but smaller, as a gift. He also mentioned the price he had paid for it at the time, and what he thought would be a reasonable price if the Marquis wanted to buy the series.

Yet another favor asked by the Marquis was a letter of recommendation for his son. Copiador de cartas Betancourt was a rising star within the Spanish court, studying the sciences and particularly mineralogy, in Paris, on a pension paid by the King. His actions towards the Marquis pointed towards the Canary Islands, Paris, Vitoria, a travelling mineral trader and his rocks, and a rare edition of Aldrovandi.

The spar was a singular rock, and he went to considerable lengths to acquire it. But this does not seem to be a plug-in; a concept that designates how small actors can connect to something larger outside the situation in order to be more competent. Rather it was the other way around; the central actor connected to small, local issues left out as incitements or posed as direct questions by the contributor in order to gain ability.

Pick- ups would then be themes, incitements, possible topics for negotiation, expressed by actors with less power towards the central actor inside a network. While plug-ins describes how central domination is translated locally, pick-ups designate how local intents to dominate are AMNCNM Calatayud , ref. Pick-ups are unstable; they can reflect whatever personal desire appears in the moment, something that comes to the fore in the encounter and is adapted to what the contributor sees as possible for the central actor to do for him, and which cannot be foreseen.

TAXONÓMICO - Definition and synonyms of taxonómico in the Spanish dictionary

Almost all the pick-ups left out by Montehermoso, then, were doable for the director, but they required a lot of work. Are pick-ups the same as domination? The plug-ins are not domination, rather it has been translated and has taken on another form. But it was an insignificant domination that, even though it demanded much work to be done, it let the central actor keep on with the accumulation. It was a domination that did not interfere with the primary goal and interests of the centre, as long as the pick-ups were done well and responded to. The use of pick-ups as a term supplementing the plug-ins is a way to analytically maintain the idea of a center.

One could perhaps just as well have described what was going on as negotiations, looking at specific encounters, and removing the focus from the center. One could say that the idea of the museum as centre of calculation hid more than it revealed of the interactions between the museum and its contributors, and argue that the model is too managerial, that it creates mess, and that it ignores the interests and power of other actors. Why should one insist on keeping the idea of a center?

First, the inflow towards the center does occur. The Icelandic spar, a unique specimen, did arrive, as did thousands of other objects. It makes analytical sense to figure out how and why this happened, and this can only be done by insisting on the directness towards a center, by investigating how the accumulation came about. Second, a center can be seen as a flexible entity. It can change, it can adapt to the interests of others, it can satisfy them, it can stretch its rules for them, it can operate with a division of labor with other centers, it can be striving, it can be humble — and it still can be a center if it continues gathering objects and knowledge; it will be a center if the accumulation is maintained.

This concept of a centre connects to the public character of the Cabinet. Montehermoso, and contributors such as Alvarado and Verde, were motivated by a desire to contribute to the Cabinet as a patriotic, enlightenment project.