The work of Pachukanis is approached in relation to the penal system and the jurisprudential practices, fundamentally the derivation between the modus operandi of companies producing goods and the legal form. In the bosom of modern mercantile development, criminal policies and deprivation of liberty are historically determined as the logistical necessity of managing the masses available for work and punishment. However, in postmodernity “work” no longer represents the greater interest in the reproduction of global capital, which leads to the collapse of the penal and prison systems, serving as real instruments of social exclusion.

The purpose of this text is to think about the situation of women in the Islamic world, in addition to the stereotypes fed by prejudice and ignorance, through reflection on the social relationships of sex and gender in the Islamic world, from the film “The source of Women”, directed by Radu Mihaeleanu, inspired by the play Lysistrata, of Aristophanes, which interweaves fiction and the real to present to the public the asymmetric gender relationships and the social place of women in the Islamic world. This film makes possible a sociological analysis of the sexual division of labor in Islamic societies and the strategies of resistance of women inserted in a patriarchal universe. It also enables analogies with the inequalities and mechanisms of power also present in the social relationships of sex and gender established in other historical-social and cultural contexts, not specifically Arab or Islamic.

The present text fits in an analysis based on situations of biographical confrontation that highlight both the challenges, risks, threats and tensions of change implied, and, on the other hand, the positions and dispositions of the subject involved. The first three cases came from very different sources: a daily text (“William Beckford’s Diary in Portugal and Spain”); a memorialist text (“Marquis de Fronteira and d’Alorna Memoirs”) and a fictional text (“The Maias” of Eça de Queirós). This article, which main source consisting of epistles related to Correia da Serra in the United States, is a reference for his action as ambassador of Portugal, dealing with the prominent figures of that emerging country. As a corollary, a model of analysis of situations of confrontation is developed through a biographical path, accentuating obstacles, risks and threats, as well as forms of expression and struggle developed by the subject in question.

In this article, we present the results of an investigation which analyzes the participation of women in illicit cannabis cultivation in towns in the São Francisco River Valley, in the Brazilian northeast. We will present an analysis of the life histories of five women, who were involved in the trade, from the perspective of the concepts of “biographical trajectories” (Dubar, 1998) and “pathways” as analytical aspect (Kokoreff, 2005). In-depth interviews sought objective and subjective aspects of the relations between them and the institutions and actors related, or not, to this illicit trade. This showed that even in a predominately-masculine environment, female participation increases productivity and profitability. This participation implies the realization of specific activities and not the intention to constitute an on-going criminal career. This gives them a certain invisibility, protecting them from police repression and other forms of violence.

If in some ways the big city liberates the individual, it also sets constraints on individuals. Indeed, if the big city partakes in the intellectual fulfillment of the individual and sets him free from the constraints of a community, it also imposes on the individual the instability and contingencies of mobility. To explore this two-faced role this paper resorts to the analysis of space in urban sociology and urban research in general as well as the relevant pragmatic approach of urban analysis. It aims to explore the role of space as a political, social and cultural experience of an urban environment.