Academic literature on the topic 'Banned books'

“Banned Books Behind Bars” is a social justice project that aims to shed light on the complex problem of information access in prison and to explore potential prototypes for possible solutions to some of these obstacles, in particular access to books and printed information. The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population but a staggering twenty-five percent of the world’s total prisoners. For many incarcerated individuals, access to information is a struggle: censorship, book banning, and lack of adequate library facilities or collections are common. Over the course of conducting preliminary research, this project evolved through the research process of ideation. Through the participatory action research method, qualitative interviews with volunteers from banned books organizations helped to identify potential digital tools meant to aid in the fight against the First Amendment violations that incarcerated individuals face daily. Furthermore, the interviews clarified that the first step toward creating an impactful digital project involves converting various forms of unstructured data, including newspaper articles, prison censorship forms, and state published banned book lists, into structured data. Through this discovery, “Banned Books Behind Bars” became an endeavor to standardize practices of data aggregation amongst banned books organizations throughout the country. Gathering concrete data about the practice of banning books within prisons requires an elevated level of transparency. Incarcerated individuals, their families, and prison reform activists need a platform for reporting data on censorship practices, and, ultimately, for bringing awareness to the arbitrary application of censorship guidelines within the complex world of incarceration. The final prototype is a digital repository, created with Airtable software, which offers authoritative dataset consolidation for activists and organizations working to deliver books to prisoners.

Banning books from public and school libraries has sharply increased in the USA in recent years. I analyze the phenomenon of book banning from the theoretical perspective of how books get ritualized in different textual dimensions. Book bans have a long cultural history in shaping literary and religious canons. Comparison with book burning shows some similar and some distinctive strategies behind book banning. Like book burning, book banning aims to draw public attention and to offend political opponents. In contrast to ritualized destruction of iconic books, however, book banning attacks the expressive dimension of reading texts by trying to prevent access to them. Whereas book burnings aim to offend opponents’ sensibilities, book bans aim to prevent inspiration to imagine different social arrangements and personal identities. That goal is apparent from the disproportionate focus on banning books with multi-cultural and LGBTQIA+ themes. The ban acts as a warning against embracing certain opinions and identities. However, analyzing book banning as ritual also draws attention to well-developed, ongoing traditions of counter-ritualizing by many libraries. They publicize banned book lists and encourage reading them during “Banned Books Week” and similar events. Through this ritual analysis of iconic and expressive texts, book banning emerges as a traditional site of cultural conflict over the means and goals of textual inspiration.

This study surveyed the ALA’s Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books lists from the past 30 years to see if there was a change in the themes and age groups of the books that are being challenged or banned.

Public schools and public libraries often receive challenges—suppression or removal requests—to particular books, which can lead the book being banned. Research has examined challenges to books with multicultural themes and individuals, noted that authors of color are disproportionally targeted, and recognized the remarkable number of challenges to books deemed to be classic. This qualitative content analysis research utilized both with inductive and deductive elements—open coding and axial coding—to examine challenged books intended for primary elementary students. The theoretical framework blended critical multiculturalism, gay and lesbian identity, and radical politics in children’s literature. Findings included patterns based on era, frequency and location of challenge, demography of challenger, and oft-challenged themes, specifically sexuality (sexual reproduction and diverse sexualities), inappropriate humor, danger, death, racial and religious diversity, mysticism and wizardry, racially or culturally insensitive elements, concerning interpersonal dynamics, and evolution. Meaning is extracted for teachers, librarians, administrators, and researchers.

Reviews with rationales for four challenged trade books that deserve a place in our libraries, classrooms, and in the hands of our students: New Kid by Jerry Craft, Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King, and You Can’t Say That!an anthology edited by Leonard S. Marcus.

This article delves into the significance of children engaging with banned books, illuminating how such literature fosters a multifaceted learning experience. By navigating through various thematic lenses, this discourse reveals the manifold advantages of allowing young readers to explore these controversial texts. From cultivating independent thought and fostering diversity appreciation to nurturing resilience and championing freedom of expression, the analysis showcases the profound impact of banned books on children's cognitive and emotional development. Through their portrayal of real-life challenges and provision of diverse perspectives, these books serve as windows into the complexities of the human experience. Additionally, the article underscores their role in addressing mental health struggles, fostering empathy, and humanizing marginalized individuals. By exploring these subheadings, this study offers a comprehensive exploration of how embracing banned books equips children with the tools to better understand themselves, their peers, and the world around them.

In 2017, I taught an Introduction to Digital Humanities course for undergraduate students at the University of Toronto. The course’s unifying theme was banned books. What moved me to focus the course in this way was the illegal typewriter that lived under my childhood bed: I grew up in formerly communist Eastern Europe, where typewriters were tightly controlled by the government. Yet my family owned an illegal, unregistered typewriter, hidden under my bed behind the off-season clothes, because they saw the ability to write and disseminate one’s thoughts as a technology of survival.In the Intro to DH course, students explored the intellectual landscape of the digital humanities by thinking about banned books throughout history. They examined early printed books of astronomy; early printed books of the lives of saints; illicitly typewritten and photographed Soviet samizdat; endangered climate change research data rescued by the Internet Archive; and American Library Association data about banned and challenged books for children and young adults. This article reflects on using the lens of banned books and endangered knowledge to focus an Introduction to DH course and encourage students to interrogate critically how a variety of technologies—from codex to printing press to typewriter to the internet—create, transmit, preserve, and repress knowledge and cultural memory.

Cette these porte sur les revues de bande dessinee en anglais diffusees aux etats-unis et au canada depuis les annees 30 (comic books ). Comme toute production culturelle, le comic book s inscrit dans un reseau de praiques sociales et de discours qui en font un revelateur de la societe qui le produit et permettent de rendre compte du statut subalterne qui est le sien. La premiere partie pose les jalons d une periodisation visant a fournir un cadre historique fiable et fonctionnel pour l analyse ulterieure. La deuxieme partie fait le point sur l evolution des modes de fabrication et de diffusion depuis les annees 30. La troisieme partie examine les contenus des comic books sous quatre angles : le fascicule comme objet autonome (publicites, courrier des lecteurs, etc) ; les grands genres (cb "pour enfants", super-heros) ; les cb comme vehicules d education et de propagande ; les cb "obscenes" (violence et pornographie). La quatrieme et derniere partie examine les conditions economiques, sociales et culturelles justifiant l apparente incapacite des cb a acceder a aucune forme de reconnaissance culturelle (indifference du grand public, recurrence de discours de censure ponctuels, non-credibilite du discours critique des amateurs, discours "negatifs" de l avant-garde artistique) malgre quelques signes avant-coureurs d une entree progressive (mais non irreversible) des comic books dans la production culturelle legitime
This dissertation bears on the periodical comis strip magazines distributed in the united states and canada since the 1930's, aka comic books. The key contention of this research is that the comic book, as any cultural artifact, is posited at the core of a network of discourses and social practices whose interpretive potential is twofold; on the one hand, they emphasize a number of revealing features proper to the social environment in which comic books are produced, on the other, they are instrumental in accounting for the comic book's inferiour cultural status. The first part is a historical survey whose purpose is to lay down a periodization framework suitable for further analysis of the medium. The second part addresses the evolution of the comics industry's central mechanisms, is creative process and commercial distribution, since the 1930s. In the third part, comic book contents are looked into from four angles: the booklet as self-contained artifact (ads, readers' mail, etc); foremost genres (comics "for kids", superheroes); comic books as a means of propaganda and education; "obscene" comic books (pornography and violence). Finally, the fourth part deals with the economic, socialn and cultural background of the comic book's apparent inability to accede to any form of cultural legitimacy (general public's indifference, recurring if limited censorship, etc) despite tentative signs of assimilation into the cultural mainstream

« Comic book » est un terme anglo-saxon, plus spécifiquement américain, employé pour désigner les fascicules de bande dessinée. Il a trouvé son autonomie en 1938 avec la création de « Superman » qui a amorcé l'hégémonie de la figure du « super-héros » dans la production. Au cours du vingtième siècle, éditeurs et auteurs ont eu recours à des stratégies de conquête et de fidélisation du lectorat dont le procédé de la réécriture est le plus significatif. Le super-héros fut alors soumis à l'interprétation de nombreux créateurs et devint le témoin à multiples facettes de l'Histoire des États-Unis. Il s'est dessiné à partir des années quatre-vingt une tendance réflexive qui prend cette figure comme objet critique et qui a donné naissance à ce qu'on appelle ici le « metacomic ». À partir d'un corpus représentatif, cette thèse est consacrée aux stratégies qui fondent cette réflexivité et aux discours qu'elle véhicule dans les œuvres. Elle se divise en quatre chapitres. Le premier est un descriptif de l'industrie du comic book qui explique ses particularités et l'hégémonie en son sein du genre « superhéroïque ». Le second est dédié aux processus formels qui permettent de justifier la constitution du corpus en définissant la réflexivité des œuvres. Le troisième est voué à une analyse du caractère idéologique de cette métafiction, afin de montrer en quoi la mise en crise du super-héros sert un discours sur l'Histoire et la politique américaines. Le dernier s'intéresse à la manière dont les œuvres consacrent le super-héros comme figure de l'imagination : adoptant une approche fictionnaliste, on y démontre comment transfictionnalité et univers fictionnels sont utilisés pour revisiter
“Comic Book” is the Anglo-Saxon, more specifically American term employed to describe a specific material medium for comics. The epochal moment in the history of the comic book was the 1938 publication of « Superman », which marked the starting point of the hegemony of the figure of the superhero in comic production. Over the course of the twentieth century, authors and publishers have used various strategies for winning over readers and securing their loyalty. Among these, the technique of rewriting is the most significant. Thus, the superhero has been the subject of many reinterpretations, and consequently, has born witness to many facets of the United States’ history. The publications of the 1980s have seen the rise of a reflexive approach in which the superhero becomes an object of critique himself. This new genre is here referred to as Metacomic. Drawing on a representative body of works, the doctoral thesis at hand examines the strategies that constitute this reflexivity, as well as the multiple discourses that it gives rise to. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter gives an account of the comic book industry and explains its particularities, as well as the hegemonic position of the superhero genre in the industry. The second chapter attempts a definition of reflexivity in comic books, which permits to establish a body of works to be examined. The third chapter attempts an analysis of the ideological aspects of this metafiction in order to show how the crisis of the superhero reflects on a certain discourse on American history and politics. The fourth and last chapter examines how the analysed comics establish the superhero as an agent of imag

Cette thèse porte sur la trajectoire éditoriale et artistique de la collection Vertigo créée en 1993 par DC Comics, maison d’édition états-unienne spécialisée dans la bande dessinée. Je me propose d’aborder Vertigo à travers l'apport des scénaristes britanniques employés par DC Comics depuis le milieu des années quatre-vingt. Leur rôle est en effet considérable, tant au moment de la fondation de Vertigo par la rédactrice Karen Berger que dans le succès ultérieur dont jouit la collection. La genèse de Vertigo met en lumière l’importance du phénomène appelé l’ « Invasion britannique », c’est-à-dire l’arrivée sur le marché états-unien de nombreux créateurs qui sont nés et travaillent à l’étranger pour DC Comics. Cette « invasion » révélera au public américain des scénaristes de tout premier plan tels Alan Moore, Grant Morrison ou Neil Gaiman, dont la série The Sandman est considérée comme un jalon majeur de l’histoire du média. La critique existante au sujet de Vertigo en général tend d’ailleurs à se focaliser sur la portion du corpus produit par les Britanniques, mais sans nécessairement prendre acte de cette spécificité culturelle. Le travail à mener est donc double ; d'une part, il s'agira de retracer une histoire du label en tant qu'instance productrice d'une culture médiatique particulière, qui s'inscrit dans un contexte socio-historique et repose sur les pratiques et les représentations de l'ensemble des acteurs (producteurs et consommateurs au sens large), eux-mêmes nourris d'une tradition qui préexiste à l'apparition de Vertigo. Il sera dès lors possible de prendre appui sur cette connaissance contextuelle pour interroger la poétique du label, et ainsi identifier les spécificités d’une « école » britannique au sein de cette industrie culturelle
This thesis deals with the editorial and aesthetic history of the Vertigo imprint, which was created in 1993 by DC Comics, a US-American comics publisher. I shall consider in particular the contribution of British scriptwriters employed by DC and then by Vertigo from the 1980s onwards. Theise creators played a tremendous role, both at the time of Vertigo's founding by editor Karen Berger and at a later date, as the imprint gathered widespread recognition. The genesis of the Vertigo imprint sheds light on the so-called “British Invasion”, that is to say the appearance within the American industry of several UK-based creators working for DC Comics. Spearheaded by Alan Moore, the “invasion” brought to the fore many of the most important scriptwriters of years to come, such as Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman, whose Sandman series has been described as a major landmark in the recognition of the medium. Existing criticism regarding Vertigo tends to focus on the body of work produced by British authors, without necessarily discussing their national specificity. My goal is therefore double; on the one hand, I intend to write a history of the label as the producer of a specific media culture that belongs to a given socio-historical context and is grounded in the practices and representations of the field's actors (producers and consumers in a broad sense). On the other hand, the awareness of the context in which the books are produced shall allow me to interrogate the imprint's poetics, thus identifying the specificity of a “British school of writing” within the comics mainstream industry

Dans ce manuscrit de thèse, nous détaillons et illustrons les différents défis scientifiques liés à l'analyse automatique d'images de bandes dessinées, de manière à donner au lecteur tous les éléments concernant les dernières avancées scientifiques en la matière ainsi que les verrous scientifiques actuels. Nous proposons trois approches pour l'analyse d'image de bandes dessinées. La première approche est dite "séquentielle'' car le contenu de l'image est décrit progressivement et de manière intuitive. Dans cette approche, les extractions se succèdent, en commençant par les plus simples comme les cases, le texte et les bulles qui servent ensuite à guider l'extraction d'éléments plus complexes tels que la queue des bulles et les personnages au sein des cases. La seconde approche propose des extractions indépendantes les unes des autres de manière à éviter la propagation d'erreur due aux traitements successifs. D'autres éléments tels que la classification du type de bulle et la reconnaissance de texte y sont aussi abordés. La troisième approche introduit un système fondé sur une base de connaissance a priori du contenu des images de bandes dessinées. Ce système permet de construire une description sémantique de l'image, dirigée par les modèles de connaissances. Il combine les avantages des deux approches précédentes et permet une description sémantique de haut niveau pouvant inclure des informations telles que l'ordre de lecture, la sémantique des bulles, les relations entre les bulles et leurs locuteurs ainsi que les interactions entre les personnages
In this thesis, we review, highlight and illustrate the challenges related to comic book image analysis in order to give to the reader a good overview about the last research progress in this field and the current issues. We propose three different approaches for comic book image analysis that are composed by several processing. The first approach is called "sequential'' because the image content is described in an intuitive way, from simple to complex elements using previously extracted elements to guide further processing. Simple elements such as panel text and balloon are extracted first, followed by the balloon tail and then the comic character position in the panel. The second approach addresses independent information extraction to recover the main drawback of the first approach : error propagation. This second method is called “independent” because it is composed by several specific extractors for each elements of the image without any dependence between them. Extra processing such as balloon type classification and text recognition are also covered. The third approach introduces a knowledge-driven and scalable system of comics image understanding. This system called “expert system” is composed by an inference engine and two models, one for comics domain and another one for image processing, stored in an ontology. This expert system combines the benefits of the two first approaches and enables high level semantic description such as the reading order of panels and text, the relations between the speech balloons and their speakers and the comic character identification

AbstractOn January 30, 2020, India reported the first case of COVID-19 in Kerala. The index case was identified as a student returning from Wuhan. As of February 3, 2020, a total of three cases were confirmed in Kerala. However, after a month the number of cases in the country increased dramatically. On March 14, 2020, India reported its first two COVID-19-related deaths. India’s case fatality ratio remained constant at 3.2 percent until June 9, 2020, when it dropped to 2.8 percent. On March 11, 2020, when WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, Indian authorities banned visas and non-essential travel from affected countries. Subsequently, all international passengers returning to India were required to go through a screening test.On March 25, 2020, the Government of India imposed a sudden complete national lockdown for 21 days. After imposition of the lockdown, the government released several guidelines on protection measures such as making wearing face masks compulsory in public places, social distancing, and avoiding mass gatherings.As on February 5, 2020, India had a testing capacity of only 11 laboratories for testing for COVID-19. But by June 12, 2020, it had ramped up its capacity to 885 laboratories that conducted more than 125 tests a day. However, India conducts remarkably fewer tests as compared to other countries.After detecting the first case of COVID-19 on January 30, 2020, India experienced a delayed growth in its test count. Subsequently, however, India recorded a constantly increasing daily incidence rate. By December 30, 2020, the number of cases in India was recorded at 10.2 million. The authors provide a preview of all the chapters in the book.

AbstractIn recent years street vending has become a major feature of the public space in downtown Rabat, Morocco’s capital city. Home to the Parliament and governmental institutions, downtown Rabat holds a powerful political symbolism in the collective representation of its inhabitants. Street vending is thus considered an intruder activity that must be banned from the area. However, history describes the downtown as a commercial zone where open-air markets—called Souks—were held regularly alongside brick-and-mortar shops before the advent of The French Protectorate in 1912, which transformed it into a “European zone” with a new “modern-formal” economy, pushing the local population to dwell in informal settlements and live from informal economy on the outskirts of the city. Through a historical analysis of the evolution of the downtown’s public space use induced by the French urban laws and models, and perpetuated by the Moroccan policies after independence, this chapter argues that itinerant trade belongs to the downtown as a central function and key element of its urban dynamics that has been disrupted by alien policies. This study makes an original contribution by evaluating the impact of colonial urban policies on urban informality in the Moroccan context. Results suggest that street vending, now considered as misappropriation of space by authorities, could be considered as a form of resistance to imported planning models and that efficient urban interventions depend on an in-depth understanding of rooted local urban design.

AbstractThis chapter starts by introducing the policy and political context of the Covid-19 crisis, surveying some of the changes it brought to immigration policies in different countries: border closures for non-citizens; disruption for temporary migrants; and special arrangements for essential (migrant) workers like doctors and nurses or farmworkers to ensure emergency wards are staffed and the food processing chain is not disrupted. The chapter critically reviews these changes and discusses the main analytical and policy questions which the book addresses. It investigates how the pandemic forces us to rethink notions like membership, citizenship, belonging, but also solidarity, community, essential services or ‘essential’ workers. Migrants expose tensions and contradictions within these concepts and values. Citizens (who may carry the virus) cannot be banned from return to the homeland as they travel internationally or domestically; by contrast, temporary migrants or asylum seekers may be locked in their dormitories because of an outbreak in their midst to prevent spread and protect the citizens. This chapter shows that the specific tensions of the global pandemic for migration are linked to the more long-term tensions of globalisation, migration, and the nation-state, suggesting that the pandemic is but a magnifying lens. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book’s contents.

Antireflection coatings have been the subject of two books and of numerous scientific and technical papers.1,2 until recently, there have been no systematic studies made to determine the optimum performance that can be achieved for a given set of specifications and coating materials. Willey has published two papers with empirical studies of this problem.3,4 He has presented equations which, for a given set of coating materials and for an overall thickness of the multilayers, give an estimate of the lowest achievable reflectance for a normal incidence antireflection. The two equations presented by Willey are valid for a certain range of coating materials, widths of the spectral region and overall thicknesses of the multilayer. They are based on the calculated results obtained for a number of different examples . It will be shown in this paper that, whilst giving a good first estimate of the attainable results, the formulae are not accurate for any one set of coating materials.

100 years since the Establishment of the State Meadow Institute the Federal Williams Research Center of Forage Production & Agroecology celebrates in June 2022. The State Meadow Institute creation was event of the most important state significance. This event is extremely important for rational nature management, increasing soil fertility, obtaining high and sustainable crop yields, and preserving the productive longevity of our lands. In 1922 the Station for the study of forage plants and forage area was transformed into the State Meadow Institute (SMI). 1930 – SMI was transformed into the All-Union Williams Fodder Research Institute. 1992 – transformation into the All-Russian Williams Fodder Research Institute. 2018 transformation into the Federal Williams Research Center of Forage Production & Agroecology. Throughout its history, the Institute has proudly borne the name of its founder – W. R. Williams. Such famous scientists as V. R. Williams, A. M. Dmitriev, L. G. Ramensky, I. V. Larin, S. P. Smelov, T. A. Rabotnov, A. A. Zubrilin and many others worked at the Institute. The Institute's works (books, articles) have been published in England, Belarus, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, USA, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Switzerland, Sweden, and Japan. Scientific and practical achievements of the Institute were awarded 7 times with State prizes of the USSR and the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology, as well as Prizes of the government of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of agriculture of the Russian Federation, diplomas of Exhibitions and other awards. For services to the country, the Institute was awarded the order of Labor Red Banner.

Abstract Thin sheets folded into three dimensional origami structures can be useful in various engineering applications. This work explores the stiffness of deployable origami tubes used as cantilevers. A unique “zipper” configuration is used to couple the tubes, which makes the systems easy to deploy, yet stiff for other deformation modes. The self-restricting geometry of the coupled tubes limits local deformations and makes the systems stiff for out-of-plane loading. The global deployment characteristics are explored using eigenvalue band-gaps, and indicate that tubes with lower sector angles are easy to deploy yet also stiffer for unintended motions. Cantilever analyses show that the geometry of the coupled tubes can significantly affect the stiffness, with some tube combinations having a high orthogonal stiffness throughout deployment, while others only having a high stiffness when fully deployed. Parametric studies are used to show optimal geometries for the coupled tubes that maximize the eigenvalue band-gaps and the stiffness throughout the deployment. The coupled tubes could serve applications such as adjustable robotic arms, and deployable space booms with a reliable extension sequence.

This article is about the story of a favorite Jewish song of many people around the world. Hava Nagila is one of the first modern Israeli folk songs in the Hebrew language. It went on to become a staple of band performers at Jewish weddings and bar/bat (b'nei) mitzvah celebrations. The melody is based on a Hassidic Nigun. According to sources, the melody is taken from a Ukrainian folk song from Bukovina. The text was probably the work of musicologist Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, written in 1918. The text was composed in 1918, to celebrate the Balfour Declaration and the British victory over the Turks in 1917. During World War I, Idelsohn served in the Turkish Army as a bandmaster in Gaza, returning to his research in Jerusalem at the end of the war in 1919. In 1922, he published the Hebrew song book, “Sefer Hashirim”, which includes the first publication of his arrangement of the song Hava Nagila.

This article is about the story of a favorite Jewish song of many people around the world. Hava Nagila is one of the first modern Israeli folk songs in the Hebrew language. It went on to become a staple of band performers at Jewish weddings and bar/bat (b'nei) mitzvah celebrations. The melody is based on a Hassidic Nigun. According to sources, the melody is taken from a Ukrainian folk song from Bukovina. The text was probably the work of musicologist Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, written in 1918. The text was composed in 1918, to celebrate the Balfour Declaration and the British victory over the Turks in 1917. During World War I, Idelsohn served in the Turkish Army as a bandmaster in Gaza, returning to his research in Jerusalem at the end of the war in 1919. In 1922, he published the Hebrew song book, “Sefer Hashirim”, which includes the first publication of his arrangement of the song Hava Nagila.

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the inflation targeting system in its first years of operation, this policy regime continued to consolidate as the BDBR and the technical staff gained experience in its management and state-of-the-art economic models were incorporated to diagnose the present and future state of the economy and to assess the persistence of inflation deviations and expectations with respect to the inflation target. Beginning in 2010, the BDBR established the long-term 3.0% annual inflation target, which remains in effect today. Lower inflation has contributed to making the macroeconomic environment more stable, and this has favored sustained economic growth, financial stability, capital market development, and the functioning of payment systems. As a result, reductions in the inflationary risk premia and lower TES and credit interest rates were achieved. At the same time, the duration of public domestic debt increased significantly going from 2.27 years in December 2002 to 5.86 years in December 2022, and financial deepening, measured as the level of the portfolio as a percentage of GDP, went from around 20% in the mid-1990s to values above 45% in recent years in a healthy context for credit institutions.Having been granted autonomy by the Constitution to fulfill the mandate of preserving the purchasing power of the currency, the tangible achievements made by Banco de la República in managing inflation together with the significant benefits derived from the process of bringing inflation to its long-term target, make the BDBR’s current challenge to return inflation to the 3.0% target even more demanding and pressing. As is well known, starting in 2021, and especially in 2022, inflation in Colombia once again became a serious economic problem with high welfare costs. The inflationary phenomenon has not been exclusive to Colombia and many other developed and emerging countries have seen their inflation rates move away from the targets proposed by their central banks.5 The reasons for this phenomenon have been analyzed in recent Reports to Congress, and this new edition delves deeper into the subject with updated information. The solid institutional and technical base that supports the inflation targeting approach under which the monetary policy strategy operates gives the BDBR the necessary elements to face this difficult challenge with confidence. In this regard, the BDBR reiterated its commitment to the 3.0% inflation target in its November 25 communiqué and expects it to be reached by the end of 2024.6 Monetary policy will continue to focus on meeting this objective while ensuring the sustainability of economic activity, as mandated by the Constitution. Analyst surveys done in March showed a significant increase (from 32.3% in January to 48.5% in March) in the percentage of responses placing inflation expectations two years or more ahead in a range between 3.0% and 4.0%. This is a clear indication of the recovery of credibility in the medium-term inflation target and is consistent with the BDBR’s announcement made in November 2022. The moderation of the upward trend in inflation seen in January, and especially in February, will help to reinforce this revision of inflation expectations and will help to meet the proposed targets. After reaching 5.6% at the end of 2021, inflation maintained an upward trend throughout 2022 due to inflationary pressures from both external sources, associated with the aftermath of the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and domestic sources, resulting from: strengthening of local demand; price indexation processes stimulated by the increase in inflation expectations; the impact on food production caused by the mid-2021 strike; and the pass-through of depreciation to prices. The 10% increase in the minimum wage in 2021 and the 16% increase in 2022, both of which exceeded the actual inflation and the increase in productivity, accentuated the indexation processes by establishing a high nominal adjustment benchmark. Thus, total inflation went to 13.1% by the end of 2022. The annual change in food prices, which went from 17.2% to 27.8% between those two years, was the most influential factor in the surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Another segment that contributed significantly to price increases was regulated products, which saw the annual change go from 7.1% in December 2021 to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The measure of core inflation excluding food and regulated items, in turn, went from 2.5% to 9.5% between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. The substantial increase in core inflation shows that inflationary pressure has spread to most of the items in the household basket, which is characteristic of inflationary processes with generalized price indexation as is the case in Colombia. Monetary policy began to react early to this inflationary pressure. Thus, starting with its September 2021 session, the BDBR began a progressive change in the monetary policy stance moving away from the historical low of a 1.75% policy rate that had intended to stimulate the recovery of the economy. This adjustment process continued without interruption throughout 2022 and into the beginning of 2023 when the monetary policy rate reached 12.75% last January, thus accumulating an increase of 11 percentage points (pp). The public and the markets have been surprised that inflation continued to rise despite significant interest rate increases. However, as the BDBR has explained in its various communiqués, monetary policy works with a lag. Just as in 2022 economic activity recovered to a level above the pre-pandemic level, driven, along with other factors, by the monetary stimulus granted during the pandemic period and subsequent months, so too the effects of the current restrictive monetary policy will gradually take effect. This will allow us to expect the inflation rate to converge to 3.0% by the end of 2024 as is the BDBR’s purpose.Inflation results for January and February of this year showed declining marginal increases (13 bp and 3 bp respectively) compared to the change seen in December (59 bp). This suggests that a turning point in the inflation trend is approaching. In other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Perú, and Mexico, inflation has peaked and has begun to decline slowly, albeit with some ups and downs. It is to be expected that a similar process will take place in Colombia in the coming months. The expected decline in inflation in 2023 will be due, along with other factors, to lower cost pressure from abroad as a result of the gradual normalization of supply chains, the overcoming of supply shocks caused by the weather, and road blockades in previous years. This will be reflected in lower adjustments in food prices, as has already been seen in the first two months of the year and, of course, the lagged effect of monetary policy. The process of inflation convergence to the target will be gradual and will extend beyond 2023. This process will be facilitated if devaluation pressure is reversed. To this end, it is essential to continue consolidating fiscal sustainability and avoid messages on different public policy fronts that generate uncertainty and distrust. 1 This Report to Congress includes Box 1, which summarizes the trajectory of Banco de la República over the past 100 years. In addition, under the Bank’s auspices, several books that delve into various aspects of the history of this institution have been published in recent years. See, for example: Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015; Tres banqueros centrales; Junta Directiva del Banco de la República: grandes episodios en 30 años de historia; Banco de la República: 90 años de la banca central en Colombia. 2 This is why lower inflation has been reflected in a reduction of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient that went from 58.7 in 1998 to 51.3 in the year prior to the pandemic. 3 See Gómez Javier, Uribe José Darío, Vargas Hernando (2002). “The Implementation of Inflation Targeting in Colombia”. Borradores de Economía, No. 202, March, available at: https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/5220 4 See López-Enciso Enrique A.; Vargas-Herrera Hernando and Rodríguez-Niño Norberto (2016). “The inflation targeting strategy in Colombia. An historical view.” Borradores de Economía, No. 952. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/6263 5 According to the IMF, the percentage change in consumer prices between 2021 and 2022 went from 3.1% to 7.3% for advanced economies, and from 5.9% to 9.9% for emerging market and developing economies. 6 https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/noticias/junta-directiva-banco-republica-reitera-meta-inflacion-3