Environmental Rationality

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Enrique Leff
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Ecological Balance ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Culture And Development

Renovating our thinking as humankind (rethinking nature, culture and development) is an imperative to approach the challenges of environmental crisis and to orient the social construction of a sustainable world. If environmental crisis is a predicament of knowledge, beyond the task of reinventing science, innovating technology and managing information, we must face the challenge of inventing new ways of thinking, organizing and acting in the world; of reorienting our ethical principles, modes of production and social practices for the construction of a sustainable civilization. Innovation for sustainability is drawn by alternative rationalities. I will argue that rationality of modernity has limited capacities to reestablish the ecological balance of the planet, while environmental rationality opens new perspectives to sustainability: the construction of a new economic paradigm based on neguentropic productivity, a politics of difference and an ethic of otherness. Paramount to this purpose is the contribution of Latin American Environmental Thinking.

Environmental Rationality

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Enrique Leff
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Ecological Balance ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Culture And Development

Renovating our thinking as humankind (rethinking nature, culture and development) is an imperative to approach the challenges of environmental crisis and to orient the social construction of a sustainable world. If environmental crisis is a predicament of knowledge, beyond the task of reinventing science, innovating technology and managing information, we must face the challenge of inventing new ways of thinking, organizing and acting in the world; of reorienting our ethical principles, modes of production and social practices for the construction of a sustainable civilization. Innovation for sustainability is drawn by alternative rationalities. I will argue that rationality of modernity has limited capacities to reestablish the ecological balance of the planet, while environmental rationality opens new perspectives to sustainability: the construction of a new economic paradigm based on neguentropic productivity, a politics of difference and an ethic of otherness. Paramount to this purpose is the contribution of Latin American Environmental Thinking.

Que el olvido social no nos gane: prácticas sociales conmemorativas en Latinoamérica. / That social oblivion not win us: Commemorative social practices in Latin America.

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (06) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Luis Mauricio Escalante Solís ◽  
Carlos David Carrillo Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Causes ◽  
Latin American Countries

Las sociedades comparten un serie de formas a través de las cuales se pueden identificar, conocerse y re-conocerse, sin hacer mucho caso a la especificidad, latitud o cultura que las caracterizan y las unen. Lo primero que comparten es una memoria social, entendida como un significado compartido por los miembros que lo conforman, sin importar su veracidad o autenticidad. El recuerdo es necesario para mantener unido a los integrantes de un grupo, es por ello que se manifiesta constante e intermitentemente en el transcurso de la existencia del grupo social, se vuelve un significado adoptado por dicho colectivo que debe ser manifiesto en las actividades y la cotidianidad.El presente trabajo describe y analiza tres prácticas sociales de conmemoración denominadas alternativas que se realizan en países latinoamericanos (Argentina, Chile y México), se fundamentan sus orígenes, causas sociales y formas de organización, así como sus acciones principales. El eje rector que unifica a estas tres prácticas conmemorativas es el hecho de que reivindican la lucha social y ejemplifican mecanismos contrahegemónicos de demanda social, antes las falencias, omisiones y acciones del Estado. El estudio y el análisis de las conmemoraciones abren la posibilidad de entender distintos usos del pasado. Los eventos históricos construyen un relato que otorga identidad y sentimiento de unidad. Sin embargo, recuperar el pasado a través de la conmemoración no elimina el surgimiento de grupos contrahegemónicos que proponen una reflexión crítica sobre lo sucedido. The societies share a number of ways through which they can identify and meet. However, often irrelevant specifics of culture. It is much more important social memory. Social memory is something that is shared by members of a group regardless of their veracity or authenticity. The memory is needed to hold together the members of a group. Therefore, the memory becomes a meaning adopted by the collective manifested in everyday activities.This paper describes and analyzes three social practices of commemoration taking place in Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile and Mexico), describing their origins, social causes, forms of organization and main actions. The guiding principle that unifies these three commemorative practices is claimed that exemplify the social struggle and counter-hegemonic mechanisms of social demand, given the failures, omissions and actions of the state. The study and analysis of the commemorations open the possibility of understanding different uses of the past. Historical events construct a story that gives identity and togetherness. However, recovering the past, through the commemoration does not eliminate the emergence of counter-hegemonic groups that propose a critical reflection about what happened.

scholarly journals The social construction of HIV/AIDS

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Goldstein ◽  
H G Pretorius ◽  
A D Stuart
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Hiv Aids

An in-depth look is taken at the specific discourses surrounding the debilitating HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping South Africa and the world. Opsomming Hierdie artikel poog om ‘n indiepte ondersoek te loods na die spesifieke diskoerse rondom die MIV/VIGS epidemie in Suid-Afrika en die wêreld. *Please note: This is a reduced version of the abstract. Please refer to PDF for full text.

scholarly journals Affect, Belief, and the Arts

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rami Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
Tertiary Level ◽  
Cooperative Groups ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge

The cultural project is a therapeutic melding of emotion, symbols, and knowledge. In this paper, I describe how spiritual emotions engendered through encounters in imaginative culture enable fixation of metaphysical beliefs. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through the social practices of imaginative culture so as to adapt people to live in culturally defined cooperative groups. Conditioning, as well as tertiary-level cognitive capacities such as symbols and language are enlisted to bond groups through the imaginative formats of myth and participatory ritual. These cultural materializations can be shared by communities both synchronically and diachronically in works of art. Art is thus a form of self-knowledge that equips us with a motivated understanding of ourselves in the world. In the sacred state produced through the arts and in religious acts, the sense of meaning becomes noetically distinct because affect infuses the experience of immanence, and one's memory of it, with salience. The quality imbued thereby makes humans attentive to subtle signs and broad “truths.” Saturated by emotions and the experience of alterity in the immanent encounter of imaginative culture, information made salient in the sacred experience can become the basis for belief fixation. Using examples drawn from mimetic arts and arts of immanence, I put forward a theory about how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and the imagination.

scholarly journals PRAISE OF THE CONVERT: BELIEVE AND BELONG FROM THE CATHOLICITY OF LATIN AMERICA

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-339
Author(s):  
Felipe Gaytán Alcalá
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Latin America was considered for many years the main bastion of Catholicism in the world by the number of parishioners and the influence of the church in the social and political life of the región, but in recent times there has been a decrease in the catholicity index. This paper explores three variables that have modified the identity of Catholicism in Latin American countries. The first one refers to the conversion processes that have expanded the presence of Christian denominations, by analyzing the reasons that revolve around the sense of belonging that these communities offer and that prop up their expansion and growth. The second variable accounts for those Catholics who still belong to the Catholic Church but who in their practices and beliefs have incorporated other magical or esoteric scheme in the form of religious syncretisms, modifying their sense of being Catholics in the world. The third factor has a political reference and has to do with the concept of laicism, a concept that sets its objective, not only in the separation of the State from the Church, but for historical reasons in catholicity restraint in the public space which has led to the confinement of the Catholic to the private, leaving other religious groups to occupy that space.

Discourse Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-94
Author(s):  
Elisa Narminio ◽  
Caterina Carta
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter describes discourse analysis. In linguistics, discourse is generally defined as a continuous expression of connected written or spoken language that is larger than a sentence. However, as a method in the social sciences, discourse analysis (DA) gave rise to diatribes about where to set the borders of discourse. As language constitutes the very entry point to the world, some discourse analysts argue that all that exists acquires meaning through language. Does this mean that discourse constitutes reality? Is there anything outside text and discourse? Or is discourse one among many means of social construction? The evolution of DA in social science unearths an ontological debate between ‘realists’ and ‘nominalists’, which eventually reverberates in epistemological strategies.

The Social Construction of Human Kinds

Hypatia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Metaphysical Claim ◽  
Human Kinds ◽  
Response Dependence ◽  
Human Kind

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response‐dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds.

scholarly journals A View from the South: The Global Creation of the War on Drugs

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Molano Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
The World

Abstract The paper claims that it is necessary to seriously consider facts and phenomena beyond the ‘West’ in order to understand and theorise the complex social practices that shape the world. From a Latin American standpoint, it questions the traditional approach to a global matter: the War on Drugs. Researchers usually see this phenomenon in Latin America as reflecting US domination in the region. However, by identifying how and why the drug issue became a matter of security in Latin America and by specifying the collective countermeasures adopted, Latin American participation becomes more apparent in the construction of the international process that gave rise to the normative framework that holds up the War on Drugs: the 1988 Vienna Convention.

scholarly journals A Inconstância do Mundo. Brevíssimos Apontamentos sobre Identificações Socioculturais e seus Eixos

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin B. Reesink
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Social Construction Of Reality ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Classification ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Synoptic Table

O artigo parte do princípio de que a literatura já acumulada abrange tantos materiais etnográficos e propostos teóricas que seja preciso um esforço para sistematizar esse conhecimento. Desse modo, a chamada “construção social da realidade” é bastante conhecida, no entanto, suas implicações não são suficientemente levadas em conta nos nossos esforços antropológicos. Portanto, se discute aqui alguns aspectos da ‘sociocriação da realidade sociocultural’, em particular, alguns aspectos selecionados da “inconstância do mundo”, para em seguida discutir a classificação social, no sentido geral, e oferecer um quadro sinóptico da “identificação e seus eixos de contínuos”. O quadro sinóptico resume uma grande literatura (impossível de ser citada toda), ensejando abstrair a complexidade real de um processo afeto-cognitivo fundamental e contribuir para a metodologia e teoria de análises futuras. Nesse sentido, essa contribuição visa oferecer uma sistematização, no nível bem abstrata e teórica e bem limitada, do processo da classificação sociocultural humana.   The Inconstancy of the World. Brief Notes on Socio-Cultural Identifications and their AxesAbstract: The article assumes that the literature already accumulated encompasses so many ethnographic materials and theoretical proposals that an effort is needed to systematize this knowledge. In this way, the so-called “social construction of reality” is well known, however, its implications are not sufficiently taken into account in our anthropological efforts. Therefore, it discusses here some aspects of the “socio-cultural creation of the socio-cultural reality”, in particular, some selected aspects of the “inconstancy of the world”, to then discuss the social classification, in a general sense, and offer a synoptic picture of the “identification and their continuum axes ”. The synoptic table summarizes a great literature (impossible to be cited all), giving the opportunity to abstract the real complexity of a fundamental affective-cognitive process and to contribute to the methodology and theory of future analyzes. In this sense, this contribution aims to offer a systematization, at the very abstract and theoretical and very limited level, of the human socio-cultural classification process.Keywords: Reality; Partner-Creation; Classification; Identification Axes.

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