Continuities, continuities, and fractures in the work of the social and political sciences in the Global South. From exiles to transnationalism and political subnationalism
Abstract
Latin American social sciences have evolved in adverse political contexts, characterized by dictatorships, negotiated transitions, insurgencies, authoritarian neoliberalism, and mass displacements. This environment has generated a situated intellectual production, marked by inequalities, conflicts, and emancipatory projects. This dossier examines the continuities and fractures of the Latin American political present, showing that democracy in the region is an unfinished, negotiated, and often interrupted process, sustained by both formal institutions and community and migrant practices. Latin American citizenship is exercised at multiple scales: state, community, digital, and transnational, and contemporary mobility becomes a political platform and a civic school. The territorial dimension is key, as democracy reinvents itself in local and community spaces, where the state coexists with local forms of decision-making and justice. Environmental conflicts are also democratic conflicts, and political ecology emerges as a central axis of social analysis.
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