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This paper analyses popular wisdom and memory transmission regarding State terrorism and forced disappearance, which are circulating among youth living around Hospital Posadas, located in Haedo, a province to Buenos Aires, Argentina. At this hospital, there was, under the military dictatorship (1976-1983), a Clandestine Imprisonment Center, where people were kept prisoner as disappeared. Therefore, at this facility both practices of health restoration and torture and murder perpetration coexisted. Through thirty indepth interviews carried out among neighbor young people, the existence of manifold knowledge fractures and memory transmission about State violence is verified, being a result from the social relations breakthrough that used to articulate the neighborhood and the hospital, and from the material life conditions promoting undifferentiated historical and political time awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Commission to Inquiry for the Causes and Situations Present on inland Violence, better known as La Investigadora, was founded in 1958 at the dawn of the socalled National Front. This research paper explains, based on some documentary sources and newspaper accounts, how in a context of transition negotiated by elites, this initiative condensed a set of official practices and narrative plots structuring the way the Violence would be politically and socially processed and represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Violence" in Colombia in the 1950's was closed without a trial of responsibilities, without reparation to the victims or a process to assimilate the meaning of what had happened. This paper shows that general Rojas Pinilla's trial at the Congress of the Republic between August 1958 and April 1959, was not only a way to confer legitimacy upon the political agreement in the National Front, but also a privileged scenario to challenge and discuss the responsibilities on the events, as well as an arena to build and recreate collective memory at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how individuals take on their lifestyles in practices revolving around a nature-based and a healthy body conception in the social spheres where they perform at ease and with relative coherence. There, consumption patterns may be evaluated, as well as the kinds of relationships that are established, and the ability to get involved with certain networks of affections and recommendations not necessarily institutionalized. Individuals move along these scenarios in building fragile and swinging lifestyles, aiming to transcend and affirming their individual identity by choosing their lifepath in a reflexive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to put forward a historical approach to research on the history of teaching, theoretically concerning the two genetic aspects developed by Norbert Elias in his research about civilizing processes --sociogenesis and psychogenesis. The analysis proposed for the schooling process includes a study on long-term changes in individuals' behavior (psychogenesis) referred to students and teachers, and changes in social settings (sociogenesis), especially in the family and the school. This study makes part of a broader research on the schooling process in Minas Gerais (Brazil) in the 19th and 20th centuries focusing on elementary school teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Norbert Elias' historical sociology. In the first place, it asserts the civilizing process theory is pretty much based on objects from the written culture produced by European Courts in the 17th and 18th centuries: the articles of the Encyclopédie, the memoirs of writers and manuals of civility. In this approach I consider that separating the construction of sociological models from the corpus of specific documents from the Ancien Regime results in a dichotomic appropriation of the knowledge process, which is far away from Elias' perspective. Finally, this paper analyzes Norbert Elias' contributions to contemporary historiographic thinking, as well as the concepts of mentality, private life and the notion of childhood in Philippe Ariès. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to map the codes of behaviors and manners in social relations and in the recent changes in sport organization in Brazil. Ideological, social, cultural, political and economic dimensions are given relevance here as a methodology in that they organize statements. In bibliographical sources interpreting sociologic discourses and in the outline of Brazilian society development and evolution we observe several characteristics pertaining to self-restraint and emotion control through sport. In the economic sphere, we evidence an explanation of social changes resulting from Brazil's late development process. However, drawing from the empirical theory, preliminary results show the recent sociocultural phenomenon of soccer as a factor to be considered in the formation of Brazilian social behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper stems from a reflection on Norbert Elias' The court society. The aim is to identify the symbols and signs allowing to think that there were people striving to establish a courtier society in viceregal Santafe de Bogotá, beginning with the deployment of fine manners, ceremonial and etiquette in social events, like parades performed in the event of new viceroy appointments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper picks up the discussion on Norbert Elias' social development concept, as a theoretical model which may contribute to the sociologic and historical studies on indigenous peoples in Latin America. Highlighting the case of Manuel Quintín Lame in Colombia, overcoming the traditional visions of social scientists and aiming at new cognitive instruments is suggested here, in order to achieve a reading in the light of notions of figuration, process continuity and intercultural education. The aim is to go beyond the genealogic explanations with the subsequent search of alternatives in process sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Chibcha civilization does not have any antecedent previous to the 1900's, when it emerged in the nineteenth-century historiography. This paper problematizes and analyzes how the idea of Chibcha civilization, preceding the formation of a nation, was an argument put forward by 19th century historiography to create the idea of historic continuity and political unity in the New Granada nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shuffles together several reflections which were wrung out of a specific ethnographic approach, staged on a street at the Manizales' historical center (Colombia). Through it, the ethnographer's experience on the field is shown as a journey of "walking" on the street, so that it provides the grounds to impinge upon current problematic notions in anthropology, such as reflexivity, the social significance of massive flow spaces and methodological questions, and the practices such ethnographic situations demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some theoretical reflections on the political reality created by the Nasa movement on northern Cauca in Colombia, in order to posit new conceptualizations to understand ethnic movements in Latin America. The discussion begins with a brief review of some gaps found in studies about those social phenomena, to continue to analyse particularities and experiences of this community process starting from the following questions: how is the nature of the Colombian Nasa movement's indigenous politics expressed?; how could we understand its political reach in light of social movement theories?; how to analyse the dynamics of their collective actions along the last decades? These questions are answered through a theoretical approach that firstly focuses on understanding social movement political practices, to proceed with the proposal for a new typology of collective actions for these movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward a notion of applied anthropology incorporating both a critical analysis of cultural diversity and intervention and policy formulation, which help to solve the problems communities we work with face. In order to do this, at a first time we revise several concepts and purposes on applied anthropology in the North American and Colombian contexts. Then, an experience on migrations and childhood is reported, including research, intervention and networking. Finally, a third moment articulates the elements discussed in a final reflection on the relationship between theory and practice in the field of applied anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the discourse conflicts concerning development and the social issue, between the government elites and the power groups during post-Peronist developmentalism era in Argentina. Because of space limitations emphasis will be made on the Onganía's government. Governmentality crisis faced during that period can be explained on the grounds of the difficulty elites in power had to come to an agreement on a hegemonic discourse concerning those issues, as it is argued here. The empirical analysis will show a constant: permanence in time of a liberal narrative against any effort of state regulation and the failed attempt to create an alternative narrative through the development significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To teach and learn Spanish language as a foreign language involves understanding the concepto of interculturality, which asks for an investigative look to appraise social, geographical, political, cultural, pedagogical and linguistic differences among countries that, even though they speak different languages, wish to communicate each other. This paper makes part of a research project intitled "Pedagogical university narrative". In it, a trainee who is about to get her degree as a Bachelor in Modern Languages from Universidad de Caldas (Colombia) and her advisor, as principal investigator, show how in New Delhi Spanish language acquisition is permeated by cultural factors that, if not adequately addressed, become barriers hindering the integration of language to contents, feelings and expectations related to the everyday context Spanish students live in -- different from their mother language -- in a foreign speaking country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to provide an analytical framework on relevant aspects derived from the present research, which intended to explore and understand demobilized youth's subjectivity shifts, and the way some educational programs addressed to that community are coming to terms with them, as a part of those groups' process of return to civilian life. By the same token, a number of pedagogical reflections born from the educational experiences studied are brought into focus. Thus, this study intends to enrich the field of knowledge and discussion on the processes of return to civilian life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to come back to the concept of human dignity, in order to understand the significant role it has played in the context of various bioethical approaches. From a critical perspective, the notion of dignity will be shown not to end on the human dimension, not to be exhausted in it, and not to belong exclusively to it. This text is made up of two sections and an epilogue: the first section points to the place the concept of human dignity occupies in the national and international legislation concerning bioethics, while the second one discusses a general characterization of the concept of human dignity from two sources and its relation to the notion of individual. As a conclusion, the epilogue presents several insights and quests on the concept of human dignity in the context of bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss ties between territoriality, and the construction of an indigenous identity and their own land-related judicial institutions, based on the case study on the indigenous community settled on reservation Cañamomo-Lomaprieta, located in the localities of Riosucio and Supía, department of Caldas, Colombia. With that aim, first of all, we explore the impact agrarian policies applied during the 20th century in Colombia have had on reconfiguring the identities and the judicial regime of land ownership, to continue to illustrate how they have left a trail of varied titles legalizing land ownership, and give evidence of the presence of distinct social actors mobilizing indigenous and mestizo identities to contest the judicial capital monopoly in the reserve's social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the simple and complex deficit and democratic model approaches, this paper analyses the communication strategies applied in several museums and interactive centers --Parque Explora, Museo Interactivo Empresas Públicas de Medellín, Planetario Jesús Emilio Ramírez and Museo Universitario from the University of Antioquia in the city of Medellín-. We argue that communicating scientific and technological developments at a conjunctural moment -because of the pressure exerted by the demand side to bring knowledge within the reach of the man in the street- involves recognizing science and technology issues should not be conveyed in a language increasingly distanced from layman's understanding and should allow for citizens' critical thinking formation face to techno-scientific developments. By analysing the communication approaches mentioned above, we found significant obstacles to be overcome in the communication strategies applied by museum staff in order to come to an understanding of science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an ethnographic perspective, this paper will focus on analyzing how «cirujas» --as people collecting reusable materials from waste are-- are readapting themselves to the current urban space in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina), and how they confront stigmatizing social discourses. An account of theses uses and the strategies they formulate to face social differentiation they use to live with, to resist or coexist with stigmatizing stereotypes condemning them is provided. At the same time, by focusing on urban spaces with interacting groups from different socio-economic sectors, the idea of social segregation will be challenged, by showing these processes come along with new encounter modalities between the different social groups based on the realization of a differentiated use of public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 19th century Europe, the image of a thermal machine, ruled by thermodynamic laws, became one of the primary metaphors to explain societal operating mechanism. At the end of 19th century, experts in fatigue, nutrition and human motor physiology strove to get a supposedly neutral and objective solution to political and economic conflicts corresponding to industrialized cities, in the quest to maximize productivity while preserving energy within the worker bodies. This paper will explore some of the reforms and social projects in Restoration Spain that were informed by the energetic productivism doctrine. The way this doctrine was based on a new perception of both human body and social body as closely related to a thermodynamic system is highlighted. In turn this point draws attention on the importance of considering other knowledge different to the medical and biological ones to rationalize and manage body and population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unfolds theoretical approaches representative in the debate on the concept of popular culture. They are analysed in their relationship to mass culture and consumption. This is a theoretical-conceptual review split in four sections: the hypothesis of "cultural circularity" according to gramsci, ginzburg, bakhtin and thompson; the concept of working class from Bordieu's theory of reproduction and stuart hall's theory of a cultural dialectics; the relationship mass culture and cultural industry, according to eco, hoggard and sarlo, and the problem of production and consumption with de certeau. Finally, the distinction between high art and mass culture (huyssen), the concept of hybridation and the relationship between popular culture and new cultural technologies (garcía) is presented. The main contribution is the elucidation of relationships between popular culture, urban culture and mass culture, as well as the acknowledgement of several epistemological problems linked to generalizations in the use of these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period of violence in Colombia, the press was the voice of the liberal and conservative parties. "Sucesos," a weekly paper that did not declare any political affiliation, recorded through its chronicles of crimes of passion gender related reasons to kill, legitimized by culture and legislated by the penal code of 1936. The beliefs and the values related to what society expected men and women to do are discovered as the principal answer to the research question. Could it be that these reasons are still valid? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on how daily life and playing games was the citizen training strategy used for children in the neighborhoods of Santa Fe, La Candelaria, and Suba, among others. The text is a compilation of fragments of interviews, workshops, and urban trips done with the same children during the second half of 2002, as part of the Project "New Citizen Voices" carried out by the Departamento Administrativo de Bienestar Social (DABS). The author inquires as to how these children take on the urban dynamics in relationship to the places where they socialize and/or coexist side-by-side, places that in turn determine the social character of both public and private life. The topic of citizen education or training is approached from the perspective of children's rights and the participation they experience in public spaces such as the street, the neighborhood, the park, and the school where they learn how to deliberate on the needs and interests of their community. A main concept used in the paper is that of a third zone, that propitious space where children explore freedom, imagination, wonderment, and difference. On the other hand, the way in which children live in their private realm is also analyzed; that is, how they live in the intimate space of family life. The article is structured around three moments: spaces for encounters and disagreements; participation and citizenship; and the public and private realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from two research projects aimed at inquiring about socioeconomic stratification in Bogota from the perspective of its value as representation of social order and hierarchy. Although socioeconomic stratification was implemented as a targeting mechanism of subsidies for the poorest households with the objective to enable them to have domiciliary potable water, electricity, sewer, gas and telephone, the policy has deeply affected the way social differences are collectively evoked. Research results from projects conducted in Bogota between 2005 and 2007, based on a variety of sources and methods, are approached with a view on social representations as a group of ideas and practices that are collectively shared and socially generated. Conclusions deal with issues of stratification and socio-spatial segregation, as well as the present configuration of representations about social differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of research carried out to evaluate the proposal and the effectiveness of the Colombian model for the accreditation of academic programs by analyzing both its bases and the results of implementing the process in technological programs. Taking what was found as a starting point, the paper puts forward a proposal to improve the accreditation model in the following aspects: widening the participation of the members of the institutions in the evaluation process; designing a model for outside evaluation to encourage communication between those who apply to the evaluation and the program to be evaluated; supporting the process of institutional improvement; diversifying the accreditation organisms and models; and creating an external evaluation as a tool for the Consejo Nacional de Acreditación's accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museum exhibitions are a strong medium and play an important role in society. The reasons are their communicative nature, thematic flexibility and capacity to connect with diverse groups of people. These qualities allow museums to act as effective agents of mediation, where disciplinary borders are crossed in achievement of a common objective: to develop identities of different sectors of society. This paper explores the qualities of museum exhibitions as a dialogue and mediation place in Colombian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of rituals as a way of political positioning has been a very difficult task, essentially because the category of ritual itself has darkened important issues concerning the rituals' functions. Using the category of ritual digression, the present paper assesses how a specific healing ritual performed by Embera people becomes a tool to generate political commitment. The study considers the ritual as a discursive and performative work, which produces political identities in a context where conflict prevails. The present work is based in ethnographic fieldwork carried out from 2000 to 2004, in sporadic seasons in an Indian reserve called La Albania, Risaralda and San José de Caldas, Caldas, Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past three years, Colombia experienced a significant change in the production of official statistics, leading to a situation in which an important tradition in the reliability and seriousness of official data has given way to mistrust and uncertainty. Complete changes in methodology, the break in continuity of historical series, the lack of transparency over the collection process and the direct access to data bases, on top of the correction of data along the way have been a constant in the midst of important transformations of the country in terms of displacement and migration of large groups of population, the country side modifies its labor structure and the conditions of poverty and extreme poverty persist. This paper deals with the development of the General Census of Population and Housing 2005, as an emblematic example of what is going on in the production of official data. The role of academia and the press in this process will be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lies, accounts and performance aimed at deceiving the audience, always haunt the researcher's mind. Whether one chooses quantitative or qualitative (even ethnographic) means, researchers come up with methodological devices (triangulation, re-interviewing, being there, rapport) as ways to eliminate distortion from researchers and respondents, and to get true statements and categories from our social subjects. In this paper I take advantage of an "identity lie" (or a fake identity) which came up while I was working with Malvinas war veterans in Buenos Aires (1992). By comparing veterans' identities to my own identity as an anthropologist in the field, I show that lies are part of metacommunicative competences by which both vets and I learn to talk and act about "Malvinas". By means of this reflexive twist, deceptive informants appear to challenge our methodological assumptions, not just because they alter the reliability of our accounts, but rather because they illuminate the very core of our identities at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically explores the role of media and political conversation as antecedents to political engagement, a set of political attitudes and behaviors. Political engagement was operationalized as political interest, political knowledge, political efficacy, associational membership, and civic and political participation. The relationships of conversation, news and entertainment media uses were examined in the context of a tumultuous society. Statistical analyses suggest that the consumption of news media and political conversation are positively related to all aspects of political engagement. On the other hand, certain entertainment media uses are negatively related. The relevance of media use and political conversation to explain political engagement is discussed and their potential to predict support for democracy is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A specific form of social mobility, spatial mobility, is examined in this paper. Likewise, social representations by residents of different social strata are analyzed. The research project that the current results are based upon, deals with the effects of the stratification policy on paying public utilities and with social mobility. Spatial mobility patterns towards and within Bogotá are reviewed, as well as the way its inhabitants move around in the city by socioeconomic stratum. Finally, representations related to moral categories and social stratifications in the city are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the problems faced by today's University from a critical approach. It examines the crisis related to the phenomena found throughout the social world that show the impossibilities to continue supporting the division of sciences established by modern projects. Hence it asks: Which is the role of the University in contemporary societies, where human beings are faced to live with a calculating and weighing attitude about their own possibilities and options? Arguments are grounded in the field of teaching practice and research, as the basis of goals pursued by the Academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the narrative uses of ideas and values in the Democratic Security-policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe's government, and in the symbolic donation of money from the Danish organisation, Rebellion, to the guerrillas of the FARC in October 2004. The article delves into depth in the epistemological implications of these narrative uses and their political consequences, suggesting that both are ways of totalising meaning and reinforce frames of understanding characteristics of modernity, legitimising violent practices. The theoretical frame-work is provided by the thought of the Latin American modernity/coloniality research program, phenomenological and existential anthropology, and I lannah Arendt's thought. The empirical material consists of Danish and Colombian media-representations on the donation, documents from Rebellion's web-site, field notes of conversations led with persons in Colombia on the donation, and interviews with a spokesperson from Rebellion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author analyze the definition reconstruction of the social tissue in relation with the themes right to city, urban marginality and forced migrations in Colombia. The author considers the reconstruction of the social tissue as the set of acts to reconstruct the significant relations that determine particular forms of being, producing, interacting and projecting in the family, community, labour and citizen contexts. Also as a pedagogic and vital process where they are important the nets of social support, the integral attention to the human being, the invigora- tion of the collective action and the support to the self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the deep contradiction that envolves the punishment of the privacy of liberty wich, in place of resocialize the violent individuals and inhibit the cycle of social violence, produces criminals and potentials the social conflict. In an anthropological way it pretends to show throught the Women's Penitenciary of Brasília DF, Brazil that is technically impossible to transform an inmate to live in freedom. For this purpose, the process of incarceration is the analytical procedure wich explains the process that women identity suffers once in jail. The encarceration, ruled by many and exacerbated power and control technologies, and delimitated by two rituals of passage wich respectively marks the entrance and the outcome from prision produces institucionalized women, unadapted to live within society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts a sociological interpretation of the causal links that may exist between dominant religious ideas in Colombia during the first half of the 20th Century and the material and cultural interests pursued by their mentors within the general context of the political, legal, and social reforms promoted by the Liberal Republic's governments from 1929 to 1946. From Max Weber's sociological perspective, history and documentary analysis is a must to examine how hierarchic leaders and prelates from the Catholic Church promoted and generated a confrontation against the emergence of a modern behaviour ethic among the Colombian population, suitable to the then recent economic, political and spiritual circumstances which required a legal reform and also give priority to civil over ecclesiastic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]