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The coverage of the Colombian peace process by the national media meant a significant work of media representation starting by introducing the main events in their agenda and was followed by the production of a series of accounts whereby the media told these events and made sense thereof. By analyzing three cases, this paper describes how the media approached the peace process, focusing mostly on produced images. One of the main findings is that the iconography of the peace process --besides being ancillary to the written news-- accounts for the strong polarization of the different stances assumed by the official and political actors regarding the peace process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the study of one's image and the society enemy's image in the margins of the State, this paper provides an analysis of the military logic on the notions of the human and the order in the TV show Hombres de honor (Men of Honor). The TV show displays an army committed to serve the civilian population, especially in the so-called conflict zones. It describes the human character of the military forces beyond their role as soldiers trained for the war. The analysis herein allows understanding both the sphere of power and the thanatopolitics providing the frame for the logic of the war actions in their image. The capitals at stake and the hierarchy in the military sphere were determined in the analysis and, based on it, this work explored the binary structuring and narratives on the law enforcement and the enemies of the society. In this context, the superiority of the army legitimizes the military values for the whole society from the biopower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the interactions between courts, experts and interest groups present in the sentence C 355/2006, through which abortion is partially decriminalized in Colombia. A detailed review of this paper allows to track the role that interest groups and social movements have in the mobilization of expert discourses in the high courts as a strategy to influence their decisions. The use of disciplines and fields of knowledge is articulated to the general structure of the sentence as literary technology that makes visible the role of the court as administrator of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper account for the main collective actions undertaken by two women networks in Colombia: Women's Peace Route and the Colombian Women Initiative for Peace, during transition justice process and the implementation of the Justice and Peace Law (2004- 2009). From a sociological approach to the political process and the gender category, this paper discusses how gender ideologies inform new ways of mobilization affecting discourses, purposes and repertoires of those claiming identities and defending human rights. The main conclusion here is that the feminist influence in redistribution and acknowledgement claims for victims from the armed conflict have encouraged collective actions that begin to modify their relationship to the State. This is proved by their achievements at Court and social acknowledgement victims have gained as social actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to account for the ways women integrating the free software community in two countries from the global South negotiate with feminizing paradigms imposed to them by the collectives interested in popularizating free technologies. Through an ethnographic approach to vital experiences of women in the Indian collective Linux-Chix, and holding a dialog with the experiences of non-organized women in the free software community in Colombia, this paper suggests these negotiations are going to be materialized primarily in the constitution of survival strategies from which certain civilizing projects are particularly vindicated, some of which seem to promote a Western paradigm of female subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is compiling some of the main methodological axes around which a research on political violence incidence on daily life of peasants in the Macarena sierra, located in Colombian Western Amazonia. This text aims to bring some elements to the methodological debate addressed by several anthropology works made in local contexts affected by political violence. Written as a research report, this paper presents several results of our work, the analysis framework used and the main features defining ethnographical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is a matter diversely studied in Colombia, particularly associated with the political figure of the assassinated leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitén. This paper first evaluates the meaning of populism in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico parallel to similar Colombian factors. With these arguments, the paper makes some critical assertions on the "populist" adjective that have accompanied the public profile of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, focused on the populist parameters of the Cono Sur's populism, and his government programs designed and proposed during the 30s and 40s of the 20th century. Finally, the paper observes the personal character of Gaitan, asking first if the leader was at least rather a pale popular than a real populist leader, as can be concluded by checking Iris relationships with the paradigmatical labor unions of Antioquia. The second part evaluates the contradictions of his personal low-class condition, which made him a person with a clear proclivity to climb into the Colombian "little bourgeoisie". As a central matter, this paper works around diverse expositions from the Colombian researcher Marco Palacios, so it does not focus on the analysis of the Latin-American populism as a whole or the diverse political-electoral perspectives of "Gaitan's phenomena" in Colombia, which almost all are concerned with his obscure assassination in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intent of this article is to present, from a specific case, the multiplicity of intentions and discussions between indigenous organizations from Cauca, Colombia. I go back to the concept of ethnicity in order to understand indigenous organizations as arenas where ethnic processes are reconstructed, relationships are redefined and the way diversity is recognized is questioned. However, this paper focuses exclusively on the different expressions and relationships that exist within indigenous organizations, especially those created after the Constitution of 1991. For this purpose I present how the Education Program of the Eastern Cauca Territorial Council of Indigenous Authorities (COTAINDOC) and their main proposals emerged.I conclude that this program redefines its way of recognizing cultural diversity and relationships with other organizations and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we reflect on the motivations, agenda and commitments set within the context of the first international seminar "Afro female Conspiracy: Rethinking feminisms from diversity" held between June 24th and 25th, 2011 in Cali, Colombia. In this scenario, it was proposed to understand Afrodiasporic feminism as a process, a research agenda, a strategy of social mobilization, a practice of solidarity and a restorative justice claim. We establish connections between the proposals discussed in this scenario and a number of proposals on diasporic feminism formulated in Latin America, in dialogue with the U.S. black feminism and African feminism [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining activity shares the characteristics of a field, in the sense attributed to the concept by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This can be observed through a case study in Marmato, in the department of Caldas. 470 years of gold-vein mining have formed a culture tied to beliefs and traditions that influence the degree of rationality in work relationships, work itself, and economic behaviour in general. It is possible that these habita are being broken by the presence of a global agent that has now entered the dispute for gold: multinational companies. This paper uses the concepts of field and habitus to study the dispute between ancestral and industrialised forms of production, and their strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformations in actor-network collective action in the Process of Black Communities --pcn--, which were developed as a consequence of the armed conflict worsening in the Pacific region --specifically on the collective lands in the municipalities of Buenaventura and Suárez (Southwestern Colombia)-- in the last ten years. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews, observation records, analysis of audio/text documents on the organizations' claims and communiqués, and the drafting of aggregated data on displacement and conflictual facts in the region. Findings show a significant up surging of conflict within the period, in the face of which PCN's coalitions with local and global actors have come both to neutralize and make visible armed actors' actions against populations, and to reorient collective action, introducing innovations in the repertoires of action and setting new goals for this actor-network in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, there are quantitative databases on armed conflict, some of them public and open-access. This paper reviews the main theoretical and methodological traits in some of those databases and their main features when defining and measuring political violence. Based on the results of a research performed in a Colombian region, several methodological issues will be presented in order to process --statistically, spatially and cartographically? the information delivered by those databases. After the exposition, several procedures are described, which allowed to measure differences among databases. Those contents are addressed aiming to show the consequences that using one or another database has in the quantitative analysis of armed conflict, since the results of those analyses will depend on the source used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires into the production of memories on violent events in two Antioquia municipalities, which from the 80's have shown alarming violence indicators. Thus, in the municipality of San Carlos violent events memories are framed within a context of a catholic society having homogeneous economic conditions, elites historically pertaining to the Conservative party, accelerated development processes, and living under hegemonic armed rule. In this scenario a certain consensus is achieved in the narrative of violence, aiming at dignifying victims and highlighting the high costs armed confrontation entails. In the municipality of Apartadó, violence memory is framed within a pluri-ethnic, lay and marginal society, immerse in accelerated development processes and unstable armed rule. There, a split memory is produced, featuring political identities routinizing and eventually justifying violent events. In the face of these cases, an attempt is made to keep the reflection on what kind of memories are required to stop reproducing war? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to show, in first instance, the existence of some "artifacts" as devices of memory, born out from various exercises conducted among communities having undergone violence. These devices are the "living" embodiment of underground memories that were gathered within various inquiry and extension projects by the research group. In the second part, a more theoretical reflection is put forward on the Memory/ Power relationship as the frame of discussion within which these experiences are situated, emphasizing two aspects: making visible those "spaces of power" where both memories are situated within today's Colombian society so as to show specifically how those spaces of power appear, as well as the instruments they make use of, qualifying memories either as dominant or underground; and to show those spaces, just like any other social process, are not immutable or unchangeable phenomena, but are prone to be transformed, redefined and even reconfigured up to leading all the way to make changes to differently distribute the resources of power leaving their mark on them. In a third final part, a reflection "as a working hypothesis" is made, which could be the way to change the issue at hand and suggest new paths aiming to shift the place in society for those underground (marginal, hidden and scarcely visibilized) memories and make them emerge to surface so that they can develop all of their political potential and get their due place in Colombia's historical memory. [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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]