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This paper aims to introduce a critical reflection on the 2019-new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). It hopes this discussion could be useful to other researchers in science and technology studies (STS), to better understand the multispecies landscapes emergence and its relations with current socio-environmental and sanitary crisis. Although the COVID-19 pandemic may be seen by some groups as the ultimate manifestation of a civilizational model in crisis, or an inflection point in the linear and uncritical trajectory driven by the modern technoscientific project; this paper emphasizes the importance of thinking about the conjuncture from the possible more-than-human alliances, collaborations and arrangement that could have appeared in this period. It concludes with an invitation to pay attention to new affective sensibilities emerging from multispecies relationships in the context of lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Finally, it could be argued that creative works of literary fiction, like Disgrace, a novel by J. M. Coetzee, are powerful means for understanding this empirical phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article is to propose a critical and decolonial reflection on the limits, challenges and alternatives of risk governance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper begins with an invitation to think about the current crisis of multilateralism as a first step to problematize the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 virus and its effects on the institutional frameworks of global politics. To understand the consequences of the current pandemic in the shaping of governance schemes adopted to address the emergency, reference is made to a body of literature that addresses perspectives on risk and uncertainty in contexts of transition towards sustainability. It also delves into the notion of geography of knowledge --developed by Latin American political ecology-- to explain the deep entanglements between the coloniality of knowledge and the construction of public imaginaries and knowledge devices on risk control and governance. We understand this reflection as "being part" of an exercise of sociological imagination that seeks to contribute to the construction of possible futures, in which integral and safe spaces are available for the reproduction of all forms of life on the planet. This reflection concludes with some ideas on the need to stimulate a new and different set of relations between sciences, technologies and knowledge, which ensures the adequate exercise of citizen practices and diverse subjectivities, in harmony with social participation in pluralistic contexts and full recognition of rights. COVID-19 represents an important opportunity to think about different ways of environmental cosmopolitanism, capable of bringing these ideas to the political arena through social movements, which could be taking shape in addressing the emergency at the local and community levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: this paper aims to discuss development practices through the presentation of two case studies from Latin-American contexts. This reflection was done during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-development perspectives were mobilized to explore new analytical dimensions in the epistemological and socio-political critique of the capitalist mode of appropriation of nature in América Latina and their potential implications amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: two study cases from Brazil and Costa Rica were elaborated. The qualitative methodological framework used to identify actors and their complex interactions became a useful tool in reconstructing different socio-political expressions, symbolic narratives, and survival/resistance strategies emerging from local groups. Results: social-environmental crisis emerging in the Anthropocene context suggest the need for different points of view and ontological turns to gain a better understanding of social change occurred in the margins of in the Western world. Latin-American societies are multiple and diverse. Both, Brazilian and Costa Rican experiences discussed in this paper, represent situated realities which cannot be generalized, but this is a rather important and critical issue. These case studies help illustrate how the non-critical adoption of hegemonic categories of sociotechnical control and securitization is inadequate to understand and explain the contingency emerging from these situated realities. Conclusions: we suggest in the final part of the paper that these reflections contribute to bring a different perspective on how science, political and nature converge in knowledge systems and how these systems are contested for different people, groups, and communities around the world. This reflection is crucial to the study of processes concerned with political legitimacy, democracy, and territorial political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper is a review of the last two National Development Plans, implemented by the Central Government of Costa Rica. We study the political and institutional evolution of Solís Rivera's (2014-2018) and Alvarado Quesada's (2018-2022) administrations. The objective of the research is to analyze the territorial perspective into public policies for rural development design, and their evolution as part of the instruments aimed at promoting the sustainable development of rural territories. Some specific questions are: how these policies gave rise to specific instruments to address the complexity and intersectoriality of rural problems? What are the effects of these policies and instruments on the sustainable development of rural territories in Costa Rica? What are the challenges of a complementary rural development agenda with a territorial approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]