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Interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and counter-disciplinarity are the hallmark of cultural studies and qualitative research, as scholars over the past three decades have discussed through extensive self-reflexive inquiry into their own unstable and ever-shifting methods (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018; Dicks et al., 2006: 78; Grossberg, 2010). Building on the interdisciplinary thought of Jacques Rancière and Caroline Levine on the one hand and traditions of participatory action research and activist anthropology on the other, we bring the methods conversation forward by shifting the focus from disciplines to forms and by making a case for aesthetic practice as qualitative research process. In this paper, the question of methods is approached through the action-based Cartonera Publishing Project with editoriales cartoneras in Latin America – community publishers who make low-cost books out of materials recovered from the street in the attempt to democratise and decolonise literary/artistic production – and specifically through our process-oriented, collaborative work with four cartonera publishers in Brazil and Mexico. Guided by the multiple forms of cartonera knowledge production, which are rooted not in academic research but rather in aesthetic practice and community relations, we offer an innovative 'trans-formal' methodological framework, which opens up new pathways for practitioners and researchers to work, think and act across social, cultural and aesthetic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades there has been a tendency throughout Latin America of the expansion of activities associated with the primary sector, such as mining, oil, cattle and soy, namely reprimarization. This tendency reflects the growth of the commodities markets and China in recent years. This paper examines the implications for both the environment and development in general, as a result of the reprimarization tendency in Argentina and Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin America accounts for approximately 8 per cent of the global generic market. Generics participation in the Latin American countries has been growing — however, the concept of generics differs considerably from country to country. In such landscape, Brazil has been distinguished not only because of the rigorous sanitary legislation — requiring bioequivalence tests and Good Manufacturing Practices certification for generic registration and aligning local regulation with internationally recognised scientific standards for proof of efficacy and safety — but also because of the market performance the generics have shown since their implementation in 1999. Annual sales reached US717m and 157m units in 2005 and displayed the highest growth rates among the different segments within the Brazilian pharmaceutical market. This paper reviews the Brazilian experience with generics, focusing on current regulatory and market issues and on the main challenges and opportunities expected for the near future in this region.Journal of Generic Medicines (2006) 4, 30–36. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jgm.4950045 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes the conference papers presented at the ninth biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). The IASFM conference was held January 9-13, 2005 in São Paulo, Brazil and was hosted by the Pontifical Catholic University and the Latin American Parliament. The conference featured 168 papers, primarily of applied research, presented by 200 academics, policymakers, practitioners, and government representatives. This was the first time that IASFM met in Latin America; the conference was simultaneously translated in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The conference focused on the number of cases and causes of forced migration as well as possible repatriation of migrants. Smuggling and human trafficking was also addressed.

This study considers the role that public service announcements (PSAs) play in addressing violence against women (VAW) in Latin America. Using content analysis, the study examines 407 PSAs about VAW from 20 Latin American countries. The results show that 62.3% of the PSAs encourage bystanders to denounce violence while portraying women as victims in 48.8% of the PSAs. However, 71.7% of PSAs did not include a helpline or how to report the crime, only 11.8% of the PSAs have non-narrative, or factual information, about VAW, and just 6.4% engage in compelling narrative messaging or storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study uses a media sociology approach to untangle how multiple influences shape the way journalists cover left- and right-leaning protests on social media. Several studies have investigated how reporters portray social movements, finding that news marginalizes protestors by focusing on spectacle and violent tactics to the detriment of their ideas. In this study, we turn to journalists' Twitter accounts to analyze if these patterns are transferred to social media, as predicted by the literature on normalization of new affordances. Through a mixed methodology matching survey and social media data from 466 Brazilian journalists who tweeted about protests in 2013 and 2015, results revealed individual attitudes predicted coverage, indicating that social media was a space for personal, not professional, expression. Contrary to the literature, findings show that social media portrayals were more legitimizing during the left-leaning demonstrations than during the right-leaning elite-driven one. As a result, marginalizing patterns of protest coverage were challenged, not replicated, on Twitter. These findings suggest a limitation of the theory of normalization to explain how global journalists use social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes various papers related to the Latin American demography that were published in different journals. The article "O Brasil em Face do Intercambio Migratorio Internaional," by E. Fischlowitz was published in the September 1968 issue of the journal "Verbum." The article examines the following facts related to Brazil: the decreasing international immigration in Brazil, the increasing internal migration and the increasing emigration of Brazilian people, most of them scientists, engineers and technicians, to other countries. The article "Race and Class in Brazil, 1937-1967: A Re-Assessment: A Review," by A.J.R. Russel-Wood was published in the October 1968 issue of the journal "Race." This article is a review of Donald Pierson's book, "Negroes in Brazil: A Study of Race Contact at Bahia." The paper "A Economic Analysis of Internal Migration in Brazil," by G.S. Sahota was published in the March-April 1968 issue of "The Journal of Political Economy." This paper analyzes interstate migration in Brazil by isolating the factors underlying labor migration. Among the major findings of this study is the fact that internal migration in Brazil is highly responsive to earning differentials.

Objectives: We explored the links between chronic diseases and cognitive ability using datasets of community-dwelling older adults from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay from the SABE (Health, Well-Being, and Aging) survey. Methods: Ordinary least squares (OLS), Tobit and linear probability models, adjusting for extensive health and socio-demographic factors, were implemented separately for men and women and complemented by a series of robustness checks. Results: We find a negative association between the number of chronic conditions and cognitive decline that has the following characteristics: (a) differs across gender, (b) increases with the number of chronic conditions, (c) is larger among those individuals in the bottom of the cognitive distribution, (d) and is different across types of chronic conditions. Discussion: These results suggest that returns from preventive policies to reduce cognitive decline would increase if they were targeted to seniors with chronic conditions and implemented before the impact from multiple comorbidities makes the cognitive decline too steep to be reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the boundaries theoretical framework to analyse Brazilian race relations. The author argues that the apparent paradox of race relations in Brazil and in parts of Latin America, i.e. the persistency of racial inequality without blatant racial conflict, can be better understood as the coexistence of strong social boundaries and weak symbolic boundaries between racial categories. Not only does the boundaries literature allow us to understand race relations in Brazil through a different lens, but the Brazilian case can also contribute to further develop this theoretical framework. Differently from most cases discussed by the boundaries literature where strong symbolic boundaries lead to strong social boundaries, in Brazil weak symbolic boundaries have played a key role in the reproduction and transformation of strong social boundaries between blacks and whites. Taking into account the different ways these two types of boundaries interact – social and symbolic – is a key challenge for the comparative literature on race relations. In order to develop the argument the author draws on recent studies about Brazil to discuss two traditional issues in the race relations literature in Latin America and beyond: the measurement of racial discrimination and the consequences of racially mixed identification for debates on racial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of multiple modernities as developed by Eisenstadt has become increasingly influential in debates about modernity and the historical formation of societies in comparative perspective. On closer inspection, the theoretical framework is less than straightforward when it comes to specific applications. This article considers Brazil from the perspective of a revised theory of multiple modernities. There has been virtually no application to specific case studies within the countries of the South. Brazil could be considered an important case study of modernity that deserves attention in its own right. The article shows that the theoretical framework of multiple modernities offers insights into the Brazilian trajectory of modernity, a consideration of which also challenges some of the assumptions of Eisenstadt’s approach. Despite the limits of the framework, the notion of multiple modernities offers a good basis for a global analysis of modernity. Greater attention needs to be given to civilizational encounters and to sources of conflict and plurality within modernity and which cannot be accounted for in terms of the principles of axiality postulated by Eisenstadt. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do policy feedbacks interact with transnational policy ideas? How do they impact domestic policy development? Using a qualitative research method based on a comparison of two poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, this article asserts that in all likelihood, if a previously implemented policy initiative was ‘locked-in’ through domestic policy experimentation and resultant state-building and interest group policy effects, it will not easily be replaced by alternative, transnational policy ideas that appear on the radar screen of national policymakers at a later date. However, if transnational policy ideas and models can draw on or build upon already established ideational and symbolic beliefs, they can actually be used to further the motivations of key political actors and societal interests – here, diffusion opens up great reform opportunities and opens the door to further policy institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-1990s, Brazil and Mexico created innovative social policies known as Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs). Since then, CCTs have spread to countries throughout Latin America and beyond. While these programs reflect a new development norm, their spread is surprising given that some emulating countries lack the basic education and health infrastructure to support increased demand from beneficiaries. This article draws on a policy diffusion framework to explain the spread of CCTs. The author contrasts domestic preconditions (political ideology, state capacity and human development levels) with international pressure (neighborhood effects, professional norm-creation and financial inducements by international financial institutions) to explain the diffusion of CCTs. In order to elucidate the mechanisms that drive diffusion processes, the article draws on mixed methods to uncover learning and emulation among actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite its argued theoretical benefits, forestry decentralization in practice can have detrimental effects on forest-dependent peoples, but little is understood about the specific paths by which decentralization affects livelihoods. This article, based on data from research in 2005 in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, presents a working conceptual model for analyzing these interactions. The research found that vulnerability increased when decentralization was not combined with policies addressing structural inequities—that is, increased municipal government control over land and forests must be accompanied by policies increasing poor local people's access rights and security. At the same time, increased municipal government authority over forest management and monitoring can facilitate access to these and other assets needed for forest livelihoods, but this new responsibility must also be accompanied by improved controls over local authorities. The needed changes rarely come about without specific organized demands of local actors' associations and movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Attributes that caregivers assign to complementary foods have been primarily described in the context of illness, but attributes assigned to foods in everyday circumstances must be understood to effectively promote good complementary feeding.Objective: This study aimed to understand how mothers judge complementary foods to be appropriate by cross-cultural examination of food perceptions in four different Latin American and Caribbean countries.Methods: We used semistructured interviews to assess attributes that mothers ascribed to a list of key foods, both home-made and manufactured, and reasons for feeding or not feeding them. We elicited attributes from 79 caregivers with children 6 to 24 months of age from two urban and perirban sites each in Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, and Panama.Results: Textual analysis based on six home foods common to the four countries and manufactured foods resulted in six attribute categories, five of which could be positive or negative (Nutrient Content, Effects on Child, Child's Response, Availability and Accessibility, and Other Food Attributes); one (Food Quality and Safety) was only negative. Analysis of attributes of home foods (chicken, eggs, beans, carrots, bananas or plantains, and oranges) revealed many beliefs that were common within and across countries, whereas analysis of the attributes of manufactured foods revealed that these foods were less known.Conclusions: The consistency of the attribute categories across countries and across home and manufactured foods suggests their relevance to planning programs to improve complementary feeding in Latin America and the Caribbean and possibly other developing countries. These results can be used programmatically to assess the need for and the focus of food education programs, and to indicate which countries will be more receptive to certain foods as a means of improving complementary feeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare is receiving greater attention in Latin America than ever before and a number of countries in the region are in the midst of major reforms. These healthcare changes are taking place in an environment that is very different to many of the industrialised countries of the world, however, and are complicated by the profound social inequalities to be found across the region. As the largest country in the region, Brazil faces immense challenges in making healthcare more affordable. As the country’s population is growing and ageing rapidly, the government has explored a range of healthcare initiatives such as increasing the use of generic medicines. This approach has been particularly successful in Brazil’s efforts to tackle the AIDS pandemic and suggests that generics will receive greater priority in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an account of the traveling experience of the 2006 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) Latin American Traveling Fellows. The group met in Houston, Texas for their international flight to Mexico City, Mexico where they met their hosts and had academic sessions from May 7 to 10, 2005. On May 11 to 15, they flew to Santiago, Chile where they tour a private hospital, a physical therapy and rehabilitation center and had lunched in Santa Rita Vineyards. On the 16th to 20, they went to Buenos Aires, Argentina where they visited different surgical centers and universities. The group also visited Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and other places in Brazil.