Search

Decolonization is a pressing issue until today. The article approaching it from a point of view of coloniality and originality, cultural processes in which original native and colonial habits and interpretations of reality are internalized and maintained alive in daily life. This is approached from a perspective of phenomenology and the Latin-American Philosophy of Liberation. It observes that coloniality, and originality, is omnipresent in contemporary Mexico, though it is often made absent, and wrongfully made irrelevant. The conclusions are based on the author's own lived experience of over 18 years. Subsequent articles follow, revealing historical analyses and proposals for liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore 'value' as understood in communities in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico in relation to Payment for Ecosystem Services. Trans-disciplinary collaborations that seek to incorporate 'novel' methods to engage participants differently might better reflect the dynamic, emergent, and often shifting nature of beliefs, attitudes and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Art Inquiry is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

• The term "citizen science" is adopted in 58 % of initiatives. • 55 % of initiatives include public participation exclusively in data collection. • 17 % of projects are co-produced between researchers and the public. • Cases monitor biodiversity (terrestrial and aquatic), water and land cover. • Funding comes from Government and/or NGO (90 %) and the private sector (25 %). Citizen science has gained momentum in the past two decades as a participatory research approach. However, it is necessary to analyze when and how this participation takes place within the knowledge generation process. We analyzed 36 cases of citizen science in Mexico to describe the relationship between the stages and levels of public participation in knowledge generation and the geographic, temporal, and thematic scope of the initiatives. We also characterized the participants and initiatives' sources of financing. We found that 21 initiatives called themselves citizen science, the rest were described as participatory monitoring or community monitoring. Furthermore, 55 % of the cases were contributory projects, in which citizens participated exclusively in the process of data collection. Only 17 % of cases were co-created, where the public participated along with scientists throughout the process of knowledge generation: from framing of the problems, research design, data collection, and analysis, to the dissemination of the results. In this article, we highlight that citizen science can achieve its greatest transformative potential when public participation takes place throughout the multiple stages of the knowledge generation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social-ecological research is an interdisciplinary endeavor. According to its research purposes, it includes biophysical aspects as well as political, economic, and cultural elements. However, to ensure that the analysis of social processes is effectively attended, it is recommended that biophysical scientists, ecologists in particular, explore the theoretical diversity within the social sciences. Drawing on our teaching experiences of more than a decade and our work as members of research teams that aim to move toward interdisciplinary work, we briefly explore four schools of thought in the social sciences explaining their philosophical and methodological dimensions, as well as the research methods they advocate. We propose that a deeper understanding of these issues will reinforce the dialogue between ecologists and social scientists and will enhance collaboration in social-ecological research projects. An invitation is also made to consider how interpretivism, constructivism, and critical theory can add value to social-ecological research when seeking to document and explain the perspectives of different stakeholders involved in the interaction between people and ecosystems. Related to this invitation we advocate that social-ecological science is essentially collaborative and needs to move toward knowledge coproduction emphasizing the relevance of communication and linkage strategies among diverse stakeholders in order to transit to sustainable socialecological systems. In order to illustrate some of our ideas, we present a case of social-ecological research related to the conservation of big predators in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflective theoretical article seeks to continue the discussion on an epistemological approach in which agroecology is circumscribed as a science of complexity, transdisciplinary and systemic in nature, aimed at responding to the problems of agroecosystems. To do this, the socio-ecological resilience is proposed as an object of study and the agroecosystems as a knowledge object. It is expected that the definition of these limits of action research enables the consolidation of agroecology in the field of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicultural discourse has reached Latin American higher education in the form of a set of policies targeting indigenous peoples. These policies are strongly influenced by the transfer of European notions of 'interculturality', which, in the Mexican context, are understood as positive interactions between members of minority and majority cultures. In Mexico, innovative and often polemical 'intercultural universities or colleges' are being created by governments, by NGOs or by pre-existing universities. This trend towards 'diversifying' the ethnocultural profiles of students and curricular contents coincides with a broader tendency to force institutions of higher education to become more 'efficient', 'corporate' and 'outcome-oriented'. Accordingly, these still very recently established 'intercultural universities' are often criticised as being part of a common policy of 'privatisation' and 'neoliberalisation' and of developing curricula particular to specific groups which weakens the universalist and comprehensive nature of Latin American public universities. Indigenous leaders, on the contrary, frequently claim and celebrate the appearance of these new higher education opportunities as part of a strategy of empowering actors of indigenous origin or African descent. Going beyond this polemic, this paper presents the first findings of an activist anthropological and ethnographically-based case study of the actors participating in the configuration of one of these new institutions of higher education, the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI), located on the Mexican gulf coast. This article examines the way UVI has appropriated the discourse of interculturality on the basis of fieldwork conducted in the four indigenous regions where the UVI offers a B.A. in Intercultural Management for Development. The study focuses on the actors' teaching and learning practices, which are strongly shaped by an innovative and hybrid mixture of conventional university teaching, community-oriented research and 'employability'-driven development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologias is the property of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)