núm. 15 (2011)

Faced with environmental degradation due to production and consumption effects, economy should provide answers based on research, education, responsibility and regulation processes, to articulate the use of renewable natural resources, managed and unmanaged, in order to establish a sustainable and streamlined economical-environmental growth that qualifies life. For the purposes of this proposal, secondary information of empirical origin was taken, which made it possible to elaborate an analytical theorization that expresses thoughts and conjectures in a clear way, offering a path to follow in the transition from biological to economic wealth.

Habitat is conceived as a political phenomenon in this article, and politics moves within the institutional field created by it. This paper explores the linguistic dimension that connects such fields, since the concept of habitat is a semantic and rhetorical construction. The theories by Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Teun Van Dijk on this matter and their interconnection are hereby reviewed, making constant reference to habitat as a problem of discourse, and explaining the foundations that enable a political discourse analysis, with the purpose of illustrating a logic of domination.

This paper aims to establish the basis for a transformation of the traditional message-emitter-receiver communication triangle to one that makes reference to the social dynamics of public communication: actors-stages-senses. As such, it is possible to develop a series of guidelines on how to act and find the conformation of a social capital for democracy in the citizen actors of communication.

This paper suggests the analysis of three key elements that determine the effectiveness of public policies from a cultural approach: bureaucracy, decentralization as a local condition, and citizens, in terms of their relationship with public policies and the effect they have on each other. To this end, we present a conceptualization of terms such as ‘governance’ and its variations, regarding the establishment of more horizontal relations in the exercise of power, with an active citizen participation, mediated by bureaucratic action, as well as sector and territorial public policies, which are very particular due to the territory.

The purpose of this paper is to show the relationship between macroeconomic performance and the internal armed conflict in Colombia. In this sense, the results obtained from the security and economic indicators for 2000-2008 showan approximation to an inverse relationship between these variables. As such, it generates evidence to theoretical explanations about the relationship between economic variables and conflict.

The interactions between universities and the environment have been studiedin recent decades, especially in the new economy’s context, where knowledge istaken as a strategic factor to generate wealth and universities as the organizationsthat must produce it. The purpose of this paper is to make a literary reviewof the main models and mechanisms of interaction between universities andthe environment in order to identify some of the challenges for universitiesin Colombia. This review was conducted on secondary sources, particularlyscientific databases, and the results showed that these models and mechanismstend to homogenize, applying indistinctly in the particular contexts of each region,showing positive results, especially in the United States and other industrializedcountries. On the other hand, they show strong ideological differences andlimitations in the interactions between the different actors, as well as in thescientific, technological and innovational skills in developing countries, likeColombia. Some of the challenges faced by Colombian universities have todo with the challenge of increasing their research capacities, as well as theiraccumulation and transfer of knowledge, improving their intellectual propertypolicies and building their own interaction model, based on their internalcapabilities and the context in which they are immersed.

This paper presents an analysis of the impact caused by the subsidies granted bythe Family Compensation Funds on economic growth. The analysis was madewith information gathered from thirty departments from 1996 to 2009 using thepanel data method, and it was found that, so long as the family compensationfunds continue to develop more education, training, library, health and nutritionprograms, they will have a positive effect on regional growth in Colombia.