vol. 15, n.º 29 (enero-junio 2018)

Gender quotas are a specific type of positive actions aimed at fostering women’s political representation. In Mexico, gender quotas were adopted since 1993 and over the years their evolution produced a federal legislature with 42.6 % of women, but also a rise of political violence against women. This paper explains the highly positive impact of judicialization on women’s representation and analyses the relation that seems to appear between effectively applied gender quotas and an increase in political violence against women.

The city of Santiago de Cali in Colombia has been characterized since the beginning of the century as one of the most insecure cities in the world. Given the State’s inability to guarantee order, there are initiatives from the communities in which they seek to mitigate the absence of security with collective actions thus replacing this institutional failure. This work seeks to explore the experience of the neighborhood Marco Fidel Suarez, one of the communities with fewer deaths in the city thanks to strategies such as voluntary enclosure through the installation of fences in strategic points, regulation of entry and exit of residents in addition to activities designed and implemented by the Community Action Board in order to manage a peaceful coexistence. The theory of “Collective Efficacy” by Robert Sampson, Oscar Newman’s “Defensible Space” and the adaptation of the concept of “Multifamily Residential Spaces” are used, supported by qualitative methodological tools such as interview and passive observation in order to understand and explain the development of the mentioned strategies.

From the social sciences of the labor, it is a consensus to point out that the advance of work precariousness generates a challenge for the traditional trade union organizations, because of the segmentation it generates in the working class, in relation to their conditions and job demands, and for the difficulty in representing those workers who are working in unregistered and informal conditions. In this context, this paper aims to reflect on the new forms of collective action that young precarious workers establish in response to these limitations of traditional trade unionism to channel their struggles. Our hypothesis is that in the absence of access to traditional trade union representation and its formal mechanisms of negotiation and struggle, the precarious workers turn to alternative repertoires of action to give visibility to their struggles and install their demands in the political ground. One of these repertoires is artistic activism, which consists in the use of images, songs and performances as a channel for denouncing and protesting about their labor problems. It is on this unconventional trade union repertoire where we focus our reflection in this paper, which gain a great place in the recent mobilizations of young precarious people in Argentina. In qualitative methodological terms, we conducted a qualitative and comparative case study on three Argentinian organizations of young precarious workers who resorted to artistic activism in their protests, during the period 2005-2015, seeking to understand its emergence as a new trade union repertoire.

This article raises the need to acknowledge the forms of narrative present in educational processes, and also presents the need for taking into account another more subtle form and directed towards education of sensitivity for solidarity, as the main hypothesis of this text argues that individuals are educated in two particularly powerful ways of rationality, which derive in a desensitization towards others and towards nature. This particular situation is evidenced in radical selfishness, in unconscious consumerism, in the exclusion of others and in the destruction of nature. As a method of analysis, the problem is examined under the light of the criticism of objective-positive thinking, from the point of view of Dewey’s classical pragmatism and Rorty’s neopragmatism as well as the corresponding critique of technological-instrumental reason is presented from the Frankfurt School. All of the above in order to offer a proposal of a lexicon, that allows us to integrate an imaginative narrative that is oriented towards the creation of an ethos of empathy and solidarity, which is considered a utopian perspective, possible only to the extent that it makes visible another aspect of humanity ignored most of the time in educational environments, to make possible the moral progress that as humans constitutes our responsibility.

Since the post-dictatorial period in Chile, the arrival of Latin American communities has generated a steady transformation in the migration pattern. In this study we aim to understand the effect of the cultural creations of immigrants on our identities, sociabilities and imaginaries. In particular, we are interested in the musical practices, putting forward the idea that music involves processes of cultural mixing, creating a transformation and a reshaping of identities. Methodologically, the study is based on an etnographic focus and on comprehensive interviews with artists of various types of music. The results reveal the existence of distinct kinds of identities, which wane and combine involving elements of natonality, ethnicity, religion and profesional. We conclude from this that the new migratory movements have marked in an important way the present cultural dynamics, creating social links and mixing between communities well beyond national and symbolic bounderies.

The theme of this work is spirituality in a secularized world. It is proposed that Solomon’s theory of emotional integrity makes explicit a form of spirituality that does not make it dependent on religion. Thus, it is a good tool to understand spirituality in a world with several forms of religiosity, atheism and agnosticism. This spirituality assumes a cognitivist conception of the three emotions that are traditionally recognized as ethical and spiritual: happiness, gratitude and love. According to this conception, emotions in general are judgments and its content is an object evaluated in some way. These three emotions have other emotional states as intentional objects, that is why they are called “meta-emotions”. Being spiritual involves an assessment of our life as a whole, affectionately evaluated from a specific present. As such, spirituality is the key to construct each person’s meaning of life. Affective spirituality is within the framework of the emotional integrity theory. This theory states that human beings are capable of endless number of emotions. In this regard, the ability to have an integral affective life is the possibility to forge what we are, to face the challenges of life; it is how we construct the meaning of our own lives.

This article presents part of the results of the doctoral thesis entitled “the institutional educational project and the formation of political subjectivity for a post-conflict scenario: collective memory of the armed conflict and school identity”. The methodology that was used was oral history, and the approach was hermeneutic. The objective pursued for this purpose was to reveal the sense and meaning that the collective memory of the Colombian armed conflict had for the institution under study, through the memory that is conveyed in literature, music and narrative as pedagogical devices. The findings can be summarized in that: 1) through literature, music and narratives as pedagogical devices, pedagogy of memory can be made, given that educational subjects acquire new sense and meanings about the impacts of the Colombian armed conflict; 2) by unveiling the sense and meaning of the armed conflict from literature, music and narratives, the educational subjects become political, ethical, civilized and compassionate; 3) the ethics that arise from memory, and that is conveyed in literature, music and narratives, is different from the ethics taught by the school as competences; 4) students can acquire a transient identity when they listen imaginatively to the other that is narrated when activated in them ethical devices (feelings of longings, desires, complicities, sympathies and compathies2) as opposed to what they hear and as opposed to the condition of the victim; 5) self-care and care for others is given when the students faced with the alter-victim acquire a semantic of cordiality; 6) before the alter-victim the students understand that forgiveness is a gift of the victim; and 7) the students become democratic and move away from the logic of evil from the memory that music entails, when they respect diversity, they do not get involved in the word and direct their actions toward peace.

This paper aims to identify the changes in the representation of violence that have occurred for more than one century in the literature on armed conflict in Colombia. This identification will be done in relationship with the historical, political, social and cultural frameworks that are encompassed within the different literary works. The goal of this project is to acknowledge the ways of narrating and representing war within the literary texts, as well as learning the role of the characters that suffer directly from the violent act in these productions. Additionally, we will pay close attention to the analysis of each character’s enunciative position within the re-signification of the war stories, with the purpose of establishing which are the discourses of each of the parties involved.

Speaking about literature is to mention one of the most special features of the human being. That effort to transmit to the outside whatever our brain activity generates, has developed through history in a slow but necessary process for its advancement. Oral language needed a receptacle to contain words that would otherwise have been hanging in the air eternally. With the appearance of writing, documentary memory emerges, which is the material and non-mental register of things, and as a consequence, came literature as that which contains the letters. Overtime, literature has undergone remarkable modifications in meaning, styles, as well as its social use. The aim is to make a sociological analysis of the evolution of western literature until the 17th century, before the appearance of modern literature.

Latin America is a source of cultural content for many writers. On several occasions writers have managed to capture aspects of Latin American reality in their texts. Among those aspects is the violence that has been experienced in all Latin American countries. To mention some, examples we can mention the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez and the story The Slaughterhouse by Esteban Echevarría. For that reason, this year the core topic of our journal is literature and violence in Latin America.The thematic core section is composed by two articles. The first one is a contribution by Jorge Andrés Cárdenas Santamaría and is entitled: “Overview of the literature on Colombian armed conflict during the 20th and 21st centuries. Considerations about its development and narrative evolution”. This article seeks to recognize how war has been narrated and depicted in literary texts and what has been the role of the characters who directly suffer the violent act in such productions. The second article is a product of Yesid Niño Arteaga which is entitled: “ Violence in rural town and the modern city: Blood and street in the literary works by Álvaro Cepeda Samudio and Rafael Chaparro Madiedo”. This paper expresses how the sociocultural context can be problematized by the words of literature.The perspective research section opens with two philosophical articles. The first article deals with spirituality in a secularized world. The article is entitled: “Emotional integrity. How to be spiritual in a skeptical world ” and its authors are José Edwin Cuéllar Saavedra, Alejandra Molano Bustacara and Miguel Ángel Pérez Jiménez. In the next article entitled: “The imaginative narrative as a way of accessing to solidarity. An educational proposal from pragmatism and neopragmatism”, author Martha Patiño raises the need to recognize the forms of narrative present in educational processes, and presents the need for integration in a more subtle and education-oriented sensitivity for solidarity.Subsequently, there are two articles that focus on art addressed from its relationship with the political. On one hand since the post-dictatorship period in Chile, the arrival of Latin American communities has generated a progressive transformation in the migration pattern. In the article “Latin American migrant musics in Chile: diasporic identities and cultural mixing”, authors Marisol Facuse Muñoz and Rodrigo Torres Alvarado propose to understand the impact of the cultural production of immigrants in our identities, sociabilities and imaginaries. On the other hand the author Marina Adamini in her work “Artistic activism as a new trade union tool of young precarious workers in Argentina” intends to reflect on the new forms of collective action established by the young precarious workers in Argentina against the limitations of traditional trade unionism to channel their struggles; as is artistic activism.To close, we have three articles that have a socio-political focus. The first on the community, the second on the political participation of women and the last one on the evolution of literature. The first article is a contribution by Javier Alexander Molina Correa. This one is titled: “Geese flying in a V shape: community building, defensible space and collective efficacy in a neighborhood of Cali, Colombia”. This paper seeks to explore the experience of the neighborhood “Marco Fidel Suarez”, one of the communities with fewer deaths in the city thanks to strategies such as voluntary enclosure through the installation of fences in strategic points, regulation of entry and exit of residents in addition to activities designed and implemented by the Community Action Board in order to manage a peaceful coexistence. The second article is entitled: “ Between gender quotas and political violence: progress and setbacks in political representation of women in Mexico”. The authors, Karolina M. Gilas and Alma Verónica Méndez Pacheco aim to explain, on the one hand, the positive impact of the judicialization of politics in Mexico on the political representation of women and, at the same time, the relationship between these measures and political violence against women. Finally, Rubén José Pérez Redondo proposes his article “Evolution of western literature from a sociological context. From Classical Greece to Baroque”, in which he intends to make a sociological analysis of the evolution of western literature until the 17th century, before the events of modern literature.