Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Development studies is concerned with two issues: the development of normative theories of development and justice (development discourse), and the empirical study of the effects of interventions and their impact on the global policy context (development policy). These distinct theoretical aims of the discipline lead to epistemological difficulties in practice. In this paper I argue that development studies suffer from two main conceptual deficiencies. The first one corresponds to an analytical incapability for providing a definitive version of social justice that is simultaneously impartial and plural. The second weakness involves an empirical deficiency related to development discourse and current policies and practices. Identifying both epistemic deficiencies inherently embedded into what development has traditionally been about, may help to shed light on its analytical and technical boundaries and thus its ability to truly carry out its stated goals. To that end, this paper focuses on highlighting the consequences of these two epistemic oversights. I conclude that the field of development has no other alternative than (re)turning to its epistemic roots to adequately review the very essence of its conceptualization and effects.

This article is the first part of an academic work that studies the theoretical-conceptual foundations of the methodological proposal of Norman Fairclough and Isabela Fairclough, especially the relationship between the concept of context and deliberation with those who support that the political discourse of a given political actor must belong to an institutionalized context. Thesis that they defend from the concept of political nature from Aristotle, conceived to arrive cooperatively and through the action of deliberation to matters of common interest. While the nature of Aristotle's politics is based on human action and deliberation, it is also clear in its policy that slaves do not deliberate. It is intended to show the way Norman Fairclough and Isabela Fairclough deal with Aristotelian exclusion to contribute to the theoretical-conceptual development of critical discourse analysis.

Given the multiplicity of perspectives that accompany the observation of the current pandemic, becomes relevant to identify those that achieve the greatest resonance. Thus, it is observed how citizens and decision makers have increased their demands for valid information by applying rationality, methods, and procedures of science in an exponential manner. In this paper we develop a synthetic set of selected guidelines on how the current pandemic is approached from systemic social sciences, and then present some of their proposals regarding the conditions, at the organizational level, which could enable the achievement of the levels of dialogue and cooperation required to address the current pandemic.

Labelling separates the common life between those worthy of being lived and the others of any sensitive consideration, both guilty and condemned to the eternal return of the prognosis and criminal repetition. This fact requires rethinking the human, through other perceptual frameworks (epistemological, affective, and methodological) progressively deactivating the immunizing effects of stigmatization of those “dangerous” lives and, consequently, “undesirable” and “intolerable” for the community. This article is based on the immune paradigm (Roberto Esposito), criminal labelling (labelling approach), and criticism as appropriation of human life (Judith Butler). Among the conclusions that this reflection throws is that the narration of existence constitutes a reaction against stigmatization, and, consequently, an inversion of the immune language, while freeing the subject from the monstrous becoming contained in the criminal label, thus revealing a humanity not seen or heard yet.

This essay argues for a situated character of knowledge of everyday life. As a starting point, relying on Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of “form of life”, we propose that our decisions are fundamentally practical uses of historically constructed rules systems and, therefore, those are irreducible to algorithmic procedures of rational cost-benefit evaluation. Later, to address the question of the conditions that make possible the subjective incorporation of these rules and, with it, our practical sense, we recover some approaches from the “background” thesis of John Searle and habitus by Pierre Bourdieu. After this discussion, from Donna Haraway's perspective of situated knowledge, we propose that the conformation of that sense is always partial; that is, related to embodied articulatory practices. Finally, we argue that the perspective of situated knowledge represents a plausible alternative to theoretically and methodologically support an approach to knowledge of everyday life.

The approach that Durkheim delineates in The Rules of Sociological Method is currently criticized: it is a conservative view that forgets the relevance of agents and it is a social sociology that only observes established order. However, an intensive reading of The Rules shows that their basic statements -about what is a social fact, that they should be treated as things, and that their explanation should be searched in other social facts- are correct one and they can integrate the correct elements argued by its critics. Behind the rejection to Durkheim there is the rejection to a radical statement in The Rules, one that is unbearable for us: that coercion is a natural part of social life.

This paper claims that change is the rule in the social world, in all scales of time, without cycles or periodic dynamics. Hereafter, the topic that immediately arises is the irregularity of the world. If this is true, then irregular social sciences are to be possible. The best antecedent of such an idea is to be found in Mandelbrot’s own understanding of fractals and multifractals. Thus, the social sciences radically deal with phenomena that are in no way repeated, for they are singular. Such events have been called as rare events. In thus tenure, a brand-new epistemology arises and is possible. At the end, some connections between the social sciences and biology and ecology are depicted. That, however, is where this text ends and remains open.

In this paper, I argue that in the context of the redistribution-recognition debate, Rawls developed a theory of justice that exceeds the margins of allocative justice and has good arguments to deal with demands of social change and recognition. I propose that some criticism of the Rawlsian conception of social justice confuses allocative justice with distributive justice. In doing this, they not only understand Rawls’s conception of primary goods as measuring staff, but they also reject their moral dimension. Finally, I examine the concepts of reciprocal recognition and self-respect to improve and expand the discussion about Rawlsian distributive justice.

Clarifying a set of epistemological and axiological stances and ideas of Zea (historicist realitivism, circumstantialism, perspectivism, pragmatism, political approach, rational autonomy of the theory, idea of concrete universality, dependency problem, dialectical assimilation), this paper elaborates the concept of critical universalism, which tie them up in an organized unit, and develops the structure and dynamism of this concept, describing its dialectic. The methodology is interpretative in the sense of a conceptual elaboration of the explicit and implicit contents in the work of this philosopher. Through the concept of critical universalism and its dialectics, the complementary relationship between the historicist and pragmatic-political criticism of the Mexican philosopher and his quest for universal knowledge and values are made visible, and a method is provided to study the life of knowledge and values in its concrete historicity and its political implications, without renouncing rational universality; method that, beyond the work of Zea, can be useful for the history of ideas and the philosophy of history in general.

The present article defends the thesis that a plausible conceptualization of egoism in the work of Thomas Hobbes is the one that integrates the possibility of individualistic behaviours that become socially beneficial. To support this thesis, a reconstruction of the concept of egoism is made in Hobbes's work to highlight those interpretations that address the differences between the state of nature and political society. In the latter, through a pact, the interests of others are recognized as part of a strategy that protects their own interests. It is possible to voluntarily protect the welfare of others, even without having any interest in it. Reciprocity and cooperation arise in adaptive processes that establish rules that can represent ideal states of the world and that also maximize self and general interest.