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

The article makes a counterpoint between the concepts of development and those of self-management and participation in the Brazilian context, following through the ‘cultural complexes’ involved. For that he follows through the rationalism of the Protestant Nordic culture and affectionate attitude of Brazilian culture. He ends with the concept of cordial man in whom would reside all the historical and heuristic potentialities for the resolution of the dilemmas of our social existence.

This article discusses the history of the Dtate-nation, political-judicial device built by Western culture which contains tensions within its framework, and is not in general dynamizing of citizenship rights. Notes that the last historical exponent of the State-nation is the Welfare State, closely linked to representative democracy which is incapable of fully incorporating citizens in public affairs, encouraging, therefore, a citizen of a passive nature. He argues that we face a loss of legitimacy of the Welfare State and that there is a fourth generation of rights, along with the "new social movements". It emphasizes that the loss of operating capacity and legitimacy of the State-nation, compels to ‘extensionate’ and ‘intensionate’ democracy, which demands a new political culture.

The author poses us with an allien confrontation: Bush’s Bible against the Taliban’s Koran. Bush's God against the Taliban’s Allah. What a World! What we do we have to do with that? This episode –says- is a greater expression of the situation where those who kill commit suicide, and then aspire to heaven where they would receive compensation for their merits. The author refers to the mentality of the Crusades, which earlier confronted Christianity with the Muslim world; and then develops a counterpoint to the September 11 military coup in Chile and the attack on the Twin Towers, arguing that with the collapse of the towers global civil war begins. On contrast, he rescues the search for ways out of this situation raised by the ralternative movement, which he suggests to strengthen in order to prevent worse future disasters. The real dilemma, he says, is between common good and barbarism.

This essay argues that although the concept of sustainable development everyone one uses it from their particular interests and world view, at least it has allowed to introduce a criterion to judge institutions and practices of modern societies, and can help to move towards a new worldview. Then presents the "Human Scale Development" and proposes an ecological or sustainable society, as an attainable utopia.

The author argues that modern scientific worldview is challenged to adapt to new evidence, which is of great difficulty for the dense network of theoretical assumptions on which it is involved. He clarifies that he does not aims to attack the spirit of science but motivate its own evolution, which should go in the direction of a more holistic science or science of totality, of which he describes its characteristics, for which believes that the time is ripe.

This article posits that throughout history of thought there has been a fascination with the creative capacity, and is considered a distinctive faculty through which individuals and societies can expand their possibilities beyond what exists; and further develops the hypothesis of three ascending levels of creativity that in turn contain three "methodologies" for their development. These levels are: techniques of creative learning, paradigm shift, and the journey inside oneself.

The author narrates in this chronicle, the details of the recent World Social Forum which took place in the city of Caracas, Venezuela. In the text he reveals the concern that rices because of the governmental intervention of the ‘chavista’ administration, in an event whose slogan is precisely one of independence of the organizations who shape it. Nevertheless, Bracho rescues the unique opportunity that was brought up in order to be able to think about a new conscience that seems to arise from the very participating actors and which is the result of the dialogue and the recognition of ancestral wisdom long desplaced from modern western culture.

The process of learning in an adult is different from that which takes place inchildhood; the adult has a ground of acquisitions to which he is able to integrate thenew knowledge and assume his learning as an elective processrealeted to his motivations and interests. The adult as “bio-psico-sociological” totality feels, lives, acts and offers meaning to what he learns, as a part ofreality and the paradigm in which he is inserted. To consider him a separate entity in regards to the complex reality he represents, is to separate his nature and condemn him to bethe lack of understanding of his own rationality. To conceive a process of self-regulation in the learning of an individual, is to recognize in him the capacity to taking responsability for that being he represents; recognize him able to respond for himself, others, and the whole of his life andexistence, being respectful of the process that reveals him as an entity which is -by its own nature- unique and unrepeatable.

History, says the author, is the extension of the homo sapiens biological evolution by other means. This point of view contributes to the theoretical foundations for an environmental history, one which shoud be like an indivisible cloth in which all human activies are interwoven. This should lead to examine -throughout history- the conflict or tension betwen, on one side, the forces responsable for the transformation of the homo sapiens since the neolithics to humanity on the nuclear era, and on the other, the forces that keep the reproduction and stability of human groups and their social means unchanged; forces that during most of history have efficaciously counterbalanced. Furthermore, proposes that marxist historians, who did not understand the undesired and involuntary consequences of the colective human projects along the twentieth century, might this time, enrichened by their practical experience, help to understand how we have reached this present situation, and help to come out with the best means to face this situation in such a way that it can efectively contribute to the development of our species in harmony witht he rest of the natural world.

The present article inquires into the construction of the aesthetics and the resulting subjectivities in urban mexican young men through the tattoo. The question of investigation that articulates the present work is related to the question: why certain urban youngsters, men and women, are tattooing their bodies? The method used for the reconstruction of the notables (the resulting subjectivities) was an interpretive one.The investigation was exploratory and ethnographic, because of the almost inexistence of researches in Mexico that consider the offer (making tattoos) and the demand (the tattooed ones) in the proper historical-social context of the meanings associated with the practice of tattoo as an aesthetic expression in the alteration of the bodies. The instruments used in the construction of data were related newspapers, and the observation of contexts; and a guide used for interviews in depth in order to find out the meanings that social actors themselves gave to their own practices.