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

Many changes are happening at a world scale. Leisure, as social and culture activity does not stay out of this evolution, and at the same time, contributes, from the personal, social economical point of view, to the configuration of certain habits, lifestyle, different ways of understanding leisure and recreational development of new activities. This article proposes the utilization of leisure, free time and voluntary service, within the collectivity of older people, outstanding the importance of their participation on various tasks. This requires a significant dedication of time, knowledge, experience and emotional support, which is not always recognized or appreciated by society. We conclude emphasizing how education, through leisure programs, has modified its conception and is defined trough parameters that refer to autonomy, development, relationship, participation and creativity, also in older people.

This article presents arguments in favor of designing public policies sensitive to multicultural challenge, especially taking into account that culture is a crucial element for individual identity. First, it reviews the dispute between liberals and communitarians as the source of the current debate. Second, it analyzes the Rawls’s response to communitarian critique. Third, it exposes critically the three most important model-conceptions that pronounce about cultural pluralism. And finally, it outlines a possible response to the demands of ethnic minorities.

This article reviews the stages through which the Chilean State moved from the 1930s onward, particularly concerning the transformations in the role it played managing the national economy, and the impact these changes had in the link between political parties and society or, in a broader sense, between State and nation. We observe two clearly defined stages. The first characterized by the constitution of the State as a key element of the economic model development and an important organizer of society; task –this last one- propitiated by the mediating action of political parties, which established deep bonds with different social organizations, enabling the channelling of demands and distribution of benefits. The second stage, which began with the breakdown of democracy in 1973, shows the State’s withdrawal and the imposition of the market as the focal point of the economic model as well as the main mechanism behind the distribution of goods and services. The return to democracy –in 1990– was characterized by this “market-centric” reality and by the new institutional structure conceived during the military dictatorship. This shaped the party system reorganization and forced a shift in interaction strategies between political parties and society, prioritizing political marketing and the use of new mass media over a direct relationship with the now deflated social organizations. This historical review may help understand the current representation and participation crisis seen today in Chile.

The incorporation of the space to the central dynamics of the political and economic processes is analyzed in the last quarter of XXth century in Spain, through its relation with the successive crisis, mainly recognized by its economic component. The production of space (transformation and growth) has become one of the key answers to the fordist crisis. This question has finally become a main component in the current crisis of financialization. By way of example, it is used the case of Madrid, because it is considered paradigmatic, since the region has played a leading role as a laboratory for new forms of governance and planning, which has given a centrality to space, with the increase of physical growth, as motor of economic growth and competitiveness in the metropolitan region of Madrid in the context of European and international cities.

The flow of remittances from migrants working places to families residing in the countries of origin, has been transformed over the past two decades into a subject of international debate that attracts broad participation of various actors. From early analysis focused on the role these flows of money should play in the development of local communities and, eventually, of national economies. This article discusses various aspects of the discussion on the relationship of remittances and development. It contextualizes the origin and meaning of these flows, giving importance to the historical situation that favors their current importance, there are also discussed different definitions of remittances and the main speeches articulated the link remittances and development, to understand the political elements underlying ideological and it is envisaged that remittances are a means of economic development of communities. It analyzes government programs to support productive projects, especially in Mexico and El Salvador. The literature review reveals that the programs developed are relatively new and is not one of his approaches to the use of remittances as an element in combating poverty, but to link migration with a multidimensional concept of social development.

Natural selection helps to solve the mystery of life but it is not applicable to explain cultural diversity. Natural selection is seen, on the one hand, as part of the imagination of a fleeting industrial world, and, on the other, as a means to produce differences in the midst of social processes that are decisive in the distribution of human genes. Genetics is intentionally translated into the social world: biology is subverted and submitted to human agencies. Such is an essential rupture that reframes the genetic pool under the newness of the human world. Humans deliberate about their condition and, in so doing, they co-opt nature. However such is not a blunt process but deliberation in itself is infiltrated by the neurological process, a strong reason for maintaining a dialectical view between genes and humans.  

The purpose of this work is to show how  social sciences emerged, with which characteristics and assumptions, and, therefore, which difficulties they have to understand and to deal with environmental problems. In a second moment, there will be presented some analysis about knowledge and its relationship with the environment, as well as the importance to overcome the division between the so-called hard sciences and the social and human sciences, and the need of contributions of the sciences of complexity, cultural studies, modernity/coloniality studies and environmental thought, both as challenges and possibilities to treat environmental problems in an integral way. These combined approximations represent a great task for the social sciences, but, without them, it will be impossible to deal with the environmental problems in an adequate way.

The filming with mobile phones of mass student demonstrations in 2011 and of the earthquake-tsunami that struck Chile on the 27th of February 2007, followed by the release on internet of these images and information—especially the videos posted on YouTube—allows us a unique opportunity to think upon the incorporation of the TICs into the process of recording memories. In this case, the reference to a “sailor” navigating the cyberspace aligns itself with respect to the semantic fields offered by the metaphor of a “liquid society”. In this context, we are addressing the use of a digital heritage —the virtual community and universal sharing of images—as a catalogue of both memories and pieces of history: isolated messages, composed by both individuals and the collective that, together, form an archipelago of cultures.