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

The aim of this article is to discuss some epistemic challenges for social research in Latin America since the consideration of the usefulness of auto-ethnography as a methodological strategy. The argumentative strategy selected to achieve the objective is: a) outline some of the discussions on the place of the researcher in social sciences in the literature of the late twentieth century, b) indicates the main characteristics of the auto-ethnography, c) outlines an experience of using auto-ethnographies in research, and finally, d) discuss some conclusions and challenges that can be extracted.    

La teoría de los medios simbólicamente generalizados es un componente central de la teoría sociológica contemporánea. Esta centralidad se observa en su aparición transversal en modelos conceptuales de distinta base epistemológica, como los casos de Parsons, Habermas, Luhmann y Derrida lo constatan. Este artículo indaga en la hipótesis de que la teorización acerca de los medios simbólicos logra esta transversalidad en la sociología contemporánea porque logra dar cuenta de lo social como orden emergente, es decir, como un orden autónomo cuyas propiedades no son reductibles a las operaciones de niveles inferiores.

This essay presents a general outlook and an analysis of the rationale behind the use of qualitative methods, including their being applied in research in Management. According to the views of methodological monism, the contribution of the conclusions which these methods yield, which are essentially subjective and not susceptible of being generalized, is considered too limited; while for advocates of constructivism and pluralism they are valuable in probing the depth of the phenomena of these disciplines. In fact, a lack of consensus prevails in these areas even in connection with what are qualitative methods and what are qualitative research techniques, associated to an indistinct use of these terms by some authors; which together with the number and diversity of qualitative methods makes it difficult to understand what actually is qualitative research.    

Traditionally epistemology and hermeneutics have been separated, since the first deals with commensurability and the second with incommensurability. Nevertheless, in my opinion, nowadays it is possible to unite epistemology and hermeneutics if we start from a theory contemporary epistemology: the theory of the truth as rational acceptability in optimal epistemic conditions. This theory allows us to justify commensurability and to understand incommensurability.    

In this article we present an application from the phenomenological perspective of knowledge and the self-organised system theory to the field of the Global Political Economy, which allows us to give a theory didactical view of the functioning and regulation of the current global economy.    

The article analyses a phenomenology of society project and compares it with logic-epistemological framework of the scientific research methodological programme (Lakatos). It reviews the foundational contribution that Alfred Schutz gave to phenomenology, from where the socio-phenomenological research programme starts.    

The neuro-toxic effect induced in the rat limbic system after acute MK-801-treatment, affects all the limbic lobe areas, such as olfactory cortex, basolateral amygdala, hippocampal system, cingulate cortex and specific frontal and insular cortical region (allo-cortical and meso-cortical areas). In contrast, the sub-cortical nucleus usually included into the limbic system, such as the extended amygdala, the estriato-pallidal-ventral system, septal area, thalamus and hippothalamus, do not evidentiate neural death. Anatomo-pathological results suggest that the limbic lobe areas share common characteristics, and support the idea of a different functional unit, which differs from other sub-cortical “limbic” regions. This supports the idea of a limbic lobe formed only by thelencephalic allo-cortical and meso-cortical areas and implies the need to redefine the classic and broad concept of “limbic system”.

Text comprehension is a complex task that requires and involves multiple cognitive abilities. Deficits in one or several abilities can cause difficulties in understanding the textual level. Evaluating these impairments therefore requires a multicomponential perspective. The incipient development of the textual dimension of the learning difficulties in   education as well as in clinic, elicits the need for an instrument of this nature for Spanish-speaking populations. With this objective, a Spanish version of a test (/Nuova guida alla comprensione del testo/, De Beni et al., 2003) was designed for evaluating text comprehension. Normative data for children of 9 to 12 years of age were obtained. The Leer para Comprender Test (Abu- samra et al., in press) is based on a global model composed by eleven factors: basic text scheme, facts and sequences, lexical semantics, syntactic structure, textual cohesion, inferences, text sensibility, text hierarchy, mental models, flexibility, and errors and inconsistencies. This instrument is sensitive to the specificity of the processes implied in text comprehension. An approach from a multicomponential perspective not only allows   operating specifically with the different aspects of comprehension, but it is also advantageous to intervene in a focused manner in the implied processes and abilities.

The aim of the present study was to verify the effectiveness of a training program based on the ability to identify “Characters, places and times” (CPT) using an initial evaluation test, a final evaluation test, and the treatment program proposed in Nuova Guida alla Comprensione del Testo (De Beni et al., 2003a), later adapted into Spanish (Abusamra et al., in press).119 students of third (43), fourth (30) and fifth grade (46) of primary schools participated in the reasearch. 59 of them were assigned to the control group and 60 to the experimental group. All of them were evaluated with standardized text comprehension tests as well as with the specific CPT test before and after training took place. The training was implemented in approximately four month’s time and was implemented on a weekly basis. Results demonstrated beneficial effects of the intervention in all the experimental groups. This intervention was particularly effective in the experimental group composed by school children of 5th grade, which exhibited not only specific improvement in the CPT test, but also general improvement in the comprehension test administered subsequently.

A review of alexia’s cases in Spanish-speaking individuals whose characteristics fit with the deep, surface and phonological alexia syndromes, initially described with patients that were reading in “opaque” systems of writing (as French and English) is presented. These systems possess many words of irregular spelling that cannot be read loudly by procedures of conversion grapheme-phoneme and that justify, among other reasons, the formulation of the double route models of reading. Due to the argument regarding the transparency of the Spanish writing system, in which all the words can be read by the procedures of conversion grapheme-phoneme,  not only the existence of the reading syndromes mentioned, in Spanish speakers has been questioned, but also the relevancy of the double route models that explain them (Ardila 1991, 1998). The present study provides with empirical evidence to support the applicability of the mentioned typology, and the explanatory power of the double route models of reading for Spanish-speaking patients.