Otredades (no) religiosas

This article is intended to be a reflection on the notion of mental health from the constant imperialist oppression of peoples in the periphery of capitalism, focusing on the Latin American and Palestinian contexts. We have started from the premise that the actions of imperial domination in Latin America and the colonial occupation of Palestinian territory are part of the same capitalist and imperialist project of domination. We have as an objective to discuss the necessary anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist stance as fundamental premises for decolonising the notion of mental health in psychology. It is a theoretical article that establishes bases to understand capitalist dynamics, especially in the Latin American context, reinforcing the analysis of the genocidal colonial project perpetrated by Israel as a facet of imperialist domination. This analysis contributes to a critical understanding of mental health, pointing out insights for a psychology that embraces the ethical-political commitment, having a non-negotiable dimension of its practice, an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist stance.

THE IDEAS BEHIND THE POSTULATES around postcolonial theory implemented by Bhabha, Said, Spivak, and Ashcroft, among others, not only as a set of historical categories but also as a strategic discourse, were already present in the Latin American context.1 Even before the literary boom of the 1960s, syncretism and hybridity were key concepts in the cultural paradigm of the Americas. This was the result of the critical process of readjustment that took place with the formation of a nationalist consciousness in different parts of the continent where cultural identity was considered to be a subversive counter-discourse that accompanied political independence. A good example of this distinctive attitude is the aforementioned proposal presented by Ortiz in 1940 in his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar, where (as I mentioned earlier) he applied the term 'transculturation' to the Caribbean as a way to avoid the problems that the anthropological concept of 'acculturation' implied. He did so because, in his particular Cuban context, cultural identity was accomplished through a process of adaptation and transformation, giving rise to a new cultural product. Thus, it seems that, in a Latin American context, a particular theory was already present without a specific label avant la lettre of postcolonial studies in the English-speaking world.2As Femando Coronil points out, Latin America, as an object of study and source of knowledge on (post)colonialism, has been excluded from or marginalized in the debates and pivotal texts.3 It is remarkable that postcolonial studies in academic institutions have focused primarily on the consequences of northern European colonialism in Asia and Africa rather than addressing the Latin American colonial experience. Walter Mignolo considers that imperial power was conceived in Latin America by means not of colonization but of 'westernization', and for this reason 'post-westernization' is a word that has its natural place in Latin American thought, much as postmodernism and postcolonialism have their place in the thought of Europe, the USA, and the former British colonies.4 Post-westernization addresses a particular critical concern with the situation that emerged in Latin American during the nineteenth century when the relationship with Europe started to be redefined according to the flourishing of a new discourse around Latin American identity. Notwithstanding this, and as Mignolo himself acknowledges,5 the situation in the anglophone Caribbean differs from the aforementioned reluctance in Latin American studies to use the term 'postcolonialism' owing to the fact that the British and French colonial legacy inherited by the Caribbean islands is an avenue of thought that, if not identifiable as postcolonial, has all the hallmarks of research that is nowadays accepted as such. As Mignolo remarks, it is noteworthy that postcolonial theories have emerged in the cultural regions that experienced the second stage of westernization carried out by Britain and France; this may be the reason why Fanon's theoretical approaches, for instance, have not made a major impression on Latin American critical theory. This is mainly due to the fact that the geocultural colonialist distribution among Latin America, Brazil, and the anglophone/francophone Caribbean helps explain the lack of communication between those regions.In this respect, the most noticeable change in literature in the Latin American tradition took place when writers decided to speak of the subaltern not only 'giving' voice to them but also 'becoming' part of them. In this deceptively simple nuance lies the real innovation of a new form of discourse. The attempt to 'become one of them' was not always accomplished in the same manner. Some of the most negative criticism levelled at iEcue-Yamba-O!, the novel that Carpentier published in 1933, centred on his lack of narrative commitment. Emir Rodriguez Monegal observes that the main narrative problem of iEcue-Yamba-O! …

Sustainable mobility and transport are topics that have been rising exponentially since the 2000s within the academic community and society. One of the main drivers for this is the intensification of the urbanization processes on a global scale, which leads to higher demand for services and transport systems, consequently bringing more severe concern regarding social, environmental, and economic issues. However, nations do not seem to advance at the same pace regarding the proposition of policies and the implementation of strategies to promote sustainable mobility and transport. Latin American countries have long been striving to improve and implement, on a larger scale, mobility solutions toward more sustainable human agglomerations. Therefore, this article analyzes the sustainable mobility challenges in the Latin American context through a systematic literature review process. The main results show that within the Latin American context, there is a significant focus on the social inequality of mobility in urban areas, which is developed in studies through mobility indicators and modeling, participatory and other qualitative approaches, and a critical analysis of public policies. However, there is a need to explore, through alternative methodologies, such as experimental and in-situ evaluations, the paths/routes of trips within the Latin American context at different scales to promote a better understanding and strategies to advance towards more sustainable cities and mobilities and deliver a better mobility experience for citizens, adding value to the mobility itself.

ObjetivoEste artículo presenta el estado de la investigación en emprendimiento en el contexto latinoamericano, haciendo énfasis en el emprendimiento internacional.Diseño/metodología/aproximaciónSe llevó a cabo una revisión sistemática de la literatura en la cual se encontraron 147 artículos, publicados entre 2002 y 2018 en revistas científicas de la región de acuerdo con el ranking SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR).ResultadosLos hallazgos presentan la evolución de las revistas, los autores, los temas y las metodologías usadas por los investigadores. Se resalta el bajo nivel de investigaciones en emprendimiento internacional en la región, lo cual es coherente con altas tasas de actividad emprendedora de Latinoamérica, pero baja orientación a la internacionalización. Este es uno de los retos de los países, considerando la importancia de esta área.OriginalidadAunque la investigación en emprendimiento ha aumentado a través de la historia, en el contexto latinoamericano las publicaciones en revistas de alto impacto son limitadas. Este estudio es la primera revisión sistemática de la literatura y análisis temático de la investigación en emprendimiento. En este sentido, los resultados sirven somo estímulo a la investigación futura mostrando las oportunidades y los desafíos dentro de este campo de estudio.

The rapid fertility declines and increases in contraceptive prevalence rates in the last decades in Latin America occurred concurrently with increases in teenage and unintended childbearing. The factors behind, as well as possible future demographic consequences of this unique pattern of fertility change are still poorly understood. This thesis advances knowledge of three aspects of reproductive behaviour in Latin America: dynamics of contraceptive use in relation to an unintended birth experience, educational disparities in motherhood-timing and possible future of cohort fertility. I explore an untapped potential of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Population Censuses for Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil, and employ demographic and statistical modelling techniques that have not been previously fully exploited in the Latin American context. First, I show how the longitudinal DHS reproductive “calendars” can be analysed using event-history models to advance the understanding of contraceptive choices of women who experience unintended pregnancies in Colombia and Peru. The study uncovers the importance of considering patterns of both pre- and after-birth contraceptive behaviour to inform the organization of postpartum family planning programmes in both countries. Second, using census data, I provide the first estimates of cohort first-birth age-specific schedules disaggregated by education level for Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. I document vastly increasing educational disparities in motherhood-timing during the fertility transition and discuss the potential factors behind this process. The analyses uncover a drastic increase in teenage fertility among women who drop-out of secondary school, indicating a need for an intervention. Lastly, using indirectly reconstructed fertility rates from censuses, cohort fertility is forecasted for total population and by education in Brazil. The study shows how a Bayesian model for fertility forecasting can be applied in the Latin American context where the childbearing pattern has been distinct from other world regions and where there is a scarcity of time-series of fertility rates. The study reveals the evolution of educational differences in completed fertility and shows that emerging low period fertility levels in Brazil might not necessarily correspond to women’s equally low lifetime fertility in the future. Overall, the substantive findings improve the understanding of the reproductive behaviour disparities in Latin America and serve as inputs for the design of policies to alleviate them. The novel use of data and application of methods are important for the development of future research agendas on fertility change and for the collection of fertility data in the region.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate if retail services have a transformative potential to improve the well-being of customers in a Latin American market. Transformative studies have been conducted mostly in developed countries, and consumer well-being in a Latin American supermarket context has not been addressed previously. Specifically, this study aims to understand if customer satisfaction with a supermarket experience in Chile leads to positive customer well-being. Additionally, it is examined if customer well-being influences firm outcomes, such as customer loyalty, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication or retailer equity.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model was developed, and data was collected through an online survey from 866 customers of a large supermarket chain in Chile. Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling.FindingsThe findings of this study support all the hypotheses of the model and confirm that customer satisfaction has direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty and other firm outcomes through customer well-being.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is among the few studies in the academic literature that considers retail experience and well-being outcomes for supermarket customers in a Latin American context. Limitations derive from the cross-sectional nature of this study.Practical implicationsThere are implications from this study contributing to the literature on customer retail experience, in terms of the potential to transform supermarket shopping in a Latin American country. This is particularly relevant in Latin America as the extent to which for-profit organizations acknowledge their relevancy of the individuals’ well-being is still at its infancy.Social implicationsThis research provides empirical support to the importance of not only looking at traditional measures such as WOM, equity and loyalty but looking into the impact services have for customers’ life and well-being.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the services literature and addresses a gap in it by exploring the transformative potential of supermarket shopping on customer well-being and in turn the role of customer well-being in retail firm outcomes. The findings also contribute in considering Chile, a Latin American context that has been overlooked in the transformative services studies. This provides managerial implications for domestic and global companies that offer grocery retailing for consumers in this region.

With a particular focus on the Mercosur bloc, this chapter examines key features of human resource management (HRM) and industrial relations systems (IRS) in Latin America. Several key themes are explicated in the chapter. The first theme is whether the dissemination of HRM practices in an institutional setting that emphasizes the hierarchical and market characteristics of IRS will also produce some kind of convergence in these practices. The second theme is to what extent the rather different national institutional environments generate similar or different HRM practices. The third theme, relatedly, is whether evidence exists of mimetic influences in the spread of HRM practices. The framework discussed in the chapter could serve as a useful theoretical point of departure for identifying both national and regional contextual influences on HRM and IRS. It may ignite interest in comparative analyses in the Latin American context. Accounts of HRM in the Latin American context, along with comparative analyses of IRS of specific countries in the region, are significantly underrepresented in the literature. Furthering national comparative research on HRM practices of organizations in the Mercosur region could open up new lines of inquiry, in particular, on the likelihood of convergence or divergence.

The purpose of this paper is to approach the concept of School Religious Education in the Latin American context, in order to propose a new school spirituality, based on listening to the new generations, according to Pope Francis in his Global Education Pact. It begins with a historical approach to the meaning that School Religious Education has had, and how this concept has evolved in the Latin American context. Subsequently, an attempt is made to understand how it is assumed from the contemporary public educational policy in Latin America, particularly in the way countries conceive it. It then proposes a school spirituality in Latin America that, following what Pope Francis mentions in his Global Education Pact, enters dialogue with the new generations and enables a spirituality oriented to provide meaning to existence through service. The article ends by affirming that the path of School Religious Education in Latin America is still open in the construction of a new approach, more integral and humanistic, inspired by models of transformation of the social fabric, such as the Global Education Pact, where we discover a commitment to continue establishing bonds of communion with the students in the classrooms.

This practitioner-focused chapter addresses mobile learning in the Latin American context during the COVID-19 emergency. To guarantee continuity of education during the COVID-19 pandemic, instructors adopted remote education. Even though much of the remote education relied heavily on computers, millions of learners in Latin America do not have a household computer. Nonetheless, mobile connectivity is very high in Latin America, and therefore, mobile learning has greatly supported institutions during remote education. Mobile learning significantly supports learning at a distance in countries that face infrastructure challenges. Even more in the Latin American context, where mobile devices may be low-cost alternatives to computers. We present four design cases about mobile learning for continuity of education during emergencies. Each design case addresses a different country, audience, and content. The design cases focus on generic technology applications regularly used by practitioners and students. The four design cases are: (1) foreign language learning and social studies to 1st – fourth graders using online blogs in Brazil; (2) teaching STEM to 8th–12th graders through social media (i.e., YouTube/WhatsApp) in Panama; (3) education to 6th–12th graders through social media (i.e., YouTube/WhatsApp/Facebook) in Mexico, and (4) humanities higher education using instant messaging and cloud-based platforms (i.e., WhatsApp, Google Drive platform) in Colombia. Recommendations for practitioners and policymakers are provided.

Latin America, and Chile in particular, has a rich tradition of community mental health services and programs. However, in vivo community-based psychosocial interventions, especially those with a recovery-oriented approach, remain scarce in the region. Between 2014 and 2015, a Critical Time Intervention-Task Shifting project (CTI-TS) was implemented in Santiago, Chile, as part of a larger pilot randomized control trial. CTI is a time-limited intervention delivered at a critical-time to users, is organized by phases, focuses on specific objectives and decreases in intensity over time. CTI-TS, which combines both the task-shifting strategy and the use of peers, introduces a novel approach to community mental health care that has not yet been tried in Chile. We aim to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and applicability of such a community-based psychosocial intervention in urban settings in Latin America - specifically, in Santiago (Chile) from a user perspective. We analyzed 15 in-depth interviews ( n = 15) with service users who participated in the intervention about their perceptions and experiences with CTI-TS through thematic analysis. Three themes were revealed. The first was related to the structural characteristics of CTI-TS, especially regarding the timing, duration and phasic nature of the intervention. The second pertained to the acceptability of the in vivo community-based approach. The third theme dealt with the task-shifting aspect, that is, users' perceptions of the peer support workers and the community mental health workers. CTI-TS was generally acceptable in this Latin American context. Users' perspectives pointed to the need to make adjustments to some of the structural characteristics of the CTI model and to combine this type of intervention with others that can address stigma. Thus, future adaptations of CTI-TS or similar psychosocial interventions in Latin American contexts are feasible and can enhance community mental health in the region.

Using the cases of Columbia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela, Peeler compares the evolution and maintenance of liberal democratic regimes in the Latin American context. These regimes are shown to be products of the normal Latin American political processes, under particular conditions that have permitted accommodation between rival political and economic elites. The author argues that these liberal democracies are fundamentally similar to those in other parts of the world.|Using the cases of Columbia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela, Peeler compares the evolution and maintenance of liberal democratic regimes in the Latin American context. These regimes are shown to be products of the normal Latin American political processes, under particular conditions that have permitted accommodation between rival political and economic elites. The author argues that these liberal democracies are fundamentally similar to those in other parts of the world.

This chapter introduces a collection of original geographical research on territorial processes in diverse settings throughout Latin America. Most of the works were first brought together in a pair of sessions organised by two of the co-authors at the 35th Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers held in San Jose Costa Rica, the guiding purpose of which was to illustrate ‘how territory and territorialization are materialised in practice in Latin American contexts’. Rather than aiming to establish a unified theoretical vision, the collection seeks to integrate the rich complexity and wide ranging empirical applications of the increasingly important concepts of territory, territoriality and territorialisation. The book covers a broad geographical spread in terms of the authors, the institutions and the places they have elected to work in, which is reflected in a diverse range of thematic, theoretical and methodological perspectives behind each work.

At the annual congress of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM, October 2002), the Surviving Sepsis Campaign issued their “Barcelona Declaration,” a call for global action against sepsis. The campaign, a collaborative effort of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF), estimates that the number of sepsis cases has now reached 18 million annually. With a mortality rate of close to 30%, sepsis is still considered a leading cause of death worldwide. As such, any effort made toward improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment represents a potentially valuable response to an urgent need. This chapter provides an overview of sepsis global epidemiology, as well as an outline regarding the description and characterization of the problem in Latin America. It should be noted that there are specifi c characteristics between developed and developing countries that may impact the occurrence of sepsis and its consequences. Specifi cally, Latin America exhibits substantial differences in ethnic background, cultural heritage, health services, and clinical research. These features support the importance of exploring, from an epidemiologic and clinical point of view, the sepsis panorama in our setting. In the Latin American context, the approach to the problem has been limited and in many instances susceptible to bias, in the estimates obtained. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this situation represents a benign scenario of perhaps lower incidence or better prognosis. More studies are needed in the Latin American context if an accurate description of the epidemiology of sepsis, including its risk factors and clinical course, is to be obtained in the different populations at risk. These studies should build on the studies already conducted, and should address the limitations observed.

Salient research topics on boards of directors of family firms in the Latin American context – An institutional perspective

Scientific production has the development of doctoral theses as one of the indicators of regional academic development. Within the educational field, academic production should consider innovations supported by ICTs in order to be in line with scientific progress. The first objective of the study was to identify trends in doctoral theses that have investigated ICT-mediated educational innovations in the Latin American context during the period 2016-2021. For this purpose, a study will be conducted in university repositories. The second objective was to learn about the perceptions of the teachers of a HEI in relation to educational innovation. At the time of the survey, these teachers were pursuing doctoral studies or had completed them. A mixed methodology was used, applying questionnaires to the participating teachers, in this case belonging to the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Guayaquil. In order to determine research trends, 88 doctoral theses from 16 Latin American universities were reviewed. A prevalence of research based on e-learning and a perception of lag between educational innovations and doctoral production topics in the region on the part of teachers were obtained. It is proposed that Latin American doctoral programs linked to education should emphasize the development of proposals for the dissemination of innovations, in order to be in line with global advances.