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The paper tests a simple but fascinating hypothesis, namely, that racism is a strictly modern reality. We will not find specifically racist theories before the eighteenth century. We also intend to establish a suggestive contrast with Spanish thought of the 16th century. The goal is to corroborate an issue that, perhaps, will amaze more than one: the verifiable circumstance that racism is absent in the doctrines of the jurists, moralists, theologians, and humanists (as well as early ethnologists) of imperial Spain in the 16th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present and analyze the ideological components of the doctrine of Sabino Arana, the intellectual and political father of Basque nationalism. Going directly to the sources, we will unravel the main components of his doctrine. We can see that two are the main ingredients in the construction of it: religious integrism and racism. We will verify that even the linguistic issue -the preservation of the Basque language-had to do with the preservation of ethnic purity. Such elements, closely correlated, are linked with some others. Indeed, in Arana's ideology we will also find abundant doses of xenophobia, ruralism, traditionalism, indigenism, isolationism, reactionism, anti-liberalism, anti-socialism and anti-Spanish sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 21st century, but mainly as of 2006, in the Republic of Ecuador a significant indigenous influence was felt at the socio-political level, which was manifested in constitutional texts, state development plans and public policies. We will analyze certain inputs that the indigenous peoples have offered in the Andean country and that have represented elements of resistance against neoliberal hegemony and extractive developmentalism. Specifically, we will examine how discourses and practices have been built around Good Living (Sumak Kawsay) and how such process is articulated with more advanced global logics of indigenism in the Latin American region. We will verify what it means, politically and epistemically, the commitment that Ecuador has made to endow the country with the rights of nature and to define itself, for the first time in its history, as plurinational and multiethnic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to analyze the role played by ideology in regard to the historical implementation of human rights, questioning whether this implementation has fulfilled an eminently ideological function. The reflection will pass through the vision of two scholars who have held one of the most interesting contemporary philosophical discussions: Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. At first, the Althusserian theory of ideology will be outlined, in order to defend that human rights have operated as an "ideological apparatus", questioning the individual from an immanently capitalist context. Then, we will verify that Michel Foucault was very critical of the Althusserian approaches. The notion of a transcendental subject will be crucial in such criticism, since in the Foucaultian perspective there are never subjects that are constituted prior to effective dynamics of power. In Foucaultian analysis, ideology will no longer occupy an essential place. The contributions of Slavoj Žižek will also be, by the way, decisive throughout this discussion. Finally, some critical reflections will be drawn to think about the emancipatory possibility of human rights in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this theoric-reflexiv text, we will investigate critically some of the components that shaped the epistemic paradigm of European modernity, considering that quantification, mathematization and measurable objectivity are not only theoretical principles found in modern science, since they constituted something more: They were the elements through which a new worldview arose. With this, a new way of understanding and imagining nature was established; and also a new way of intervening and violating it. Some critical theories will be exposed, like the Amerindian perspectivism and the decoloniality, that have responded to this supposedly universal and homogeneous vision, concluding that despite the existence of world patterns of power and knowledge, alternatives for the wise and acting on the environment pass through decolonizing the Method of extracting resources; for which not only certain economic practices and some models of accumulation must be reversed, but in turn must neutralize the epistemic violence that justifies and protects such practices and models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Such a theoretical clash is related to the post-Marxist invective hurled against a tradition ostensibly rooted in now-discredited essentialist parameters, and discernibly incapable, for the same reasons, of comprehending the new forms of political subjectivation that surfaced in the societies of late capitalism. This dispute will unfold, almost paradigmatically, between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek. Despite the controversy's playing field already being determined, to a large extent, by the universe of Gramscian theory -- the notions of 'hegemony', 'antagonism' and 'collective will' will thus be decisive -- the more general debate over postmodernity and multiculturalism will also shape an inescapable backdrop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, without seeking to be exhaustive, we intend to take a journey which will enable us to see what a concept of education closely linked to the independence of the "voice of reason" has meant in different historical contexts; we understand this independence, very broadly speaking, as a critical capacity which enables us as human beings to be sufficiently free and, if necessary (as it almost always is), to be able to construct autonomously our own judgments in the face of the inertial weight of tradition and the force of the social consensuses which structure the common sense of our time. We can trace this "enlightened tension" through the history of Western thought from Plato to Condorcet, from Kant to Paulo Freire. In this sense, and to conclude, it will be appropriate to assess what role the educational process is taking on in the contemporary era, where the intensive processes of commodification have also come to permeate all aspects of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we wish firstly to trace the economicist and productivist logic that determined the profound development of Western modernity; a logic that reached its peak in the market societies which were already operating at full capacity in some of the European industrial powers of the nineteenth century. Since then, the commercialisation of social and natural life has continued apace, as Karl Polanyi recognized and examined in depth. This model of civilisation, which became virtually universal towards the end of the twentieth century, met with nodes of counterhegemonic resistance. One such node is to be found in the political discourses constructed on the basis of some of the learnings of the pre-Hispanic cultural world, linked to the Quechua notion of Sumak Kawsay, translated into Spanish as Buen Vivir, and which makes up a very powerful counterpart of the social and cultural development brought about by the overwhelming triumph of the market economy and its associated worldview. Extractivism, one of the most conspicuous results of this modern-western rationale, has been debated and opposed from these discursive spheres. However, when the public policies of a State located on the periphery of the capitalist world-system seek to foster equitable human development (with the fundamental goal of reducing poverty) and, at the same time, aim to recognize the intrinsic rights of nature, inevitable frictions, contradictions and paradoxes arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study approaches Aristotelian reflections on economy through the eyes of Karl Polanyi, as he resorts to the Greek philosopher to find useful elements when building a profound criticism of the modern market society. Aristotle intuited the uncertain future of a social order devoured by economic relations expanding at a hypertrophic rate. In his time, indeed, this was only a potential threat —he never saw the effective culmination of anything like what we are seeing today—. But he was nevertheless able to see the ultimate meaning of what was at stake, and to understand that the unmeasured, uncontrolled growth of market relations would irremediably affect civic balance. He understood that the unrestricted extension of the desire for profit to all human ties would be a powerful threat to the heart of the political community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]