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From a decolonial perspective, and taking Latin America as its case study, this article discusses southern criminology --a body of work that has consolidated in the region and other Global South countries, and that aims at explaining crime and violence, together with the social control responses they elicit, as part of the colonial matrix of power. The article claims that southern criminology has the potential to contribute to the discussion of crime, violence, and social control in Latin America in at least two aspects: first, it may provide an incisive analysis of the relations between different forms of violence and subordination, on the one hand, and the punitive and exclusive responses of Latin American political regimes to these phenomena, on the other. Second, it may contribute a suggestive explanation of how the forms of social control that have emerged in different countries of the region since their birth as independent republics are closely linked to the construction of political, economic, and social orders that are part of the colonial matrix of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Roberto Manero Brito presents the developments of institutional analysis in Latin America, particularly its connection with the Argentine group dynamic trend. Instituting, self-management, and general assembly, among other mobilizing myths, took on a unique form in this continent through the intersection of psychoanalysis, group work, and the desire for social change. Manero notes that institutional analysis in Latin America has been guided more by a logic of mestizaje than by an illusion of theoretical-technical purity. To integrate this perspective into the realm of education in social sciences, the field needs to be prioritized, the research assignments questioned, and a specific relationship between social knowledge and specialized knowledge established, centered on listening and a transition from empathy to sympathy. Questioning academic structures and building a sense of community around research and intervention issues are key elements for this transition. The final part of the interview focuses on the promotional orientation of social psychology, specifically the commitment to the collective construction of knowledge and the creation of new social meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the study of religious phenomena from the perspective of lived religion was born in the North Atlantic countries, several researchers have adopted this approach in the Latin American context to account for the religious fact and its evolution. This orientation responds to the dissatisfaction with the conclusions reached by classical sociological theories when they try to explain the place and meaning of religion in the context of Latin American modernity, as in the case of the theories on secularization. This approach has proved promising, insofar as it offers evidence of the presence of the religious phenomenon in contemporary society that has not been sufficiently taken into account before. But, at the same time, it presents aspects that need to be clarified and/or developed. One of them is the relationship between lived religion and the theoretical frameworks that, from the different social sciences, are intended to explain the religious phenomenon. This article offers some considerations on the fruitful relationship that can be established between lived religion and the phenomenology of religion. It identifies aspects in which both disciplines complement and enrich each other, as well as critical issues to be taken into account. Specifically, it proposes a phenomenological approach to two distinct and, at the same time, intertwined fields of analysis: lived religion and lived spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that, despite the importance of the Soviet model in the Latin American imaginary, the latter's relations with Moscow during the Cold War have not been a topic of frequent research. The sixties saw the rise of the first studies on the subject, which expanded in the early seventies, and again in the late eighties after a phase of "silence," but which were strongly impregnated by the typical prejudices of their context. Other than punctual interpretations, however, the end of the conflict has not stimulated the academic renovation that was expected, and an evaluation of the "state of the art" shows that, In the area of Soviet-Latin American ties, the social sciences are still In debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]