Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> This article addresses the issue of internationalization of social sciences by studying the evolution of production (of academic articles), collaboration and citations patterns among main world regions over the period 1980–2009 using the SSCI. The results confirm the centre–periphery model and indicate that the centrality of the two major regions that are North America and Europe is largely unchallenged, Europe having become more important and despite the growing development of Asian social sciences. The authors’ quantitative approach shows that the growing production in the social sciences but also the rise of international collaborations between regions have not led to a more homogeneous circulation of the knowledge produced by different regions, or to a substantial increase in the visibility of the contributions produced by peripheral regions. Social scientists from peripheral regions, while producing more papers in the core journals compiled by the SSCI, have a stronger tendency to cite journals from the two central regions, thus losing at least partially their more locally embedded references, and to collaborate more with western social scientists. In other words, the dynamic of internationalization of social science research may also lead to a phagocytosis of the periphery into the two major centers, which brings with it the danger of losing interest in the local objects specific to those peripheral regions. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The current competition regime that characterizes international science is often presented as a quest for excellence. It diversely affects research in Latin America and research in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. This article asks how this competition regime may orient the direction of research in Latin America, and to whose advantage. It is argued that, by relating excellence to quality differently, a research policy that seeks to improve the level of science in Latin America while preserving the possibility of solving problems relevant to the region can be designed. Competition, it is also argued, certainly has its place in science, but not as a general management tool, especially if the goal is to improve overall quality of science in Latin America. Scientific competition is largely managed through journals and their reputation. Therefore, designing a science policy for Latin America (and for any ‘peripheral’ region of the world) requires paying special attention to the mechanisms underpinning the production, circulation and consumption of scientific journals. So-called ‘international’ or ‘core’ journals are of particular interest as local, national, or even regional journals must struggle to find their place in this peculiar publishing eco-system. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article makes connections between violent deaths, public problems and changes seen in the past 30 years in Argentina. The authors argue that the ways in which people were killed, the ways in which their dead bodies were handled and the ways in which the dead and their behaviours were described in terms of morality play a key role in determining social reaction and the challenging of public authorities. It is suggested that shock and outrage in the face of the violent death of a defenceless, innocent person trigger political, social and cultural changes in highly complex ways. Where contemporaries tend to establish almost immediate causal relationships, a retrospective analysis shows that the ruptures and continuities following each death result from a variety of temporal and causal chains. A death’s ability to pose public problems can help us think about democratic processes in Latin America, indicating that democracies in the region are judged in terms of their capacity to solve the public problems embodied by deaths like those analysed here. </jats:p>