Memoria y democracia. Una relación incierta

This paper begins with a series of findings on the increasing focus on the memories of the recent past, particularly in societies that have undergone periods of political violence, dictatorships and civil wars. In analysing the moment of installation of the institutional, territorial and symbolic marks (understood as expressions produced by various actors and state policies and social movements that respond to the demands of these social actors), one can see how memories of the recent past, suffering and political violence act as stimuli for countless rituals, cultural productions, and a search for interpretations and explanations. This paper seeks to question some of the basic assumptions and basic innuendos implicit in the “duty of memory”: an exploration of the relationship between memory and justice, between memory and democracy, and between preservation-preservation and transmission. By analysing these relationships, this paper aims to relocate memories in the context of broader and longer-lasting structures and social processes; centrally linked to the persistence of multiple social inequalities and the relationship between memory and political present. To do this, some institutional state processes are analysed, both at the symbolic level and in the field of education and transmission, in order to present some situations that allow the task of rethinking and raising further questions about the relationship between memory and democracy.     

Homosexuality and the Repression of Intellectuals in Fresa y chocolate and Máscaras

Abstract The aim of this article is to examine and compare how the repression of homosexuals and intellectuals is portrayed in two recent Cuban fictional narratives: the film, Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) (Gutierrez Alea et al., 1993) and the detective novel, Mascaras (Masks) (Padura Fuentes Mascaras, Tusquets, Barcelona, 1997). It discusses how these narratives document the history of both these phenomena and evaluates how they might contribute to a better understanding of the process of fundamental social and cultural transformation which the Revolution is experiencing following the collapse of the Soviet Union.     

Entre la autonomía y la heteronomía. Socialización universitaria y prácticas profesionales de los sociólogos en la Argentina

This article studies the relation between university socialization and professional practices of sociologists in Argentina since democracy’s restoration in the mid-eighties. On the one hand, it examines orientations and ways of understanding the discipline transmitted by the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) curriculum contents and, on the other, it reconstructs the main labor market changes. Through the examination of the notion of autonomy (and its opposite, heteronomy), it aims to show that the professional practices of sociologists are strongly conditioned by the set of perception and classificatory schemes incorporated during university socialization. Those schemes, operating through a group of oppositions, contribute to the production of a set of “crafts” or modes of practicing sociology clearly differentiated according to the area or sphere of insertion.     

Aproximaciones y reintegros: La democracia tensionada

Based on the conception of democratic aspiration as hegemonic, the author argues that democracy and its reproduction are doomed to exist in a constant tension. Anchored on a critical review of the ideas of Pierre Rosanvallon, Colin Crouch, Klaus Von Andreas Schedler and Klaus Von Beyme, the author analyzes the particular configuration of this form of government and the challenges it must confront, both those that are inherent to its design and those that are derived from its development in contemporary societies and political systems. Thus, democracy is approached from different conceptual perspectives, although favoring the one that views it as a political-institutional arrangement enabling coexistence and competition of/within political diversity. In turn, and taking as referents the undp and eclac diagnoses, the author analyzes the specificity of democracy in Latin America, its structural weaknesses and the possibility of building a new social pact in order to provide an answer to the prevailing breakdown of social cohesion and exclusion.