Latin America and the world are shaken by the impacts—generally unrecognized and mercilessly devastating—of the transformative processes that accompany globalization. Various authors refer to the uncertainty and the presence of multiple crises: economic, social, political, ecological, migratory, and planetary climate. It is true that these crises exist, impacting countries and regions in different ways and with varying degrees of intensity. The modern Anthropocene era is at its structural saturation point. Human social life, collectively pressured and shaped toward an individualism that destructively undermines equitable participation in the market and the sustainability of socio-ecosystems, which are overwhelmed in their capacity to provide the planet's sustenance, clearly shows signs of exhaustion with symptoms of global collapse. Increasingly frequent, intense, and disastrous extreme events occurring in different parts of the world bear witness to this reality. These crises produce serious problems of political and social stability in countries, threatening coexistence, institutions, values, and democratic life.    

Globalization manifests itself in diverse forms of external geopolitical intervention in national and regional territories, qualitatively very different and, in some ways, with greater levels of alienation than the interventions of past colonizations and empires. Countries that painstakingly and through conflict built the nation-state with varying degrees of democracy—as is the case in Latin America—now, after neoliberal intervention, appear institutionally quite weakened and diminished in their ability to confront new problems and challenges. Neoliberalism has profoundly weakened the public institutions—oriented toward the welfare state—built in the 20th century, which, in a democratic sense, have contributed to advancing the establishment of citizens' rights (related to public education and health, work, housing, and public infrastructure), as well as social and political rights.  

Simultaneously, neocolonialism is once again placing the Eurocentric view of social and historical processes at the center, as if it were the only possible way to interpret and experience the world. Alternative narratives, which had begun to emerge in the Global South, fueling multiple resistance movements, are once again declining, countered by the pace set by the processes of meaning appropriation by the media and hegemonic knowledge production spaces. 

The reactions of sectors that feel "threatened" by the various processes of exclusion accentuate these narrowing margins for diversity and, therefore, limit the interstices for emancipation that emerged as vital in recent situations 

Globalization processes, without national/regional institutional counterweights, leave societies helpless and powerless in the face of the expansionist power of large state and private capital vying for scarce resources—productive land (food), water (multiple uses and rights), biodiversity (the basis of the planet's sustainability), new minerals (lithium, rare earth elements, etc.), solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, new planets (new resources), and artificial intelligence (a new trans-posthuman industry). The current asymmetrical relationship between the global and the regional/local, a direct consequence of these interventions, threatens to destroy or displace the positive social, ecological, gender, productive, human, and political practices that social struggles and positive relationships with nature have fostered throughout the history of modern societies by Indigenous communities, traditional agricultural groups, artisans, and community/neighborhood networks, as well as by public schools focused on developing the true potential of children and young people. Decolonization processes in general are threatened in this new phase of capital. 

But globalization doesn't operate alone against the entirety of society; it has its internal allies, those who directly benefit, especially large multinational corporations. Their thirst for profit accumulation is insatiable, which is why they dispossess communities, increase extractivism and rent-seeking, and criminalize social protest. These sectors, in concert with populist far-right policies, promote a rollback of many of the rights acquired during the era of the Welfare State. They are joined by Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, whose "prosperity" theology, along with neoliberalism, contributes to breaking down social bonds, fosters the illusion of individual achievement, and promotes a public agenda that rolls back the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people.

This means, in addition to the regression in rights, new forms of social behavior based on false premises of "liberation and achievement," resulting in societies damaged and sick from the social malaise that these illusions generate.   

As we stated in the 201 presentation, the social processes underway in Latin American countries during this second decade of the 21st century involve the reconfiguration of a new political landscape in the region, framed by the global crisis of capitalism, the destabilizing pressure from the United States, and the neo-conservative offensive. These processes represent a setback to the social gains achieved under the progressive governments that emerged through democratic elections in the previous decade. In the global context, this crisis manifests itself in the political, economic-financial, environmental, human rights, and scientific spheres, among others, and in the strengthening of neoliberal hegemony. Increasing processes of social and economic marginalization, concentration of wealth and precariousness of work (in the sense of Castel and Dörre, 2009), migration crisis, ethnic and gender intolerance, among others, have led not only to the dismantling of citizens' rights but also to the strengthening of right-wing and even far-right, xenophobic and nationalist political groups and parties in Europe and the United States.

To defend historical practices with emancipatory and transformative meaning, it is essential to resignify and revalue them in new contexts. These practices have been denied and deemed unviable, not “profitable,” by the neoliberal/colonial strategy that has caused so much damage to the progressive advancement of the process of subjective self-understanding among citizens of modern society. In truth, these historical practices can constitute the basis for a redefinition and deepening of democracy in our times, insofar as they are recontextualized; insofar as they are transformed into a renewed force—with the support of science and technology—for containing and constructing a new socio-cultural, ecological, pluralistic, and democratic order, insofar as they respond consciously to the new challenges of post-development, which could replace the capitalist market in crisis and aim for Buen Vivir (Living Well). 

Regional or local practices, isolated and detached from the global context and other similar international experiences, will have no effect and risk being devastated by the force of the globalizing current of capital. Isolated, disconnected, and frustrated, they only serve as "natural" fuel for the far-right neoconservative trends underway in the world, as is happening in various countries, including the most developed.  

Emancipatory practices have generated knowledge, social relations, culture, family and local life, trust, and diverse forms of collaboration to address and solve problems and challenges, such as natural disasters, poverty, and food crises. They have produced a world and a social life with some level of quality and tolerance. Undoubtedly, these have been imperfect systems that, therefore, require new inputs from science, technology, and emancipatory human interaction for their revalidation, in accordance with the challenges of the new century and, especially, the need to adapt urgently and creatively to the challenges of climate change. 

The new democracy must bear the political hallmark of a dehierarchical and debureaucratized approach, characterized by intercommunicative, relational, and collaborative processes. The democracy our countries require will no longer be one that transfers or transfers sovereignty from the voting citizen to power structures that ultimately distance themselves from the citizenry and their unmet problems and aspirations. The complex new realities facing modern societies demand a redefinition and deepening of democracy, moving toward a relational form of governance involving diverse actors, institutions, and individuals who seek and want to influence the fundamental decisions that affect their very existence.

This proposal is a continuation and advancement of the GT Critical Thinking and Emancipatory Practices, so this presentation is articulated with the previous proposal and the activities constitute an advance with respect to the work done.

Addressing the complex processes mentioned in the previous point requires a multidimensional, interdisciplinary, and interknowledge-based analytical perspective (De Sousa, 2010; Rojas, 2016), encompassing relevant aspects such as educational, environmental, political, economic, gender, and multicultural factors. We begin by recognizing that "social life is a multidimensional phenomenon, whose concrete interpenetrations and dialectics must be analyzed according to each particular process, even if a broad perspective is adopted in spatiotemporal terms" (Domingues, 2009).

This approach requires new practices from social researchers, grounded in a perspective that recovers, values, and recognizes the relevance and social connection of knowledge, within the framework of a renewed social understanding of the production of science and technology. Among the elements that characterize this research model are the use of pluralistic and group methodologies, dialogic engagement that includes the perspective of others, collaborative interpretation or co-production of research, and the reinterpretation of knowledge produced through participatory and comparative analysis in the cultural and social contexts in which the lives of the social actors being studied unfold.

When discussing the innovation of critical social thought, it inevitably leads to questioning the traditional epistemological foundations that underpin it. Therefore, it will be necessary to develop a narrative of the Epistemology of the South (De Sousa, 2009), within which we situate ourselves. This involves considering the content of ecologies of knowledge, temporalities, recognitions, trans-scales, and productivity, so that the sociologies of absences and emergences become recognizable to critical thought. Thinking about originality from the South requires a holistic and comprehensive critique of the modernity-coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000, 2012; Mignolo, 2001; Walsh, 2004), questioning the Anglo-Eurocentric model, and the categories of racism, discrimination, and patriarchy that reproduce inequality, neocolonialism, and social exclusion. This leads to liberating thought, as proposed by Dussel (2000) in his critique of neoliberal modernity, with his concept of transmodernity, in which philosophy and politics are oriented towards liberation from neocolonial ties through a praxis that integrates ethics and the principle of otherness in law and the recognition of difference from interculturality.

Likewise, to build the relational governance discussed in the previous item, the social sciences need new research methodologies that move beyond instrumental subject/object relationships and, instead, implement methodological approaches where the “object” of study becomes an epistemic subject. This requires methodological innovation, a dialogical approach that recovers lived experience and common-sense knowledge, redefining its place as a creative subject capable of transforming its subordinate condition. In this sense, one of the fundamental contributions of the Working Group is to open new paradigmatic horizons from the perspective of social subjects in the context of everyday life, challenging traditional forms of knowledge and creating a space for the reconstruction of knowledge based on the recognition of the voices of those absent from the unfolding of history. 

This is a great challenge in the field of social sciences and from the perspective of Reflexive Sociology: how to reconstruct new methodologies from a dialogical, participatory, collaborative, multidimensional perspective, opening new horizons in the production of knowledge. 

The theoretical and methodological significance of the concept of Everyday Life is empowered as a space for the construction of knowledge, intervention and social transformation.  

Methodological processes must be generated that aim at the deconstruction of hegemonic social representations anchored in inequitable systems that respond to the perverse benefit of the neoliberal economy, reconstructing and assuming emancipatory practices that return to the subject the sense of freedom and social well-being in their context and territory not only objectively, but also subjectively

Thus, the meanings of democracy—as the power of knowledge of sovereign peoples—refer to both the political exercise of representative institutions and the very domain and construction of emancipatory collective knowledge. Herein lies the challenge: a radicalization of democracy alongside the democratization of knowledge leading to dialogical understanding. It is worth asking whether socio-eco-systemic equity and sustainability can be sustained without considering its essential components of the distribution of power and knowledge. Emancipatory practices of the past, as well as those of progressive social movements of the present, contain narratives, logics, and worldviews that must be recovered in this democratization to foster a shift from languages ​​to interlanguages, with a dialectic of ongoing dialogue with scientific and technological production, whether it concerns its visions of the social order or the physical environment.   

Co-productive research of comparative international practices and experiences can contribute to protecting our increasingly exploited, plundered and diminished natural and human resources, adding value to them, improving the quality of life, and protecting the biosphere, our highly sensitive home, shared with other living species. 

The demands in these areas require solutions based on empirical experience, which also formulate new ways of generating knowledge, taking into account the various situated contexts, lived experience and the accumulation of knowledge generated from social interaction.  

From a multidisciplinary and multidimensional perspective, we will work together with social movements that carry out emancipatory struggles from three axes: 1) Practices of decolonization and theoretical-political emancipations: indisciplinarities and emancipations with the land, peoples and territories of life, coordinated by Patricia Botero; 2) Gender(s) and Diversity(ies), coordinated by Beatriz Schmukler, Ruth Sosa and Gerardo Larreta and 3) Producers, Methods and Movements to the social intellect, coordinated by Alberto L. Bialakowsky, Ana Cárdenas Tomač, Félix Raúl España Cuellar and Luz Montolongo.

From the first axis, we will focus on research processes stemming from collective actions, dynamic socio-territorial theories arising from the challenges to life politics. We will connect and learn from proposals and the uncolonized space of narrative, drawing on multiple initiatives that require simultaneous work. These initiatives will incorporate emerging terms from struggles such as: alternative ways of life, everyday autonomies, re-existences, mutual nurturing, communalities, and relational life fabrics; ontological struggles, dynamic socio-territorial theories, and life politics, with the aim of contributing to the self-critique of critical thought concerning the land and peoples in movement. The activities will be linked to proposals already underway with other academic institutions and networks of resistance and re-existence. 

From axis 2, we propose deepening our training methodology and pedagogy to contribute to strengthening public policies on gender mainstreaming and human rights, integrating the diverse perspectives of the individuals involved in the participatory action research process. We embrace a pedagogical approach to training and participatory action research from the perspective of Experiential Epistemology within the context of everyday life, emphasizing critical reflexivity and highlighting the importance of these processes in transforming gender relations and moving towards equality, as well as in designing intervention strategies for preventing gender-based violence from the field of Cognitive-Emotional Pedagogy. We understand that co-constructive research is an essential path in the search for new horizons within the field of Reflexive Sociology for a new framework of state policies. 

From axis 3: Producers, Methods, and Movements in the Social Intellect, the analysis begins with three relevant conceptual links: i) the need to understand intellectual production as a social product, ii) revealing its alienation determined by the coloniality of power and knowledge, and iii) developing a dialogical methodology that contributes to transforming both the content and orientation of the hegemonic scientific paradigm. The proposal is to develop and implement a methodology of co-production research, simultaneous co-creation of knowledge, and emancipatory cognitive collectives. This axis will focus on three lines of inquiry and analysis: a) the effects of new technologies and the resulting labor dynamics on the capture of collective knowledge production within productive-reproductive processes, b) the emergence and development of social movements aimed at challenging the collective intellect and dominant scientific production, and c) the emergence and development of self-managed productive and cognitive experiences as alternative intellectual models.