The project aims to explore the relationship between ideas, intellectuals, and social change in Latin America in the current context. To this end, it seeks to delve deeper into the progress made regarding two key moments that impact the possibility of constructing Latin American social thought based on the profound manifestation of social and political changes: first, the beginning of what has been called the “epochal shift,” which we tentatively date to 1999, with a legacy from earlier periods; and second, the recent political transformations carried out by dominant sectors in recent years, both globally and regionally, marked by a construction of cultural hegemony produced through new modes of cultural, intellectual, and political production that require analysis.

This project proposes a socio-historical analysis of the construction of ideas in Latin America, whose relevance has become evident today as Latin America is revisited and questioned within the context of the global crisis facing capitalism. In this sense, the development of Latin American thought—one that articulates theory and practice, past and present, and that is grounded in the affirmation of regional integration and strengthened by the South-South axis—constitutes a true challenge in a context of regional political reconfiguration with significant cultural and intellectual shifts. This process, in our view, requires a return to the path forged by Latin American critical social thought of the 1970s, but in a way that is productive for our current times.

One might venture to say that the 21st century in Latin America began in 1999 when Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency of Venezuela. From then until approximately the end of the first decade of the 2000s, many countries in the region (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay—the latter interrupted by a coup d'état—and, to a lesser extent, Peru) underwent a process of transformation, contrasting sharply with the decades of neoliberal hegemony. To the extent that the balance of power allowed, these governing experiences challenged—with conflicts and ruptures—the pillars of the neoliberal order, and in some cases, such as the paradigmatic Bolivia, there was a true refounding of the state. However, the changes have been numerous and, in several respects, neither linear nor definitive.

During the cycle of government projects that expanded rights, incorporated new political sectors into the economic and state dynamics, and modified socioeconomic conditions by narrowing the gaps of inequality, the political and social right did not remain passive, but reconfigured its strategies and rearticulated itself around old and new actors: the military, agrarian and industrial bourgeoisies, the media, think tanks and other types of cultural and intellectual intervention. This allowed the balance of power at the regional level to begin reversing towards the end of the first decade of the 2000s. The reconfiguration operated through different paths and presented novel features compared to past eras, for example, in the surgical nature of the use of force or the greater sophistication in producing and disseminating ideas that manage to naturalize worldviews aligned with the perspective of the dominant sectors. The dynamics of current neoliberalism promoted changes not only in political practices, but, no less importantly, in intellectual and cultural practices. The advance of markets into the spheres of social life—a process that dates back to the 1980s globally—led to areas whose dynamics had functioned autonomously now operating in permanent tension with the predominance of capital on a global scale. This invites us to reflect on the complexity of the processes of social change at the dawn of the 21st century and the role of intellectuals in the region and the ideas they circulate about these processes.

The intellectual matrix that characterizes contemporary Latin American societies, in line with the processes of media and publishing sector concentration, on the one hand, and the digital circulation of discourse, on the other, has promoted changes in the modes of public discourse that reflect a consolidation of right-wing cultural hegemony. The “new right,” which in recent years has come to occupy positions of political power, presents novel forms in the political and cultural sphere, driven by actors who produce ideas and their intermediaries: think tanksTechnical analysis centers, advisors and a corporate bureaucracy, mass media and publishing companies, academics, experts and intellectuals.

Think tanks are centers or committees of experts or idea laboratories, generally linked to particular economic and political interests, that seek to shape opinion on various issues and, at times, influence government policies. It is essential to analyze their methods of exercising symbolic power (Rigolin and Hayashi, 2012) in the Latin American region, which in recent years has emerged as a capacity to construct an “agenda for change,” with particular narratives, discourses, and practices (Soler and Giordano, 2016; Acosta, Ansaldi, Giordano, Soler, 2015; Rocha, 2015; Prego, 2016) in countries such as Argentina (CIPPEC, Fundación Pensar), Paraguay (Fundación Desarrollo en Democracia and Asociación PRO Desarrollo), and Colombia (Instituto de Ciencia Política "Hernán Echavarría Olózaga" and Fundación Centro de Pensamiento Primero Colombia).

For its part, regarding cultural production specifically, the intellectual role gained immense importance in the form of public figures present in both traditional and emerging media, no longer confined to the margins of academia. Academics, writers, artists, and television, radio, and print journalists gained visibility by publicly intervening in political and cultural matters, even from a position representing civil society, a position supported by media logic (Bourdieu, 1997; Debray, 2001; Escalante Gonzalbo, 2010). While these actors partly recover some aspects of the 20th-century public intellectual role (the performance of public acts, collective action, moral argumentation), they acquire recognition primarily through their media, publishing, and online visibility. mainstream more so than for their academic integration. It's not just the media that's relevant in this process. The publishing sector, for example, is a fundamental space in this regard, marked by its concentration and transnationalization since the 1980s. The acquisition of national imprints by conglomerates has led to a few large groups dominating a market in which "brand authors" hegemonize production, circulation, and the attention of most readers. In this sense, hand in hand with large corporations and the intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and authors who publish books on various local situations, this space constitutes a privileged arena for constructing ways of viewing the political world (Saferstein, 2017, 2019) that has not been sufficiently explored.

The complex redefinitions that have emerged over the last two decades regarding the relationships between ideas, knowledge, intellectuals, the field of knowledge production in general, mass media, and the concept of democracy—ranging from a reductionist perspective focused solely on electoral promises to a broader perspective that integrates struggles for the ongoing construction of rights—have evident effects on the opening or closing of fields of possibilities and social horizons. The capacity to think alternatively in contexts of captured and instrumentalized intelligence is a significant issue for the immediate future. Indeed, the aforementioned changes in the social and political order shape a context of transformations in the conditions of idea production in general and in the social sciences of Latin America in particular.

In sum, in this sense, in recent years the social sciences have once again begun to grapple with the challenges of the present, and several key questions have arisen that this working group aims to explore in greater depth: How can we explain these processes of change? What original contributions can Latin American social thought make? What is the role of intellectuals? What transformations exist in the modes of intellectual intervention? What lines of creative argumentation are intellectuals in Latin America capable of constructing, and what capacity do they have to project them? What elements of continuity and rupture with previous traditions can be identified? To what extent have emerging mutations at the global level led to the incorporation of new elements or to a retreat into more regional movements and knowledge, and what viability and challenges do both approaches present? To what extent is the redefinition of the critical intellectual of the past, in relation to the uncritical exaltation of other figures associated with “technical” specificity, a conjunctural or structural process? How is it possible to contest spaces for the production of ideas in the current context?

With the exception of the oft-cited case of the Comuna group in Bolivia, Latin American social thought and its intellectuals seem to struggle to understand the transformations underway. We believe that references to the past and the 1970s have become increasingly frequent because, indeed, they offer insightful elements that define the unique relationship between intellectuals, ideas, and politics in Latin America, a relationship that contrasts sharply with the intellectual colonialism of the neoliberal decades. However, it is crucial to consider these interventions within a context that is indeed dominated by a neoliberal framework, which must be critically examined, avoiding reductionism and one-sidedness, in order to engage in political and intellectual intervention.

The defeat of revolutionary movements, the establishment of military dictatorships, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR, and above all, the development of neoliberalism as the dominant paradigm, eroded the foundations of Latin American social thought. The current political and cultural hegemony of the right wing is evidence of this process. The social sciences, for the most part, abandoned large-scale perspectives, and comprehensive questions were replaced by specialized and microscopic knowledge of their objects of study, overlooking the role of history in explaining social reality. As part of this trend, Latin America itself, both as a subject and as a problem, occupied an increasingly smaller place, to the point that some dared to assert that Latin America as a unified entity no longer existed. However, today the region is being re-examined through the lens of the social thought of the 1970s, and this thought has begun to be revisited with new nuances. To the old themes that concerned the social sciences and politics between 1950 and 1970: development and industrialism (in line with the first ECLAC), dependency currents, indigenism; were added new debates in accordance with the socio-historical transformations of the dawn of the 21st century: extractivism, Latin American integration, and feminism, to mention three of the most notable.

In this project, we aim to explain, within the broader context of transformations in the conditions of idea production in Latin America in particular, how recent changes in the social order and the political system have reshaped a) new modes of cultural and intellectual production that actively contribute to the construction of right-wing cultural hegemony at the regional level, and b) how this has impacted the research and production agenda of the social sciences. Furthermore, it is essential c) to explore the link between intellectuals and the world of politics and the public sphere, both among those who collaborate within this new regional paradigm and among those who critically engage with it. Taking into account the legacy of the social sciences and their intellectuals in terms of their ways of thinking and viewing previous eras in the region, we propose to focus, within the contemporary context, on cultural and intellectual practices and the historical accumulation that has shaped the academic and political trajectories of intellectuals from 1999 onward, according to the specific countries and their political fluctuations.

This Working Group seeks to study the current conditions of cultural and intellectual production, to understand the role of intellectuals and the explanations they construct of Latin American reality, identifying continuities and ruptures with previous periods. One of its fundamental objectives is to explore what elements define the originality of Latin American thought and what its potential applications are for explaining other realities within the South-South axis in a context of global transformations. To this end, it aims to conduct a critical review of emblematic Latin American social science production and to complicate the phenomenon by asking questions arising from the current situation, in a regional context that can be defined as critical for the development of popular projects. Crucially, it seeks to incorporate perspectives from other spheres of thought production and from other actors who do not conform to the typical/ideal definition of the intellectual of the past. The aim is to revitalize Latin American critical social sciences that made contributions in several ways: they offered countless analytical categories for thinking about reality and showed the potential of a type of reflection that articulated theory and praxis, that studied national realities in a regional and global perspective, that challenged disciplinary boundaries and that, even while drawing on the most professionalized scientific thought, was able to reflect on the different processes of social change without getting trapped in orthodox scientism.

Today, the social sciences face a reality that poses both theoretical and practical challenges. Initiatives such as the one held on January 21, 2013, at the Lula Institute in São Paulo, where 35 intellectuals and politicians from different countries in the region met under the slogan “Progressive Paths for the Development and Integration of Latin America,” pointed to a path forward. 

In Latin America, the social sciences have been distinguished by their focus on large-scale social change and the interaction between past and present. The founding of CLACSO in 1967 was one of the key events that contributed to their expansion. The initiative arose from the Conference on Comparative Sociology (1964) organized in Buenos Aires by the Di Tella Institute. Comparison was inherent to the emergence of our social sciences. Orlando Fals Borda, a founding father of sociology in the region, stated, regarding the “IX Latin American Congress of Sociology” (1969), that it “marked the will to move toward an independent science, free from intellectual colonialism.” To this end, among other things, he emphasized the importance of the notion of “crisis,” and advised: “rather than similarities between crisis situations, we should study the specific differences.” Again, comparison was at the heart of the institutionalization of Latin American social sciences. Fals also called for “knowledge in order to transform.” The Working Group aims to revitalize the approach of critical social sciences and their comparative perspective to capture the “unity” and “diversity” of Latin America, fostering reflection on the modes of production of ideas in the region's current social and political landscape, taking into account the role of intellectuals, cultural and political producers and intermediaries. Thus, our proposal and the progress we have made in previous and concurrent projects echo CLACSO's 2013 Call to incorporate studies on the state of the social sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean as a new theme, this time within a regional context of profound transformations.

The Working Group (GT) occupies an interdisciplinary space capable of bringing together, within a single sociohistorical explanation, the contributions, trajectories, practices, institutional projects, and debates that, through their commitment to interdisciplinary hybridization, have shaped and given content to Latin American social thought in recent years. This analysis takes into account the conjunctures of change: on the one hand, the cycle of progressive transformations that began in 1999, and, in contrast, the consolidation of a right-wing cultural and political hegemony under new forms and modes of production. In this sense, we draw on contributions from intellectual history (Altamirano, ed. 2010; Devés, 2008; Viales, 2006), political sociology, and the sociology of culture (Blanco, 2010; Pereyra, 2010; Sierra et al., 2007) to consider, from a historical perspective, these elements rooted in the processes of social change that have occurred in Latin America in recent decades. The revitalization of Latin American social thought is a contribution to the development of the social sciences, but above all, it contributes to the reflection on current processes of transformation in Latin America. To this end, we call for the formation of research networks at the Latin American level on a topic that has urgently resurfaced and which must be brought into dialogue with other "peripheries" that can draw on Latin American experiences. It is also an objective to provide analytical tools to advance the formulation of public policies that address what is "unique" to Latin America, an element devalued by the intellectual colonialism of the stale neoliberal decades that have now been repurposed under new guises.

The following periodization can be identified in the development of Latin American critical thought: 1. 1960-1970: the crisis of the import substitution industrialization (ISI) model and the devaluation of political democracy (due to a resurgence of revolution or authoritarianism); 2. 1980-1999: the transition to political democracy and the establishment of a neoliberal model; 3. 1999-2010: the restructuring of the import substitution industrialization model and the revaluation of social and political democracy; 4. 2010 onwards: the rise of the new political and cultural right.

Borrowing a sharp metaphor used by Fernanda Beigel (2006) to describe the dependency theory—though its expression is applicable to Latin American social thought in general—we can say that Latin American critical thought has experienced three phases: “life, death, and resurrection.” Moving away from a nostalgic and ahistorical view of the phenomenon, we understand the transformations in the social sciences as both part of and a product of a complex web—with continuities and ruptures—of the construction of different orders that has developed from the 1970s to the present. The aim of this working group is to study the phases of “life” and “resurrection” of Latin American critical thought within their contexts and modes of production and circulation of ideas, based on a historical reading that considers not only the ideas, practices, intellectual trajectories, and thought itself, but also the economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of each national, regional, and international historical moment. We believe that herein lies the key that makes something communicable on a global level that otherwise remains trapped in a presumed untranslatability of Latin American singularity.

Between stages 3 and 4 mentioned in the periodization, the transformations of the region's map are eloquent, beginning with the rise of the "new" right. As Perry Anderson (2003) states, the neoliberal project has shown a vitality and dynamism that has not been exhausted but has been reinforced as "a self-consistent, militant body of doctrine, lucidly determined to transform the world in its own image" (Anderson, 2003: 17). In this sense, there are a series of contributions to thinking about the hegemonic claim of the right and new right at the global level (Mouffe and Turner, 1981), regional level (Falero, Quevedo and Soler, 2019; Soler, Giordano and Saferstein, 2018; Ansaldi, 2017; Giordano, 2017; Nikolajczuk and Prego, 2017; Bertonha and Bohoslavsky, 2016; Bohoslavsky and Boisard, 2016; Ansaldi and Soler, 2015) and national level (López Segrera, 2016, Luna and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2011; Canelo and Castellani, 2016), as well as according to certain topics, such as think tanks (Mercado, 2017; Echt, 2016; Fischer and Plehwe, 2017; Grassetti J. and Prego, F. 2017); Acuña, 2009; Alvear, 2007; Bellettini and Carrión, 2009), mass media (Goldstein, 2018; Soler and Nikolajczuk, 2017), publishing companies (Saferstein, 2016 and 2017; Soler and Giordano, 2016), social networks (Slimovich, 2018, 2017; Rocha, 2015) and the role of intellectuals, academics and experts (Goldentul and Saferstein, 2019; Soler and Bayle 2017), among other topics on which progress is sought.

In Argentina, the Sociohistorical project of the present time (of which several Argentine applicants are a part, based at the IEALC) takes up an idea that began to germinate in 1991, when Waldo Ansaldi created the Research Workshop in Historical Sociology of Latin America (TISHAL) as an interdisciplinary and extracurricular space within the Sociology Department of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. TISHAL is, to our knowledge and after the UAM-Azcapotzalco, the largest and longest-standing project for the institutionalization of a space for the hybridization of Social Sciences and History in Latin America. The GT's proposal is to gather the trajectory that began in TISHAL and that has continued in two instances: the awards (2 consecutive) that Giordano and Soler received from CLACSO for teaching the courses Historical Sociology and Comparative Method in Research on Latin America (F. Fernandes Chair) and Problems and Tools of the Comparative Method and its Application in Research on Latin America (F. Borda Chair) and in the project The Historical Imagination of Latin American Sociology (c.1940s-1980s), financed by the SeCyT of the UBA (dir. W Ansaldi and codir. V Giordano). These researchers are joined by others from institutions such as the Gino Germani Institute, the Center for Documentation and Research on Leftist Culture, the Center for Latin American Studies at the National University of San Martín, and the Postgraduate Program in Latin American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, among others, who have been conducting research in this area and for whom this Working Group would serve as a coordinating body. As has been the case since its inception, the Working Group seeks to replicate and deepen these experiences by consolidating a network capable of disseminating the knowledge generated within it through organized events (three general meetings, publications, and debates in the media and other forums) and through the professional activities of its members (postgraduate courses, collaborative projects, conferences, outreach activities, publications, and media debates). The Working Group will leverage international academic events on the agenda for the coming years in this regard. Furthermore, the results of this Working Group can be used as resources for its members to submit proposals for online courses to CLACSO's periodic calls for proposals (especially for members who have not yet had this experience). The book *Intellectuals, Democracy, and the Right*, published in 2019 as a result of the 2016-2019 edition of the Working Group, demonstrates the progress and consolidation of this network, which the current call for proposals aims to strengthen.

The Working Group brings together a number of researchers with extensive experience in the proposed subject. One of the members has been specially invited to participate, despite not belonging to a CLACSO Center, due to his remarkable track record in the recent transformation processes in Ecuador. This provides us with direct experience in the articulation of critical ideas, intellectuals, and social change in a country in the region that has transformed its State and its Constitution in a truly new way.

The Working Group is guided by objectives in several directions: to foster the training of Latin Americanists capable of reviving our own "native science" and explaining the reality of our region from that perspective; to consolidate a Latin American and hemispheric network of interdisciplinary exchanges; and to promote the participation of researchers and their work in public debates to contribute to the formulation and reflection on current issues. The most immediate, and no less important, connection of the Working Group with the agenda of states and the formulation of public policies is the design of content that replenishes the critical mass of Latin American social thought, both past and present (postgraduate studies, training for officials and professionals), which will then inform public debates in general.