Throughout its successive editions, the Working Group has been exploring the relationship between ideas, intellectuals, and social change in Latin America in the current context, taking into account its recent transformations. To this end, it seeks to connect key moments in the construction of Latin American social thought and the profound manifestation of social and political changes: first, the 1970s; second, the beginning of what has been called the epochal shift, which we tentatively date to 1999; and third, the rise of the political and cultural right to power in the second decade of the 2000s. Furthermore, the pandemic emerges as a fourth moment of reconfiguration that must be considered. These recent transformations are marked by a construction of cultural hegemony produced through new modes of cultural, intellectual, and political production that require analysis.

This collective project proposes a socio-historical analysis of the current state of Latin American social sciences, whose relevance has become evident 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—presents a challenge in the face of changing circumstances.

During the cycle of government projects that expanded rights and incorporated new political sectors into the economic and state dynamics, right-wing forces reconfigured their strategies and reorganized themselves around old and new actors: the military, agrarian and industrial bourgeoisies, the media, and think tanks. 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 new developments. The dynamics of current neoliberalism promoted changes in political, intellectual, and cultural practices. This invites us to reflect on the complexity of the processes of change and the role of intellectuals in the region and the ideas they circulate about these processes.

Latin American social thought and its intellectuals seem to be struggling to keep pace with the ongoing transformations, whose political heterodoxy has raised more questions than answers in this field. The social sciences, for the most part, have abandoned large-scale perspectives, and comprehensive questions have been replaced by specialized, microscopic knowledge of their objects of study, overlooking the role of history in explaining social reality.

In recent years, the social sciences have once again begun to grapple with the challenges of the present, and some key questions have arisen: How can we explain these processes of change? What original contributions can Latin American social thought make? What is the role of intellectuals? Under what modalities are ideas produced and circulated?

In this Working Group, we aim to explain, within the broader context of transformations in the conditions of production of the social sciences in general, and in Latin America in particular, how recent changes in the social order and the political system have reshaped the social science research agenda and the relationship between intellectuals and the world of politics and the public sphere. The intellectual matrix that characterizes contemporary Latin American societies, in conjunction with the processes of media and publishing sector concentration, on the one hand, and the digital circulation of interventions, on the other, has fostered 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 arena, driven by actors who produce ideas and their intermediaries: think tanks, technical analysis centers, advisors and a corporate bureaucracy, mass media and publishing companies, academics, experts, and intellectuals.

The intellectual role gained an almost insulting prominence 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 the media logic studied by Bourdieu and Escalante Gonzalbo, among others. While these actors partly recover some aspects of the 20th-century public intellectual role, they acquire recognition more for their mainstream media, publishing, and online visibility than for their academic engagement. The publishing sector is a fundamental space in this regard, marked by its concentration and transnationalization since the 1980s. Hand in hand with large corporations and the intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and authors who publish books on various local events, this space constitutes a privileged arena for constructing ways of viewing the political world.

The Working Group aims to reconstruct, problematize, and analyze these processes of change and their impact on modes of public discourse. The "new right," which has emerged and occupied positions of political power in recent years, presents novel forms in the political and cultural sphere, driven by actors who produce ideas and their intermediaries: think tanks, technical analysis centers, advisors, as well as the corporate bureaucracy, mass media and publishing companies, academics, experts, and intellectual groups.

In what sense have the conditions of intellectual production and reproduction of the field changed? What role do intellectuals play, and what explanations do they construct? What elements of continuity can be identified? What are the channels for transmitting ideas, and how do they condition their production, circulation, and reception? What are the new elements? What are the possible projections for explaining other realities within the South-South axis? How do right-wing groups intervene in the production of ideas today? Under what conditions do right-wing intellectual productions emerge? What function do think tanks, publishing houses, media outlets, and networks play in the production of political ideas?

The Working Group seeks to enrich the analysis of the region by incorporating perspectives from spaces of intellectual production and other actors who do not conform to the typical/ideal definition of the intellectual of the past. It aims to revitalize the region's critical social sciences, which have made contributions in several ways: they offered analytical categories for understanding reality and demonstrated the potential of a type of reflection that articulated theory and practice, studied national realities within a regional and global perspective, challenged disciplinary boundaries, and, while drawing on more professionalized scientific thought, was able to reflect on the various processes of social change without becoming trapped in orthodox scientism. Today, the social sciences face a reality that presents both theoretical and practical challenges, which the Working Group seeks to address.

In Latin America, the social sciences have distinguished themselves by their focus on large-scale social change and the interaction between past and present. CLACSO is one of the main institutions that contributed to their expansion. Fals Borda affirmed "the will to move toward an independent science, free from intellectual colonialism." To this end, he emphasized the importance of the notion of "crisis," and advised: "rather than similarities between crisis situations, we should study the specific differences" and "knowledge in order to transform." The Working Group aims to revitalize this path of critical social sciences and their comparative vision to capture the unity and diversity of Latin America, fostering reflection on the role of intellectuals and ideas regarding the region's current social and political landscape. Our proposal echoes the call to incorporate studies on the state of the social sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean and their transformations.

The Working Group occupies an interdisciplinary space capable of bringing together the personal trajectories, institutional projects, and debates that shaped and gave content to Latin American social thought. The individual research of its members and the collective project draw from history, intellectual history, the history of ideas, historical sociology, cultural studies, and book and publishing studies, as well as contributions from communication studies, philosophy, and political science. The aim is to ground these elements and perspectives in the processes of social change that occurred in Latin America, using concrete empirical references.

The redefinitions that have been drawn up in recent decades regarding the relationships between ideas, knowledge, intellectuals, media, and other digital and traditional channels of circulation have evident effects on the opening or closing of fields of possibility and social horizons. The capacity to think alternatively in these contexts is a significant issue for the immediate future. The Working Group aims to understand the place of intellectual production, what explanations it constructs of Latin American reality, and what continuities and ruptures exist in historical terms. It seeks to explain how social and political changes have reshaped modes of cultural and intellectual production, affecting the construction of visions from both the left and the right, as well as their impact on the social science agenda. The revitalization of Latin American social thought is a contribution to the development of the social sciences and a contribution to reflection on processes of transformation based on empirical research. To this end, we call for the formation of networks at the Latin American level on a topic that has reappeared with urgency and that it is a priority to put into dialogue with other "peripheries." that can draw on the experiences of Latin America. The following periodization can be identified in the development of Latin American critical thought: 1. 1960-1970: the crisis of the ISI model and the devaluation of political democracy (due to a renewed emphasis on revolution or authoritarianism); 2. 1980-1999: the transition to political democracy and the affirmation of a neoliberal model; 3. 1999: the recomposition of the import substitution model and the revaluation of social and political democracy; 4. 2010 onward: the rise of the new political and cultural right. According to Beigel (2006), Latin American critical thought experienced three phases: “life, death, and resurrection.” We understand the transformations in the social sciences as both part of and a product of a complex web of constructing different orders that has developed from the 70s to the present. The focus of this working group is to study the phases of “life” and “resurrection.” Latin American critical thought, based on a historical reading that considers not only the ideas, intellectuals, and thought, but also the economic, social, and political dimensions of each national, regional, and international historical moment. We believe that herein lies the key to making something communicable on a global scale that would otherwise remain trapped in a supposed untranslatability of Latin American singularity.

Between stages 3 and 4, the transformations of the region's map are eloquent, stemming from the rise of the "new" right. Neoliberalism 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). 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 and Prego 2017); Acuña, 2009; Alvear, 2007; Bellettini and Carrión, 2009), mass media (Goldstein, 2018; Soler and Nikolajczuk, 2017), publishing companies (Saferstein, 2021; Soler and Giordano, 2016), social networks (Slimovich, 2018) and the role of intellectuals, academics and experts (Soler and Bayle 2017).

In Argentina, the Sociohistorical Project of the Present (of which several applicants are a part, based at the IEALC) revives an idea that began in 1991, when Ansaldi created the Research Workshop in Historical Sociology of Latin America, one of the most ambitious and long-standing projects for institutionalizing a space for the integration of Social Sciences and History in Latin America. The Working Group's proposal is to build upon this trajectory, which has continued in various capacities: CLACSO awards, UBA projects, and funding from the National Scientific Agency. These researchers are joined by others from institutions such as the IIGG (UBA), CeDInCI and CEL at UNSAM, CELA (UNAM), and CIADE in Mexico, among others, who have been developing research in this area and for whom this Working Group will serve as a coordinating body.

As has been the case since its inception, the Working Group (GT) seeks to replicate and deepen these experiences by consolidating a network capable of disseminating knowledge through organized events (general meetings, publications and debates in the media and other forums, postgraduate courses, collaborative projects, conferences, outreach activities, and publications). The GT will leverage international academic events on the agenda for the coming years in this regard. Published books, dossiers, and other outputs demonstrate the GT's consolidation. The GT brings together established researchers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador, the United States, and Colombia, and is guided by objectives in several directions: fostering the training of researchers capable of revitalizing our own scientific knowledge and explaining the reality of our region from that perspective; Consolidating a Latin American and hemispheric network of interdisciplinary exchanges with other working groups and various institutions, and promoting the participation of researchers and their work in public debate spaces to contribute to the formulation and reflection on the agenda of current problems, as well as the articulation with the agenda of States and the formulation of public policies in the design of content that replenishes the critical mass of Latin American social thought of yesterday and today that spills over into public debates in general, is a horizon.