Our Working Group proposes as a field of study, reflection and intervention an area that is composed of two dimensions relevant to the work of Latin American social researchers: on the one hand, we will work on the processes of participation (instituting and instituted) seeking to improve our understanding of their trajectories of change, their challenges and the conditions for their functioning in this continent and in other regions; on the other hand, the field of participatory methodologies that accompany the processes of action reflection-action as an approach that supports the implementation of interventions.

To address these dimensions, the GT will be organized into six thematic sub-axes:

Theory and Practice

Systematization of Experiences

Institutionalization of Participation

Gender and Feminisms

Ecology

Education and Universities

PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES

Following Cunill (1997), four forms of participation can be identified (social, community, political, and civic) which, together, express diverse ways of intervening in the public sphere. These forms unfold in scenarios where, sometimes, the State convenes and creates participatory institutions; and in others, citizens organize themselves autonomously to contest agendas, meanings, and rights (Villarreal, 2009; Ziccardi, 1998).

In recent decades, Latin America has been a pioneer in the creation, expansion, and diversification of mechanisms for institutionalized participation: neighborhood councils, participatory budgeting, town hall meetings, advisory councils, participatory urban planning, and prior consultations with Indigenous peoples, among others. The participatory budgeting process that emerged in Porto Alegre in 1989 remains a global landmark that has inspired numerous adaptations on other continents. These mechanisms allow us to observe trends, innovations, and limitations in contemporary democratization (Welp, 2023; Isunza and Gurza Lavalle, 2020).

In parallel, and especially since the 2019 protest cycle and the post-pandemic mobilizations, the region has been the scene of multiple constituent practices of participation: Indigenous territorial movements in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile; militant research processes; popular universities; the actions of the MST and urban organizations in Brazil; feminisms (#NiUnaMenos), climate youth movements, anti-extractivist networks; conservative movements (#ConMisHijosNoTeMetas); and citizen uprisings for rights, living conditions, and new constitutions. These practices express creative, hybrid, and multisectoral repertoires of collective organization (Oraisón, Torrejón, Paño, Giraldo, Goñi, Rébola, 2023).

Demands for participation have left their mark on subnational constitutions and regulations, expanding direct, participatory, and community-based democracy, although not always with substantive effects on social justice or political inclusion (Suárez, Signorelli, Mérida, and Del Prado, 2022; Welp and Almeida). This is compounded by a context marked by the weakening and questioning of representative democracy (Avritzer, 2023), the rise of radicalized right-wing movements and anti-rights projects, and the growing influence of evangelical churches in the struggle over values ​​and public policies (Córdova, 2014).

These tensions are compounded by emerging challenges: new actors (Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, children and youth, LGBTIQ+ movements, women land defenders) and new issues (climate justice, care work, the rights of nature, the energy transition, digital rights). In this context, it is crucial to analyze participation as an arena for contestation, the co-production of power, and the construction of democratic alternatives.

Finally, digital transformation (including the expansion of generative AI) is shaping a new landscape for participation: digital platforms, hybrid consultations, participatory processes that incorporate generative AI at some stage (Signorelli, 2024), algorithms that influence public opinion, disinformation, and surveillance. This shift raises urgent questions about the limits, risks, and potential of participation in societies increasingly mediated by technology (Suárez and Del Prado, 2023; Annunziata, 2022).

PARTICIPATORY METHODOLOGIES

The field of participatory methodologies constitutes the other key dimension of the GT. It is an autonomous and at the same time complementary area, since participatory research has been key to strengthening processes of social transformation and democratization from below.

Latin America is the birthplace of methodologies that have projected themselves globally: popular education, communication for social change, action research in social psychology, Participatory Action Research (PAR), Freirean thematic research, systematization of experiences, recovery of collective memories, militant research, among others (Suárez and Meneses, 2019). These methodologies emerged as critical alternatives to positivism and were consolidated as tools for empowerment and collective knowledge production at the service of subaltern actors.

With the thematic research of Paulo Freire and the IAP of Orlando Fals Borda (Gajardo, 1985; Torres Carrillo, 2004), a methodological horizon was opened that, since the 1970s, inspired emancipatory processes. Milestones such as the Cartagena Congress (1977), the Convergence meetings (1997), the Latin American anthologies (Brandão, 1987; Fals Borda and Anisur, 1991; Brandão and Streck, 2006), the creation of the International Journal of Action Research (2008) and the recent Symposia on Participatory Methodologies (Porto Alegre 2011; Copenhagen 2013; Bogotá 2015; Cartagena 2017; Rosario 2018) or the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Paulo Freire (2021) and of Orlando Fals Borda (2025) demonstrate the vitality of this current.

In recent years, these methodologies have undergone a process of renewal: feminist, decolonial, and intersectional methodologies; collaborative ethnographies; social innovation labs; digital and co-design methodologies; approaches to co-production of knowledge in environmental and urban governance; and methodologies of care and community building. Their expansion confirms their relevance for understanding and transforming contemporary Latin American societies.

DIALOGUE WITH GLOBAL DYNAMICS

At a global level, Latin America continues to be a benchmark in participatory innovation (Avritzer, 2002; Welp & Almeida, 2018), but also a territory where democratic setbacks are strongly expressed (Latinobarometer, 2023; LAPOP, 2023) with the advance of new neoconservative right-wing movements, the persistence of deep social inequalities (ECLAC, 2022) and the advance of the ecological crisis and territorial conflicts linked to extractivism (Svampa, 2019; Gudynas, 2020).

These problems place us in an active and committed role as researchers, educators, and individuals seeking processes and tools for deepening democracy, which challenge us from various dimensions:

The governance of environmental and energy transitions,

The advancement of AI and the democratic regulation of technologies,

Epistemic justice and the dispute of knowledge,

The revitalization of transnational social movements.

Within this framework, Latin American participatory methodologies contribute approaches, practices, and knowledge that are projected globally and that can enrich international debates on co-production of knowledge, collaborative governance, deliberative democracy, and social innovation.

The relevance of the proposed field of study (participatory processes and methodologies in Latin America and the Global South) lies in its centrality to understanding and challenging the meanings of democracy, knowledge production, and collective action in a regional and global context characterized by multiple crises: persistent inequality, democratic backsliding, polarization, territorial violence, accelerated digital transitions, and the climate emergency. Faced with these dynamics, participation and knowledge co-production methodologies constitute not only an object of study but also a strategic terrain for theoretical innovation and social intervention.

From a theoretical standpoint, the topic is central because it allows for the articulation of contemporary debates of high conceptual density: the crises of representation and democratic legitimacy; the emergence of new ecologies of knowledge and epistemic disputes; the participatory turn in planning and governance; the expansion of collaborative research methodologies; and the tensions between participation, digital technologies, and algorithmic power. The region contributes unique approaches that engage critically with global theories of deliberative, participatory, and agonistic democracy, as well as with decolonial, feminist, and intersectional perspectives that have broadened the ways of understanding collective action, resistance, and the construction of the commons (Oraisón, Torrejón, Paño, Giraldo, Goñi, Rébola, 2023).

On a social level, this issue is relevant because participation (in its established and emerging forms) has become one of the main arenas where disputes over rights, identities, social justice, and environmental justice are expressed (Suárez, Signorelli, Mérida, and Del Prado, 2022). The various forms of participation challenge some of the contradictions that require reflection (economic, political, environmental, food-related, labor-related, and cultural) associated with the capitalist model of production and consumption of goods and the exploitation of people and the environment. Along these lines, we highlight the participation of decolonial organizations and movements focused on gender, diversity, and care, as well as Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant communities, which reclaim alternative practices of knowledge and power, challenging the patriarchal and colonial culture of Latin America. Promoting outreach to share the experiences of struggle built from resistance is part of our objectives as a group. We aim to make visible new participatory processes that will allow us to build new transformations. Analyzing these processes allows us to understand the changes in political culture, the repertoires of action, the territorial construction of alternatives, and the way in which diverse actors challenge the State and produce their own institutions.

Therefore, the democratic deficits of our sociopolitical reality, associated with its structural systems of inequality, demand approaches that promote the collective construction of knowledge, the articulation between knowledge and action, and ecologies of knowledge that propose postcolonial, post-development, and post-capitalist visions (Torres, 2014; Mignolo, 2005) openly oriented toward the search for creative local alternatives. The advancement of participatory methodologies is guided by these visions and, through their combination of reflection-action-reflection (Rodríguez-Villasante, 2015), already includes significant processes of co-construction of knowledge by and for communities. Furthermore, it is necessary to contribute, through participatory methodologies, to making disadvantaged groups (due to gender, ethnicity, economic status, among others) visible from a political perspective and to combating these inequalities from a common ground that allows for analyzing how to understand differences. Denaturalizing discrimination and combating gender oppression, beyond the fact that women's inequalities of opportunity may be related to problems of other minorities or to broader socio-political issues, undoubtedly implies making visible the power relations between men and women (Fernández, 2009).

Therefore, we can say that participatory methodologies provide innovative ways of understanding complex phenomena such as collective action and social and political participation, allowing us to enhance the knowledge of the experiences that have been developing in the countries of the region, and in turn, due to their own vocation to learn together with the subjects, they allow us to improve the experiences at the same time as we learn (Villasante, 2011; Paño, Rébola and Suárez, 2019).

In summary, this field is relevant because it allows for the articulation of theory and practice, research and action, academia and social movements, contributing to the construction of socially situated and politically significant knowledge (Tenze, Castaño, and Arnanz, 2023). At a time of erosion of traditional models of democracy and traditional research, the Working Group aims to strengthen a workspace that recognizes the transformative potential of participation and collaborative methodologies, renews conceptual frameworks, generates methodological innovations, and sustains intergenerational dialogues that allow us to address the present and future challenges of the region.