Latin America and the world are deeply affected and shaken by the impacts of the transformative processes that accompany the implementation of predatory and expansionist neoliberal policies in times of global climate change. Human life and the modern world are profoundly affected by multiple crises, further pressured by a culture of individualism. Challenged by the demands of ecosystem sustainability, and overwhelmed by their capacity to provide the planet's life-support services, ecosystems are showing clear signs of exhaustion and symptoms of global collapse. Increasingly frequent, intense, and disastrous extreme events occurring in different parts of the world and regions bear witness to this grave reality. These multiple crises produce problems of political and social stability, threatening coexistence, institutions, values, nature, and democratic life.

A significant transformation observed in recent political scenarios, particularly exploited by far-right political groups, is the emotional factor. Feelings of abandonment, present in many people and at play in their daily lives, are also amplified by the aggressive processes of capitalist commercialization.

Modernity has also become explosive... Under the enormous influence of both commercialized fiction and psychological culture, emotions now play a key role in self-definition and in the emergence and maintenance of social relationships that increasingly depend on conscious self-scrutiny and emotional monitoring. This emotional self-knowledge is no longer accompanied by character formation, an orientation towards moral values, virtue, and good. Individuals are primarily attuned to their private goals, pleasure, and feelings. Emotions are transformed into the reality through which individuals apprehend themselves and much of their social world, making emotions the foundation and object of social relationships, imbuing them with an objective reality (Eva Illouz, 2025: 25-26).

The technological revolution must also be considered: the various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) underway worldwide and in Latin America. These represent significant advances, but also conflicts related to job losses, the deterioration of social and intellectual life, and new ways of exercising power and dominating human life. This technology is developing independently of societal development, lacking regulation.

“Digital technologies are being used more and more. We talk about the cloud, algorithms, automation, robotics, or datafication, but above all about the adoption of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is one of the most popular and fastest-growing data-based technologies used worldwide. It is not something of the future; artificial intelligence is already present in our lives” (Velasco, 2021:21-22).

To this must be added the new reality of education, a central theme of one of the Working Group's axes. Preparing new generations for life and the practice of the profession in more uncertain and complex territories: in the contexts of "inter-re-tro-actions" in which human action is often involved in the modern world in metamorphosis (Morin, 2011).

Overcoming the current crises requires strengthening education and adapting it to the new times. In this sense, universities, institutes, and research groups, as well as educational establishments, can play an important, active, and innovative role in the process of seeking a sustainable future. This requires intercommunication and dialogue to find common ground in lived history, in the practices and traditions of communities and regions, in accumulated bioknowledge, in applied research, and in democratic cultures and institutions—all present in the decolonizing and emancipatory efforts forged by each country, community, and society (Rojas, CLACSO, 2025).

Neoliberalism has weakened public institutions. This explains the reactions of multiple social sectors, communities, and socio-ecological and environmental movements that feel threatened by the various processes of exclusion and expansion by old and new powers.

“Colonialism, violence against the Earth, violence against indigenous cultures, and violence against women were a continuum of violence. Decolonization, the land rebellion, the indigenous rebellion, and the women's rebellion are a nonviolent movement for peace, sustainability, and justice” (Shiva, 2024: 68).

In this context, Florence Gaub, a researcher on the future, makes a relevant point: "The more strongly people participate in decision-making processes, the less they will feel controlled by others. Therefore, democracy should be participatory."

“A Vision for the Future. Politics should convincingly convey how to effectively address the ongoing transformations that generate fear among the population. Whether it be climate change, artificial intelligence, or migration. Politics should not only speak of duties, renunciations, or demands, but also promote motivations about the future. Because a pro-climate policy also means and requires a healthy environment, cities worth living in, and that offer economic opportunities” (Gaub, June/July 2025: 54).

Big capital seeks to destroy human solidarity and vies for the planet's and countries' scarce resources: productive land, water, biodiversity, rare earth elements, lithium, and energy. However, this strategy is confronted by communities, regions, socio-environmental movements, and feminist movements.

Women's movements are fighting to improve their conditions of discrimination.

"The promotion of gender equality and women's human rights that organizations have been promoting through their activism and community work contributes to democratic strengthening and promotes more inclusive and diverse political power structures" (OAS-CIM. 2025: 10).

It is currently difficult to predict with certainty what society will look like in the future. Globalization has been slowed by pandemics, regional wars, energy crises, and the emergence of new imperial powers vying for control of territories, natural resources, and geopolitical strategies.

Within this context, it can be argued that certain Latin American and Caribbean regions exhibit socio-ecological transition models based on relocalization, circular economy, and the protection of common goods. Their future sustainability will depend particularly on the deepening of democracy, the implementation of regional/local governance models, and the collaboration of researchers who support the emancipatory decolonization processes of communities striving to improve their quality of life.

In recent years, Latin America has witnessed significant mobilizations of producers in the public sphere. Through their demands, these producers challenge the hegemonic collective intellect, and their intellectual pronouncements socially propel the ideological and sociocultural contradictions of the system to become visible. Addressing these complex processes requires a multidimensional, interdisciplinary, and inter-knowledge-based analytical perspective (Rojas, 2016), encompassing educational, environmental, political, economic, gender, ethnic, and multicultural aspects. Social life is a multidimensional phenomenon, whose interpenetrations must be analyzed according to each particular process (Domínguez, 2009). This approach also demands new practices from researchers that recover, value, and recognize the relevance and social connection of knowledge.

Education is a central theme of one of the Working Group's priorities. Overcoming current crises requires strengthening education and adapting it to the changing times. In this regard, universities, research institutes and groups, as well as educational establishments, can play an important innovative role in the process of seeking education for a sustainable future (Rojas, CLACSO, 2025).

Women's rights are central to the decolonization process. Their movements fight to improve their conditions of discrimination worldwide, and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The promotion of gender equality and women's human rights that organizations have been promoting through their activism and community work contributes to democratic strengthening and promotes more inclusive and diverse political power structures" (OAS-CIM. 2025: 10).

Women's rights constitute the epistemological basis of the GT 2026-2028.

The technological revolution and artificial intelligence are also of interest to the Working Group. They represent progress, but also conflicts related to job losses, the deterioration of social life, and new forms of power. Their social impacts are a cross-cutting concern for the Working Group 2026-2028.

The Working Group highlights the use of dialogical methodologies that include the perspective of the other and collaborative interpretation, investigative co-production, as well as the reinterpretation of knowledge produced from a participatory and comparative analysis in cultural and social contexts of the lives of the social actors studied.

We will continue to contribute to the narrative of Southern Epistemology. We will insist on the ecologies of knowledge and the trans-scales of productivity. Thinking about originality from the South requires a holistic critique of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000, 2012; Mignolo, 2001; Walsh, 2004); a questioning of Eurocentrism, instrumental rationality, discrimination, and patriarchy, which reproduce inequality, neocolonialism, and social exclusion. This leads to liberatory thought, as proposed by Dussel (2000) with his concept of transmodernity: philosophy and politics oriented toward liberation from neocolonial constraints through a praxis that integrates ethics and the principle of alterity into law and the recognition of difference from an intercultural perspective. In this sense, we will continue to open paradigmatic horizons from the perspective of social subjects, generating spaces for the reconstruction of knowledge based on the recognition of their practices and their emancipatory tendencies. The challenge for the social sciences and reflexive sociology is: how to reconstruct new methodologies from the ecology of knowledges, opening new horizons in the shared production of knowledge as a common good?

A new paradigm requires a deeper exploration of co-production: a) the justice of knowledge and b) collective production. It requires a shift towards a science that methodically incorporates the reproduction of its own productive body. The inadequacy of critical thinking, in the face of "scienticide," lies substantially in these destructive subjective and institutional limitations on production, since the hegemonic solipsistic tendency is reproduced through epistemic individualism and indexed productivity. The foundation of this new proposal is comprised of significant activities carried out in the areas of training, research, communication, seminars, discussions, conferences, the publication of various books and articles, community work, and interactions with other CLACSO Working Groups.

We seek to de-individualize the sciences and place them at the service of emancipatory biopolitical processes within human communities. We aim to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge: reason/emotion; mind/body; objective/subjective; masculine/feminine; universal/particular; local knowledge/scientific knowledge. We seek to democratize and humanize knowledge. We advocate for collaboration to generate co-production, communities of knowledge, and communication between peoples and territories of life.

"Local practices, knowledge, and experiences in water governance and in solving various socio-ecological problems that affect modern society represent important spaces for community management, social coexistence, and co-production of goods and knowledge; but in order for them to be truly effective and project themselves sustainably into the future, they require the support of local and state institutions" (Rojas Hernández, 2021: 22).

In this regard, the publication on Open Science is relevant:

UNESCO emphasizes citizen science; the participation of society in the generation of knowledge. This is crucial for our region, where solutions often arise from collaboration between scientists and local communities, who possess invaluable knowledge of their realities and needs. Open science also promotes open infrastructure, interoperable repositories, and the long-term preservation of knowledge, ensuring that the legacy of our research endures for future generations (Anllo, 2025: 25-26).

Based on the progress made, the plan is to move to a higher level by strengthening collaborative links with Working Groups: forces of producers, movements towards sociocultural and ecological intellect, with an epistemic shift, methodologies, education, intensifying the instruments of a dialogical, holographic and autopoetic recursive nature.

From a multidisciplinary and multidimensional perspective, we will continue working with social movements, territories, and localities that are bearers of their own emancipatory practices and knowledge. This work will be based on four key areas:

Axis 1. Transdisciplinarities, theoretical-political decolonizations, transformations with peoples, land and territories of life. Coordinators: Patricia Botero, Alicia Naveda, Rebeca Yanis Orobio and Janeth Calambás.

Theme 2. Plural feminisms, diversities and dissidences. Coordinators: Martha Zarina Ruiz, Rebeca Yáñez

Axis 3. Co-production, producers and methods. Movements towards social intellect. Coordinators: Alberto Bialakowsky, Ana Cárdenas, Luz Montolongo and Francisco Favieri.

Axis 4: Teacher training. Coordinators: Juana Erramuspe and Patricio Silva Ávila