Hugo Zemelman Prize, epistemology and politics, ten years after his death

CALL FOR ESSAYS

18 September 2023

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Half a century ago, fateful events unfolded that, through a military coup and the destabilizing intervention of internal groups supported by external powers, halted the political transformation—the so-called democratic path to socialism—that the constitutional government of Salvador Allende was undertaking. With the imposition of this regime of terror, the violation of human rights, and the methods of control characteristic of national security dictatorships (which spread to other countries in the Southern Cone of the continent), many people saved their lives by going into exile in other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. This was also the case for great Chilean thinkers who were forced to leave their country.

Hugo Zemelman Merino experienced this circumstance in a significant way. He went from being a professor at the University of Chile in Santiago to moving his work to Mexico as soon as his ability to sustain his teaching and educational work in his birthplace was hindered by the police forces and military intervention in academic institutions, which were either closed or where critical reflection was mutilated.

The territorial relocation would soon be expressed as a shift in his intellectual concerns. Zemelman would thus see the scope of his reflection broaden, moving from issues of rural studies, peasant mobilizations, and the labor movement to a wider reflection on political struggle, the State, and questions of power. This emphasis on the determinations of history and politics on the planes of knowledge would then lead to his mature reflections on the heuristic possibilities of dialectics, critical analyses of and from the totality, and the inscription of themes of utopia and the future on reasoning and historical construction. His work as a whole strives to develop an epistemic way of thinking about reality, endowing questions of knowledge with a certain rigor that prevents these reflections from descending into the cold slopes of the abstract logic of concepts and instead engages them with the heated struggles waged by social actors and movements in the arena of political dispute.

Hugo Zemelman was born in Concepción, Chile, in 1931. He earned undergraduate degrees in rural sociology and law, and completed postgraduate studies in sociology. Throughout his long career, he held the positions of Director of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chile, Professor-Researcher at the Center for Higher Studies of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Professor-Researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies at El Colegio de México, and collaborator with CLACSO on the rural studies commission. He also taught at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and was the Founder and Director General of the Institute for Thought and Culture in Latin America (IPECAL) until his death on October 3, 2013. His extensive intellectual output included over one hundred articles, numerous lectures, and the publication of dozens of books, many of which have become classics in social analysis.

The call for essays in homage to Hugo Zemelman, ten years after his death, is an initiative of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) with several purposes. First, to honor the legacy of epistemic and methodological work that the Chilean sociologist built throughout his itinerant career across Latin America and the Caribbean. Second, to stimulate the production of historical and historicizing thought committed to the noblest causes of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples. Third, to trace, in the subterranean gestures, the reminiscences of historical events, and the unfolding of instituting political practices, the political processes of subject reconstitution or the emergence of processes of political subjectivation that may be steering the present toward a future under construction—elements from which, using Zemelman's categories, political analysis can be undertaken. As a fourth objective, it proposes to promote the use or appropriation of the approaches suggested by Zemelman to foster reflective knowledge that addresses the density and plurality of temporalities, as well as the complexity and interweaving of spatialities in theorizations on issues of territoriality, place, regions, memory, or conjuncture, in analyses that combine scales from the local, the national, or the global. Finally, it seeks to address his concerns about what he called committed knowledge, which sometimes arose within the framework of problems associated with “historical impasse,” and therefore the ethical need to address these situations through the opening up of the object, subjects, or institutions, as may be the case with the university itself.

This is a call for essays, seeking the participation of both established and experienced intellectuals, as well as new generations of researchers and academics. Therefore, it is aimed at graduate students, professors, and researchers interested in the study of Zemelman's extensive work and its legacies and resonances. Applicants must be endorsed by CLACSO network member centers.

El Hugo Zemelman Prize, epistemology and politics, ten years after his death We are seeking essays focused on various thematic areas. Among others, the suggested topics are the following:

• Epistemology and methodology from Latin America
• Notions for categorical thinking, and for understanding the direction of knowledge structures.
• Key elements of a historical and committed knowledge.
• Analysis of political subjectivation from some Zemelmanian categories.
• Memory and events as key issues for the political analysis and the Latin American situation
• Utopia and the future in knowledge.

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RULES OF THE CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Those authors whose essay proposals are selected will be contacted by email. The list of winning essays will be published on the CLACSO website.

Queries: [email protected]

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OPINION – Hugo Zemelman Prize, epistemology and politics, ten years after his death

The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) announces the results of the
Call for essay proposals “Hugo Zemelman Prize, epistemology and politics, ten years after his death”.

Hugo Zemelman was born in Concepción, Chile in 1931. He earned degrees in rural sociology and law, and completed postgraduate studies in sociology. Throughout his long career, he held the positions of Director of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chile, Professor-Researcher at the Center for Higher Studies of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNAM, Professor-Researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies at El Colegio de México, collaborator with CLACSO on the rural studies commission, and professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). He was also the Founder and Director General of the Institute for Thought and Culture in Latin America AC (IPECAL) until his death on October 3, 2013.

The event, held in his honor ten years after his death, is an initiative of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) to honor the legacy of epistemic and methodological work that the Chilean sociologist built throughout his itinerant career across the Latin American and Caribbean region; to stimulate the production of historical and historicizing thought committed to the best causes of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples; and to trace, in the subterranean gestures, in the reminiscences of historical feats, and in the deployments of instituting political practices, the political processes of reconstitution of the subject or the emergence of processes of political subjectivation that could be steering the present towards a future under construction; as well as to promote the use or appropriation of the approaches suggested by Zemelman to foster reflective knowledge.

The 42 proposals received were found to be in a condition to be evaluated by the Committee
International. The Committee considered the quality, relevance, coherence and timeliness of the proposals, in accordance with the terms of the Call for Proposals.

The evaluation process was carried out by an International Committee made up of the following experts: Alejandra Bazúa, Ana Ceceña, José Gandarilla, Marcela Gómez Sollano, Araceli Mondragón, Adriana Murguía, Lía Pinheiro Barbosa, Ricardo Romo and Alfonso Torres.

The evaluation, based on anonymized work, assessed the quality of the essay proposals submitted, as well as their soundness and intellectual contribution to the issues addressed in the Call for Papers.

Furthermore, given the quality and relevance of most of the works, CLACSO decided to expand the number of winning proposals to 15, 5 more than the 10 established in the Call for Proposals.

Within 90 days of this notification of results, authors must submit their final essay according to the guidelines defined in the Call for Papers. Once submitted, a further evaluation will be conducted for inclusion in the digital publication, which will be a CLACSO edition produced by the CLACSO Publications Department and will be available in open access, free of charge.

According to the evaluation carried out, the list of the 15 (fifteen) selected essay proposalsThe final essays will form part (once approved) of the collective digital publication.

This ruling is irrevocable and cannot be appealed.

Buenos Aires, November 22, 2023.