Background Biomedical and ethnographic studies among indigenous people are common practice in health and geographical research. Prior health research misconduct has been documented, particularly when obtaining genetic material. The objective of this study was to crossmatch previously published data with the perceptions of the Waorani peoples about the trading of their genetic material and other biological samples. Methods We conducted a mixed methods study design using a tailored 15-item questionnaire in 72 participants and in-depth interviews in 55 participants belonging to (...) 20 Waorani communities about their experiences and perceptions of participating in biomedical research projects. Additionally, we conducted a systematic review of the literature in order to crossmatch the published results of studies stating the approval of an ethics committee and individual consent within their work. Results A total of 40 men and 32 women, with a mean age of 57 ± 15 years agreed to be interviewed for inclusion. Five main categories around the violation of good clinical practices were identified, concerning the obtention of blood samples from a recently contacted Waorani native community within the Amazonian region of Ecuador. These themes are related to the lack of adequate communication between community members and researchers as well as the voluntariness to participate in health research. Additionally, over 40 years, a total of 38 manuscripts related to the use of biological samples in Waorani indigenous people were published. The majority of the studies did not state within their article obtaining research ethics board approval, and 71% did not report obtaining the informed consent of the participants prior to the execution of the project. Conclusion Clinical Research on the Waorani community in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin has been performed on several occasions. Unfortunately, the majority of these projects did not follow the appropriate ethical and professional standards in either reporting the results or fulfilling them. The results of our investigation suggest that biological material, including genetic material, has been used by researchers globally, with some omitting the minimum information required to guarantee transparency and good clinical practices. We highlight the importance of stating ethics within research to avoid breaches in research transparency. (shrink)

La pregunta que articula este artículo es acerca del tipo de sujeto que se esconde tras los requisitos formales del acto en Žižek. ¿Quiénes son los sujetos empíricos implicados en su concepción de acto? El acto lo es sin sujeto, carece de explicación causalista; sin embargo, si bien no aporta una noción positiva con contornos específicos y un contenido determinado, sí existe una dimensión sociológica implícita. ¿Dónde ubica sociológicamente ese “universal concreto”? Si el efecto más inmediato de lo que Žižek (...) denomina “posmodernismo” es la despolitización de la economía, ¿Quién es, entonces, el agente de la repolitización? ¿qué podría ocupar hoy el lugar de “posición proletaria”? Argumentamos que si bien Žižek se propone repetir Lenin contra las concepciones economicistas, su apuesta por el lumpen como “individuo universal” lo aproxima más bien a los planteamientos bakunianos contra Marx, al observar en las figuras de la exclusión un potencial sujeto revolucionario. (shrink)

El término “ambivalencia” cumple con varias de las funciones teóricas más relevantes tanto para el psicoanálisis como para su tesis fundacional: la del inconsciente. Este artículo se plantea la necesidad de elaborar una revisión somera que sea capaz de enlazar los condicionantes socio-históricos de la disciplina freudiana con los antecedentes teóricos más relevantes de su objeto de estudio. En este nexo surge la historia de la filosofía y sus contribuciones a la constitución de su concepto de inconsciente, comportándose como si (...) se tratara de un “alter ego”, incómodo pero imprescindible, de cuya acechanza Freud nunca se llega a emancipar. (shrink)

In both philosophy and the sciences of the mind there is a shared commitment to the idea that there is a center— the seat of consciousness, the source of deliberation and reflection, and the core of personal identity —in the mind. My dissertation challenges this deeply entrenched view. I review the empirical literature on working memory, psychology’s best candidate for the workspace of the mind, and argue that it is not a natural kind and cannot inform these central cognitive processes. (...) This deflationary view directly imperils many naturalistic theories of consciousness that rely on working memory, which are reviewed in this project. This dissertation thus serves as the necessary first negative step required to begin the process of articulating socially-embedded accounts of many central cognitive processes that dominate the contemporary philosophical literature, including consciousness and reasoning. (shrink)

The traditional “realist” conception of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of a reality in our absence , seems incompatible with quantum formalism and it most fruitful interpretation. The proof rests on the violation by quantum mechanical formalism of some fundamental principles of the classical ontology. We discuss if the conception behind Einstein’s idea of a reality in our absence, could be still maintained and at which price. We conclude that quantum mechanical formalism (...) is not formulated on those terms, leaving for a separated paper the discussion about the terms in which it could be formulated and the onto-epistemological implications it might have. (shrink)

Over the past two decades the growth of the organic sector has been accompanied by a shift away from first party, or peer review, systems of certification and towards third party certification, in which a disinterested party is responsible for the development of organic standards and the verification of producer compliance. This paper explores some of the limitations of the third party certification model and presents the case of Mexico as an example of how an alternative form of participatory certification (...) has emerged. The paper suggests that participatory guarantee systems (PGS) are reflective of the growing “beyond organic” movement, which focuses on reconstructing the local and re-embedding food systems into their socio-ecological contexts. It argues that PGS offers a number of benefits for producers and consumers, particularly in the South, but that it faces a number of challenges as well, such as a lack of formal recognition, social conflicts and dependence on donated resources. (shrink)

La teoría de sistemas formulada por el sociólogo Niklas Luhmann constituye uno de los más notables productos teóricos de lo que se ha venido en llamar la postmodernidad. Su gran capacidad explicativa la hace muy interesante como modelo de comprensión de lo social, lo político y lo jurídico en la compleja realidad actual. El presente trabajo pretende interpretar esta teoría desde una perspectiva metodológicamente estructural, esto es, explicitando la estructura de pensamiento sobre la que descansa desde una hermenéutica que la (...) considera analógicamente en relación con la Modernidad, con el propósito de comprenderla en el ámbito filosófico más abierto posible, el metafísico, y en el más concreto de la teoría sociológica, política y jurídica actual. (shrink)

La Revolución Francesa (1789) ha despertado desde sus impresionantes acontecimientos, las más diversas reacciones y las más inimaginadas formas de interpretarlos. El "problema social" durante las primeras décadas del siglo XIX, que aflora en parte como consecuencia de esta "aurora del mundo" contemporáneo, determinó una nueva manera de contemplar este acontecimiento histórico universal. Tres personalidades intelectuales de primer rango. Lorenz von Stein, Karl Marx y Alexis de Tocqueville, procedentes de tres mundos político-sociales y académicos diversos, se enfrentan a evaluar el (...) significado de la Revolución Francesa a la luz de los convulsos acontecimientos de su siglo. Sus penetrantes miradas no sólo enfatizan en la actualidad imborrable de los acontecimientos derivados del 89 hasta Napoleón, sino que descubren un horizonte social para la historia de cuño decisivo. La historia deja de ser una historia de acontecimientos, de datos o fechas, en el sentido tradicional de crónica, e incluso la historia deja de contemplarse como un asunto racional en la tradición ilustrada. La Revolución Francesa, gracias a estos tres autores, supera su circunstancialidad épocal y se eleva a una categoría de estructura de sentido inmanente. En otros términos, a diferencia de su contemporáneo Leopold von Ranke, von Stein, Marx y Tocqueville construyen un nuevo sentido de la historia, particularmente de las raíces incuestionables del mundo contemporáneo. (shrink)