RUNA, archivo para las ciencias del hombre

Preliminares e índice

Runa Cuerpo editorial — 2025-07-08

Experiencias socioeducativas: aprender haciendo en el campo de las Ciencias Antropológicas

Maximiliano Rúa — 2025-07-30

Learning by doing with the Xakriabá: territorialized experiences in conducting research and training researchers

Juliana Ventura de Souza Fernandes — 2025-06-09

This article presents the pathways involved in conducting research and training both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, based on experiences involving the Xakriabá Indigenous people. It begins with the problematization of a scientific investigation, broken down into the stages of research proposal, development, identification of possible “applications,” and, later, the proposition of “returns” or “counterparts” to the groups involved. It seeks to focus on learning to do research in co-presence with those directly affected by the consequences of the investigation, as a practice of “self-regulation” of scientific production. It draws on a revisited notion of “communities of practice” (Lave, 2019) and connects it to the idea of “practices in common” (Stengers, 2015) to explore, across different research settings, how relationships define the situated framing of the investigation, as well as how they give rise to a composition of practices that brings together different practitioners in an articulation aimed at responding to diverse interests.

Schoolchildren mapping their environment

Elsie Rockwell — 2025-06-30

To investigate how schoolchildren comprehend their environment and how they communicate and represent what they know, we decided to combine two perspectives: Brousseau’s didactic theory, which allows us to understand the diversity of students’ points of view on any knowledge, and the concepts of anthropologist Timothy Ingold, who considers the “process of knowing” as the result of inhabiting and traversing an environment along a “meshwork of paths.” With this in mind, we explored notes, photos and video recordings of a community mapping activity designed by a project to study the links between children’s knowledge and the environment. For this article, we analyzed sequences in which two fifth-grade teams debated, based on their experience, how to locate certain places and trace paths on their map. We describe the complexity of their verbal and gestural interventions and confirm the value of Ingold’s concepts in accessing children’s knowledge of their environment.

Research and technical assistance experiences in the management of indigenous education (Chaco)

Florencia Vecchione — 2025-06-30

The Intercultural Bilingual Education of the province of Chaco (Argentina) represents a key experience of this educational modality within our country, whose trajectory –predating the enactment of relevant legislation– can be understood through the various ways in which Indigenous communities themselves have led this process. The role of the leaders of the Qom, Wichí, and Moqoit peoples has evolved from organizing demands and advocating before the provincial government to their inclusion in educational management at ministerial levels. This article presents the collaborative work experience of a research team composed of linguists, anthropologists, and a geographer, working alongside teachers and representatives of Chaco’s Intercultural Bilingual Education (EBI). The aim is to revisit a series of collaborative efforts and share insights arising from the integration of technical assistance and research from academic-institutional spaces with actors who have taken on management responsibilities.

Intercultural coexistence in primary schools

Porfiria del Rosario Bustamante de la Cruz — 2025-06-30

This qualitative study analyzes intercultural coexistence in schools in northwestern Mexico with a high presence of migrant children, based on interviews with 33 teachers and critical analysis. Information related to the central category Intercultural coexistence and its predetermined subcategories were identified: violence prevention strategies, attention strategies and transformation strategies. It should be noted that two additional subcategories emerged during the analysis: linguistic and cultural barriers, and exchange of knowledge. The findings show pedagogical practices oriented towards inclusive coexistence, although institutional and pedagogical challenges persist to include cultural and linguistic diversity. Teaching practice is recognized as a key axis in the construction of inclusive educational spaces; however, teachers are in the process of transitioning towards more reflective and critical approaches. It is concluded that strengthening teacher training from a critical and intercultural perspective is essential to guarantee the educational rights of migrant children.

I imagine everything as it was before

Gabriela Piña Ahumada — 2025-06-30

The present article seeks to contribute methodological reflections for working with rural youth and to challenge hegemonic ideas about adolescent women and Indigenous peoples, highlighting the agency of rural adolescent girls through their own narratives. The text is based on a project of creation and reflection carried out with a group of Pehuenche students at a secondary school in the Araucanía region of Chile. The project aimed to reflect on identity constructions in relation to gender, territory, and ethnicity, from the perspective of rural girls and adolescents through artistic workshops. The process allows for significant contributions regarding collaborative work, the continuity and change of cultural ideas, and spaces for making youthful subjectivities visible

Nomadic methodological tactics as production of non-adult knowledge in socio-educational research

Siu Lay-Lisboa — 2025-06-02

As a result of an adult-centered and colonial sociocultural heritage, children are thought of as pre-social persons, lacking knowledge, and projected into the future. This causes impediments to the production of scientific knowledge with children, mainly due to the difficulty in overcoming the dominance of the pseudo-natural pair adulthood-childhood. Therefore, it is not unusual that those who usually report on the problems and interests of childhood are usually adults. Theoretical-epistemological and technical-methodological challenges are discussed at the moment of researching with children. We propose the use of four methodological techniques to produce stories with children: talking drawing, mapping, the story of unfinished situations and social theater. We seek to promote studies that articulate together with children a hybrid place, a third space, where influences of a dominant and a subordinate sociocultural model are filtered and permeate, and where alternative societies are built.

Ludic pedagogies against neoliberal subjectivities

Emilia Millon — 2025-06-30

This paper explores the use of ludic pedagogies as methodologies for participatory action research and militant investigations, drawing from feminist epistemology and popular education. It shares concrete experiences that challenge neoliberal subjectivities promoted by the dominant economic system—such as meritocracy, competition, and entrepreneurship—through playful, collective learning processes. Rooted in feminist economics, the proposal emphasizes the standpoint critique to reframe research practices by placing life at the center of analysis. Ludic pedagogies are presented as tools that resist neoliberal logics, fostering agency and collective reflection to subvert intersecting systems of gender, race, and class oppression. Rather than offering prescriptive methods, this approach contributes to broader pedagogical and political efforts to transform research into a non-extractive, collaborative practice aligned with the struggles of marginalized communities. As part of critical and popular pedagogies, ludic methodologies open space for rethinking knowledge production and advancing emancipatory political projects through creative, situated, and participatory means.

From a Fortuitous Encounter to a Community of Practice

Eva Guadalupe Lucero — 2025-06-30

In the academic sphere, knowledge is transmitted according to a specific temporal and methodological framework, structured through formal curricular processes. However, when knowledge is acquired outside these frameworks, alternative learning dynamics emerge that are worth exploring. The aim of this paper is to present a fortuitous process of collective knowledge construction in human osteology that led to the formation of a community of practice. Drawing on the experience of the Osteological Collection Team of the General San Martín Cemetery, we reconstruct the formative trajectories that emerged in response to the limited availability of institutional spaces for training in forensic anthropology. In particular, we reflect on shared practices and peer-to-peer exchange that fostered meaningful learning experiences beyond formal academic settings, experiences in which we have participated, and in some cases continue to participate, as undergraduate students and anthropology graduates.

Conquering beauty

Agustina Triquell — 2025-06-30

This article aims to reflect on the tensions between the intentions of the research and the realities of fieldwork in the context of the production of photographic images in a series of workshops carried out in a peripheral neighborhood in the city of Córdoba (Argentina). The initial proposal was centered on the elaboration of visual narratives from the neighborhood, in order to respond to the stigmatizing views elaborated from outside. In the possibility of producing their own images, the importance of nature and beauty appeared in the perception of the neighborhood, where the inhabitants find value in their natural surroundings, often ignored by people from outside this neighborhood. The research reveals that neighborhood identity is not to be found in the cultural representation imposed from outside, but in the everyday experience and contact with nature.

When the files return to the territory

Alexis Papazian — 2025-06-30

This paper analyzes and reflects on the process of preparation and presentation in the territory of four volumes entitled “Papeles y memorias. Documents, state records and memories in the Mapuche communities of the Department of Aluminé”. They were made during 2022-2023 and presented in Aluminé, province of Neuquén (Argentina), during November 2023. We are interested, in this work, in (a) observing the relationship between the written state archives and the remoteness/proximity with the Mapuche communities of the region, (b) reflecting on the work of the researchers, the role of the state and the communities of the area and (c) analyzing the affectivities that emerge in the subjects that are questioned as a people, as a community and/or as a family from their memories in relation to the archives. Finally, we propose a reflection on the notion of frontiers and the archives that these frontiers have produced.

In memoriam of Jenny Assaél

Alonso Laborda Contreras — 2025-06-30

Making and living the neighborhood

Yanina Kaplan — 2025-07-03

This article explores the practices and forms of organization developed by women living in Villa 21-24 (Buenos Aires City) to improve life in the neighborhood, and reflects on the meanings they themselves attribute to these actions. The work is part of a broader research project and follows a qualitative methodology, grounded in a socio-anthropological approach, an intersectional perspective, and ethnographic tools based on fieldwork carried out between 2015 and 2024. From a situated position that articulates research with activism and social work, the article presents scenes, dialogues, and organizational strategies. Through a historical overview, it shows how, based on shared experiences, these women activate processes of politicization of everyday life that strengthen responses to structural problems. Although these actions are often not recognized as political practices, they are what make life possible in contexts of precarity.

“They say one thing but in practice they do another”

Romina Del Monaco — 2025-06-30

Starting from social sciences research on the narratives of psychologists and psychiatrists, the aim of this work is to investigate the articulation between diagnostic categories and trans identities, taking into account the enactment of the gender identity law in 2012 in Argentina. This law is the result of demands made to the State and healthcare services by sex-dissident activists. Thus, the study investigates professional accounts regarding the ways in which gender self-perception is expressed. One of the key aspects of the law is its depathologizing nature. In this sense, the paper explores the tensions between what is said and practiced from psychological knowledge, based on the aforementioned transformations. It is interesting to examine the coexistence and, often, contradiction between pathologizing elements that persist in discourses with modifications in practices, the incorporation of other knowledge, and internal discussions. This is a qualitative study, and in-depth interviews were conducted with psychologists and psychiatrists working in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Defensive rural constructions of the NE of the Province of Buenos Aires in the 19th century

Oscar M. Palacios — 2025-06-30

At 19th century, rural inhabitants of the province of Buenos Aires, in areas of conflict because of attacks by the original inhabitant and/or internal struggles for national organization built their border houses as a way to defend their property and their lives.
We consider that many constructions are defensive but theoretically we are lacking the set of variables that must come into play in this statement. From the case of the RRF Pergamino, repeated in other dwellings in a similar and sometimes identical way, we can at least affirm a remarkable ubiquity. The structure has many features (moat, lookout, low eaves, privileged location, etc.) similar to other buildings built in contemporary times that cover practically all the S XIX. Variables that would be in play in the concept of defense, were inquiered to military sources and contrasted to RRF

Child nutritional status and food practices and representations in vulnerable collectives of the periurban area of La Plata

Olivia Lopez Monja — 2025-06-30

The aim of this study was to improve knowledge of the nutritional status of children and family food practices and representations in vulnerable populations living in the peri-urban area of La Plata. To this end, a cross-sectional anthropometric study was carried out on 581 schoolchildren aged 6-12 years, and nutritional categories were determined on the basis of body weight, height and body mass index. Socioeconomic and environmental characteristics
of residence and family food practices and representations were also assessed. The results confirm the socio-economic and environmental vulnerability of the population studied and the coexistence of the two faces of child malnutrition, with an apparent substitution of undernutrition by overweight. The practices and representations related to eating that families use in their own context and daily lives are also identified.

Los Natural elements and the connection with andean cultural practices in the Jesuit churches of colonial Chucuito (17th-18th century)

Carla Maranguello — 2025-06-09