Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America The Mecila – Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America examines past and present forms of social, political, and cultural conviviality in Latin America and the Caribbean. It employs conviviality as an analytical concept to describe ways of …
“Marginal Conviviality: on inequalities and the reproduction of violence”, by Gabriel Feltran In this ethnography of marginal conviviality in São Paulo, Brazil, the author addresses the theoretical framework of conviviality-inequality in social contexts marked by state and interpersonal violence. A life story, followed empirically from 2005-2018 in a district of São Paulo, guides the argumentation. …
Our new video series “Mecila Glossary” addresses the need to make concepts and ideas from the humanities and social sciences more accessible in plain language and friendly formats. We are inviting academics from our network to explain keywords related to our research interests. In the first episode, Maya Manzi, a former postdoctoral researcher at Mecila, …
We invite candidates to apply for a ten-week grant for a Thematic Research Group on conservatisms. The group should include two Senior Fellows (Experienced Scholars) and two Junior Fellows (scholars who have obtained their doctoral degrees in the last five years). At least one group member must be affiliated to one of Mecila’s seven partner …
We are honoured to announce that our first group of Junior and Senior Fellows has started their research activities at Mecila! We warmly welcome our Junior Fellows Juliana Streva (FU Berlin), Léa Tosold (USP), Ricardo Castellón (UzK), and Clemente Penna (UFRJ). They are distinguished early-career scholars that have recently obtained their doctoral degrees in the …
In our latest Working Paper, Fernando Baldraia (former Postdoctoral Investigator at Mecila) offers a diagnostic of our present times to advance the notion of conviviality as a space of analytical experimentation where inequality and difference share the condition of conceptual isonomy. “The particular thought experiment performed here”, writes Baldraia, “tries to accomplish this goal by exploring …
How did the construction of railways impact the daily life of those who lived at its margins? Which new social interactions arose with it, and how did people deal with the presence of trains, these new, unknown creatures? The latest episode of Diálogos Mecila invites Historian and former Mecila Postdoctoral Investigator Luciane Scarato to travel back to 19th-century Brazil …
In “Ancestral Knowledges and the Ecuadorian Knowledge Society”, political scientist Julia von Sigsfeld (Universität Potsdam) traces how so-called ancestral knowledges were elicited in unprecedented ways in the context of bringing about a change of the productive matrix in Ecuador, as biodiversity was conceptualized as the country’s most significant comparative advantage. The Working Paper Series is …
For the #05 episode of the Diálogos Mecila we invited researchers Peter Birle (Mecila Principal Investigator, IAI), Camila Rocha (Cebrap) and Fernando Baldraia (Mecila former Postdoctoral Researcher) to debate conservatism in Brazil, USA and India. The rise of conservative regimes throughout the world is no longer a new phenomenon. How did the new or radical …
The Research Area Medialities of Conviviality will hold regular virtual colloquia. The first session, “Medialities of conviviality: inequality,” takes place on July, 8th (16-18h MEZ). This first meeting starts with internal sessions to foster the discussions within the Research Area. In the Research Area, scholars from different disciplines work together. In addition to the coordinators …
