Latin America: you are here!

Abstract

This call from V!RUS journal aims to bring together at least three categories of academic work: 1] those produced in Latin American countries, but not necessarily approaching regional issues; 2] those which have the continent as their main subject and their focused issues are related to its cities and cultures; and 3] works that discuss aspects, processes, dynamics of places geographically located in one of the twenty independent countries of Central and South America, and the Caribbean, whose official language comes from the Romance languages Portuguese, Spanish or French. We seek scientific articles and critical essays that range in one of the above categories, and moreover study and problematize the production of cities and architecture, the dynamics of urban life, and cultural issues.

Housing a population of more than 600 million people, about 78% of whom live in cities, these countries exhibit huge inequalities both internally as well as with each other. At the same time, they share a history of coloniality that, in many ways, extends to the present, and they also have in common the understanding of the Latin American city as a socio-cultural construct, as proposed by Adrián Gorelik. Aware of the immense wealth and diversity of the scientific work produced on the continent, this call also targets scholars from other countries who have been dedicated to Latin American issues or related to the Global South.

The twenty-second edition of V!RUS hopes, on the one hand, to gather studies from different perspectives on the production of cities in Latin America, their buildings, the dynamics of urban life, and Latin American cultures, side by side, in order to raise transversal topics, renew methodological understandings, identify singularities, highlight current issues, propose new theoretical articulations, and reframe our understanding of the continent. It also wants to put together research work that can contribute to reflections and actions on the Global South and especially the Latin American continent. The papers do not need to address specific Latin American issues, but we ask authors to establish a dialogue between their research reflections and the Latin American context.

We are interested in works that approach the edition's theme in a critical and well-founded way, from different areas of knowledge, in particular architecture, urban studies, art, cinema, design, anthropology, cultural studies, history, geography, and social, environmental, and political sciences, among others, dealing in particular – but not only – with the following topics:

+ Humanities research in or about Latin America: a review of analytical concepts and categories, the expansion of the field, methods and procedures, the role of the researcher, the sense of belonging and the awareness of the place

+ Cultures, diversity, and minorities: gender identity, ethnic identity, multiculturality, native peoples

+ Technopolitics: big data, privacy, use of personal data, Artificial Intelligence, security and control applications

+ Political participation: social movements, cyberactivism, cyberspace and the public scene, public decision-making processes, agendas, achievements

+ Polarities and socio-political issues: revisions and setbacks in the construction of the commons, hate speech, social networks

+ Fake news and the notion of truth: manipulation of public interest information, moderation and monitoring, attitudes to scientific knowledge

+ Public management, transparency, and governance, urban public policies: the Latin American city as an analytical category

+ International dialogues: bi- or multilateral cooperation, common borders, legal aspects, concepts and conflicts, Latin America and the (new) world order

+ Latin America and the COVID-19 pandemic: society, urban dynamics, cultural issues, job insecurity

+ Latin America and sovereignty: external interference, international extraction of natural resources and personal data, historical processes of sending wealth from the South towards the North of the planet

+ Theoretical frameworks, meta-theories, systemic thinking, complexity, cybernetics, communication ecology, transdisciplinarity

+ The housing question: housing modalities, design, and production, urban occupations and the struggle for housing, financialization, national social housing programs

+ Teleworking: historical references, technical framework, domestic environment, pandemic and insecurity

+ Audiovisual, documentation and urban readings: explorations, experiments, representations, teaching, and theoretical foundation

+ Artistic production and digital media: history, contemporaneity, projects, criticism

+ Memory and cultural heritage: documentation, dissemination, special projects, preservation, recovery of construction techniques and popular knowledge

+ The notions of national and regional product design: research, production, innovations, explorations

+ Digital cartographies and representations of the city: records and omissions, ownership and control of contemporary mappings, GIS, CIM platforms

+ Design processes in architecture, urbanism and product design, BIM and mediated collaboration, parametric design

+ Physical modeling, parametric modeling, digital fabrication, remote design, and production processes

+ Teaching and learning processes via the Internet: concepts, methodologies, innovative practices, learning spaces, the role of teacher

+ University extension: face-to-face projects with communities, live sessions, webinars, and whom they are intended to, preliminary assessment

+ University-community projects and the construction of commons: community participatory actions, digital social technologies, bottom-up citizen actions

In addition to text and graphic images, we welcome photo essays, videos, short films, animations and gifs, sound and musical pieces, and testimonials in audio files, art installation projects, architectural, urban studies, and building projects and criticism, slide shows and further digital languages considering Nomads.usp's interest in exploring the potential of digital media use on the Internet for academic communication.

Contributions will be received in ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE, OR SPANISH on the journal website no later than March 7th, 2021, according to the guidelines for authors available at www.nomads.usp.br/virus/submissions.

IMPORTANT DATES

December 2020: first call for papers

February 2021: second call for papers

March 7th, 2021: deadline for submissions

From April 12th: notification to authors on the evaluation outcome and request for any adjustments

May 24th: deadline to receive the authors' adjustments in the original version of the articles

June 6th: deadline to receive the article's translated version (to English, Spanish or Portuguese)

July 2021: the release of V!RUS 21