Chapters authored
Quality of Life from the South, Local Knowledge, Socio-Ecological Relationships, and Citizen Participation in Times of Global Climate Change
The quality of life in the South is coping with several problems and tensions that require solution: poverty, socio-territorial and climatic inequalities, lack of scientific and technological development, corruption, migration, lack of access to services, obsolescence of public institutions, and low citizen’s participation in the social affairs. There is a global crisis of the Anthropocene’s development model. Currently, this context explains multiple mobilizations such as social, environmental, gender, ethnic, working class, and student ones in the South, especially in Latin America. The mobilizations tend to deepen to the extent that the underlying problems are not solved with due urgency, depth, and focus on the human dignity. However, most people and communities value, practice, and aspire to improve their levels of quality of life. This is based on experiences and traditions—such as Living Well—that they have cultivated, beyond the empire of colonizing forces and based on common goods that have learned in a closer relationship with nature. In the South, there is cultural diversity, good coexistence practices, cooperative traditions, food quality, and biodiversity that are the bases for deepening the dreaming quality of life.
Part of the book: Quality of Life
Indigenous Peoples, Uncertainty and Exclusion in the Global South in Periods of the Pandemic
The indigenous peoples are distributed in all regions of the world, representing more than 6% of the world’s population. According to UN data, the pandemic has disproportionately affected indigenous groups, aggravating the structural inequalities and processes of widespread historical discrimination and exclusion present in the Global South, for example, high rates of extreme poverty, social exclusion, high prevalence of the disease, and limited and in some cases non-existent access to health care. Also, indigenous peoples have a great wealth of knowledge, traditional practices, cultural forms, and access to natural resources, as well as forms of collective social organization and community life that result in resilience factors in response to adversity and uncertainty. In this way, the chapter focuses from a descriptive-analytical approach on the situation of indigenous peoples and the pandemic, analyzing the forms of responses, their resilient action in the face of uncertainties and structural exclusions in the Global South.
Part of the book: Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Resilience During the Pandemic Period