Enacting networks, crossing borders: On the internationalization of the social sciences in Mexico

Abstract

The study of the internationalization of science seems to be focused on the natural and formal sciences and on networks of the Global North. A shift towards the social sciences and a peripheral region (Mexico) is proposed here and shows that two different types of networks are enacted to face the challenges of internationalized research. On the one hand, there are strategic networks which internalize the pressure of incentives brought to bear on academics and tend to reproduce an over-professionalized idea of the academia. On the other, there are engaged networks that try to strengthen international bonds according to certain politico-ethical imperatives. In this article, relying on current research on internationalization of the Mexican social sciences, the author explores the usefulness of these ideal-types of networks and discusses their implications.

Die Politik der Buchübersetzung

“…19 Eine gewisse Ambivalenz liegt schließlich in Heilbrons Schlussfolgerung, dass ein translatorisches Weltsystem zwar aus der gegenseitigen Abhängigkeit von Sprachräumen steht, jedoch zugleich »cultural exchanges have a dynamic of their own, based on a certain autonomy vis-a-vis the constraints of the world market« (Heilbron 2000, 12). Dies äußert sich beispielsweise darin, dass -für den literarischen Buchübersetzungsmarkt -die extreme Dominanz des Englischen den Platz für Übersetzungen aus anderen Sprachen nicht verdrängt, sondern lediglich die Produktion »autochthoner« literarischer Werke beeinflusst (dies wird zumindest für die Niederlande 18 Branchadell (2005,2) (Bielsa 2016), Globalisierung und Inter-/Transnationalisierung der Geistes-und Sozialwissenschaften (Heilbron 2014;Heilbron et al 2017;Rodriguez Medina 2019), die Translate produziert und von solchen produziert wird.…”

On the importance of taking risks

“…The debate on inequalities in the geopolitics of knowledge production and circulation found in Current Sociology a welcoming and fertile space for debate, especially during the last three decades. The journal published influential articles by Oomen (1991), McDaniel (2003), Alatas (2003), Baber (2003); and the more recent contributions by Vessuri, Guédon and Cetto (2013); Ramos-Zincke (2014), Mosbah-Natanson and Gingras (2014), Beigel (2014), Vessuri (2015), Oomen (2016), Collyer (2018) Rodriguez Medina (2019), and Koch and Vanderstraeten (2019), among others. Nevertheless, besides the debate, there was much work to be done to rectify the inequalities these authors were highlighting, and I wanted to embrace and put into action the transformations in Sociology which I was reading and teaching about in the previous years.…”

Social science Eurocentrism in the land of universalism: An introduction to French blindness

“…It may be apprehended as the “global” becoming of a discipline through the development of international associations (Boncourt, 2018; Platt, 1998). It may also be understood as the efforts undertaken by sociological bodies in “peripheral” countries in terms of language or international recognition (see Yazawa, 2014, for Japan; Blanco & Wilkis, 2018, for Argentina; Rodriguez Medina, 2019, for Mexico). On the whole, internationalization is rarely the subject of a treatment that seeks to grasp or improve the place given by the discipline in question to authors, theories or works coming from abroad, which the Canadian sociologist Yves Gingras, essentially on the basis of collaborations between authors coming from different countries, but also on the basis of “sources used by researchers in their work,” rather refers to as the “internationality” at work in sociological texts (Gingras, 2002, p. 37).…”