ABOUT THIS ISSUE Theories postulated to explain our creativity and its collective grounds (culture) have often led to innovation in historiography and new currents of critical revision in the Historical Sciences. Hence, the identification of common problems treated by such theories can shed light on both the historical revisionism characteristic of a period and each new theory and its achievements. In contemporary formulations of cultural theory, for example, one notes a growing interest in the problem of the relation between sociability and reflexive consciousness. We know through introspection that we sustain and articulate our self conscious acts through processes of representation; we recognize as well that certain representations achieve a notable durability as guides for our dispositions and suppositions. Is it possible, then, to comprehend, for the past or in the present, processes of representation and their relations with our ways of thinking, acting and feeling? Is sociability, those strategies for the presentation of the person in public, a pycho-historical configuration of representations of durable dispositions and suppositions? The historical, socio-material and ideational nature of the durability of representations and their weight in the constitution of ways of thinking, acting, and feeling are contentious themes in Anthropology and History. We marvel, for instance, at how representation implies (represents) the transformation of social interaction into symbolic interactions but we must comprehend as well how and when social representation involves the separation of meaning from experience in the context of domination (Roseberry 1989, 46). Sigmund Freud observed at some moment that representation means the absence of the object of desire. Long before Freud s aphorism, though, Marx had characterized the representations of the past as tormenting or a nightmare in the brains of the living. On the one hand, representation frees our experience from the immediate situation of experimenting; on the other, it can penetrate us and inscribe attitudes and dispositions, preferences and aversions in our bodies. The thematic section of this issue represents an effort coordinated by Luis Esparza and Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara to explore one of the
contemporary currents of social representational analysis and interpretation; in this case, the theory of social representation associated with the work of Serge Moscovici. We begin with an essay by Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara that seeks to relate the work of Moscovici to the studies of Roger Chartier in The World as Representation. Taking Chartier s work as his starting point, the author examines the presence of a theory of social representation in the historiographic frameworks of the New Cultural History and the History of Mentalities. As a prelude to the discussion of Chartier s book, the essay introduces us to a historiography conscious that the frontiers between ontology and epistemology constitute the site where history is made. Then, it examines the contrasts and complements of Chartier s historiographic approach with the theory of social representations in Social Psychology, emphasizing the concrete challenges for a general theory of social representation when the aim is communication with the dead. Tania Rodríguez Salazar returns to the theoretical-methodological problems of the theory of social representations, but from within debates in Social Psychology. In an expository essay on the ideas of Moscovici, she reviews a series of key arguments with emphasis on Discursive Psychology s critique of social representation theory. Rodríguez thus offers us a meta-theory (a map) of the concepts of social representation and the problems of its empirical study. Another meta-theoretical approach to the study of social action mediated through the representation and reception of representations is Oscar Rodríguez Cerda s essay. The author reviews five themes concerning the relations between culture and reason from the theoretical perspective of social representation: 1) the construction of the self (psyche) as a function of socially-mediated communications; 2) the paradox of similarity in the development of judgments; 3) the critique of the notion of collective representations and individuation in Durkheim; 4) representation in theory (processes of objectification and anchoring) and as a phenomenon (multiplicity of forms of understanding and communication); and 5) three modalities of communication (diffusion, propagation, and propaganda) as regards the dynamics of representation. The discussion places emphasis on the relativity of the sociabilities that
emerge in lives organized in groups and affirms the existence of intimate connections between sociability and reason. Denise Jodelet returns to the central theme of the relevance of the theory of representations for History. Once again the theoretical-methodological tactic is that of meta-narrative. She raises the question of a possible common space between History and Psychology a common point of inquiry permitting a reciprocity of perspectives. She affirms, and illustrates with examples, that Social Psychology allows us to build bridges between the two disciplines. The recurrent theme in this reflection is the pyscho-historical nature of social thought. We close our thematic section with a recent interview with Denise Jodelet. As Luis Esparza stresses in his presentation, the responses of Jodelet to Oscar Rodríguez Cerda s questions offer a more spontaneous but equally reflexive introduction to the study of social representation and the concrete problems of empirical work in the field of representation. Jodelet addresses themes such as the relation between beliefs and representation, representation and social practice, the concepts of habitus and social categorization and the phenomenon of representation, and the social subject and its representations in relation to the construction of knowledge and social identity in collective surroundings inscribed with representations. In the general section, we return to several topics discussed in recent issues of Relaciones. Jorge Luis Cruz Burguete and Gabriela Robledo Hernández review the transformations in the population of Mexico s southern border. The population movements in the border area and their causes and consequences are exemplified with the cases of two cities, Comitán and Las Margaritas, in the state of Chiapas. With the aim of characterizing the social scene in the urban centers of the frontier region, the authors synthesize information along three axes: 1) agrarian change, especially recent settlement processes; 2) the complex religious field that has emerged in the zone and the role of religious alternatives and conversion in social organization; and, 3) the context of political and military conflict in the region. From population movements on the southern border and their consequences, our focus shifts to the concrete problems of Mexican demographic growth and public health. Through a case study of the role of
health services in the promotion of birth control, Verónica Vázquez García and Aurelia Flores Hernández describe changes in the politics of population in Mexico. As the authors stress, these policies were born with the Mexican Nation-State but, although in the last twenty-five years there has been a national policy directed toward the aims of reducing the rate of demographic growth, problems exist for its institutional implementation. One finding of Vazquez and Flores study carried out in a nahuatl -speaking hamlet in the Santa Marta Mountains in southeast Veracruz is the institutionally-constructed verticality of access to contraceptives. They document how this verticality constitutes an obstacle to the acquisition and exercise of reproductive rights in rural areas. The related theme of gender and agrarian rights in rural areas is developed by Rosio Córdova Plaza. This author examines in a concrete fashion how social representations of gender in three ejidos in central Veracruz contribute to processes of social exclusion. Córdova reviews representations of the norms for transmission of agrarian rights (access to land) both in the historical documents of state archives in Veracruz and also in the predominante strategies of inheritance identified through field work. The study s results call into question arguments for a general tendency towards greater equality between gender though the insertion of rural women into the labor market. We close this issue with an essay that returns to the theme of social representation and the historical sciences. Jérome Baschet appears to offer an interesting response to Denise Jodolet s reflections on pychohistorical constructions: epochs, especially epochal time, when critically contrasted reveal psycho-historical qualities. Baschet s main concern is the current domination of the perpetual present. The tyranny of today resides in the fatalism of a supposed consummation of history (the supposition of a new global order) which greatly contrasts with the temporality of other epochs. Baschet s reflexive essay reviews neo-zapatista texts in search of a critique of this normativity of the perpetual present. Through the critical contrast of epochs, the author explores possibilities of representation that restore the historicity of the contemporary and, hence, its promise of change.
Relaciones is pleased to announce that the article by Esteban Sánchez de Tagle 1847. Un protectorado americano para la ciudad de México, and the book review, Por una voluntad divina; escasez, epidemias y otras calamidades en la ciudad de México, 1700-1762 by Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara, both published in issue 86, vol. XXII, spring 2001, have received awards from the Comité Mexicano de Ciencias Históricas (2001) for best article on the 19th Century and best book review on the colonial period, respectively.