Scielo RSS http://socialsciences.scielo.org/rss.php?pid=1518-447120060002&lang=en vol. 2 num. SE lang. en http://socialsciences.scielo.org/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://socialsciences.scielo.org http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This article is based on a research developed during 1996/97 in the Grande Sertão Veredas National Park / MG, focused on different groups involved in the process of implantation of the Conservation Unit. Inspired by the analogy developed by Michel de Certeau between the act of speaking and the act of walking, I describe some of the routes in Santa Rita, an area of the National Park, walking in the patrol, formal and programmed itinerary of the park guards. Following this spatial practice and walking through a way articulated by crossed references - from guards, inhabitants, researcher - it was possible to register memories and narratives motivated by the paths. The option of taking these routes and movements as an analytical unit, seeking the style suggested by the 'rhetoric of walking', permitted the perception of different accounts from common steps, concerning both links between memory and territoriality and the connections between traditional context of the locality and new social/cultural contexts, in this case, the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the 1970s and the creation of the Park in the 1980s. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This essay explores the concept of figuration or configuration developed by Norbert Elias with the purpose to overcome the antinomies of structural functionalism and methodological individualism. The relationships of the concept of configuration with the categories of interdependency, function and coercion are studied within the context of his sociological theory. Based on the consideration of simplified models of game competition, the author's process oriented perspective and its relevance for solving the false opposition between society and individual. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200003&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This article deals with a singular experience of evangelization of Indians, black people and of ethnic minorities in Latin America. Nominated Theology of the Inculturation and realized by Christians missionaries in the last decades, this experience aims to establish an intercultural dialogue between equals differents and, not, between differents being become identicals, affirming that the god’s face of the other makes visible the face of my god. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200004&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The essay aims at comparing differences in patterns of parliamentary recruitment for federal legislatures in Latin American countries. Those patterns as well as the political performance of state delegations were analyzed from the viewpoint of levels of stability in the control of seats. The Chilean House of Representatives is the case presenting the highest level of stable political careers in a context of moderate political turnover.. By contrast, Mexico and Argentina present high rates of political turnover among elected representatives, a condition facilitating the access of politicians lacking previous experience at the federal sphere of politics. Brazil is a intermediary case, displaying long periods of high rates of turnover, followed by reversals of such trend, as it occurs since 1998. When changes in the composition of party representation in federal legislatures resulting from voter's behavior are discarded, one may conclude that, with the exception of Chile, the high rates of political turnover are only marginally connected with electoral variations among the competing parties. Intra-party politics determining strategies for choosing and promoting candidates appear to be the most relevant variable explaining rates of parliamentary turnover. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This article will treat two dimensions of social relations: death at the hospital , and the way in which health professionals manage their emotions regarding death and suffering. The hospital has been chosen as a privileged location for this research for it is a central and almost naturalized place concerning services directed to health, disease and death. Accounting that this institution has become, in contemporary western society, the place of social delegation of care for the sick, especially those who are about to die, two public hospital units where taken as subject of ethnographic research: an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and a Palliative Care hospital (PC), which attends patients with cancer "out of therapeutic possibilities". The two units present different forms of caring for the patients, in which the space and value given to the expression of feelings are also different. The analysis is centered on the way that the staff's emotions are managed, as well as on discussions regarding the contact with suffering, death and feelings wich involves the social actors. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1518-44712006000200006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This essay draws a comparison of perspectivism in Friederich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) and in Max Weber´s intellectual framework (1864-1920), aiming at demonstrating that, despite the affinity between both authors in thinking culture and life as a profusion of meanings and multiple values, that is, lacking any systemic unity, they radically differ when dealing with perspectivism. Such difference leads to distinct conceptions of knowledge, and critical evaluations concerning the "culture of reason" and history.