PRESENTATION

The issue 77 of our journal contains a thematic dossier from which we seek to examine the role that the racial issues have had in reshaping the nation. Some questions that guided the call were the following: What role have had racial issues and social inequities regarding race in the nation building? What are the major changes that have occurred in the ways to understand, accept and produce that which is racial in the age of multiculturalism and postmodernism? How anthropology has responded to these changes, taking into account its historical relationship with race as a category of analysis? What continuities and discontinuities can be identified in relation to the model of the mestizo nation? How has the white-mestizo got built as a place of racial privilege in Latin America and the Caribbean? In this framework, what have been the effects of racialization processes in upward mobility and/or reproduction of social inequalities? What is the relationship of gender and sexuality with these issues? i.e., how do them articulate with that which is racial?, what analogies do they propose and how are they constituted as social inequalities?

In the company of Mara Viveros Vigoya and Sergio Lesmes, guest editors of this issue 77, we collect on the following pages eleven reflections from different latitudes (Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Colombia and Brazil) that allow us to investigate the effects produced by the changes in the different constitutional regimes on the understanding of that which is racial. Along with this, the articles presented in this issue seek to understand phenomena -such as the emergence of reparative and affirmative action policies, which together have reshaped the meaning of race and its place in public debates-, as well as identify the terms in which the relationship between the historical development of social sciences and race, as an analytical category, has been given.

In the process of selection of proposals for this special monographic issue, there were valued those which showed or that problema-tized the tensions associated with gender, region, generation, space (urban/rural) and scale (national/ international, global/local) in the framework of conceptions, discourses or ways of assuming that which is racial in different national contexts.

Along with these eleven articles that make up our Espacio monográfico, the issue 77 of Universitas Humanística also brings an article in its Espacio abierto oriented to continue the reflection contemplated in the number 76 on social studies of science and technology from situated perspectives. This time it is about the work of Oscar Javier

Maldonado Castañeda who invites us to wonder about the social place that the legal appeal of amicus curiae² has in the legitimization of abortion as a democratic, participatory and representative process of the general perception. The arguments surrounding the use of science and expertise in the reasoning processes of the actors involved in the debate are intriguing.

As always, this editorial effort is now in your hands. We hope you to enjoy it, make the most it, discuss it and put it into circulation.

Tania Pérez Bustos

Editor

² The amicus curiae "is a legal concept, whereby "third parties to litigation" may voluntarily offer a technical or legal concept to assist the court in resolving the matter under discussion." This definition is taken from the Maldonado Castañeda's article present in this volume of the journal.