Foreword

Introduction to Vol. 6, No. 1 of the Latin-American Review of Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth

This issue opens the 6th volume of our Review. At the end of 2007, we announced that our Review had applied for a promotion to category B in the Colombian National Bibliographic Index "Publindex". Fortunately, we can now announce to our readers the good news of the classification in this category, the highest we can reach now, due to our short years of existence. This recognition also implies that we will soon be eligible for category A, and that we now may enter the international bibliographic index Scientific Electronic Library Online "SciELO", for which we are already carrying out the manifold tasks required for inclusion in it.

This issue's first section–«Theory and metatheory»–includes four papers by Colombian authors. In the first, Andrés Klaus Runge-Peña, who teaches at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, reflects with fluent and provocative style on two no less provocative expressions that are becoming fashionable in current discourse: "Childhood heterotopies: reflections on its 'disappearance' and on 'the end of its education'."

In the next two papers, two recent graduates of the doctoral program in the Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth of the University of Manizales and Cinde, now teaching at two Colombian cities, Manizales and Popayán, share with the readers a few theoretical insights of their dissertations. In her paper "The nature of social representations", María del Carmen Vergara-Quintero underscores the conceptual and methodological power of the category of social representations in qualitative research, and Deibar René Hurtado-Herrera explains one of the key categories of his research in his text "Configuration: A resource to understand patterns of imaginary meanings."

The first section closes with a paper that reflects on a recent musical phenomenon in Colombia: the rapid expansion of a musical genre inspired in peasant traditions of the High Plains of Boyacá and Cundinamarca, two Andean provinces of Colombia. This genre was developed during the 80's and 90's by Jorge Velosa-Ruiz and his group, called "Los Carrangueros de Ráquira". Tomás Sánchez-Amaya as main author, and Alejandro Acosta-Ayerbe as co-author, wrote for us the paper "Peasant folk music. Social uses, inroads into school scenarios, and appropriation by children: The musical approach of Velosa and his 'Carrangueros'."

The second section–«Studies and Research Reports»–opens with a report by the Argentinean researcher Pedro Fernando-Núñez: "The redefinition of the link youth-politics in Argentina: A study based on political representations and political practices of Middle- and High- School youths."

The second paper, signed by four Mexican researchers, Itzel Adriana Becerra-Pedraza, Verónica Vázquez-García, Emma Zapata-Martelo, and Laura Elena Garza-Bueno, describes a moving case of agrarian child labor. The title of this well-documented report is: "Childhood and work flexibility in Mexican export agriculture".

Five Colombian authors, Sara Eloísa del Castillo Matamoros, André- Noël Roth Deubel, Clara Inés Wartski Patiño, Ricardo Rojas Higuera and Orlando Arnulfo Chacón Barliza share with us the results of a research project on the "Implementation of public policy on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in the Colombian Coffee Axis: The case of adolescent pregnancy."

Then, Teresita María Sevilla-Peñuela, a researcher now living in Cali, Colombia, tackles the difficult topic of decision-making in highrisk situations by youths of that city: "'Unsafe sex': An analysis of rationality as part of risk among youths from Cali, Colombia."

María Teresa Paredes, Martha Cecilia Álvarez, Leonor I. Lega, and Ann Vernon carried out the first study of peer violence among school children in the same Colombian city of Cali; they present their findings in the paper "An exploratory study on the phenomenon of 'bullying' in the city of Cali, Colombia."

Finally, another graduate of the doctoral program on Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth of the University of Manizales and Cinde, Elsa María Bocanegra-Acosta, uses Foucault's toolbox to explore what students from several schools of Bogotá have to say about their institutions. Her explorations are set out in her paper "From confinement to paradise. Dominant imaginaries in Colombian contemporary schools: A look from schools in Bogotá."

As announced in the last issue, the Editorial Board has decided that the last two sections of our Review, more concerned with current events and other useful information, are to be no longer published in the hard copy of our journal. Instead, they will appear in the electronic version available at the server of the University of Manizales, which, along with the International Center for Education and Human Development Cinde, are the institutions that constitute the Center for Advanced Studies in Childhood and Youth, responsible for the Review and for the doctoral program in Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth. In their virtual version, these sections will be useful to all those interested in the Review, even before they receive the hard copy or when it is difficult to obtain. The hard copy of the Review will have a detailed index of the contents of these two sections and indications on the way to find them in the Internet, which is through the URL http://www.umanizales.edu.co/revistacinde/index.html

The third section–«Information and Analyses»–begins with the author index of all five volumes of our Review. Then, we publish an announcement for a master's degree program on creativity in the Autonomous University of Manizales, Colombia, and a list of some of the main events and conferences related to the social sciences for the months of August, September, and October of this year 2008. Even though it is now too late to send proposals for papers, it is not too late to register and to attend those meetings. We would be very grateful to our readers when they are organizing national or international events, or when they find out about them, if they would inform the editors as soon as possible to announce them well in advance in this virtual section of our Review.

In the fourth section–«Revisions and Reviews»–the reader will find some texts adapted form the web page created by the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture, OEI, to support and spread the initiatives of the Decade of Education for a Sustainable Development, instituted by the United Nations, an effort our Review decidedly supports. The URL of the page on the Decade is: http://www.oei.es/decada/

The first text is a commentary on a new initiative that is very coherent with the objectives of the Decade: the International Year of Planet Earth. This commentary is taken from Bulletin nº 25 of January 1st, 2008. Then, the reader will find a transcription of part of Bulletin nº 26 of April 26, 2008, where the authors encourage us to carry out concrete activities during the remaining years of the Decade. Our Review invites the readers to browse through the rest of that bulletin, or at least to analyze the synthetic table "How can each one of us contribute to a sustainable future?" that can be found at the URL of Bulletin nº 26: http://www.oei.es/decada/boletin026.htm

This table includes many proposals of concrete actions that were gathered in workshops with secondary-school and college students, as well as with pre-service and in-service teachers.

In the same fourth section, we publish a manifesto on open access to information in the Internet, issued by the International Federation of Librarian and Library Associations IFLA, to which our Review fully adheres. Then, the reader will find the declaration of the First International Meeting of Editors of Scientific Journals (May 7-9, 2008), gathered under the motto "Challenges of scientific journals for education in the present society", in which our Review did participate. Finally, we also publish a short report sent by our distributor, the Colombian Teachers' Publishing House "Cooperativa Editorial Magisterio".

We thank the many readers who sent their contributions as a response to our call for papers about current research on youth. The selected papers will be published in the second issue of this volume, and we are sure that others that will not appear in that issue because of delays in reviewing and revising cycles will appear in the first issue of volume 7. There is also still plenty of time to send us a contribution in Spanish, Portuguese or English that could be published in the second issue of that volume.

The Director,

Carlos Eduardo Vasco