Patricio Besana has a degree in Sociology and a PhD in Political Science. He is an Assistant Researcher at CONICET based at the Instituto de Investigaciones Políticas. He is general coordinator of the Environment and Politics Area and teaches at the School of Politics and Government of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Much of his work deals with participation, environment and access to public services, with emphasis on contexts of urban poverty. He is currently researching on Anthropocene and anti-speciesist identities and demands in Latin American countries. He has published articles, books and chapters on these and other topics in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Recent publications

2022. Coproducción y desigualdad: recolección y residuos en barrios populares de la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. En EURE (Santiago) – Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales. Disponible en: https://www.eure.cl/index.php/eure/article/view/EURE.48.145.01/1475

2022. Conflictos Ambientales en América Latina III. Reflexiones y Casos de estudio. Ciudad de México y Buenos Aires: Editorial CIGA-UNAM y Ediciones UNGS. Disponible en: conflictos_ambientales_III.pdf (ungs.edu.ar)

2022. Coproduction, water and sewage network in popular neighborhoods of the metropolitan periphery of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1983 onwards)”. En Revista Uruguaya de Antropología y Etnografía. Disponible en: Coproduction, water and sewage network in popular neighborhoods of the metropolitan periphery of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1983 onwards). | Revista Uruguaya de Antropología y Etnografía (fhce.edu.uy)

2021. Estado, Orden y participación de intermediarios en asentamientos de la periferia de Buenos Aires, Argentina (1989-2015). En Rumbos TS. Un espacio crítico para la reflexión en Ciencias Sociales. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.51188/rrts.num26.532

2020. Patricio Bruno Besana y Soledad Fernández Bouzo. “¿Agua que no has de beber? Acceso al agua potable e intermediarios en asentamientos informales del Conurbano Bonaerense (1983-2015)”. En: Cuadernos de Geografía: Revista Colombiana de Geografía. 29 (1). 152-170.

Research project at CALAS

Title: An Antispeciesist Identity in Latin America A radicalized critique of modern foundations?

Abstract: The construction of an anti-speciesist identity is an emerging process in Latin America. It represents significant changes with respect to much of the preceding Latin American environmentalism and expresses a radicalized ontological critique of the foundations of Modernity. This critique shares a diagnosis of the crisis of modern foundations with other environmentalist expressions. However, the former goes a step further. Antispeciesist foundations not only symbolically displace the figure of modern man as a superior being external to a vast nature by the idea of a fragile environment of which human beings are a part. They also remove any semblance of moral superiority from humans in order to put them on an equal footing with other sentient animals. The incompatibility expressed by the antispeciesist identity with respect to anthropocentric values syndicated as responsible for the crisis is such that it opens the way to a series of innovations in ways of thinking, saying and doing.

These were studied, pre-eminently, on the basis of activists and organizations from the Global North. Therefore, an analysis of anti-speciesist identity in Latin America is proposed here by conducting Life Histories in Mexico and Argentina, in conjunction with other on-line and off-line data collection tools. Such an analysis is considered to have a strong potential to reflect on the dispute of meaning around the nature and future of the region.