Productive Transformation, Regional Asymmetries, and Social Exclusion in Ibero-America

Conference Overview

The vertiginous changes experienced by contemporary society have been accompanied by processes involving the restructuring and relocation of productive activities, both globally and locally. Technological change has led to greater flexibility of production systems and labor markets, which is expressed in a dynamic of capital accumulation that does not anchor itself to territories, but instead moves permanently through space and across borders in search of greater profitability.

This phenomenon – typical of the flexible accumulation of capital – has generated new conditions for the concentration of productive activities in new centers of agglomeration, leaving in its wake a problem of unequal development, which reproduces territorial asymmetries and the social exclusion of populations who live in peripheral areas or who do not possess the necessary qualifications to enter the new labor markets.

Ibero-American countries face the challenge of designing and implementing public policies and development strategies that can adapt to the new conditions established by the knowledge society, with the purpose of promoting a productive transformation with equity and environmental sustainability, capable of reducing territorial asymmetries in access to basic goods and services as well as to the labor market. This task incorporates a vision of wellbeing where social inclusion – including gender, ethnicity, race, and immigrant work – is at the center of the development agenda.

Academic Areas of Discussion (Networks)

1. Theoretical / Methodological Contributions to Socio-Economics
2. Globalization, Local and Territorial Development
3. Governance and Citizen Participation in the Debate on Environmental Public Policy
4. Institutional Architecture of Regulation
5. Migration, Informality, and Human Rights
6. Knowledge Economy and Cultural Industry
7. Democracy and Development
8. Institutional Reforms for Economic Development and Equity: A Competitiveness Approach
9. Productive Sectors, SMEs, and Productive Chains
10. Fiscal Governance: Distribution, Equity and Territory
11. Towards a Human Development Agenda
12. Territory, Inequality, and Poverty

Featured Speakers

Enrique Dussel

Enrique Dussel is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Autonomous Metropolitan University, UAM) and also teaches courses at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM).

He has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (National University of Cuyo) in Mendoza, Argentina, a Doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid, a Doctorate in History from the Sorbonne in Paris, and an undergraduate degree in Theology obtained through studies in Paris and Münster.

He has been awarded Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, the University of San Andrés in Bolivia, the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, the University of Santo Tomás de Aquino in Colombia, and the National University of General San Martin in Argentina. He is the founder with others of the movement referred to as the Philosophy of Liberation, and his work is concentrated in the field of Ethics and Political Philosophy.

Rebeca Grynspan

Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis is a Costa Rican economist, the Secretary General of SEGIB, the Ibero-American Secretary General, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, and the Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

She was the Vice President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998. Grynspan previously served as Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, appointed to the position by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in December 2005.

Akos Rona-Tas

Akos Rona-Tas is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is also founding faculty of the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. For many years, he was a senior research associate at INRA, Paris, and he was the President of SASE in 2018–2019.

He has written two books on market creation. Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: Demise of Communism and Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary was published by Michigan University Press; the second, co-authored with Alya Guseva, Plastic Money: Constructing Markets for Credit Cards in Eight Postcommunist Countries, was published by Stanford University Press.

He has published articles on the post-communist transition, small entrepreneurs, consumer credit, and payment card markets in journals including the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Socio-Economic Review, Social Science Research, Research on Sociology of Organizations, Journal of Comparative Economics, and Research in the Sociology of Work, as well as various chapters in edited volumes. He is currently working on the problem of rationality and uncertainty in two different contexts: credit assessment and the use of science in risk management.

Akos Rona-Tas has been a member of SASE since 2005. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the Finance and Society Network, served on the Executive Council between 2012 and 2015, as Treasurer between 2015 and 2018, and as SASE President in 2018/19.

Santos Ruesga

Santos Ruesga is Professor of Applied Economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has taught in numerous academic centers in multiple countries in Europe (Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, etc.), North America (Mexico and USA), Latin America (Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, etc.), and Asia (China and Japan).

As a researcher in socio-economics, he has specialized in the study of labor relations, the informal economy, and Latin American economies, from macroeconomic and empirical perspectives. On these topics, he has published a large number of books and articles in academic and professional journals and has participated in more than a hundred international and national scientific congresses.

He is also a prolific organizer of scientific events, serving on numerous scientific councils at international congresses and meetings, and participating in more than a dozen editorial and advisory boards of scientific journals in various countries.