Mecila Subproject: Information Infrastructure and Knowledge Dimension

The Mecila - Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila) examines past and present forms of social, political, and cultural conviviality in Latin America and the Caribbean. It employs conviviality as an analytical concept to describe ways of living together in specific contexts characterized by diversity and inequality. In order to achieve this, it links studies about interclass, interethnic, intercultural, interreligious and gender relations in Latin America and the Caribbean with studies about conviviality beyond the region. In doing so, the Centre aims to establish an innovative exchange with benefits for both European and Latin American research. 

The Centre’s headquarters have been stablished in São Paulo (Brazil) by a consortium composed of three German institutions: Freie Universität Berlin (coordination); Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin; and Universität zu Köln, Cologne, as well as four Latin American institutions: Universidade de São Paulo and Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento, São Paulo, Brazil, Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (CONICET / Universidad Nacional de La Plata), La Plata, Argentina, and El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico. The Centre draws on the existing long-term cooperation between these institutions. It is financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from April 2017 until March 2020. After this preliminary phase, the consortium can receive grants for a main phase of another six years.

The Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (IAI, Ibero-American Institute) coordinates together with the Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (CONICET / Universidad Nacional de La Plata) the Subproject: “Information Infrastructure and Knowledge Dimension”.

For more information see https://www.mecila.net/ (external link, opens in a new window)

The Centre’s research programme addresses convivial contexts in Latin America and the Caribbean through analysis of their history and their interrelations at local, regional, national, and global levels. These convivial contexts may have various spatial boundaries, corresponding to a neighbourhood, a municipality, a country, or to global or transnational spaces of a translocal or even a virtual nature. Three interdependent dimensions of convivial contexts are being studied: structures, negotiations and representations.

Throughout the preliminary phase, the Principal Investigators (PIs) implement and develop the Centre’s research programme. Postdoctoral Researchers, based at the Centre in São Paulo, support the PIs by contributing with review essays and research on structures, negotiations and representations of convivial contexts in Latin America and the Caribbean. During the third year of the preliminary phase, international Senior Fellows will join the Centre, complementing the theoretical cornerstones of the research programme for the main phase.

The Centre wants to make a substantial contribution to a better understanding of conviviality in unequal societies.