Organizing from the South: Coloniality, Emergences and Alternatives In Latin America
Organizing from the South: Coloniality, Emergences and Alternatives In Latin America
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC17 Sociology of Organizations (host committee)
Language: English and Spanish
Session Type: Oral
Open Session.
This session examines the organizational realities of Latin America through a decolonial and epistemologically situated perspective, affirming the Global South as a legitimate site of theoretical production. It challenges the hegemony of Eurocentric and First World organizational knowledge by foregrounding the specificity of Latin America's economic and political formation, as well as its cultural heritage—conditions that have historically been rendered invisible within mainstream organizational studies. From this critical standpoint, the notion of otherness is problematized as an epistemic construction that obscures the organizational richness of the Global South. Rather than treating otherness as a deficit, this session recasts it as a source of knowledge from which alternative practices, rationalities and organizational forms emerge. In contexts marked by structural inequality, urban informal economies, violence and institutional fragility, Latin American organizations do not represent deviations from an assumed norm; they constitute distinct configurations that challenge dominant analytical categories. From business strategies in marginalized communities to indigenous management practices, diverse epistemologies and ontologies come to the fore—ones that exceed conventional notions of efficiency, control and governance. These organizations are positioned as empirical and theoretical sites, capable of generating knowledge that unsettles and enriches global organizational sociology while exposing the colonial genealogies embedded in dominant concepts, including bureaucracy, management and governance, and challenging evaluative frameworks that privilege formalization and rationalization over situated practices and relational logics rooted in Latin American realities and experiences. This contributes to a more plural and inclusive discipline globally today.
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