Presentation

Acknowledgment and welcome to the new editor

Paloma Marín Escobar

Forma de citar este artículo en APA:

Marín Escobar, P. (2026). Acknowledgment and welcome to the new editor [Presentation]. Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales, 17(2), 332-335. https://doi.org/10.21501/22161201.5504

It is true that working with scientific journals, particularly one with the long-standing trajectory of our publication, requires continuous and sustained effort over the years, ideally guided by an editorial leadership capable of maintaining and consolidating processes over time. However, for me, this journey comes to an end with the present issue. It is important to clarify that, although the editorial direction will now pass into the hands of my successor, our policies and procedures are sufficiently solid to preserve the continuity I mentioned earlier. Our Editorial Fund works diligently to guarantee authors, reviewers, readers, and scholars in the Social Sciences a high-quality publication, as evidenced by every issue published throughout its history and by the fact that the journal has never interrupted its work since undertaking the mission of giving voice to researchers whom the so-called “hard sciences” tend to marginalize today.

For this reason, with complete peace of mind regarding the work accomplished and with deep pride in our publication, I warmly welcome Dr. Mauricio Arcila Arango, who, beginning in January 2026, will officially assume this position. I would like to thank the entire Editorial Fund team of the Universidad Católica Luis Amigó, but above all the authors and reviewers with whom I exchanged correspondence, always in the most respectful manner, with diligence, and recognizing that their contributions are what truly give meaning to our journal. To all of you, my sincere thanks. This issue—the last in which I participated as editorial director while fulfilling our editorial guidelines and carrying out the demanding and rigorous task of finding reviewers—includes one editorial, six research articles, two reflective articles derived from research, and one review article.

The editorial entitled In Praise of Superficiality, written by Santiago Verhelst Hoyos, addresses surface and appearance as fundamental dimensions of being and of our relationship with the world. Through a theoretical and philosophical reflection that engages with authors such as Nietzsche, Arendt, and Benjamin, the text concludes that superficiality constitutes the active sphere in which possibility becomes reality and contact. Its contribution to the social sciences lies in reclaiming everyday and seemingly minimal spaces as liminal settings where the most basic experiences of social interaction and perception are configured.

The first research article, by Carolina Ferrante, entitled Mothers with Disabilities: Challenging Prejudices (Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 21st Century), analyzes the impact of motherhood on the biographies of women with disabilities in Buenos Aires through a qualitative methodology based on in-depth interviews. One of its conclusions is that, in the face of prejudice and the lack of state support that privatizes and feminizes care work, motherhood operates as a catalyst for political resistance and critical awareness. This contribution offers intersectional counter-narratives that challenge the disability/ability system and traditional ideals of motherhood.

The second article, Emerging Perspectives on LGBTQ+ Territory and Political Citizenship in Ciénaga, Magdalena (Colombia): Mapping Places of Homosocialization, by Luis Ricardo Navarro Díaz, Sergio Andrés González Leones, and Silvanna Mary Martínez Coronado, presents, through participatory ethnography using social mapping and patchwork quilting techniques, a reconstruction of the meanings of LGBTQ+ territory and citizenship in post-conflict Ciénaga. The research positions the “Casa de Paz” as a setting of resistance and memory, where experiences of the body and the street become political action in response to structural violence. This exercise in subaltern and intersectional voices articulates new pathways for influencing public policy and healing the social fabric from the territory itself.

In the third article, Digital social networks and migrant agency on the Darién route, Paul Antonio Córdoba Mendoza, Samuel Pinto López, Jorge Roquebert, and Guillermo Mendoza conduct a digital ethnography and quantitative analysis to examine how social networks operate as tools of agency and collective resistance in the face of migration externalization policies. The study demonstrates that information exchange and emotional management, marked by strong female leadership, enable migrants to negotiate routes and subvert controls in the Darién Gap. This research positions the virtual environment as a space of mobile citizenship and counterpower, where shared knowledge challenges traditional structures of exclusion and state security. In the article entitled Territorial transformation and potentialities of Bastión Popular from the communitarian perceptions of its residents, Ingrid Ríos-Rivera, María Mercedes Zerega, and Diana Vallejo-Robalino analyze how violence and insecurity reshape everyday life and the use of space in the Bastión Popular neighborhood of Guayaquil. The study positions the ZUMAR center as a place of resistance, where the toy library and media library emerge as tools for reclaiming dialogue and healing the social fabric in response to forced confinement.

In the article Family Communication in Moral Education from the Perspective of a Group of Adolescents, the authors Angie P. Herrera Morales, Arbey A. Rendón González, Diva A. Moreno Triviño, and Lady J. Álvarez Suárez analyze family communication as a central axis in the moral formation of adolescents in Bogotá and Cali. Their analysis highlights assertiveness, trust, and example as pillars of guidance and care that enable the internalization of values in the face of gaps in domestic dialogue. These youth perspectives support intervention strategies that transform communication skills into tools for ethical and social construction.

Likewise, Allison Montalvo Velázquez and Francisco Iván Hernández Cuevas in “Impact of Tourism Employment on Household Income in Progreso, Yucatán” seek to demonstrate how tourism employment affects the domestic economy of Progreso. The research reveals that, although the sector generates higher income—especially in female-led households—this increase is insufficient to reverse structural poverty. The article reflects on the need for tourism activity to move beyond market logic and become an effective driver of equity and social development.

Two articles make up the section of reflective articles derived from research. In the first, Identity Reconstruction and Transitional Justice: The Narrative of a Female Ex-Combatant in Colombia, the authors Jenny Marcela Acevedo Valencia and Natalia Baena Robledo analyze, from a qualitative study with a feminist perspective, the identity transformations of a former FARC-EP female combatant during her transition to civilian life and transitional justice. The narrative situates commitment to peace and memory-building as central axes of subjective reintegration, reconciling collective political militancy with new personal agency and family roles. This approach, grounded in situated narratives, reveals the complexity of transition processes and legitimizes individual voices as pillars for social reparation. Meanwhile, in the article From Impertinence to Impostorism: An Analysis of Gaslighting as Positional Injustice, María Luján Christiansen, drawing on narrativism and the affective turn, uses microfiction to analyze gaslighting and impostor syndrome as effects of positional injustice. The analysis depathologizes these experiences by revealing relational harms that systematically undermine subjects’ epistemic and emotional self-confidence. This critical epistemology provides a framework for dismantling the power asymmetries that determine who has the right to be believed and validated in everyday social interactions.

This issue concludes with a single review article, Orfandade, feminicídio e emoções: uma revisão integrativa de literatura, by Roberta Scaramussa da Silva, Rafael Patiño, Gabriela Lamego, Rebeca Valadão Bussinger, and Isabela Mesquita Aragão. Through an integrative literature review, the authors position orphanhood caused by femicide as a socially and politically constructed condition that goes beyond individual trauma. The research denounces how state invisibility and the psychologization of pain conceal a politics of death that undermines the living conditions of survivors. This approach to emotions from a historical-political perspective provides critical pathways toward situated social justice.

I reiterate my deepest gratitude to the community that makes up this publication—readers, authors, reviewers, copy editors, and translators—as well as to the entire editorial team for welcoming me as one of their own and for teaching me the importance of quality in editorial processes, transparency, and assertive communication. Likewise, I thank everyone who makes it possible for researchers to give visibility to their valuable work, transforming it into a space for expression, encounter, debate, and progress in the Social Sciences, both in Latin America and throughout the wider global sphere interested in the phenomena that concern us all as human beings and societies.