At the national level there is a policy of recognizing the academic merit of professors and researchers who work at universities and other institutions of higher learning and research in Mexico. This policy is overseen by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT for its initials in Spanish), which uses different programs focused on sectors or actions to promote the diffusion of research results within teaching and research activities. The programs are interrelated, so the results are integrated and require action to achieve cascading results.

Some of the causes of international migration are analyzed in this paper, reviewing experiences in field work in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in 2010, as well as in Tlaxcala and Puebla from 2012 to 2014. The problems and failures of development in the rural environment are addressed first, followed by the theoretical aspect of the social representations of migration, since that enables us through sociological analysis to delve into the perceptions, evaluations and attitudes as to why migration is an option for the subjects being studied: the peasants, these being the primary protagonists in the phenomenon of migration, though not exclusively. The paper concludes with the need to enhance strategies for rural developmental taking into account the peasants’ productive interests and their attachment to their birthplaces. In other words, the peasants should be in charge of their own destiny. 

This article discusses the intervention of various social actors in the municipality of Catazajá in the reconfiguration of territory, based on qualitative research in which the interview and case study techniques were used to characterize the social interactions that have been generated in 20 years of territorial transformations. The methodology used included consultation with representatives of various governmental and non-governmental agencies, interviews with community leaders, participatory workshops and desk research. The main results show that the territory is transformed by social actors who have taken ownership of the public policies linked to economic and social development which the state implemented in the indicated period. This process has enabled the emergence and reconstitution of social actors around new economic and productive conditions, as well as social, political and cultural organization forms that have reconfigured the territory in Catazajá, Chiapas.

The Mexican rural sector has undergone socio-productive changes, which are confronted through adaptations in life strategies. These strategies have been analyzed through systemic, ethno-biological, and gender, subsistence strategies of families from Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas; the role of peasant women in these strategies, and the elements that define that role. The diversified strategies have as their main components pottery and agriculture, activities in which women contribute in very significant way supporting the preservation of family production system and bio-cultural sustainability of life. 

Columbia, after Syria, is the country with the second largest number of displaced persons in the world as a result of internal armed conflict, with a total of six million people (Bilak, et al., 2015) who have had their rights, including their right to work and live with dignity, violated. The main objective of this present paper is to study the condition of the population which lives in the urban area of Altos de la Sabana in the municipality of Sincelejo, focusing on social-labor inclusion and sustainable social entrepreneurship. This urbanization makes up part of the program of a million free houses that the national government has provided for the purpose of benefiting victims of forced displacement and people who are in extreme poverty (DNP, 2014). In order to accomplish said objective, a descriptive study was made using a quality-quantitative methodology whose basic source of information was primary, based on a questionnaire directed at 54 community leaders and on a semi-structured interview of a group of entrepreneurs who developed businesses in the community. As general results, those employed work informally. Only 22.2% of the activities in the studied cases are undertaken in what can be considered as small productive ventures. 

In Mexico, the Physiographic Province of Sierra Madre del Sur has environmental, geographic and socio-cultural complexity and heterogeneity, particular qualities from the rest of the Mexican physiographic provinces, however, unsustainable human activities, such as traditional agriculture, are causing land-use changes. Processes and activities that cause land-use changes in the Community of Progreso Hidalgo, Villa Guerrero, Estado de México were identified and analyzed with satellite images from the years 2000 and 2007, application of tools of geographic information systems, remote sensing, supervised classification, direct observation, georeferencing and application of a questionnaire to 100% of the peasant families. The categories of analysis are: tropical deciduous forests, water storage, traditional agriculture, commercialized technified agriculture and human settlements. The results show that tropical deciduous forests and traditional agriculture has losses of 6,751 ha and 1,249 ha, respectively, while water storage and human settlements had increases (1,171 ha and 1,745 ha). From 2005, some areas used for traditional agriculture have been replaced by commercialized technified agriculture (5,084 ha). If this trend continues, in the next five years, the community’s agricultural area will be occupied with greenhouse infrastructure. 

The structural crisis experienced by vanilla grower organizations in Totonacapan threatens their permanence in a highly competitive and asymmetric commercial environment. The objective of the present study was to identify the components that integrate an organizational innovation strategy to consolidate rural associative enterprises (RAE). Based on information provided by five vanilla small producer associations in Puebla, Veracruz and San Luis Potosí, we estimated the organizational innovation index (OII) per component: small producer association, market development, technological management, management, and resource management. The results indicate that rural associative enterprises have significant lags in the following components: small producer association and management with a value of 0.46 respectively and 0.45 for market developement. The company valuation indicated that RAE2 and RAE1 had an OII of 0.64 and 0.50 respectively, while RAE3, RAE4 and RAE5 had values <0.40, this can be attributed to the fact that the companies have scarce management, commercial and technological capacities. Therefore, strengthening these five components enables rural associative enterprises to enhance their response capacities to more competitive markets. 

This is a very interesting book because it approaches issues that although people or scholars and researchers in this field of knowledge might already be familiar with, it is still useful to know about the good practices and experiences from different countries around the world.  It must be said that the first edition of this magnificent book was published in English in 2013 by UNESCO itself and other publishers; subsequently, in 2015, it was published in Spanish in its ebook version, which is what we are broadly reviewing here.

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