Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
Emilia Millón, ISES-CONICET/UNT, Argentina, millon.emilia@gmail.com
Denise Pozzi-Escot, Museo Pachacamac, Ministerio de Cultura, Perú, denisepozziescot@yahoo.es
Sofía González S., La-Ponte: Research Centre and Ecomuseum, Guatemala, info@laponte.org
Various formats of museums—eco-museums, interpretation centres, educational trails, and popular workshops—emerged from the hope of non-formal education and shared knowledge. Traditional national museums, often rooted in large archaeological collections with significant bureaucratic and security responsibilities, have also started democratizing knowledge and heritage. These efforts aim to decolonise museum practices and engage surrounding communities, particularly those with ancestral claims to these spaces.
This session seeks to intersect feminist pedagogy and popular education, introducing a seldom-discussed element: the popular economy. It contrasts the neoliberal subject—central to sustaining neoliberal capitalism—with the relational subject proposed by feminism and popular education. These practices enhance quality of life not only economically but also through personal growth, empowering women who work in museums and protect cultural heritage.
In times of rapid, individualistic, and often violent economic policies, it is crucial to foster collective imagination and strengthen community bonds. The neoliberal subject rejects critical thinking, active communities, and bodies in motion, instead enforcing a violent pedagogy that silences dissent, hierarchises bodies, and undermines comprehensive sexual education. It reinforces masculinity as the standard, marginalising other perspectives.
To counter this, a “pedagogy of life” emphasises sustainability (Perez Orozco 2014), critical reflection, emotional experiences, and diversity. It challenges the private/public divide, encouraging open dialogue about what has traditionally been silenced. As Rita Segato argues, “only a world of relationships and community sets limits on the objectification of life” (2018, p. 16, translated by authors). Learning, in all its forms, is liberating and essential for imagining a future rooted in relationships rather than individualism.
Papers:
Ludic Strategies for Teaching (Feminist?) Economics
Emilia Millón, ISES-CONICET; Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina
In an effort to move beyond the traditional, banking-based approach to teaching mainstream economics—often centred on the ‘Homo economicus’ paradigm (Ferullo 2011)—one of the research groups I am part of developed an alternative experience to share, teach, and reflect on macroeconomics and its specific impact on women. To achieve this, we designed a board game that, under the guidance of a pedagogical coordinator, facilitates engagement with the topic through an interactive intervention.
In most Latin American educational settings, alternative learning experiences often take place in community spaces, workshops, or soup kitchens rather than within formal institutions. This study examines such an experience through a feminist epistemological lens, using intersectionality as an analytical framework to understand how certain groups are subordinated to market-driven and heteropatriarchal logics. The outcomes varied depending on the context in which the game was implemented—public universities, state programs, middle- and working-class secondary schools, and popular high schools, among others. Overall, incorporating playful strategies to teach about economic issues proved highly effective, both as an educational tool and as a catalyst for deeper reflection on the subject. At the end, the work reflects about neoliberal subjectivities and his role in education and emancipation.
Self-recognition, Self-valuation and Customary Law: A Relationship Between Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology
Maria Eugenia Orejuela Mesa, University Autónoma of Barcelona and University of Cantabria; Assistant Professor, Universidad del Valle, Colombia
Karen Lloed Arcos, History, University of the Valle, Colombia
Based on an experience in the Huila reservation/resguardo (Colombia) with the Nasa Indigenous people, a workshop was held that initially aimed to observe how much the perception of archaeological remains had changed from the 1990s to the present in the region. Materiality was used as a vehicle to connect with the ancestors and with current realities. The experience showed an interest in relating that materiality to the present and revealing its own epistemologies and ontologies. Self-esteem was observed, an effect of ethnogenesis processes, where the foundations for expressing self-esteem are laid. A dialogue between academia and the community is necessary and constructive for both parties, so that the relationship between the customary and the past is consistent with their own realities and perceptions. A relationship of good practices in which reparation and power relations are considered as primordial instances for clear and fair approaches. Thus, the material representations that have occurred can create the foundations for recognising and ordering a present and recent past of encounters between Indigenous peoples and Western or Westernised societies.
Project Presentation: La-Ponte Research Centre and Ecomuseum in Asturias, Spain
Sofía González S., anthropologist, researcher and coordinator, La-Ponte: Research Centre and Ecomuseum, Guatemala
La-Ponte was born in 2011 as a grassroots initiative in Asturias, dedicated to the identification, conservation and dissemination of Asturian tangible and intangible heritage. It works by integrating the local community in its projects, and through intersectoral collaborations with other local and international collectives for the protection of cultural landscapes, economic diversification and environmental sustainability of the rural territory. This intervention aims to show the contribution of La-Ponte to the implementation of feminist pedagogical practices in rural territories of Asturias, Spain. These strategies and practices are specifically designed and implemented in the fields of archaeological and anthropological research, and in the management of tangible and intangible heritage. Currently, it is the rural women who lead and participate more in the activities and projects of the ecomuseum, establishing at the same time support networks and spaces for women’s empowerment in the local territory.
Weaving Community Ties: The Pachacamac Museum and the Women Artisans of SISAN in Lima-Peru
Denise Pozzi-Escot, Rosangela Carrión, Pamela Castro de la Mata and Carmen Rosa Uceda, Museo Pachacamac, Ministerio de Cultura, Perú
The Pachacamac Museum is responsible for the Pachacamac archaeological sanctuary, an important ceremonial centre on the Peruvian coast. Recognising the importance of community participation in the preservation of the archaeological site, the project named “Promotion of Community Development” is part of the sanctuary’s Management Plan. It aims to link cultural heritage with the surrounding community, offering new social, cultural, and economic value, thereby improving the community’s quality of life.
In this context, the SISAN artisan association was formed, composed of women living near the museum. They are now active members of the Pachacamac team. Through the production and marketing of handicrafts, SISAN artisans not only contribute to the local and family economy, but also preserve and disseminate traditional techniques and the sanctuary’s iconography.
We want to share in this paper her collaborative approach that highlights the interconnection between heritage conservation and community well-being, and the possibility to establish a sustainable model that can be replicated in other museums, promoting comprehensive and harmonious development between culture and community.
Sexuality Education in Debates: Practices, Spaces and Strategies to Dispute its Meanings
Constanza San Pedro, Escuela de Ciencias de la Educación, Centro de investigación de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, y Secretaría de Extension de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
Ayelén Branca, CONICET – Centro de investigación de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, y Secretaría de Extension de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
In a project on Philosophising with Children, teachers and Philosophy students at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, have been working for 30 years in various spaces, addressing topics such as Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). This project engages children, young people, and adults through workshops. Here, we share a critical reflection on teacher training experiences related to the implementation of CSE in educational settings, aimed at future primary and early childhood teachers. These training sessions challenge norms, stereotypes, and mandates that shape subjectivities within institutions, particularly schools and other educational spaces, such as an Anthropology Museum. In this way, we reaffirmed the commitment to deconstruction and the pedagogies of pleasure, and, through the questioning of certain imaginaries that permeate the teaching task, we sought to problematise the way in which different devices configure our subjectivity and the place that we, as teachers and/or future teachers, have in sex education, whether by reinforcing or reproducing the prevailing norms. Both experiences require reinterpretation in the current context of the global far-right’s ideological advances. In Argentina, this is particularly evident in a right-wing government that directly attacks agendas related to the Comprehensive Sexuality Education Law (26.150), passed in 2006.