Psicología, procesos psicosociales y escenarios rurales: Editorial

Abstract

Latin American psychology has rarely stopped to think about the peculiarities of rurality, even though a significant part of the Latin American population lives in rural environments and most of the world's poorest population lives in territories defined as rural. Research findings and professional practices tend to be transferred uncritically from urban to rural contexts without a proper discussion of their scope and contextual relevance, naively assuming that human beings relate to the urban. At the same time, specific psychosocial processes and dynamics associated with rurality remain invisible to our profession. We assume that "the rural" requires a specific view of psychology, since it is a field of problems that challenges its theories and tasks, usually thought and developed from urban sociocultural practices. In this issue we publish six papers that highlight experiences located in rural contexts of Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, gathering the experiences of rural workers. We hope that the dialogue of these works will serve as a stimulus to continue contributing, from Latin America, to promote the work and development of rural psychology at a global level. From this perspective, we invite our readers to encourage and share these research experiences.