INSTITUTIONS WITH THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC CAPITAL IN THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FIELD IN LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

Community development as a perspective represents a great opportunity for Latin American countries. The institutionalization of the scientific field of community development in Latin America has not been previously studied. The objective of this paper was to identify the characteristics of community development as a scientific field in Latin America from the analysis of institutions related to it. This reserach was classified as descriptive with a theoretical contribution, in addition to being a longitudinal retrospective study. To obtain results, several methods were used at the theoretical and empirical levels, mainly the bibliometric method. As a result, the most productive institution in the field was the Universidad Autónoma de México since multiple postgraduate training programs on local and community development are offered in it. The rest of the institutions with the greatest scientific capital were the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad de La Habana. In the scientific field of community development in Latin America, the most productive magazine is Interações, followed by Studies and Perspectives in Tourism and Eure. The Interações magazine of the Don Bosco Catholic University, Brazil, is the only magazine specialized in the field. The EURE magazine is the best positioned in the field of community development, however it cannot be classified as a specialized publication in this theme. In the scientific field of community development in Latin America, there is no evidence of extensive collaborative relationships between institutions, most of the collaboration is at a national level.