Characteristics of the invisible weavers in the joint publications of intellectual networks. An analysis based on the study of Latin American political-religious cases from the second half of the 20th century

Abstract

It is possible to trace different ways of linking intellectuals through joint publications. This paper presented from the least to the most complex in their organization. These three concepts were analyzed in case studies of Latin American political-religious networks in the second half of the twentieth century. The joint publications linked to a quasi-group within the Brazilian journal Paz e Terra (1966-1969) and to the intellectual network around the publications of the Argentine-Uruguayan editorial Tierra Nueva during the 1970s were analyzed from the sociocentric method. The egocentric method was used to analyze an invisible school to which the Basque-Salvadoran Ignacio Ellacuría belonged. Finally, the origins of the publications were studied to investigate the invisible weavers, that is, people who were central to the birth of the works but who did not appear (or if they do, it is in a very marginal way) in the writings. It was concluded that the linkage rule towards them is different from the linkage that the rest of the quasi-group, network or invisible school have with each other. This characteristic distances them from other concepts, such as nodes with a higher degree of centrality, intermediation, proximity, or Hubs.