The coexistence from the social imaginary: Meetings mediated by complicity and friendship

Abstract

This research article addressed the coexistence from the encounter with the other, considered from the theory of social imaginaries. The paper aimed to understand social imaginaries related to the coexistence of students from the Humanist Institute of Pereira Risaralda (Colombia). For this purpose, the approach and design of complementarity were implemented (Murcia & Jaramillo, 2008), prioritizing the reflexive ethnography for the approach to the social reality of the school. Then, the field work was carried out in depth with interviews, cartographies, and focus groups, categorized with the help of the well-founded theory. The interpretation was achieved through the triangulation of information. The results show the classroom as a time and space to express what a human being is and to experience recognition and acceptance, and to be part of the social group people belong to. Moreover, practically and unusually, friendship and complicity are recognized as latent expressions of imaginaries that dispute their naturalization and other imaginaries that resist it and project it as a possibility of socialization with the other in the school.