International Journal of Science and Technology (IJST)

The Concept of Mode of Life in Veterinary Education in Mexico

This review advances “mode of life” as a foundational, cross-species concept that surpasses “way of life” and “lifestyle.” A mode of life names the integrated configuration of material exchanges with environ-ments, socio-technical mediation (tools, symbols, infrastructures), rules, communities, and divisions of labor through which beings persist and become. Marxian analysis grounds modes of life in productive and reproductive activity shaped by power, ideology, and political economy (e.g., Gramsci on hegemo-ny; Federici on social reproduction). Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Leontiev, Engeström) reframes learning as transformation of object-oriented, tool-mediated activity systems, in which both the object (what is produced) and the subject (who we become) change. Burkitt’s relational account of emotion and Levin’s agentive evolution widen the lens to multi-level intelligence and subject formation across phylogeny. Within this framework, veterinarians and animal scientists are designers and mediators of modes of life. In public/One Health, they reconfigure human–animal–ecosystem relations through vaccination, biosecurity, food safety, and risk communication. In animal production, they co-design welfare-centered husbandry (silvopastoral systems, environmental enrichment, antimicrobial stewardship) that counters industrial alienation and ecological harm. In companion-animal practice, they align species-typical needs with domestic routines; in wildlife and conservation, they restore or ethically approximate species-authentic modes of life; in laboratories, they secure humane, reproducible research. Throughout American and Latin American contexts, institutional infrastructures, cultural practices, and inequalities condition what modes of life are materially possible. Ethically and politically, the essay ad-vocates non-authoritarian relations and democratized organization of animal work (Wolff’s workplace democracy; Blakeley’s community governance). Veterinary praxis is cast as expansive learning: diagnos-ing contradictions, modelling alternatives, implementing and consolidating improved activity systems. Health is reconceived as a property of modes of life—nutrition, movement, rest, stress regulation, socia-bility, safety—rather than mere disease absence. The argument closes on need as the mediating category binding organisms to particular modes of life and orienting professional responsibility: to co-create just, sustainable, and flourishing interspecies life-ways.