On 30 Sep 2014,  Andrea Valle <valle@di.unito.it> wrote
> I?m working on a project for a book that is a collection of essays.
> Each one needs at its end a list of references.
> 
> 
> But how can I force context to take into account only a portion of text for generating bibliographic references and for inserting a block of references after a section?
> (To collect all refs in a single bib file or to have split bib files is not an issue)

Hi Andrea,
It probably depends on whether you cite your bibliographic references in the text of your essay, or only a part of them.

What I would do anyway is to make a subsection or a subject “References" after each essay, add the references that I have not cited in my text as \nocite[key] and finish with  \placepublications[criterium=cite]. 

I should perhaps add that I always process my projects without using the bib-module. I separately make the necessary .bbl-files, which I linput before \starttext. It gives me a lot of flexibility. 

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Robert Blackstone