scholarly journals An enchanted modernity: Making sense of Latin America’s religious landscape

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Morello SJ ◽  
Catalina Romero ◽  
Hugo Rabbia ◽  
Néstor Da Costa
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The North ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
Popular Religiosity ◽  
Religious Landscape

This is an interpretative, critical, and selective review of scholarly contributions that explore Latin America’s religious landscape. We present data, both qualitative and quantitative, from Latin America and analyze the explanations given to make sense of it. After assessing the literature that uses either secularization theory or the “religious economy” approach, we study explanations that highlight a Latin American style of “popular religiosity.” These three models, in different ways, put the emphasis on religious institutions—their vitality, commands, competition, and authority. We propose, instead, a focus on the religious practices of regular believers. We speculate that embarking from that focus, the idea of an “enchanted modernity” will help make sense of Latin America’s religious landscape. Nuanced elucidation of Latin America’s religious particularities will situate them in dialogue with other regions of the world, like western Europe and the United States, while also acknowledging the fact that Latin America is experiencing a modernization process distinct from the North Atlantic one.

Assessing the Obstacles to Industrialisation: The Mexican Economy, 1830–1940

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Haber
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
The North

After England began what came to be known as the First Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, industrial technology quickly diffused throughout the nations of the North Atlantic. Within fifty years of the first rumblings of British industrialisation, the factory system had spread to Western Europe and the United States. Latin America, however, lagged behind. It was not until the twentieth century that manufacturing came to lead the economies of Latin America and that agrarian societies were transformed into industrial societies.This article seeks to understand this long lag in Latin American industrialisation through an analysis of the experience of Mexico during the period 1830–1940. The purpose of the paper is to look at the obstacles that prevented self-sustaining industrialisation from taking place in Mexico, as well as to assess the results of the industrialisation that did occur.The basic argument advanced is that two different types of constraints prevailed during different periods of Mexico's industrialisation. During the period from 1830 to 1880 the obstacles to industrialisation were largely external to firms: insecure property rights, low per capita income growth resulting from pre-capitalist agricultural organisation, and the lack of a national market (caused by inefficient transport, banditry and internal tariffs) all served as a brake on Mexico's industrial development. During the period 1880–1910 the obstacles to industrialisation were largely internal to firms. These factors included the inability to realise scale economies, high fixed capital costs and low labour productivity. During the period from 1910 to 1930 these internal constraints combined with new external constraints – including the Revolution of 1910–17, the political uncertainty of the post-revolutionary period and the onset of the Great Depression – which further slowed the rate of industrial growth.

The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Internet Intermediary Liability in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-189
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Lara Gálvez ◽  
Alan M. Sears
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Free Trade Agreements ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
Intermediary Liability ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on intermediary liability in Latin America, with special emphasis on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) provisions that have been included into every bilateral FTA the United States has entered into since 2002, thus promoting their inclusion in the national law of other countries. However, these provisions are controversial, and whether they drive the internet economy or create a more restrictive online space is a matter of debate. This chapter analyses the impact of such provisions in Latin American countries and the state of their implementation in national jurisdictions. In particular, this chapter reviews implementation and proposed implementation of the DMCA model in Chile, Costa Rica and other CAFTA bloc countries, Colombia, and Peru. It also discusses the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to create new intermediary liability rules and how the same language was ultimately included in the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which became the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The Gender Gap in Latin America: Contextual and Individual Influences on Gender and Political Participation

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Desposato ◽  
Barbara Norrander
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Many Core ◽  
Developed World

While a substantial literature explores gender differences in participation in the United States, Commonwealth countries and Western Europe, little attention has been given to gender’s impact on participation in the developing world. These countries have diverse experiences with gender politics: some have been leaders in suffrage reforms and equal rights, while, in others, divorce has only recently been legalized. This article examines the relationship between gender and participation in seventeen Latin American countries. Many core results from research in the developed world hold in Latin America as well. Surprisingly, however, there is no evidence that economic development provides an impetus for more equal levels of participation. Instead, the most important contextual factors are civil liberties and women’s presence among the visible political elite.

Managerial Resource Development in Peru: Directions and Implications

1968 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-586
Author(s):  
Robert R. Rehder
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
North American ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Managerial Efficiency ◽  
The North ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Managerial Resources ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
American Concept

In Peru, as in most Latin American republics, managerial manpower development is gaining increased recognition as a major force in the modernization process. The explosive contemporary evolution of management education with new programs developing in every conceivable form and institution in Peru strongly evidences the North American concept of specialized higher education for administration, as well as its theory and curriculum. However, Peru's development of effective managerial resources is directly related to its unique social economic system within which they function. What may be sound and efficient management practice in the United States may be largely ineffective when taught within the widely different cultural and economic environment of Peru. In fact, the North American concept of managerial efficiency must be redefined in relation to the Peruvian value system and environmental constraints within which it must operate.

Voter Behavior in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew M. Singer ◽  
Gabriela Ramalho Tafoya
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demographic Traits ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Structural Roots ◽  
Established Democracies

Voter choices in Latin America have structural roots that are similar to what is observed in other regions, but these structures are weaker and more fluid than in more established democracies. In particular, while cleavages emerge in the average Latin American country and voters’ choices vary across demographic traits, issues, ideologies, and partisanship, these cleavages are weaker than in Western Europe and the United States. These cleavages are particularly weak in countries where parties do not take ideologically distinct positions from each other and instead emphasize clientelism, which suggests that the overall weakness of these cleavages in the hemisphere reflects the weak commitment of political parties to programmatic competition. Elections in Latin America are strongly shaped by government performance, especially economic trends, but these forms of accountability are weakened in countries where the party system makes it hard to identify the degree to which any specific party is able to dominate the policy process or where identifying a credible alternative to the incumbent is difficult. Thus, while voters are trying to use elections to hold politicians accountable and to ensure that their policy preferences are represented, the weaknesses of Latin America’s party systems often make this difficult.

The Development of Urban Systems in the Americas in the Nineteenth Century

1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Morse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Export Agriculture ◽  
The North ◽  
Socioeconomic Organization

Developing a line of thought from an earlier essay (Morse, 1973: II, 11-55), this paper examines some points of departure for a comparative analysis of urbanization in Latin America and the United States during the nineteenth century. Two assumptions guide the inquiry: first, that the “external dependency” thesis so frequently invoked to explain Latin American urban development easily leads to dogmatism; second, that geoeconomic factors must be perceived as interacting with those of the sociopolitical order.To set broad guidelines for our effort we might construe the economic and institutional development of the United States and Latin America along the lines of two tensions or counterpoints.United States. Here the North and West with their commercial agriculture, trading energies, and industrialization faced the commercially and financially dependent South, its socioeconomic organization conditioned by the plantation system, slavery, and export agriculture.

scholarly journals Models of Integration, Models of Development in the Pacific

1995 ◽  
pp. 97-177
Author(s):  
John Borrego
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Latin American ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Modernization Process

In order to understand the processes related to integration and development in the East Asian and Latin American societies this paper attempts to place those processes in the larger context of cycles of world accumulation. Many of the societies in East Asia, Latin America, and the South, in general, were integrated into the world economy during previous cycles of hegemony and accumulation. However, in the American cycle, and particularly at the height of this cycle, East Asia was developed while most of Latin America continued to experience truncated development. How do we understand these different trajectories? We argue that the best way to understand the different processes of integration and development in these two regions during the current historical period of global capitalist accumulation is to see them all as housed in a transition period between the waning American cycle of hegemony in the world economy and a new, as yet undefined cycle. We will look at the role that the East Asian region and its societies are playing in the transition to the next cycle, as well as analyze why these societies should not be viewed as successful products of the "modernization process," as proponents of that theory argue. The "success" of these societies is rooted in their historical entry point and the geopolitical importance to the United States of the region in which they were housed, and is not necessarily repeatable by other Third World societies such as those in Latin America.

scholarly journals Lost Decades? Economic Performance in Post-Independence Latin America

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEANDRO PRADOS DE LA ESCOSURA
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Latin American Countries

AbstractIn this paper the economic performance of post-independence Latin America is assessed in comparative perspective. The release from the colonial fiscal burden was partly offset by higher costs of self-government, while the opening of independent Latin American countries to the international economy represented a handmaiden of growth. Regional disparities increased after independence, so generalisations about the region's long-run behaviour are not straightforward. However, on average, per capita income grew in Latin America, and although the region fell behind compared with the United States and Western Europe, it improved or maintained its position relative to the rest of the world. Thus the term ‘lost decades’ appears an unwarranted depiction of the period between 1820 and 1870.

scholarly journals Why Study Religion from a Latin American Sociological Perspective? An Introduction to Religions Issue, “Religion in Latin America, and among Latinos Abroad”

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Morello
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The North ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
American Model ◽  
Middle Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Popular Religiosity

This article introduces the Religions issue on Latin American religiosity exploring sociological perspectives on the Latin American religious situation, from a Latin American perspective. The Secularization Theory proposes “the more modernity, the less religion”, but in Latin America we see both, modernity and religiosity. The Religious Economy model, on the other hand, affirms “the more pluralization, the more religion”, but in Latin America there is not so much pluralization, and it is not easy to switch from one religion to other. Finally, the article presents a Latin American model, the “popular religiosity” one. The problem with it, is that it is mostly ‘Catholic,’ and so does not account for the growing religious diversity in the region. It also emphasizes the “popular” aspect, excluding middle socioeconomic status individuals and elites, assuming they practice “real” religion. This introduction presents a critical approach as a way to recover, describe, and understand Latin American religious practices. This methodology might be a path to creating sociological categories to understand religion beyond the north Atlantic world.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Associations ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
The Road ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The New Deal

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.

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