Introduction: Everyday Life in (Post-)Neoliberal Latin America

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Daniel Nehring ◽  
Gerardo Gómez Michel ◽  
Magdalena López
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Societal Consensus ◽  
The Subject

The introduction explores the cultural dynamics of neoliberalism and anti-neoliberal resistance in Latin America. While Latin American neoliberalisms and the regions transition – perhaps temporary – to post-neoliberalism have been extensively debated (Dávila 2012, Flores-Macias 2012, Goodale and Postero 2013), extant research has largely focused on relevant political and socio-economic processes. The cultural dynamics of neoliberalism, anti-neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism, in terms of the discursive construction of neoliberal common sense and the organisation of everyday beliefs, norms, values and systems of meaning, have received far less attention. The introductory chapter then sketches the subject matter of the following case studies. Together, the studies in this volume seek to address this gap. They pursue three objectives. First, they seek to explore how neoliberal narratives of self and social relationships have transformed everyday life in contemporary Latin America. Second, they examine how these narratives are being contested and supplanted by a diversity of alternative modes of experience and practices in a diversity of settings, in the context of anti-neoliberal and post-neoliberal socio-political programmes. In this context, the studies in this book address the questions to what extent contemporary Latin America might in fact be described as post-neoliberal, given the crisis of political challenges to neoliberalism in societies such as Venezuela, Argentina or Bolivia. Third, the following chapters interrogate the discourses and cultural practices through which a societal consensus for the pursuit of neoliberal politics may be established, defended and contested.

scholarly journals A APLICAÇÃO DO CONCEITO DE POPULISMO À AMÉRICA LATINA: pela necessidade de classificar, e não desqualificar

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
João Carlos Amoroso Botelho
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The Political ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Past ◽  
De Se ◽  
The Subject ◽  
America Latina

Desde que autores como Germani (1962), Di Tella (1969) e Ianni (1975) aplicaram a noção de populismo à América Latina, muito se escreveu sobre o tema. O conceito se estirou tanto que tem servido para definir políticos os mais díspares. Com a ausência das condições socioeconômicas descritas pelas formulações clássicas, a estratégia adotada é limitar a categoria à dimensão política. Esse procedimento, porém, não é capaz de descrever atributos exclusivos suficientes para que o populismo seja um fenômeno específico. Ao mesmo tempo, o conceito está tão enraizado que não é viável abandoná-lo. A solução proposta é avaliar em quais características um político se aproxima e se afasta dos casos paradigmáticos do passado. Assim, ele pode ser populista em certos aspectos e não em outros. Com esse procedimento, se chega a uma classificação, em que um líder apresente mais ou menos atributos descritos pelas definições clássicas, eliminando a necessidade de reformulação constante do conceito para adaptá-lo a novas circunstâncias. Também haveria menos espaço a que o rótulo de populista continuasse servindo para desqualificar políticos latino-americanos. O artigo aborda definições clássicas e recentes aplicadas à América Latina e avalia a viabilidade empírica da estratégia de se concentrar na dimensão política.---LA APLICACIÓN DEL CONCEPTO DE POPULISMO AMÉRICA LATINA: la necesidad de clasificar, y no descalificar Desde que autores como Germani (1962), Di Tella (1969) y Ianni (1975) aplicaron la noción de populismo a la América Latina, mucho se ha escrito sobre el tema. El concepto se ha estirado tanto que ha definido políticos muy dispares. Con la ausencia de las condiciones socioeconómicas descritas por las formulaciones clásicas, la estrategia adoptada es concentrarse en la dimensión política. Ese procedimiento, sin embargo, no es capaz de describir atributos exclusivos suficientes para que el populismo sea un fenómeno específico. Al mismo tiempo, el concepto está tan enraizado que no es viable abandonarlo. La solución propuesta es evaluar en cuales características un político se acerca y se aleja de los casos paradigmáticos del pasado. Así, ello puede ser populista en ciertos aspectos y no en otros. Con ese procedimiento, se llega a una clasificación, en que un líder presente más o menos atributos descritos por las definiciones clásicas, eliminando la necesidad de reformulación constante del concepto. También habría menos espacio a que el rótulo de populista continuase sirviendo para descalificar políticos latinoamericanos. El artículo presenta definiciones clásicas y recientes aplicadas a la América Latina y discute la viabilidad empírica de la estrategia de concentrarse en la dimensión política.Palabras-clave: populismo; América Latina; casos paradigmáticos; clasificación.---THE APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF POPULISM IN LATIN AMERICA: the need to classify and not disqualifyEver since authors such as Germani (1962), Di Tella (1969) and Ianni (1975) applied the notion of populism in Latin America, much has been written on the subject. The concept stretched out so much that it has served to define the most dissimilar politicians. In the absence of socioeconomic conditions described by classical formulations, the strategy adopted is to restrict the category to the political dimension. Such a procedure, however, is not capable of describing adequate particular attributes that populism would be a specific phenomenon. At the same time, the concept is so deeply embedded in our society that it is not feasible to abandon it. The proposed solution is to evaluate in which characteristics a politician reaches and moves away from the paradigmatic cases of the past. Thus, it can be populist in some respects and not in others. In such a procedure, we arrive at a classification in which a leader shows more or less attributes described by classical definitions, eliminating the need for constant reformulation of the concept to adapt it to new circumstances. Also, there would be less space to which the label of populist would continue to serve to disqualify Latin American politicians. The article discusses recent and classic settings applied to Latin America and assesses the empirical viability of focusing on the political dimension strategy.Key words: populism; Latin America; paradigmatic cases; classification.

In and Out of Digital Humanities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste ◽  
Juan Carlos Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
American Culture ◽  
General Context ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Digital Aesthetics ◽  
Latin American Culture

This introductory chapter provides a general context for this collection, starting with the anecdotal inception of the project. It provides a list of some of the important titles in the field of digital humanities that figure prominently as academic predecessors and ponders on the consequences and implications of the digital turn in the humanities for the study of Latinx and Latin American culture. In response to the cultural hegemony of Anglocentric circles in the digital humanities, it provides ample evidence of the development and existence of the field in Latin America. Finally, it provides a brief overview of the four sections into which the book is divided: digital nations, transnational networks, digital aesthetics and practices, and interviews with Latin American DH scholars.

scholarly journals Enter 9/11: Latin America and the Global War on Terror

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-573
Author(s):  
Markus-Michael Müller
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Global War

AbstractThis article offers an analysis of the transnational discursive construction processes informing Latin American security governance in the aftermath of 9/11. It demonstrates that the Global War on Terror provided an opportunity for external and aligned local knowledge producers in the security establishments throughout the Americas to reframe Latin America's security problems through the promotion of a militarised security epistemology, and derived policies, centred on the region's ‘convergent threats’. In tracing the discursive repercussions of this epistemic reframing, the article shows that, by tapping into these discourses, military bureaucracies throughout the Americas were able to overcome their previous institutional marginalisation vis-à-vis civilian agencies. This development contributed to the renaissance of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism discourses and policies in the region, allowing countries such as Colombia and Brazil to reposition themselves globally by exporting their military expertise for confronting post-9/11 threats beyond the region.

Time and Christianity in Early Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Matthew O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of

The arrival of Christianity in the Americas and its long-term development throughout the colonial era were closely connected to questions of time—whether the human experience and manipulation of time, the crafting of historical memory, or the imagining of potential futures. Exploring classic and recent scholarship on the colonial era, this chapter considers some of the ways that the history of Christianity in early Latin America is also a history of time. This chapter focuses on the viceroyalty of New Spain—Central Mexico in particular—but also makes some references to scholarship from other parts of Spanish America. The centering of attention on time starts a productive dialogue within the historiography on early Latin American Christianity—a conversation that steps beyond a tired debate about the relative “Europeanness” or “indigeneity” of post-conquest cultures, focusing, instead, on unique ways of being that emerged out of the remarkable convergence of intellectual traditions and cultural practices in the colonial world.

Political Development and Socioeconomic Development: The Case of Latin America

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 889-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin C. Needler
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Past History ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Latin American Countries

One way of acquiring insight into the processes of political development in Latin America is to compare the countries of the area systematically in terms of the “degree of development” which each can be said to have attained. Ideally, such an enterprise can lead to the understanding of the past history of the “more developed” countries by reference to the present problems of the “less developed” while an understanding of the problems confronting the more developed countries can make possible a glimpse into the future of those now less developed. Isolation of the factors responsible for a state's being more or less developed can moreover prove instructive for the understanding of the relations between political and socioeconomic phenomena.Perhaps most important, such comparisons provide the means for holding constant effects attributable to characteristics shared by all, or nearly all, of the Latin American countries. Thus it can be argued with much plausibility that military intervention in politics, say, derives from elements in the Hispanic tradition. Yet it is clear that the frequency of military intervention varies from country to country, even where they share equally in that tradidition. Thus one is forced to go beyond the “Hispanic tradition” thesis with which the investigation might otherwise have come to rest.In the present article I will be concerned with the problem of the relation of political development to socioeconomic development in the Latin American context. For reasons that will become apparent below, I will not at this point attempt a rigorous analysis of the concept of political development, which has already been the subject of a large and rapidly growing literature.

scholarly journals Postcolonial theory and its Impact upon modern historical-anthropological research of Latin America

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Irina Veselova
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Special Challenge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Latin Americanism

The object of this research is the postcolonial theory, while the subject is its impact upon the historical, and namely, historical-anthropological research of Latin America. The author examines such peculiarities of post-colonialism as the problem of identification, the “oppressed”, the importance of linguistic component of scientific description, as well as the political bias of this direction. Attention is turned to the process of adaptation of postcolonial theory to Latin American scientific foundation; emphasis is placed on the fact that the region has its own tradition of interpretation of the colonial past that results in occurrence of the so-called phenomenon of decolonial turn within the Latin American humanities. Based on the comparative method and qualitative content analysis of the works dedicated to postcolonial theory, the author demonstrates the presence of a wide range of opinions of Latin American researchers on such concepts as “colonialism: and “Latin Americanism”. The conclusion is made that the intense discussion on the theoretical aspects of colonial and decolonial theory may underlie the new vector in the historical studies of Latin America.  At the same time, decolonial turn alongside postcolonial theory, raise a number of questions, the solution of which is vital for the development of accurate methodology for further scientific research. For the Russian Latin American scholars, the new trends turn into a special challenge that should be considered in carrying out historical and anthropological research.

scholarly journals Dollars for Pesos? The Political-Economy of Dollarization in Latin America

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-81
Author(s):  
PAMELA K. STARR
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Stable Growth ◽  
Latin American Countries

ABSTRACT The capacity of dollarization to generate stable growth in Latin America despite occasional instability in the international financial system has been the subject of significant economic analysis in recent years. Yet very little attention has been afforded to the politics of the issue. This paper attempts to fill this void by looking at both the political and the economic factors which influence the policy effectiveness of dollarization. The paper reviews the theoretic and policy debate within which the dollarization question is situated and then develops an informal model of the political and economic variables which influence the viability of dollarization. It concludes that although dollarization may be the correct policy choice for some Latin American countries, it is unlikely to benefit the majority. Most Latin American countries would benefit more from directly addressing the forces know to promote economic instability.

Ghosts in the Machine and Other Tales around a “Marvelous Invention”: Player Pianos in Latin America in the Early Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Ospina Romero
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Player Piano ◽  
Gender Constructions ◽  
Literary Portrait ◽  
Local Discourses

Gabriel García Márquez's literary portrait of the arrival of the pianola in Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude functions as a metaphor for the reception and cultural legitimization of player pianos in Latin America during their heyday in the 1910s and 1920s. As a technological intruder, the player piano inhabited a liminal space between the manual and the mechanical as well as between unmediated musical experiences and the mechanically mediated consumption of sounds. It thus constitutes a paradigmatic case by which to examine the contingent construction of ideas about tradition and modernity. The international trade in player pianos between the United States and Latin America during the first decades of the twentieth century was developed in tandem with the commercial expansion and political interventionism of the United States throughout the Americas during the same period. The efforts of North American businessmen to capture the Latin American market and the establishment of marketing networks between US companies and Latin American dealers reveal a complex interplay of mutual stereotyping, First World War commercial geopolitics, capitalization on European cultural/musical referents, and multiple strategies of appropriation and reconfiguration in relation to the player piano's technological and aesthetic potential. The reception of player pianos in Latin America was characterized by anxieties very similar to those of US consumers, particularly with regard to the acousmatic nature of their sounds and their perceived uncanniness. The cultural legitimization of the instrument in the region depended, however, on its adaptation to local discourses, cultural practices, soundscapes, expectations, language, gender constructions, and especially repertoires.

British Investment in Latin America, 1850–1950 A Reappraisal

Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American History ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
New Research

For forty years much of the research on Britain's relationship with Latin America has been dominated by a rather narrow agenda, the boundaries of which were established by radical and conservative writers in the middle third of the twentieth century, just when Britain's role in Latin America was rapidly declining. Essentially this was a debate about power, that of British governments and businessmen on the one hand and Latin American governments and elites on the other. More recently, however, younger historians have begun to break free of the confines established by those writing in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result there is some hope that new research on this topic may offer more of interest to non-specialists and contribute to other historical debates, both in British and Latin American history. The purpose of this historiographical essay, which is based primarily, but not entirely, on the research undertaken in Britain during the last twenty years, is to review the recent literature on British investment in Latin America, and to investigate some of the implications of what we now know about the subject for our understanding of the evolution of Latin American societies.

scholarly journals Against the current: The emergence of a media democratization policy agenda in Latin America

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-248
Author(s):  
Philip Kitzberger
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spontaneous Reaction

In Latin America, the role of the media in democratic societies has recently become the subject of public debates, struggles and political mobilizations that have denaturalized the existing media order and established a distinct policy agenda oriented towards media democratization. This region-wide trend – a counter-tendency to the globally dominant market-driven orientation of media and telecommunication policies – requires explanation. This article stresses that it cannot be attributed to a spontaneous reaction to market concentration or media elitism, just as it cannot be reduced to a top-down process driven by populist leaders seeking to control the media. Drawing on social movement literature, the article traces four interacting processes – domestic network mobilization, reframing processes, transnational activism and changes in political elite alignments – that have brought about the unprecedented politicization of the Latin American media order.

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