Decadent Modernity

Author(s):  
Michela Coletta

How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this book explores how different groups of intellectuals, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, drew from European sociological and medical theories to produce a series of cultural representations based on notions of degeneration. Through a comparative analysis of three country case studies − Argentina, Uruguay and Chile − the book investigates four themes that were central to definitions of Latin American modernity at the turn of the century: race and the nation, the search for the autochthonous, education, and aesthetic values. It takes a transnational approach to show how civilisational constructs were adopted and adapted in a postcolonial context where cultural modernism foreshadowed economic modernisation. In doing this, this work sheds new light on the complex discursive negotiations through which the idea of ‘Latin America’ became gradually established in the region.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Amaya Álvez-Marín ◽  
Camila Bañales-Seguel ◽  
Rodrigo Castillo ◽  
Claudia Acuña-Molina ◽  
Pablo Torres

Diverse existing legal paradigms have dealt with the interaction of humans and Nature in different ways. We identify three main lenses through which current constitutional systems in Latin America have operated to resolve conflicts. We focus on rivers as emblematic elements of Nature that offer concrete possibilities to operationalize an emerging paradigm that recognizes legal personhood for Nature. The objective is to examine, from a critical interdisciplinary perspective, the existing paradigms, describe their limits and open the debate to alternative jurisdictional venues for favouring the coexistence of humans and natural systems. Through the comparative analysis of three case studies in Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, we outline the challenges and opportunities offered by an emerging legal tradition, ‘The New Latin American Constitutionalism’, and question what would effectively be different with a change of paradigm towards the recognition of Nature’s rights.


2006 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Ehrick

In her study of early cinema and modernity in Latin America, Ana López wrote: “Latin American modernity has been a global, intertextual experience, addressing impulses and models from abroad, in which every nation and region created, and creates, its own ways of playing with and at modernity.” Early Uruguayan cinema exemplifies this interaction of global phenomena with local realities and thus provides an instructive window onto some of the ways Latin Americans were “playing with and at modernity” in the early twentieth century. During that era, Uruguay emerged as Latin America’s first welfare state and a model of progressive reform in the region. The complexities of that transition are reflected in so-calledcine de beneficencia(beneficent cinema), film made by and for social assistance organizations for fundraising and propaganda purposes. Film historian José Carlos Álvarez identifies beneficent cinema as “something that we think was purely Uruguayan, and specific to this era.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.


Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny

Case studies of Indonesia and Japan illustrate that party-system stability in patronage democracies is deeply affected by the relative autonomy of political brokers. Over the course of a decade, a series of decentralizing reforms in Indonesia weakened patronage-based parties hold on power, with the 2014 election ultimately being a contest between two rival populists: Joko Widodo and Subianto Prabowo. Although Japan was a patronage democracy throughout the twentieth century, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) remained robust to outsider appeals even in the context of economic and corruption crises. However, reforms in the 1990s weakened the hold of central factional leaders over individual members of the LDP and their patronage machines. This was instrumental to populist Junichiro Koizumi’s winning of the presidency of the LDP and ultimately the prime ministership of Japan. This chapter also reexamines canonical cases of populism in Latin America.


1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Megan DeVirgilis

The Gothic short form in Latin America has yet to receive focused scholarly attention. Yet, despite no early Gothic novel tradition to speak of, the Gothic mode emerged in poetry and short fiction, representing particular anxieties and colonial/postcolonial realities specific to the region owing in part to a significant increase in periodicals. Focusing on two case studies – Clemente Palma's ‘La granja blanca’ (Peru, 1904) and Horacio Quiroga's ‘El almohadón de plumas’ (Uruguay, 1917) – this article will explore how Latin American authors classified as modern, modernista, and criollista were experimenting with Gothic forms, adapting the design of the traditional Gothic novel to intensify its effect and reach a wider readership. Demonstrating a particular influence of Poe, a unity of effect is created, one that suggests that the home is a place of horrors, not comfort, and the uniquely horrifying settings and plot ultimately challenge established moral codes and literary tendencies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Caimari

This Element examines urban imaginaries during the expansion of international news between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, when everyday information about faraway places found its way into newspapers all over the world. Building on the premise that news carried an unprecedented power to shape representations of the world, it follows this development as it made its way to regular readers beyond the dominant information poles, in the great port-cities of the South American Atlantic. Based on five case studies of typical turn-of-the-century foreign news, Lila Caimari shows how current events opened windows onto distant cities, feeding a new world horizon that was at once wider and eminently urban.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 685
Author(s):  
Paulo Braz Clemencio Schettino

As lembranças que restaram amarelecidas e transformadas pelo decurso do tempo na memória consciente a partir da experiência de espectador das artes sonoras e imagéticas da pintura, do teatro, da música e do cinema sobre as questões da latinidade nas Américas em confronto com a vivência de idêntica problemática política nos dias atuais – 30 anos depois. Revisitação de um tempo passado em busca de sua atualidade, e análise comparada de quatro textos de categorias diferentes, abrigados sob um mesmo título – El Dia Que Me Quieras – em exercício de intertextualidade. A pesquisa que antecedeu o presente texto pretende ao menos compreender e se possível lançar luz sobre a questão da América Latina, Latinidade e Latino-americanos. Palavras-chave: América Latina; Colonialismo; Latinidade. “The day that you love me” Abstract: The memories that remain yellowed and turned the course of time in conscious memory from the viewing experience of sound and image arts of painting, theater, music and film on the issues of Latin civilization in the Americas in comparison with the experience of similar political issue today – 30 years later. A visitation of time spent in search of his current and comparative analysis of four texts of different categories, sheltered under the same title – El Dia Que Me Quieras – intertextuality in exercise. The research that preceded the present text intends to at least understand and can shed light on the question of Latin American, Latina and Latino Americans. Keywords: Latin America; Colonialism; Latinity.


2017 ◽  
pp. 26-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Knobel ◽  
Andrés Bernasconi

The higher education sector in Latin America has fallen short of its promise of spearheading cultural, social, and economic progress for the region. As higher education changes to meet the challenges on the new century, the few flagship universities of Latin America are called upon to lead. However, these universities face both internal and external obstacles that hinder their full modernization, threatening their leadership.


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