"Cath Collins, Katherine Hite, and Alfredo Joignant, eds., The Politics of Memory in Chile: From Pinochet to Bachelet: Book Review." Latin American Politics and Society 56(4): 182-185. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sociological Inquiry, 2008
Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing have accomplished an important and much needed task. They have provided the theoretical, empirical, and historical elements to understand how neoliberalism was established in Bolivia, as well as the groundbreaking social movements against it that emerged in the past seven years that changed the social, political, and economical landscape of that country. Thanks to the well-researched work of Kohl and Farthing, we are better positioned to understand these processes. Chapter 1 is a must for students of neoliberalism. The authors argue that, under neoliberalism, "freedom becomes complete market control in the sphere of economics and electoral participation in the sphere of political participation" (p. 12). They underscore that neoliberalism fundamentally transforms the role of the state in ways that are routinely underestimated; for instance, it becomes more difficult to develop regulatory institutions. They also expose the covert ways in which neoliberalism works in favor of transnational corporations, for instance, by promoting decentralization as a means of improving governmental efficiency, but without making the links between global interests and political decentralization apparent. The authors underscore the hegemonic nature of neoliberalism, which is "produced by a community of experts who agree, more by convention of political persuasion than by factual backing, to call a certain type of thinking and speaking rational" (p. 15). But like all hegemonic systems, it is subjected to challenges and counter-hegemonic discourses. Drawing on events from 2000 to 2005 in Bolivia, the authors show how global neoliberalism was challenged by the people most affected by these policies. The authors thus highlight one paradox of neoliberalism. On the one hand, it promotes a kind of democracy where the real decision making takes place in the private sector. On the other hand, such democratic initiatives can plant important seeds that grow into counter-hegemonic resistance. Chapter 2 lays the historical background, underscoring commonalities with other countries-strategic alliances between ruling classes, appropriation of resources by local and international elites, resistance by indigenous populations-as well as important particularities to Bolivia: the power struggle between the center and the regions makes it one of the least integrated in Latin America. The implementation of neoliberalism in Bolivia in the 1980s-the New Economic Policy (NEP)-is dealt with in Chapter 3. Bolivia was the second country, after Chile, where the most radical neoliberal restructuring was implemented. The success of these policies, the authors argue, came to workers at great losses such as great social devastation and unrest and the adoption of repressive authoritarian measures during times of democracy.
Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Contemporary Social Movements in Latin America
Latin American Politics and Society, 2011
These four books combined offer a wealth of interesting, rich ethnographic data and novel analysis of contemporary Latin America ¶s leftist political parties, social movements, and civil society. During the past 20 years they cover, the region underwent important changes as neoliberalism stormed throughout Latin America in the wake of the military dictatorships that paved its way. The authors of these volumes focus on the innovative, bold, daring, and clever initiatives of social actors in the public sphere, who can be credited with, if not altogether stopping neoliberalism, certainly altering its course, forcing changes, advancing democracy, and in some cases, even overthrowing corrupted national governments. This essay will offer a brief summary of each book, take a look at its research methodology, analyze how the different pieces ³talk´ to each other, and assess their contributions to the field.
Similar Critiques on Neoliberalism and Different Post-Neoliberal Responses in Bolivia and Ecuador
This article aims to contribute to the understanding of recent democratization processes in Bolivia and Ecuador, two Andean countries that underwent similar processes of contestation to neoliberalism and implemented different strategies and policies to respond to it. In this article, I will focus on the similarities between the democratic processes of Bolivia and Ecuador in the context of neoliberalism and the divergent post-neoliberal responses implemented in the last decade.
International Political Sociology 7:2, 2013
This study is about strategies of neoliberalization in relation to practices of dissent and resistance. It explores how struggles arising in the context of neoliberalization may be subject to entanglement within the very processes they seek to contest and—in so doing—interrogates the political stakes of neoliberal governmental rationality. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic research, I trace the international trajectory of mobilizations against the dispossession visited upon Colombian farmers in the context of BP’s investment in oilfields in the mid-1990s. Reasoning through attention to the ways in which this one specific struggle was neutralized, I suggest that a key aim of neoliberal strategies of political control is to accomplish a sort of “political hygiene” by nullifying politically surplus subjects and containing dissent within manageable parameters. The invocation of discourses of rights and civil society can be seen to be integral to neoliberal political rationality in this regard, but rights are comprehended within a symbolic structuration of the population that coincides with neoliberal logics. I suggest that such logics are directed not so much at incorporating the population into a generalized “right of death and power over life,” as Foucault famously put it, but at inscribing subjects into networks of unstable and precarious private contract that constrict the wider obligations of population and citizenship commonly associated with liberalism. Discourses of rights, civil society, and development are not antidotes to socioeconomic dispossession or armed repression. Rather, all of these are complementary components of strategies aimed at the domestification of dissent.
Introduction, Latin America today: The revolt against neoliberalism
Socialism and Democracy, 2005
Today the specter haunting capitalism journeys through Latin America. The region's ongoing social and political upheaval-be it through the ballot box or direct mass action-threatens the hegemony of global capital and neoliberal ideology. In an unprecedented cycle of strikes, mass mobilizations, and popular insurrections extending from the early 1990s to the present, the marginalized, exploited, and despised subaltern classes have drawn on deeply rooted traditions of struggle to bring down corrupt and authoritarian regimes closely identified with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and Washington. Important electoral victories have been achieved in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Mass direct action has toppled governments in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina. Government proposals to privatize public services have been soundly defeated in Uruguay, Peru, and Bolivia. In Mexico, the peasants of San Salvador Atenco blocked plans to build a new airport on their agricultural lands, and in Peru the peasants and provincial authorities in Tambo Grande kept agricultural land from being taken over by a multinational mining company. Confronted by the retrenchment of the state from its most basic social duties, many popular movements and organizations mobilize to address such aspects of everyday life as housing, nutrition, childcare, education, and productive work. One thinks here of the communal kitchens in Peru, squatter organizations in Uruguay, cooperatives of unemployed workers in Argentina, landless peasants in Brazil, and the autonomous municipalities and Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils) in the territories in Mexico controlled by the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army). Driven by principles of solidarity, self-respect, collective participation, and communal interest, these popular institutions constitute a powerful challenge to the individualism, self-interest, and exclusion that are the core values
Critical Social Policy, 2018
The rejection of neoliberalism in Latin America at the time of the new millennium led to the emergence of a wave of 'post neoliberal' governments that sought to renegotiate the relationship between state and market and pioneer new forms of inclusive welfare. Supported by income from an export boom and a commitment to raising taxes, these governments attempted to implement a new economic model which bore some similarities to social democracy, alongside greater emphasis on recognition and identity politics. We ask here what accounts for the difficulties of institutionalising Leftist governance in Latin America and, in so doing, we draw attention to the embeddedness of the idea of neoliberal governance, globally and regionally. Whilst the weaknesses of the Left are real, the return of neoliberalism, now on the horizon in Latin America, fundamentally reflects the fact it is the global status quo.
The politics of neoliberalism in Latin America: dynamics of resilience and contestation
Sociology Compass, 2021
Over the last two decades, academic debates around neoliberalism in Latin America have shifted from evaluations of the drawbacks and virtues of the application of neoliberal policies for achieving socioeconomic development , towards discussions imagining and implementing alternatives. After thirty years of neoliberal reform, even neoliberal advocates have increasingly recognised the pernicious effects that the process of neoliberalization have had on people's lives. The fleeting left and centre-left moment brought renewed hopes and expectations of a post-neoliberal future. However, post-neoliberal states could not solve the contradictions of neoliberalism and told us much about its resilience and adaptability.
Dispatches from Latin America: On the frontlines against neoliberalism
2006
Description From the laboratory of neoliberalism—popularly known as" globalization"—Latin America has transformed itself into a launching pad for resistance. As globalization began to spread its devastation, robust and thoughtful opposition emerged in response—in the recovered factory movement of Argentina, in the presidential elections of indigenous leaders and radicals like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, against the privatization of water in Bolivia. Across Latin America, people are building social movements to take back control of their ...
The Colombian “Black Hand”: A Case Study of Neoliberalism in Latin America
The Review of Politics, 1965
COMMENTATORS puzzling over the question of whether the Brazilian insurrection of March-April, 1964, was a revolution or simply a coup d'état have speculated on the role of a faintly mysterious civilian organization called IPES (Instituto de Pesquisas Estudos Sociais) in the rebellion. IPES is one of a large number of organized civilian groups now covering all of Latin America except for Haiti and Cuba, groups which can be generically termed Neoliberal. The Brazilian rebellion is undoubtedly the greatest success the Neoliberals have had so far in their four or five years of existence (only three of the more than forty Neoliberal organizations were founded before 1959), and the only occasion on which they have been directly (though not uniquely) responsible for the overthrow of an incumbent regime. What the future role of IPES and similar groups will be in Brazil, and whether the transformation of the country will be a truly revolutionary one, remains to be seen, but the power mus...