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Author : Sybil Rhodes Publisher : State University of New York Press Page : 242 pages File Size : 34,12 MB Release : 2012-02-01 Category : Political Science ISBN : 0791482588
This innovative book examines how the privatization and reregulation of the telecommunications sectors in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s provoked the rise of new consumer protest movements in Latin America. Sybil Rhodes looks at how hasty privatization of state-owned telephone companies led to short-term economic windfalls for multinational corporations but long-term instability due to consumer movements or the threat of them. Eventually these governments implemented consumer-friendly regulation as a belated form of damage control. In contrast, governments that privatized through more gradual, democratic processes were able to make credible commitments to their citizens as well as to their multinational investors by including regulatory regimes with consumer protection mechanisms built in. Rhodes illustrates how consumers—previously unacknowledged actors in studies of social movements, market reforms, and democratizations in and beyond Latin America—are indispensable to understanding the political and social implications of these broad global trends.
Mounting hostility to the hegemony of the United States; tumbling stock markets; environmental destruction; sluggish economic growth, unprecedented income inequality, and growing poverty: something fundamental is wrong, argue Petras and Veltmayer. They assert that globalization is a mere euphemism for capitalism in its current global, imperialist projection. They show how resistance to capitalist globalization is being organized among very diverse social sectors, from rural peasants to the middle class in wealthy countries of the North. They conclude their analysis by assessing the possibilities for unifying the diverse forces of opposition to neoliberalism, capitalism and imperialism and the prospects for an alternative socialist form of development.
The authors trace out the development of capitalism and U.S. imperialism in Latin America in the latest phase of this development, from the installation of the new world order of neoliberal globalization in the early 1980s to the present when U.S. imperialism is held at bay, neoliberalism is in decline, and capitalism is in crisis.
This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.
This handbook covers social movement activities in Latin American countries that have had profound consequences on the political culture of the region. It examines the developments of the past twenty years, such as a renewed upswing in popular mobilization, the ending of violent conflicts and military governments, new struggles and a relatively more democratic climate. It shows that, from southern Chiapas to Argentina, social movements in the 1990s and especially in the 2000s, have reached new heights of popular participation. There is a lack of research on the politics of this region in the contemporary era of globalization, this volume partially fills the void and offers a rich resource to students, scholars and the general public in terms of understanding the politics of mass mobilization in the early twenty-first century. The contributors each address social movement activity in their own nation and together they present a multidisciplinary perspective on the topic. Each chapter uses a case study design to bring out the most prominent attributes of the particular social struggle(s), for instance the main protagonists in the campaigns, the grievances of the population and the outcomes of the struggles. This Handbook is divided into seven substantive themes, providing overall coherence to a broad range of social conflicts across countries, issues and social groups. These themes include: 1) theory of Latin American social movements; 2) neoliberalism; 3) indigenous struggles; 4) women’s movements; 5) movements and the State; 6) environmental movements; and 7) transnational mobilizations.
The political and social upheavals that have transformed the economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the past ten years have sparked considerable interest and speculation on the part of Western observers. Less noted, though hardly less dramatic, has been the revolutionary spread of free market capitalism throughout much of Latin America during the same period. In a wide-ranging survey that illuminates both the history and present business climate of the region, Paul Roberts and Karen Araujo describe the economic transformation currently taking place in Latin America. And as they do so, they also reexamine many of the prevailing orthodoxies concerning international development and the regulation of markets, and point to the success of privatization and free enterprise in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile as harbingers of the economic future for both hemispheres. The potential strength of the economies of Central and South America has always been obvious, the authors point out. Abundant natural resources, combined with vast expanses of fertile land and a sophisticated and relatively cohesive social culture, are found throughout the region. But the authors show that the Latin American nations were slow to discard the economic and social climate that they had inherited from their Spanish colonial masters, who had ruled by selling government jobs--creating a network of privilege--and by suppressing through over-regulation the development of markets for goods, services, and capital. The prevalent cultural attitude in Latin America was hostile to commerce, trade, and work--indeed, it was more socially acceptable to court government privilege than to compete in markets. The authors further show that U.S. aid packages to the region actually reinforced this culture of privilege and further hampered the growth of a free economy. Not until the 1980s did the picture begin to change, largely in response to the economic crises brought on through catastrophic national debts and hyperinflation. The book describes the efforts of the Salinas, Pinochet, and Menem governments to combat the established interests of the local elites and the international development agencies, to privatized state industries, and to established independent markets. In this new climate, private capitalists and entrepreneurs are feted and celebrated, and productivity has risen to levels unimagined only a few years before. But this dramatic economic turnaround, the authors show, is a mixed blessing for the U.S. For if it provides us with a vast new market for our goods, it has also created a powerful new competitor for capital investment. To keep American and foreign capitalists investing in America, the government needs to make changes, which the authors outline in a provocative conclusion. Central and South America have a combined population of 460 million people, a potential market greater than the United States and Canada combined or the European Community. Thus the rise of free market capitalism in Latin America is of vital interest to the United States. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America provides an insightful portrait of this dramatic economic turn-around, illuminating the economic consequences for our own society.
This book explores the battleground between neoliberal capitalist development processes in Latin America and the challenges to these systems that can be found through innovative community-driven buen vivir/vivir bien initiatives. In the current climate of worldwide capitalist development, Latin America is caught between left-leaning proposals for progressive policies towards a more inclusive form of development, and the re-emergence of harsh austerity measures, neoliberal reforms and right-wing populism. Divided into two parts, this book first provides a retrospective analysis of the advance of resource-seeking ‘extractive’ capital across the continent since the 1990s. The second part goes on to focus on forward-looking challenges to neoliberal capitalist development, focusing in particular on the indigenous notion of buen vivir/vivir bien – the concept of ‘living well’ in social solidarity and harmony with nature. Drawing on cases in Mexico and Venezuela, the book argues that it will be through these new approaches to social change that we will move beyond development as we know it towards a more inclusive form of ‘postdevelopment’. Looking hopefully towards this future of development, this collection offers an essential analysis of the vortex of social change currently consuming Latin America and will be key reading for advanced scholars and researchers in the fields of Development Studies, Latin America Studies, Politics, and Social Change.
This collection of works by prominent Latin Americanists explores the social and political dynamics of this important region in transition to a post-neoliberal era. The first part deals with the intensifying regional crisis created by neoliberal policies, showing how regime stability has been broadly undermined, with specific attention given to the cases of Panama and Argentina. In the second part, a sympathetic yet critical evaluation is offered on the diverse development strategies that have been pursued by four leftist governments in power, namely, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela and Uruguay. In the final section, various aspects of the constraints facing the region are discussed and consideration is extended to some of the emerging social movements that seek to radically transform Latin America.
“One of the definite merits of this book is to cleverly mix a theoretical breakthrough with a meticulous historical and empirical account of the transformations of some key Latin American countries. First, it is at the frontier of a research agenda initiated back to the end of the 1970s, second it clearly distinguishes between an ideal-type approach and the complexity of any specific national configuration and its transformation in history. Furthermore, the author provides decisive arguments against a pure economic determinism too frequently supposed to govern institutions building and reforms. Last but not least, the book culminates by an impressive analysis of the crises that quite any Latin America society experiences at the end the 2010s.” -Robert Boyer, Institut des Amériques, Paris, France. This book defends the idea that there are significant structural and institutional differences between the countries in Latin America. Building off the results of a four-year research project, Bizberg argues against the idea that in Latin America there is one single type of capitalism—a hierarchical one—that is entangled in a vicious cycle. Rather, there are clusters of countries that have had similar historical trajectories, analogous structures, or comparable reactions to changes to the world economy, but have not all followed the same mode of development. Just as analysts have found a variety of capitalisms in developed countries, it is possible to identify the emergence of different types of capitalism in Latin America since the 1980s debt crisis. These varieties of capitalism are defined according to categories—including the articulation to the world economy, the role of the State, the structure of the political system and the action of civil society—which give rise to distinct wage relations, comprising the industrial relations system and the welfare regime.
The world is at the crossroads of social change, in the vortex of forces that are bringing about a different world, a post-neoliberal state. This groundbreaking book lays out an analysis of the dynamics and contradictions of capitalism in the twenty-first century. These dynamics of forces are traced out in developments across the world - in the Arab Spring of North Africa and the Middle East, in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, in the United States, and in Asia. The forces released by a system in crisis can be mobilized in different ways and directions. The focus of the book is on the strategic responses to the systemic crisis. As the authors tell it, these dynamics concern three worldviews and strategic responses. The Davos Consensus focuses on the virtues of the free market and deregulated capitalism as it represents the interests of the global ruling class. The post-Washington Consensus concerns the need to give capital a human face and establish a more inclusive form of development and global governance. In addition to these two visions of the future and projects, the authors identify an emerging radical consensus on the need to move beyond capitalism as well as neoliberalism.