Latin America has often been represented by images of pre-Columbian artifacts and artwork on book covers and in other printed materials produced by Latin American studies. This article tries to show that there are strong connections between this type of representation and the semantics of Latin America both in everyday English language and in the discourses of the social sciences. First, the author reviews the history of the concept of Latin America in everyday (...) English language, showing how it has been defined as the opposite of a glorified collective self-image of America, in cultural, temporal, and racial terms. Next, chief approaches of Latin American studies (modernization theory, studies of corporatism, and the present-day textbook literature) are examined, focusing on how social scientific discourses have defined Latin America. Before returning to the topic of pre-Columbian representation, the covers of the best-selling present-day textbooks are surveyed to show how these pictorial representations reproduce the cultural and temporal perceptions of otherness already present in the texts, plus a racial perception that is mostly absent in them. The author argues that the pre-Columbian representation reproduces the three aspects of Latin America’s othering in a powerful and synthetic way. Last, the results of the present analysis are evaluated in the light of some contributions to postcolonial theory, visual culture studies and picture theory. (shrink)

A meridional American space, a brief history, a rapid rythm of change and finally a specific time element, these are perhaps the fundamental elements of American history. These fundamental elements determine a conjucture. America entered the mainstream of history rather late. But America has more than fully made up for this because events and economic factors, which take place there, have an amazing ability to stamp by their shifts and changes the worldwide resultant of all specific conjunctures. To (...) the extent that, almost everywhere, the rythm of a worldwide conjuncture can be felt, whose peaks and troughs impose themselves on men and have to be forcibly taken into account by all strategies, this conjuncture, ever since America took her place in history, has borne the imprint of America. One is tempted to write that it is American. (shrink)

Regional integration in Asia and Latin America is a crucial and increasingly important issue that, from Washington's perspective, betokens a defiant world gone out of control. Energy, of course, remains a defining factor - the object of contention - everywhere.

This collection brings together some of Latin America's most important thinkers and writers, making available in one volume classic and recent essays that address the question of postmodernity in Latin America. Here readers can find Octavio Paz's Nobel Prize speech, Leopoldo Zea's recent observations on postmodernity and the question of revolution in Mexico, Enrique Dussel's seminal discussion of modernity and the rise of world capitalism, Walter Mignolo's discussion of the relationship between cultural hegemony and control over (...) sites of intellectual production, and Iris Zavala's use of Lacan to trace the postcolonial and postmodern imagery of Martf's Nuestra AmTrica. Included are also detailed and comprehensive discussions of the sociological, political, literary, and cultural responses to the various positions and themes associated with postmodernity. This collection is an ideal primary text for courses in contemporary Latin American thought, as well as classes on postmodernity. It will also serve as a major reference work on contemporary intellectual trends in Latin America. As such it will be of interest to Latin Americanists, social thinkers, philosophers, and literary and cultural critics and historians. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the issue of “weak separatism” in Latin America as well as to give an answer to the question why there are no significant separatist movements in this region. The authors provide the definitions of separatism and secessionism as well as an explanation of these phenomena. Moreover, they present an overview of historical and contemporary separatist movements in Latin America. Based on Horowitz’s theory of ethnic separatism, the authors attempt (...) to analyse the separatist movement “The South is My Country” in Brazil and compare it with separatism in Catalonia in Spain, where a referendum on independence from Spain was held in 2017, serving as an impetus for a similar referendum that took place in the South of Brazil. In spite of similar goals of these two separatist movements, the authors argue that there are significant differences in their nature, which are determined by the history and culture of the respective countries. (shrink)

Global descriptions of proportionality as a methodology, and the rulings that are flagged up to illustrate its operation, are regularly extracted from a handful of countries—North-Atlantic democracies and Global South jurisdictions whose rulings are available in English. This leaves in the shadow important dimensions of the practice, and supports contentions about global traits that are not always exact. This chapter discusses questions to be considered when thinking about enriching the global canon on proportionality with contributions from Latin America. (...) It provides information about regional traits, including the distinctive status of Colombian constitutional doctrines and the existence of minority paradigms that are representative of alternative traditions. Afterwards, it identifies a set of rulings that should enter the global proportionality canon on different grounds: methodologic expansion, functional expansion, and thematic expansion. These rulings provide examples of proportionality being used to enforce social rights, combat state’s omissions, evaluate state’s insufficient or regressive action, or assess the measures taken in a process of transitional justice. A ruling that anticanonically uses proportionality to weaken the normative import of social rights is also identified and discussed. (shrink)

The mechanisms of imperial control - violence and economic warfare, hardly a distant memory in Latin America - are losing their effectiveness, a sign of the shift toward independence. Washington is now compelled to tolerate governments that in the past would have drawn intervention or reprisal.

Throughout, Latin America retained its primacy in global planning. As Washington was considering the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1971, Nixon's National Security Council observed that if the US cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world." That policy problem has become more severe with recent South American moves towards integration, a prerequisite for independence, and establishment of more varied international ties, while also beginning to (...) address severe internal disorders, most importantly, the traditional rule of a rich Europeanized minority over a sea of misery and suffering. (shrink)

For almost 10 years, the Business Ethics Index (BEI) has measured consumers’ perceptions of business ethical behavior in the USA and numerous other countries. This article expands the BEI to five Latin American countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia). The BEI of Argentina and Bolivia were similar in magnitude to the USA, whereas those for Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico were distinctly higher. The component sub-indices showed divergent patterns. The major ethical concerns for Brazil and Bolivia concerned service, whereas (...) Mexico and Argentina complained about overpricing. (shrink)

As poor people in Latin America rapidly emerge as a new social class, they are creating a new situation that calls for the church to become a “church of the poor.”.

In Latin America, institutionalized feminist philosophy is a recent phenomenon, dating for the most part since the 1980s. Historically, the gifted writer/philosopher/poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico, Colonial Period) and the utopian socialist activist Flora Tristán (France and Peru) are especially recognized for their original feminist contributions. The Uruguayan philosopher Carlos Vaz Ferreira wrote the moderately pro‐feminist treatise Sobre feminismo in 1918, during the suffragist phase of the movement. Contemporary feminist philosophy has followed the general theoretical (...) trends established since the 1970s in Western European and Anglo‐American feminist philosophy and theory. Feminist philosophers have challenged traditional androcentric readings of the canon and have pursued alliances with colleagues in Women's Studies programs. As of the mid‐1990s, a firm tradition of feminist studies has been established in several countries. Important feminist journals and publications include Debate feminista (Mexico), Estudos feministas (Brazil), Isis Internacional (Chile), and Feminaria (Argentina); Hiparquía (Argentina) currently publishes feminist and non‐feminist articles by women philosophers. (shrink)

This article offers an historical-materialist account of the coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009, which ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. It draws on over two dozen interviews with members of theFrente Nacional de la Resistencia Popular[National Front of Popular Resistance, FNRP], and participation in numerous marches and assemblies over two periods of fieldwork – January 2010, and June–July 2011. The paper steps back in time to provide an historical cartography of the basic material structures of the Honduran economy (...) and its integration into the world market, as well as the geopolitical role it played as a launching pad for Ronald Reagan’s counter-insurgency campaigns against guerrilla forces elsewhere in the region during the 1980s. We show how the defeat of mass guerrilla insurgencies in Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as the triumph over the Sandinista government in Nicaragua by 1990, allowed for the neoliberal pacification of Central America as a whole, including Honduras. We further demonstrate how the centre-leftist Manuel Zelaya, elected to the Honduran presidency in 2006, modestly encroached upon neoliberal orthodoxy and forged geopolitical alliances with left and centre-left governments elsewhere in the region, laying the bases for his violent overthrow. Finally, the paper traces the origins, trajectory, and heterogeneity of the resistance that emerged almost immediately after the coup had been carried out. (shrink)

La pregunta por la sujeto de enunciación emerge de una experiencia académica y nutre la visibilización de las diferencias que nos atraviesan como mujeres. Revisar las heridas abiertas que la invasión-conquista-colonización-evangelización europea provocó con la implantación de la matriz moderna, colonial, capitalista, patriarcal, occidental permite localizar la doble subalternidad de las mujeres latinoamericanas. Un desencuentro con el humanismo académico permite traducir las raíces que nos atraviesan a nosotras, las mujeres de América Latina. El constructo delimita en la designación un espacio (...) común, surgido ahora, de una experiencia común que disloca los discursos hegemónicos y gesta un "entre" el feminismo occidental y el feminismo poscolonial, que habilita particulares puntos de vistas en los devenires de mujeres como potencia epistemológica-política. The question of the subject of enunciation emerges from an academic experience and nourishes the visibility of the differences that cross us as women. Revising the open wounds that European invasion-conquest-colonization-evangelization is urgent for us. The occidental, modern, colonial, capitalist, patriarchal, implanted matrix permits to locate the double subordination of Latin American women. A disencounter with the academic humanism allows to translate the roots that cross us, the women of Latin America. In its designation the construct delimits a common space. Now this common space emerges from a common experience which dislocates hegemonic discourses and makes an "in between" among occidental and postcolonial feminisms, which enables individual views on women´s processes as epistemological and political power. (shrink)

Foucault and Latin America is the first volume to trace the influence of Foucault's theories on power, discourse, government, subjectivity and sexuality in Latin American thought.

The task of mapping the reception of mimetic theory in Latin America presents two challenges. On the one hand, rather than looking at just one country, this study has to take into account a mosaic of nations making up a continent, each with their own local diversities and particular complexities. Such circumstances impose specific rhythms onto the assimilation of Girardian thought, and being aware of these rhythms is vital to understanding the precise impact of mimetic theory. On the (...) other hand, such a study also has to cover two languages, Spanish and Portuguese, which means identifying the translations of his work and the impact of Girard’s ideas in both of the languages.And that is not all: such a mapping .. (shrink)

Transitional justice scholars are increasingly concerned with measuring the impact of transitional justice initiatives. Scholars often assume that TJ mechanisms must be properly designed and ordered to achieve lasting effect, but the impact of TJ timing and sequencing has attracted relatively little theoretical or empirical attention. Focusing on Latin America, this article explores variation within the region as to when TJ occurs and the order in which mechanisms are implemented. We utilize qualitative comparative analysis to assess the impact (...) of TJ timing and sequencing on democratic development. We find little evidence for path dependency owing to the chronological order of mechanisms. We do find, however, that amnesties and trials approach a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation in Latin America; trials, however, come closest to being a necessary condition for successful democratic consolidation. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:British Medical Association, The Medical Profession and Human Rights: Handbook for a Changing Agenda.

This book is the first history of odious debt. This five-hundred-year history shows that the origins of debates on legitimate and illegitimate state debts date back to Hugo Grotius’ moral critique of the Spanish Empire. Latin American rebels and rulers harnessed these ideas as they sought to establish what their nations owed the Spanish Crown. Commutative debt continued to shape relations in the Catholic Spanish Empire while contracts became the law of the land in Protestant Europe and North (...) class='Hi'>America. With a focus on Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, this book draws on archival sources in seven countries, overlooked congressional debates, and understudied thinkers. It analyses how officials who drafted Latin America’s first constitutions reconciled Catholic ideas of moral economy with visions of justice embedded in the Protestant law of nations. Debates over slavery, reprisal, and property rights shaped the creation of the new Latin American states. When constitutions failed and interventions over unpaid debts increased, Latin Americans sought to turn the law of nations into a code for a global moral economy. The sanctity of contracts was used to legitimate interventions and yet, as Latin American thinkers countered, the use of violence undermined the sacred purpose of debt: to fulfil the state’s obligations to the community. Today, as China’s global financial expansion grows by the day and international politics are increasingly dominated by debates on reparations, Latin America can reframe what it owes to the world and what the West owes to the rest. (shrink)

The revival of New Spanish music has roots in a collaboration between Robert Stevenson and the Roger Wagner Chorale in 1960s Los Angeles. This final chapter critically chronicles how early music ensembles since then, and especially around 1992, have combined themes of exoticism, travel, discovery, and encounter to create a contemporary Latin Baroque performance tradition that foregrounds rhythm, improvised percussion, conviviality, and a Caribbean-themed imagination of Latin America. This new Latin Baroque tradition differs from historically plausible (...) scenarios and celebrates Latinx identities in the present, sometimes problematically. Meanwhile, choral ensembles have taken historically informed approaches, but some repertories and timbral elements still await exploration and revival through performance. (shrink)

This open-access issue aims to highlight views about justice in a pandemic context from Latin American countries and to contribute to the dialogue between them as well as with the global scientific community. It explores the global challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, relevant differences between public health measures and their impact on high-income countries versus low- or middle-income countries, and how global injustice deepened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also draws attention to experiences, outcomes, and responses to the (...) pandemic from the global north regarding vulnerable populations and exposure paths that are also present in Latin America. (shrink)

This review essay looks at Christopher Boyer’s Political landscapes: forests, conservation and community in Mexico,, Thomas Miller Klubock’s La Frontera: forests and ecological conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory, Pablo Lapegna’s Soybeans and power: genetically modified crops, environmental politics and social movements in Argentina and Elspeth Probyn’s Eating the ocean as each provide a holistic study of how political ecology and marginalized peoples engage the issue of natural resources in Latin America. Through they deal with different regions and a (...) wide range of approaches to management, collectively they shine light on the social interactions that accompany changes in the land and how local communities engage issues surrounding nature’s use. On a larger level, they offer readers more insight into the field of the environmental humanities and what it means to live with the land. (shrink)

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain is the result of the critical and political commitment of various Latin American and Spanish philosophers who share a critical approach to the global “stealth revolution” in recent decades, where neoliberalism has forced the well-being and reproduction of life to adapt to a system devastating for both humans and non-humans. The authors voice the shared concern of contemporary Spanish and Latin American (...) societies to build new conceptions of the public and the common through mobilizing affects usually disavowed in political theory. If, in Ancient Greece, the idea of strengthening the most vulnerable and weakest was deplored as the art of sophists, this collection edited by Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid explores the other side of our social world to revive grassroots strategies of resistance and emancipation, which are able to bring about new distributions of power, welfare, and discursive legitimation and to extend our goal of creating a radically democratic world. (shrink)

The present study analyses the typology and structure of Chinese Aid to Latin America and the Caribbean, considering the features of this kind of South-South Cooperation within the context of China’s aid policy and strategic aims in this region. The results of the study reveal the different patterns in the structure of Chinese aid to the LAC sub-regions. These patterns indicate that the most significant funds are focused on development and commercial projects in South America; that grants (...) prevail in the case of the Caribbean; and representational aid, which does not need major resources, is associated with Central America. As Wan states, this shows that China’s aid has a strategic role at a global level. (shrink)

On the eve of Mexican independence one of the intellectual leaders of the movement, Dr. Servando Teresa José de Mier, whom the “new despotism” had incarcerated in the prison of San Juan de Ulúa, reflected on the Idea of the Constitution Conferred upon America by the Kings of Spain before the Invasion of the Old Despotism. He evoked with fervor the epoch—at the height of the reign of Charles V—when Fray Bartolome de Las Casas introduced the new laws protecting (...) the Indians in the Council of the Indies (1542-1543), when he imposed upon the conquest the ideal of pacific evangelization formulated in his De unico vocationis modo, and in a memorable controversy finally triumphed over the “notorious Sepúlveda, advocate of war and slavery” (1550). “It was,” Mier maintained, “the most significant epoch of American history, for it marked the termination of America's major misfortunes and laid the foundation of her fundamental laws or true constitution.”. (shrink)

In order to develop sustainable relationships with the natural environment it is necessary to focus on approaches that may yield workable models of sustainability. Here I sample a few approaches from Latin America that point toward a promising model of sustainability. I argue that these approaches share the idea that the natural environment is in very close interdependence with human beings and their communities. I also outline the beliefs and practices of certain Latin American populations which exemplify (...) this idea, and conclude that the crucial feature for achieving sustainability is a particular type of cultural matrix. (shrink)

This essay briefly explores the phenomenon of nepantla in three representative cross-cultural encounters, in both initial and later phases: Spain-Latin America, England-India, and the West-Japan. N...

This essay briefly explores the phenomenon of nepantla in three representative cross-cultural encounters, in both initial and later phases: Spain-Latin America, England-India, and the West-Japan. Nepantla is a mode of in-betweenness rooted in the historical encounter between cultures and leading to mediation of various kinds. For Latin America, the essay focuses on Columbus, the Cortés-Moctezuma encounter, the Aztec-Franciscan dialogues of 1524, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. For India, the essay comments on the East India (...) Company, English education in India, Lord Macaulay, Dean Mahomet, Rabindranath Tagore, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, and a number of other writers from the early, mid and late twentieth century. For Japan, the essay considers, first, Japanese reactions to missionary activities in the sixteenth century, then the opening up of Japan in the nineteenth century, the Meiji Restoration and its literature, and in particular authors like Fukuzawa, Sōseki, Endō, Kawabata, and Ōe. The essay argues, finally, that nepantla is a useful and dynamic approach to intercultural encounters that complements approaches indicated by terms like colonialism, imperialism, contact zones, hybridity or métissage, liminality, de-colonization, or post-coloniality. (shrink)

This text offers suggestions on how to overcome the divide between Europe and Latin America. On the one hand, it deals with the link between Europe and other globalised countries, and it particularly proposes several economic reflections in terms of competitiveness of production, pricing and quality vis á vis North America and Europe. On the other hand, it addresses the second challenge: how to bridge the divide between rich and poor countries? This part focuses on the multilateral (...) policies and how to promote a globalisation process with less violence that allows different poor or threshold countries to form part of the global concert. What forms of global governance are required to establish mechanisms to convene, set a common agenda, and engage in a process of democratic decision-making with benefits for both hemispheres? (shrink)

This book examines links between post-conflict security, peace and development in Africa, Latin America, Europe and New Zealand. Young peace researchers from the Global South as well as from Italy and New Zealand address in case studies traumas in Northern Uganda, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants in the Ivory Coast, economic and financial management of terrorism in Kenya, organised crime in Brazil, mental health issues in Colombia, macro realism in Europe and global defence reforms within the military apparatus (...) since 1990. The book reviews linkages between regional stability, development and peace in post-conflict societies while adding on to the post 2015 international agenda and discusses linkages between peace, security and development. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Philosophy affected the birth of Latin America in two ways. First it inspired the famous men who started the independence movements, which led to the definitive liberation from the Spanish yoke. Once the revolution was over, philosophy influenced the development of the legal and political systems that were created to organize the life of the new states.

The paper discusses the place occupied by Latin America and Eastern Europe in the contemporary world-system in the era of increasing globalization. It discusses the dominant types of consciousness in both parts of the world, where a tendency to overcome dependence and peripheral position are noticeable as is a desire for democracy and foreign relations based on partnership. What is long raised and very characteristic for thinkers coming from those very different regions of the globe are attempts to (...) create a new universalistic philosophy, more or less utopian, for the whole of mankind. (shrink)

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. (...) First, I raise what I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of different Indigenous groups. I then depart from Mariátegui and engage in a critical exercise to show that even he would be guilty of failing in his own solidarity demands. I follow that by drawing out some implications of the argument. I first sketch how this differentiation would play out against the political project of “Mestizaje,” a project that seems to inform some of the Latin American philosophical tradition. I then speculate about the kinds of duties that the field of Latin American philosophy might have towards the field of Indigenous Philosophy produced in Latin America. (shrink)

The article exposes an appreciation of the importance of the notion of catharsis of Antonio Gramsci for the political struggle of the subalterns. It is a reflection on the characteristics and conditions that generate an ethical political elevation of the local economic and corporate struggle of the popular sectors as well as the union of political currents of the left around a common project built in the social struggle, project of a universal nature linked to the proposal of a hegemonic (...) alternative, of the constitution of an integral autonomy of these in the perspective of a national and international dispute over ideological political leadership and hegemony. This notion is particularly necessary in Latin America and in Mexico due to the conditions of organic and current political crises and the need for a popular unity before the enthronement of neoliberalism as a form of transnationalized domination that seeks to maintain the subordination of countries to the great powers and large capitals even at the expense of the decomposition of the State and the resort to violence. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the peripherical socio-economic position of most Latin American countries give researchers from those countries a particular perspective on the potential consequences of emerging neurotechnologies, their regulation or lack thereof. Furthermore, I argue that this perspective can bolster international discourse by highlighting the importance of specific topics, therefore complementing mainstream analysis with new proposals based on regional insights. In order to exemplify this, I consider the issue of access to enhancement neurotechnology, its perceived interest (...) in the LATAM region, and how that interest could provide original answers against the “rights inflation” objection to the relevant neurorights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to broaden the scope of Critical Theory beyond the Anglo-American and European sphere by addressing the work of Stefan Gandler. Gandler, who has long advocated for the importance of Mexican philosophers, has also utilized their work to criticize the current iteration of Critical Theory in its second and third generations. Finding them far removed from the first, he considers the work of thinkers like Bolívar Echeverría to be the tradition’s true heirs. By attending to his critique, (...) this article examines rethinking the history of Critical Theory as such and expand its scope. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the visualization of Euro-American medicine and indigenous healing in John Steinbeck’s 1941 documentary-drama _The Forgotten Village_. The movie juxtaposes film and medical discourse as exemplifications of modern, visual culture by showing excerpts from hygiene films and foregrounding medical imagery (e.g., bacteria cultures). The film displaces indigenous medicine by privileging a Euro-American medical model, and the gaze of oppression is perpetuated through humanitarian medical intervention. In short, disease is not simply a material fact but embedded in discourses about (...) community identity, moral values, and politics. (shrink)

In this book Raluca Grosescu uses jurisprudence analysis, lawyer interviews, and ethnography to explain changes in international criminal justice law as experienced in Latin America and Central Eas...

This article analyses recent social, cultural and political developments in Latin America, with special reference to the `modernity/coloniality' project, as well as offering an alternative sociological interpretation of the contemporary subcontinent. It analyses in particular Walter Mignolo's work as the main expression of that `post/decolonial' project, a general interpretive effort that reflects actual social changes but offers misguided theoretical and political perspectives. The article then proposes a discussion of modernity as a global civilization which is now unfolding its (...) third phase, characterized by greater complexity and pluralism. In addition it argues that modernity should be seen as a two-pronged phenomenon, featuring not only domination but also emancipation. Against the reification of modernity, the article suggests that we see it as woven by multiple and contingent modernizing moves. (shrink)

There had been interesting interactions between philosophical reflections, technical developments and the work of artists, poets and designers, starting especially in the 1950s and 1960s with a stimulating cell in Stuttgart and Ulm in Germany spreading mutual international interactions. The paper aims to describe the philosophical background of Max Bense with his research on the intellectual history of mathematics and the upcoming studies on technology and cybernetics. Together with communication theories and semiotics, new aesthetics such as cybernetic aesthetics had been (...) worked out, based on the notions of information and sign. This background stimulated international students, artists and researchers from different creative disciplines for methodical approaches leading to first computer art experiments. The interrelations in these fields with Latin America are in the focus of these studies. Students, artists, and poets from Latin America, especially Brazil, came to Germany for studies and exhibitions in the creative scientific cell around Max Bense. Some of them stayed in Europe, but the exchange developed also in the opposite direction, traveling to and working in Latin America. Some of those fruitful international interrelations will be described and reflected. (shrink)

The Chilean Cybersyn project, an attempt to manage a nation’s economy by cybernetic methods, has evoked more and more interest in recent years. The project’s design lead and several team members were alumni of the Ulm School of Design—an institution that has been labelled “Bauhaus successor” and today is famous for a no-arts and method-led design approach with strong societal aspirations. The school also influenced the emerging design discipline in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s. This article (...) reviews topics in the Ulm curriculum that influenced “Ulmian” thinking, but often remained unnoticed in design centred publications. Cybernetics, Operations Research and Information Theory and their relation to design are discussed and the related scholars are portrayed critically. (shrink)

The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang proposed the theory of "kicking away the ladder", in reference to how the world’s great powers managed to establish themselves as such after a prolonged period of robust measures to protect their development. Once they achieved that, they entered the free global market, demanding that small countries eschew any protectionist measures and immediately enter the ‘free trade’ in a highly unprotected manner. According to this approach, Cybernetics in Latin America can be interpreted in (...) different ways: it can be a confirmation of the disappearance of technological, social, and industrial development defended by the already non-existent Latin American developmental states that had a utopian view of technology as a tool for self-determination, but, on the other, it can also be a provocation for those in the region who still believe in the possibilities of Cybernetics to develop and support its proposals. There is a fundamental difference between using technology and producing it, while the ways of using it are also techniques or technologies in themselves. This paper outlines the meaning of first-order cybernetics and then interprets what second-order cybernetics has represented in Latin America, its Viable System Model, and how its components have evolved. (shrink)

: The article offers a synthesis of Latin American economic thought post-second world war, underlining in particular the specificity of the regional perspective. The idea is to describe their beginnings and key regional authors, which is generally unknown in Anglo-Saxon academic circles. The reading that guides the presentation questions Eurocentric interpretations. Since the 1980 economic discourse in Latin America has lost its sui generis characteristics, its vocabulary today has been lost to the new generations, given the pre-eminence (...) of orthodox neoliberal ideas and policies which certainly have not improved the living standards of the region. Resumen: El artículo ofrece una síntesis de pensamiento económico de América Latina después de la segunda guerra mundial, desarrollando en particular la especificidad de la perspectiva regional. La idea es describir sus comienzos y sus autores claves, los cuales generalmente son desconocidos en los círculos académicos anglosajones. La lectura que guía la presentación cuestiona las interpretaciones eurocéntricas. Desde 1980 el discurso económico en América Latina ha perdido sus características sui generis. Su vocabulario hoy se ha perdido para las nuevas generaciones, dada la pre-eminencia de las ideas de la ortodoxia neoliberal y sus políticas, las cuales ciertamente no han mejorado los estándares de la vida en la región. (shrink)

Ethics in the West too often equates morality with universal moral principles, thus imposing lifestyles and moral criteria that do not respect differences and local histories. Even Christianity proposes ethics that is based on eternal, absolute and universal truths or principles, independent of sociocultural and historical contexts. The problem is that these universal moral laws become a means of social control to exclude those who are different: non-Christian religions, nonwhite races, non-Western cultures, and poor and marginalized social classes everywhere. To (...) these can be added minorities marginalized because of sexual orientation, physical handicaps, and women of all sectors and cultures. Another kind of ethics is urgent. For these reasons, Christians in Latin America and other parts are seeking innovative ways of envisioning ethics from their marginalized and discriminated social locations in order to find another possible ethics, an ethics that is not universal and not based on eternal truths or principles, but rather is contextual and historical and that takes into account real-life realities. Only an ethics that does this will be liberative. Important steps toward this other possible ethics have been taken by the theology of liberation by developing a contextual and intercultural morality. (shrink)

In the epistemological context of theory transferand scientific exchanges, the aim of this paper is to indicate the presence of Weberian categories and ideas on dependency theory formulated by Fernando Cardosoand Enzo Faletto. Here we see how the construction of this paradigm was based on some issues, concepts, approaches and orientations of the Weberian research program formulated by José Medina Echavarría to explain Latin American development. We will also consider the contexts of enunciation and reception theories, allowing us to (...) talk about the "sociological school" that was formed in the Social Planning Division of ILPES in mid-sixties, crucial for understanding the history of sociology in Latin America. En el contexto de la discusión epistemológica sobre el examen de las transferencias y los intercambios científicos de las teorías, el objetivo de este artículo es señalar la presencia de categorías e ideas weberianas en lateoría de la dependencia formulada por Fernando Cardoso y Enzo Faletto. Aquí veremos cómo la construcción de este paradigma se sustentó en algunos temas, conceptos, enfoques y orientaciones del programa de investigación weberiano formulado por José Medina Echavarría para explicar el desarrollo latinoamericano. También tendremos en cuenta los contextos de enunciación y de recepción de las teorías, lo que nos permitirá hablar de la "escuela sociológica" que se formó en la División de Planificación Social del ILPES a mitad de los años 60, decisiva para comprender la historia de la sociología en América Latina. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom is that the best way to alleviate poverty is to provide the maximum freedom for individual entrepreneurs and corporations to create wealth. Drawing on the case of Latin America, this article contends that there are serious defects in analyses based on such assumptions. New technologies and restructuring of international capitalism have accelerated wealth creation worldwide but amid growing inequalities. Technology is mainly controlled by large multinational corporations and not directed at relieving the deprivation suffered by (...) the world's poor. Pervasive, persistent economic inequality and lack of access to appropriate education and training have all been significant in Latin America's failure to develop rapidly during the twentieth century. Most successful “latecomer” countries in the past two hundred years have adopted heterodox autonomous growth strategies, and the authors suggest that such strategies are necessary now to counter the powerful processes that sustain inequality. (shrink)