Key Issues and Texts: Capitalism and Society
Seminar 1: Latin America and the world market: industrialisation, commodities-led growth, and catching-up (PML)
This session examines recent development strategies in Latin America, interrogating their views regarding what economic policies should be adopted to reach fast and sustained growth. The session discusses how different strategies see the role of manufacturing versus resource-based development; analyse global value chains and how climb to their higher links; and integrate growth into a larger policy and development framework. Reading these debates in light of earlier theorisations of dependency, this session explores how different schools of thought have attempted to understand how Latin America is inserted into the world market, why it is in such a position, and what could be done to change this
Key issues
- Neostructuralism
- Resource-based development
- Global value chains
- Dependency theory
- Extractivism
Required readings
- Cardoso, H. F. 1972. Dependent capitalist development in Latin America. New Left Review, I(74), 83-95.
- Kingsbury, D. 2023. Lithium’s buzz: extractivism between booms in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. Cultural Studies, 37(4), 580-604.
- Leiva, F. I. 2008. Toward a Critique of Latin American Neostructuralism. Latin American Politics and Society, 50(4), 1-25.
- Perez, C. 2016. Could Technology Make Natural Resources a Platform for Industrialization? Identifying a New Opportunity for Latin America (and Other Resource-Rich Countries). In: Noman, A. and Stiglitz, J. E. eds. Efficiency, Finance, and Varieties of Industrial Policy: Guiding Resources, Learning, and Technology for Sustained Growth. Columbia University Press, 353-389.
Seminar 2: Social policy under the (Post-) Washington Consensus (PML)
This session examines the main changes to social policy frameworks in Latin America since the 1990s. It explores how income-supporting policies and the provision of key goods and services have been envisioned, following the main policy frameworks since the transition to neoliberalism and from the 2000s onwards. Policies are investigated not only in terms of their expected and actual results, but also placed in the theoretical and normative underpinnings that are used to justify them and their future potential. Some of the key processes this session discusses are the rise of conditional cash transfer (CCT) schemes, the muted rise of universal social protection networks, the ‘financialisation’ of social policy, and the rationales and visions that underpin these different frameworks and their dynamics.
Key issues
- Social protection, social policy, and the welfare state
- Conditional cash transfers
- Universal and targeted social protection networks
- Participation, empowerment, and co-responsibility
- ‘Financialisation’ of social policy
- (Post-)Washington Consensus
Required readings
- Molyneux, M. 2008. The ‘Neoliberal Turn’ and the New Social Policy in Latin America: How Neoliberal, How New? Development and Change, 39(5), 775-797.
- Filgueira, F., 2015. Models of development, the welfare state matrix and Latin American social policy tools. In: Cecchini, S., Filgueira, F., Martínez, R. and Rossel, C. eds. Towards universal social protection: Latin American pathways and policy tools. Santiago: ECLAC, 47-80.
- Franzoni, J. M. and Sánchez-Ancochea, D., 2018. Why and How to Build Universal Social Policy in the South. In: Paus, E. ed. Confronting Dystopia: The New Technological Revolution and the Future of Work. Cornell University Press, 230-250.
- Lavinas, L. 2018. The Collateralization of Social Policy under Financialized Capitalism. Development and Change, 49(2), 502-517.
Seminar 3: Which development? For whom? Challenges from Latin America (PML)
This session discusses how Latin American authors have challenged ‘standard’ views of development and proposed alternatives during the past decades. It first examines how a series of concepts, theories and political platforms emerged in the struggle against neoliberalism, during the 1990s. This session then investigates the novel theoretical approaches and visions of development that have been proposed, during the 2000s and 2010s, in relation to the left-of-centre governments and the processes of commodities-based capital accumulation of the period. In examining these visions, the focus of the session is to identify what are their novelties, how they defy prevailing visions of development, and how they are related to the social, economic and political landscape of Latin America since the 1990s.
Key issues
- Neo-extractivism
- Commodities consensus
- Post-neoliberalism
- Post-development
- Buen vivir, sumak kawsay, suma qamaña
Required readings
- Beling, A. E., et al. 2021. Buen vivir (Good Living): A “Glocal” Genealogy of a Latin American Utopia for the World. Latin American Perspectives, 48(3), 17-34.
- Chuji, M., Rengifo, G. and Gudynas, E., 2019. Buen vivir. In: Kothari, A., et al. eds. Pluriverse–A Post-Development Dictionary. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 111-114.
- Radcliffe, S. A. 2018. Tackling Complex Inequalities and Ecuador's Buen Vivir: Leaving No-one Behind and Equality in Diversity. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 37(4), 417-433.
- Svampa, M. and Viale, E., 2021. Los puntos ciegos del modelo de desarrollo dominante. In: Acosta, A., García, P. and Munck, R. eds. Posdesarrollo: Contexto, contradicciones y futuros. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 41-63. Alternatively, read Svampa’s short Cambridge Elements book Neo-extractivism in Latin America.
Seminar 4: Social conflict, illegal economies, and punishment (PML)
Whilst Latin America has not experienced ‘classic’ forms of inter-state war as much as other regions, domestic forms of conflict abound. This session deals with how social conflict and its dynamics – from punishment to the inequalities that surround it – permeate the reproduction of capitalism in Latin America. It focusses on three main issues. First, it discusses the rising trend of incarceration and punishment in the region since the transition to neoliberalism, contrasting it to explanations usually offered for developed countries. Second, it explores some of the consequences of mass imprisonment and the social relations structured through it, particularly how prisons both isolate and connect individuals, spaces, and families. Finally, it looks into how different forms of conflict are integral aspects of how capitalism is reproduced in and through the region, interrogating the boundaries between the legal and illegal economies.
Note: there are long descriptive sections in the first required reading (Feltran 2022). Don’t get fixated on the detail, but look for the bigger picture through it.
Key issues
- Forms and dimensions of social conflict
- The boundaries of legal and illegal economies
- Punishment, incarceration, and social control
Required readings
- Feltran, G., ed., 2022. Stolen Cars: a Journey Through São Paulo’s Urban Conflict. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Introduction and ch. 1-3 (pages 1-86). (available in the library)
- Fontes, A. W. and O'Neill, K. L. 2019. La Visita: Prisons and Survival in Guatemala. Journal of Latin American Studies, 51(1), 85-107.
- Sozzo, M. 2021. Inequality, welfare and punishment. Comparative notes between the Global North and South. European Journal of Criminology, 19(3), 368-393.
Seminar 5: Popular Economies: Life, Labour and Collective Politics (Dolores Señorans)
This session will address urban popular economies in Latin America in the context of contemporary academic and political debates on the precarisation of life and labour. Through the analysis of ethnographic studies, the session explores two main issues. Firstly, we will examine popular ways of making a living focusing on their linkages to social relationships and obligations, public policies, market dynamics and politics. When looked at with an anthropological lens, wageless lives are neither lacking nor detached from capital accumulation. Secondly, we will discuss what kinds of collective politics are emerging from these experiences. While it is often asserted that the precarisation of labour is part of capitalist strategies to fragment, disorganise and limit the possibilities for collective action, current political experimentations show that such a goal is never complete and that workers have developed innovative organisations to claim for their rights. More broadly, the anthropological exploration of popular economies in Latin America will lead to the interrogation of assumed distinctions such as formal/informal, market/non-market, urban poor/working class.
Key issues
- Urban popular economies
- Marginality, informal economy, surplus populations
- Precarity in everyday life
- Emerging forms of collective politics
Additional Material
- Documentary “Un gigante de cartón” (2020). [Students should watch it before the seminar]
Required readings
- Fernández Álvarez, María Inés. 2019. ‘“Having a Name of One’s Own, Being a Part of History”: Temporalities of Precarity and Political Subjectivities of Popular Economy Workers in Argentina’. Dialectical Anthropology 43 (1): 61–76.
- Munck, Ronaldo. 2013. ‘The Precariat: a view from the South’. Third World Quarterly 34 (5): 747–62.
- Millar, Kathleen M. 2014. ‘The Precarious Present: Wageless Labor and Disrupted Life in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’. Cultural Anthropology 29 (1): 32–53.
- O’Hare, Patrick. 2022. Rubbish Belongs to the Poor: Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons. London: Pluto Press. Chapter 5 "Precarious Labour Organising and Urban Alambramiento". Pp 154-178.
Seminar 6: Urban Informality, Peripheries and Inequalities in Latin America (Dolores Señorans)
Latin America is today the most urbanised area of the world with 80% of its population living in cities. For decades much of this rapid urbanisation has been fuelled by residents who have constructed their own houses and often entire neighbourhoods.
Villas, asentamientos, favelas, comunas, cantegriles, barrios, are some of the many popular ways of naming these urban areas that have long caught the attention of social scientists. This session will focus on the informal city and the urban peripheries in Latin America through an anthropological lens. Firstly, we discuss how urban segregation shapes the everyday experiences of residents considering inequalities in the access to urban infrastructure and public services, violence and environmental suffering. Secondly, we consider the changing nature of state planning – ranging from forced displacement and slum eradication to pacification and securitization – delving into the imaginaries that underpin it, and its consequences. Thirdly, we explore how residents have organised to struggle for citizenship and “the right to the city”. Finally, we reflect on the politics of representation of these spaces as sites of deprivation and their populations as the “urban poor”, and consider the potential contributions that anthropological studies from the south can make to urban theory.
Key issues
- Urban segregation
- Peripheral urbanisation
- Securitization
- The Right to the City
Additional material
Documentary “Ciudad del boom ciudad del bang” (2013). [Students should watch it before the seminar]
Required readings
- Auyero, Javier, and Débora Alejandra Swistun. 2009. Flammable Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Introduction (Pp 1-20) and Chapter 4 (Pp 81-108).
- Caldeira, Teresa Pires. 2017. ‘Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35(1), 3-20.
- Gledhill, John. 2015. The New War on the Poor: the Production of Insecurity in Latin America. London: Zed Books. Chapter 2 (Pp 29-62).
- Perez, Miguel. 2017. ‘Reframing Housing Struggles: Right to the City and Urban Citizenship in Santiago, Chile’. City. Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action 21 (5): 530–49.