Indelible Inequalities in Latin America

Paul Gootenberg and Luis Reygadas (Eds.)

Description

Since the earliest years of European colonialism, Latin America has been a region of seemingly intractable inequalities, marked by a stark divide between the haves and the have-nots. This collection illuminates the diverse processes that have combined to produce and reproduce inequalities in Latin America, as well as some of the implications of those processes for North Americans. Anthropologists, cultural critics, historians, and political scientists from North and South America offer new and varied perspectives, building on the sociologist Charles Tilly's relational framework for understanding enduring inequalities. While one essay is a broad yet nuanced analysis of Latin American inequality and its persistence, another is a fine-grained ethnographic view of everyday life and aspirations among shantytown residents living on the outskirts of Lima. Other essays address topics such as the initial bifurcation of Peru's healthcare system into one for urban workers and another for the rural poor, the asymmetrical distribution of political information in Brazil, and an evolving Cuban "aesthetics of inequality," which incorporates hip-hop and other transnational cultural currents. Exploring the dilemmas of Latin American inequalities as they are playing out in the United States, a contributor looks at new immigrant Mexican farmworkers in upstate New York to show how undocumented workers become a vulnerable rural underclass. Taken together, the essays extend social inequality critiques in important new directions.ContributorsJeanine AndersonJavier AuyeroOdette CasamayorChristina EwigPaul GootenbergMargaret GrayEric HershbergLucio RennoLuis Reygadas

Sujets

• Histoire
• América del Sur
• Social group
• South America
• Latin America
• History of the Americas

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 21 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822392903
• Langue: English

Extrait

Indelible Inequalities in Latin America

Indelible Inequalities in Latin America

InsightsfromHistory,Politics,andCulture

edited by paul gootenberg and luis reygadas

foreword by eric hershberg

Duke University Press Durham and London 2010

∫2010 Duke University Press

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan

Typeset in Quadraat by

Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-

in-Publication Data appear on the

last printed page of this book.

Acknowledgments

vii

contents

eric hershberg Foreword: The Paradox of Inequality in Latin America xi

part i. New Approaches, Old Disciplines

1.paul gootenberg Latin American Inequalities: New Perspectives from History, Politics, and Culture 3

2.luis reygadas The Construction of Latin American Inequality 23

part ii. History, Subjectivity, and Politics

3.christina ewig Health Policy and the Historical Reproduction of Class, Race, and Gender Inequality in Peru 53

4.jeanine anderson Incommensurable Worlds of Practice and Value: A View from the Shantytowns of Lima 81

5.lucio renno Inequalities of Political Information and Participation: The Case of the 2002 Brazilian Elections 106

part iii. Culture across Borders

6.odette casamayor| BetweenOrishasand Revolution: The Expression of Racial Inequalities in Post-Soviet Cuba 139

7.margaret grayLatin American| How Inequality Becomes Latino Inequality: A Case Study of Hudson Valley Farmworkers

javier auyeroFunes and the| Afterword: Toolbox of Inequality 193

Bibliography 199 About the Contributors Index 223

221

169

acknowledgments

This book grew out of an exploratory project called Durable Inequalities in Latin America, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and hosted at the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (lacs) Center at Stony Brook University between 2003–2006. The original idea was to take an urgent social problem—inequality in the Americas—one with a strong presence in the ‘‘social sciences,’’ and revisit it with emerging humanistic, cultural, and historical perspectives. Stony Brook became a bustling interdisciplinary site, with six residential visiting fellows, most of them from Latin American universities, who sparked a wide dialogue with our faculty, graduate stu- dents, and other new inequality study groups. For if there was one thing we discovered during these years of debate, it was that inequality is now an issue with a deep resonance among scholars, activists, and communities across the hemisphere. The recent election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, in 2008, presaged by the democratic turn to the Left in much of Latin America and by the Bush-era global economic collapse, should lend further momentum to anti-inequality movements. The moment to confront inequality is here, but we need new intellectual tools and mobi- lizing strategies to do it. This book is a modest attempt at this retooling. In terms of resources, we need to thank the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation’s (now redefined) Program in Creativity and Culture, especially the vision of the program o≈cers Tomás Ybarra-Frausto and Scott Mac- Dougall, who took a personal interest in the Stony Brook initiative, though it lay slightly o√ their usual map of concerns. Domenica Tafuro, our remark- ablelacsassistant, was active at all stages of the project— administrative from helping to polish Gootenberg’s first proposal as thenlacsdirector, to welcoming the fellows at Stony Brook, to aiding in the final editing of this book. Other o≈ces of the university also supported the project: especially the College of Arts and Sciences (under the deans Bob Liebermann and James Staros), O≈ce of the Provost, Graduate School, Linda Merians in University Advancement, the Humanities Institute (hisb), and the Depart- ments of History, Sociology, and Hispanic Languages and Literature. The

viii Acknowledgments

most crucial individuals, besides our fellows, were an interdisciplinary team of ‘‘Latin Americanista’’ faculty who served on the selection committee and participated in seminars and a series of symposiums convened at Stony Brook’s Manhattan site. Most notable were Javier Auyero (formerly of sociol- ogy, who first suggested inequality as our topic and who contributes to this volume), Katy Vernon (Hispanic languages), Fred Moehn (music), and Edu- ardo Mendieta (philosophy), as well as Tim Moran (sociology), Tracey Wal- ters (Africana studies), Tom Klubock and Brooke Larson (history), and the anthropologists Pamela Block and Karen Kramer. Said Arjoman and E. Ann Kaplan served as program advisors. We are also indebted to Eric Hershberg, then at the Social Science Research Council (ssrc), who took an immediate interest in the initiative, served as the external member of the selection committee, participated in our events, linked us to other inequality study groups (such as the Princeton project of Jeremy Adelman and Miguel Cen- teno), and contributed the foreword to this collection. At one point, the legendary Columbia University sociologist Charles Tilly, who first lit this theme, played interlocutor to a memorable discussion at thessrc around the ‘‘relational’’ and proactive nature of inequalities. Sadly, Tilly passed away in April 2008, as we were putting the final touches on this volume so influ- enced by his ideas. A string of graduate students in history worked as re- search assistants to the fellows: Gabriel Hernández, Consuelo Figueroa, Greg Jackson, Alberto Harambour, and Alexis Stern. Celina Bragagnolo, a graduate student in philosophy, helped with two of the book’s translations. Martín Monsalve, a historian now doctored and teaching in Lima, did a savvy job of organizing the multilingual publicity and applications process for the Durable Inequalities program, which garnered scores of fascinating appli- cants from across the globe. At the center of this collective learning experience were six interdisciplin- ary visiting scholars: Jeanine Anderson (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú), Luis Reygadas (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana [uam], Iztapa- lapa, Mexico), Lucio Renno (Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil), Odette Casa- mayor (Cuba, and now University of Connecticut, Storrs), Christina Ewig (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Margaret Gray (Adelphi University), all represented in this volume. What a stimulating and committed team of colleagues! It is they who brought questions of inequality and now this book to life, born from papers presented at a fellows symposium held in May 2006. Paul Gootenberg wants to especially thank his coeditor Luis Reygadas for his intellectual vision as well as his patience, insight, and skills in navigating

Acknowledgments ix

the shared tasks of criticism and editing. Mexico City and New York are now linked by an anthropologist and a historian from di√erent academic cul- tures, even if our home universities share the same ‘‘statist’’ architecture. In 2005 the Mexican anthropological journalAlteridadespublished some of this volume’s essays in embryonic form in a special Spanish-language issue, ‘‘La desigualdad en América Latina’’ (14, no. 28 2004). Luis Reygadas, in particular, wants to express his gratitude to the Univer- sidad Autónoma Metropolitana, for providing the sabbatical year for his research leave in New York, and Stony Brook–lacs, which hosted him during 2003–2004 with a Rockefeller fellowship in the Durable Inequalities in Latin America program. Eduardo Mendieta made valued comments on the first draft of the essay Reygadas contributed to this volume. Gabriel Her- nández, who is a living example of overcoming inequality, worked as Reyga- das’s research assistant at Stony Brook. At Duke University Press, we thank Valerie Millholland for her timely nod to the project, as well as Miriam Angress, who was so indispensable in guiding the book through the editorial process. Many thanks to the excellent copy editor, Patricia Mickelberry, and to Amy Chazkel, who prepared the index. We also thank three insightful and sympathetic press readers, includ- ing John H. Coatsworth.