Cultural Politics In Latin America

This book argues the relationship between culture and politics can be productively explored by delving into the nature of the cultural politics enacted by Latin American social movements and by examining the potential of this cultural politics for fostering social change.

The relations of culture and politics in Latin America were transformed in the last decades of the 20th century. This study offers insights into this process, with contributions from academics working in and outside the region. Chapters range across fields as diverse as music and anthropology, sociology and cultural memory, politics and (post)modern theorizing, economics, communications and cultural globalization, poetry, narrative and drama, and all are contextualized in the extended introduction and afterword.

This book argues the relationship between culture and politics can be productively explored by delving into the nature of the cultural politics enacted by Latin American social movements and by examining the potential of this cultural politics for fostering social change.

Investigating the complex interrelations between culture and politics in a wide range of social movements in Latin America, this book focuses on the cultural politics enacted by social movements as they struggle for new visions and practices of citizenship, democracy, social relations, and development. The volume explores the potential of these cultural politics for fostering alternative political cultures and social transformations. Theoretical and empirical chapters assess and build upon novel conceptions of culture and politics in a variety of disciplines and fields—particularly anthropology, political science, sociology, feminist theory, and cultural studies.The notion of the cultural politics of social movements provides a lens for analyzing emergent discourses and practices grounded in society and culture, the state and political institutions, and the extent to which they may unsettle, or be reinscribed into, the dominant neoliberal strategies of the 1990s. Contributors explore how social movements—urban popular, women's, indigenous, and black movements as well as movements for citizenship and democracy—engage in the cultural resignification of notions such as rights, equality, and difference, thus altering what counts as political. By highlighting simultaneously the cultural dimensions of the political and the political dimensions of the cultural, the book transcends the distinction between “new” and “old” social movements and thus significantly renews our understanding of them.

The relations of culture and politics in Latin America have been transformed in recent decades. Cultural Politics in Latin America offers unprecedented insights into this process, with contributions from leading intellectuals and academics working in and outside the region. Chapters range across fields as diverse as music and anthropology, sociology and cultural memory, politics and (post)modern theorizing, economics, communications and cultural globalization, poetry, narrative and drama, and all are contextualized in the extended Introduction in Latin America.

In this groundbreaking study, Riet Delsing narrates the colonization of the Pacific island of Rapa Nui and its indigenous inhabitants. The annexation of the island by Chile, in the heydays of world imperialism, places the small Latin American country in a unique position in the history of global colonialism. The analysis of this ongoing colonization process constitutes a “missing link” in Pacific Islands studies and facilitates future comparisons with other colonial adventures in the Pacific by the United States (Hawai‘i, American Samoa), France (Tahiti), and New Zealand (Maori and Cook Islands). The first part of the book surveys the history of the Chile–Rapa Nui relationship from its beginning in the 1880s until the present. Delsing delineates the Rapanui people’s agency along with their cultural logic, showing their resilience and will to remain Rapanui— indigenous Pacific islanders rather than an ethnic minority forcefully integrated into the Chilean nation-state. In the second part, the author describes the Rapanui’s contemporary emphasis on the revitalization of their language, traditional concepts about land tenure, a unique corpus of material and performative culture, renewed contact with other Pacific island cultures, and creative acts of resistance against Chilean colonialism. Emergent in her analysis is the effect of Rapa Nui’s vibrant tourist industry—commodification of Rapanui difference is creating the possibility to loosen economic and political ties with Chile. Drawing on statements of several Rapanui, she concludes that over the past few decades they have acquired a different kind of interpretive power, based on which they are making choices that serve them as a people on the road to cultural and political self-determination. Contemporary Rapa Nui is thus a modern, articulated place, marked by spirited identity politics that show the resilience and adaptability of the indigenous people who inhabit this island.

The result of a collaboration among eight women scholars, this collection examines the history of women’s participation in literary, journalistic, educational, and political activity in Latin American history, with special attention to the first half of this century.

The result of a collaboration among eight women scholars, this collection examines the history of women’s participation in literary, journalistic, educational, and political activity in Latin American history, with special attention to the first half of this century.