The Modern Culture Of Latin America

This book details many aspects of Latin American culture as experienced by millions of people living in Central and South America. The author argues that despite early and considerable European influences on the region, indigenous Latin American traditions still characterize much of the social and artistic heritage of the Latin American countries. Several chapters provide detailed accounts of daily life, including descriptions of contemporary dress, mealtime traditions, transportation, and traditional ways of conducting business. Other chapters focus on the cultural significance of the popular music, art, and literature prevalent in each Latin American country. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

This insightful book introduces the most important trends, people, events, and products of popular culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent times, Latin American influences have permeated American culture through music, movies, television, and literature. This sweeping volume serves as a ready-reference guide to pop culture in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, focusing on Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, among other areas. The work encourages hands-on engagement with the popular culture in these places, making such suggestions as Brazilian films to rent or where to find Venezuelan music on the Internet. To start, the book covers various perspectives and issues of these regions, including the influence of the United States, how the idea of machismo reflects on the portrayal of women in these societies, and the representation of Latino-Caribo cultures in film and other mediums. Entries cover key trends, people, events, and products from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. Each section gives detailed information and profound insights into some of the more academic—and often controversial—debates on the subject, while the inclusion of the Internet, social media, and video games make the book timely and relevant.

A survey of contemporary Latin American popular culture, covering topics that range from music and film to popular festivals and fashion. Like no other volume of its kind, Pop Culture Latin America! captures the breadth and vitality of pop culture in Central and South America and the Caribbean, exploring both familiar and lesser-known aspects of its unique melange of art, entertainment, spirituality, and celebrations. Written by contributors who are scholars and specialists in the cultures and languages of Latin America, the book focuses on the historical, social, and political forces that have shaped Latino culture since 1945, particularly in the last two decades. Separate chapters cover music, popular cinema, mass media, theater and performance, literature, cultural heroes, religions and festivals, social movements and politics, the visual arts and architecture, sports and leisure, travel and tourism, and language.

Explores a wide range of cultural phenomena to examine both national symbolic orders and national/global tensions resulting from a climate of conflicting economic and political ideologies.

In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state. Jens Andermann is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at Birkbeck College, London, and co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Among his publications are Mapas de poder: una arqueología literaria del espacio argentino (Rosario, 2000) and articles for major journals in Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the US. William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, London. His book Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991) has been translated into several languages. His most recent works, apart from translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry, are Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life (Oxford, 2000) and Ensayos vallejianos (Berkeley and Lima, 2006).

Samba and carnival, radio soaps and telenovelas, oral poetry, popular drama, Amerindian art. This illustrated overview of Latin America's popular culture considers the broad spectrum of cultural forms in the various countries of the subcontinent. Exploring the ways in which daily life and ritual have resisted and been influenced by Western mass culture, Memory and Modernity traces the main anthropological, sociological and political debates about the nature of popular culture. Rowe and Schelling use their analysis of the development of a culture industry in Latin America to engage with wider debates about modernity, drawing out the contrast between Latin America's cultural wealth and its widespread material poverty. In challenging the assumptions of much Western cultural criticism, this book will be essential reading for students of Latin American society, while offering the general reader a concise and accessible overview of an exciting and varied popular culture.

This nuanced book considers the role of religion and religiosity in modern Mexico, breaking new ground with an emphasis on popular religion and its relationship to politics. The contributors highlight the multifaceted role of religion, illuminating the ways that religion and religious devotion have persisted and changed since Mexican independence. They explore such themes as the relationship between church and state, the resurgence of religiosity and religious societies in the post-reform period, the religious values of the liberals of the 1850s, and the ways that popular expressions of religion often trumped formal and universal proscriptions. Focusing on individual stories and vignettes and on local elements of religion, the contributors show that despite efforts to secularize society, religion continues to be a strong component of Mexican culture. Portraying the complexity of religiosity in Mexico in the context of an increasingly secular state, this book will be invaluable for all those interested in Latin American history and religion. Contributions by: Silvia Marina Arrom, Adrian Bantjes, Alejandro Cortázar, Jason Dormady, Martin Austin Nesvig, Matthew D. O'Hara, Daniela Traffano, Paul J. Vanderwood, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Pamela Voekel, and Edward Wright-Rios