American foundations and the development of international knowledge networks

This article examines the role and influence of three American foundations – Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford – in developing international knowledge networks that significantly impacted upon the Third World, helping to consolidate US hegemony after 1945, fostering pro‐US values, methods and research institutions. The international networks were modelled on prior domestic initiatives resulting in the effective intellectual hegemony of ‘liberal internationalism’, of empirical scientific research methods, and of policy‐oriented studies. Such domestic hegemony constructed a key basis of America’s rise to globalism, which after 1945 required a continuing and enhanced foundation role, especially with the onset of the Cold War. The article, which examines the role of the US foundations in relation to intellectual hegemony construction in Latin America, Indonesia, and Africa, concludes that the evidence is best explained by Gramscian theory, and calls for further empirical research in this vital area.     

Economic Transition,Class Formation,and the Superintendent State in the Midwest: 1850‐1900

This article outlines and clarifies the complex relationship between economic development, the formation of classes, political movement responses to these changes, and state institutional capacity building in response to these movements in the Midwestern US. It seeks to remedy views of the transition to capitalism in America that focus too narrowly on a moment of transition, positing instead a long, politically contested process of class formation by elucidating the specific interactions between agrarian and union movements and state‐building processes. Our research reveals the substantial role of the state in forcing through acceptance of economic changes and shifting class locations through a co‐developmental process of political resistance movements and state‐building.     

Las Migraciones en el Proceso de Integracion de las Americas: Seminario Internacional (Migration in the Integration Process in the Americas: International Seminar). Conference report

This conference report of the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos and the Center for Migration Studies pertains to meetings held in August 1992. Summary information on migration movements in Latin America is presented by region and subject. The topic of integration in the Americas was presented by Mr. Lelio Marmora. Other topics and presenters include the new Colombian Migration Policy (Mr. Carlos Adolfo Arenas), the integration policies in Central America (Mr. Pilar Norza of Costa Rica, Raimundo Alvarado of El Salvador, and Luis Armando Gusman of Nicaragua), the Andean Pact agreements (representatives of each country), US immigration policy (Charles B. Keely), the Mexican integration with Latin America and immigration to the US (Jorge Bustamante), migration to Bolivia and Argentina and Chile, and transnationalism in the Caribbean (Professor Andre Corten). Migration policy needs to be tailored specifically to the situation in Latin America, and greater attention needs to be devoted to labor migrants' rights and working conditions. There are still fundamental differences among countries in policies regarding the free circulation of persons across borders. There is a division among those who support migration and those who are realists. National sovereignty issues are solvable because of a common national past and a relatively homogenous population. Another opinion is that Latin America is more diverse than commonly recognized. Capital is protected more in international agreements than is migrant labor. Regional integration for the US does mean immigration from Mexico. The US sees Mexican migration as a policy problem, and Mexico sees migration as a labor opportunity.     

The greening of the booth: Environmental awareness,movements and policies in Italy

This paper presents a comprehensive, if only sketchy, case‐study of environmental awareness, movements and policies in Italy. For brevity's sake, no attempt is made to draw explicit international comparison or to use the case as a starting point for theoretical generalizations; although both are implicit. The history of Italian environmentalism is divided into five periods: pre‐history (1900–1950), early history (1950–1967), the ‘ecological spring’ (1968–1973), the seventies and the eighties. The growth of environmentalism in the seventies is analyzed at three levels: institutional, cultural, and political. Developments in the last decade are studied in several sectors: laws and institutions, business, professions and research, public opinion, movements, organizations and parties. A section is devoted to the anti‐nuclear campaign.     

Latin American Identity Politics: Redefining Citizenship

Identity‐based social movements and politics have played an important role in Latin America since the 1970s and continue to do so today. In this essay, I argue that this form of politics – as it has taken shape across Latin America – has been defined by its intersectionality. I trace the ways in which neoliberalism has facilitated a certain kind of identity politics while limiting more radical political claims. I argue that identity politics have contributed to the current “pink tide” sweeping across the continent and are in continual dialogue with these new leftist governments as they redefine what it means to be citizen and what the relationship between state and citizen should be.     

MAPPING CULTURAL/POLITICAL DEBATES IN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

The theorization of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism has generated a number of debates among Latinos in the US and among Latin American critics in particular. This article examines a number of writings published between 1989 and 1994 by Latin American critics focusing on the viability of seeing Latin America as postmodern. We argue that in the rush to accept First World theoretical frameworks, there has been much confusion and a collapsing of economic, political and cultural categories. Conflating market growth and shifts with social change and the availability of a plurality of consumer goods with the distribution of goods and services, some critics have been quick to label cultural production in Latin America as ‘postmodern’. What is needed is a delimitation of the categories used, an examination of the cultural debate in relation to other debates on development, social movements, democratization and alliance politics, as well as an examination of local intellectual debates within the global context of restructuring and transnational capital.     

Determinants of Latin American Activism: Domestic and Transnational Political Opportunities and Threats

For decades Latin America has been and continues to be a vibrant source of activism as democracies emerge, civil societies strengthen, and movements turn an outward eye towards international forces. Social movements, organizations, and activists in Latin America mobilize around a diverse set of issues from neoliberalism to women’s rights and more. Yet, all groups must successfully navigate ever‐shifting domestic and transnational political opportunities and threats. This review first defines the political opportunity approach and discusses debates surrounding its utility and applicability at different phases of social movement activity, as well as growing debates about the importance of domestic versus transnational opportunities and threats for predicting movement mobilization, protests, and outcomes. Next the article discusses changing domestic and transnational political opportunities and threats throughout Latin America. It then turns to empirical application of the political opportunity model to various social movements, organizations, and activist groups working in Central and South America. This paper concludes with a brief revisit of the debate and points to future lines of inquiry. Additionally, it provides an interactive Google Map, which locates the prominent actors involved in Latin American activism, the international institutions that influence them, and Internet links for more information.     

The Emergence of Pro-Regularization Movements in Western Europe

Contrary to the image conveyed by existing research on irregular migrants as powerless and exploited victims of restrictive immigration policies, irregular migrants in some European countries display a strong potential for collective action. In France, Spain and Switzerland since the mid‐1990s pro‐regularization movements have emerged which have claimed the collective regularization of illegal migrants. At the centre of these new social movements were illegal migrants from sub‐saharan Africa, Latin America and former Yugoslavia who went public and claimed a legal residence status. This article starts form the assumption that despite important differences between the three countries, they share several central characteristics which enabled the emergence of these pro‐regularization movements. In order to identify these pre‐conditions, three country studies, based on an innovative social movement research approach, were carried out. The findings of the country studies show that the findings of the country studies shows that in the three countries the same specific preconditions existed which encouraged the emergence of the pro‐regularization movements.     

Immigration and Transnationalism: Rethinking the Role of the State in Latin America

As more Latin American migrants make their way to the United States, the issue of transnationalism has received increased scholarly attention. Transnationalism refers to the delinking of the individual from his or her government and an increase in international ties as a result of the economic globalization that promotes the movement of people, goods, money, and ideas. Prevailing consensus is that the state, particularly in Latin America, is weakened by transnationalism because individuals are freer than ever from state control. This article argues that examining Latin American emigrant policies yields a different conclusion, namely that the state's response to transnational pressures has made governments more active and relevant in certain ways than in the past. Studies of transnationalism must therefore incorporate state strategies for a better understanding of its impact on Latin American governments.     

Contemporary Research on Social Movements and Protest in Latin America: Promoting Democracy, Resisting Neoliberalism, and Many Themes in between

This essay outlines how research on Latin American social movements has evolved since the late 1980s. Emphasis is given to two topics. First, the essay examines how Latin American social movement research has historically been oriented toward social movement theories that emerged out of the study of European movements and, to a lesser extent, movements in the United States. At the same time, it discusses how the unique historical and contextual factors of Latin American societies have repeatedly been found to defy adequate explanation by these theories. Second, the essay outlines five major themes that characterize the Latin American social movement literature: the dynamics of movements in relation to transitions to democracy, and to neo-liberal economic reforms, as well as transnational movement dynamics, indigenous movements, and women's movements.     

US Americans and 'Us' Americans: South American perspectives on Comparative American Studies

Abstract

This article discusses topics in Comparative American Studies from a South American perspective. If, on the one hand, we no longer restrict a people's history or literary and cultural production to spaces which were arbitrarily constructed for political and economically hegemonic purposes, but rather see these 'national' spaces as plural and movable loci, on the other hand, the very concept of 'America' will require an approach that seeks to deal with the geographic, linguistic, ethnographic, cultural, political and economic hemispheric differences – and the relations between space and power that necessarily come to mind when one thinks about America comparatively. The us/them paradigm, in an inter-American context, becomes highly problematized: in historical terms, America, the New World, is primarily a European construct; later the word America was appropriated to signify the US national space. Thus, America must be approached from a perspective that takes into consideration these very processes; which is to say that, whichever the adopted approach, it will necessarily be one that problematizes 'American' and that develops a form of US Studies that theorizes an interpretive framework for studying how the US exports its image to the rest of the world, the many ways in which the rest of the world has constructed the US and how US Americans have imagined 'us' Americans.     

Research on international migration and census data co-operation in Latin America

Population censuses in Latin America have generally recorded the place of birth of all persons enumerated. The use of those data for the study of international migration has been less common because international movements were judged to be a relatively weak factor determining demographic change in the majority of Latin American countries and because the data gathered were generally not tabulated with sufficient detail. During the 1970s, the UN Latin American Demographic Center (CELADE) realized that international migration was not necessarily a minor factor in their evolution and launched a program to improve the quality and availability of census information on the foreign-born population enumerated by each country. The program on International Migration in Latin America (IMILA) has therefore been in operation for more than 10 years and has been successful in eliciting the in-depth tabulation and exploitation of census information in the majority of Latin American countries and in the 2 main receivers in the Americas: Canada and the US. As part of the IMILA project, CELADE has become the depository of magnetic tapes with census information on the foreign-born population, thus gaining greater flexibility in the exploitation of the data available. On the basis of the information gathered, CELADE has published twice in the past decade a compilation of tabulations of the foreign-born population by country of enumeration, country of birth, age, and sex. Although census data on place of birth are not free from problems, particularly in countries where illegal migrants may not be adequately enumerated by a census, they are a valuable source of reasonably comparable information on the overall impact of migration in receiving countries and are often the only source of information on emigration from the sending countries.     

Selling or buying American dreams?: Americanization and Australia's interwar advertising industry

Abstract

During the interwar period, the US industrial and financial sectors expanded at a phenomenal rate. Despite the Depression, America had become an economic, industrial, and cultural powerhouse by the beginning of the Second World War. The advertising industry had been both a beneficiary of this growth and, indeed, a key contributor – spreading the American Dream to national and international audiences, including Australia. An important member of this audience was Australia's advertising industry. Like its American counterpart, the local advertising industry was directly involved in the process of Americanization. However, the Australian advertising industry did not simply ape its American counterparts. By examining the discourse of America in interwar Australian advertising literature, this article argues that the Australian advertising industry was interested in American advertising methods and techniques because they had been devised by the most modern advertising industry in the world. For Australian advertising agents, Americanization was simply viewed as a means to an end – to maximize consumption.     

Trends in Latin American Skilled Migration: “Brain Drain” or “Brain Exchange”?

During the last half of the twentieth century the Latin American sub‐continent, historically a region of immigration, became one of emigration characterized by intra‐regional movements and movements towards the developed world, particularly the US. The emigration of highly skilled resources was a new phenomenon in the 1960s and debate on “brain drain” took a significant place in academia and in international organizations. In recent years, within the context of intensification of the globalization process and by virtue of the drive for technological development and the subsequent demand for specialization, the issue has returned to both the arena of political debate and to the academic world. This article presents an analysis of trends in Latin American migration in the context of the new situation. It discusses whether there is a continuation of the “brain drain” phenomenon or the emergence of a trend towards “brain exchange” or “brain circulation”, as appears to be occurring in other parts of the world.     

Locating Security in the Womb

The discourse surrounding US family planning policies has evolved into a highly moralistic one that mirrors US domestic debates surrounding abortion rights. However, the original intent of ‘population control’ was to protect US access to raw resources and maintain US global supremacy. US family policies did not first identify woman as the object to be controlled, but policies have changed such that women's bodies have become a symbolic representation of – and site of resistance to – the power relationships between the US and developing states. The change in the rhetoric – from population control to family planning, women's empowerment, environmental sustainability and human rights – does not mean the ‘rules’ enforced by the hegemon have changed so much as it indicates a process of identity formation occurring through the implementation of these rules.     

Lessons from Latin America's neo‐liberal experiment: An overview of labour and social policies since the 1980s

Introducing the six country studies that follow, this analytical overview shows that the social and labour policies inspired by the Washington Consensus – implemented across much of Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s – consistently failed to deliver the expected improvements. Labour flexibilization, decentralization of collective bargaining, pension privatization and other measures to increase market provision of welfare typically resulted in growing informality, widening inequalities and shrinking social protection coverage, while also failing to stimulate employment growth. But the lessons have been learned: many such policies have recently been reconsidered and there are signs that a more balanced policy approach may be emerging in Latin America.     

‘A New Language that Speaks of Change Just As It Steps Toward It’: Transnationalism,Erotic Justice and Queer Human Rights Praxis

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movements have too often been dominated by US liberal individualist framings of lesbian and gay rights, resulting in the hegemony of US‐focused issues and institutional actions, despite the irony that the US government has been relatively unsupportive of LGBT rights on the international stage. We argue that transnational, grassroots queer movements embody more profound aspirations that do not limit the meaning of queer liberation to singular identity politics or rights‐restraining institutions. Specifically, we point to transnational and Third World‐based queer movements that offer more complex structural analyses of sexual oppression as well as more visionary praxes of sexual rights. Drawing on lessons from two cases of queer human rights praxis from the Philippines and México, we assert that a queer grassroots enactment of human rights allows for multiple subaltern constituencies to find – and to make – a place in human rights discourses; queer identity and actions create social formations that expand human rights agendas to further embody the intersectionality, interdependence and transnationality of daily life. Key to these enactments of queer human rights praxis are prefigurative politics and rooted cosmopolitanism, which catalyze new expansions of human rights to include intersectional framings and practices of erotic justice.     

Cooptation and non-cooptation: elite strategies in response to social protest

ABSTRACT

The risk of cooptation – of being absorbed by powerful elites without gaining new advantages – is an important concern in studies of social movements and social change. Through cooptation, elites undermine movements by stripping them of their credibility as agents of change. This paper aims to explain why, despite its powerful rationale, cooptation does not occur more frequently. Building on political process theory and relational sociology, it demonstrates that cooptation appears rational only on the condition that cooperation is valued lower than political domination. But elite-movement interaction may result in mutually strategic relationships that are conditional on each side’s recognition of the other’s interest. Two empirical cases illustrate this possibility: the US Civil Rights Movement and Latin American participatory budgeting. In both cases, the actors involved chose a strategy of ‘mutually assured autonomy’ over cooptation.     

¿Qué hacen los nuevos americanistas? Collaborative strategies for a postnationalist American Studies

Abstract

This article advocates that the field of American Studies institutionalize Spanish as its second language in order both to address the cultural importance of the growing US Spanish-speaking population and to ensure productive scholarly dialogue within the context of the Americas. Its ideas follow up on recent proposals for 'new' or 'postnationalist' American Studies. It warns that Americanists must be conscious of unresolved issues raised in recent debates on Latin Americanism regarding the increasingly privileged status of English (vs. Spanish) language and US (vs. Latin America) based scholarship in the globalized field of Latin American Studies, problems sure to be exacerbated by a globalizing but US centered and monolingual American Studies. It concludes by suggesting a series of strategies to promote the incorporation of Spanish into both undergraduate and graduate level pedagogy, as well as to foment bilingual scholarly dialogue across the disciplines in the context of the Americas.     

‘Being in the Spaces where Decisions are Made’: Reproductive Rights Advocacy and Policy Influence in Two Regions of Peru

In the 1990s, some segments of Latin American feminist movements shifted to advocacy strategies to influence government policies. Long-standing social movement theories predict that this tactical change to institutional means has two possible consequences for a movement: either it gains greater influence over policy arenas and becomes more effective in achieving outcomes, or it loses capacity to carry out protest tactics and becomes less effective in achieving outcomes. However, empirical studies on Latin American feminist organizations intervening in policies, and recent social movement theorizing, indicate that the relationship between social movements and policy influence is more complex. Moreover, these theories have been formulated based on empirical studies in contexts with established democratic frameworks and institutions. The study presented here employed Grounded Theory to examine inductively the research questions of how reproductive rights organizations carry out advocacy to influence government policies in Peru. Data was collected through participant observation and focus group discussions among two reproductive rights coalitions in the regions of Arequipa and Cusco. The findings indicate that the reproductive rights coalitions develop a multiplicity of interactions with government officials, as a means to influence policies through various channels and handle constraints on their ability to act as independent pressure groups. In addition, the findings show that the coalitions deal with a wide range of factors to influence policies: organizational capacity, advocacy strategies, issue frames, relationships with other policy actors as well as political and social aspects that facilitate or hinder advocacy. The study concludes that the relationship between social movements and policy influence is more complex than portrayed by long-standing theories. Instead, the findings are consistent with, and enhance the scholarship on Latin American feminist organizations involved in policies, as well as recent social movement theorizing that takes into account how various factors affect social movement influence on policies.