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Scarcity and Latin America Abundance

The Return Of Modernization (neoliberalism) And Its Cultural-ecological Critics



The nationalist-capitalist project collapsed in the 1980s due to corruption and inequity in which enormous debts to foreign (mostly U.S.) banks resulted in retrenchment, job loss, and impoverishment. Neoliberalism is the intellectual movement that corresponds to the dismal era of economic retrenchment and return of U.S. domination in the period from 1982 to the twenty-first century. As a set of ideas, neoliberalism differs little from those advocated by "científicos" and modernizers of past epochs except, perhaps, in its emphasis on the example of U.S.. and East Asian business practices, such as private entrepreneurship. Again the assumption is that Latin America is characteristically backward and needs to import models for achieving abundance from more "successful" societies.



There are, however, two alternatives on the intellectual horizon. The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto propounds the argument that Latin America has been hobbled by monopolies of economic and political power and that enduring prosperity will be created by the acts of millions of tiny entrepreneurs—street vendors, small businesspeople, and the like. This is clearly an idea of its time, related to neoliberalism and reflective of the retreat of the grand projects of the state and the proliferation of microscopic businesses among the unemployed, but it does touch on the persistent problem of stultifying monopolies of power in the region.

Meanwhile, welling up from innumerable social movements are the offshoots of dependency theory but with a new focus on indigenous cultures, women, and ecology. Like dependency theory, these diverse ideas (for which we do not yet have a name) locate abundance inside Latin America, in its forests and waters and in its pre-Hispanic and African-American legacies. They see globalization (economic and cultural) as threatening that abundance and thus form part of the international antiglobalization movement, centered on the World Social Forums held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Unlike dependency theory, these ideas emphasize an encompassing cultural vision of radical economy and ecology, drawing on 1960s forebears in liberation theology and Paulo Freire's "conscientization" approach to collective self-education. Fragmented as these tendencies are, there is no single intellectual spokesperson, but one might start with the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar. We look hopefully for a synthesis of the penetrating critique of political-economic power characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s and the richer attention to culture and nature characteristic of recent Latin American thought.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Sonia E., Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, eds. Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998. A compilation of work on modern Latin American radicalism.

Arguedas, José María. Yawar Fiesta. Translated by Frances Horning Barraclough. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. A characteristic anthropological novel by Arguedas. Originally published in 1958.

Bulnes, Francisco. El porvenir de las naciones Hispano-Americanas ante las conquistas recientes de Europa y los Estados Unidos. Mexico City: Imprenta de Mariano Nava, 1899. A representative work of the cientifícos.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Enzo Faletto. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. A nuanced statement of dependency theory.

De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World. Translated by June Abbott. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. An important work of neoliberalism.

Frank, Andre Gunder. Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969. An emphatic statement of dependency theory.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970. The classic statement of conscientization.

Gossen, Gary H., and Miguel León Portilla, eds. South and Meso-American Native Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation. New York: Crossroad, 1993. A useful compilation of pre-and post-Columbian indigenous thought.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. The Power of the Poor in History: Selected Writings. Translated by Robert R. Barr. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983. A valuable source for liberation theology.

Mariátegui, José Carlos. Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Translated by Marjory Urguidi. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971. The key work by this radical Andean critic.

Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Covers the Sepúlveda–Las Casas debates, among other topics.

Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Modern Mexican Identity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Discusses the tortilla debate in Mexico and offers a fascinating culinary angle on that nation's history.

Josiah McC. Heyman

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Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Jean-Paul Sartre Biography to Seminiferous tubulesScarcity and Latin America Abundance - Pre-and Postconquest Thought, Modernization And The Ideology Of Science, The Radical Critique Of Modernization