In Latin America in Debate, eminent Argentine social theorist, novelist, and activist Maristella Svampa provides a broad and accessible overview of the key political and intellectual debates in Latin America from the early twentieth century to the present. She examines four main topics: the place of Indigenous peoples in postcolonial nation-states; the impact of development on the Latin American political imagination; the impact of being economically dependent within a global capitalist order; and the turn to populism as a particular political response to these various challenges. Svampa traces each debate's genealogy and contextualizes them over the course of the twentieth century and demonstrates how intellectual and sociological currents have redefined and reshaped them in the twenty-first. Svampa also maps the tensions in each and shows how they influence contemporary Latin American politics. By focusing on Indigeneity, development, dependency, and populism, Svampa provides a clear entry point to understand the most pressing issues confronting Latin America while showcasing how the region's intellectuals have been thinking about and debating these issues in ways that generate social theory with global implications.
Maristella Svampa is Senior Researcher at Centro de Investigaciones CientIficas y TEcnicas de Argentina and the author of Neo-Extractivism in Latin America and numerous other books. Alejandro Reyes is a freelance writer, translator, editor, and the author of several books in Spanish.
Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I. Latin American Debates and History 1. The Debate on the Indigenous and Indianidad 15 2. Between the Obsession with Development and Its Critique 87 3. Dependency as an Organizing Axis 125 4. Populisms, Politics, and Democracy 177 Part II. Scenarios, Contemporary Debates, and Disputed Categories Part II. Introduction 217 5. The Way of Indianismo: The Debate on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 221 6. Debates on Development 247 7. Dependency as a "Compass" 273 8. Twenty-First-Century Populisms 301 Final Reflections 329 Notes 343 References 353 Index
"Latin America in Debate is a work of unparalleled erudition and scope. Its careful tracing of the most structuring threads in the continent's social, political, and intellectual history demonstrates why Maristella Svampa is the most accomplished scholar in the rich tradition of Latin American critical thought at present. This book is essential reading for those wishing to engage with the urgent task of reimagining the place of world regions in the globalized world." - Arturo Escobar, author of Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible "Charting the evolving debates among Latin American intellectuals and scholars regarding Indigenous peoples, dependency, development, and populism, Maristella Svampa offers a critical survey of Latin American social and political theorizing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Svampa has put a lifetime of reading and thinking into this book in a remarkably fruitful way. Latin America in Debate is a tour de force that will be the basis of many important and valuable conversations." - Mary Louise Pratt, author of Planetary Longings
