Ho Chi Minh City is a city which has received and accumulated many cultures and religions from around the world, from Oriental culture to Western civilization, from West Asian and East Asian cultures to South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures. The cultures of some African and Latin American countries have also arrived recently. Most world religions, regional religions, national religions and even new religions are present in the city. The characteristic of religions and cultural identities of Ho (...) Chi Minh City is in the process of transformation, receipt and selection of the cultural and religion elements of those cultures. Based on the research results of a scientific research on the topic, “Cultural and religion life in Ho Chi Minh City in the era of international integration”, we would like to share some opinions about the characteristics of culture and religions in the process of cultural exchange, acculturation and accumulation of Ho Chi Minh City from traditional to modern stage. (shrink)

Considering the lack of substantive scientific or theoretical studies about ethics in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America, this paper examines the context of an existent paradox, based upon the perspective of experts and academicians of Latin America and the Caribbean. These countries live different realities, due to their respective European cultural influences, as well as to racial and economic issues. Such facts impact the size and characteristics of their industries. On the other hand, the (...) SMEs face more similarities in the region, so they will be treated as a group in the discussion of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Latin American SMEs. As this topic has not been sufficiently investigated in this geographic area, the objective of this exploratory study is to offer a contribution for future research. It raises the main dilemmas and intends to explain how legislation and common practices enable and perhaps lead SMEs to choose unethical strategies to survive and compete in the market. These enterprises are growing in number and in job creation, but do not participate in the Gross National Product in the same proportion. Informality, tax evasion and corruption are gradually caused or erode morality in business, but can contribute to corporate social responsibility in the region. The paper tries to show positive and negative aspects of apparently unethical practices and discusses challenging ways to solve complex problems that are common in most Latin America. (shrink)

FROST (copy 2): From the John Holmes Library collection.

Most Latin American scholars treat Latin American nations as a simple study object with similar characteristics. The purpose of this essay is to analyze some myths, stereotypes, realities, and challenges given to one of the most important regions of the world, knowing as Latin America. Latin Americ..

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A "Nation" of ImmigrantsJose Jorge MendozaIntroductionIn "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States' claim to be a "Nation of Immigrants." Gabaccia's endeavor is motivated by the question "What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?" (Gabaccia 5). (...) This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, "[t]o ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations" (Gabaccia 5-6). In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into Gabaccia's claim and argue that the issue of immigration is important for philosophers to consider because it is an issue that lies at the heart of the intersection between political philosophy and philosophy of race—an intersection that shows, more than anywhere else and in particular in the debate surrounding the use of the word illegal, how and why words do matter.The Braid of WhitenessDavid Roediger, in his book Working Toward Whiteness, argues that it is problematic to read "ethnicity" back into earlier accounts of race, specifically in the United States during the period from 1860-1924. Roediger argues that the term "ethnicity," at least as we use it today, does not really appear during this period. He goes on to show how the use of racialized language during that period was in fact very messy and would not fit neatly into the strict biological/phenotypic definitions that we give today. He writes: [End Page 41]This loose, state-endorsed linkage of biology to culture, history, and class can mislead modern historians of race who characteristically attempt to disentangle the biological from other rationales for oppression, regarding the former as underpinning racism and the latter as underpinning other kinds of prejudice. But what was so striking about restrictionist and racist thought at the beginning (and indeed, at the end) of the twentieth century was its very entanglement of the biological and the cultural.(Roediger 66)In short, Roediger is arguing that the distinction we currently make between race and ethnicity was not nearly as sharp at the turn of the century as it is now and that this messiness was most clearly present in the debates surrounding immigration.Roediger, for his part, argues that we do not need to fear this messiness or inability to neatly distinguish between race and ethnicity at the turn of the century, but instead we should allow for a space of "in-betweeness" within the strict white/nonwhite binary. In allowing for this space, Roediger claims we can come to understand how the "new immigrants" (i.e., Irish, Italians, Jews, and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who emigrated to the United States between 1860-1924) went from being nonwhite to white and in so doing, solidified our current understanding of whiteness (Roediger 3-130). While I am not sure Roediger does enough in his account to warrant dismissing the race/ethnicity distinction at the turn of the century, I think he is right in emphasizing whiteness as central to racism. He is also correct to note the key role that restrictions on immigration played in the construction and solidification of the U.S. nation-state as a white nation.To be clear, the term whiteness, in its more technical sense, does not simplistically refer to skin color, but denotes the dominant race and/or ethnicity as it passes for the nonracialized and non-ethnic norm upon which the "other" is differentiated. As George Yancy, a current philosopher of race, writes:To say that whiteness is deemed the transcendental norm is to say that whiteness takes itself to be that which remains the same across a field of difference. Indeed it determines what is deemed different without itself being defined by that system of difference. Whiteness is that according to which what is nonwhite is rendered other, marginal, ersatz, strange, native, inferior, uncivilized, and ugly.(Yancy 3)This privilege that whiteness enjoys is... (shrink)

If we admit that Latin-American literature is a part of what is called Western culture, why, I ask myself, has it not been able to influence any of the great literatures of the West, outside of the Spanish? To be more precise, when I speak of influencing, I am not referring to the historico-cultural event that signifies Latin America, which has changed the West, but specifically to literature, that is, writing, the book, the language, the contents, the (...) creative structure and the symbols. From its origins until today, Latin-American literature, like Jugoslavian literature—in spite of the Nobel prize awarded to Ivo Andric—or Bulgarian or Icelandic, remains a marginal phenomenon. It is produced within a closed circuit, having no real resonance except in Spain. Furthermore, it struggles between two guilt feelings: one, that of being late with regard to renovating currents of fashions of the day and the other, that of not responding to its own reality. Because of those burdens of a guilty conscience, it often feigns innovation by following outside models or exalting a nationalist realism that has not produced the slightest new form but only a mediocre art of propaganda. It simulates and copies, or it lags behind. It either tries to be up to date or pretends to overcome this uneasiness by inventing an intransigent Americanism, behaving like a telluric barbarian or accepting traditional popular forms that may produce works such as Martin Fierro, whose value for the Latin-Americans cannot be denied but whose range is limited. (shrink)

This research analyzed the ethical-political discussions of distributive justice in national minorities and its incorporation into the Constitutions of Latin American countries. Ethics stands out in its search to dignify the human being, finding two immeasurable positions: (a) the deontological models of justice and equality and their detached subjects, and (b) the communitarian models that rescue the identity contingencies of the subjects. The latter have allowed reflections that recognize the defense of cultural, territorial and linguistic identity as (...) fundamental issues. Finally, the discussion ventures to delimit equity and positive discrimination. (shrink)

In Latin America Cardenal is generally regarded as an enduring poet. He brought a recognizably Latin American material into his poetry, and he introduced to Spanish-language poetry in general such poetic techniques as textual collage, free verse lines shaped in Poundian fashion, and, especially, a diction that is concrete and detailed, textured with proper names and the names of things in preference to the accepted poetic language, which was more abstract, general, and vaguely symbolic. But what is (...) notable in Spanish-language poetry is not only Cardenal’s “craft,” in the sense given this word by Seamus Heaney to mean manipulation of poetic resources; there is also this poet’s “technique,” which in Heaney’s sense means a “definition of his stance toward life.”2 Cardenal’s characteristic poetic stance has been admired because he addresses the political and social pressures that shape—and often distort, damage, or destroy—life and feeling. This is apparent even in the earliest poems Cardenal has chosen to preserve. “Raleigh,” for example, is a dramatic meditation from 19493 in which the treasure-hunting explorer marvels at the expanse and wealth of the American continents and out of sheer pleasure recounts some of the triumphs and hardships of his travels. Although his alertness and wonder make him sympathetic, this Raleigh’s vision of the New World as a limitless source of wealth is forerunner to the economic exploitation of the land and people.One might ask, What are the political and social circumstances which, rather than distorting and damaging life and feeling, nurture and preserve them? Perhaps one might answer that, paradoxically, destructive conditions of life have many times proven insufficiently powerful to prevent the creation of poetry. And some poetry has even arisen in reaction to the destructive: such conditions produce resistance, which, if it cannot heal the spirit, can lend it strength. One might answer further that it is not Cardenal’s or any artist’s responsibility to establish what circumstance will form a fruitful matrix for art, but only to work as honestly and as hard as political, social, and artistic circumstances will permit. 2. Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1969-1978 , p. 47.3. The date is from Joaquín Martin Sosa, “Breve guía de lectores,” preface to Poesía de uso, p. 9. Reginald Gibbons is the editor of TriQuarterly magazine and teaches at Northwestern University. His most recent books are his third volume of poems, Saints, one of the winning books in the National Poetry Series , and two edited collections of essays—The Writer in Our World and, with Gerald Graff, Criticism in the University. He is at work on a critical study of modern and contemporary poetry, as well as new poems and fiction. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry, “Poetic Form and the Translator,” appeared in the June 1985 issue. (shrink)

This article examines the views of Latin American philosophers on the process of formation of the Latin American subject of history, its characteristic features, as well as the role of the intellectual in this process. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the position of the prominent Argentine philosopher A. A. Roig, and to compare his position with the position of another well-known representative of the philosophy of liberation (E. Dussel). In this paper therefore, (...) Roig's works devoted to the philosophical interpretation of the process of formation and development of Latin American national thought are analyzed. It is established that in the writings of this thinker the activity of Latin American people appears as the activity of a single collective subject of history. During the study, we conclude that both philosophers (Roig and Dussel), come to the same idea in different ways: the intellectual identity of the Latin American collective subject of history is based on the history of interaction between the people of Latin America and Europe, unique in its dramatic nature and same for the entire continent. The work uses mainly the historical and bibliographic method, as well as the method of comparative analysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface In this issue, one cluster of articles presents scholarly and creative work focused on Latin American queer politics. Each article reveals queer challenges—theoretical, aesthetic, political, ideological, libidinal, corporeal—to prevailing logics of heteronormativity and neoliberalism, and to asymmetrical processes of knowledge production and circulation. Rafael de la Dehesa examines how political responses to AIDS in Brazil enabled surprising alliances between NGOs, activists, and the state, which produced (...) radical social change and, at times, engendered exclusion and vulnerability. Christine Keating and Amy Lind’s essay explores indigenous and transfeminist efforts to transform the Ecuadorian constitution, producing new conceptions of both state and family. Constanza Tabbush and Melina Gaona trace the rise and fall of a neighborhood organization in Argentina called Tupac Amaru, which provided a space of encounter for lesbian, non-gender normative, and marginalized women. In a review of recent work on Latin American sexualities, Juan Camilo Galeano Sánchez finds LGBT people across Latin America and the diaspora deploying “queer revolutionary gestures” as a form of resistance to social, political, and economic marginalization. María Amelia Viteri’s commentary examines the intellectual trajectories of a network of queer scholars from across the Americas. The art essay by Tara Daly engages Iquitos artist Christian Bendayán’s visual efforts to queer prevailing conceptions of the Amazon, and tatiana de la tierra’s* poems offer a deep celebration of female eroticism. * We have spelled tatiana de la tierra’s name in lower case in accordance with the wishes of her literary executors. 256Preface Another cluster of essays highlights reproductive rights and race in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez and Lynn M. Morgan study the tactics that right-wing, US-based organizations deploy against sexual and reproductive rights in Mexico and Central America. Jennifer L. Shoaff examines the Dominican cultural construction of the Haitian mother as “beggar-mother,” which shores up ideas of pathological black maternity. Ana-Maurine Lara’s article considers the gendered and sexual logics of anti-blackness, and anti-Haitianism, in the Dominican Republic. The provocation for our cluster on representations of queer identities and politics in Latin America came, broadly, from developments in Latin America in recent decades: the wave of LGBT organizing around issues from same-sex marriage to transgender rights, alongside the continued, if not escalated, violence against trans, travestis, and other queer people in countries throughout the region. More immediately, it came from a symposium on Latin American/Latin@ queer and sexuality studies, cosponsored by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) and the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Amherst, in March 2013. Several of the papers published here were initially presented at that event and have been complemented and extended by other analytical essays and creative material on similar questions. Based on their familiarity with the debates, Sonia Alvarez, UMass CLACLS Director and professor of political science, and Amy Lind, head of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, offered invaluable input for this issue, and we thank them for their intellectual generosity and collaborative spirit. Three of the articles in the cluster take us inside the complex relations between queer movements and neoliberal institutions, illustrating the distinctive ways these dynamics play out in different national contexts and political configurations. In “NGOs, Governmentality, and the Brazilian Response to AIDS: A Multistranded Genealogy of the Current Crisis,” Rafael de la Dehesa argues that the AIDS crisis served as a “doorway to the state” for marginalized actors, such as sex workers and LGBT activists. These groups pushed for and won a national AIDS program that dramatically reduced rates of mortality and new infections in Brazil in the 1990s through universal access to treatment and a nonstigmatizing approach to prevention. Its success was based, in part, on World Bank Preface 257 loans and, in part, on a participatory model of public-private partnerships characteristic of neoliberal government. De la Dehesa argues that, “Far from encapsulating activism in a seamless web of biopolitical management... nodes of articulation between officials and activists became sites of conflict and productive tension.” However, while the alliances between NGOs... (shrink)

The Purpose in Life Test is a measure of purpose in life widely used in many cultures and countries; however, cross-cultural assessments are scarce. The present study aimed to evaluate the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the PIL in the general population of seven Latin American countries. A total of 4306 people participated, selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling, where Uruguay has the highest mean age ; while Ecuador has the lowest mean age. Furthermore, in each country, there is a (...) higher proportion of women than men. Using Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis, the factorial structure does not show evidence of invariance among the included countries. However, based on the Multi-Group Factor Analysis Alignment, there is evidence that a three-dimensional structure of the PIL is the same in the participating countries. Results based on item response theory indicate that most PIL items can significantly differentiate responses according to the level of life purpose. In addition, people with low life purpose will tend to choose the lower response alternatives on the PIL; while people with higher life purpose will choose higher response alternatives. The findings indicate that the PIL has the potential to increase knowledge about how people conceive and experience their purpose in life in different countries. (shrink)

This encyclopedia article outlines the history of Latin American philosophy: the thinking of its indigenous peoples, the debates over conquest and colonization, the arguments for national independence in the eighteenth century, the challenges of nation-building and modernization in the nineteenth century, the concerns over various forms of development in the twentieth century, and the diverse interests in Latin American philosophy during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Rather than attempt to provide an exhaustive and (...) impossibly long list of scholars’ names and dates, this article outlines the history of Latin American philosophy while trying to provide a meaningful sense of detail by focusing briefly on individual thinkers whose work points to broader philosophical trends that are inevitably more complex and diverse than any encyclopedic treatment can hope to capture. (shrink)

A durable question in Latin American thought is whether it could amount to a characteristically Latin American philosophy. I argue that, if, as is now widely conceded, there is a role for philosophical analysis in thinking about problems that arise in applied subjects, such as bioethics, environmental ethics, and feminism, then why not also in Latin American thought? After all, the focus of Hispanic thinkers has often been upon the issues that arise in their (...) own experiences of the world, and they make up a diverse group of peoples related by very idiosyncratic ethnic and historical connections. I believe that, given some appropriate criteria, the existing corpus of works by Latin American thinkers constitutes a distinctive philosophy. (shrink)

__Forging People __explores the way in which Hispanic American thinkers in Latin America and Latino/a philosophers in the United States have posed and thought about questions of race, ethnicity, and nationality, and how they have interpreted the most significant racial and ethnic labels used in Hispanic America in connection with issues of rights, nationalism, power, and identity. Following the first introductory chapter, each of the essays addresses one or more influential thinkers, ranging from Bartolomé de Las Casas on (...) race and the rights of Amerindians; to Simon Bolívar's struggle with questions of how to forge a nation from disparate populations; to modern and contemporary thinkers on issues of race, unity, assimilation, and diversity. Each essay carefully and clearly presents the views of key authors in their historical and philosophical context and provides brief biographical sketches and reading lists, as aids to students and other readers. “Latin American philosophy has a long history of engagement with issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality. To date, however, there has been no volume that focused on the contributions of the major figures in the Latin American tradition, to illustrate their connections, and to illuminate the context in which much of their work occurred. This volume fills that gap and takes an important step in remedying this shortcoming in the existing philosophical literature, and also in the literature of related fields such as Latin American studies, ethnic studies, and the cross-disciplinary work of race, ethnicity, and nationality.” —_Manuel Vargas, University of San Francisco _. (shrink)

This book presents Latin American Perspectives on women philosophers, comprising selected articles from the First International Conference of Women in Modern Philosophy that took place in Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil, Latin America, in June of 2019. The conference brought together over twenty national, transnational, and international philosophers from seven countries, whose work combines historical and analytical insight to recover the philosophical legacy of women philosophers. Historical and analytical work on women’s philosophical thought constitute efforts to (...) re-conceptualize what counts as philosophical knowledge and re-appraise the epistemic relevance of written material that women thinkers produced for most of history. This collection and the conference that gave origin to it are testimony to the enduring power of multinational and multicultural philosophical collaboration. (shrink)

This review-essay offers an extended engagement with Fernando Ignacio Leiva’s Latin American Neostructuralism, one of the most important contributions to contemporary Latin-American political economy. It situates Leiva’s critique of neostructuralism against the wider backdrop of Latin America’s contradictory turn to the Left since the late 1990s, and compares the treatments of change in Latin-American capitalism over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries developed by the schools of classical structuralism, neostructuralism, and (...) neoliberalism. The essay finds that Leiva’s critique of neostructuralism and his explanation for its influence on large segments of the region’s Left is the best work on the topic currently available in English. Leiva systematically demolishes neostructuralism’s claim to be a progressive alternative to neoliberalism. At the same time, it is argued that Leiva’s theoretical framework is compromised by its uncritical adoption of categories from French regulation-theory, and its nostalgia for elements of classical structuralism and its associated development-model of import-substitution industrialisation. Further, it is found that Leiva’s implicit attachment to certain myths propagated by the Marxism of the Second and, especially, Third Internationals regarding the national bourgeoisie’s role in Third-World capitalist development leaves him unduly dogmatic about the necessity, and unduly optimistic about the possibility, of building a progressive stage of capitalism in Latin America today. The same mythologies prevent Leiva from drawing the appropriate conclusions as regards the urgent necessity of rebuilding the socialist project in Latin America and internationally. (shrink)

We have entered a 21st century where people, rather than uniting across borders and daring to feel an affinity with the other ̶ bridging ethnic and national differences ̶ are now increasingly vulnerable, exposed to fragmenting movements often set in motion by leaders driven by egocentric values and self-interests pursued at the expense of the well-being of minorities and those occupying a lower level in the social hierarchy. While regionalism, nationalism and authoritarianism appear to be rising divisive movements triggered (...) by such destabilising sociopolitical trends, within regionalism we can find examples of positive collaborations. Such is the case with Latin America today; a region which demonstrates a people coming together in a spirit of solidarity and creativity. Regionalism can in this case be inwardly advantageous. In a world characterised by personal disengagement and apathy, Latin America along with its indigenous communities uphold national values in a spirit of mutual comprehension on a communal level. Throughout history, these nations have been subjected to totalitarian regimes and hostile policies that disrupt societal structures. As a result, Latin American communities have developed resilience and a sense of hope deeply embedded in regional values. Its rich and diverse cinema reflects nations that despite all their uncertainties, differences, struggles and discontents have been showing the way forward. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Richard A. Falk, this proposal explores Latin American cinema within a regional framework, looking at regionalism as a model for collective cooperation in the midst of a highly volatile world. -/- . (shrink)

Some of the central questions that have been explored by Latin American and Latinx philosophers are questions of metaphilosophy. "Metaphilosophy" refers to philosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy itself. For example, we might ask: What is the purpose of doing philosophy? How does philosophy compare and contrast with other disciplines, such as science, theology, or literature? And what is the best way of categorizing the different kinds and traditions of philosophy? These are philosophical questions about philosophy as (...) an activity and as a discipline. In this chapter, we discuss some ways that Latin American and Latinx philosophers have addressed these and other metaphilosophical issues. Our focus will be on the following questions: What are the defining characteristics of Latin American philosophy and Latinx philosophy? Do they constitute distinctive traditions of philosophy, and if so, what is especially valuable about these traditions? (shrink)

This brief essay proposes to reflect on what could be Latin American bioethics, speculating about possible identity characteristics and operational limits of the idea of what constitutes Latin America, outlined conceptually by geographical, historical and cultural aspects. This attempt does not assume the task of defining exactly or definitively what Latin American bioethics is, but rather limits itself to the purpose of causing controversy in order to stimulate reflection on this topic to assess its usefulness.

The paper challenges mainstream theories of Latin American development, showing their theoretical weaknesses and pointing to their role in ideologically mediating the region’s ‘truncated’ capitalism. To that end, the paper presents an alternative view of Latin American development that starts by considering capitalist social reproduction as a worldwide process and regional/national politico-economic development as mediations in the structuring of global capital accumulation. Latin America’s specific variety of capitalism is understood to have emerged from its (...) original transformation by expanding European capital into a place to produce raw materials under favourable natural conditions. On the one hand, this has reduced their price and that of the labour-power directly or indirectly consuming them; on the other, it has resulted in a flow of surplus-value towards the owners of those natural conditions of production. The historical development of Latin American societies has expressed the partial overcoming of that antagonistic relationship between rent-paying capital and rent-appropriating landed property. (shrink)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many Latin American intellectuals adapted the philosophy of positivism to address the pressing problems of nation-building and respond to the demands of their own social and political contexts, making positivism the second most influential tradition in the history of Latin American philosophy, after scholasticism. Since a comprehensive survey of positivism’s role across Latin American and Latinx philosophy would require multiple books, this chapter presents the history of (...) positivism and its transformations in Mexican and Chicanx philosophies, proceeding chronologically and focusing on these representative thinkers: Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Gabino Barreda (1818-1881), Justo Sierra (1848-1912), José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Antonio Caso (1883-1946), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004). We pay special attention to how positivism was used to build the Mexican nation and reconstruct Mexican identity through education, creating philosophical debates about the relationships among science, religion, morality, education, race, economic progress, and national development. These debates continue to resonate as we think critically about the respective roles of scientific education—then called “positive” education, now “STEM” education—and moral education in the curricula used to educate a country’s youth while reconstructing their ethnoracial and national identities. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene por objeto analizar el proceso de creciente marginalización que experimentó la figura de Manuel Ugarte (1875-1951) hacia los años treinta del pasado siglo. Hasta entonces, y desde su despertar a la vida pública a fines del siglo XIX, este intelectual había ocupado un lugar central en el escenario político-cultural latinoamericano en virtud, por un lado, de su participación en los círculos literarios vinculados al modernismo latinoamericano. Por otro, como corolario de su campaña antiimperialista y latinoamericanista emprendida hacia (...) comienzos de siglo que lo convirtió, en los años veinte, en un referente indiscutido del antiimperialismo impulsado entonces por intelectuales y juventudes latinoamericanas. No obstante, en la siguiente década, el prestigio de Ugarte inició un férreo declive que se correspondió con el progresivo aislamiento de su figura del mundo político-cultural latinoamericano. De ese lugar marginal habría de rescatarlo, posteriormente, un sector de la izquierda nacional como precursor del “socialismo nacional”. The purpose of this work is to analyze the process of increasing marginalization experienced by the figure of Manuel Ugarte (1875-1951) during the 1930s’. Until then, and since his irruption into public life by the end of the Nineteenth Century, his intellectual figure had played a key role in the Latin American political and cultural scenarios by virtue, on the one side, of his presence in literary societies belonging to the Latin American modernism. On the other side, as a corollary to the Latin-Americanist and anti-imperialist campaigns initiated by the beginning of the Twentieth Century which turned his figure, during the 1920s’, into an undisputed reference of the imperialism stimulated by the intellectuals and Latin-American youths of that time. However, within the following decade, Ugarte’s public recognition experienced a steady decline that matched his increasing isolation from the Latin American political and cultural scenarios. His figure was to be revived, at a later stage, from such isolation, by a sector within the local left as an early figure of the “national socialism”. (shrink)

This essay examines contemporary Latin American historical writing about natural history from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries. Natural history is a “network science,” woven out of connections and communications between diverse people and centers of scholarship, all against a backdrop of complex political and economic changes. Latin American naturalists navigated a tension between promoting national science and participating in “universal” science. These tensions between the national and the universal have also been reflected in (...) historical writing on Latin America. Since the 1980s, narratives that recognize Latin Americans' active role have become more notable within the renewal of the history of Latin American science. However, the nationalist slant of these approaches has kept Latin American historiography on the margins. The networked nature of natural history and Latin America's active role in it afford an opportunity to end the historiographic isolation of Latin America and situate it within world history. (shrink)

Fertility levels have dropped substantially in Latin America in recent decades, fuelled by increased contraceptive use and notably a method mix skewed towards female sterilization. This study examined choice of female sterilization in four Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Peru. Data were drawn from national Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 1995s reproductive histories to consider the effects of a number of sociodemographic and contextual determinants as they pertained to status at the (...) moment of the event. The results revealed that the likelihood of a womans propensity to choose sterilization. (shrink)

Five different Latin American experiences help us to understand the impacts of corporate social responsibility on communities. We focus on communities composed of low-income populations to compare types of interventions, their main characteristics, spaces for community participation, and some results and impacts. Some of the findings indicate that (a) a company’s enlightened self-interest in its CSR program ensures its commitment to the program and the program’s sustainability; (b) community involvement from the outset in defining a project increases the (...) probability of success, since corporations cannot assume they understand the needs of a community by taking them at face value; (c) projects do not create untenable expectations in local communities when they consider the whole life cycle and the sustainability of the investment after an appropriate exit strategy is executed; and (d) financial resources are only part of the equation because corporations can have enormous impacts with limited financing if programs are well defined and supported. (shrink)

Although US and European research has documented improvement in earnings quality associated with corporate governance characteristics, the situation in Latin America is questionable, given the business environment in which firms operate, which is characterized by controlling family ownership and weak legal protection. The purpose of this study is to examine the relation between the internal mechanisms of Corporate Governance and Earnings Management measured by discretionary accrual. We use a sample of listed Latin American non-financial companies from the (...) period 2006–2009. Our results show how in the Latin American context the role of external directors is limited and that Boards which meet more frequently take a more active position in the monitoring of insiders, so showing a lower use of manipulative practices. In addition, we find a non-linear relation between insider ownership and discretionary accruals, also pointing to the fact that ownership concentration may be a manipulative practices constrictor mechanism only when the ownership of main shareholders is moderate. The findings have important policy implications since this is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to analyze the relation between the effectiveness of the government and the earnings management behavior. As policy implications, we document how when a country implements controls aimed at reducing corruption, strengthening the rule of law or improving the effectiveness of government, this leads to a reduction in firm earnings management. (shrink)

Social sciences in Latin America experienced, during the 1960s, a great number of debates concerning the very foundations of different academic fields. In the case of Argentina, research programs such as Proyecto Marginalidad constituted fundamental elements of those controversies, which were characteristic of disciplinary developments within the social sciences, particularly sociology. Mainly influenced by the critical context that had been deepened by Project Camelot, Argentinian social scientists engaged in debates about the theories that should be chosen in order to (...) account for ‘national reality’, the origins of funding for scientific research, or the applied dimension of science. In this sense, the practices of philanthropic organizations like the Ford Foundation stimulated considerably the ideological passions of that period; those practices also contributed to fragmentation in various academic groups. In this way, the problem of American imperialism, and its consequent economic and cultural dependencies, were present in the controversies of academic fields whose historic evolutions cannot be fully understood without considering their strong links with national and international politics. (shrink)

This article examines multinational banks’ approaches to corporate social responsibility in developing countries’ subsidiaries, particularly in Latin America. Building on in-depth case studies of two MNBs that are based in Europe and market leaders in Latin America, we analyze their CSR motivations and outcomes in host countries. We examine institutional environments by applying the national business system framework, and we suggest missing categories in its financial and educational dimensions. We theorize how institutional necessity determines MNBs' CSR in (...) developing countries. Finally, we examine the CSR outcomes in Latin America, where banks’ responsible conduct has led to major improvements in educational levels and financial inclusion. These improvements alleviate poverty and enhance both country's social wellbeing and MNBs’ legitimacy, leading to mutual prosperity. (shrink)

We seek to add to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD) literature through the empirical study of Latin American firm membership in the United Nations Global Compact (GC) and Global Report Initiative (GRI). Within an institutional-based framework, we explore through three filters – commercial, state-signaling, and distinguished peers – the impact of normative and mimetic pressures associated with GC/gri membership. Our sample includes 207 public firms from six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, (...) Colombia, Mexico, and Peru). Our results suggest Latin American firms from countries with a greater European influence (normative pressure) are twice as likely to be enrolled in the GC/gri. Additionally, we find that Latin American firms listed on the NYSE (mimetic pressure) are also twice as likely to sign up under the GC/gri. Hence, the normative and mimetic pillars of institutional theory are found to be significant factors for Latin American firms adopting sustainability initiatives. (shrink)

This paper analyzes how cultural diversity in Argentina is calling into question modern political concepts like republic, nation or democracy. The phenomenon of population movements, the demand for recognition of indigenous people's rights, or the conflicts arising from claims to regions' right to life and identity - as in the case of the town of Gualeguaychú in Argentina - challenge the logic of the nation-state and its sovereignty as well as the republican principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. The author (...) examines how far the representation of the Argentinean republic at the time of its foundation included a standardizing vision of diversity, and how the legacy of this representation brought about an ambivalence between a universalist wish to take part in the progress of humanity and the reality of an exclusive democracy that valued one culture over others. It studies the narrative of national identity and attempts to describe how, proceeding from this narrative, the opposition between civilization and barbarity affects the way Latin Americans see the great challenges presented by the future of democracy, and by the recognition of the plurality of cultural allegiances. (shrink)

Positive Youth Development (PYD) is an approach that promotes resilience and focuses on youth strengths rather than their weaknesses as done by the traditional deficit-based perspective. Research in Europe and North America show that developmental assets are associated with school success, psychological well-being, and lower health risks among youth and young adults. However, not much research has been done on these associations in Latin American contexts. The purpose of this research study is to assess the association between substance (...) use behaviors, such as drunkenness and the use of illicit drugs, and mental health, together with the mediating role of developmental assets representing youth strengths (e.g., social competence) and contextual resources (e.g., social support at home or school). Cross-national data was collected from Colombian (n= 210; 70.4% females) and Peruvian(n= 349; 66.5% females) 1st year university students. Results shed light on the protective role of developmental assets regarding substance use behaviors and mental well-being. Specifically, the results showed direct negative associations between developmental assets and substance use behaviors and positive associations of developmental assets with mental health indicators. Internal assets appear to be a stronger predictor of social, emotional, and psychological well-being compared to external assets. We did not find any statistical significance in the association of substance use behavior and mental health. We discuss implications regarding research, policy, and practice. (shrink)

What can be learnt from Paul B. Preciado’s ecological framing of trans* and migrant world-making in An Apartment on Uranus? How might trans* and migrant solidarities affirm life in the context of capitogenic climate catastrophe and what Françoise Vergès has named the ‘racial capitalocene’? Through these guiding questions, I connect recent calls to ‘decolonize trans* imaginaries’ with translocal hispanophone knowledges that reaffirm the plurality of gender/sexuality in las Amé ricas before the conquest by braiding together strands of Preciado’s writing with (...) Latin American decolonial transfeminists such as María Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa, among others. Reviewing recent debates on how ‘border imperialism’ unevenly shapes and restricts trans* and migrant mobility, I address criticisms of Preciado’s analogies between trans* and migrant experiences, by considering how his writings on these themes offer an intersectional reflection on the multiple cracks of the nation-state, the fictions of race and regimes of binary gender to reveal the cracks of capitalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the thesis developed in the context of the Latin American critical thought in order to address the question of the crisis of modernity. We particularly consider the theories of two contemporary authors: Bolívar Echeverría and Enrique Dussel. Their theoretical positons are clearly different from the critique that had occurred in the postmodern discourse and they intend to account for the meaning of modernity in relation with certain phenomena that (...) characterize it structurally, which are represented by the development of capitalism and the consequent globalization. In this sense, albeit taking into consideration where these critical theories have been enunciated, that is, the particular experience of modernity in Latin America, their reflections have a global scope and try to explain the complex and contradictory characteristics of this civilization process. We analyze Bolívar Echeverría’s original proposal regarding the baroque ethos by which he identifies a particular way of modernity that tends to offer an alternative to the capitalist modernity. As regards Enrique Dussel, we underscore his trans-modernity concept that gives a new response to the Eurocentrism and colonization that marked the historical changes since modernity to the present. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers the first step in an ongoing project of revisiting the foundations of latinidad and lo latinoamericano by focusing on the exclusions enacted by the history of these concepts and the cultural and political identity that comes with them. In conversation with Susana Nuccetelli and Omar Rivera, the author focuses on two emblematic authors in the history of Latin American philosophy (Simón Bolívar and José de Vasconcelos) that are usually read as offering a novel, liberatory (...) conception of the Latin American reality/identity, categorically different from European and Anglo-American conceptions. This common reading of some of the foundational texts on Latin American identity, however, conceals not only the active, textual removal of Blackness in the construction of this identity, but also the literal subtraction of Black bodies, lives, and histories from the Latin American nations and communities. Both of these elements are an explicit part of the philosophical programs of Bolívar and Vasconcelos. The article shows how the thought and political practice of these two authors, celebrated in different ways as foundational of what we understand as Latin America today, exemplify the exclusionary historical demarcation of latinidad. (shrink)

The Texas borderlands have come to be increasingly important in the historical literature and in public opinion for the way that the region shapes national thought on race, borders, and ethnicity. With this increasing importance, it is pressing to examine the history of these issues in the region so that they may be accurately and insightfully deployed. This article contributes to the existing scholarship with a close discursive analysis of race in the booster materials, 1904-1941. The booster materials forge (...) a notion of race relations that borrows from tropes common across the West but is also informed by Jim Crow and the unique demands of the region. The booster materials forward a notion of race that is largely unique in Western boosterism, positing only two major characters, Mexicans and white Northerners. The figure of ‘the Mexican’ is drawn more as a part of nature than human society in that it shares the fundamental characteristics of the land, animals, and rivers of the region. Nature in the region is depicted as an adventitious, disorderly, and wasteful body that calls out for northern discipline. The ‘Northerners’ are figured as the ones who, through applying discipline to the natural resources of the area (land, water, and Mexicans) can bring reason, fertility, and profitable connection to the national economy. The consequences of this racial division are further explored in the article as they play out in schooling, religion, justice, beauty, leisure, and sport. (shrink)

Latin America is not one, but many. It exists in six different regions with differing forms of Catholicism. This Catholicism had acted from a position of power. The challenge of modernity and independence movements made people anti-Church if not anti-Christian. New missionary priests from North America and Europe changed the face of Latin American Catholicism after the second world war. Yet Catholicism is not deeply rooted in Latin America and thus has had to resort to political (...) means for survival. In the pluralistic world of the future, Catholicism in Latin America will have to live with change. (shrink)

This article focuses on the articulations of migration and gender, from the vantage point of women whose feminist experiences have been both enriched and challenged by migration and vice versa. It presents the results of a qualitative research study of five Latin American women who migrated to Barcelona and felt close to feminisms. The author draws on feminist and postcolonial approaches to migration studies that highlight the active role women play in migratory processes as well as how intersectional (...) variables of ethnic origin, socioeconomic class, education and family contexts are articulated, configuring different power relations and resources in specific sociohistorical contexts. The results challenge widespread stereotypes about migrant women by revealing a rich diversity of profiles, motivations and migratory pathways, as well as how informants’ experiences of social activism across national borders have transformed their subject formation processes and re-positioned them as active subjects of political action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper deals with two cases of acquisition and construction of Van de Graaff accelerators in 1950s Latin America, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of São Paulo, respectively. A comparative approach allows us to appreciate the significance of this particular technology within scientific, cultural, commercial, and political processes. Van de Graaff accelerators appeared as an affordable technology to engage in experimental nuclear physics and to be part of the atomic age. The circumstances (...) that motivated physics communities in Brazil and Mexico to choose this specific technology took shape in close interactions with US institutions and scientists. These inter-American alliances involved precisely the main companies and groups that competed for the market of this technology around the world. These accelerators also intertwined with the building of campuses for two major Latin American universities, occupying then a singular place (physically and symbolically) within their execution. This paper engages with comparison for the common goal of going beyond frameworks and methodologies tied to the nation, while integrating the study of connections and interactions, as well as the interplay of multiple scales. (shrink)

Carnival was brought to the New World by Spanish and Portuguese colonizers, and it has been preserved there up to our day, although in the meantime it has almost disappeared from the countries where it originated. One asks oneself if Carnival has kept its original characteristics over the years, or if it instead has been transformed, and if so, how. The ethnological and cultural variety present in Latin America leads us to think that there must have been an evolution (...) over the years, and that Carnival should show some signs of acculturation. It is the examination of these two points that will be the subject of our study. (shrink)

In a bold new approach to the lives of the Founding Fathers and the principles they embraced, Breggin shows how the same ideals that inspired the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence can motivate and guide people today to live happier and more satisfying lives.

This chapter explores the representations of the Renaissance developed by two prominent intellectuals in Argentine philosophy during the first three decades of the twentieth century: José Ingenieros and Alejandro Korn. Their work is contrasted with that of a nineteenth- century Spanish source that served as the basis for their own performances, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo. It will highlight how these authors articulated the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance with the construction of a national thought and culture. For the Argentines (...) it was important to understand how the Renaissance was perceived in Spain, the country that set the course for the predominant ideas in Argentina in the colonial period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Menéndez Pelayo devoted special attention to the Renaissance because there he finds the highest and most genuine moment of the Spanish intellectual history. All three thinkers are interested in weighing the differences between the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, and their impact in the construction of the national culture of their countries, both Spanish and Argentine. Regardless of their philosophical, political and religious differences, the historical narratives of these authors used the Renaissance ideologically, and made of it a conceptual motive, an inspiring model containing the values to be embodied by the culture of their nations, above all the value of “free inquiry”. (shrink)

This book studies the diverse societies, cities, nations, economies, and regions of the Americas as they emerged in the Western hemisphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on the paradigms of social imaginaries and civilizational analysis, it explores regions of Central America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America.