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Begin New Search Topic Civil Society Political Geography Latin America Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Kellogg Institute for International Studies Publication Year within 10 Years Publication Year within 25 Years

1. Protesting Against Crime and Insecurity: High-Risk Activism in Mexico's Drug War

Author:
Sandra J. Ley Gutiérrez
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
When do protests against crime and insecurity take place, regardless of the risks that such mobilization may entail? This paper argues that while violence provides an initial motivation for participating in protests, social networks play a fundamental role in incentivizing citizen mobilization against insecurity. Socialization within networks helps generate solidarity and empathy among participants, while at the same time transforming emotions associated with living in a violent context into potential for action. Also, through networks, individuals share information about opportunities for collective action and change their perceptions about the effectiveness and risks of such activism. These distinct mechanisms are valuable for the activation of protest against crime across levels of violence. Supporting evidence is derived from an original dataset on protest events in reaction to violence in Mexico between 2006 and 2012. Additionally, I rely on qualitative in-depth interviews and participant observation to illustrate the role of networks in protest against crime across several Mexican states. This paper contributes to the growing literature on criminal violence and political participation.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Crime, Social Movement, Protests, Violence, Social Networks, and Activism
Political Geography:
Latin America, North America, and Mexico

2. Democracy and Urban Political Culture in Spanish South America, 1810-1860

Author:
Paula Alonso and Marcela Ternavasio
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
“Democracy,” a word seldom used in public debate at the start of the nineteenth century and negatively associated with tumult, disorder, and direct rule, in a few decades became linked to representative government and increasingly employed with positive connotations. This paper argues that these conceptual changes should be explored in their political and social contexts, since the term “democracy” was invoked to (de)legitimate certain political practices and social sectors. Therefore, in exploring this non-linear process in Spanish America, these pages focus on the interactions between the emerging language of democracy and its varied meanings and uses in urban politics. These interactions were part of the factional disputes on how to implement the principle of popular sovereignty. Starting with an overview of selected emerging political practices during the Independence period, the paper then focuses on Lima and Buenos Aires, two regions with contrasting colonial pasts, responses to Spanish crises, and post-independence paths, showing how the concept of democracy could be put to varied uses according to different contexts and political objectives.
Topic:
Civil Society, Governance, Culture, Democracy, Citizenship, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, Latin America, and Peru

3. The Space of Utopia: Christians for Socialism in Chile

Author:
Denisa Jashari
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper examines the intellectual production of the Chilean clerical movement, Christians for Socialism (CpS). It does so by contextualizing the emergence of CpS within the Chilean Church’s own transformations in theological practices and in grassroots interactions with workers and the poor. The election of self-declared Marxist Salvador Allende in 1970 inspired a sector of the clergy to rethink both the role of the Church in society and the role of the poor in the nation. I draw on Ernst Bloch’s concept of concrete utopia to argue that in Chile Christians for Socialism not only creatively converged Marxist and religious thinking but contributed to altering conventional notions of the two. The notion of transcendence and the construction of a “New Man” appealed to the utopian aspects of both religious and Marxist thinking. Moreover, the Chilean CpS had a Latin American impact, as evidenced by the First Latin American Encounter of Christians for Socialism in Santiago, Chile, in 1972, and a world impact, seen in the formation of the Ecumenical Association of Third-World Theologians in 1976. While the legacy of CpS and liberation theology in Chile is far more visible in the grassroots work undertaken during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, an examination of this movement’s theological and ideological productions before the coup is critical to comprehending members’ subsequent material, on-the-ground actions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Human Rights, Religion, Social Movement, Violence, and Catholic Church
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile

4. Beyond a Single Model: Explaining Differences in Inequality within Latin America

Author:
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper studies the determinants of income inequality in Latin America over the long run, comparing them with explanations of why the whole region is unequal. I first show how land inequality can account for differences between Latin America and other parts of the world but how it does not explain within-region differences. Using qualitative comparative analysis, I then consider how political institution and actors interact with the economic structure (i.e., type of export specialization) and with the ethnic composition of the population. The paper has several findings. A low indigenous/afrodescendant population is a necessary condition for relatively low inequality. I identify two sufficient-condition paths, both of which include the role of democracy, political equality, and a small indigenous and afrodescendant population. The first path also includes a favorable export specialization, while the second one includes the presence of leftist presidents instead. The paper calls for more explicit comparisons between our analytical models for the whole region and our explanations of between-country differences. Hopefully, the paper can also trigger more research on how the interactions between ethnicity, politics, and the export structure shape inequality in Latin America.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Political Economy, Poverty, Race, Social Movement, Democracy, Inequality, and Ethnicity
Political Geography:
Latin America

5. Unsettlements: The Potential Termination of Temporary Protected Status and the Threat of Displacement Among Salvadorans in the United States

Author:
Joseph Wiltberger
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The 2018 decision by the US government to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Salvadorans, the largest population of TPS holders, would displace nearly 200,000, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades. TPS, a form of humanitarian relief that provides a broad set of protections for those who have fled disaster and instability in their countries of origin, has been continually reapproved for Salvadorans over many years, making it a liminal legal status that has come to resemble a permanent legal status. This paper examines the unsettling effects of this decision, should it be enforced, for Salvadoran holders of TPS (TPSianos) who have established lives and families in the United States. The decision to abruptly end TPS threatens TPSianos and their family members with forced displacement and extraordinary hardships; the decision also has the potential to send them to live under dangerous conditions in El Salvador. Drawing from ethnographic findings, the paper shows how the decision contradicts the logics and realities of permanency in the United States that have guided TPSianos’ future planning and expectations that they should be allowed to transition to a more permanent legal status. Conceptualizing such disruptions and contradictions wrapped up in the ending of TPS for Salvadorans as an entanglement of unsettlements, this analysis extends scholarship on the political, economic, and legal dynamics surrounding TPS and on the lived experiences of liminal legality.
Topic:
Civil Society, Migration, Citizenship, Borders, Public Policy, and transnationalism
Political Geography:
Latin America, El Salvador, and United States of America

6. Shoutings, Scoldings, Talkings, and Whispers: Mothers’ Reponses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

Author:
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they relate to the armed actors who inhabit their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experience of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. La Caracola, with a long history of civic organizations and drug trafficking, suffers regular, extortionate actions by the police. La Piedad has been ravaged by militarized police operations, which have produced a "warfare mode" among the members of organized criminal groups. Through this comparative ethnographic project we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their traditional cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. We focus on how women make and communicate meanings; engage in social networks with other women; and employ different discursive strategies as they deal with the armed actors. We foreground women’s experiences in two barrios, asking what material and historical conditions make these different experiences possible. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as, both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip” to more helpless ones, such as whispering—are their main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Conflict, Violence, Peace, and Social Networks
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

7. Integral Human Development Through the Lens of Sen’s Capability Approach and the Life of a Faith Community at the Latin American Urban Margins

Author:
Séverine Deneulin
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The concept of integral human development is central to the Catholic social tradition. Yet, it remains under-explored with regard to its integrating components and their implications. What does taking an integral human development perspective mean for social analysis and action? The paper seeks to answer this question on the basis of the four encyclicals in which the idea of integral human development is treated, and in combination with two other sources: 1) the literature on “human development” in the multidisciplinary social science field of international development studies and its conceptual foundations in Amartya Sen’s capability approach; and 2) the life of a faith community in a marginalized Latin American urban neighborhood. Based on a combination of these sources, the paper concludes by proposing an understanding of “integral human development” that it calls a spirituality-extended capability approach to the progress of peoples.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Education, Poverty, Religion, Inequality, Youth, Violence, Christianity, and Catholic Church
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America

8. Can Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Improve Collective Action? Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination and Social Norms

Author:
Sandra Polanía-Reyes
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This study tests an unintended benefit of a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia: the ability to overcome coordination failures. Participants interact with fellow beneficiaries, which gives rise to a coordination device. Beneficiaries participate in a minimum effort coordination game. Those enrolled in the program for over a year are exerting the highest level of effort. The improvement in coordination is not due to potential confounds such as willingness to cooperate or connectivity. A structural choice model illustrates that when beliefs about other’s behavior are sufficiently high the Pareto- dominant equilibrium holds. The findings support nascent initiatives to influence beliefs through policy interventions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Political Economy, Poverty, Communications, Governance, Inequality, Economic Growth, Public Policy, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America