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- Convenors:
-
Susanne Hofmann
(University of Göttingen)
Ainhoa Montoya (CSIC)
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- Discussant:
-
Angela Torresan
(University of Manchester)
- Location:
- ATB G209
- Start time:
- 12 April, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the emergence of new political subjectivities in contexts of intense neoliberalisation. We invite papers that discuss how neoliberal subjectivities and circumvention of state institutions have been replaced by new subjectivities and forms of political action.
Long Abstract:
In the last few decades, many Latin American countries have experienced a deregulation of markets, a rolling-back and remaking of the state, and an extension of the market into ever more spheres of everyday life. With the intensification of neoliberalism in some Latin American regions, actors from the socio-economic margins saw their hopes to become integrated into the formal economy and overcome their economic insecurity truncated. Instead, these actors experienced the pressures of a process of 'making neoliberal selves,' through which they were called upon to become risk-taking entrepreneurs who took on responsibility for their lives.
In this context, a shift took place from collective to ever more individualised forms of identity and political subjectivities, which effectively resulted in a fragmentation of existing collectivities. Where a process of neoliberalisation has coincided with corrupt state authorities, a flawed judiciary or overlapping criminal and political networks (narco-states), individuals have withdrawn from exercising their citizenship rights. Likewise, where state responsiveness to people's concerns is low, we have seen increasing disaffection vis-à-vis government, and in turn the abandonment of political participation.
Our panel seeks to explore examples in which atomised subjectivity has been overcome and individuals who had formerly circumvented the state have begun to engage anew in political action or have forged new political subjectivities. We would like to bring to the fore forms of citizenship and 'informal politics' (Day 2008) that have remained outside of political analysis or have been negatively represented because they do not match normative expectations of political behaviour.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research on transnational adoption circuits, this paper offers a reflection on forms of political subjectivity and collective modes of political action in contemporary Guatemala, a context marked by aggressive neoliberalization and simultaneous re-militarization.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on research on transnational adoption circuits, the paper offers an ethnographically informed reflection on the experiences of families whose children vanished during the Guatemalan conflict (1960-1996), and who are currently pursuing collective political strategies to mount Habeas Corpus appeals (recursos de Habeas Corpus) to hold the State to account for the disappearance of their relatives. It focuses on an analysis of political subjectivities and collective modes of political action in contemporary Guatemala, a context marked by aggressive neoliberalization and simultaneous and rapidly intensifying re-militarization.
Unable to locate the missing and failing to find any information on their abduction in the archives, for these families, the condition of being disappeared is marked by a sense of absence as duration and lack of resolution. Against this background, I suggest that the presence of the disappeared in social memory, social practice and in the body politics can be conceptualized with reference to the Derridean notion of 'the trace', a construct which I put into conversation with the ethnographically resonant notion of 'huellas'. If the presence of the disappeared is their absence, this marks modes of subjectivity and social relations 'under erasure' which are currently the ground of articulation of political subjectivities and forms of political action in Guatemala. The paper considers how these dynamics may be reconfiguring the body politics, in a context where the re-militarization of communities in ways that mimic the political repression of counter-insurgency is increasingly part of daily life.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the aims and strategies of formally politically organised groups of sex workers in Mexico, and the ‘informal politics’ of sex workers who do possess specific political identities, but rather understand themselves as self-entrepreneurs in an ‘economy of makeshifts’.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 1990s we have seen a wave of sex worker organising across Latin America, with the formation of RedTraSex (La Red de Trabajadoras Sexuales de Latinoamérica y El Caribe) in 1997, uniting sex worker organisations from fifteen Central and South American States in the joint struggle for respect and sex worker rights. While some sex worker self-organisations in Latin America have gained public visibility and been able to create social and political networks through integration with existing trade unions, other groups of sex workers have resorted to 'informal politics' (Day 2008), informal political activities of resistance that draw on everyday practices of mutual care, support, and cooperation that are much less visible to the public and often not recognised as 'politics'. This paper will draw on examples of sex workers from the Tijuana and Mexico City, exploring the aims and strategies of formally politically organised groups of sex workers, and the 'informal politics' of sex workers who do not understand their activities as political, nor possess specific political identities, but rather understand themselves as self-entrepreneurs in an 'economy of makeshifts' (Brace 2002). I will contrast sex worker activism with other movements, in relation to which sex worker collectives face greater obstacles to mobilising material and human resources due to a lack of moral capital. I will explore how the stigmatisation of sex work acts as a barrier to organisation and to finding resonance with the wider public, significantly shaping sex workers' strategies of struggle.
Paper short abstract:
Argentina's 2001 crisis of neoliberalism led to an explosion of worker-recovered companies and state policy responses which sought to both support yet deradicalise the movement. This paper analyses the experience of workers' self-management and assesses its impact on worker subjectivities since then
Paper long abstract:
This article analyses worker responses to mass unemployment during Argentina's economic 2001 crisis with a particular focus on the recovered company movement as well as the state's policy responses to it. We assess the extent to which the state has taken an active role in supporting, yet also de-mobilising and de-radicalising this autonomous, grassroots movement under Kirchnerismo's National Popular project. The impact of participation on worker subjectivities is examined as is the government's rhetoric of empowerment and the theme of participatory democracy. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, we identify the 2001 popular revolt against a decade of neoliberal reforms in the 1990s and its significance for both the emergence of the self-management project and the state's policy responses to it. In the second section, the ways in which the government have tried to control and co-opt workers self-management initiatives through the establishment of state cooperatives are examined, with a particular focus on the Programme for Self-Managed Work and Plan Let's Get to Work, both in 2004. The concluding section evaluates the political and economic sustainability of these state initiatives as a credible alternative to neo-liberal policies in Argentina and the region, given the mounting political opposition to the Kirchner government in the context of increased economic difficulties.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how the participation of certain Indigenous Peoples of Brazil and Mexico in educational projects framed by neoliberal approaches to cultural diversity can create critical political possibilities.
Paper long abstract:
In the first decade of the 21th. Century we have witnessed a strong democratization appeal within the higher education systems of Latin America. The claim is especially conspicuous regarding the student body composition. Among the different groups excluded, particular attention has been paid to ethnic groups. Thus, nowadays there is a variety of policies and programs intended to include Indigenous Peoples into tertiary education.
Framed by the term Interculturalidad the policies targeted at Indigenous Peoples emphasize encounter and dialog between them and non-Indigenous cultural groups. This approach, though, has triggered heated debates, whereby these populations are characterized as either victims of a swindle by state or accomplices of it. Accordingly, critical voices implicitly conceive of Indigenous individuals and communities participating in these policies as subjects defenseless before neoliberalism. This research aims at questioning such a view and recognizing that in spite of acceptance of the state view of intercultural higher education Indigenous subjectivities develop political positionings that question the freezing, harmonious view of intercultural dialog. The analysis focused on Brazil and Mexico points out that the notion of "Indigenous Peoples' Knowledges", immersed in intercultural educational policies, entails participative voices that can be interpreted as new ways to actualize Modernity's promises unresolved by states and non-Indigenous societies; promises concerning cohabitation and population care. Indigenous Knowledges thus allow populations involved with interculturalidad to create simultaneity spaces, instead of succession spaces, whereby ethnic boundaries get relevant to conduct such actualization projects; by so doing, neoliberalism is challenged as the only one life-possibility.