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Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks great changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been transformed definitively in the years since the Second Vatican Council. Religious change has not been obvious because its transformation has not been the sudden and massive growth of a new religion, as in Africa and Asia. It has been rather a simultaneous revitalization and fragmentation that threatened, awakened, and ultimately brought to a greater maturity a dormant and parochial Christianity. New challenges from modernity, especially in the form of Protestantism and Marxism, ultimately brought forth new life. In The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity, Todd Hartch examines the changes that have swept across Latin America in the last fifty years, and situates them in the context of the growth of Christianity in the global South.
The Bolivia Reader provides a panoramic view, from antiquity to the present, of the history, culture, and politics of a country known for its ethnic and regional diversity, its rich natural resources and dilemmas of economic development, and its political conflict and creativity. Featuring both classic and little-known texts ranging from fiction, memoir, and poetry to government documents, journalism, and political speeches, the volume challenges stereotypes of Bolivia as a backward nation while offering insights into the country's history of mineral extraction, revolution, labor organizing, indigenous peoples' movements, and much more. Whether documenting Inka rule or Spanish conquest, three centuries at the center of Spanish empire, or the turbulent politics and cultural vibrancy of the national period, these sources—the majority of which appear in English for the first time—foreground the voices of actors from many different walks of life. Unprecedented in scope, The Bolivia Reader illustrates the historical depth and contemporary challenges of Bolivia in all their complexity.
How might we best understand the relationship between the vibrant religious landscapes we see in many cities and contemporary urban social processes? Through case studies drawn from around the world, contributors explore the ways in which these processes interact in cities. This book argues that religious events – including rituals, processions, and festivals – are not only choreographies of sacred traditions, but they are also creative disruptions that reveal how urban cultural hierarchies are experienced and contested. Exposing the power dynamics behind these events, this book shows how performative uses of urban space serve to destabilize dominant genealogies and lineages around urban identities just as they lay claims to cultural supremacy or heritage. Through exploring the affective disruptions and political controversies caused by religious events, the contributors engage theoretical discussions in urban studies, the sociology of religion and the ethnography of ritual. This book is a significant contribution to understanding emerging patterns in contemporary religion and also for theories related to heritagization, eventization, and urbanization.
This book is the first of three volumes of HabitusAnalysis that take the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as a starting point to develop a methodical approach to the habitus of social actors. However, the concept of habitus and Bourdieu’s approach to language are somewhat disputed while his relationist epistemology is seldom paid tribute to. The present volume therefore in its first part deals with Bourdieu’s roots in relationist Neo-Kantian philosophy, the basic traits of his relationist sociology. The second part examines Bourdieu’s theoretical and empirical work on language before elaborating its own praxeological concept of language use that opens the road to a methodically and theoret...
The Children of Gregoria portrays a struggling Mexico, told through the story of the Rosales family. The people entrenched in the violent communities that the Rosales belong to have been discussed, condemned, analyzed, joked about and cheered, but rarely have they been seriously listened to. This book highlights their voices and allows them to tell their own stories in an accessible, literary manner without prejudice, persecution or judgment.
This comprehensive reference offers an authoritative overview of Andean lifeways. It provides valuable historical context, and demonstrates the relevance of learning about the Andes in light of contemporary events and debates. The volume covers the ecology and pre-Columbian history of the region, and addresses key themes such as cosmology, aesthetics, gender and household relations, modes of economic production, exchange, and consumption, postcolonial legacies, identities, political organization and movements, and transnational interconnections. With over 40 essays by expert contributors that highlight the breadth and depth of Andean worlds, this is an essential resource for students and scholars alike.
Crime and violence soared in twenty-first-century Venezuela even as poverty and inequality decreased, contradicting the conventional wisdom that these are the underlying causes of violence. The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela explains the rise of violence under both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro—leftist presidents who made considerable investment in social programs and political inclusion. Contributors argue that violence arose not from the frustration of inequality, or the needs created by poverty, but rather from the interrelated factors of a particular type of revolutionary governance, extraordinary oil revenues, a reliance on militarized policing, and the persistence of concentrated disadvantage. These factors led to dramatic but unequal economic growth, massive institutional and social change, and dysfunctional criminal justice policies that destabilized illicit markets and social networks, leading to an increase in violent conflict resolution. The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela reorients thinking about violence and its relationship to poverty, inequality, and the state.
In the Americas, debates around issues of citizen's public safety--from debates that erupt after highly publicized events, such as the shootings of Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin, to those that recurrently dominate the airwaves in Latin America--are dominated by members of the middle and upper-middle classes. However, a cursory count of the victims of urban violence in the Americas reveals that the people suffering the most from violence live, and die, at the lowest of the socio-symbolic order, at the margins of urban societies. The inhabitants of the urban margins are hardly ever heard in discussions about public safety. They live in danger but the discourse about violence and risk belongs...
Starting from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Schäfer composes a methodical approach to habitus of social actors and the logic of their praxis: Building upon the generative terms of praxeology, he focuses on identity and strategy in processes of internalization, their transformation by means of dispositional schemes, and their externalization in action. The emphasis lies on a theory of dispositions that allows a flexible understanding of identity and strategy formation in the context of social experience and the interplay with social structures. This theory is developed over the course of a three-step analysis on habitus as a network of dispositions, on the dynamics that unfold between th...
Abortion and Democracy offers critical analyses of abortion politics in Latin America’s Southern Cone, with lessons and insights of wider significance. Drawing on the region’s recent history of military dictatorship and democratic transition, this edited volume explores how abortion rights demands fit with current democratic agendas. With a focus on Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, the book’s contributors delve into the complex reality of abortion through the examination of the discourses, strategies, successes, and challenges of abortion rights movements. Assembling a multiplicity of voices and experiences, the contributions illuminate key dimensions of abortion rights struggles: health...