The Sovietization of Lithuania after WWII: modernization,transculturation, and the lettered city

ABSTRACT

This article approaches the Sovietization of the Baltics in the light of two critical notions developed by the noted Latin American critic Angel Rama: “narrative transculturation” and “the lettered city.” By revisiting key moments in the development of Soviet Lithuanian culture and intellectual class against a backdrop of forced collectivization, urbanization, and modernization, the article aims at a novel interpretation of what Sovietization meant in the Lithuanian context, the significance of de-Stalinization and cultural modernism during the Thaw in the 1960s, and the cultural preconditions for the emergence of the popular movement against Soviet rule in the late 1980s.     

Inequality,Ethnicity, Political Mobilisation and Political Violence in Latin America: The Cases of Bolivia,Guatemala and Peru*

The paper explores the relationship between political violence and ‘horizontal’ inequality in ethnically‐divided countries in Latin America. The cases studied are Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru. Preliminary results are reported on the measurement of horizontal inequality, or that between groups, defined in cultural, ethnic and/or religious terms. The Latin American cases are shown to be often more unequal than the cases from Africa and Asia included in the wider study of which the work forms a part. The complex relationship between such inequality, ethnicity and political violence is explored historically. Ethnicity is today rarely a mobilising factor in violence in the Latin American cases, but the degree of inequality based on ethnicity is shown to be highly relevant to the degree of violence which results once conflict is instigated. History explains why.     

Ignorance and ‘Habitus’: Blinkered and Enlightened Approaches Towards the History of Science in Latin America

In broad terms, European students of the history of Latin America have concentrated their researches upon colonial policies, interactions between Europeans (and their American‐born descendants) and indigenous peoples, economic and commercial structures, and political life (whether of elites or, more recently, of subaltern groups). The last two decades have witnessed a significant expansion in Britain and elsewhere of research into gender studies and cultural studies. Although the latter discipline embraces an awareness of the importance of the history of science, this has tended to be rather narrowly focussed upon travel writing, and the extent to which there were links between the promotion of scientific travel and both imperial and national projects, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, like the great British scientific travellers of the nineteenth century in Latin America, the works of cultural studies specialists tend to reveal more about European attitudes and misconceptions than Latin American reality.     

Globalization and Pension Reform in Latin America

While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globalization has created a double bind for Latin America's capital-scarce governments, fostering long-term incentives to privatize pension systems while heightening the risk of punishment in the short term.     

‘Latin American Modernity,and Yet …’1

The article examines two ‘postmodern’ critiques of modernity: a general history that argues that it was never solely Western, and a work of Latin American cultural criticism that petitions for the region to leave behind a modernity seen as Eurocentric. It argues that to understand the modern elements of Latin America entails keeping present the European, and in part pre‐nineteenth‐century, genealogy of modernity. This is in order to grasp that both the pitfalls of claiming modernity is a common project (colonialism vanishes) and the difficulty of going beyond it (European modernity bequeathed the language of breaks and dialectical incorporations). The piece identifies the rhetorical choreography involved when the limits of the critique of Western modernity become apparent.     

Inter-parliamentary European Union–Latin American Caribbean (EU-LAC) relations and the increasing political convergence among Latin American regional parliaments (2006–15)

Europe and Latin America present a long-standing tradition of parliamentary diplomacy and particularly in the development of regional parliaments. Since the 1970s, inter-parliamentary relations between the two regions have been institutionalized, first by the regular dialogue of the European Parliament with the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) and more recently, in 2006, with the creation of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat). Apart from representatives of Parlatino, EuroLat includes in the European Union-Latin American Caribbean (EU-LAC) parliamentary dialogue members of other regional assemblies created in recent decades, such as the Andean Parliament, the Central American Parliament and the Mercosur Parliament. However, recent EuroLat meetings have made evident a polarization of positions on regional politics between European and Latin American sides, especially regarding the political and human rights situation in Venezuela. In this sense, the present paper analyzes the impact of EU-LAC relations on the political convergence of Latin American parliaments concerning regional political issues. The aim is to discuss how institutionalized relations with the European Parliament, through EuroLat, increased convergence among Latin American parliamentarians. This argument is exemplified by the joint defensive position on the Venezuelan political situation adopted by Latin American parliamentarians vis-à-vis the European Parliament's condemnatory position.     

Modernity and the Politics of Identity in an Amazonian Society

Abstract— Recent work in the anthropology of practice shows that cultural transmission is a complex and active process rooted in everyday activity. It follows that cultural continuity depends more on understanding in practice than on the internalisation of collective representations. These insights are used to examine critically the provision of state bilingual education to the Huaorani, a small group of Amazonian hunter-gatherers. It is generally hoped that bilingual programmes for indigenous minorities will protect their linguistic and cultural rights. However, by neglecting ‘culture in practice’ and reducing culture to language, these programmes foster the emergence of a discursive identity at odds with the cultural continuity of nomadic and egalitarian indigenous groups. This case study is used to discuss some recent analyses of the politics of cultural identity and difference. It is argued that current thinking fails to recognise that culture is acquired and transmitted within communities of practice. 01997 Society for Latin American Studies.     

The Role of the Inter‐American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD): Confronting the Problem of Illegal Drugs in the Americas

The illegal drug trade has become a serious threat for the Americas. Is a multilateral approach to combat it possible? This article proposes that the United States and Latin America are finding ways to use multilateral organisms to confront this threat and examines as an example the role of CICAD in setting a cooperative agenda to develop an antidrug regime. CICAD has established common ground for long‐term cooperation in certain areas. But common drug strategies in the Americas require the support of the United States and the cooperation of Latin American states, both of which are still works in progress. Therefore the future of the CICAD‐inspired antidrug regime will depend on whether the United States and Latin America will cooperate to define the illegal drug threat in the same way and bestow on CICAD the authority necessary to address it.     

From Reflection to Refraction: Rethinking Paradigms of Cultural Interaction and Identity in Peru and Mexico

This article explores the construction and reworking of paradigms of culture contact and identity by social scientists and cultural critics in response to contradictory sociocultural experiences of modernity in Peru and Mexico. It seeks to do so in the context of calls made by the Peruvian critic Antonio Cornejo Polar for greater historicism and critical thinking about these, and the concern that this appeal has since generated in the field of Latin American Cultural Studies. Focusing first on the postcolonial, ideologically driven model of 'mestizaje', the article then traces continuities and discontinuities between it and latter–day thinking about cultural pluralism.     

文化因素与美国对华外交

在一国对外政策中,文化因素,特别是一个民族长期形成的文化传统、价值观念、民族心理和思维方式对一个国家的外交有着长期、深远的影响.本文在分析美国文化特征的基础上,认为上帝选择的"使命观"和实用主义对美国外交具有深刻的影响.中美两国从18世纪开始交往以来的二百多年历史中,这些特征在美国对华外交中一直起着重要的作用.     

Latin America in a time of global financial turmoil∗

Following the financial turmoil in Asia and Russia, Latin America has suffered dramatic setbacks, including major economic slowdown, threats to democratization, and worsening social conditions. For the medium term, neither prosperity nor political stability are assured, says Abraham F. Lowenthal, founding president of the Pacific Council on International Policy at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Lowenthal identifies three positive shifts that have occurred in the region over the past few years: a convergence among economic policymakers on the main tenets of sound policy; an even more widespread embrace of constitutional democracy as an ideal; and a growing disposition on the part of Latin American nations toward pragmatic cooperation with each other and with the industrialized countries, including the United States.     

Can Anyone Stop the President? Power Asymmetries and Term Limits in Latin America, 1984–2016

Since the late twentieth century, numerous Latin American nations have launched efforts to relax presidential term limits, often successfully. This article discusses the conditions under which countries succeed in relaxing term limits. Drawing from bargaining models and reviewing 36 cases, it makes three arguments. First, actors' preferences are fairly predictable on the basis of officeholding: presidents are the most prominent actors pushing for expansion of term limits; opposition parties lead the resistance. Second, power asymmetry, measured by presidential approval ratings, is the best predictor of success, better than ideology or share of seats in Congress. Third, the only hope for stopping popular presidents rests with ruling parties and the courts, but only when the latter are sufficiently independent.     

Civil Service Reform in Latin America: External Referents Versus Own Capacities

In the context of state reform and democratisation in Latin America, reinforcing public institutions becomes critical to sustaining and consolidating realised gains. In this area, civil service reforms are critical. But civil service reform initiatives in Latin American countries were designed with different degrees of compatibility with countries’ administrative traditions and with the role played by the civil service within the political system. The results of different initiatives are described in a brief review of six key features of nine Latin American civil services. Discussion of these results allows us to draw conclusions about the capacity to generate learning dynamics. A new conception of the civil service and its role in the political system appears more evident, unless the required political consensus for implementing and consolidating the new reform strategy for most Latin American public administrations is not confirmed.     

Mending the Divide: Lessons from LGBTQ+ Movements for Latin American Studies

Latin American has made remarkable progress in the last twenty years regarding LGBTQ+ rights. More recently, LGBTQ-related issues have had major impacts on national and regional politics. However, most of the literature about Latin American social movements still largely ignores LGBTQ+ movements. This article argues that including LGBTQ+ movements in social movements research is essential to further our understanding of LGBTQ+ politics in the region and of Latin American politics and social movements more broadly, as well as to address the enduring lack of academic engagement with gender and sexuality as political topics.     

Measuring Judicial Performance in Latin America

An increasing number of development scholars and policymakers are recognizing the importance of Latin American judicial reforms in shaping the ultimate outcome of the region's "dual transition." We can hardly begin to assess the conditions in which judicial systems are likely to improve, however, unless we have a means to measure judicial performance systematically across countries. This article offers just such a comprehensive cross-national measure of judicial performance for Latin America. Drawing from a survey of Latin American legal scholars and practitioners from 17 countries in the region, it seeks to establish a more valid, and therefore more useful, assessment of the performance of Latin American judiciaries than existing measures, in order to advance efforts to understand the causes and consequences of effective judicial reforms in the region.     

The East Asian financial meltdown

In view of China's economic growth and rising international status, Latin American and Caribbean countries will accord increasing priority to their relations with the Asian giant. China's permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council is also a factor to reckon with. Today, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico have established strategic partnerships with China. While the vast distance between China and Latin America generates difficulties in transportation and mutual understanding, it also means that both parties have no serious conflicts of strategic and political interests. Their Third World orientations in diplomacy contribute to a 95% concurrence in their votes in the United Nations. While the Chinese leadership seeks to promote multipolarity to curb US unilateralism, it appreciates its limitations in Latin America. In addition, China and the Latin American and Caribbean countries value good relations with the US. In the foreseeable future, China will increase its investment in Latin America and more Sino-Latin American business joint ventures will be formed. These trends may well reduce trade frictions associated with China's economic expansion.     

National Competitiveness in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Latin America

The term competitiveness is widely applied as a catch‐all for investor‐friendly policies and institutions. This article argues that sloppy applications of the term ignore the possibilities of policy tradeoffs and varieties of institutional choices. Popular conceptualizations of the term describe three discernible clusters of economic policies and institutions. One cluster captures openness to international trade; a second gauges regulatory impediments to private sector competition; a third refers to public sector investments in human capital, security, and infrastructure. This essay develops three empirical indexes to operationalize these clusters and shows that these concepts are not only theoretically but also empirically distinct. In particular, the correlation between these measures is not especially high in a sample of Latin American countries. The larger economies in the region tend to be more competitive on the regulatory and public goods dimensions but fall well behind smaller economies in terms of external competitiveness, broadly conceived.     

Judging the Judiciary: Understanding Public Confidence in Latin American Courts

Although there is a substantial literature examining public confidence in the judiciary in developed nations, scholars have paid scant attention to analyzing judicial confidence in developing countries. Building on extant work regarding developed nations and introducing original hypotheses in the context of developing nations, this research explains influences on public confidence in Latin American judiciaries by developing a theory that focuses on the potential influences of institutional quality, experiences, and individual attitudes. The hypotheses are empirically tested with the rich individual‐level data compiled by the Latin American Public Opinion Project 2006 survey. The results indicate that a variety of factors influence public confidence in Latin American courts; the role of context explains points of consistency and divergence with research on developed nations.     

Contesting Mestizaje: Black Politics and Oral Traditions in Venezuela

Afro-descendant oral traditions are powerful modes of political expression that disrupt anti-black logics within Latin America's mestizaje. Scholarship on Afro-Latin American anti-racist mobilisation centres on large-scale, collective action. Instead, in this article, I examine songs and décimas, central forms of Afro-descendant cultural subjectivity. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in La Guaira state, Venezuela, I show how oral traditions are place-based forms of resistance against anti-black racism. This research calls on scholars to attend to oral traditions and their geographies as a tool of anti-racist political mobilisation.