Latin America in Debate

Indigeneity, Development, Dependency, Populism

Maristella Svampa, Alejandro Reyes

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781478031949, 9781478028710
• eBook ISBN: 9781478060918
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism

In Latin America in Debate, eminent Argentine social theorist, novelist, and activist Maristella Svampa provides a broad and accessible overview of the key political and intellectual debates in Latin America from the early twentieth century to the present. She examines four main topics: the place of indigenous peoples in postcolonial nation-states; the impact of development on the Latin American political imagination; the impact of being economically dependent within a global capitalist order; and the turn to populism as a particular political response to these various challenges. Svampa traces each debate's genealogy, contextualizes them over the course of the twentieth century, and demonstrates how intellectual and sociological currents have redefined and reshaped them in the twenty-first. Svampa also maps the tensions in each and shows how they influence contemporary Latin American politics. By focusing on indigeneity, development, dependency, and populism, Svampa provides a clear entry point to understand the most pressing issues confronting Latin America while showcasing how the region's intellectuals have been thinking about and debating these issues in ways that generate social theory with global implications.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Latin American Debates and History
• Part II: Scenarios, Contemporary Debates, and Disputed Categories
• Final Reflections
• Notes
• References
• Index