Program Tracks and Committee Members

Gabriel Giorgi, New York University
Magdalena López, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) / Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame

The appearance of COVID-19 and the ways in which the pandemic was managed laid on the carpet, once more, the importance of discussions on biopolitics. The centrality of the virus came to corroborate intensify lines of problematization of the notion of “life” and its movement between human and non-human, organic and inorganic, bios and geos that had been worked from different angles of biopolitical reflection. It is clear that the distinction between human and the nature of humanism itself, with the resulting placement of the former in terms of superiority and domain over the latter, is having lethal effects on the sustainability of the planet. Given this perspective, identified as “anthropocentrism”, “anthropocene/capitalocene”, “speciesism” or with the effects of the “anthropological machine”, various studies have abandoned old questions, and formulated other new ones in which the premises about the relationships between body and policy acquire new resonance and rewrite prior discussions. How the limits of what is human, and its possible links with other forms of life in contexts of intensified extraction, discussed and rethought? How are gender-neutral, racial, and cultural policies rearticulated from there? How do we think about the relationship and friction between Amerindian and Afro-descendent knowledge and the biopolitical tradition? What critical fables about animal, vegetable, and mineral go against the grain of the dominant language around extractivism? How to intervene on the inflections of the old and new authoritarianism in necropolitical contexts? In recent years, these questions have been explored in relation to the Latin American experience under different perspectives such as the law, philosophy, history, biology, anthropology, environmental and human rights activism, social work, literature, cinema, fine arts, and research on new technologies. Understanding that the biopolitical crosses different lines surpass academic disciplinary limits, we invite you to submit proposals that discuss these lines of work based on a critical reflection from and/or in contrast with the tradition of biopolitical thinking.

Gabriel Negretto, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)
Sofía Donoso, Universidad de Chile

Traditionally, Chile has been considered one of the most successful cases of democratization in the region. After the reinauguration of democracy in 1990, Chile was able to avoid the problems that affected other new democracies. A center-left coalition that governed the country for two decades and shared power with a center-right coalition that was able to win the presidency since 2010. Chilean politics have not been affected by insurmountable political or institutional crisis and have had comparatively low levels of public corruption. In addition, since the 1990s, Child has attained a deserved reputation for economic success. Between 1990 and 2010, the country not only multiplied its annual per capita income by more than three times, it also reduced poverty levels from 46 to less than 20 percent. As in most of the region, Chile has experienced relative economic stagnation since 2011. However, the per capita income continued to grow, and in 2019, poverty fell below 10 percent.

From the perspective of the Chilean public, however, the signs of concern had been accumulating over time: the decrease in public trust in representative institutions, demands for better education, health, pensions, and compliance with social rights in general. These concerns reached a boiling point in October 2019, when massive social protests arose against the political and social status quo. As a reaction to mass protests, a multi-party agreement activated a process to replace the constitution in Chile. The process has captured the imagination of the Chilean public and outside observers because it could function as a peaceful solution to social conflict and dismantle the remains of a constitution originally designed to restrict the power of arising from the ballot box. It also promises a new model of drafting democratic constitutions in a region in which public dissatisfaction with democratic performance too often led to conflictive plebiscitary processes of constitutional replacement which facilitated the deterioration of democracy or an outright authoritarian regression.

However, the process of democratic transformation in Chile faces many challenges that are all too familiar for Latin American societies in general: the lack of response by the elites to social demands for reform, public disaffection, the crisis of representation, the transformation of the party system, and even the threat of populism.

In this sense, Chile is a laboratory of comparative analysis. This thematic area of the program will highlight the analysis of these questions, including comparative studies between the social and political processes in Chile and other countries in the region. Under what conditions to the political elites give a timely and adequate response to the social discontent? What is the role of the social protests in triggering profound reform processes?

Luis Daniel Vázquez Valencia, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), México
Eduardo Porreti, The New School University

For decades, the relevance of institutional powers- those exercised not by virtue of being elected, but rather by the capacity of pressure or authority possessed- in political decision-making have been evident. While in the past some legal institutional powers with weight, such as the Church, have lost their ability to influence, others have gained it. How does this affect contemporary democracies? The interaction among institutional powers and the political power can take place by legal means, like lobbying or campaign financing by business groups, the financial pressures of international organizations, the communications media, different types of unions, to obtain laws and public policies according to their interests. This can also be done through illegal mechanisms, such as threats, bribes, rigged bidding procedures, inappropriate business dealings, illegal campaign financing, revolving doors, or violence. To add to the complexity, much of the interaction between institutional powers and the state take place in gray areas, with acts that appear legal, but whose means and/or purposes are fraudulent to constitutional and democratic principles.

We are facing processes of state collusion, coopting, and reconfiguration that affect not just political representation, but also the provision of public goods and the quality of democracy. In the extreme, we are facing networks of macro-criminality, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations and militias that may come to institute order and provide resources in the territory by means of criminal governance, and with governmental agreement. What happens to political representation? Where is the long-awaited construction of the general wellbeing? What circuits of representation are reconfigured and how is the concept of democracy altered? How is the political order constructed and where is it going? Who governs Latin America and the Caribbean?

Martha Cecilia García, Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (CINEP)
Moisés Arce, Tulane University

The 21st Century has been marked by waves of protest in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. From the Water War in Bolivia in 2000, the Argentinazo in 2001, through those that led to the rise and fall of Evo Morales (2003-2018) and through the constant protests against the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela (2002, 2004, 2007, 2014, 2017, 2018). There were also protests in Brazil (2013), Nicaragua (2018), Haiti (2018-2019), El Salvador (2019-2020), Puerto Rico (2019), Mexico (2019), Chile (2019), Ecuador (2019), Peru (2019), Colombia (2019, 2020, 2021) and Cuba (2021). Such protests were realized by many social and political actors, which unfolded in public spaces, and in very varied manners, a diversity of claims; the government responses were also varied, both to the demands presented, and to the protagonists of these social struggles. 

Art, technology, activism, academia, were interlaced in these protests to enhance their visibility. Solidarity, sorority, self-care, and care for others flourished in most of them. What conditions have permitted these waves of protest to spread across the continent? What do these protests say about democracy in the region? Are they an example of the crisis of representative democracy, of political legitimacy, or of social polarization? How do the emerging and revitalized social actors and movements, which carry demands of guarantees to exercise and enshrine individual and collective rights, relate to political parties and movements? How have the governments of the region responded to claims of corruption, human and environmental rights violations, and impunity that have been expressed in the social struggles? How have the political systems in the region responded to the public distrust of the political institutions?