The relations of culture and politics in Latin America have been transformed in recent decades. Cultural Politics in Latin America offers unprecedented insights into this process, with contributions from leading intellectuals and academics working in and outside the region. Chapters range across fields as diverse as music and anthropology, sociology and cultural memory, politics and (post)modern theorizing, economics, communications and cultural globalization, poetry, narrative and drama, and all are contextualized in the extended Introduction in Latin America.

Desde hace dos o tres décadas la historia cultural ocupa un lugar preferente en la escena historiográfica, aunque con desfases cronológicos y distintas modalidades dependiendo de las circunstancias nacionales y, en este sentido, se impone una aproximación comparativa. El presente volumen pretende inscribirse en esta perspectiva, preguntándose por la realidad de un «giro cultural» en la historiografía mundial. Los numerosos colaboradores han aceptado responder a un plan de trabajo en el que, partiendo de la situación historiográfica de cada país, se analicen las modalidades de surgimiento y de estructuración de la historia cultural. La meta buscada no es normativa y contempla un planteamiento que combina el análisis de las obras, las singularidades de las coyunturas historiográficas y la organización de los mercados universitarios.

To date, the nascent consequential notion of ‘multiple modernities’ has been predominately grounded in historical research with the purpose of validating the theory. Yet, the notion of multiple modernities represents a radical transformation in the way modernity and, indeed, the contemporary world is viewed. As such, the central aim of this volume is to explore the implications and hidden understanding of the multiple modernities research project beyond historical analysis in order to investigate its wide ranging omnipresent implications as they exist in communication and in the social order of societal membership in contemporary societies. This volume collects new research about multiple modernities and globalization. It shows the new turn of sociological theory in the contemporary scene with respect to multiple modernities, multi-centrism, transglobality, hybridization and multiculturalism, and explores it as a new area of societal communication – one that takes effect in the sectors of a global society as a ‘society of societies’. The studies in this book converge to demonstrate that the route of Western modernization, its cultural program and its institutional structure, does not follow the pathway of modernization that we have thus far observed in the emerged new area. Rather, the continuation of the multiple modernities research program is given a new design, researching the social structure and dynamic of postmodern societies, their exchange and the debate about the flow of free resources. But the studies are also evidence that the sociological theory has no normative foundation. Contributors are: Mehdi P. Amineh, Barrie Axford, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Mark Jarzombek, Werner Krawietz, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Manussos Marangudakis, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Gerhard Preyer, Roland Robertson, Luis Roniger, Yitzhak Sternberg, and Michael Sussman.

Many contemporary party organizations are failing to fulfill their representational role in contemporary democracies. While political scientists tend to rely on a minimalist definition of political parties (groups of candidates that compete in elections), this volume argues that this misses how parties can differ not only in degree but also in kind. With a new typology of political parties, the authors provide a new analytical tool to address the role of political parties in democratic functioning and political representation. The empirical chapters apply the conceptual framework to analyze seventeen parties across Latin America. The authors are established scholars expert in comparative politics and in the cases included in the volume. The book sets an agenda for future research on parties and representation, and it will appeal to those concerned with the challenges of consolidating stable and programmatic party systems in developing democracies.

Millions of enfranchised people live in abject poverty in democracies around the world. Yet in representative democracies, the success or failure of political parties rests on their ability to effectively engage voters. In today's highly unequal and individualized societies, the diversity of voters along socioeconomic, religious, and other lines presents an obstacle for parties vying for electoral success. How, then, can widespread, crushing poverty still exist in stable democracies, if every citizen has a vote? Two wildly different parties, Chile's right-wing UDI and Uruguay's left-wing Frente Amplio, have achieved stunning victories in this supposedly inhospitable political landscape. They have done so by simultaneously segmenting and strategically harmonizing their linkages to distinct cross-sections of voters in each society. While that electoral strategy makes for a winning hand for parties in fragmented modern societies, it perpetuates the gross inequalities that characterize the social, political, and economic landscapes of the developing democratic world. This book develops a new analytical and conceptual framework to unveil and explain segmented representation, revealing new implications for democratic societies. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

This book presents a new and conflict-centered theory of successful party-building, drawing on diverse cases from across Latin America.

The rise of Juan Perón to power in Argentina in the 1940s is one of the most studied subjects in Argentine history. But no book before this has examined the role the Peronists’ struggle with the major commercial newspaper media played in the movement’s evolution, or what the resulting transformation of this industry meant for the normative and practical redefinition of the relationships among state, press, and public. In The Fourth Enemy, James Cane traces the violent confrontations, backroom deals, and legal actions that allowed Juan Domingo Perón to convert Latin America’s most vibrant commercial newspaper industry into the region’s largest state-dominated media empire. An interdisciplinary study drawing from labor history, communication studies, and the history of ideas, this book shows how decades-old conflicts within the newspaper industry helped shape not just the social crises from which Peronism emerged, but the very nature of the Peronist experiment as well.