JOURNAL OF STUDIES AND RESEARCH ON THE AMERICAS
ISSN: 1984-1639 DOI: 10.21057
Call for papers:
Criticisms of Latin American neo-developmentalisms and reformisms
The decline and relative failure of power projects conceived under the perspective of dispute and/or democratization of the institutions of post-dictatorial Latin American states, as well as their incapacity for structural transformation of the historical inequalities of the social formations of these countries, established a process of political balance, a reanalysis of their limitations, and in particular a theoretical strengthening of the political left-wing power projects which, since the coups of the 1960s and 1970s, have emphasized the need for a radical revolutionary transformation of these societies.
However, revolutionary political left, even when it actively influenced important sectors of the working class, actively participated and/or directly leaded popular mass movements to challenge the institutional and reformist field, also encountered limitations of several orders for a radical transformation project, destruction and/or seizure of state power, which in certain cases has been isolated and controlled through various repressive and ideological apparatuses or even by victorious counter-insurgency strategies.
Considering a context in which structural inequalities continue to worsen and deepen, the current political perspectives of radical overcoming are renewed and they present their political projects in the face of the crisis of the various Latin American reformist strands and their variants that have been more or less associated with governments of the so-called “pink tide” on the continent and, for that, also turn to the political analysis of their own organizational experiences and anti-collaborationist resistance projects that have been in dispute over the first decades of the twenty-first century.
In this sense, this Call aims to gather critical studies from the revolutionary left about the experiences and political economy of the governments so-called “progressives”, “neodevelopmentalists”, “social-liberals”, “social-neoliberals” or “left-wings” in Latin America and the Caribbean at the beginning of the 21st century.
To this end, critical analyzes will be particularly welcome for the following points, for example:
a) economic, political and social conditions of rise and decline in positions of State power;
b) political strategies, alliances and class compositions;
c) disruptions, transformations, continuities or other characterizations of movement or not before neoliberalism and world capitalism;
d) genesis and history of formation-construction-dissolution of blocks and parties;
e) formations and theoretical references of ideologists and militants;
f) other specific themes, such analyzes of political, social and/or popular counter-hegemonic alternatives to bourgeois institutions and counterrevolutionary strategies (emergences, dissolutions, neutralizations, transformisms, collaborations, resistances etc).
We hope to compose the dossier with rigorous analyzes in the light of references derived from distinct materialist traditions, understood in their plurality of Latin American readings, from Marxism, Maoism, Autonomism, Councilism, Guevarism, Trotskism, Anarchism, etc., which have sharpened their revolutionary critiques and their own theoretical frameworks throughout these governments.
The final composition of the Dossier will seek to privilege contributions of diverse origin, both politically and academically, as well as regional and gender, from Brazil and other countries, especially Latin America and the Caribbean. The proposals of articles will be evaluated according to the norms of the Journal, with the publication of the Dossier in the number of May-August 2020.
In memory, in the same issue of the Journal of Studies and Research on the Americas in which we will organize this Dossier, it will be published in the section “Classics of the Latin American and Caribbean Social Sciences” the article “La pequeña burguesía y el problema del poder” (“The petty bourgeoisie and the problem of power”, free translation) of Ruy Mauro Marini (1973), compiled by him in his own edition of critical articles of the so-called “vía chilena” to socialism (in: Marini, RM “El reformismo y la contrarrevolución“. México DF: Ediciones Era, 1976).
Email for prior consultation and/or sending proposals of articles to the guest editors of the Special Issue:
Submission Deadline: 10/30/2019.
Guest editors:
Gil Felix
Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-americana
Federal University for Latin American Integration (Brazil)
Mariano Féliz
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
National University of La Plata (Argentina)
