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Latin American Critical Enquiry and the Nature of the Political in the Era of GlobalizationAuthor(s): Hanna LaakoSource: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 35, No. 6, Women in Agriculture / Globalization,Democracy, and Revolutionary Nationalist Movements (Nov., 2008), pp. 93-105Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27648139 .

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Latin American Critical Enquiry and the Nature of the Political in the Era of Globalization

bv Hanna Laako

Along with essential political activism such as the emergence of the Zapatistas in 1994 and the World Social Forum in 2001, there has been a significant increase in research in the field of critical theory in the global South and especially in Latin America. This has generated new forms of knowledge production and contributed to a growing body of research on the changes in world politics. For many this has meant serious ques tioning of the capacity of the conventional social sciences to respond to the demands

of the contemporary world. Latin American critical enquiry reflects the need to call attention to the shortcomings of the mainstream social sciences and to extend the

understanding of the political.

Keywords: Political, Globalization, Social movements, Latin America, Critical theory

In the social sciences in general and in the field of world politics in partic ular the twenty-first century has brought a sharp shift in theory production toward issues such as democracy, globalization, and world order. For the past decade or so, the field has increasingly been preoccupied, for example, with

global democracy and global governance, empire, and the transformation of the state in the globalized world (see Held and McGrew, 2000a; 2000b; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Strange, 1996; Gros, 1996). Social scientists have begun to

speak of a new era in global politics and to explore new analytical approaches that engage the dynamics inherent in global social and political change and the changing form and content of the world order. This has meant a profound questioning of the social sciences' capacity to respond to the analytical requirements of the changed world. As Bahgat Korany has argued (1994), by the end of 1980 there was no longer any question whether to deal with change or not: it had become mandatory. Since then increasing attention has been

paid to the gaps in the mainstream social sciences, examining whose histories,

experiences, and perspectives are routinely left out of the dominant accounts

of world history and world politics. As Julian Saurin (1996) puts it: "How

Hanna Laako is a researcher in the Department of Political Science and World Politics of the

University of Helsinki. This article represents a strand of a thesis entitled 'The Political in the Era

of Globalization: The Case of the Zapatista Movement" and emerged as part of a project on the

contemporary lefts of Latin America. The author thanks Raquel Sosa at the Universidad Nacional

Aut?noma de M?xico for inspiring this work in her seminar in autumn 2005. She also thanks the

Finnish Cultural Foundation for supporting the research, the Graduate School for North and

Latin American Studies in Finland, where earlier versions of this article were presented, and, for

useful comments, Katariina Kantola, Leticia Ruiz Rodriguez, Teivo Teivainen, Emilia Palonen, Branwen Gruffyd-Jones, Jussi Pakkasvirta, Michael Coleman, and Manual Martinez Espinoza.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 163, Vol. 35 No. 6, November 2008 93-105 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X08326015 ? 2008 Latin American Perspectives

93



94 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

can one give credence to a discipline which purports to explain international

action and international order, when it has almost nothing to say about

seventy-five per cent of the world's states, and simply discounts from its

analysis eighty-five per cent of the world's population? Is this exclusion and

invisibility mere oversight?"

Along with these debates, then, has emerged a field of study that critically reconsiders our knowledge of the world outside Europe and the United

States. Researchers in this field argue that we need extensive knowledge of

the processes and structures of a fragmented world that includes also the so

called Rest. Such study could, it is argued, not only shed light on these

processes and structures in the global context but also extend our under

standing of the notion of the political beyond the boundaries of nation-states

and the institutional actors traditionally studied to broader or looser political communities, global phenomena and structures, and political processes with

out borders. Above all, this means viewing political movements as agents in

expanding and reforming social agendas, cultures, and notions, including the

definition of the political. This article aims to examine this emerging critical

approach in Latin America and to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, in

particular considering what should be treated as political in the twenty-first

century.1 The significant increase in critical theory in Latin America is to some

extent a reflection of the transformation of the continent, especially the

emergence of the Zapatistas in 1994 and the World Social Forum in 2001. The new political activism has contributed to new forms of knowledge produc tion. Although it may be risky to call this field "Latin American critical

enquiry," the term is used here to facilitate discussion. Its most common

Spanish equivalents are pensamiento cr?tico, otros saberes, and saberes cr?ticos.

The field will be defined here as a paradigm in the Latin American social sci ences that attempts to produce new social theories critical of the dominant

theories promoted in Europe and the United States. This paradigm focuses on themes such as postcolonialism, Eurocentrism, and alternative world

views in contemporary politics. The aim of this article is to stimulate discussion and to generate some ideas

and interpretations for further debate. The analytical framework is loosely based on discourse theory in the sense that the point of departure is the way this paradigm produces itself. It is also connected to cognitive framework

theory in analyzing the different interpretations of reality that the paradigm is

producing. The major research questions are what critical theory debates

about, what it proposes, and what kinds of tools it offers for analyzing both

politics and Latin America. The article describes how and where critical

enquiry is mainly produced and goes on to consider the factors contributing to its emergence and some of the most visible issues it addresses.

The amount of material is huge, and therefore many interesting debates

have to be left out. In addition, the article concentrates on the recent, post

Chiapas and post-Porto Alegre wave, unfortunately leaving a long history of Latin American critical theory production to references rather than in-depth

exploration. It argues that it is crucial for the contemporary and historical

world?for its political realities and its political science?that the production of knowledge draw upon perspectives from every corner of the globe.



Laako / LATIN AMERICAN CRITICAL ENQUIRY 95

OBSERVING CRITICAL ENQUIRY IN LATIN AMERICA

A growing body of literature may be distinguished from that of other fields of the social sciences in terms of the references cited and theoretical orienta tions represented by its authors, the sources used, and the research questions addressed. A good point of departure is the Consejo Latinamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Social Science Council?CLACSO), estab lished in 1967, which at the moment consists of 170 research centers in 21 coun

tries in Latin America and the Caribbean whose objective is to contribute to a

kind of critical and plural theory production in the societies of Latin America.2 In recent years, CLACSO has generated an increasing amount of critical theory; for instance, in Politics and Social Movements in a Hegemonic World Boron and Lechini (2005) state that the purpose of the research was to "re-create and re

discuss the production of knowledge in the social sciences in the countries of the so-called 'South' and to favour its increasing circulation in the academic

media and the public space in the countries." The book is the product of acad emic cooperation among institutions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia that

was undertaken because of (1) the persistence and worsening of social prob lems, (2) the clear inability of the conventional social sciences, admitted to be in crisis, to account for ever more complex realities, (3) the overwhelming inter est of these societies in these issues, and (4) the hope of generating a "critical

mass" of thought about them. It envisions a South-South dialogue to "develop comparative research projects, identify problems that affect the development of South-South cooperation, and explore the possibilities of advancing in the pro ject of constructing an alternative vision to the dominant, neoliberal one." In

addition, in 2000, CLACSO created the Observatorio Social de Am?rica Latina

(Latin American Social Observatory?OSAL), a program with the objective of

promoting the monitoring of social conflicts and social movements and the

organization of regional exchanges and debate on these subjects. This has resulted in a chronology of social conflict events in 19 countries of the conti

nent, as well as various publications (Seoane, Taddei, and Algranati, 2005).

During the past decade, CLACSO has produced several publications intended to promote critical theory in Latin America and Southern thinking.

One influential contribution to the debate is Lander's (2005) "The Coloniality of Knowledge." The book, a collaboration by various Latin American writers, states that it is important in the contemporary world to create spaces for other

knowledges that can function as a counterbalance or counterweight to the dominant neoliberal approach.

Finally, there have been attempts to promote these ideas outside the region as

well. The journal Nepantla was designed to create a platform "for debating the crit ical role of the humanities in generating knowledge and understanding that can

help build more democratic, just, and equitable world" (Nouzeilles and Mignolo, 2003:1). Its successor, Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise, continues this line, citing "a need to open up to language beyond the Occident and beyond modernity, to other knowledges, to other worlds that will, of necessity enter into conflictive dia

logue with the hegemony of Occidentalism" (Mignolo and Nouzeilles, 2003). From these examples it seems obvious that there has been an increase

in critical theory production in Latin America. One way to make sense of this




situation is to examine it in relation to other debates. Alejandro Casas (2006) asserts, for example, that Latin America as a continent represents a relative unit for the articulation of economic, political, and social requirements at the

regional level. Obviously, Latin America's status as a unit depends on its common characteristics (both linguistic and sociocultural), despite its rich

diversity. Finally, Casas argues that "a critical theory of Latin America seems

increasingly forced by the social and political realities that are being experi enced on the continent." According to Atilio Boron (2005), Latin America

requires radical enquiry because of its unfair global situation, the necessity of

advancing well-being in the countries involved, and the need for critical

rethinking of its societies and exploration of other possible worlds that might enable it to resolve the crisis it is facing as a region.

In this context, Latin American critical enquiry should be considered part of the reflexive critical theory of the social sciences in general, a response to the actual or perceived shortcomings of conventional social and political theory3 The claim of critical theory is that conventional theories significantly misrepresent or misinterpret social and political reality. In the same way, the Latin American

critical enquiry promotes reflection on social reality in Latin America that has been lacking and produces worldviews different from those of the conven

tional social sciences.

Critical theory in Latin America can also be analyzed in relation to its place ment within the social sciences. One significant feature of the paradigm is its

effort to separate itself from "Eurocentric theory," mainly produced in the West.4 Another is its idea of the "South" as a counterparadigm to Eurocentrism, reflect

ing the North-South division of the 1970s in the new context of "South-South"

dialogue.5 However, as will become apparent, critical theory in Latin America is neither an entirely separate branch of study nor a homogeneous whole.

THE EMERGENCE OF LATIN AMERICAN CRITICAL ENQUIRY

Latin American critical theory is not an entirely new phenomenon. The

region has a significant critical tradition dating back to such historical philoso phers as Sim?n Bol?var, Jos? Mart?, and Jos? Carlos Mari?tegui and Haitian

critical theorists against slavery such as Toussaint L'Ouverture (Casas, 2006). Some of these revolutionaries and thinkers have recently been rediscovered, as in the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela. Latin America has contributed to a significant amount of critical theory research on developmentalism and liberation theology. According to Ronald Chilcote (2000: 1), particularly dur

ing the 1960s and 1970s intellectuals in Africa and Latin America (e.g., Ruy Mauro Marini, Theot?nio dos Santos, Pablo Gonz?lez Casanova, Ra?l

Prebisch) worked out perspectives that moved away from the Eurocentrism that was reflected in many views on imperialism and Western dominance.

The emergence of these ideas in many parts of Latin America may be a

response to the crisis of the social sciences and the Eurocentrism of the con

ventional social sciences, political processes, some global in character and some taking place particularly in the South, and critical theory of other kinds, and the desire to construct Southern voices. What is at issue is the desire to

construct something of a counterweight to the universality of the conventional




social sciences and the contemporary capitalist world order combined with a

need to explain various social forces in Latin America and elsewhere and to

understand new worldviews and the state of the contemporary world. Finally, there seems to be a need on the part of critical theorists to translate contem

porary political processes, such as the emergence of the Zapatista movement

(Cece?a, 2001), the colonialism of power (Quijano, 2000), the worldview of the

indigenous (Quijano, 2005; Lenkersdorf, 1999), and the new subjectivity and

the Argentine piqueteros (Ferrara, 2003). These factors also underline that the

Latin American critical enquiry does not necessarily represent a marked

departure from 1970s developmentalism but searches for new paths and inter

pretations for contemporary societal and political questions.6 These perspectives are all in part linked to the crisis of the social sciences,

which is mostly seen as including such problems as (1) a universalizing econ

omy and discourse that apply the same logic everywhere, (2) the disappearance of collective actors such as classes and organizations, (3) the institutionalism,

methodological positivism, and cost-benefit thinking associated with the ratio

nal-choice model, (4) the Eurocentrism of the social sciences, and (5) the disap

pearance of the "political" from the issues at hand (Boron, 2005). Thus, as

Immanuel Wallerstein (2003) famously argues, critical theory ought to "rethink"

the social sciences from nonconventional perspectives, placing emphasis on the

political. This debate on the crisis of the social sciences is evident among Latin

American critical theorists and for many of them is the point of departure. There

is constant reference to the issues just mentioned, and these points are also

fiercely defended, although, as Wallerstein (2003) argues, the social sciences

themselves emerged as a product of and response to these Western problems. The decolonization of Africa and Asia and the increase of political con

sciousness in the non-European world have affected the world of knowledge as well as the world-system, and this in turn has influenced the emerging debate on the nature of the conventional social sciences (Wallerstein, 2003). Chilcote (2000: 1-2) argues that after World War II and the downfall of the

imperial schemes of various European countries, the newly emerging nations

of Africa, Asia, and Latin America began to question capitalist development. Their criticism drew upon the literature of imperialism in the pursuit of

understanding poverty, exploitation, and lack of development. However, after

1945, intellectuals worked hard at promoting new theories of the relation

between imperialism and underdevelopment. The discourse changed again

during the 1970s and 1980s as authoritarian regimes collapsed and institutions

such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund came to exercise

control over struggling domestic economies in many parts of the world.

During the 1990s, notes Chilcote, the language of development and imperial ism began to employ the term globalization to describe the pervasive and expan sive world economy, but the principal concern was still with capitalism and its

impacts.7 Toward the end of the century, however, questions of democratic

systems and neoliberal policies emerged on the agenda, as it seemed that

progress in the region had been symbolic rather than concrete. Various writers

began to contrast the "top-down" process, hegemonic and neoliberal, with a

"bottom-up" process involving civil society and the majority of citizens who

were excluded from the benefits of the neoliberal policies that had swept the

continent from the 1990s onward. Indeed, according to Robert Cox (1999: 14),




"At the end of the century, there is a world-wide problem of repairing or build

ing political societies, of constructing a sense of identity between people and

political authorities. There is a wide space between constituted authority and

the practical life of people." In many ways, Latin American intellectuals and

political movements contributed to these processes by generating a politiciza tion of civil society outside the state (NACLA, 2005; Laako, 2006). Above all,

they were looking for new angles for approaching their sensed otherness, even

tually producing a kind of politics of otherness that created spaces without bor

ders, demanded autonomy, and was anti-Establishment in character. In this

sense, intellectuals and movements in Latin America have taken over from the state as the locus of the political. The Zapatistas, for example, created a new

political system and community within the official state system, and the World

Social Forum promoted a horizontal discursive space for social movements. Latin American critical enquiry can be seen as inspired by the political activism

represented by the Zapatista movement and the World Social Forum. There was

clearly a need both to explain this new cycle of social protest and to explore the

distinctive features of these novel movements (Seoane, Taddei, and Algranati, 2005). For example, the Zapatistas represented challenges for social science

research in terms of their national and international impact, their rural origin and

indigenous identity, their demand for collective rights, their claims of autonomy, their demand for radical democratization, and their summoning of continental and global convergences (Seoane, Taddei, and Algranati, 2005). The World Social Forum represented a "spring of politics," involving a high level of spontaneity,

political originality, and internationalism and a radical democratic practice (Seoane and Taddei, 2001). These examples are probably the most visible mani

festations of the contemporary political cycle to be explained and analyzed. As Jos? Seoane and Emilio Taddei (2001) argue, the emergence of the criti

cal theory in Latin America is a response to the emergence of new social move

ments that revitalized social thought, introducing new problems and new

theoretical and methodological frameworks. At the same time, Fran?ois Houtart (2001) argues, this critical theory represents an attempt to understand

contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism and the social relations involved and the political nature of the contemporary world. In this context, critical

theory is not only a response of the global South to the dominant understand

ings of the social sciences (which it considers flawed) but also a new series of

debates aimed at reconstituting knowledge and ideas, culture and language, and the practice of politics.

THE SPRING OF THE POLITICAL

Considering the various works of Latin American critical enquiry, what

appears to dominate is the reconsideration of the historical time and place in

which we are living and its worldviews or perceptions of reality. Indeed, the

description of our era sometimes comes at the expense of an explanation of it.

Imperialism, social exclusion, increasing concentration of economic power,

poverty, the remilitarization of international relations, and the role of Latin

America in the world are some of the realities of the contemporary age. Others are the new protest cycle, the emergence of a new internationalism, and the




r??valuation of decision-making mechanisms and the ideologies behind them. These global processes, structures, and phenomena are considered political in

character and treated as such. Not only is globalization seen as a powerful polit ical project but class, state, and world order are all part of the political agenda.

These three fundamental concepts all deal to some extent with the notion of the political, understood as struggle or confrontation of interests in a space. The critical paradigm, in contrast to many other critical theories in the social

sciences, appears to be strongly pro-state. This is interesting because Latin American social movements have tended to be highly critical of the state, opt

ing for nonstate and nonparty activism and emphasizing the importance of civil society. Critical theorists perceive neoliberalism as the new strategy of

capital for diminishing the state by devaluing it and argue that the state ought to be the vehicle for change. The questions appear to be: What is the role of Latin American states in world politics? And what is the relation between civil

society and the state?

The question of the state is not only shared by Latin American critical enquiry and social movements but also a major focus of a considerable academic and

policy literature on the "retreat of the state" or "failed states." This debate has

emerged especially since September 11, 2001, among academics and policy makers in the West, and it is sometimes considered to have played an active role in legitimating interventions in the so-called Third World and in the con

struction of a preemptive world order. According to David Carment (2003), for

example, the concept of the failed state has taken center stage in world poli tics. Curiously, there seems to be rather little dialogue between critical theory and the failed-state debate.

Secondly, Latin American critical enquiry has managed to challenge the con

cept of class, the traditional Marxist axis of political actors. Again, there seem

to be differences in theory and practice: on the one side, the Latin American critical paradigm has often employed the concept of class and argued for its

importance; the question of class has not disappeared but undergone depoliti cization. At the same time, Latin American social movements have moved

away from the class to focus on exploitation based on gender, race and gener ation. In the case of the Zapatistas, for example, new cleavages such as the

indigenous and minorities have been introduced.8 Jean-Germain Gros (1996)

argues that class cleavages are important in explaining why states fail (without, however, overlooking other significant divisions in the society), whereas John

Holloway (2002) stresses that class, state, money, and capital should be under stood as a process of being constituted in a certain way.

A more active dialogue is between the concept of class and imperialism in

relation to the new buzz words "empire" and "multitude."9 It seems that, from the perspective of critical theory, "empire" and "multitude" are just substi tutes for state, class, and imperialism. According to Claudio Albertani (2004), for example, the idea of "empire" is an excellent contribution to the interpre tation of the new world order, but the idea of "multitude" leaves unexplained how people are suddenly converted into "many" or an "open whole." For Boron (2004), the idea of "multitude" is something "schizophrenic," whereas for Raquel Gutierrez (2004) it is attractive in that it explains social movements in new way: "being connected to a form of political action that is absolutely divorced from formal political structures."




Finally, critical theory is concerned with world order. Although "world order" is frequently described and explained, there is no agreement whatso ever whether our time is characterized by a new world order, disorder, transi

tion, or stagnation. On occasion, writers contradict themselves on the subject. As is apparent from the above, there are significant differences not only between writers but between the theoretical community and "the community in action," the social movements.

Equally important is the fact that Latin American critical enquiry is not only about themes and issues but about methods and concepts. Although analysis of its methodological proposals has been very limited, it does exist. As Maritza

Montero (cited in Lander, 2005: 27-28) describes the situation, critical theory views community, participation, and popular knowledge as products of research and knowledge. It emphasizes the idea of liberation through praxis,

which assumes the mobilization of conscience and a critical sense of ways of

learning, constructing, and being in the world. It redefines the role of the social researcher, acknowledging the research itself as subjective social actor and a constructor of knowledge. It considers history indeterminate, indefinite, and relative to knowledge. Finally, it brings different perspectives to the research agenda, among them dependency and resistance, the tension between minorities and majorities, and alternative modes of doing and know

ing in the world. Although this outline functions only as a point of departure, it could be taken to indicate the potential for improving the quality and scope of the social sciences in Latin America and producing a more profound analy sis, both historical and contemporary, of the realities in Latin America and in

the South in general. Nevertheless, this critical theory has its shortcomings. Although it has

extensively accounted for the cycle of new protest and the world in which Latin American social movements have functioned, it has yet to explain why these movements emerged in exactly this historical time and place. There seems to be a contradiction between the description of the contemporary

world as highly repressive and exclusive and the successes of the contempo rary social and popular movements. Regarding this issue, critical enquiry could be argued to be rich in description but still narrow in explication.

Similarly, the dialogues between branches of critical theory tend to be nar row and the debates isolated from the mainstream social sciences. For

example, Latin American critical theory has not always included Latin American feminist theories, which have played their own significant role in

critical thinking in the region and have a similar background in questions of resistance and dominance. Finally, although the extensive material on the

coloniality of knowledge raises important critical questions about the nature

of knowledge, turning the world map upside-down re-creates the old North South division. Moreover, the theories on the coloniality of knowledge do not demonstrate effectively how to produce other types of knowledge?how to rewrite history and develop tools for interpreting the contemporary world. Latin American critical theory has great potential for providing a better ana

lytical framework and alternative perceptions of reality and the political if it is able to respond to its own challenges.




SOUTHERN VOICES

Latin American critical enquiry is part of a global movement that chal

lenges conventional knowledge and perceptions of reality. According to Manuel Monereo (2001), the pursuit of a new global vision originated in Africa and then in China, with its emerging world potential. He argues that this "triangle" manifests a kind of "new internationalism," involving such issues as the Tobin tax, Third World debt, financial reform, disarming of the Third World, self-centered development, human rights, and democratization.

According to some writers, this new internationalism, perhaps also inspired by the World Social Forum process, could be considered a new, internationally organized political subject with special emphasis on the left of the political spectrum. Boron and Lechini (2005) suggest that the idea of "Southern voices"

emerged in the 1970s when social scientists in the three regions began to

develop initiatives to promote a theoretical view based in the South. They argue that the societies of this Southern triangle?Latin America, Africa, and Asia?must join forces to understand their common experiences, construct new approaches to their diverse realities, and find ways of emerging from the crisis that they are perceived as experiencing.

The shared world view of these Southern voices is double-sided. On the one

hand, the societies of three regions perceive themselves as unwillingly inte

grated into a world-system that identifies them as subordinate or peripheral. As Samir Amin (2005), however, argues, "peoples have their history that did not stop to wait to be integrated into the capitalist world system that was to be constructed." This is the other side of the coin, as noted by Madeleine

Alingue (2005): "Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean have for cen turies posed and designed 'other' ways of resistance that, though less visible, have modified and altered international, regional and national balances."

Southern voices, then, can be interpreted as making visible experiences and his tories that have persisted despite globalization while at the same time interpreting the shared experiences imposed on them by the global context. This is what Jaime

Zuluaga Nieto (2005) calls a "tricontinental of knowledge," a space for South South cooperation among social researchers on the three continents. Southern voices could at best offer a kind of internationalist perspective on history.

As a continuation of the 1970s North-South debate, however, both Southern

thinking and to some extent Latin American critical theory may present the risk of creating divisions. According to Julian Saurin (1996), we need a new

approach to the social sciences that does not reproduce North-South, devel

oped-developing, and industrialized-industrializing divisions, the material divisions that mark people's lives being poorly reflected by these binary logics.

In this sense, the greatest challenge for Southern voices is to tell the tale of two worlds and avoid becoming what they have criticized the North for being. Garcia Canclini (quoted in Munck, 2000:154) asks in this connection, "What political con

sequences follow when we move from a critical and bipolar conception [of

sociopolitical relations] to one which is decentred and multidetermined?"

Finally, the question arises whether the concept of the "South" is purely geo

graphical, theoretical, or cultural. For example, some of the most often cited "Southern voices," among them Immanuel Wallerstein, Noam Chomsky, Robert




Cox, James Petras, and Neil Harvey, are North American in origin. Are they inside or outside of the so-called Eurocentrism? If the concept refers to a partic ular approach that aims to explore the experiences of the 85 percent of the world's population and 75 percent of the states that have been largely absent

from the social sciences, the fact remains that there is a South in the North and a North in the South. Where does one count the millions of illegal or legal immi

grants of the North, living under conditions equivalent to those in the South? How can Southern voices respond to these challenges? Today the political is

limited neither to nation-states nor to geographical areas. Recognizing this will

help us to capture the political realities of the world we live in, although it will not resolve the complexities of our social scientific work. We need to take glob

ality as our analytical approach to political processes, the forms of power, and

power relations. This will require a better definition of, among other things, the

concepts of "North" and "South."

CONCLUSIONS

Critical theory has emerged in response to the crisis of the conventional

social sciences, and its great strength is making visible something flawed or

ignored. As I have shown, the contribution of Latin American critical enquiry is in stressing the experiences, knowledges, histories, and languages outside the axis of Europe and United States. This implies a challenge to conventional

theory to respond to the requirements of the contemporary era. Generally

speaking, whereas there is a tendency in the North to perceive the current

global transformations as positive and talk about the "end of history" or "failed

states," there is a tendency in the South to see the destructive elements of glob alization and the impacts of colonialism and imperialism. However, the South also invokes the possibility of a politics of change and a politics of otherness that

may have great potential for the study of world politics and Latin America. The emergence of the critical paradigm reflects changes both within the

social sciences and in the world at large. The conventional social sciences, uni

versalist, positivist, and sometimes too institutional, omit the majority of the

people of the globe. Critical theory has an important role to play in providing a counterweight to the universality of the conventional social sciences, point

ing to the gaps (not only with regard to regions of the world but also with

regard to social forces), translating Latin American phenomena and processes for scholars outside the continent, and calling attention to the political nature

of the contemporary world. This will mean rethinking what constitutes the

political in the era of globalization. What are the boundaries of the political if

the role of nation-states is diminished? To what extent does politics emerge in

civil society? What is the political relation between civil society and the

nation-state? What are the major actors on the global scene? In this sense, pol itics could be seen as something that appears and becomes rather than some

thing that is. Beyond this, to what extent does Latin America or the South

require its own theories and methods? To what extent does this complicate comparative research? Could the "politics of otherness" lead to sectarianism?

Although not a coherent social theory, the critical paradigm has managed to

create a space for the political by reconsidering especially the concepts of class,




state, and world order. The idea of Southern voices has helped to make visible

experiences and histories that have persisted in the global context and will be key in determining the knowledges that will emerge there in the coming decades.

NOTES

1. "Latin America" will be understood here as referring to the countries of the American con

tinent that share a history of a Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonialization (Rouqui?, 1989). 2. http : // www. clacso. org / w w wclacso / espa?ol / html / institucional / f institucional .html.

3. Especially in the field of international relations, critical theory questions, for example, the

basic assumption that states are the major actors whose interaction is to be explained. Instead, it

has focused on civil society and world order (Cox and Sinclair, 1996). 4. According to Lander (2005: 23), "the Eurocentric construction cogitates and organizes the

totality of time and space, of all humanity, starting from its own experience, placing its historic

cultural speciality as a pattern of superior and universal reference. This also refers to the colo

nial and imperialist character of knowledge produced in the social sciences."

5. The North-South division refers to a division between the wealthy developed countries

(North) and the poorer developing countries (South), sometimes also called the First and Third

Worlds. The North-South debate emerged in the context of the idea of "sustainable develop

ment," mediating between the North's ecological viewpoint and the South's promotion of

modernization.

6. Developmentalism emphasized the assumption that development has similar stages around the world and examined the reasons for underdevelopment and pathways to modern

ization. Nowadays critical theory acknowledges that development is not necessarily the same

everywhere and that there may be different ways of achieving it. For some the whole concept of

development is questionable, but for many the questions of imperialism, exploitation, and mod

ernization are still at the center of theoretical thinking. 7. The aim of this article is not to account for the imperialism globalization debate.

"Globalization" is understood here not as a "brave new world" but as a concept that explains

something essential about our time. Whereas imperialism could be defined as domination of a

state or states over others in an attempt to take advantage of the latter, globalization can be

understood not only as the economic structures and worldview of states but also as new social

movements and global interactions, processes, phenomena, and structures that are not limited to

the economic dimension or exploitation. In this context, globalization is a broader concept that

includes the imperialist and neoliberal project but also the new resistances. In same way, the

global approach employs a perspective that is not limited to economic structures or states.

8. As Cece?a (2001:131) argues, the Zapatistas mark a difference in the dominant political the

ories when they maintain that "the place is not the fabric but the social depths, the name is not pro letarian but to be human, the character is not the one of exploited but the one of excluded, the

language is metaphoric, the condition indigenous, the conviction democratic, the being collective."

9. These concepts of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri can be understood as follows:

"Empire" implies the end of national conflicts and a transition from a modern, nation-state

centered imperialism to an emergent postmodern construct among global ruling powers. "Multitude" refers to a new model of organization of resistance.

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