In recent years the idea of “culture as resource” has been hailed as a new epistemological paradigm for assigning value and significance to artistic practice. This article acknowledges this idea as determining values assigned to art in the recent context of globalization. Yet it questions the heuristic hold of such an episteme for the interpretation of some cultural practices, especially those of musicians in a world where many of them are not so much administering resources as managing their scarcity. It thus explores the disjuncture between the idea of care of the self, invoked by using the performativity of culture as the basis of the resource paradigm, and the actual practices of musicians in promoting careers that demand investments of money, affect, time, and other resources in order to sustain those careers. In such situations, musicians often privilege other values of music—aesthetic desires, stylistic options, and so on—as primary epistemic and affective reasons for determining their choices and what they find valuable in music. I explore this through the work of two Colombian musicians with contrasting careers and musical styles and practices, Lucía Pulido and Charles King.

En el año 2005, David Aniñir publica Mapurbe en Santiago de Chile, un poemario que ha generado polémicas y reflexiones sobre la identidad, la lengua y la globalización del pueblo mapuche-huilliche entre los críticos de la poesía chilena y los propios poetas indígenas. Debido a la novedad del poemario, pocos estudios han abordado Mapurbe desde un enfoque que trascienda el siglo XXI en Chile. De ahí la necesidad del presente trabajo al analizar el collage lingüístico en Mapurbe en el contexto de la poesía indígena contemporánea; y al situar en retrospectiva la propuesta estética de Aniñir a partir de dos categorías de las ciencias sociales: colonialismo y colonialidad.

Although much has been written on civil society participation in the formulation and monitoring of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), very little systematic and scientific evidence exists on the kind of organizations that participate and the elements that explain their involvement in these processes. This article considers one country case, Honduras, for which survey data were gathered from 101 civil society organizations (CSOs) in 2006. This study examines the characteristics these organizations display which explain (non)participation in the next participatory round of the PRSPs. The findings challenge some of the by now widely accepted ideas relating to the kinds of organizations involved in PRSP processes. The idea that predominantly urban-based, highly professional, well-funded, donor-bred-and-fed nongovernmental organizations participate is too blunt. The Honduran case shows that the players in participative processes are more diversified than much of the current literature on PRSPs suggests.

Sin olvidar la importancia que el factor económico juega en el fenómeno migratorio, y sin caer en el riesgo de proyectar una visión romántica del mismo, este trabajo pretende profundizar en aquellas migraciones que se inician siguiendo determinadas “motivaciones extraeconómicas”. De ahí que, desde el intento de contribuir a visibilizar la heterogeneidad de situaciones personales que conforman las migraciones internacionales, este artículo se centra en otro tipo de factores que incitan a migrar: razones profesionales, políticas, de orientación sexual o de ampliación de horizontes vitales. Para ello se parte de diferentes relatos de mujeres migrantes cubanas y ecuatorianas en España.

Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in the main welfare office of the city of Buenos Aires, this article dissects poor people's lived experiences of waiting. The article examines the welfare office as a site of intense sociability amidst pervasive uncertainty. Poor people's waiting experiences persuade the destitute of the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to be compliant clients. An analysis of the sociocultural dynamics of waiting helps us understand how (and why) welfare clients become not citizens but patients of the state.

Este trabajo analiza de qué manera la guerra de Malvinas (Falklands) afectó los planes de la Internacional Socialista (IS) para consolidar un esquema de alianzas flexibles entre partidos políticos de distinta procedencia geográfica e ideológica como sostén de su expansión extra europea, en el marco de un entorno internacional cambiante. Se avanza en la caracterización de las posiciones adoptadas por los partidos políticos latinoamericanos y europeos miembros de la IS, profundizando en sus diferentes visiones del conflicto y evaluando qué impacto tuvo en las relaciones interpartidarias y en las estrategias regionales de la IS.

This research report explores critical and methodological approaches to game studies, or ludology, contextualizing them within the field of Latin American cultural studies. It provides evidence of the growing influence of video games and explains major ludological concepts such as simulation and remediation, providing the theoretical and critical background necessary for the development of research on games and their cultural impact in the region. The report goes on to offer a preliminary taxonomy of Latin American cultural simulations in video games, thoroughly discussing examples of existing portrayals as well as laying the groundwork for further critical inquiry in this burgeoning field of study.

Although Latin America is home to 8 percent of the world's population, only 1.7 percent of scholarly knowledge about Latin America is produced there. The limited voice of Latin American scholars in Latin American studies constitutes the loss of a valuable and unique cultural perspective. To address this issue, we interviewed Latin American studies scholars residing in Latin America as well as those residing in the United States and United Kingdom to reveal how and to what extent these scholars participate in the international academic community. Our findings show that the two groups were markedly different. Latin American scholars identify themselves as agents of change, motivated by a desire to solve problems and fulfill social needs in the region, whereas US/UK-based scholars see themselves mainly as experts in the field, driven by a desire to impact the knowledge about the region.

This article challenges the assumption that parties and candidates with access to material benefits will always distribute goods to low-income voters in exchange for electoral support. I claim that a candidate's capacity to turn to clientelistic strategies of mobilization is a necessary but insufficient condition to explain his or her decision to use clientelism. Besides having the capacity to use clientelism, candidates have to prefer to use clientelism to mobilize voters. In studying candidates' capacities and preferences to use clientelism, this article provides an account of the microfoundations of political clientelism in Argentina. By combining quantitative and qualitative data at the municipal level, I find that the number of pragmatist candidates, who are capable of using clientelism and prefer to turn to such strategies, is almost equaled by the number of idealist candidates, who, though capable of doing so, prefer not to use clientelism.

Este artigo é uma análise histórica das relações entre nacionalismo, biogeografia, internacionalismo e conservação da natureza no Brasil nas décadas de 1930 e 1940. A produção e a divulgação do conhecimento biológico mostraram-se repletas de conteúdos políticos e se ligaram a diversas ações intelectuais e políticas mais amplas para a construção de uma identidade nacional. Privilegiando a obra do zoólogo Cândido de Mello Leitão, argumento que o estudo da zoogeografía permitiu-lhe adotar uma abordagem inovadora e complexa sobre a fauna brasileira. Suas análises evidenciavam o caráter ínfimo da história humana e das fronteiras políticas, no âmbito maior das eras geológicas e da vida na Terra. Nesse processo, Mello Leitão relativizou o tempo e o espaço da nação brasileira, aproximandose das tendências crescentemente internacionalistas do conservacionismo.

In a recent article, Montero (2008) sought to clarify the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America. Testing a number of competing hypotheses, he found that macroeconomic stability, as measured by the current account, had the most consistent effect on FDI flows across countries in the region. Although Montero was interested in the role of macroeconomic stability, he also explored the impact of governance factors, including human rights and regime type. His results suggest that the effects of rights and regime type are inconsistent. Briefly, in his models that focused on governance and cost-related factors, the coefficient for the terror scale (rights abuse) had a positive and significant effect in two of three trials; in the same trials, the coefficient for Polity IV (regime) was negative and statistically significant, which suggests that politically competitive regimes received less FDI. Nevertheless, when Montero modeled the effects of economic reform, rights abuse and regime type were no longer statistically significant (Montero 2008, Table 1). Given the inconclusive nature of his findings with regard to rights and regime type, and the ongoing controversy in the literature, a brief comment on his article is potentially instructive.