Power and ethnicity in Latin America

These last decades have seen a significant rise in the role of indigenous identities in sociopolitical struggles throughout Latin America. Besides being a powerful driving force for collective action, the politicization of ethnic specificities has triggered change in several areas of Latin American societies.

This class will examine the ongoing expansion of this phenomenon in its political and cultural dimensions from a multidisciplinary perspective. This approach, bringing together the latest research from historians, anthropologists and political scientists from both sides of the Atlantic, offers a comprehensive understanding of both the continuities and transformations of power relationships based on ethnic criteria in the region.

We will especially concentrate on the issue of the political participation of native groups in national and local levels, combining the diversity of national cases with a broader regional perspective, as well as on the challenges behind the concept of plurinationality as a model for social and political harmony in contemporary Latin America societies. We will also focus on the intersections between ethnicity and feminism, indigenous experiences of local political autonomy and the future of indigenous people in 21th century Latin America.

Finally, we will discuss in a comparative manner the place of race and racism in Brazil and the United States over the last 150 years.