Es posible pensar una nueva política social para América Latina


Book Description

Se discute desde un punto de vista teórico, los diferentes enfoques de la política social y se analiza el fenómeno de la migración.




Social Policies and Emotions


Book Description

This book analyzes the connections between social policies and politics of sensibilities. The authors show how social policies build sociabilities, experiences and sensibilities, producing processes of conflict avoidance and consecration of the given. After discussing violence against women as a case study in order to understand the current state of social policies, the authors then describe how the “place” and “value” of education have become central features to social policies in order to disband conflict. Finally, they explain the emergence of a social phenomenon in the last sixteen years in Latin America and particularly Argentina: the compensatory consumption system and the resulting emergence of the “assisted citizen.”




The Social Question in the Global World


Book Description

In an era of rapid globalisation, how can the changes that characterise how the social question is addressed in rich and emerging countries be analysed? How can one interpret the crisis in the Welfare State and the emergence of new social policies that push for the financial contribution of beneficiaries and the development of new forms of solidarity? What can be said about the world’s poorest countries and their recurrent difficulty in benefiting from international aid to fight against poverty and ensure the protection of all people? This volume brings together 24 researchers from around the world to analyse a series of case studies of developed, emerging and developing countries. They study the evolution or decline observed in these countries and propose some answers to the issue of the way in which the economic model influences how the social question is taken into account around the world. A closer look reveals that the manner in which this question is addressed largely determines how the evolution of the world is perceived. While the contributors here highlight how capitalism makes it possible to reflect on the issue of social protection, they also show the limits of policies unable to guarantee this protection as soon as the economic situation can no longer allow countries to bear its costs.




Sustaining Civil Society


Book Description

“South America is not the poorest continent in the world, but it may very well be the most unjust.” This statement by Ricardo Lagos, then president of Chile, at the Summit of the Americas in January 2004 captures nicely the dilemma that faces Latin American countries in the wake of the transition to democracy that swept across the continent in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While political rights are now available to citizens at unprecedented levels, social and economic rights lag far behind, and the fledgling democracies struggle with long legacies of poverty, inequality, and corruption. Key to understanding what is happening in Latin America today is the relationship between the state and civil society. In this ambitious book, Philip Oxhorn sets forth a theory of civil society adequate for explaining current developments in a way that such controversial neoconservative theories as Francis Fukuyama’s liberal triumphalism or Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” cannot. Inspired by the rich political sociology of an earlier era and the classic work of T. H. Marshall on citizenship, Oxhorn studies the process by which social groups are incorporated, or not, into national socioeconomic and political development through an approach that focuses on the “social construction of citizenship.”




Out of the Shadows


Book Description

Since the beginning of scholarly writing about the informal economy in the mid-1970s, the debate has evolved from addressing survival strategies of the poor to considering the implications for national development and the global economy. Simultaneously, research on informal politics has ranged from neighborhood clientelism to contentious social movements basing their claims on a variety of social identities in their quest for social justice. Despite related empirical and theoretical concerns, these research traditions have seldom engaged in dialogue with one another. Out of the Shadows brings leading scholars of the informal economy and informal politics together to address how globalization has influenced local efforts to resolve political and economic needs&—and how these seemingly separate issues are indeed deeply related. In addition to the editors, contributors are Javier Auyero, Miguel Angel Centeno, Sylvia Chant, Robert Gay, Mercedes Gonz&ález de la Rocha, Jos&é Itzigsohn, Alejandro Portes, and Juan Manuel Ram&írez S&áiz.




Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History in North America


Book Description

This encyclopedia provides readers with basic information about the history of social welfare in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The intent of the encyclopedia is to provide readers with information about how these three nations have dealt with social welfare issues, some similar across borders, others unique, as well as to describe important events, developments, and the lives and work of some key contributors to social welfare developments.




On the Edges of Development


Book Description

Big business, financial institutions, and capitalist powers have wreaked much havoc on the Third World in the name of development. This book re-imagines development through a careful and imaginative exploration of some of the many ways that culture – in the broadest sense of lived experience and its representation – can recenter resistance, suggest alternative models, and advance critiques of development as it is currently practiced. The diverse group of scholars and activists who contribute chapters to the volume engage with the puzzle of how best to conceptualize an alternative development that improves the living conditions of women and men in different parts of the world and simultaneously demands solutions that focus on the integration of gender, diversity, and development with the realities of people’s lives.







The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Latin America


Book Description

The essays included in this volume provide both an assessment of key areas and current trends in sociology, specifically with regard to contemporary sociology in Latin America, as well as a collection of innovative empirical studies. The volume serves as an effective bridge of communication allowing sociological academies to mobilize and disseminate research dynamics from Latin America to the rest of the world.




From Right to Reality


Book Description

This study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, health, unemployment risks and anti-poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. The book argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. It advocates well-targeted, tax-funded, tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low-income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and labor market programs, and safety net transfers.