THE SOCIAL LIFE OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES IN CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICA Decades of Change Edited by MARGIT YSTANES and ISELIN ÅSEDOTTER STRØNEN APPROACHES TO SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference Series Editors Edvard Hviding University of Bergen Bergen, Norway Synnøve Bendixsen University of Bergen Bergen, Norway The book series contributes a wealth of new perspectives aiming to denaturalize ongoing social, economic and cultural trends such as the processes of ‘crimigration’ and racialization, fast-growing social-economic inequalities, depoliticization or technologization of policy, and simultaneously a politicization of difference. By treating naturalization simultaneously as a phenomenon in the world, and as a rudimentary analytical concept for further development and theoretical diversification, we identify a shared point of departure for all volumes in this series, in a search to analyze how difference is produced, governed and reconfigured in a rapidly changing world. By theorizing rich, globally comparative ethnographic materials on how racial/cultural/civilization differences are currently specified and nat- uralized, the series will throw new light on crucial links between differences, whether biologized and culturalized, and various forms of ‘social inequality’ that are produced in contemporary global social and political formations. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14775 Margit Ystanes • Iselin Åsedotter Strønen Editors The Social Life of Economic Inequalities in Contemporary Latin America Decades of Change Editors Margit Ystanes Iselin Åsedotter Strønen University of Bergen University of Bergen and the Chr. Bergen, Norway Michelsen Institute (CMI) Bergen, Norway Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference ISBN 978-3-319-61535-6 ISBN 978-3-319-61536-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61536-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955007 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018. This book is an open access publication. 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Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book is dedicated to the numerous people across Latin America who resist and struggle against social inequalities every day. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume grew out of a workshop on inequality in Latin America, organised by the editors in Bergen, in March 2015. We would like to extend our most heartfelt gratitude to everyone who was somehow involved in this event and made possible the stimulating discussions and friendly atmosphere that characterised it. Sarah A. Radcliffe and Cristiano de Moraes both participated in the workshop, and while unfortunately other commitments hindered their inclusion in this book project, we are deeply grateful for their contributions at the event. We would also like to thank Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) for hosting the workshop. To Inge Erling Tesdal at CROP/UiB Global, we could not possibly thank you enough for all the administrative work and support you provided and for making sure every detail of the event ran smoothly. Charlotte Lillefjære-Tertnæs and the rest of the staff at CROP and UiB Global also contributed in various ways and provided a support- ive milieu for the event. Funding for the workshop was generously provided by NorLARNet (Norwegian Latin America Research Network) and the Research Council of Norway’s SAMKUL programme (Cultural conditions underlying social change). At the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, we would like to thank our colleagues for support and stimulating conversa- tions. In particular, we extend our gratitude to Palgrave Macmillan’s series editors, Synnøve Bendixsen and Edvard Hviding, for taking an interest in this project and for their assistance along the way. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The contributions in this volume have been developed further since the original workshop. Some of the authors have come to the project at later stages, but have also participated in various rounds of revision. We thank you all for being so willing to rework and revise your contributions accord- ing to our suggestions and thus making this a genuinely collaborative effort. On a more personal note, the editors would also like to thank our fami- lies and friends for their support and patience throughout the period we have been working on this volume. Margit extends her most heartfelt gratitude to her parents, Sunneva and Per Ystanes, for their unwavering emotional support and practical assistance with all kinds of things. I am also deeply thankful to friends for still being there despite my prolonged absences, whether spent in my office or doing fieldwork. Finally, I would like to express my deep grati- tude to Alejandro Huidobro Goya for sharing both life and work with me. Thank you for inspiring me every day, for making me grow in ways I never imagined and for keeping everything together while the finalising of this book absorbed me. Most importantly, thank you for filling my life with love and laughter. Iselin is deeply grateful to her parents, Frode and Åse KarinStrønen, who as always have provided vital emotional and practical support in the process of finishing this book. I don’t know how I would have done it without you. Thank you. My heartfelt gratitude is also extended to Marieke Mulders Steine for moral support during the last-minute frenzies, and to Siv Mælen for always being there. Thank you also to Nefissa Naguib and Maria Victoria Canino, both of whom provided important and wise words of advice in the process of finalising the book. As always, my deepest gratitude goes to my daughter, Cecilia, who stoically has waited out hours and hours of mummy being lost behind a computer screen in the final phase of this process. You must be the most patient five-year-old in the world. Thank you for reminding me every day that there are more impor- tant things to life than writing books, the importance of the topic notwithstanding. Rio de Janeiro and Bergen, Iselin Åsedotter Strønen and Margit Ystanes April 19, 2017 CONTENTS Part I Social Lives, Economic Ideas 1 1 Introduction 3 Iselin Åsedotter Strønen and Margit Ystanes 2 Reformism, Class Conciliation and the Pink Tide: Material Gains and Their Limits 35 Pedro Mendes Loureiro Part II The Case of Brazil 57 3 Entangled Inequalities, State, and Social Policies in Contemporary Brazil 59 Sérgio Costa 4 #sosfavelas: Digital Representations of Violence and Inequality in Rio de Janeiro 81 Margit Ystanes 5 Urban Development in Rio de Janeiro During the ‘Pink Tide’: Bridging Socio-Spatial Divides Between the Formal and Informal City? 107 Celina Myrann Sørbøe ix x CONTENTS 6 Meanings of Poverty: An Ethnography of Bolsa Familia Beneficiaries in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil 129 Michele de Lavra Pinto Part III Subjectivities and Structures 151 7 Political Polarisation, Colonial Inequalities and the Crisis of Modernity in Venezuela 153 Iselin Åsedotter Strønen 8 Market Liberalisation and the (Un-)making of the ‘Perfect Neoliberal Citizen’: Enactments of Gendered and Racialised Inequalities Among Peruvian Vendors 183 Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard 9 Coming of Age in the Penal System: Neoliberalism, ‘Mano Dura’ and the Reproduction of ‘Racialised’ Inequality in Honduras 205 Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera, Iselin Åsedotter Strønen, and Margit Ystanes Part IV Land, the Eternal Legacy of Inequality 229 10 Settlers and Squatters: The Production of Social Inequalities in the Peruvian Desert 231 Astrid B. Stensrud 11 Latin American Inequalities and Reparations 253 Marvin T. Brown CONTENTS xi Part V Postscript 273 12 Postscript 275 Sian Lazar Index 283 CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Marvin T. Brown teaches ethics in the Philosophy Department at the University of San Francisco. As a teacher, consultant, and writer, he has written about processes of dealing with disagreement, the ethics of organ- isations, and more recently alternative economics. Brown’s books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Italian, Korean, and Chinese. His last book, Civilizing the Economy (2010), describes how a civic approach to the economy allows us to design just and sustainable systems of provision. Brown has given presentations and workshops on dialogical decision-making and related topics in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. His current work aims to demonstrate the connections between violations of our common humanity and the challenge of climate change.