Latin America Transformed

This text provides an introduction to contemporary development issues in Latin America. It examines a continent that is becoming more international in its economic relationships and more homogeneous in its political framework, but in which a variety of social and cultural patterns can be observed.

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There has been a radical series of transformations in the economic, political, social and cultural life of Latin America. This text offers an holistic approach to understanding these changes, relating them to the wider processes of modernization and globalization.



An international team of authors from a range of disciplines - cultural studies, economic geography, political science, sociology and social geography - contextualize their different disciplinary foci within a broad political economy approach which provides a critical yet balanced analysis of the neoliberal politics pursued by almost all countries in the region over the last two decades. A new political economy is being constructed in Latin America, as national economies become radically restructured and transformed, democracy becomes the institutional norm, and new social arrangements are being created. The contestation and alternatives to this new global modernity are also explored.