Este artículo se pregunta por el lugar del espacio urbano en la (re)producción de la desigualdad social en las ciudades latinoamericanas. Recientemente distintas investigaciones han resaltado la reducción de la desigualdad de ingresos en la mayoría de los países latinoamericanos durante la última década. Por otro lado, desde hace al menos una década los estudios urbanos en la región llaman la atención sobre un creciente proceso de fragmentación socio-espacial en las ciudades latinoamericanas. Ambas líneas de investigación dialogan en este artículo y permiten plantear un escenario paradójico: mientras en la última década muchos países de la región han implementado políticas que lograron reducir (levemente) la desigualdad de ingresos, se verifica la continuidad del movimiento expansivo de áreas metropolitanas fragmentadas que incrementan no solo la desigualdad en el acceso a la ciudad y a sus bienes, servicios y oportunidades, sino que también consolidan – articuladas con la segmentación del sistema educativo y el mercado de trabajo – redes y circuitos sociales segregados. Ante este panorama se sostiene como hipótesis que la continuidad del patrón de urbanización excluyente limita los efectos de las políticas redistributivas y torna necesaria una política del uso del suelo para impactar en las desigualdades de la región.

En este texto se presentan y analizan algunas de las conceptualizaciones sobre las múltiples desigualdades en el pensamiento social latinoamericano en las décadas de los años sesenta y setenta del siglo XX. Estas ideas tienen una doble inserción: por un lado, están enraizadas en tradiciones académicas y en discusiones teórico- conceptuales; por el otro, tienen un fuerte anclaje en el propio movimiento de los actores y en la inserción sociopolítica de las y los propios/as analistas. En ese momento histórico, la preocupación de analistas y de gobernantes estaba centrada en la cuestión del “desarrollo”. En este marco, el texto presenta una cuestión específica que se inscribe en el campo de las ideas de la época: la manera en que las y los analistas de la época discutieron e interpretaron la interrelación entre lo que consideraban la dimensión central de las desigualdades sociales – las clases sociales – y otras dimensiones y clivajes sociales, fundamentalmente el género (Saffioti, Larguía), la “raza” (Fernandes) y la etnicidad (Stavenhagen)

The paper provides historical perspectives on regional economic inequalities in Brazil making use of a database on Brazilian municipalities from 1872 to 2000. A suit of maps and graphs describe the geographic forces shaping the historical development of the Brazilian economy highlighting the role of transport costs, and its consequences for the spatial dynamics of income per capita and labor productivity. The next section estimates econometric models of growth convergence for municipal income per capita and labor. For the 20th century analyses are refined in two ways: first, by disaggregating the models for urban and rural activities; second, by enlarging the model to take account of the determinants of spatial growth convergence. Empirical results endorse the preeminence of geographic factors in contrast to institutional conditions. The final section summarizes the results and proposes research extensions. The Appendix describes the database.

El presente documento analiza los efectos de los flujos globales sobre la desigualdad socioeconómica en los cuatro estados mexicanos que tienen frontera con Texas: Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila y Chihuahua. En particular, se analizan los efectos de la migración, el comercio transfronterizo, la extracción y venta de energéticos y el crimen organizado transnacional. Los resultados de la presente investigación muestran claramente mayores niveles de desigualdad en los municipios de mayor dinamismo económico y presencia de estos flujos globales – formales, informales o ilícitos. La presencia del crimen organizado transnacional es fuerte en estos estados de la República Mexicana y parece operar en la misma dirección que el resto de los flujos globales, reforzando la desigualdad en el interior de los estados mexicanos, así como la desigualdad entre las ciudades fronterizas mexicanas y las tejanas.

El “giro a la izquierda” ha sido el fenómeno más importante que ha acaecido en América Latina en lo que va del presente siglo. Dada su intencionalidad posneoliberal puede ser interpretada como el tercer momento rousseauniano en la historia de la región ya que intenta revertir las desigualdades sociales generadas por el (neo)liberalismo precedente. Tomando como referencia los tres casos más “radicales” (Venezuela con el chavismo; Bolivia con el Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS, y Ecuador con la Revolución Ciudadana) se analizan tanto los cambios operados en la esfera de la distribución, compuesta por los mercados básicos, así como las transformaciones acaecidas en la esfera de la redistribución. Se plantea como hipótesis que no habido cambios distributivos sustantivos pero sí transformaciones redistributivas importantes. Estas han consistido en la ampliación de la ciudadanía social básica a la cual ha sido incorporada sectores subalternos históricamente excluidos. Esto no ha supuesto una mera continuidad y profundización de la políticas (neo)liberales basadas en la invención de la “pobreza”. Esta interpretación se enmarca en el contexto de rentismo que caracteriza el desarrollo capitalista de estas tres sociedades. Se concluye comparando este tercer momento rousseauniano con su precedente para entender su naturaleza y alcance.

This paper explores the extent to which Cuban remittance recipients are responding to the Cuban government’s current economic reforms which seek to incentivize entrepreneurial activities as an economic growth strategy and state liberalization policy. In so doing we hope to make some preliminary observations and recommendations about the potential role and impact of remittances in Cuba’s socio-economic development. It is based on an original survey conducted in Cuba in 2012.

En el ámbito de prácticas concretas de investigación en el que intervienen diferentes culturas de prácticas disciplinarias junto con otros actores sociales no disciplinarios, adquieren relevancia las asimetrías y diferencias que se presentan, no sólo en materia de conocimientos, sino también de poder y autoridad. El objetivo de este trabajo es revisar las potencialidades de la investigación transdisciplinaria sobre la base de una experiencia concreta. Para ello, se identifican los desafíos y aprendizajes de la práctica de la transdisciplinaridad por parte de los autores de este trabajo, analizando de manera particular el peso que adquiere el reconocimiento y la confianza entre los participantes en esta forma de investigación, las asimetrías, los procesos de negociación asociados y el tratamiento de las diferencias. Se concluye en la necesidad que los consejos de ciencia desarrollen políticas de financiamiento cónsonas con los retos que plantea esta forma de investigación.

The legal status and living conditions of migrants in host countries reflect contemporary forms of inequality arising from the uneven distribution of wealth and power among states. Over the past decades, the transnational social impacts of global movements of people have raised concerns about the appropriateness of the premise of self-contained nation-states, which have led some authors and social actors to reevaluate the notion of nation-based citizenship and to consider alternative conceptions that fit better to the changing complexities of international migration. In 2008, a constitutional amendment in Ecuador introduced the concept of universal citizenship, granting citizens’ rights independently of national affiliation. This provides a valuable case study for the exploration of the real implications of a de- nationalized citizenship when adopted under the current international framework, and particularly for understanding the way normative orders and migration policies in transnational social spaces are interconnected. This article examines the way in which the rights of both emigrants and immigrants are included in the Ecuadorian Constitution and analyzes three cases that reflect the kind of interdependent limitations and constraints that Ecuador faces for its migration policy choices and constitutional rules on universal citizenship, including its unintended consequences.

This working paper is the result of a preliminary analysis of a research project that aims to understand the articulations between local state formation, development and violence. Such articulations are generative of a certain form of governance and of a political subjectivity mainly shaped within the language of neoliberalism. This entails a limited form of state intervention through development projects that leave most of the responsibility to guarantee well-being and even life itself to local inhabitants. As a secondary, and more preliminary line of analysis, I address how within such complex articulations we can understand mechanisms of social inequality (distanciation, exclusion, hierarchization). The specific scenario under study is located in the Colombian Caribbean Coast, where an alternative project on coca eradication was implemented. This project had the stated purpose of forging new relationships between local peasant communities and state institutions and creating new livelihood possibilities.

In recent years, attention to universal social policy has intensified in Latin America and other parts of the periphery. Definitions of universal social policy have traditionally varied between a minimalist approach focused on broad coverage and a maximalist approach focused on generous, citizen-based programs funded exclusively with general taxes. Unfortunately the former is too narrow and the latter relies on over-ambitious policy instruments, hardly attainable in the periphery. Instead, we propose a definition focused on policy goals: universal social policies are those that reach the entire population with similarly generous transfers and high quality services. In the second part of the paper, we review the advantages of universal policies, which can be more redistributive, create less stigma and be easier to manage than means tested programs and can also have positive effects on social cohesion and economic growth. The paper concludes with a discussion of different types of fragmentation as significant threats towards the expansion of universal social policies in Latin America and beyond.

Basado en investigaciones etnográficas realizadas en Argentina entre 2010 y 2013, este trabajo presenta algunos resultados de la investigación “Redes y asociaciones del sector agrobiotecnológico argentino: dispositivos y prácticas de legitimación de un modelo socioproductivo y de conocimiento”. En el presente Working Paper, abordaremos en primer lugar el contexto de la transformación del modelo de producción agrícola en el cual se enmarca el problema de investigación, focalizando en el papel del Estado argentino en dicha transformación y en la reconfiguración de la organización de la producción. En segundo lugar, presentaremos una tipología de las alianzas que emergen del estudio de las asociaciones del sector. En tercer lugar, ilustraremos las dinámicas de construcción de redes a partir del análisis de la biografía de un actor clave y de una alianza entre un actor del sector del agro y un actor extra-sectorial. Por último, a partir de los datos presentados, reflexionaremos sobre las particularidades de las dinámicas de construcción de redes y sobre la traducción e incorporación de las lógicas globales por parte de los actores locales.

The inequality implications of nature exploitation, utilitarian representations of nature and processes of (global) environmental change are substantial. In Latin America social inequalities are historically rooted in unequal allocation systems of land rights or mining rents. Current investments in natural resources or elements thereof tend to generate new or reinforce existing patterns of inequality. Despite these evidences and despite the increasing recognition of the social dimensions of environmental change, linking the analysis of social inequalities with (global) environmental change, politics and forms of nature appropriation and production is still incipient. Based on first empirical findings from the Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America (desiguALdes.net) the aim of this paper is to draw conclusions on how inequalities can be researched through the lens of societal nature relations. The paper reveals ways to theoretically conceptualize and analytically understand social inequalities as historically rooted expressions of contingent spatio-temporal societal nature relations, taking different research fields and social theories as points of departure. The key fields addressed are environmental justice, political ecology and social and cultural anthropology. In addition, core analytical categories such as time, space and physical materiality are introduced in order to show how they operate in empirical analysis. The paper concludes with a summary of the main findings.

Three contemporary paradoxes deserve explanations. First, in America, the finance-led growth regime has brought about a rupture with the Fordist Golden Age, causing a surge of inequality, because of quite specific spill-over effects from the economy to policy, whereby diverse social science research has convincingly concluded that the cost of inequality has become excessively large. Second, the Euro-zone crisis is often perceived as reflecting the limits of universal welfare states and the ideal of social equality, but some social democratic countries have resisted and continue to exhibit a complementarity between an extended welfare system, moderate inequalities and a dynamic innovation and production system. Third, Latin America, which used to be the continent with the highest inequality, has reversed its previous dynamics and seems to exhibit a growth pattern based upon inequality reduction, while still relying heavily upon the strong international demand for commodities. To resolve these paradoxes, a common socioeconomic approach is proposed, based upon the concept of inequality regimes. It is then applied to investigate the durability and likelihood of such a U-turn for Latin America. Conventional interpretations stress the universality of the mechanisms which widen individual inequalities within each nation-state but reduce the hierarchy of national standards of living. This analysis, however, concludes that Asia, North America, Europe and Latin America do not follow the same trajectory at all, since they have developed contrasting regimes of inequality that co-evolve and are largely complementary at the world level. This could be an alternative to the hypothesis of an irreversible globalization of inequality. As a consequence, the future of more inclusive Latin American economies depends on the interaction between new domestic democratic advances and the reconfiguration of the international economy.

The paper discusses the process of mapping environmental conflicts in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, highlighting the epistemological differences between the concepts of conflicts and impacts. By focusing on the case of mining registered in the map, it analyzes the effects of abstract global ideas upon politically-grounded processes in Brazil. It reveals how global environmental policies and strategies related to consensus building are presented as solutions to environmental conflicts and interrogates how such strategies, driven by transnational financial institutions, have been adopted by Brazilian agencies in turn producing depoliticizing effects (i.e. shifting the focus from rights to interests). If participation has been a key concept within a global sustainability paradigm, and one that seemingly responds well to calls for democracy in countries like Brazil, negotiation is the medium through which participation (therefore democracy/the political) must occur. Yet in a process typical of coloniality of knowledge and power, dissent and alterity are sidelined, perpetuating processes of environmental inequalities.

In this paper I sketch the contours of a research program which draws on the insights of both institutionalist theories of long term economic change and world system analysis in order to analyze the many ways in which national and global inequalities interact. While the political economy approach developed in the research program of Acemoglu and Robinson has provided important insights on the relationship between national inequalities and economic growth, world system analysis focuses on interactions and asymmetries in the global economic and political system and their effects on national trajectories. On the one hand, I propose ways to make national institutions endogenous to international economic and political interaction via the influences these may have on national inequalities. The key to this discussion is the realization that the impact of international economic interaction on domestic distribution may be changed significantly, even in sign, if rights are weakly enforced and “grabbing” type redistributive activities are ubiquitous, especially inside and by the state. On the other hand, I explore the gains from looking at the world system as an institutional system, applying ideas developed by Acemoglu and Robinson, and North, Wallis and Weingast to analyze inequalities and asymmetries in countries to the entire globe. Here, both the question of whether a global elite coalition is to be defined as a group of countries or as a network of global elites in states, business and media and the question of how the international institutional order limits access to global political and economic resources are central.