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Understanding the military generation that transformed modern Chile.

Chilean soldiers in the twentieth century appear in most historical accounts, if they appear at all, as decontextualized figures or simply as a single man: Augusto Pinochet. In his incisive study The Pinochet Generation: The Chilean Military in the Twentieth Century, John R. Bawden provides compelling new insights into the era and posits that Pinochet and his men were responsible for two major transformations in Chile’s constitution as well as the political and economic effects that followed.

Determined to refocus what he sees as a “decontextualized paucity” of historical information on Chile’s armed forces, Bawden offers a new perspective to explain why the military overthrew the government in 1973 as well as why and how Chile slowly transitioned back to a democracy at the end of the 1980s. Standing apart from other views, Bawden insists that the Chilean military’s indigenous traditions and customs did more than foreign influences to mold their beliefs and behavior leading up to the 1973 coup of Salvador Allende.

Drawing from defense publications, testimonial literature, and archival materials in both the United States and Chile, The Pinochet Generation characterizes the lens through which Chilean officers saw the world, their own actions, and their place in national history. This thorough analysis of the Chilean services’ history, education, values, and worldview shows how this military culture shaped Chilean thinking and behavior, shedding light on the distinctive qualities of Chile’s armed forces, the military’s decision to depose Allende, and the Pinochet dictatorship’s resilience, repressiveness, and durability.

Bawden’s account of Chile’s vast and complex military history of the twentieth century will appeal to political scientists, historians, faculty and graduate students interested in Latin America and its armed forces, students of US–Latin American diplomacy, and those interested in issues of human rights.

The Chinese Communist Party has long depended on ideology to set the agenda, communicate its priorities, and legitimize its rule. The Pliant Public argues that for Chinese citizens, however, ideology is in short supply. Surveys show that public opinion is depolarized. Ordinary people have little sense of what ideological labels like “left” and “right” mean, and most of the people who put themselves on the right have the scale backwards. Since a depolarized public is ill-equipped to check the state, China’s leaders can make massive changes to government policy without triggering much backlash. 

But depolarization does not always strengthen the state. When citizens lack clear ideological commitments, it is easier for them to set aside their differences. If China’s leaders lost their performance legitimacy, then depolarization could facilitate a broader challenge to party rule.

The historic and increasing interdependence of the Latin American and U.S. economies makes an understanding of the political economies of Latin American nations particularly timely and important. After World War II, many nations initially implemented import substituting industrialization policies. Their outcomes, and the shift in policies, are related to the domestic policies and world economic conditions that led to government deficits, inflation, foreign borrowing, debt renegotiation, and renewed emphasis on common markets and other devices to stimulate trade and investment.

In The Political Economy of Latin America in the Postwar Period, important policy measures are evaluated, such as indexation of prices and contracts; special provisions for financing the government through the Central Bank; stabilization; and deregulation of the economy.

The introduction presents trends in Latin American growth and the factors that influence them. This is followed by parallel studies of the economic development of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru from 1945 to the mid-1990s. Noted experts bring their considerable experience to analyzing the content and impact of the economic theories that guided policymaking and their effects on output, income, and quality of life.

In this first overview of the Brazilian republican state based on extensive primary source material, Steven Topik demonstrates that well before the disruption of the export economy in 1929, the Brazilian state was one of the most interventionist in Latin America. This study counters the previous general belief that before 1930 Brazil was dominated by an export oligarchy comprised of European and North American capitalists and that only later did the state become prominent in the country’s economic development.

Topik examines the state’s performance during the First Republic (1889–1930) in four sectors—finance, the coffee trade, railroads, and industry. By looking at the controversies in these areas, he explains how domestic interclass and international struggles shaped policy and notes the degree to which the state acted relatively independently of civil society.

Topik’s primary concern is the actions of state officials and whether their decisions reflected the demands of the ruling class. He shows that conflicting interests of fractions of the ruling class and foreign investors gradually led to far greater state participation than any of the participants originally desired, and that the structure of the economy and of society—not the intentions of the actors—best explains the state’s economic presence.

Are the Mexican people the children of Moctezuma or the children of Cortés? This question, long the central problem of Mexican historians, Justo Sierra answered by saying, "The Mexicans are the sons of the two peoples, of the two races … to this we owe our soul."

Because Sierra recognized the dual parentage, he was able to view his country's history as an evolutionary process. Formed in both the indigenous past and the colonial past, the Mexican people, after three hundred years of slow and painful gestation, were finally born with the arrival of Independence. They came of age when the Reform, the Republic, and the nation achieved a single identity.

This classical synthesis, written on the eve of the Mexican Revolution, gave direction to the generation that furnished the Revolution's intellectual leaders. Although the author was Secretary of Public Instruction in the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Díaz, he was the first historian to show sympathy for the plight of the masses, and his book ends with the warning that political evolution has lost its way unless the result is freedom.

As Edmundo O'Gorman points out in an important essay on Mexican historiography, written especially for this edition, Sierra was also the first to write a history of his nation in a sincere endeavor to get at the truth, instead of shaping his account to prove a thesis or to preach some political faith. And yet, his work "owes its originality and its lasting merit to his vigorous interpretation of Mexico's history in the light of his convictions, of his keen insight, even of his fears." Though the chapters on the pre-Columbian Indian have been rendered obsolete by later archeological discoveries, the rest of the history is still valid and needs only to be brought up to date.

Since the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014, and with its consolidation of power in the 2019 general election, India has witnessed a significant realignment of its national politics and a shift toward the right of the political spectrum. The Politics of India under Modi provides a detailed overview of India’s political trends, economic prospects, and international relations in the twenty-first century.

This book is designed as a supplement and update for existing syllabi that trace India’s political economy from the birth of the republic to the quest for economic liberalization and great power status. Undergraduates and scholars interested in India’s foreign policy and political reform will find value in this timely book.

“The subject of this book is extremely compelling and important, as well as timely. BJP rule and the Modi regime, it is now clear, represent some critical turning points in Indian politics, which have yet to be analyzed in depth academically by experts. I see this book as a key first step in this process.”
-Rina Verma Williams, School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati

The population of Brazil increased tenfold, from 10 to over 100 million, between 1880 and 1980, nearly half of this increase occurring since the end of World War II. The Politics of Population in Brazil examines the attitudes toward population planning of Brazilian government officials and other elites—bishops, politicians, labor leaders, and business owners—in comparison with mass public opinion. The authors' findings that elites seriously underestimate the desire for family planning services, while the public views birth control as a basic issue, represent an important contribution on a timely issue.

A major reason for this disparity is that the elites tend to define the issue as a matter of national power and collective growth, and the public sees it as a bread-and-butter question affecting the daily lives of families. McDonough and DeSouza document not only the real gulf between elite and mass opinion but also the propensity of the elites to exaggerate this gap through their stereotyping of public opinion as conservative and disinterested in family planning.

Despite these differences, the authors demonstrate that population planning is less conflict ridden than many other controversies in Brazilian politics and probably more amenable to piecemeal bargaining than some earlier studies suggest. In part, this is because attitudes on the issue are not closely identified with opinions regarding left-versus-right disputes. In addition, for the public in general, religious sentiment affects attitudes toward family planning only indirectly. This separation, which reflects the historical lack of penetration of Brazilian society on the part of the church, further attenuates the issue's potential for galvanizing deep-seated antagonisms. As the authors note, this situation stands in contrast to the fierce debates that moral issues have generated in Spain and Ireland.

The study is noteworthy not only for its original approach—the incorporation of mass and elite data and the departure from the standard concerns with fertility determinants in population—but also for its sophisticated methodology and lucid presentation.

In the 1960s, when students everywhere were coming alive politically, and when the Latin American student activist in particular became as archetypal of radicalism as the Latin American dictator was of repression, Puerto Rican students remained strangely silent. With the exception of FUPI, a radical student group with only a small following, student political behavior conformed to that of Puerto Rican society in general—center to conservative.

Historically, Puerto Rico has been economically and politically dominated first by Spain and then by the United States. But unlike other colonial dependencies in Latin America, Puerto Rico has never rebelled. Puerto Rican politics centers on the status issue—independence, statehood, or association for the island. But no legendary victories, no heroic defeats offer a battle cry for nationalists, leftists, and independistas. Overwhelming foreign influence in the Church, the schools, the economy, and eventually the mass media deprived the island of any strong indigenous institutions that might foster nationalism. Militancy lies outside the mainstream of Puerto Rican tradition.

Against this historical and cultural backdrop, Arthur Liebman closely examines the social background and political activity of students at the Rio Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico. Based on personal interviews with students, faculty, and administrators, as well as on a survey of the student body, his study reveals the strength of political inheritance among university students in Puerto Rico. The student left is small and weak largely because the left of the parents’ generation is small and weak. To date, Puerto Rican students have been the children of their parents and of their society.

Within a university that emphasizes practicality, the nonmilitant majority of the students study education, business, engineering, and medicine, being trained to participate in and to reap the rewards of the status quo. Student leftists, in the minority, generally study history, economics, sociology, and law—fields that open wider perspectives on their society and its problems and offer no immediate guarantee of its benefits. Brighter, less religious, and more dissatisfied with their role as a student, the student leftists stand apart from their cohort at the University of Puerto Rico. Like their adult counterparts, they are an anomaly in an acquisitive, relatively conservative society.

Between 1890 and 1930, the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, experienced a liberal revolution and a worker's movement—key elements in shaping the Ecuadorian national identity. In this book, O. Hugo Benavides examines these and other pivotal features in shaping Guayaquilean identity and immigrant identity formation in general in transnational communities such as those found in New York City.

Turn-of-the-century Ecuador witnessed an intriguing combination of transformations: the formation of a national citizenship; extension of the popular vote to members of a traditional underclass of Indians and those of African descent; provisions for union organizing while entering into world market capitalist relations; and a separation of church and state that led to the legalization of secular divorces. Assessing how these phenomena created a unique cultural history for Guayaquileans, Benavides reveals not only a specific cultural history but also a process of developing ethnic attachment in general. He also incorporates a study of works by Medardo Angel Silva, the Afro-Ecuadorian poet whose singular literature embodies the effects of Modernism's arrival in a locale steeped in contradictions of race, class, and sexuality.

Also comprising one of the first case studies of Raymond Williams's hypothesis on the relationship between structures of feeling and hegemony, this is an illuminating illustration of the powerful relationships between historically informed memories and contemporary national life.

In The Politics of the Trail, Löwenheim confronts this tension by focusing on his encounters with three places along the trail: the separation fence between Israel and the Palestinians; the ruins of the Palestinian village Qalunya, demolished in 1948; and the trail connecting the largest 9/11 memorial site outside of the U.S. with a top-secret nuclear-proof bunker for the Israeli cabinet. He shares the stories of the people he meets along the way and considers how his own subjectivity is shaped by the landscape and culture of conflict. Moreover, he deconstructs, challenges, and resists the concepts and institutions that constitute such a culture and invites conversation about the idea of conflict as a culture.

The large member states of the European Union have clear priorities when it comes to EU-level decisions, while the small member states hold veto power when decisions need to be taken unanimously. This book focuses on the potential of middle powers in EU decision-making using the example of Romania's relations with Central Asia. The author examines how Romania's diplomatic activities as a medium-sized member state - and as a newer member - can affect EU foreign policy. Ana-Maria-Andreea Anghelescu conducted a quantitative study of three hard power indices, as well as the soft presence dimension of the Elcano Index of Global Presence. The latter includes tourism, sport, culture, science, education, information, and migration. The statistical results were complemented by qualitative field research in Kyrgyzstan involving all five Central Asian countries.

The volume’s analysis concludes that Romania underperforms in using its robust hard faculties to benefit the country's soft capabilities. Central Asia is a region where the EU must work hard to maintain its influence. By strengthening their presence in the region beyond bilateral partnerships, the EU's middle powers can play a key role in asserting Europe's pragmatic and normative interests.T

Mexico and the United States each have a constitution and a federal system of government. This fact has led many historians to assume that the Mexican system of government, established in the 1820s, is an imitation of the U.S. model. But it is not.

First published in Spanish in 1955 and now translated by the author and amplified with new material, this interpretation of the independence movement tells the true story of Mexico's transition from colonial status to federal state. Benson traces the Mexican government's beginning to events in Spain in 1808–1810, when provincial juntas, or deputations, were established to oppose Napoleon's French rule and govern the provinces of Spain and its New World dominions during the Spanish monarch's imprisonment.

It was the provincial deputation, not the United States federal system, that provided the model for the state legislative bodies that were eventually formed after Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. This finding—the result of years of painstaking archival research—strongly confirms the independence of Mexico's political development from U.S. influence. Its importance to a study of Mexican history cannot be overstated.

The last three decades of the twentieth century brought relentless waves of death squads, political kidnappings, and other traumas to the people of Guatemala. Many people fled the country to escape the violence. Yet, at the same moment, a popular movement for justice brought together unlikely bands of behind-the-scenes heroes, blurring ethnic, geographic, and even class lines.

The Quiet Revolutionaries is drawn from interviews conducted by Frank Afflitto in the early 1990s with more than eighty survivors of the state-sanctioned violence. Gathered under frequently life-threatening circumstances, the observations and recollections of these inspiring men and women form a unique perspective on collective efforts to produce change in politics, law, and public consciousness. Examined from a variety of perspectives, from sociological to historical, their stories form a rich ethnography. While it is still too soon to tell whether stable, long-term democracy will prevail in Guatemala, the successes of these fascinating individuals provide a unique understanding of revolutionary resistance.

How the U.S. empire-state transformed post-1945 Afghanistan into a key site for reimagining development
 

Established in 1961 by President Kennedy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is often viewed as an extension of the security state, playing a constant role on the ground in Afghanistan since the early sixties. The Quiet Violence of Empire traces USAID’s long and bloody history of development work in the region, revealing an empirically rich account of the transnational entanglements of imperialism and racial capitalism.

Wesley Attewell carefully analyzes three chronological moments of development as counterinsurgency in action: the Helmand Valley Project, the Soviet–Afghan conflict, and the post-9/11 occupation in Afghanistan. These case studies expose how USAID’s very public commitment to bringing seemingly inclusionary forms of self-help, technical assistance, and market development to Afghanistan has been undergirded by longer-standing infrastructures of race war and racial management. Attewell exposes how one of the net effects of USAID’s development mission to Afghanistan has been to constrain the life chances of Afghan beneficiaries while simultaneously diverting development capital back to U.S. contractors, deftly underscoring the notion of development as a form of slow violence.

The Quiet Violence of Empire asks the critical question: how might we refuse the ruse of USAID and its endlessly deferred promise of development? Thinking relationally across the fields of human geography, global studies, and critical ethnic studies, it uncovers the explicitly racial underpinnings of international development theory and praxis.

40th anniversary edition of a rediscovered classic

When Pubah and Lazy LaRue move to a houseboat on an Oregon river, they find themselves immersed in a life filled with whimsical adventures. Even though their dwelling is ancient, tippy, and in need of endless repairs, their affection for it, for river life, and for one another does not wane. These linked stories teem with life and with love for their friends and for new neighbors—other houseboat people, ducks, beavers, muskrats, and all else the river has to offer. Lazy LaRue writes stories; Pubah is an apprentice electrician. Their world encompasses the mundane and the fanciful—from lassoing logs and rewiring a houseboat to dreaming of new inventions and traveling in a hot air balloon.

Filled with humor, optimism, and playful exploration, the stories in these pages bring warmth and inspiration. Illustrations by Mary Narkiewicz capture the quirky quality of the tales with splendid charm and add to the dreamlike quality of the storytelling. A new afterword by the author reflects on writing The Riverhouse Stories and on the cultural climate of the time, showing how much the world has changed over four decades.  
 

This is the first book in English which provides comprehensive analysis and documentary history on the Roundtable talks, the major event of the “negotiated revolution” of Hungary. These negotiations occurred during the summer months of 1989 between the representatives of the Communist Party, the Opposition Roundtable, and the so-called Third Side (which brought some pro-Communist satellite organizations together).

The authors offer much more than just a detailed account on the negotiations: they also put the process of constitutional revolution into a comparative and historical perspective. They believe that the Roundtable Talks amounted to much more than just a sideshow and in fact they constituted the hub of the revolutionary transformation.

Between 1850 and 1930, Latin America's integration into the world economy through the export of raw materials transformed the region. This encounter was nearly as dramatic as the conquistadors' epic confrontation with Native American civilizations centuries before. An emphasis on foreign markets and capital replaced protectionism and self-sufficiency as the hemisphere's guiding principles. In many ways, the means employed during this period to tie Latin America more closely to western Europe and North America resemble strategies currently in vogue. Much can be learned from analyzing the first time that Latin Americans embraced export-led growth.

This book focuses on the impact of three key export commodities: coffee, henequen, and petroleum. The authors concentrate on these rather than on national economies because they illustrate more concretely the interaction between the environment, natural and human resources, and the world economy. By analyzing how different products spun complex webs of relationships with their respective markets, the essays in this book illuminate the tensions and contradictions found in the often conflictive relationship between the local and the global, between agency and the not-so-invisible hand. Ultimately, the contributors argue that the results of the "second conquest" were not one-sided as Latin Americans and foreigners together forged a new economic order—one riddled with contradictions that Latin America is still attempting to resolve today.

The Selfie Machine offers novel insight into personalized communication practices in the digital age through the medium of the selfie. While the selfie has achieved notoriety due to pop-psychology accounts of Narcissism-related selfie "disorders," this book examines the selfie as a mode of meaning making and self-presentation that includes not just still images, but also short videos, hashtag practices and economies of liking and following. In taking India as the starting point of its investigation, The Selfie Machine inverts the "West-then-the-rest" model of understanding global digital media practices. The book considers selfie culture’s impact on personal and public digital practices and trends—ranging from cellphone markets, to influencer entrepreneurship and microcelebrity, to the conduct of politics and protest. In doing so, it not only offers an expanded definition of selfies in digital media culture, but also demonstrates how “global” digital media (including selfies) cannot be understood as a monolith.