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Coquimbo 4th – 9th of January 2020
*This edition was canceled due to strong protests in Chile in October 2019.
LASI 2020 will focus on what we term Haunting Social Issues in Latin America: Theoretical Innovation and Interdisciplinary Approaches. The pressing social and political issues that jeopardize people’s well-being and threaten to undermine contemporary democratic coexistence are not exactly new to the region. While the specificities and theoretical terminology we adopt to describe them change, the region has arguably been haunted by the persistence of the same social issues for decades: concerns with climate change and the social impact of extractive economies can, for instance, be traced back to an ongoing concern with the region’s dependent position on resource extraction in a global economy and its impact on local communities and indigenous people. Similarly, it might be asserted that questions regarding plurinationalism and interculturalism are but current phrasings of how scholars and policymakers have approached the continent’s longstanding questions of diversity, demands for indigenous autonomy and questions of coexistence within the nation-state. In the same vein, the continent has for decades been among the most violent in the world and scholars have continuously worked to relate social or criminal violence with processes of urbanization, segregation, and poverty as well as to situate these forms of violence in relation to past and present forms of state violence and authoritarianism.
In other words, while global contingencies, without a doubt, present new topics and while social movements certainly push forward novel concerns and agendas—including gender equality and identity-based demands, for example—we ask how these concerns relate to larger historical trends in the hemisphere and globally? What has changed, and which elements remain the same? How does the continent’s changing geopolitical position in relation to emergent global powers, such as China, install new realities in relation to the continued influence of the United States? How do regional concerns, such as those mentioned above, relate to broader global processes?
This focus on continuity and change seems particularly relevant if we are to provide empirically grounded knowledge and relevant analysis of contemporary pressing issues that haunt the continent: How can we elaborate relevant explanatory frameworks of the cycle from the so-called “socialism of the 21st Century”—an idea that has marked national politics in several of region’s countries in recent decades—to the current resurgence of authoritarianism and neo-fascism? What are the relevant questions we should ask, and what other global and historical contexts should we consider in order to properly comprehend the current scenario? What has changed and what continuities are there from authoritarian legacies of the 1970s, for instance? Similar questions could be posed with regard to a series of haunting social issues: the persistence of populist politics and its relation to contemporary democratic state formation and “alternative” forms of political participation; with continuing issues of poverty and an increasing inequality, it remains pertinent to ask how everyday strategies of social mobility and practices of survival among the poor unfold in the contemporary era of neoliberalism.
Adopting a critical and comparative perspective (within the region and globally) as well as a critical review of social science theory and practice, we invite scholars and students of each workshop to reflect on specific “haunting social issues” with these concerns in mind. Rather than simply asking what is new and what is old, we are interested in the ways in which new and old registers intersect and the effects these articulations generate. In the specific workshops we will explore cutting-edge theoretical perspectives on a series of “haunting issues” and consider which methodological approaches might generate new knowledge and facilitate work that has a tangible impact on people’s everyday lives and in policy-making arenas. Finally, we invite scholars and students to consider ways in which interdisciplinary collaborations might enrich these processes.
LASI is an initiative launched in Chile by the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) and Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile.
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LASI-Summer School 2020 is an invitation to learn about and reflect upon borders, frontiers and circulation through keynotes, plenary activities and a series of specialized workshops that go in-depth with specific topics and theories.
The summer school has duration of 6 days in which thirty students and ten professors will participate in an experience of mutual learning, exchange, and knowledge generation. LASI is organized as a combination of plenary key-note lectures and smaller intensive workshops that focus on specific issues, with about 8 – 10 students in each group. The groups will be organized around specific research themes, and each group will be supervised by a tutor whose own research specialization falls within that theme. This tutor will be assisted by a second person from the host institutions. The Summer School organizers will work to achieve a balance of research themes, covering as much as possible the many disciplines within the social sciences.
It is expected that each student will participate in two workshops, and reading lists and texts will be distributed well in advance. All participants are expected to have engaged in a critical reading of the texts before arriving in Coquimbo and to elaborate a short review on how the texts and topics relate to their own research. The principal idea is that within each of the six groups of workshops, participants will receive specialist instruction in a particular research area, and that, through this process, members of the group will design empirical studies, advance in their writing, and/or address key empirical and theoretical questions in their research projects.
The official language of LASI is English and participants should be able to read texts and engage in presentations and discussions in this language. However, given the Spanish speaking context in which LASI is located, English speaking students should be prepared for a setting where Spanish is the mother tongue of a significant part of the participants and local interlocutors. Local instructors and some of the international instructors speak and/or understand both languages, and the instructors will make an effort to generate an inclusive environment for all students and facilitate a fruitful communication.
While the specialized workshops will be held in English some of the afternoon activities with local interlocutors will be in Spanish and basic knowledge of Spanish is therefore preferable.
Application Process:
LASI – summer school invite graduate students from social sciences and humanities to apply.
Fee: $50O USD. This fee includes all the described academic activities and the supplies needed; Transport (by air) from Santiago to Coquimbo; housing and most meals during the stay in Coquimbo. Students coming from outside Santiago or Chile must arrange for transport to Santiago de Chile themselves.
Applications must be submitted by November 14th 2019 at the latest through the online application system. The selected participants will be notified by November 30th 2019 onwards.
Email: ciir@uc.cl
