APPROACHES TO SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE Decades of Change THE SOCIAL LIFE OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES IN CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICA Edited by MARGIT YSTANES and ISELIN ÅSEDOTTER STRØNEN 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 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. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover photo © peeterv / iStock. All rights reserved. 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 Editors Margit Ystanes University of Bergen Bergen, Norway Iselin Åsedotter Strønen University of Bergen and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) Bergen, Norway This book is dedicated to the numerous people across Latin America who resist and struggle against social inequalities every day. vii 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. A cknowledgements 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 ix c ontents 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 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 xi CONTENTS Part V Postscript 273 12 Postscript 275 Sian Lazar Index 283 xiii 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. Sérgio Costa is Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Latin American Studies and Institute of Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin. He is a cospokesperson of desiguALdades.net, Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America, and spokesperson of the Merian International Centre Conviviality in Unequal Societies. His disci- plinary interests are political sociology, comparative sociology and con- temporary social theory. He has specialised in democracy and cultural difference, racism and antiracism, as well as social inequalities and transna- tional politics. His most recent book publication is Global Entangled Inequalities: Conceptual Debates and Evidence from Latin America (co- editor). For more details, see: http://www.lai.fu-berlin.de/en/homep- ages/costa/index.html c ontributing A uthors xiv CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Michele de Lavra Pinto has a PhD in History and Politics from CPDOC/ FundaçãoGetúlio Vargas (FGV/RJ), a Master’s in Social Anthropology and licentiate degree in Social Science from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil. She has edited the books Youth, Consumption and Education 1,2,3 and 4 and the book Consumption and Sociabilities: Spaces, Meanings and Reflections . Her research centres mainly on the areas of consumption anthropology and economic anthropology. Sian Lazar is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research focuses on citizenship, social movements and collective politics more broadly in Latin America, especially Argentina and Bolivia. She is the author of El Alto, Rebel City. Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia (2008), and The Social Life of Politics. Ethics, Kinship and Union Activism in Argentina (2017), among other publications. Pedro Mendes Loureiro holds a BA in Economics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil) and an MSc in Economics from the University of Campinas (Unicamp, Brazil). He is an Economics PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London, researching the left-of-centre governments in Latin America (the “Pink Tide”). This research project seeks to unpack the advances and limitations of their economic and social policies, focusing on the politicisation of shifts in class inequality and capital accumulation. His other research interests include heterodox theoretical frameworks (Marxist, post-Keynesian, institutionalist), state theory, inter- disciplinary and pluralist approaches, mixed methods, financialisation and Latin American economic history. Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard is an associate professor at the University of Bergen, Department of Social Anthropology. Her research focuses on informal economies under neoliberal regimes, gender, inequalities, cos- mologies and Andean conceptualisations of nature. Based on research in Peru since the 1990s, articles of Ødegaard have appeared in journals such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , Ethnos Journal of Anthropology , Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Borderlands Studies and Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine , among others. She is the author of Mobility, Markets and Indigenous Socialities: Contemporary Migration in the Peruvian Andes and has contributed with research-based chapters in the volumes Contested Powers: The Politics of Energy and Development in Latin America (University of Chicago Press 2015) and xv CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera studied anthropology (Universidad de los Andes—Colombia) and political science (FreieUniversität Berlin). Currently, she is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Universidad Nacional de Colombia—Medellin Campus. Prior to relocating to Colombia, Lirio was a postdoc researcher at the desigual- dades.net Research Network at the Freie Universität Berlin. She researches urban violence, marginality, contemporary prison and incarceration, and Central America migration. In the latter, she has researched Palestinian migration to Honduras and their emergence as an economic elite, as well as Honduran women fleeing gender violence and crime in their home country. She has carried out fieldwork in Honduras and Colombia. Her current research focuses on urban politics, planning, and gender in Medellin, Colombia. Celina Myrann Sørbøe has a Master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Oslo. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo, and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. Sørbøe has lived and conducted fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro for two years between 2012 and 2016, eight months of which she lived in Rocinha (four months in 2012 and four months in 2016). Astrid B. Stensrud holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo. She currently has a postdoctoral position at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, as part of the project “Overheating: The Three Crises of Globalization”. Having done ethnographic research in the Peruvian Andes since 2001, her current research interests include political practices, difference and inequality, environment-human relations, climate change, water management, glo- balisation and the state. The PhD dissertation focused on entrepreneur- ial activities and animistic practices in a working-class neighbourhood in Cusco, Peru. Stensrud’s current postdoctoral project examines responses to climate change, water politics and identity politics in the Majes-Colca watershed in Arequipa, Peru. Iselin Åsedotter Strønen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and affiliated researcher at the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway. She has done extensive field research xvi CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS in Venezuela since 2005, focusing on the relationship between the urban popular sectors and the Venezuelan state in the context of the Bolivarian process. Thematically, she has explored issues such as participatory poli- tics, gender, state transformations, oil culture, consumption, corruption, poverty and inequality. Her latest publications include Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela: The Revolutionary Petro-State (Palgrave, 2017), and Everyday Crafting of the Bolivarian State: Lower-Level Public Officials and Grass Root Activism in Venezuela, which appeared in Latin American Perspectives . Strønen is also involved in ethnographic research in Angola and Brazil. Margit Ystanes is postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen. She obtained her PhD from the University of Bergen in 2011, with the dissertation Precarious Trust: Problems of Managing Self and Sociality in Guatemala . Ystanes’ current work investigates the use of sporting mega-events as a tool for urban and economic development in Rio de Janeiro. In particular, she focuses on the use of forced evictions, and the resistance against them, as well as their impact upon social relationships and stated aims of poverty reduction and urban integration. Ystanes’ work includes the co-edited volume (with Vigdis Broch-Due) Trusting and Its Tribulations: Interdisciplinary Engagements with Intimacy, Sociality and Trust and the documentary Dirty Games: Olympic Evictions in Rio de Janeiro (co-directed with José Alejandro Huidobro Goya, 2017). xvii l ist of P hotos Photo 4.1 Interconnected worlds: as Rio prepared to host the 2016 Olympics, the hashtag #cidadeolympica, used by the city administration for propaganda purposes, was inscribed onto the urban landscape as a physical manifestation of the interconnection between the virtual and “real life” (Photo: Margit Ystanes) 88 Photo 4.2 Graffiti in Vila Autódromo shows that the residents consider the confiscation of their neighbourhood as a transfer of public land to private actors: “When there are no more public areas to sell, they will sell the favelas. Who will protest?” (Photo: Margit Ystanes) 97 Photo 7.1 Statue of Simón Bolívar in Paseo de los Próceres in Caracas. Note the wall carvings behind him. Bolívar liberated Venezuela and several of the surrounding countries from the Spanish Crown. He was from a wealthy creole family, and driven by his political ambitions and his (for the time) progressive, egalitarian views, he split off from his class background. This is also what has given him such mythical qualities in the context of the Bolivarian process (Photo by the author) 165 Photo 7.2 Typical barrio homes (Photo by the author) 173 Photo 7.3 Gated mansions in an affluent neighbourhood in the east of Caracas (Photo by the author) 174 Photo 7.4 Labour Day in Western Caracas, May 1, 2011 (Photo by the author) 176 xviii LIST OF PHOTOS Photo 10.1 ‘New Hope’ ( Nueva Esperanza ) is the name of one the marketplaces in Villa El Pedregal and the name of the association of vendors and merchants (asociación de comerciantes) who work there (Photo by the author) 241 Photo 10.2 Day labourers ( peones ) harvesting potatoes on the land of a settler farmer ( colono ) (Photo by the author) 247 xix l ist of f igure Fig 3.1 Average monthly earnings in Brazil, 2012 (average earnings from the main occupation of the population over 16 years old) calculated for the intersection of inequality factors: sex, race, and region (figures in Brazilian Reais as of September 2012) NE Northeast, CW Center West 67 PART I Social Lives, Economic Ideas 3 © The Author(s) 2018 M. Ystanes, I.Å. Strønen (eds.), The Social Life of Economic Inequalities in Contemporary Latin America , Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61536-3_1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Iselin Åsedotter Strønen and Margit Ystanes Latin America has for long been the most unequal continent in the world. At the turn of the millennium, voters rebelled against this situation by ushering left-wing and centre-left political candidates into power in country after country. The so-called Pink Tide emerged, and hopes of more equal, economically self-supported societies sprung up all over the continent. After decades of neoliberal policies, increasing inequality and escalating protest, questions of redistribution and social and economic rights were now finally central to the political agenda. In that process, socio-cultural hierarchies and their interconnections with economic inequalities were also forcefully contested and challenged. Ever since the colonial encounter between pre-Hispanic peoples and European conquistadors, Latin American social orders have been built on a foundation of inequality. This foundation is the outcome of a complex interplay between economic and political relations, social imaginaries and notions of “otherness”, kinship and morality—usually conceptualised as class, ethnicity, “race” and gender. Thus, both historically and today, I.Å. Strønen University of Bergen and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen, Norway M. Ystanes ( * ) University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway