Suchergebnisse

A reviewer confronted with fourteen new books on the Latin-American economy inevitably seeks a common theme on which to hang his remarks, in the hope that this will make sense of his labours. Let it be confessed immediately that diligent search has failed to reveal any such unity in these volumes. Indeed, on the safe assumption that they represent a random selection from the rapidly growing literature on the subject, they might almost be taken as evidence of a diversity of approach. An alternative strategy, therefore, is to argue the existence of central doctrines in the literature on Latin- American development in the last twenty-five years, and to relate to them the literature under review.

Recent explanations of the crisis in Uruguay have tended to focus either on the inadequacies of economic policy in the 1950s, or on the financial and moral implications of the social legislation of Uruguay. This article puts forward an alternative interpretation of the crisis, finding the fundamental causes of it in the manner in which modernizing forces were reconciled to traditional structures in the early decades of this century. The first section discusses the nature of the economic crisis, its immediate causes and some of its political repercussions. The second analyses Uruguay's reputation for political and social modernity. The third suggests the origins of the crisis in the policies of José Batlle y Ordóñez and the consequences they have had. The sections, therefore, broadly correspond to three different perspectives on the crisis–the first economic, the second political, the third historical.

First published in 1984, this collection of twelve case studies examines the emergence of a free wage-labour force in all regions of the third world. Although the struggle and conflict through which the proletariat has achieved a degree of class consciousness is not neglected, the more dominant theme is that of the process and techniques which have created a working class on the capitalist periphery