Suchergebnisse

Dreams of Latin American integration are as old as decolonization itself, with Simón Bolivar's vision of a league of American republics the first of myriad attempts at multilateral engagement. Indeed, the Americas region has challenged Europe at least nominally in its attempts at regionalism and integration. This article investigates the case of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the most recent and arguably ambitious attempt at Latin American cooperation. The article adopts a "two‐step" approach to evaluate the extent to which CELAC is able to achieve its goals. Drawing first on neoliberal institutionalist research in global governance, it argues that CELAC's structural weaknesses and the conflicting interests of its core members raise doubts about its ability to accomplish its wide‐ranging material ambitions, including economic integration and promotion of development. It then counters that to focus solely on CELAC's inabilities to facilitate material cooperation would be to overlook the other purposes and functions of the institution, which are continuing to construct, consolidate, and frame a regional identity. Following recent constructivist research, CELAC is framed as a vehicle for the articulation of a shared Latin American identity; it arises out of a continuing and mutually constituting process of region construction and recognition.

Compassion is a key moral emotion of liberal modernity. Traditionally, it is seen as an unproblematic moral compass, both theoretically and ethico-politically. This applies especially in the case of humanitarian action, which hinges on the compassionate impulses of individuals – to care, to give and to act – in the face of distant suffering. The article takes a critical approach to compassion. It argues that humanitarian action is incomprehensible outside of a general theory of how compassion structures the encounter between the suffering object of relief and the caring public. It does this by elaborating a pragmatist and eclectic approach to compassion in which seemingly internal affective responses have a socio-political existence and are already enabled by productive power, in particular by socially circulated and embodied narrative frames. By engaging a representative sample of NGO imagery related to the 2010 post-earthquake response in Haiti, the article illustrates not only how specific narrative frames seek to both elicit and govern the ways of feeling compassion, but also how these aesthetic and emotional practices are ethico-politically problematic in portraying distant sufferers and facilitating action. As a result, the benevolent self-image of compassion becomes circumspect. The article concludes by exploring two alternative avenues for compassion and caring.