This text shows how different collective identities in Latin America shape the access to, and participation in, the public domain. Collective identities were previously thought to be primordial components that would not survive the modern world, but now theorists think of them as a modern creation.

Illustrates how different collective identities in Latin America have access to, and participation in, the public domain, and examines the historical experience of societies marked by social, political, and intellectual struggles as each shapes a collective identity according to competing visions of modernity. Subjects include patriotism and the nation in colonial Spanish America, human rights violations and the reshaping of collective identities, and Latin American intellectuals and collective identity. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book examines the emergence of (and limitations to) a common European public sphere and the advantages and problems surrounding this development.

This book of collected essays by Laurence Whitehead, an eminent scholar of Latin America, explores the structures and influences that bind together the region, shedding light on this vast and rapidly changing culture zone.

The new democracies of the Southern Cone have publicly professed to reject and condemn the uses of the state power in various forms against citizens under military rule, thus dissociating themselves from their predecessors. And yet the experiences of military rule have become a grim legacy, raising major issues and dilemmas to the forefront of the public agenda. The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay analyses in a systematic and comparative way the struggles and debates, the institutional paths and crises that took place in these societies following redemocratization in the 1980s and 1990s, as they confronted the legacy of violations committed under previous authoritarian governments and as the democratic administrations tried to balance normative principles and political contingency. The book also traces how these trends affected the development of politics of oblivion and memory and the restructuring of collective identity and solidarity following redemocratization. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. The series will concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series will primarily be Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia.

Latin America is a region made up of multiple states with a diversity of races, ethnicities, and cultures. In 'Transnational Perspectives on Latin America', Luis Roniger argues that a regional perspective is significant for understanding this part of the Western hemisphere. He claims that geopolitical, sociological, and cultural trends molded a contiguity of influences, shaping a transnational arena of connected histories, cross-border interactions, and shared visions, complementing the process of separate nation-state formation.--

Nationalism in the New World brings together work by scholars from the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe to discuss the common problem of how the nations of the Americas grappled with the basic questions of nationalism: Who are we? How do we imagine ourselves as a nation? Debates over the origins and meanings of nationalism have emerged at the forefront of the humanities and social sciences over the past two decades. However, these discussions have been mostly about nations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or Africa. In addition, their focus is usually on the violence spawned by ethnic and religious strains of nationalism, which have been largely absent in the Americas. The contributors to this volume "Americanize" the conversation on nationalism. They ask how the countries of the Americas fit into the larger world of nations and in what ways they present distinctive forms of nationhood. Such questions are particularly important because, as the editors write, "the American nations that came into being in the wake of revolutions that shook the Atlantic world beginning in 1776 provided models of what the modern world might become." American nations were among the first nation-states to emerge on the world stage. As former colonies with multiethnic populations, American nations could not logically rest their claim to nationhood on ancient bonds of blood and history. Out of a world of empires and colonies the independent states of the Americas forged new nations based on a varied mix of modern civic ideals instead of primordial myths, on ethnic and religious diversity instead of common descent, and on future hopes rather than ancient roots.

This study consists of eight essays critical of the currently dominant guns and germs theories in the historiography of European colonial conquest causes. Other methods of conquest, notably communication control, were as vital as firepower and disease importation, and motives were often more important than methods.

The aim of this book is to establish a sociological understanding of dyslexia within adulthood. The research explores the effects dyslexia has on the lives of individuals within an educational and employment context. A feature of the study is that it draws from literature within the social model of disability rather than employing the psycho- educational approach that dominates contemporary research. The study has placed dyslexia within the field of disability studies in an attempt to understand how this syndrome can be interpreted through the concept of disabling barriers. In order to explore dyslexia within the field of disability studies the book employs a biographical narrative approach. The book discusses the importance of identifying and supporting people with dyslexia within education and employment. By acknowledging that dyslexia is affected by issues of socio- economic status, the research has broadened the debate in relation to labelling individuals within education. The study has developed a pro-labelling approach based on evidence from the social and educational perspectives in order to represent the voices of participants within this study.

The reception of the ‘discovery’, conquest and colonisation of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of imagining by two diametrically different groups: literate, and in some cases erudite Europeans, and a vanquished native nobility. The former endeavoured to make sense of Spain’s (and Portugal’s) ‘marvellous possessions’ in the New World with the limited conceptual tools at their disposal, the latter to construct a colonial identity based on their shared ancestral memory while incorporating elements from the even more wondrous Hispanic culture that had overwhelmed them.