CIPR | Center For Inter-American Policy & Research

Tulane University

Contesting Trade in Central America: Market Reform and Resistance

November 20th, 2015
4:00 PM

Location
100A Jones Hall, Greenleaf Conference Room

Please join us for a lecture by Dr. Rose J. Spalding, Professor of Political Science, DePaul University. Dr. Spalding will present her recent book Contesting Trade in Central America: Market Reform and Resistance (University of Texas, 2014). Refreshments will be served.

Contesting Trade analyzes the debate over the 2004 adoption of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by the United States, five Central American countries, and the Dominican Republic. It is the first book-length study to focus on the region’s decision and the resistance it generated from social movements. It draws on nearly two hundred interviews with representatives from government, business, civil society, and social movements to analyze the relationship between the advance of free market reform in Central America and the parallel rise of resistance movements. Dr. Spalding views this dynamic through the lens of Polanyi’s “double movement” theory, which posits that significant shifts toward market economics will trigger oppositional, self-protective social countermovements. Examining the negotiations, political dynamics, and agents involved in the passage of CAFTA, she argues it served as a high-profile symbol against which Central American oppositions could rally. This shows that post-neoliberal reform requires building sustainable and inclusive political coalitions that prioritize the quality of social bonds over raw economic freedom.

Rose J. Spalding received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has been at DePaul University since 1980, where she is Professor of Political Science, a department she chaired from 2000-2003. She also currently directs the university honors program. Her previous books include Capitalism and Revolution in Nicaragua and The Political Economy of Revolutionary Nicaragua. She is the author of numerous book chapters in edited volumes as well as scholarly articles, both in English and in Spanish, which have appeared in multiple journals including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, and Latin American Research Review, among others. Dr. Spalding is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Her current research focuses on mining conflicts in Central America.

To RSVP or for more information, please contact cipr@tulane.edu

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CIPR talk series Critical Issues in Democratic Governance to host political economist Dr. Katrina Burgess

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Join the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies in welcoming Dr. Katrina Burgess as part of the fall speaker series Critical Issues in Democratic Governance, on Friday, November 16, in 110A Jones Hall. Dr. Burgess will give a talk titled Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States.

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to cipr@tulane.edu.

Katrina Burgess (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Associate Professor of Political Economy of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is author of Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy, which won the 2006 Outstanding Book Award for the best publication on labor issues granted by the Section on Labor Studies and Class Relations of the Latin American Studies Association, and co-editor with Abraham F. Lowenthal of The California-Mexico Connection. She has also published numerous book chapters, as well as articles in World Politics, Latin American Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, South European Politics and Society, Comparative Political Studies, Politica y gobierno, and International Studies Review. Dr. Burgess has also served as Assistant Director of the U.S.-Mexico Project at the Overseas Development Council in Washington, D.C. and Associate Director of the California-Mexico Project at USC in Los Angeles.

Patterns of migrant engagement in politics back home cannot be understood without examining the ways in which homeland states reach out to their migrants. Since states engaged in what can be called diaspora-making are unable to deploy many of the tools of rule within their borders, they are especially reliant on the cultivation of loyalty. The agents, motives, and loyalty-cultivation strategies of diaspora-making have important implications for whether homeland parties mobilize voters abroad, as demonstrated by the contrasts between Mexico and the Dominican Republic.