Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres: Latin American Paths
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Sussex Academic Press
- Publish date: 04/19/1998
Description:
This book shows how different collective identities in Latin America shape the access to, and participation in, the public domain. It significantly enhances our understanding of the historical experience of societies marked by social, political and intellectual struggles as each shapes a collective identity according to competing visions of modernity.
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Collective identities were often supposed to constitute a primordial component which would dissolve on the way to modernity, under the impact of universalistic pressures, social convergence and globalization. More recently, a new analytical perspective (usually associated with the work of Benedict Anderson and of Ernest Gellner in their respective studies of nationalism) became dominant, treating collective identities as a modern creation: the "imagined communities" shaped by modern nation-states. S. N. Eisenstadt concludes the volume with a chapter entitled: "The Comparative Significance of the Latin American Experience".
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