Inequality and the Re-politicization of the Social in Latin America

Abstract

Social issues in Latin America have been de-politicized since the 1980s, the outcome of a conception of scarcity that ordered the prevailing focus on poverty. While questions of power could not be avoided later, due to the importance the inequality problematic had taken on, a perspective that impairs understanding conflict has been imposed. The present text –based on an alternative proposal for taking on inequality in which power and conflict occupy central positions– seeks to re-politicize the social. Two problem-sets are to be considered. The first relates to the dynamics of profound disempowerment that have arisen from a model of globalized accumulation, a pillar of the (neo)liberal order. It has led to a not-insignificant number of secondary sectors being pushed into social marginalization. Despite this, the second problem-set concerns these sectors’ responses in resistance to disempowerment as well as disempowerment’s partial reversal, notably in the form of violence, migration, religiosity and other collective actions. The essay ends with reflections on the pertinence of considering inequality from this perspective as a means of seeing how the social –vis-à-vis the (neo)liberal order– has widely and deeply re-politicized.