Dreaming of Freedom in the Americas: Four Minds and A Name

The full text of the inaugural lecture of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, given by Professor James Dunkerley on 25 October 2004

Un enfoque fluido y dinámico

El Caribe colombiano: una historia regional (1870-1950). Eduardo Posada Carbó. Banco de la República, El Ancora Editores, Santafé de Bogotá, 1998, 507 págs

Andres Bello and the Challenges of Spanish American Liberalism

Andrés Bello (1781-1865) is generally reckoned to be the foremost intellectual amongst opponents of the Spanish empire in the Americas after the Napoleonic Wars. This paper provides a synoptic account of Bello’s development as a scholar, politician and statesman from his early career as a servant of the crown in colonial Caracas, through his 19-year exile in London, to his prominent role in the institutional design and management of the young Chilean republic. The paper traces the historiographical treatment of Bello and the application of his cosmopolitan learning to the tasks of nineteenth-century state-building. It is suggested that his trajectory reflected a successful adaptation of liberal precepts to a conservative local social setting within a world order dominated by British promotion of free trad

Participation as Post-Fordist Politics: Demos, New Labour, and Science Policy

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift ‘from deficit to dialogue’ in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism

Mode of socio-economic development and occupational structure: the case of contemporary Russia

The given paper assumes the existence of a correlation between the occupational structure and the mode of social and economic development of a country. It is shown that the modern stage of development in advanced economies could be described by the post-industrial phase with (a) the specific proportions in the occupational structure (predominance of professional managers and technical experts); (b) particular nature of work and the corresponding extent of labor division according to specialization and qualification (highly skilled labor with broad specialization and a new criterion of creativity included within qualifications). Within the certain historical framework these indicators, combined onto the entire scheme, produce the criteria to distinct different types of socio-economic development and arrange them in consistent order. The analysis of occupational structure of Russian population shows that the reforms of 1990s have facilitated the process of deindustrialization alongside with the growth of semi- and low-skilled jobs. According to the scheme, Russia seems to have reached the stage of the development that is similar to one of the 1950–1960s in the USA and the Europe