From Sarmiento to Borges: The Construction of an Intellectual Lineage in the Magazine Punto de vista

This article analyses the revision of the Argentine intellectual tradition demonstrated in the magazine Punto de vista throughout its first nineteen issues, published during the last Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983). From Sarmiento and the generation of 1837 to Borges and the Sur generation, the reassessment of Argentine intellectuals' legacies set out by editors of Punto de vista was an explicit attempt to insert the magazine into a recognised intellectual lineage. At the same time, it responded to a search for identity prompted by the critical and repressive context in which the magazine was first published

En torno a la desilusión argentina On Argentine disillusionment

Con base en una revisión de la bibliografía que aborda el tema del fracaso argentino, y tomando en consideración las obras de cinco intelectuales que fueron, de alguna manera, especialistas en nombrar "los males del país" -Lucas Ayarragaray, Leopoldo Lugones, Benjamín Villafañe, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada y Julio Irazusta-, el artículo explora respuestas posibles para los interrogantes siguientes: ¿cómo definir el concepto de fracaso?; ¿cuándo datar la emergencia del tópico en la historia cultural argentina?; ¿cómo articular su aparición con procesos económicos y sociales más generales?; ¿cómo jalonar las peripecias de esa idea?; ¿cómo caracterizar, cómo clasificar, sus principales expresiones?; ¿cómo pensar la significación global de toda esa dinámica…? El planteamiento general destaca que el tópico del fracaso argentino adquirió sus rasgos decisivos durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, a través de una dinámica compleja que, más allá de sus especificidades, parece haber contribuido a la erosión de una entera configuración ideológico-cultural, caracterizada por un notorio impulso de futuridad, a la que denomino ilusión argentina. Como telón de fondo del proceso cabe mencionar la creciente complejización social, la cada vez mayor y disonante diversificación discursiva (Tulio Halperín) y la profunda crisis de hegemonía experimentadas por el país a lo largo del período.<br>Considering a review of the bibliography that approaches the topic about the Argentinean failure, and taking into account the analysis of five intellectuals that had been, in some way, specialists in naming "the country's ills" -Lucas Ayarragaray, Leopoldo Lugones, Benjamín Villafañe, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Julio Irazusta- the article explores some commendable answers to the following questions: How to define the concept of failure?; When to date the emergency of this topic in the cultural history of Argentina?; How can we link its emergence with general social and economic processes?; How can we extract the incidents of this idea?; How can we characterize and classify its main expressions?; How can we think about the global meaning of this ideological and political process? The general exposition of the research is focused on showing that the topic of the failure acquired its decisive attributes during the first half of the 20th century, through a complex dynamic, comprised of diverse channels which should be captured in their specificity, although without losing sight of the more general movement of which they form a part: seen globally, this movement contributed to the erosion of an entire ideological-cultural configuration, which I call "argentine illusion". The backdrop of the process was none other than the growing social complexity, the greater and more dissonant discursive diversification (Tulio Halperín) and the profound hegemony crisis which the country experienced throughout the period

Imagined races : from environmental determinism to geographical authenticity in twentieth‐century Argentina

This article explores how Argentine intellectuals incorporated the natural environment into their accounts of the racial, cultural and political features of the nation. In the late nineteenth century environmental determinism, based on the assumption of a cause–effect relationship between geographical and racial factors, entered Argentina through three main routes: Lamarckism, Darwinism and Spencerianism. By the mid twentieth century, however, anti‐positivist philosophies had been fully incorporated into a body of work that analysed Argentina's socio‐historical foundations. This article examines the shift that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century in how those seeking to define race incorporated the environment into their arguments. The raza was commonly taken to be synonymous with nation. Selected works by sociologist and legal scholar Carlos Octavio Bunge (1875‐1918) and by writer and ensayista Bernardo Canal Feijóo (1897‐1982) will be analysed as influential yet overlooked examples of how ‘the problem of Argentine culture’ could not be separated from the question of nature understood in terms of both physical and human geography. The goal will be to reveal, firstly, the extent to which the notion of the interior as geographical and anthropological desert deeply informed the political vision of the early national period in relation to race and nation and, secondly, how later interpretations of the nation recast American nature as a foundational element of cultural authenticity based on a sentiment of geographical belonging

Easing the tension between the state and the market? Developing social protection and labour law during Latin American industrialization

18 páginasThe onset of industrialization across Latin America put the social question squarely on the agenda of policy-makers. Although Latin American countries in many respects did not meet the conditions of socio-economic and political development that proved to be the prerequisite for welfare state creation in Western Europe, the early Latin American industrializers decided to broadly follow the style and function of the European model introducing social rights and a rather truncated notion of citizenship. Nevertheless, those early policy decisions have proved to lastingly impact social, economic and political conditions across the region with central aspects of social protection and labour law having limited reach due to deficiencies in state capacity, the rule of law and high levels of labour informality. Discourses on the development of citizenship, social protection and labour law are inextricably linked to the complex processes that make up industrialization entailing thorough economic and political transformations and struggles within society. The resultant so-called social question has ever since the inception of industrialization given rise to intense debates on social inclusion, welfare state creation and the design thereof. This paper focuses on state-society relations during the early stages of industrialization in Latin America until the 1980s, predominantly analysing the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia