Market Hegemony (1973–2001)

Abstract

A combination of global economic transformations and Latin American political shifts came together in a decisive move to impose free-market politics in the second half of the 1970s and early 1980s. The previously dominant development model was no longer delivering in economic terms and it had failed to secure stable hegemonic governance. The result was a process of market “Dis-Embedding,” a concept that follows through on Gramsci’s early political economy through to the Second World War period theorizing by Karl Polanyi on the relationship between market and society. In particular we show the relevance of the Polanyian “double movement” (market dis-embedding and re-embedding) for a reading of social transformation in Latin America. The section on “Global Discipline” takes up the massive transformations of the global political economy that occurred in the 1990s ushering in the era of globalization, as it became known. This more integrated global political economy meant that the national development path in Latin America was now foreclosed as neoliberal economic policies began to take a grip. Then, the section on “Remaking Society” is dedicated to the Foucaultian disciplinary subjection of Latin American society by the military dictators and some of their democratically elected successors in government.