Stavenhagen and Nation: ethnic group, community and political project

JORGELINA LOZA

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

SAGE

Lugar: California; Año: 2018 vol. 45 p. 95 - 106

0094-582X

In Latin America, there is already a consensus about modern States of the region emerge from a community project based on the existence of pre-national societies. It is urgent to ask about the actors who are part of this construction and the way in which they receive the national discourse promoted by the State. We propose to discuss here some of the foundations of this inequality. Is exclusion a feature of the nation? Who are the actors that constitute the nation? And who constructed it? Our approach to this debate will be through the analysis of Rodolfo Stavenhagen, whose work we find a critical look at the processes of construction of this modern organizational form and the different ways of living the nation. For diverse sectors that elaborate on this experience their own interpretations of the national culture, and in a present where the nation stays as an identity category, Stavenhagen allows us to think of it as a construction that can account for the current coalition of forces and is contested by those who demand a leading role in it. If the Nation represents a hegemonic project that leaves out broad sectors of the population, what options does the Latin American future present?