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Session Submission Summary

Making “the Public” in Popular Economies: Latin America’s Changing Shared Economic Spheres

Mon, May 27, 2:15 to 3:45pm, TBA

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel explores the contested meanings and makings of “the public” in contemporary popular economies, through distinct ethnographic and epistemological approaches. In popular economies, private earnings and dynamics of capital accumulation often co-exist with situated relations of reciprocity and diverse forms of exchange. Interdependencies materialize around jointly-used marketplaces, collective projects, shared reputations, and interactions with the state. Efforts to shape a “common good” and manage a shared ethical-economic space unfold in relation to private and state encroachment, as well as internal conflicts. In recent years, popular economies in Latin America have confronted multiple new forces and strains: Asian-made goods flood trades; new technologies and social media shape consumer markets; and, importantly, recent state transformations have increased the tracking, regulation, and taxation of informal economies. In this context, we are interested in how popular sectors are working to articulate and manage shared economic spheres and economic possibilities. Panel participants examine changing economic realities in Latin America by detailing the ideas and practices that constitute publics in popular economies today, as vital spaces of popular aspiration, negotiation, and contestation.

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