Latin American Cultural Politics

Latin American cultural politics, as studied within anthropology, examines how colonial legacies continue to shape power relations, knowledge systems, and everyday life across the region long after formal independence. Scholars in this area interrogate Eurocentrism—the tendency to treat European frameworks as universal standards—and ask whose ways of knowing get recognized as legitimate and whose get suppressed or erased. A central concern is the concept of *Buen Vivir*, an indigenous philosophy of collective well-being that challenges growth-centered development models and has been taken up by social movements and even some state constitutions. Ongoing debates turn on whether decolonization can happen through existing institutions or whether it requires more fundamental ruptures in how knowledge is produced, circulated, and put to political use.

Works

36,902

Total citations

65,296

Keywords

ColonialityDecolonizationLatin AmericaEurocentrismPostcolonialismEpistemology