Southern Cone Studies

Report 2010

The Southern Cone Studies Section at LASA

Led by our former chair, Professor Alvaro Fernández Bravo, the Business Meeting of the Southern Cone Studies Section (Toronto, October 2010) brought together a significant group of members (35 attendees). Previous officers of the Section designed and oversaw an electronic voting procedure, which produced a new chair and treasurer.

One of the peculiar strengths of our Section has been its transnational nature, establishing debates, which incorporate scholarship on Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. In the 2010 LASA Congress, we organized three sessions around the following themes: the State, everyday practices and urban spaces in the Southern Cone; readings and cultural representations of the Independence in the Centennials' narratives in South America; and, territories, borders and visual representations in contemporary Argentina.

In the coming years, we plan on further strengthening the transnational scope of our Section while at the same time developing its interdisciplinary potential. Specific areas of debate to be considered are:  first, poverty, as an economic, social and ethical issue in the region; second, immigrant communities in the major urban centers of the Southern Cone; third, the status of indigenous peoples, their self-representation and their rights, especially in Chile and Argentina; and, fourth, the Bicentennials and the "transnational shift" or the emergence of other "imagined communities" in the realm of social, aesthetic and cultural imagination, including the role and impact of the internet in this process.

A more specific goal for the 2011-2012 period is to establish a space for our Section on the web, a virtual tool that will increase our communications and dialogue. Finally, we agreed to institute the granting of awards for books and articles in Southern Cone Studies in order to recognize the intellectual and academic production in our regional field.

Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante, Chair

The University of Texas at Austin

Leila Gómez, Treasurer

University of Colorado at Boulder