Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Gilberto Freyre is a fundamental reference in Brazilian social thought by virtue of the innovative account of the country’s history he developed beginning with his 1933 magnum opus, Casa-grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves). Predicated on a certain notion of culture – at the time aimed at displacing prevailing racial hypotheses – Casa-grande & Senzala, alongside with Sobrados e Mucambos (Mansions and the Shanties) recount Brazilian colonial and later independent history by and large oriented by the concept of society. This represents a vantage point for an International Relations-based investigation of his work. Despite countless studies about it, Freyre’s work is perhaps yet to receive due attention in terms of its contribution to thinking about the modern international. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to collate Freyre’s narrative about the fall of the Colony’s patriarchal regime and its early 19th century replacement by a bureaucratic regime with the master distinctions of state-society and state-system of states in modern political discourse, integral to the conceptual scheme underpinning traditional thinking in IR. The focus on the deployment of the state concept in Freyre’s corpus is justified by its peculiarities, as it will be seen to be (i) preceded by a direct articulation of Brazilian society to world politics, by means of the depiction of a competition between such forces as agents of the Portuguese Empire and the Jesuits for the organization of colonial society, and then to (ii) take place as a means of market-driven and biopolitical rearrangements of social institutions legated by cultural inflows during Colony. Thus, the paper’s analytical gains should obtain from reflection regarding consonances and/or dissonances posed by Freyre’s works vis-à-vis traditional state-centric approaches to IR.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Modernity is a balancing act between universal claims to equality and rhetoric that justifies the subordination or exclusion of the Other. Some plausible account of the philosophical roots of this tension might provide a position from which to evaluate the modern disquiet with alterity, and whether and to what extent the politics of exclusion is a justified political alternative in dealing with the contemporary Other. I turn to the Debates at Valladolid in 1550-51between Las Casas and Sepúlveda to explore the logic of exclusion, the subsequent defense of the Other as equal based on faith in its assimilability, and the emergence of the tension between moral superiority and philosophical equality born from this logic which helps explain the modern disquiet with alterity. A modern rereading of the Valladolid debates provides leverage to understand the tension between universal values and alterity, and as the context to reflect on the dangers of exclusionary politics in contemporary relations with alterity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: John Locke's chapter On Property in the SECOND TREATISE
has been the subject of intense academic attention for centuries.
Recently two booklength studies on Locke have sought to place Locke
into the context of the medieval tradition of Christian theology
(Waldron, 2002), and the tradition of medival natural law (Braybrooke,
2001). The present study raises difficulties for those who would see
Locke's attitude towards property, money and greed as an orthodox
expression of the medieval natural law framework associated with
Aquinas and others. The study presents a contrast between the ideas of
Bartolome de las Casas and Locke. Las Casas account of the Spanish
conquest in the early 16th Century is shown to stress St. Paul's
understanding of the greed that is idolatry (Collasians 3:5), with
authorial support from Aristotle and Aquinas. Las Casas shows that the
covetous Spaniards were destructive of the lives of others, and of
their own lives because of their disordered preoccupation with gold. In
Locke's treatment of property, the author develops a theory of money
that explains how the individual might accumulate far more property
than they needed through the heaping up of money (ss46). This is a
striking transformation, or even repudiation of the teaching of St.
Paul in 1Timothy (the love of money is the root of all evil), which
Locke had earlier cited as ...the voice of reason confirmed in
inspiration. In the end Locke's view breaks from his Chritian
predecessors, including the early Reformers, by implicitly rejecting
any orthodox notion of the impact of original sin on human nature. Like
Machiavelli, Locke is willing to accept greed as a component of human
nature proper, and not as a sign of corruption.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: “Globalization” suggests the convergence of the Global South and Global North—not only in the spread of the cultural practices of capitalism throughout the Global South but also in the re-emergence of regressive labor practices in the Global North—and it is this convergence that makes Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, one of the current foci of the processes that comprise globalization.
Casa Amiga, located in Ciudad Juárez, was the first crisis center for women in the entire Mexican side of the Mexico-U.S. border region. Its staff focuses their efforts upon addressing some of the major manifestations of globalization in this particular location, especially domestic violence and femicide. “Femicide” (feminicidio, or, less commonly, femicidio) is the term that has been applied to the particular problem faced in Ciudad Juárez in recent years, given that the city has been the site of a wave of unsolved murders of an estimated 340 women over the past twelve years. The majority of the women who have been the targets of this violence share certain characteristics in common: most are young (teenagers or in their early twenties); nearly all have been employees in the maquiladoras; and many of them share indigenous features that mark them as “outsiders” to Ciudad Juárez—i.e., they are from southern Mexico or other regions of Mexico’s interior.
This essay builds upon Devon Peña’s analysis of popular resistance to the production strategies of the maquiladora industry in northern Mexico delineated in Terror of the Machine. Peña argues that within capitalism, people in the working class are valued solely for their work on the shopfloor and are seen in a nearly one-dimensional way—i.e., as “workers”—and also that many who sympathize with and document social movements and take pains to portray labor exploitation often fall into a similar trap of seeing people in this one-dimensional way: as exploited and as victimized. In documenting the ways in which Casa Amiga is a participant in the broader movement of working class people in Júarez, I will explore two principal questions: 1) Does Casa Amiga see a connection between domestic violence and femicide on the one hand and globalization on the other, and if so, how is this connection articulated? 2) How does Casa Amiga create small-scale, local alternatives to globalization? I argue that Casa Amiga does indeed make a connection between globalization and violence against women and children, in that both are processes of dehumanization and manifestations of alienation; and that Casa Amiga creates a local alternative to globalization through working with women and children who have experienced violence to restore a sense of empowerment and multidimensional humanity—i.e., through community-building.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Latinos, U.S. born and immigrant alike, believe in homeownership as a pathway to the American Dream. But reaching the dream is not within reach of one single family nor is synonymous with a better quality of life. Latinos, particularly as they move to suburban municipalities in Chicago’s metropolitan area, continue to face many challenges in housing. Many Latino families experience housing discrimination, the selective enforcement of occupancy codes and misinformation or lack of information about the homeownership process. The goal of this presentation is to provide a window into the housing experience and living conditions of 34 Latino families in six municipalities in Chicago’s metropolitan area. The Latino housing experience as described here through the lens of the families themselves validate some of the stories already told by housing advocates and practitioners. Ultimately, the right to decent and adequate housing is a tenet in this country that applies to immigrants and native Latinos whether they secure shelter in adobe houses in the Southwest, tenement housing in the East coast, trailer homes in the West coast, or bungalows in the Midwest.