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The Politics of Forever in Bolivia Come to an End (at least for now): Understanding the Crisis in Bolivia Through Competing Systems of Value

Anthropology Departmental seminar with Mark Goodale, University of Lausanne

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 26 February 2020,  at 13:00 - 15:00

Location

Lecture Hall Moesgård (4206-139)

Abstract:

 

In light of the current crisis in Bolivia, this talk will examine the conflict as a study in competing systems of value, most of which have remained hidden to the international media that have covered the fall of the Morales administration and its MAS allies and the coup d’état by a rightwing “transitional” government. The presentation will be anchored in longterm ethnographic research that is featured in A Revolution in Fragments: Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology, and Practice in Bolivia (Duke University Press 2019), a work that was coincidentally released on the same day on which Evo Morales was ousted under threat from the Bolivian military. The talk will use the ethnographic analysis of Bolivia to reflect more generally on questions of more general interest, including the limitations to radical change in the contemporary world, the ongoing legacy of colonial structures of power, and the increasing racialization of our “post-liberal” moment. 

Bio:

Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Laboratory of Cultural and Social Anthropology (LACS) at the University of Lausanne. The author or editor of a number of books, his most recent is A Revolution in Fragments: Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology, and Practice in Bolivia (Duke University Press 2019). He is currently directing a four-year (2019-2023) research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation that is investigating resource politics and the materialities of energy industrialization in Bolivia.