ABSTRACT
By combining chronological coverage, analytical breadth, and interdisciplinary approaches, these two volumes—Histories of Solitude and Histories of Perplexity—study the histories of Colombia over the last two centuries as illustrations of the histories of democracy across the Americas.
The volumes bring together over 40 scholars based in Colombia, the United States, England, and Canada working in various disciplines to discuss how a country that has been consistently presented as a rarity in Latin America provides critical examples to re-examine major historical problems: republicanism and liberalism; export economies and agrarian modernization; populism and cultural politics of state formation; revolutionary and counterinsurgent Cold War violence; neoliberal reforms and urban development; popular mobilization and counterhegemonic public spheres; political ecologies and environmental struggles; and labors of memory and the challenge of reconciliation. Contributors are sensitive to questions of subjectivity and discourse, observant of ethnographic details and micro-politics, and attuned to macro-perspectives such as transnational and global histories.
These volumes offer fresh perspectives on Colombia and will be of great value to those interested in Latin American and Caribbean history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|70 pages
Imagining a Republic
chapter 1|19 pages
“We Are Free Citizens”
chapter 2|25 pages
Becoming the “Country of Regions”
chapter 3|24 pages
Colombia's Continental Contributions
part 2|68 pages
Building a Public Sphere
part 3|63 pages
Crafting Citizenship
chapter 7|20 pages
They Fined the “Negro de la Bocina”
chapter 9|21 pages
Darkening José Vasconcelos
part 4|82 pages
Inventing Development
chapter 10|19 pages
When Making Money Was a Social Service
chapter 11|21 pages
“You'll Only Be Good for Planting Potatoes!”
chapter 12|18 pages
“Let's Produce Wheat!”
part 5|88 pages
Subverting Orders