ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the term ‘excommunication’ has been used to describe the suspension or limitation to membership of a religious community or organisation, an act normally undertaken as a mode of censure. However, Armand Mattelart’s reworking and extension of the term directs us instead towards the range of factors that can separate persons from the processes, channels and circuits of exchange ZLWKLQVRFLHW\0DWWHODUW:KHUH0DWWHODUW¶VIRFXVLVRQWKHELUWKDQG growth of exclusionary technologies, the term is used in an even broader sense KHUHWRLOOXPLQDWHWKHFRQÀXHQFHRISUHVHQWDQGSDVWVRFLRSROLWLFDOSURFHVVHVDQG events that have combined to distance certain actors and groups from meaningful political dialogue in Latin America. ‘Excommunications’ in Latin America have resulted from oft-interrelated factors including: poverty, stark and persistent income inequalities; the marginalisation of particular political, social and ethnic groups as legacies of the colonial encounter; as well as authoritarianism and the violent suppression of dissent. 7KLV FKDSWHU¿UVW H[SORUHV VRPHRI WKHZD\V WKDW VWUHHW DUW FDQ ± DQGKDV ±
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