Publications
The Institute for the Study of the Americas publishes in the disciplines of history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography and environment, development, culture and literature, and on the countries and regions of Latin America, the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
As well as its in-house series, the Institute also pubishes a Lecture Series featuring key speakers at the Institute, and edits the 'Studies of the Americas' series published by Palgrave Macmillan.
See below for a list of new and forthcoming titles. All titles can be searched or browsed by author, title or keyword via 'search for a title'.
The majority of publications may be ordered through the Institute (via the order form at left) or from Amazon. A link to the relevant Amazon purchase page is available through the publications search function.
The Institute welcomes publication proposals on relevant topics, and is particularly interested in exploring co-publication opportunities.
See also the ISA Staff pages for details about staff publications.
The Impact of the Great Recession on Social Security and Welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean, Carmelo Mesa-Lago
Written by the top scholar on social security in Latin America and the Caribbean, this book assesses the effects of the world financial and economic crisis on social security and welfare in the region. Drawing on the impact of and lessons from previous crisis, it identifies the strengths and weakness of Latin American social security before the current global crisis, and evaluates its actual and potential effects on pensions, health care and social assistance programs, based on a taxonomy of three groups of countries.
The book ends with a summary of policies adopted by some countries and the author’s own recommendations on social policies to attenuate the crisis adverse outcomes. Latin America’s social-welfare pioneering reforms and influence elsewhere make this book important for other regions of the world, both developed and developing. Published March 2010. More details.
Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective
Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers (eds.)
Criminal violence has come dramatically to the forefront in contemporary Latin America, to the extent that it is widely considered the critical social concern of the present. Youth are among the principal victims but also the primary perpetrators of this new panorama of brutality. At the same time, the youth violence phenomenon remains profoundly misunderstood, as sensationalist myths and stereotypes abound. Through the juxtaposition of wide-ranging, cutting-edge studies focusing specifically on the youth gang phenomenon and the dynamics of juvenile justice, this volume provides a balanced and systematic comparative overview of the reality of present-day Latin American youth violence. Published October 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details.
Latin America and the Caribbean in the Global Financial Crisis
Papers from a conference held in April 2009 at the Institute and sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History
Christopher Dummitt and Michael Dawson (eds.)
This book highlights the work of nine early career scholars who offer innovative thoughts on present and future approaches to the study of the Canadian past. Moving beyond the debates over political vs social history that have dominated the field since the 1970s, the essays in this collection suggest novel questions and approaches while delving into recently overlooked subjects.There is a particular emphasis here on international, transnational and comparative approaches to the past. Essays cover such topics as the Atlantic World, oral history, postcolonialism, public history,historical periodisation, Canada's place in the British Empire, French-English relations, as well as the art of history as a discipline and practice. A "must read" for Canadian historians, the book will also appeal to international scholars interested in these issues and curious about the contribution that Canadian history can make to the broader history of the Americas. Published April 2009, Institute for the Study of the Americas. More details.
Joaquim Nabuco, British Abolitionists and the End of Slavery in Brazil
Leslie Bethell and Jose Murilo de Carvalho (eds.)
A little studied aspect of the struggle to abolish slavery in Brazil in the 1880s is the relationship established and maintained between Joaquim Nabuco, the leading Brazilian abolitionist, and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London. The correspondence between Nabuco and Charles Harris Allen, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, and other British abolitionists throughout the decade and beyond reveals a partnership consciously sought by Nabuco in order to internationalise the struggle. These letters provide a unique insight into the evolution of Nabuco’s thinking on both slavery and abolition and at the same time a running commentary on the slow and (at least until 1887–8) uncertain progress of the abolitionist cause in Brazil. Published March 2009, Institute for the Study of the Americas. More details.
Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America,
edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi
This book analyses the proposals for development and post-neoliberal governance that are emerging in Latin America and look at the place of social and political inclusion, as well as economic growth, within them. Disscussions of the region’s economy cannot be meaningfully separated from a debate about its politics – and in particular, discussion of how social and political resources are distributed. This book discusses the possibilities and limitations of state activism and social/political inclusion after neoliberalism and the extent to which a common regional trend away from the neoliberal state can genuinely be discerned. Published July 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details.
Modern Poetics and Hemispheric American Cultural Studies,
by Justin Read
With the rise of globalization, the American hemisphere has been integrated economically and politically. But what is the role of culture in this new integration? To what extent do the Americas share a common culture? This book starts from the premise that cultural conflict is inherent to all American cultures. Thus, the only way to study national cultures hemispherically is to examine the inter-cultural collisions both between American nations, and within them. Through readings of key 20th century texts, Read argues that such conflicts form a distinctly poetic process. Modernist and vanguardista poets sought to make the language of cultural conflict – translation – into a concrete reality in its own right, the language of the Americas. Published August 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details.
Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals
by John M Kirk and H Michael Erisman
While public health is important for revolutionary Cuba, providing medical services to the developing world is also a priority: 38,000 medical staff are engaged abroad; the largest medical school in the world (ELAM) has an enrollment of over 8,000 students from the Third World; and since 2004 over 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean have had their eyesight restored. How has this small nation of 11.3 million people managed to save more lives in the developing world than all of the G-8 countries together? And what are its motives? This book, the result of four years of research in Cuba, provides an updated analysis of this extraordinary record. Published July 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details.
See the complete list of titles in the 'Studies of the Americas' series with Palgrave Macmillan.
Visual Synergies in Fiction and Documentary Film from Latin America
edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page
This collection brings together leading international scholars and filmmakers focusing on Latin American cinema. Themes discussed include subjectivity, history, memory, representations of reality, cinema's relation to the public sphere, and issues of production, distribution and marketing. Published July 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details.
Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940-1967
by Steven High
This book examines the social, economic and political aftermath of the famous Anglo-American 'destroyers-for-bases' deal of 2nd September 1940 that saw fifty obsolete U.S. destroyers exchanged for 'base colonies' in Trinidad, Bermuda, Newfoundland and the Bahamas. While the diplomatic importance of the destroyers for bases deal has been widely acknowledged, few have examined the social impact of these 'friendly invasions' on the base colonies themselves. Published February 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details
The Political Economy of the Public Budget in the Americas
edited by Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Iwan Morgan
This volume draws together the work of political economy specialists from Latin America, the United States and Europe. Its innovative approach provides a multi-disciplinary comparison of fiscal and tax policies in Latin America and the United States. The contributors identify the common budgetary problems of the nations of the Americas in terms of their status as 'small fiscal states' that have failed to generate adequate tax resources to fund the responsibilities of modern government. They also consider the differing effect of capital inflows on the autonomy of the public sector in the United States and Latin America. While the former has been able to operate large budgetary and trade deficits without adverse reaction from global financial markets, the latter has experienced the 'disciplining' effect of these external forces to maintain low public deficits. The volume therefore offers a timely assessment of hemispheric fiscal developments on the eve of the greatest crisis for the world economy since the depression of the 1930s. Published December 2008, Institute for the Study of the Americas. More details
Caribbean Literature After Independence. The Case of Earl Lovelace
edited by Bill Schwarz
Trinidad, historically located at the crossroads of the Americas, has produced an incomparable national literature, fashioning literary genres that have informed the Caribbean region as a whole. One of the greatest contemporary Trinidadian writers is Earl Lovelace, whose novelistic performative epics combine the rhythms of steelband and calypso with the narrative complexity of Faulkner. Lovelace was an early enthusiast for Black Power and remains an indefatigable critic of the inequalities bequeathed by the post-Independence state. Embracing an aesthetic which seeks out the darkness of the nation – the traces of Africa, the passions of the black dispossessed, the liturgies of the Shouter churches – he strives to imagine a society which might at last break free from its colonial past, dramatizing the political and psychic struggles of the poor for selfhood. Published March 2008, Institute for the Study of the Americas. More details
The Federal Nation: Perspectives on American Federalism,
by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip J. Davies
This volume gathers contributors from both the US and UK to provide a comparative examination of federalism in the Bush era, a period of huge change in national politics, but also one of significant shifts in US federalism in relation to social and socioeconomic issues. Published February 2009, Palgrave Macmillan. More details
America's Americans: Population Issues in U.S. Society and Politics
edited by Philip Davies and Iwan Morgan
This book examines the social, cultural, economic and political effects of modern demographic change in the United States. The specialist contributors from the US and the UK draw on new research to analyse a wide range of issues pertaining to the diversity of American society. Among the subjects considered in this study are: Latino immigrant incorporation; racial and ethnic integration in metropolitan contexts; population and self-determination issues pertaining to Native Americans; public policy issues relating to immigration; the growth of the US prison population; the changing nature of poverty in the US; the politics of demographic and social change at national and local levels; and the historical change in the labor force participation of women.
More details
Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Local and Universal Views Confronted
Edited by James Copestake
Development is something we all aspire to, but also readily criticize for failing to live up to our hopes of sustained improvement in human wellbeing. This book presents findings of systematic research into the contested meanings of development and wellbeing from a country, Peru, which has recently experienced both rapid economic growth and deep social conflict. A mix of ethnographic and questionnaire data from seven poor urban and rural communities straddling the Andes is used to describe and analyze local and global interpretations of their inhabitants’ pursuit of wellbeing. More details
The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas
edited by Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen
Benefiting from a truly Pan-American perspective, these essays evaluate the economics and politics of the new patterns of North-South integration in the particular context of the Americas, questioning if regional and bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA or the FTAA are appropriate mechanisms to promote economic development. More details
Football in the Americas: Ftbol, Futebol, Soccer
edited by Rory Miller and Liz Crolley
Football (soccer) has a long history in the Americas, but currently displays many signs of crisis. In South America the combination of spectator violence, poor business management, and the emigration of players is undermining professional football. In the United States, in contrast, a professional league (Major League Soccer) has taken root in the last decade, and the US womens team has gained international success. Football has always provided its players and its fans with identity and belonging, whether to the nation or to a particular social group. It has been both a vehicle for the politically ambitious and an arena in which citizens can make sense of national failings and contest existing power structures. This volume explores many of these themes. The fifteen essays range widely, with theoretical and empirical contributions on the region as whole, as well as chapters specifically on Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and the United States.
More details
Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present. Essays
James Dunkerley
This volume brings together essays written over three decades on Bolivian history and politics. Opening with a contemporary survey of the new government of the MAS headed by Evo Morales, the chapters here review the neo-liberal experiments of the 1980s and 1990s, the strategic and intellectual failures of Che Guevara's guerrilla foco, the origins of the Revolution of 1952, explanations for the dominance of the caudillos of the 19th century, and the extraordinary story of Francisco Burdett OConnor, whose life combined liberation struggles on both sides of the Atlantic.
More details
American Civilization
Charles A. Jones
Far from being exceptional, the United States is the most American of nations, sharing with its neighbors to the south an aspiration to realize liberalism in a racialized society and distinguished from them chiefly by the greater material capabilities it has been able to apply to this historic task. Sometimes regarded as Western, the United States is separated from Western Europe by distinctive levels and styles of religiosity, public violence, respect for law and concern with materiality that, far from constituting a claim to exceptionality, bind it firmly to the rest of the hemisphere, from which it was separated only by the strange accident of historiography that created a separate Latin America little more than a century ago. This book looks forward to a truly American century.
More details
The Contemporary Canadian Metropolis, Richard Dennis, Ceri Morgan and Stephen Shaw (eds.)
Including contributions from established Canadian and British researchers and new scholars, this series of essays combines social science, architectural and cultural studies perspectives on the analysis of contemporary change in major Canadian cities, exploring connections and tensions between diversity and multiculturalism on the one hand and economic change, creativity and urban regeneration on the other. Forthcoming 2010. More details.
Caamaño in London: the Exile of a Latin American Revolutionary, Fred Halliday
This book is a complex and informative study of Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó, President of the Dominican Republic during the ‘Constitutionalist’ uprising of April-May 1965 and the subsequent US invasion, who was exiled to London in 1966. The title provides a missing chapter in the history of the Dominican Republic and, more broadly, makes a contribution to the oft forgotten history of the Cold War in the Caribbean. Forthcoming 2010. More details.
Quebec and the Franco-American Heritage, Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies (eds)
This study marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec and consists of six essays by a team of contributors drawn from Quebec, the USA, France and the UK. It explores the concept of Franco-American heritage as not a modern remnant of a lost French North American empire but a thriving entity that grew in both vitality and geographical spread in the centuries after the Conquest of 1759. Two things are fundamental to the essays in the collection: Franco-America’s heritage was neither French nor American but something different and unique from both; and its geographical extent spread far beyond Quebec province, where it was born, and penetrated into large parts of so-called Anglo-America – in other words it was continental rather than provincial in nature. Forthcoming 2010. More details.
In this series ISA publishes selected seminar and conference papers, and public lectures, delivered at the Institute or elsewhere by Institute staff or associates. See the expanded list.
Conversa de malandro or Brazilian jive talk: music, language, community
(no. 8) by David Treece (2008)
Party and Non-Party Actors in Latin American Politics
(no. 7) by Roberto Espindola (2007)
Nationalism
Unbecoming: George W. Bush, War and the American Democratic Tradition
(no. 6) by Richard Crockatt (2007)
London
and Latin America: 200 Years of Shared History
(no. 5) by James Dunkerley (2007)
Americas
Plural: Old Wine in New Bottles?
(no. 4) by James Dunkerley (2006)
'Our
people are paralyzed for want of leadership': Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson
Davis and the American Civil War
(no. 3) by Richard Carwardine (2006)
The
Hispanic World in the Historical Imagination
(no. 2) by Fernando Cervantes (2006)
Mexican
Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Century
(no. 1) by Ana Covarrubias (2005)