Review by Choice Review
Whitehead (Oxford Univ., UK) argues that although democratization eliminates power contenders who lack electoral support, the often-used metaphor of the "living museum" is still useful to analyze politics in the region. He delves deeply into the contradictory tendencies in Latin American society and politics, focusing on historical cycles of halfway reforms that are superseded before completion, resulting in a social landscape "littered" with "memorials" of successive drives for "modernity," from the Panama Canal to privatized state enterprises. The book proposes a sophisticated, "configurative" evaluation of Latin America's political distinctiveness that challenges "essentialist" characterizations of the region. After situating Latin America in comparative perspective, the author develops his thesis of Latin America as a "mausoleum of modernities." The author criticizes the exclusionary nature of the neoliberal model but argues that it "may still have a considerable distance to run," despite the backlash against neoliberalism in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela. A useful addition to Peter H. Smith's Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective (2005). ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. M. E. Carranza Texas A&M University--Kingsville
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
