Introduction to Latin America : Twenty-First Century Challenges

'This excellent textbook provides students of Latin America with a rich and deep analysis of the processes and outcomes of globalization, past and present. Diversity and difference are explored using vivid and detailed country profiles. A strength of this textbook is its ability to explain complex issues in a way that is engaging and informative. It provides conceptual frameworks for students to engage in independent analysis of the complexities of global forces as they impact on, and interact with, the "local" in different contexts. It also, however, engages with the issues of crucial importance for the lived realities of Latin American people- poverty, development, the state and resistance under changing political, economic and ideological conditions. An essential buy for serious students of Latin America' - Anne Boran, Chester College, University of Liverpool 'This is an outstanding textbook which will appeal to a wide audience but especially those wishing to understand contemporary Latin America.... I have been studying Latin America for over 40 years and wish I could have written such a lucid and engaging book' - Dr Crist[ac]obal Kay, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague Introduction to Latin America provides a completely new introduction to the political, social and economic forces shaping this essential region of undergraduate study today. It is the first textbook to place Latin America within a genuinely global context and introduce the debates and impact of globalization, neoliberalism, democratization, and the environment. It fully reviews the traditional literature in the postwar period (such as modernization or dependency theory) to demonstrate the way in which Latin America has often been misunderstood and introduces more recent theorizing to consider the longer-term prospects for equitable and sustainable development. Encorporating maps, case study boxes, summary exhibits, and guides to further reading, Introduction to Latin America will be an essential text for all students of Latin America across politics, international studies, geography, sociology and development studies.

Peadar Kirby is a senior lecturer in the School of Law and Government in Dublin City University