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Miguel Centeno
My work on globalization maps the structures of economic transactions in the contemporary world by focusing on the multi-dimensional aspects of international trade. Through this lens, I try to define the asymmetries of power, the manner in which influence is wielded, and how these forces may combine to reinforce conditions of inequality. I compare my findings with the basic assumptions of 19th century Liberalism and ask whether or not the balances of power and equality presumed by this ideology are still operating in the new global system. Visit WebsitePublications Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State Latin America. Penn State University Press.
Our understanding of the rise of the nation-state is based heavily on the Western European experience of war. Blood and Debt shifts the lens to Latin America, with additional comparisons with regions as varied as the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than building nation-states and fostering democratic citizenship, as has often been the consequence of war in the west, Centeno argues that in Latin America it destroyed institutions, confirmed internal divisions, and killed many without purpose or glory. 
The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America. (co-editor with Fernando López-Alves), Princeton University Press.
This volume re-evaluates widely accepted theories of the state, and of property, race and economics based on the western experience, exploring their utility and shortcomings against the Latin American experience. |
