Social Cohesion in Latin America: Assembling the Pieces
April 16–17, 2009
New voices will join an ongoing conversation when the conference “Social Cohesion in Latin America: Assembling the Pieces" convenes in April 2009. (For more on social cohesion, click here.)
Download the full program here.
Part of an effort begun by the Kellogg Institute in 2006 in partnership with CIEPLAN in Santiago, Chile, and the F. H. Cardoso Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, the conference continues an ambitious research agenda to investigate the countries of the region from a “glass-half-full” perspective. A new survey carried out in seven Latin American countries in 2007—ECosociAL—captured information about key aspects of society not included in the Latinobarómetro or the World Values Survey; analysis of the data resulted in the publication of four volumes in Spanish.
With the goal of continuing the discussion by exploring societal characteristics and social policies as they affect the relative extent of social cohesion, organizers of this conference have chosen to focus in depth on a number of specific topics. Contributors will examine:
-
trends in poverty levels and income distribution;
-
the social effects and organizational features of education;
-
trends in family demography and the social effects of family morphologies;
-
the peculiarities and impacts of social mobility;
-
trust in institutions;
-
the importance of ethnicities in defining personal identities and their impact on attitudes related to a wide range of issues;
-
the nature, consequences, and fluidity of religious identities;
-
and the extent to which Latin Americans are tied to networks that promote either social integration or perceptions of insecurity and anomie.
The conference, which aims to provide a set of synoptic snapshots of Latin American societies that is both original and refreshingly well grounded in new empirical research, will result in a collected volume in English disseminating the project’s findings.
Conference Organizers: Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellows J. Samuel Valenzuela and Timothy Scully, CSC, and CIEPLAN President Eugenio Tironi
