Articles by Sebastian Guzman
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2021
In 2011, Chilean higher education students led the most massive protests in two decades demanding... more In 2011, Chilean higher education students led the most massive protests in two decades demanding ‘public, free, and quality education’. The institutional consequences of the protests have not been properly studied until now. We assess students' institutional gains – in legislation, executive decisions, judicial decisions, and university policies – in all their demands related to neoliberal higher education. We show that the movement has had important successes, especially in financial terms, but the power of corporations remains mostly untouched. Contradicting some narratives, comparable gains occurred during both the right-wing and centre-left administrations, highlighting the difficulties of challenging neoliberal corporate policies.
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 2018
Sociological Forum, 2015
How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization ... more How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization in their community has been countering this misinformation for years? Why do people knowingly accept misinformation without even being upset about it? I address these questions by analyzing ethnographic data and interviews with 84 Chilean low-income housing debtors, whom, like many Chileans, are victims of financial misinformation. While the state and banks had significant agency in inducing the unproblematic acceptance of misinformation, debtors also played an active role in the processes. First, debtors had to decide whom to trust, which was not only a cognitive problem about evidence but also a behavioral and practical problem involving risks. Second, debtors engaged in “motivated reasoning”—affect-driven biased information processing—to dismiss the possibility of being misinformed, to downplay the significance of misinformation, and to direct blame away from misinforming institutions. The latter two practices reduced debtors' anger about being misinformed. The findings have implications for studies of social movement framing and counterinformation, for the cognitive psychology of misinformation, and for the sociology and social psychology of acquiescence.
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2015
Many scholars have questioned the thoroughness of Weber’s typology of authority. The key problem ... more Many scholars have questioned the thoroughness of Weber’s typology of authority. The key problem has been that some empirical cases, such as doctors and Soviet leaders, cannot be accounted for by combining Weber’s three pure types of authority. I propose a new solution to this problem by reconstructing Weber’s conceptualization of authority—stressing the doxic (Bourdieu) backup of authority—and modifying his typology—adding a ‘substantive-rational’ type. Unlike previous attempts, this solution meets three important criteria: (1) thoroughly accounting for a variety of anomalous cases; (2) overcoming the limitations of the theory of action by acknowledging the developments of contemporary social theory; and (3) still serving Weber’s ambitious purposes, such as understanding broad rationalization processes and the stabilization of charisma. The usefulness of the typology is illustrated with various empirical cases that represent transformations of charisma in a substantive-rational direction or combinations of formal- and substantive-rational grounds for legitimacy.
Sociological Theory, Sep 2013
This article proposes an empirically grounded theory of the acceptance of authoritative speech be... more This article proposes an empirically grounded theory of the acceptance of authoritative speech beyond contexts of deliberation. I synthesize Habermas’s and Bourdieu’s influential theories on the topic by specifying factors that lead to either a prereflexive acceptance or a critical evaluation of the claims made by people in positions of authority. To do so, I assess each author’s theses in four types of contexts covered by three empirical studies that analyze reactions to authoritative speech. I find that people can autonomously reject authoritative speech if they have the necessary cultural resources, such as relevant personal experience or contradictory background norms, or if they are strongly motivated—for example, by disappointed expectations. Otherwise, individuals are likely to accept what authorities say without regard for reasons. The synthetic theory proposed better grasps the potentials and limitations of people’s critical capacities—a crucial task for democratic and critical sociological theory.
Books by Sebastian Guzman
Routledge and Macat, 2017
LOM/Programa de Economía del Trabajo, 2006
Abstract in English first/Resumen en español más abajo.
ABSTRACT: This book aims to understand... more Abstract in English first/Resumen en español más abajo.
ABSTRACT: This book aims to understand the group of economic units often identified under concepts such as urban informal sector, informal economy, micro-enterprises, and self-employment. Is this a group distinguishable from the rest of the economy? How are we to understand it's relation to the rest of the economy? How do these units make economic decisions? How are we to understand its emergence and persistence in capitalist economies? The book discusses to what extent we can answer these questions by focusing on the rationality and culture of these economic units, their class locations, or on other economic variables (e.g. number of workers, amount of capital, capital to worker ratio). We conclude that the analysis of class locations is the most promising avenue to answer these questions, although the other factors make some secondary contributions. We propose a typology that modifies Erik Olin Wright's and Alejandro Portes's Neo-Marxist class typologies to account for informal workers in countries with a large informal sector. The typology re-frames the so-called informal economy as a mix of an informal sub-proletariat, workers temporarily expelled from formal jobs, petty bourgeoisie, and small employers. The differences between these groups, often lumped together by policies addressing "micro-enterprises" in Latin America, help us better answer the above-mentioned questions and understand these economic units.
RESUMEN: Este libro busca comprender el grupo de unidades económicas generalmente identificadas bajo conceptos como sector informal urbano, economía informal, micro-empresas y auto-empleo. ¿Es posible distinguir a este grupo del resto de la economía? ¿Cómo operan estas unidades en sus decisiones económicas? ¿Cómo se relacionan con el resto de la economía? ¿Cómo podemos comprender su emergencia y persistencia en economías capitalistas? El libro evalúa las posibilidades de responder estas preguntas si enfoamos el análisis en la racionalidad y cultura de las unidades, sus locaciones de clase u otras variables económicas (por ejemplo, número de trabajadores, cantidad de capital, relación capital trabajo). Concluímos que un análisis de las locaciones de clase es la vía más prometedora para responder a estas preguntas, aunque los otros factores hacen contribuciones secundarias. Proponemos una tipología que modifica la tipología de clases neo-marxistas de Erik Olin Wright y de Alejandro Portes para dar cuenta de los trabajadore informales en países con un gran sector informal. La tipología re-define a la llamada economía informal como una combinación de sub-proletarios informales, trabajadores expulsados temporalmente de trabajos formales, pequeña burguesía, y pequeños empleadores. Las diferencias entre estos grupos, frequentemente indiferenciados por políticas orientadas a la "micro empresa" en America Latina, nos ayuda a responder de mejor modo a las preguntas más arriba mencionadas y a comprender a estas unidades.
Dissertation by Sebastian Guzman
ABSTRACT
This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a ... more ABSTRACT
This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a six-year mortgage strike demanding that the state cancel their debt. By comparing debtors in the same housing development who behave differently, the dissertation explains how debtors were motivated to resist or consent to debt payment and how they made sense of their choices. The main contribution lies in demonstrating that, at least in cases like this one, solidarity and moral beliefs do not motivate consent or resistance. Rather, practices of consent and resistance induce the moral beliefs we choose to satisfy psychological desires.
The analysis shows that debtors’ decisions to pay or to protest were pragmatic, responding largely to an evaluation of fears and the need and expectations for obtaining debt relief. However, most debtors held contradictory beliefs about the fairness of debt and about whether their decision was in their best interest. Thus, making sense of these decisions was not effortless. They sought to overcome their ambivalences, working hard to convince themselves that their decision to pay or to default was the best, both pragmatically and morally. In other words, they engaged in what psychologists call “motivated reasoning,” that is, biased information processing driven by affects.
The findings contribute to the study of consent and protest in four ways. First, the study clarifies the agency of individuals in legitimating their own subordination, as well as in choosing and adapting ideas mobilized by social movements and their adversaries. Second, the study highlights agency of movements and their adversaries in creating beliefs through the creation of incentives for people to embrace such beliefs. Third, solidarity and framing efforts by social movements and their adversaries are probably less relevant to producing behavior than we had previously thought. Nevertheless, while legitimacy and some framing efforts may not affect behavior, they can make domination less psychologically painful. Fourth, at a meta-theoretical level, the study proposes that we take cognitive processes and psychological motives more seriously in the study of normative beliefs, protest, and acquiescence.
Papers by Sebastian Guzman
Vera Institute of Justice report, 2022
https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/learning-from-youth-envisioning-freedom-for-unaccompa... more https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/learning-from-youth-envisioning-freedom-for-unaccompanied-children.pdf
Hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children and youth from around the world have arrived in the United States over the past decade seeking protection from violence, persecution, war, and insecurity. Yet, their reception into the country has often led them into an immigration system characterized by systematic criminalization, a lack of transparency, and separation from their families. The reception system for children arriving to the United States needs to be reformed to demonstrate respect for their basic human dignity. In interviews and group discussions, Vera engaged with 32 young adults who were detained as unaccompanied minors by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). They shared their stories about navigating the complex U.S. immigration system. Drawing from their lived experience and expertise, they developed 10 proposals to reform the reception system for unaccompanied children and youth in a way that centers their freedom, safety, and family unity.
Key Takeaway: Reception for unaccompanied children and youth should be designed to welcome, house, and support them—not to criminalize and institutionalize them. Policymakers need to reform the reception system in a way that centers dignity and keeps families together.
Authors: Emily Bartholomew, Sebastian Guzman, Hortencia Rodrigues, Shaina Aber, Alejandro Garcia, Tammy Cho
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2021
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/blar.13313
In 2011, Chilean higher education stu... more https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/blar.13313
In 2011, Chilean higher education students led the most massive protests in two decades demanding ‘public, free, and quality education’. The institutional consequences of the protests have not been properly studied until now. We assess students' institutional gains – in legislation, executive decisions, judicial decisions, and university policies – in all their demands related to neoliberal higher education. We show that the movement has had important successes, especially in financial terms, but the power of corporations remains mostly untouched. Contradicting some narratives, comparable gains occurred during both the right-wing and centre-left administrations, highlighting the difficulties of challenging neoliberal corporate policies.
ABSTRACT This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a s... more ABSTRACT This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a six-year mortgage strike demanding that the state cancel their debt. By comparing debtors in the same housing development who behave differently, the dissertation explains how debtors were motivated to resist or consent to debt payment and how they made sense of their choices. The main contribution lies in demonstrating that, at least in cases like this one, solidarity and moral beliefs do not motivate consent or resistance. Rather, practices of consent and resistance induce the moral beliefs we choose to satisfy psychological desires. The analysis shows that debtors’ decisions to pay or to protest were pragmatic, responding largely to an evaluation of fears and the need and expectations for obtaining debt relief. However, most debtors held contradictory beliefs about the fairness of debt and about whether their decision was in their best interest. Thus, making sense of these decisions was not effortless. They sought to overcome their ambivalences, working hard to convince themselves that their decision to pay or to default was the best, both pragmatically and morally. In other words, they engaged in what psychologists call “motivated reasoning,” that is, biased information processing driven by affects. The findings contribute to the study of consent and protest in four ways. First, the study clarifies the agency of individuals in legitimating their own subordination, as well as in choosing and adapting ideas mobilized by social movements and their adversaries. Second, the study highlights agency of movements and their adversaries in creating beliefs through the creation of incentives for people to embrace such beliefs. Third, solidarity and framing efforts by social movements and their adversaries are probably less relevant to producing behavior than we had previously thought. Nevertheless, while legitimacy and some framing efforts may not affect behavior, they can make domination less psychologically painful. Fourth, at a meta-theoretical level, the study proposes that we take cognitive processes and psychological motives more seriously in the study of normative beliefs, protest, and acquiescence.
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2018
Group projects are widely used in higher education, but they can be problematic if all group memb... more Group projects are widely used in higher education, but they can be problematic if all group members are given the same grade for a project to which they might not have contributed equally. Most scholars recommend addressing these problems by awarding individual grades, computing some kind of individual weighting factor (IWF) from peer and (sometimes) selfassessments, which is then multiplied by the group grade to generate an individual grade. Several variants of the IWF method have been proposed, sometimes with complex algorithms. However, theory suggests they are inaccurate and their accuracy has not been evaluated. This article uses Monte Carlo experiments to assess the accuracy of the original IWF method and variants proposed in the past decade. Findings show that the earlier, simpler methods work best and that self-assessments should definitely be avoided.
Sociological Forum, 2015
Sebasti an G. Guzm an 2 How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a socia... more Sebasti an G. Guzm an 2 How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization in their community has been countering this misinformation for years? Why do people knowingly accept misinformation without even being upset about it? I address these questions by analyzing ethnographic data and interviews with 84 Chilean low-income housing debtors, whom, like many Chileans, are victims of financial misinformation. While the state and banks had significant agency in inducing the unproblematic acceptance of misinformation, debtors also played an active role in the processes. First, debtors had to decide whom to trust, which was not only a cognitive problem about evidence but also a behavioral and practical problem involving risks. Second, debtors engaged in "motivated reasoning"-affect-driven biased information processing-to dismiss the possibility of being misinformed, to downplay the significance of misinformation, and to direct blame away from misinforming institutions. The latter two practices reduced debtors' anger about being misinformed. The findings have implications for studies of social movement framing and counterinformation, for the cognitive psychology of misinformation, and for the sociology and social psychology of acquiescence.
Sociological Theory, 2013
This article proposes an empirically grounded theory of the acceptance of authoritative speech be... more This article proposes an empirically grounded theory of the acceptance of authoritative speech beyond contexts of deliberation. I synthesize Habermas’s and Bourdieu’s influential theories on the topic by specifying factors that lead to either a prereflexive acceptance or a critical evaluation of the claims made by people in positions of authority. To do so, I assess each author’s theses in four types of contexts covered by three empirical studies that analyze reactions to authoritative speech. I find that people can autonomously reject authoritative speech if they have the necessary cultural resources, such as relevant personal experience or contradictory background norms, or if they are strongly motivated—for example, by disappointed expectations. Otherwise, individuals are likely to accept what authorities say without regard for reasons. The synthetic theory proposed better grasps the potentials and limitations of people’s critical capacities—a crucial task for democratic and crit...
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2014
Many scholars have questioned the thoroughness of Max Weber’s typology of authority. The key prob... more Many scholars have questioned the thoroughness of Max Weber’s typology of authority. The key problem has been that some empirical cases, such as doctors and Soviet leaders, cannot be accounted for by combining Weber’s three pure types of authority. I propose a new solution to this problem by reconstructing Weber’s conceptualization of authority – stressing the doxic (Bourdieu) backup of authority – and modifying his typology – adding a “substantive-rational” type. Unlike previous attempts, this solution meets three important criteria: (1) thoroughly accounting for a variety of anomalous cases; (2) overcoming the limitations of the theory of action by acknowledging the developments of contemporary social theory; and (3) still serving Weber’s ambitious purposes, such as understanding broad rationalization processes and the stabilization of charisma. The usefulness of the typology is illustrated with various empirical cases that represent transformations of charisma in a substantive-ra...
To Pay or to Protest: Consent and Resistance to Social Housing Debt in Chile (dissertation in progress)
In this chapter, I explain how debtors made sense of the Chilean National Association of Housing ... more In this chapter, I explain how debtors made sense of the Chilean National Association of Housing Debtors' (ANDHA) efforts to politicize mortgage debt—particularly of ANDHA’s use of frames that presented housing as a right and frames that identified debtors as poor and thus entitled to assistance. I show that neither ANDHA nor the state could impose meanings but, rather, that they negotiated those meanings with debtors. Debtors adapted leaders’ critiques in ways that did not strongly contradict the neoliberal ideology, made sense of their experience of debt as a free choice rather than forced imposition, and avoided the stigmatized identity of the poor. Yet, on the other hand, through these adaptations of ANDHA’s frames, debtors could still criticize their indebtedness and housing policies and thus justify their protests. At a more abstract level, the argument has two implications. First, it illustrates that framing processes and classification struggles do not involve imposition of meanings that resonate or rejection of meanings that do not (Benford and Snow 2000; Snow and Benford 1988), but negotiation of meanings. Second, it suggests one way in which social movement constituencies and leaders avoid the difficulties posed by important strategic dilemmas: whether to oppose existing meanings or use them to gain support—the “dilemma of cultural innovation” (Jasper 2004:13); and whether to justify demands using stigmatized identities constituents want to avoid—a variant of Jaspers’ (2010) “dilemma of stigmatized identities.” The analysis is based on archival and ethnographic data.
Why do unions sometimes strike against their partisan allies in government? Against rational choi... more Why do unions sometimes strike against their partisan allies in government? Against rational choice explanations, this article argues that leaders with a militant and autonomist ideology strike against allies because they believe strikes are a necessary to achieve gains—contrasting with their less autonomist colleagues’ views. This is expected particularly in some Latin American and Southern European countries where labour is highly politicized and divided. Statistical and qualitative analysis of six Chilean public sector unions in the first eighteen years of post-authoritarian regime (N=86) support the theory. Reanalysis of secondary data suggests it may apply for other Latin American countries.
Book chapters by Sebastian Guzman
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Articles by Sebastian Guzman
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The submitted version is available here. If you need the printed version, 100 free copies of the full article are available at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/h4QX9xupbQxy8eRxxM3g/full and http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ee2eHDqmr2aTEb9t4dB8/full
The paid version is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1416457
Books by Sebastian Guzman
ABSTRACT: This book aims to understand the group of economic units often identified under concepts such as urban informal sector, informal economy, micro-enterprises, and self-employment. Is this a group distinguishable from the rest of the economy? How are we to understand it's relation to the rest of the economy? How do these units make economic decisions? How are we to understand its emergence and persistence in capitalist economies? The book discusses to what extent we can answer these questions by focusing on the rationality and culture of these economic units, their class locations, or on other economic variables (e.g. number of workers, amount of capital, capital to worker ratio). We conclude that the analysis of class locations is the most promising avenue to answer these questions, although the other factors make some secondary contributions. We propose a typology that modifies Erik Olin Wright's and Alejandro Portes's Neo-Marxist class typologies to account for informal workers in countries with a large informal sector. The typology re-frames the so-called informal economy as a mix of an informal sub-proletariat, workers temporarily expelled from formal jobs, petty bourgeoisie, and small employers. The differences between these groups, often lumped together by policies addressing "micro-enterprises" in Latin America, help us better answer the above-mentioned questions and understand these economic units.
RESUMEN: Este libro busca comprender el grupo de unidades económicas generalmente identificadas bajo conceptos como sector informal urbano, economía informal, micro-empresas y auto-empleo. ¿Es posible distinguir a este grupo del resto de la economía? ¿Cómo operan estas unidades en sus decisiones económicas? ¿Cómo se relacionan con el resto de la economía? ¿Cómo podemos comprender su emergencia y persistencia en economías capitalistas? El libro evalúa las posibilidades de responder estas preguntas si enfoamos el análisis en la racionalidad y cultura de las unidades, sus locaciones de clase u otras variables económicas (por ejemplo, número de trabajadores, cantidad de capital, relación capital trabajo). Concluímos que un análisis de las locaciones de clase es la vía más prometedora para responder a estas preguntas, aunque los otros factores hacen contribuciones secundarias. Proponemos una tipología que modifica la tipología de clases neo-marxistas de Erik Olin Wright y de Alejandro Portes para dar cuenta de los trabajadore informales en países con un gran sector informal. La tipología re-define a la llamada economía informal como una combinación de sub-proletarios informales, trabajadores expulsados temporalmente de trabajos formales, pequeña burguesía, y pequeños empleadores. Las diferencias entre estos grupos, frequentemente indiferenciados por políticas orientadas a la "micro empresa" en America Latina, nos ayuda a responder de mejor modo a las preguntas más arriba mencionadas y a comprender a estas unidades.
Dissertation by Sebastian Guzman
This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a six-year mortgage strike demanding that the state cancel their debt. By comparing debtors in the same housing development who behave differently, the dissertation explains how debtors were motivated to resist or consent to debt payment and how they made sense of their choices. The main contribution lies in demonstrating that, at least in cases like this one, solidarity and moral beliefs do not motivate consent or resistance. Rather, practices of consent and resistance induce the moral beliefs we choose to satisfy psychological desires.
The analysis shows that debtors’ decisions to pay or to protest were pragmatic, responding largely to an evaluation of fears and the need and expectations for obtaining debt relief. However, most debtors held contradictory beliefs about the fairness of debt and about whether their decision was in their best interest. Thus, making sense of these decisions was not effortless. They sought to overcome their ambivalences, working hard to convince themselves that their decision to pay or to default was the best, both pragmatically and morally. In other words, they engaged in what psychologists call “motivated reasoning,” that is, biased information processing driven by affects.
The findings contribute to the study of consent and protest in four ways. First, the study clarifies the agency of individuals in legitimating their own subordination, as well as in choosing and adapting ideas mobilized by social movements and their adversaries. Second, the study highlights agency of movements and their adversaries in creating beliefs through the creation of incentives for people to embrace such beliefs. Third, solidarity and framing efforts by social movements and their adversaries are probably less relevant to producing behavior than we had previously thought. Nevertheless, while legitimacy and some framing efforts may not affect behavior, they can make domination less psychologically painful. Fourth, at a meta-theoretical level, the study proposes that we take cognitive processes and psychological motives more seriously in the study of normative beliefs, protest, and acquiescence.
Papers by Sebastian Guzman
Hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children and youth from around the world have arrived in the United States over the past decade seeking protection from violence, persecution, war, and insecurity. Yet, their reception into the country has often led them into an immigration system characterized by systematic criminalization, a lack of transparency, and separation from their families. The reception system for children arriving to the United States needs to be reformed to demonstrate respect for their basic human dignity. In interviews and group discussions, Vera engaged with 32 young adults who were detained as unaccompanied minors by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). They shared their stories about navigating the complex U.S. immigration system. Drawing from their lived experience and expertise, they developed 10 proposals to reform the reception system for unaccompanied children and youth in a way that centers their freedom, safety, and family unity.
Key Takeaway: Reception for unaccompanied children and youth should be designed to welcome, house, and support them—not to criminalize and institutionalize them. Policymakers need to reform the reception system in a way that centers dignity and keeps families together.
Authors: Emily Bartholomew, Sebastian Guzman, Hortencia Rodrigues, Shaina Aber, Alejandro Garcia, Tammy Cho
In 2011, Chilean higher education students led the most massive protests in two decades demanding ‘public, free, and quality education’. The institutional consequences of the protests have not been properly studied until now. We assess students' institutional gains – in legislation, executive decisions, judicial decisions, and university policies – in all their demands related to neoliberal higher education. We show that the movement has had important successes, especially in financial terms, but the power of corporations remains mostly untouched. Contradicting some narratives, comparable gains occurred during both the right-wing and centre-left administrations, highlighting the difficulties of challenging neoliberal corporate policies.
Book chapters by Sebastian Guzman
Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781405165518
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The submitted version is available here. If you need the printed version, 100 free copies of the full article are available at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/h4QX9xupbQxy8eRxxM3g/full and http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ee2eHDqmr2aTEb9t4dB8/full
The paid version is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1416457
ABSTRACT: This book aims to understand the group of economic units often identified under concepts such as urban informal sector, informal economy, micro-enterprises, and self-employment. Is this a group distinguishable from the rest of the economy? How are we to understand it's relation to the rest of the economy? How do these units make economic decisions? How are we to understand its emergence and persistence in capitalist economies? The book discusses to what extent we can answer these questions by focusing on the rationality and culture of these economic units, their class locations, or on other economic variables (e.g. number of workers, amount of capital, capital to worker ratio). We conclude that the analysis of class locations is the most promising avenue to answer these questions, although the other factors make some secondary contributions. We propose a typology that modifies Erik Olin Wright's and Alejandro Portes's Neo-Marxist class typologies to account for informal workers in countries with a large informal sector. The typology re-frames the so-called informal economy as a mix of an informal sub-proletariat, workers temporarily expelled from formal jobs, petty bourgeoisie, and small employers. The differences between these groups, often lumped together by policies addressing "micro-enterprises" in Latin America, help us better answer the above-mentioned questions and understand these economic units.
RESUMEN: Este libro busca comprender el grupo de unidades económicas generalmente identificadas bajo conceptos como sector informal urbano, economía informal, micro-empresas y auto-empleo. ¿Es posible distinguir a este grupo del resto de la economía? ¿Cómo operan estas unidades en sus decisiones económicas? ¿Cómo se relacionan con el resto de la economía? ¿Cómo podemos comprender su emergencia y persistencia en economías capitalistas? El libro evalúa las posibilidades de responder estas preguntas si enfoamos el análisis en la racionalidad y cultura de las unidades, sus locaciones de clase u otras variables económicas (por ejemplo, número de trabajadores, cantidad de capital, relación capital trabajo). Concluímos que un análisis de las locaciones de clase es la vía más prometedora para responder a estas preguntas, aunque los otros factores hacen contribuciones secundarias. Proponemos una tipología que modifica la tipología de clases neo-marxistas de Erik Olin Wright y de Alejandro Portes para dar cuenta de los trabajadore informales en países con un gran sector informal. La tipología re-define a la llamada economía informal como una combinación de sub-proletarios informales, trabajadores expulsados temporalmente de trabajos formales, pequeña burguesía, y pequeños empleadores. Las diferencias entre estos grupos, frequentemente indiferenciados por políticas orientadas a la "micro empresa" en America Latina, nos ayuda a responder de mejor modo a las preguntas más arriba mencionadas y a comprender a estas unidades.
This is an ethnography of Chilean low-income housing debtors, some of whom sustained a six-year mortgage strike demanding that the state cancel their debt. By comparing debtors in the same housing development who behave differently, the dissertation explains how debtors were motivated to resist or consent to debt payment and how they made sense of their choices. The main contribution lies in demonstrating that, at least in cases like this one, solidarity and moral beliefs do not motivate consent or resistance. Rather, practices of consent and resistance induce the moral beliefs we choose to satisfy psychological desires.
The analysis shows that debtors’ decisions to pay or to protest were pragmatic, responding largely to an evaluation of fears and the need and expectations for obtaining debt relief. However, most debtors held contradictory beliefs about the fairness of debt and about whether their decision was in their best interest. Thus, making sense of these decisions was not effortless. They sought to overcome their ambivalences, working hard to convince themselves that their decision to pay or to default was the best, both pragmatically and morally. In other words, they engaged in what psychologists call “motivated reasoning,” that is, biased information processing driven by affects.
The findings contribute to the study of consent and protest in four ways. First, the study clarifies the agency of individuals in legitimating their own subordination, as well as in choosing and adapting ideas mobilized by social movements and their adversaries. Second, the study highlights agency of movements and their adversaries in creating beliefs through the creation of incentives for people to embrace such beliefs. Third, solidarity and framing efforts by social movements and their adversaries are probably less relevant to producing behavior than we had previously thought. Nevertheless, while legitimacy and some framing efforts may not affect behavior, they can make domination less psychologically painful. Fourth, at a meta-theoretical level, the study proposes that we take cognitive processes and psychological motives more seriously in the study of normative beliefs, protest, and acquiescence.
Hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children and youth from around the world have arrived in the United States over the past decade seeking protection from violence, persecution, war, and insecurity. Yet, their reception into the country has often led them into an immigration system characterized by systematic criminalization, a lack of transparency, and separation from their families. The reception system for children arriving to the United States needs to be reformed to demonstrate respect for their basic human dignity. In interviews and group discussions, Vera engaged with 32 young adults who were detained as unaccompanied minors by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). They shared their stories about navigating the complex U.S. immigration system. Drawing from their lived experience and expertise, they developed 10 proposals to reform the reception system for unaccompanied children and youth in a way that centers their freedom, safety, and family unity.
Key Takeaway: Reception for unaccompanied children and youth should be designed to welcome, house, and support them—not to criminalize and institutionalize them. Policymakers need to reform the reception system in a way that centers dignity and keeps families together.
Authors: Emily Bartholomew, Sebastian Guzman, Hortencia Rodrigues, Shaina Aber, Alejandro Garcia, Tammy Cho
In 2011, Chilean higher education students led the most massive protests in two decades demanding ‘public, free, and quality education’. The institutional consequences of the protests have not been properly studied until now. We assess students' institutional gains – in legislation, executive decisions, judicial decisions, and university policies – in all their demands related to neoliberal higher education. We show that the movement has had important successes, especially in financial terms, but the power of corporations remains mostly untouched. Contradicting some narratives, comparable gains occurred during both the right-wing and centre-left administrations, highlighting the difficulties of challenging neoliberal corporate policies.
Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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I want to propose a policy solution to this problem that, while apparently reformist, challenges a major pattern of capitalist accumulation in our financialized economy. Hopefully this could amount to something like what André Gorz called “non-reformist reforms.” The key of the idea is to allow families to use their social security savings (or other pension savings, depending on the country) as down-payment and/or backup fund to pay their mortgage in moment of unemployment or illness; simultaneously, the gaps they leave in their social security can be securitized by the home (like a home equity loan). In the US, this should allow people to avoid the cost of Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI, an insurance required for those who buy with less than 20% down-payment). In the US and other countries it may also grant access to lower interest rates. And families would be able to buy a home earlier in their life without the difficulty of saving and throwing out their money in rent. After they pay their home, people should pay back the gaps that they leave in their social security contributions. If they cannot pay the social security debt, the value of the home is used to pay for it after the homeowner dies, unless her inheritors take over the home and the debt. That way, the pension system recovers the money similar to how a home-equity loan works, and the inheritors have a chance or inheriting some of their parents’ wealth.
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educación es necesariamente un peso menos en otro gasto social.
Pero garantizar educación gratuita no significa que menos plata estará disponible para el Sename, hospitales, o la prioridad del momento
. . . la verdadera gratuidad debiera de acompañarse, además de admisiones abiertas o al menos más equitativas, de un sistema verdadero de becas de mantención como existe en países como Suecia o Uruguay.
. . .
Si decimos que la educación es un derecho, tiene que estar garantizado, no condicionado a si tenía las condiciones suficientes para terminar la carrera en el plazo mínimo. Es como decir que la salud es un derecho, pero por cada enfermedad sólo existe un número determinado de prestaciones y si hay complicaciones que requieren tratamiento más largo, corren por cuenta del paciente.
Muchos han criticado –con justa razón– que la reforma a los colegios permite la existencia de una élite que puede invertir todos los recursos necesarios en la formación de sus hijos, mientras el resto de la sociedad debe limitarse a recibir lo que ofrece el sistema público con sus escasos recursos.
Curiosamente, algunas personas que hablan de terminar con un sistema discriminatorio, en que los estudiantes reciben educación de acuerdo con los ingresos de su familia, piden que en la educación universitaria coexistan instituciones pagadas y gratuitas.
El argumento es que algunas instituciones cumplen con fines privados, confesionales o no entregan educación de calidad. Sin embargo, hay una serie de efectos negativos de tener un sistema combinado. . . . (seguir leyendo http://www.elmostrador.cl/opinion/2015/02/11/peligros-de-la-gratuidad-solo-para-algunas-universidades/)