Elections in Argentina: the end of a cycle?

 

Sign up for the seminar (free and open to all; lunch from 12:30)

 

On the 25th of October, Argentina will elect a new president and congress. That will mean the end of what has been called the “Kirchner-era”: the rule by the late Nestor Kirchner (from 2003 to 2007) and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-present). The Kirchners, representing the left-wing of the Partido Justicialista (Peronist party), have enjoyed high popularity. However, several of their policy measures have been controversial, and Argentina has become increasingly polarized over the last years. In this seminar we will discuss the prospects for the upcoming elections, and how and to what extent they may bring change to Argentina.

 

Speakers

Andrés Malamud is a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. He received a B.A. from the University of Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence. He has been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg and the University of Maryland, College Park, and a professor at several universities in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Portugal and Spain. His areas of interest include comparative regional integration, government institutions and parties, EU Studies and Latin American politics.

Kristi Anne Stølen is Director at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Oslo. She holds a Dr. Philos. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo, and she has comprehensive field research experience from Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala and Zambia. Stølen’s current research project focuses on gender and agricultural change in Argentina in view of the rapid expansion of gene modified organisms in agriculture. The project is part of a longitudinal study of agrarian change among farmers in Argentina, started in 1973.

Fabián Mosenson is a lecturer at Østfold University College. He received a B.A. from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), a degree from FLACSO, and a Master’s from The New School for Social Research. He has researched at the Gino Germani, UBA. and taught in Argentina (UBA, Facultad Libre de Rosario, Univ. del Cine), USA (New School, Parsons, Ramapo), Spain (UMH at Elche and Orihuela) and Norway (University of Oslo, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Bergen, Telemark University College). His areas of interest include Argentina and Latin America, politics, aesthetics, and culture.

Cecilia G. Salinas has an MA in Social Anthropology and is currently enrolled in the PhD Program in Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her main research interests are forest conservation, REDD+, politics, poverty, inequality and issues concerning indigenous people and the tobacco industry. Her PhD project explores the interrelatedness of local-global processes underlying both the conservation and destruction of the Atlantic Paraná Forest in the Northeast province of Misiones.

 

Programme

12:30 - 13:00
Informal lunch

13:00 - 13:45
ANDRES MALAMUD: "Argentina 2015: the end of a cycle or Peronist renovation?"

13:45 - 14:00
KRISTI ANNE STØLEN: "'El agro' challenging Kirchnerismo"

14:00 - 14:15
FABIAN MOSENSON: "'La grieta' kirchnerista. Present and future of a socio-cultural schism."

14:15 - 14:30
CECILIA G. SALINAS: "Politics from the Hinterland: How tobacco growers and Mbya people understand “la política”; an understanding that springs from their precarious livelihoods in a frontier area bordering Brazil."

14:30 - 14:40
Coffee break

14:40 - 15:30
Open debate