Call for papers. Public policies and statality

Thematic dossier. Public policies and statality: the State as an agent of social change in Latin America  

Editorial advisory board: Mariana Schweitzer (CIHaM-CONICET-UBA, Argentina); Reto Bertoni (FCS-UdelaR, Uruguay); Marcel Theza Manriquez (CEDER, Universidad de Los Lagos, Chile); Rogério Leandro Lima da Silveira (PPGDR-UNISC,Brasil); Ariel García (CEUR-CONICET, UBA, Argentina).

Deadline for submission: August 30, 2021

With the call for this thematic dossier, the Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais [Brazilian Journal of Urban and Regional Studies] (RBEUR) seeks to bring together original papers with a primary focus on the State and statality, governmentality and public policies, in which empirical references are revalorized, discussed and contributed in order to reflect on the potential of the state apparatus as an arena for conflict resolution, channeling popular demands and building government agendas that challenge the common meanings produced from neoliberal devices.

The State, governmentalities and public policies generally appear within the scenario as notions that encompass political-institutional processes, which deserve to be treated with both suspicion and distrust. The State, as a monolithic object, endowed with Weberian rationality, with its pervasive capacity and severed from society, may be considered a cultural triumph of the neoliberal devices of domination over our peripheral societies. From the approach proposed herein, the State is conceived as an artifact geared towards social cohesion and integration (asymmetric and hierarchical) and an arena into which part of the social contradictions and conflicts are condensed by means of the disputes that involve social groups through specific resources (material and intangible).

We are aware that this perspective conflicts with European post-Marxist views, which very often demonstrate suspicion towards statality for being conceived as a vehicle for disseminating neoliberal rationality (Cowan Ros, Berger and García, 2020), through which "The State of rights is not being abolished from the outside, but destroyed from inside to make itself a war weapon against the population and at the service of the dominant" (Dardot and Laval, 2019). Nevertheless, Latin America provides substantial evidence that the State is able to build rights, thereby expanding the horizons of citizenship and offering empirical keys through which to strengthen its capacities. However, this Latin American particularity is thematic and has been analyzed from interpretive schemes designed for other historical eras and territorial scenarios, through theories of state, which are not fully compatible with the characteristics of our states.

Thus, the proposal of the dossier has been guided by a viewpoint that seeks to denature the State, so that the place of action, agency and intention of the people and actors who operate through their state institutions (bureaucratic units, programs, legislation, etc.) are all made visible. This process, involving the deconstruction of the State, as a subject and place of action, enables us to recognize the plural, heterogeneous, complex - often contradictory – senses of the multiple state devices, and thereby facilitates the notion of statality, to emerge as a concept that discusses the idea of "the State" as a comprehensive, totalizing, rational and harmonious entity of irremediable executive conduct.

In this dossier, we commence by considering that the road towards the deconstruction and denaturation of the fetishist conception of the state begins by questioning its position as a grammatical subject within our narrative constructions. We set out to remove it from the place of action, of agency, and of intention, in order to reinstate within it the people and interest groups who operate through the aforementioned state institutions so as to influence the production of social order, whether through offensive, concessional dynamics or resistance towards the cycles of neoliberalization. On the other hand, we seek to apprehend and recognize the multiplicity of State expressions whether as  representations, bureaucratic units, programs, laws, agents, material manifestations (infrastructure, documentation, etc.), statistics and, fundamentally, different levels of government (national and subnational), with a view to (re) discovering and guiding our study objects more precisely (Cowan Ros, Berger and García, 2020). Analyzing the diversity of expressions, dynamics and interactions within statality leads us to characterize and understand the state formations that coexist in Latin America, with their characteristics, identities, and ways of proceeding. This unquestionably allows us to build native interpretive schemes that recognize conceptual legacies and, at the same time, enables us to exercise epistemological vigilance so as to avoid slipping into colonized interpretations with which the academy, with its customary distant stance, observes the political processes that bring meaning to statality.

In short, based on these assumptions, and transcending aspects regarding the health conjuncture, we hereby invite employees, professionals and academics who are specialized in the subject to submit research articles that:

• Enhance the debate on the concept of the State in Latin America. On the one hand, in relation to the distinct characteristics of the state bureaucracy as a non-monolithic apparatus, with power relations within, as well as multi-scalar dynamics in the decision-making processes.
• Discuss – from the viewpoint of dependence and underdevelopment - the tension in the face of global, de-territorialized economic and political flows, and the limitations and possibilities of generating transformations within the scope of the capitalist system.
• Invest in present and/or past intervention devices of a national nature, from which institutionality may be built in order to solve economic and social problems, particularly the promotion and guarantee of social rights.
• Analyze the constituent characteristics of popular initiatives that strive to build transformative statality from the meaning of devices conceived through neoliberal rationalities.
• Characterize the state devices, which are in conflict with the functions traditionally undertaken by hegemonic economic operators (financing, production and supply of food, social technologies, etc.).

Colleagues from different disciplines with an interest in the topic of the dossier are invited to submit original articles that consider the abovementioned themes. Texts may be written in Portuguese, Spanish or English.

The editorial rules covering the elaboration and presentation as defined by RBEUR are available at: https://rbeur.anpur.org.br/rbeur/about/submissions

Articles for this dossier should be sent through the RBEUR site until August 30, 2021. Those approved will be published from November 2021.