Taming Markets: Latin America in the Global Neoliberal Order.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Area Studies
Abstract
The fellowship will support training, research, and writing. of the book project tentatively titled Taming Markets: Latin America
in the Global Neoliberal Order. In what became a moment of policy experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s, market-driven, financial
institutions and strategies such as commodity exchanges and futures markets began to compete with the existing but renewed
arsenal of state-led mechanisms such as commodity agreements, cartels, and price controls in an effort to tame markets in period of
economic distress at the global level and political repression in the region. The book project will investigate the emergence,
transformation, and impact of those institutions, policies, and everyday practices aiming at taming and markets and controlling prices
in a context of a sweeping neoliberal turn that promised to freed markets once and for all. The book expects to make several scholarly
and societal contributions. Instead of asking about the origins and politics of freeing markets like the existing multidisciplinary
literature on neoliberalism, this book aims to flip the question and examine the politics of taming of markets. With regards to Latin
American history, this book project opens the black box of economic policymaking during military regimes while exploring economic
life beyond the well-trodden myths of "economic miracle" or "pauperization" that surround them. Finally, the book fills this book fills
an overwhelming gap on the history of global finance by examining the rise and use of trade institutions and finance instruments in
the developing world. Beyond scholarly goals, the book is part of a broader project of increasing financial and economic literacy in the
humanities.
in the Global Neoliberal Order. In what became a moment of policy experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s, market-driven, financial
institutions and strategies such as commodity exchanges and futures markets began to compete with the existing but renewed
arsenal of state-led mechanisms such as commodity agreements, cartels, and price controls in an effort to tame markets in period of
economic distress at the global level and political repression in the region. The book project will investigate the emergence,
transformation, and impact of those institutions, policies, and everyday practices aiming at taming and markets and controlling prices
in a context of a sweeping neoliberal turn that promised to freed markets once and for all. The book expects to make several scholarly
and societal contributions. Instead of asking about the origins and politics of freeing markets like the existing multidisciplinary
literature on neoliberalism, this book aims to flip the question and examine the politics of taming of markets. With regards to Latin
American history, this book project opens the black box of economic policymaking during military regimes while exploring economic
life beyond the well-trodden myths of "economic miracle" or "pauperization" that surround them. Finally, the book fills this book fills
an overwhelming gap on the history of global finance by examining the rise and use of trade institutions and finance instruments in
the developing world. Beyond scholarly goals, the book is part of a broader project of increasing financial and economic literacy in the
humanities.
