The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes and the Next Left - Softcover

Torres, Rodolfo D; Ibarra, Armando; Carlos, Alfredo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745335241 ISBN 13: 9780745335247

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2018

Synopsis

In the United States, the number of Latinos struggling in pursuit of the American Dream has never been greater. Millions work towards this ideal each year, only to find themselves trapped in a cycle of debt and labor. The need for a vivid, empirically grounded study on Latino politics, culture, and social issues is more essential now than ever before--The Latino Question fulfills this gap, offering a cutting-edge overview and analysis of the transformative nature of Latino politics in the United States.
 
In a radical alternative to the dominant orthodoxy in Latino political studies, Armando Ibarra, Alfredo Carlos, and Rodolfo D. Torres emphasize the importance of political economy for understanding Latino politics, culture, and social issues. Written in an accessible style, the authors draw from extensive original research and several critical traditions--including Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault--to make crucial links between socio-economic and culture-based approaches for understanding the politics of race and ethnicity in capitalist society. Notably, they present front-line evidence of how some Mexican communities across America are not only resisting, but also reinventing and transforming the predominant economic ideas. The Latino Question will be essential for anyone hoping to understand the changes in Latino communities in America today.  

About this title

About the Author

Armando Ibarra is associate professor in the School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is coeditor with Torres of Man of Fire: Selected Writings of Ernesto Galarza. Alfredo Carlos is a faculty member in political science and Chicano Latino studies at California State University, Long Beach as well as the executive director of the Foundation for Economic Democracy. Rodolfo D. Torres is professor of urban planning, political science, and Chicano and Latino studies, and director of the Latino Urban Theory Lab at the University of California, Irvine.

Review

“Provocative . . . . A timely intervention on Mexican American politics and labor.” (Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva)

“Scholars of Mexican American politics have largely rendered invisible capitalism and the inequalities that flow from it. This is a remarkable analysis of Latino politics and labor in this period of market-driven madness and unruly democracy. . . The Latino Question is a compelling critique of our political economy.”  (Rodolfo F. Acuña, Author of Occupied America)

“Studies of Latino politics in the past have largely failed to locate their discussions in the context of the American capitalist political economy and the class divisions that it fosters and that shape so much of the country's political and cultural struggles. The Latino Question provides a pathbreaking and extraordinary account of contemporary Latino politics.”
  (Mario Barrera, author of Race and Class in the Southwest)

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0745335241
• ISBN 13: 9780745335247
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256