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Ringvorlesung am 19.01.2023, 18:00 bis 20:00 Uhr in Kassel
Vortrag von Dr. Hannes Warnecke-Berger und Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt (Universität Kassel)

Abstract

Some countries in Latin America were among the richest in the world as recently as the beginning of the 20th century. The continent was rich not only in income but also in raw materials. Increasingly, Latin America began to specialize in the export of these raw materials, however, by the middle of the 20th century, Latin America was still competing with East Asia for development advances. However, Latin America failed to diversify its blatant dependence on raw materials, either in production or in exports. This lecture discusses this persistence of raw material extractivism in Latin America. It traces incisive developmental moments of extractivism and considers how Latin America is challenged by climate change and sustainability strategies in Europe. The presentation shows that inequality and issues of income distribution are important factors in explaining this relationship. Latin America has been too rich but at the same time too unequal to develop. If this issue is not addressed, Latin America will miss yet another opportunity to move away from commodity dependence.

Short Bio

Dr. Hannes Warnecke-Berger is senior researcher at the University of Kassel and Extractivism’s project coordinator. He has led research projects on migration and remittances as well as violence and development. He has worked within the Collaborative Research Center 1199 “Spatialization Processes under Conditions of Globalization” at the University of Leipzig. He received his doctorate in Political Science with a thesis on forms of violence in Central America and the Caribbean at the University of Leipzig. He studied Political Science, Law and Sociology at the University of Leipzig and Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Science Po Bordeaux. He has conducted field research in Central America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the United States and France.

Dr. Hannes Warnecke-Berger

Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt holds the Chair of International and Inter-Society Relations at the University of Kassel. He has many years of experience with joint projects and international cooperation, conducting various research projects in Latin America. For example, he was a project leader of several university partnerships in Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Venezuela and has conducted various research projects in Latin America. As the German director of the Merian Center of Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS), he is in charge of four Latin American regional centers and is the director of the Latin American Studies Center (CELA) at the University of Kassel. For more than ten years, he has been researching environmental and raw material politics and development theory focusing on Latin America.

Lecture Video