AILASA 2014 – Voicing Dissent – The University of Sydney 2nd – 4th July, 2014.

In the past few decades, in Iberian and Latin American Studies there has been a growth of academic interest in the challenges posed to the status quo by a plethora of social actors. From committed individual voices in the arts, cinema and literature, to collective forms of urban and rural resistance such as social and indigenous movements, Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula have witnessed an increase in the presence of dissenting voices.

Parallel to this phenomenon, the demands that grew from these forms of resistance, often originating “from below” have become part of significant reforms carried out by nation-states. Some of these top-down reforms have been led by people such as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, to mention just two examples, with the effect of unsettling traditional perspectives on identity politics, citizenship, and the relationship between politics and culture.