CAREER: Social Bases of Politics in Latin America

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award integrates research with an enhanced teaching curriculum that stresses early exposure of students to filed and primary research activities. The overall plan has two basic components: 1) a five year research plan involving the production of a single-authored book and an edited volume; and, 2) a teaching plan which stresses interaction between field experience, research training, and classroom work. The research plan sheds theoretical light on the links between large-scale social changes and recent institutional changes and political realignments in Latin America. It also promotes and empirically-grounded agenda of research on the links between social change and political change. The research involves work on the recasting of populist parties in Latin America, as well as research exploring the broader dimensions of social change and democratic politics in past decades. The education plan is based on the notion that students' learning experience can be greatly enhanced by first-hand and practical exposure to the contexts and issues they are studying, and that early opportunities for field research are vital to training for future scholarship. Through the investigator's own research activities and teaching curriculum innovations, research and field experience opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students will be expanded, and students will gain greater exposure to the practical contexts they are studying. The main types of exposure under this plan are field research experience through the linking of study abroad with field research opportunities, as well as integration of support for primary research into regular undergraduate seminars and independent projects. Student contact with activists and practitioners in the classroom, and student participation in individual and collaborative research activities, are included in this research-education activity.