Eduardo Silva

Statement

I am honored to have been nominated to serve on the Executive Council of LASA, an institution that has been at the center of my professional life since graduate school.  It’s steadfast commitment to interdisciplinarity generates a friendly “big tent” atmosphere for scholars of all walks to find each other, learn from their conversations, generate new ideas, discover opportunities, disseminate research, maintain and reconfigure research groups, hatch new projects and programs, and all the while having fun working in a relaxed social setting. These are the reasons that bind me to LASA.

LASA faces many challenges in maintaining these qualities in a post-Covid world of more depersonalized, fragmented communications. In this context, I think it important to find ways to maintain opportunities for close, collaborative, imaginative and productive professional relationships. They are the bedrock of LASA’s hallmark: imaginative, useful, and timely work that addresses Latin America’s many and diverse problems and challenges, as well as its strengths and lessons for the rest of the world. The key to building on this legacy, in my view, rests on continual renewal of our commitment to supporting the vitality of subfields, the diversity of theoretical approaches, and mythological pluralism. There is natural competition among them. The task is to protect these qualities from the temptation of crowding others out. I would look for, and support, initiatives to strengthen these positive aspects of LASA. The structure of LASA supports this mission with a diversity of sections as does its annual congress with its program tracks and the composition of its committees. It might be useful to think about what missing or underrepresented in the existing gamut of program tracks and descriptions to ensure the vibrancy of LASA’s scholarly pluralism. Thematic “Foros Plenarios” during LASA congresses that examine a problem from various theoretical and methodological perspectives might be something to explore. A precursor to any such initiatives would be to arrive at a consensus over any “imbalances,” and then collectively establish how to address them.

Creating spaces and opportunities for engaging with research from Latin America, as many recognize, is key to achieving the goals expressed above. The “view from Latin America” is crucial. Latin American colleagues often have different perspectives regarding what the key issues are and how to frame them. Some cannot fully address what they perceive to be the most important problems because they don’t fit with dominant theoretical and methodological approaches from the center. Others forge ahead modifying theory, combining different theoretical approaches from a more multi-disciplinary perspective, and are open to methodological pluralism. Many candidates to the executive committee before me have expressed the need to encourage more participation from Latin America by facilitating their travel to LASA congresses and by forging closer links to Latin American research universities. I support such initiatives. I would also look for opportunities to disseminate the scholarly production of working groups, research groups, and individual scholars from Latin America in the Global North, and especially in the USA. The next crucial step would be to bring them into conversation with US-Global North-based scholars and see what develops. In other words, how can LASA help in the process of advancing theory from Latin America in a way that impacts scholarship from the North? “Foros Plenarios,” during LASA congresses, among other mechanisms, might offer such opportunities. In any case, the point would be to offer institutional support for “Espacios de Encuentro,” in some form or other.