Latin America and the Global History of Democracy. Ideas in Motion, 1810-1930 / Book Conference

As part of the Latin America and the Global History of Democracy, 1810–1930 project, we are organizing a two-day conference to be held from 31 October to 1 November at the Latin American Centre, University of Oxford.

The goal of the conference is to demonstrate that ideas, institutions, and practices related to democracy during more than a century of state formation in Latin America did not occur in isolation but were part of geographically interconnected discussions of mobile people and ideas. Global historians have emphasized the mobility of people, the exchange of commodities, and the circulation of ideas to challenge traditional narratives that focus on national settings without considering the broader influences that shape local processes. At the same time, many historians have recently made considerable efforts to dispel notions of diffusionist processes from Europe and the United States to elsewhere. Building on these efforts, one of the objectives of the conference it to address the potential and limitations of the circulation of ideas during this period, as well as issues of hierarchies of knowledge between different regions and between diverse social, gender, racial, and ethnic groups within Latin America. The two-day conference will provide the framework for a more focused discussion of transcultural and transnational ideas that have shaped understandings and practices of democracy throughout the Americas and across the Atlantic.