Chapter 11: Latin America in the Twenty-First Century

Predicting the future is, even in the most stable situations, a hazardous undertaking. The history of the social sciences is littered with firm predictions which the complexity of historical change has quickly proven to be totally mistaken. Amid the uncertainties and volatility of a fast-globalizing world, it would be foolhardy to predict what lies in store for Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, neither should the social scientist be content simply with analysing the past, since it is out of that past that the future emerges. The tools of social scientific analysis therefore provide instruments that help identify the structures and forces shaping the future and the complex interactions between them. While this knowledge ...