Resisting the global slum: Politics, religion and consumption in the remaking of life worlds in the twenty-first century

The volatility of Latin American society is producing political challenges to neoliberal capitalism, but these are complicated by the transformations neoliberalism has wrought in everyday social life. This paper explores tensions between movements to 'democratise democracy' and politics orientated to controlling the national state, while also considering apolitical forms of 'resistance' to humiliating conditions of life and the impact of new religious movements. I argue that although no instant utopias are likely, there are positive as well as egative possibilities in the way that apparently contradictory developments are combining to transform the established historical contours of hegemony in the region. © Society for Latin American Studies, 2006.