A Cultural Political Economy account of Higher Education in Mercosur
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis looks at the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and its Education Sector (SEM) to explain the role of HE in region-building over time. Mercosur is a regional organisation launched in 1991 among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay. Venezuela became a full member in 2012, and Bolivia is in process to acquire full membership. The research aims to shed new insight on the changing place, players and space of HE in region-making by means of a historical analysis of Mercosur HE projects from 1991 until 2016. It argues that understanding Mercosur’s HE sectoral regionalism should be done in relation to the broader development of Mercosur as a region, as well as to the different scales of rule that shape these social relations. The thesis aims to answer the main question: ‘what is Mercosur HE a case of?’ I understand Mercosur HE as a relational space (Harvey 2006), therefore constructed in relation to Mercosur as a region. This process spans external and internal influences grounded in economic, cultural and political dynamics (Robertson, Olds, Dale, & Dang, 2016) that are specific to the experience of Latin American regionalisms. The study adopts a Critical Theory approach to understanding social worlds, including social change (R. W. Cox & Sinclair, 1996). It used critical realism in order to identify the relationship between the outcomes and the action of mechanisms in context (Pawson & Tilley, 1997; Sayer, 1992, 2000). To address the research questions, I traced the historical trajectory of Mercosur’s HE using Process Tracing (Falleti, 2016; Trampusch & Palier, 2016). The framework of Critical Junctures (Collier & Collier, 1991) indicated five moments of change and legacy in the historical development of Mercosur HE. The data analysed was a combination of documentary analysis, unstructured observation and interviews, collected in two fieldwork trips to Latin America in 2016 and 2017. I analysed them as text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) with a fo…
abstract: This thesis looks at the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and its Education Sector (SEM) to explain the role of HE in region-building over time. Mercosur is a regional organisation launched in 1991 among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay. Venezuela became a full member in 2012, and Bolivia is in process to acquire full membership. The research aims to shed new insight on the changing place, players and space of HE in region-making by means of a historical analysis of Mercosur HE projects from 1991 until 2016. It argues that understanding Mercosur’s HE sectoral regionalism should be done in relation to the broader development of Mercosur as a region, as well as to the different scales of rule that shape these social relations. The thesis aims to answer the main question: ‘what is Mercosur HE a case of?’ I understand Mercosur HE as a relational space (Harvey 2006), therefore constructed in relation to Mercosur as a region. This process spans external and internal influences grounded in economic, cultural and political dynamics (Robertson, Olds, Dale, & Dang, 2016) that are specific to the experience of Latin American regionalisms. The study adopts a Critical Theory approach to understanding social worlds, including social change (R. W. Cox & Sinclair, 1996). It used critical realism in order to identify the relationship between the outcomes and the action of mechanisms in context (Pawson & Tilley, 1997; Sayer, 1992, 2000). To address the research questions, I traced the historical trajectory of Mercosur’s HE using Process Tracing (Falleti, 2016; Trampusch & Palier, 2016). The framework of Critical Junctures (Collier & Collier, 1991) indicated five moments of change and legacy in the historical development of Mercosur HE. The data analysed was a combination of documentary analysis, unstructured observation and interviews, collected in two fieldwork trips to Latin America in 2016 and 2017. I analysed them as text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) with a fo…
author: Barlete, Aliandra Raquel Lazzari
language: en
keywords: Higher Education, Regionalism, Latin America, Mercosur, process tracing, critical junctures, Cultural Political Economy, critical realism, critical theory, Mercosur Education Sector
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c09afb62-d01d-415e-bff1-e543da849c39/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2019-11-30
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:21Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.45288