Luis Reygadas He is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa Unit; His lines of research are the anthropology of work, contemporary capitalism and inequality in Latin America. His publications include Appropriation, unraveling the networks of inequality (Anthropos, 2008), Assembling cultures. Diversity and conflict in the globalization of the industry (Gedisa, 2002), Alternative economies. Utopias, disenchantments and emerging processes (Juan Pablos, 2014, co-editor) and Millennium Anthropologists. Inequality, precariousness and diversity in working conditions in anthropology in Mexico (2019, in press). Together with Paul Gootenberg, he edited the book Indelible Inequalities in Latin America. Lessons from History, Politics and Culture (Duke University Press, 2010).

Coloquios interdisciplinarios

Comment to the colloquium "Inequalities and the re-politicization of the social in Latin America" by
  • Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz
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Inequality is always political

  • Luis Reygadas

Keywords: social action, social inequality, distribution, power, politics, redistribution.

Whis reflection on Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz's proposal regarding the consequences and responses of subaltern groups to inequality -which he explores in migration, violence, religiosity and collective action-, appreciates that it places the discussion on social inequality in Latin America back at the center. Reygadas proposes several reflections on the relationship between social actions and inequality. He points out that social disparities are not enough to explain the responses on which Pérez Sáinz focuses. That it is necessary to conceive that the reproduction of persistent inequalities occurs in the long term, while social action has a short-term impact and, in addition, transformations are required in other links of this chain of reproduction. Finally, he qualifies Pérez Sáinz's emphasis on the distribution of basic markets (land, labor and capital), since from Reygadas's perspective, the locus of inequality is also found in redistribution, through progressive fiscal structures, in the economy and politics, markets, society and public institutions, as well as in material distribution and symbolic configurations.