Thomas Ponniah and Jonathan Eastwood have produced an engaging and profoundly thought-provoking collection of essays on Venezuela’s process of political and social change under the late President Hugo Chávez. The volume rises above the simplistic, and often sterile, debates over democracy versus authoritarianism, and capitalism versus socialism that Venezuela’s polarized politics all too frequently elicit. Instead, its high quality analytic and theoretically-driven essays explore the consequences of Venezuela’s political experiment for institutions and individuals in all of their complex, multidimensional, and contradictory nature. In carefully selecting essays that reflect the gamut of political positions, the editors invite us to confront our preconceptions, move past them, and draw our own conclusions about the impact, meaning, and legacy of Venezuela’s ‘revolution.’
Eduardo Silva
Contemporary Sociology
This excellent book makes an important contribution to the scholarly debate on the meaning of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution since the democratic election of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in 1998. While some scholars depict the Chávez regime as autocratic and undemocratic, others view Chávez’s Venezuela as embodying 21st-century participatory democracy and socialism. Eastwood and Ponniah have assembled a collection of high-quality, well-researched essays in an attempt to overcome the polarized nature of academic debates on Chávez’s Venezuela… This pathbreaking book shows that the Venezuelan experience with 21st century socialism transcends the country’s borders by planting the seeds of an alternative modernity.
M. E. Carranza
Choice