UCL Institute of the Americas was delighted to host The Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship Lecture by Professor Ricardo López-Pedreros, recipient of this prestigious award and currently collaborating with the Institute under the auspices of the scheme. By drawing on the Colombian case, in this lecture, Professor Ricardo López-Pedreros invites us to think of the social formation of elites as a way to see how neoliberal rationalities have become the dominant way to organize societies across the Americas in the last half century. Although scholars have recently privileged the study of neoliberalism from below, he proposes it is crucial to see how elites legitimise—acquire, preserve, shelter—their power and privilege in neoliberal societies. This presentation, América and the Elites without History: Some Thoughts on Democracy as Domination, is an effort to stimulate a broader discussion on how we materialize interdisciplinary approaches to critically understand how a system of domination, rooted in a diversity of hierarchies and vast disparities in wealth, have become sanctioned as a reality. This lecture was delivered online on March 15, 2022.

• published: 16 Mar 2022
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