Faculty

Fernando I Leiva
  • Title
    • Professor
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Latin American & Latino Studies
  • Affiliations Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, Oakes College
  • Phone
    831-459-5897
  • Email
  • Fax
    831-459-3125
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Merrill College Academic Building, 30
    • Merrill Academic, room 30
  • Office Hours On Sabbatical
  • Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High St.
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Development Economics, Globalization, Labor and Social Movements, Latin American and Latino Studies, Political Economy of Development
  • Courses LALS 200 Bridging Latin American and Latino Studies; LALS 200-A Power and Society; LALS 245 Epistemologies of the South; LALS 258 Critical Cultural Political Economy; LALS 94-X Mother Nature, Capitalism, and Crises; LALS 158 Latin American Political Economy; LALS 194-X Socio-Environmental Conflicts in the Americas; LALS1 Intro to Latin American and Latino Studies

Summary of Expertise

Socio-environmental conflicts; Economic elites, the state, and political domination; Political economy; Latin American Development; Social Movements; Labor flexibility; Post-neoliberalism. 

Research Interests

I am currently working on two projects: The first focuses on fleshing out a systemic, strategic relational, critical cultural political economy approach for the study of economic elites and the contemporary power of capital and capitalist classes. I am a member of CLACSO's Working Group on Élites empresariales, estado y dominación (Business Elites, the State, and Domination). The second project examiines current strategies to expand the frontiers of extractivism focused on Chile's Atacama region. I co-coordinate the Research Cluster on Critical Cultural Political Economy of Extractivism. I just finished a book The Left Hand of Capital: Neoliberalism and the Left in Chile (SUNY Press, forthcoming) and I am revising the Spanish translation.

Biography, Education and Training

Born in Santiago, Chile, I am a transnational Chilean. 
PhD in Economics, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
MA in Economics, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
BA in Economics, American University (Washington D.C).

Teaching Interests

Latin American political economy, Critical cultural political economy, Contemporary socio-environmental conflicts.