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Nelson W. Sodré was one of the main Brazilian intellectuals of the last century, with a broad range of concerns—historical, economic, social, and cultural. Despite his focus on Brazilian history, Sodré’s work can also be regarded as having a broader interest for the so-called peripheral, neocolonial, or simply underdeveloped nations. Much of Sodré’s work can be considered an important cultural legacy and deserves to be revisited, given its ongoing relevance in many aspects, among them: his analysis of the nature of colonial economies and their superstructural manifestations; his effort to adapt Marxism to the study of colonial and neocolonial nations and his stress on the necessity of achieving intellectual independence in the periphery; and his definition of the “people” in Brazil. Despite limitations of some of Sodré’s research hypotheses, he will be remembered not only as a great Brazilian historian but also as a great example of struggles for social emancipation.

The last works of Joan Robinson showed increasing preoccupation with ecological and environmental issues. Some of these preoccupations were already present in some of her main earlier works, but as she approached old age, the discussion of these questions became more frequent, as well as of other issues such as the arms race and the nuclear threat to the human race. However, Robinson had not dealt with ecological and environmental questions by means of a systematic approach. This article evaluates Robinson’s views on ecology and environment not only because this is a gap in the literature on her work, but mainly because some of Robinson’s insights on these questions are yet to be fully developed. Therefore, this article mixes the history of economic thought with political economy, Robinson’s perspectives being summarized and then analyzed in light of the ecological critique as established by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. The article shows that despite the fact that Robinson could have developed more profoundly the logical consequences of some of her core contributions to economic theory to a broader ecological critique, many of her theoretical perspectives overlap with Georgescu-Roegen’s ecological economics, being able to contribute to a heterodox critique of the neoclassical approach.

This article reviews the recent growth period in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries up to the current crisis, to provide an assessment of trends observed in the world of labour. Our assessment includes demographic trends, the employment structure, trends in unemployment and wages and the trajectory of social, racial and gender inequalities. We argue that the LAC region has undergone significant structural changes due to shifting positions in the international division of labour. The rural exodus has persisted, but also the industrialization patterns of the past have given way to renewed emphasis on primary goods exports, as well as new specialization patterns which favour low paying jobs in services or industries of the ‘maquila’ type. The informal, or low productivity, sector has also expanded. The economic boom of the 2000s had some positive distributional effects, but made limited inroads into the established racial and gender hierarchies, which found expression in persisting super-exploitation and extreme levels of violence and mass incarceration.

This work aims to evaluate Argentina’s macroeconomic behaviour between 2003 and 2013. The article begins with a discussion and description of the main policies adopted by the government in the period. The second section contains an empirical evaluation of the overall economic behaviour of the economy during the 2003–2013 period, including inflation. The third section contains an interpretation of the recent Argentinian experience of economic growth and high inflation rates.