Kate Maclean
Biographic Data
| ID | 3662069 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate Maclean |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate |
| FAMILY NAME | Maclean |
| SIGNATURE | MACLEAN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5509-7108 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Did Eve Emerge From Evo's Rib? Gendered Complexities Over the Period of MAS Rule in Bolivia
The MAS governments in Bolivia (2006–2019) sought to overturn neoliberalism through a decolonial and post‐neoliberal political project informed by indigenous movements, feminist thought, and social movement participation. However, feminist activists and scholars soon argued that MAS discourse and policy increasingly essentialised gender and reinforced extractivist and developmentalist logics that limited the transformative potential of the projec…
Introduction to the inaugural gender, place and culture/Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group (RGS) annual keynote lecture, 2025
The establishment of this lecture responds to what has, until recently, been a noticeable absence: a dedicated, high-profile keynote space for gender and feminist geography at the Royal Geographica...
Owning modernity
This article explores how popular markets and cultural aesthetics challenge colonial binaries of tradition versus modernity, focusing on La Paz and El Alto during a period of Indigenous political power and economic expansion (2006–2019). Drawing on fieldwork and Bolivian scholarship, I show how two visible formations—Freddy Mamani’s “ cholet ” buildings and la moda de la chola paceña —enact plural, ch’ixi modernities rather than simple incorporat…
Crypto dad and the primal horde
This article examines the gendered symbolic order that is being created by the struggle between blockchain enabled currencies (colloquially known as ‘crypto’) and established financial institutions. Narratives from the financial mainstream both for and against regulation adopt classic psychoanalytic scripts of inter-generational conflict, as crypto is frequently described as ‘puerile’, whilst regulators adopt paternal epithets such as ‘Crypto Dad…
St-Century Gender Games
Chess-boxing brings brains, brawn, and bawdy good times
Shifts to Global Development
This special section on global development has been developed from a conference roundtable event run by the Development Geographies Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society. In this special section, we (some of the committee) introduce the four papers and their critical contributions to emerging debates. These extend early work on how the “global” is being made, focusing on the projects of multilateral development agencies and state insti…
Fashion in Bolivia’s cultural economy
This article explores the development of Chola Paceña fashions in La Paz, Bolivia. It traces the social and political lineage of the distinctive pollera dress, and its role in traditions that continue to underpin Aymaran social networks and economies, while it is simultaneously becoming a symbol of their consumer power. Bolivian gross domestic product (GDP) has tripled since 2006, and this wealth has accumulated in the vast urban informal markets…
Women and Microfinance in the Global South
Women and Microfinance in the Global South achieves what many qualitative researchers who have tried to persuade economists and politicians of the validity of their work may well view as a Holy Gra
Gendering the city
Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an importa…
Envisioning gender, indigeneity and urban change
La Paz, Bolivia, and its neighbouring city, El Alto, have been experiencing patterns of urban accumulation, dispossession and displacement that demonstrate the importance of social, cultural and historical logics to understanding the politics of urban space. A striking feature of these patterns is that the image of the person who has accumulated enough wealth to displace people, is that of an indigenous woman. The Aymaran woman, traditionally dre…
Disarming charisma? Mayoralty, gender and power in Medellín, Colombia
Sanity, “madness,” and the academy
Key Messages The “epidemic” of mental health crises in universities needs to be understood in the context of academic hierarchies and power dynamics. Contradictory pressures are exerted on early career researchers by the collision of elitism and neoliberalism. R. D. Laing's approach to mental illness can elucidate how the work culture of universities interacts with the experience of mental distress
Gender, risk and the Wall Street Alpha Male
From the outset, analyses of the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussions, have been gendered. In particular, rampant risk taking in an unregulated environment, widely deemed to be a principle cause of the crash, has been associated with masculine characteristics. In this article, I explore how the concepts of gender and risk entwine in two films on the financial crisis – The Other Guys and Margin Call. By looking at h…
Conclusion
The conclusion reflects on the policies, discourses, and politics of the Medellín Miracle, asking how these political processes could have been related to the dramatic decline in violence. It is argued that the distinctive elements of the Medellín Miracle, which distinguish social urbanism from other international models of urban development, are the political changes that accompanied these policies. The broader significance of the Medellín case …
New Political Spaces
Despite the continued dominance in many ways of traditional elites, political spaces have emerged in Medellín over the last 20 years that have enabled different political actors to have a seat at the table, influence the agenda, and in some cases gain power within the formal mechanisms of local government. The contention here is that in these new political spaces is seen the real potential of the miracle, as they represent a disruption to the lon…
Medellín
Throughout the twentieth century, Colombia was plagued by violence, as a bitter civil war was fought between the Liberal and Conservative parties, over a period which also saw the formation of Marxist guerrilla groups and paramilitary groups. However, violence in Medellín in the 1980s greatly exceeded levels of violence in the rest of the country and is particularly associated with the rise to power of Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel. This …
Introduction
Medellín, Colombia, was once the most violent city on Earth. In recent years, however, the city has gained prominence not for its association with narco-traffic and the notorious Pablo Escobar, but for the regeneration policies, known as ‘social urbanism’, which appear to have dramatically reduced the city’s violence. Social urbanism was designed to address violence by tackling inequality and exclusion in the city, with projects including innovat…
The Politics of Violence and Urbanism
This chapter provides the theoretical framing for the discussion of violence and social urbanism in Medellín, drawing on work from geography, urban studies, political science, and regionally specific explorations of violence in Latin American cities. Theories of violence have tended to situate the problem either with the individual, in terms of criminal pathology, or with structural inequality. This chapter proposes a more dynamic analysis of vio…
The Miracle? Social Urbanism
This chapter places social urbanism in a global context by examining the policies associated with the ‘Medellín Miracle’ alongside urban regeneration interventions from other ‘model cities’, including most notably Barcelona. City branding has become a global business as cities compete for foreign investment and various ‘mega-events’ such as the Olympics. Policies to achieve model city status tend to include the types of project that have been cen…
Social Urbanism and the Politics of Violence
Medellín, Colombia, used to be the most violent city on earth, but in recent years, allegedly thanks to its 'social urbanism' approach to regeneration, it has experienced a sharp decline in violence.
Behind the Miracle
This chapter analyses the political and economic changes, discourses, and dynamics that allowed leftist community leaders, social organisations, and activists to sit at a table with the city’s elites to develop and eventually implement social urbanism. During the 1990s, a number of changes at the global and national scales influenced narco-traffic and the struggles between guerrilla, paramilitary, and State actors in Colombia, and the Medellín Mi…
Social Urbanism and the Politics of Violence
(Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south
This paper looks at the use of economic and social ‘evidence’ in debates on microfinance. Microfinance was originally inspired by small-scale women's savings and credit organisations. When its potential to become a financially sustainable, even profit-making, development intervention was recognised, microfinance underwent a ‘revolution’ that was to convert it into a much lauded development ‘panacea’. Microfinance's reputation has, however, been t…
Chachawarmi
Latin America's turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded-nowhere more so than Bolivia-by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored by looking at, in Escobar's words, 'the concrete struggles within particular communities'. Based on long-t…
Evo's jumper
Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is ex…
Capitalizing on Women's Social Capital? Women-Targeted Microfinance in Bolivia
Both social capital and microfinance are central to mainstream development interventions, and both are predicated on the need to recognize the importance of social factors in development. Microfinance institutions mobilize social capital in the form of a group guarantee, and aim to support the development of sustainable financial institutions and income generation. Women are targeted in part because of the effectiveness of their social capital as…
Gender, Risk and Micro‐financial Subjectivities
This article analyses the gendered contradictions of microfinance's celebrated “double bottom line” of social and financial impact. The example of microfinance is used to illustrate the gendered and colonial constructions of “risk” and “responsibility” that underpin neoliberalism and its gendered paradoxes. After revisiting the discursive critique of these terms, I draw on how indigenous women participating in a microfinance institution in Bolivi…
Chachawarmi
Latin America's turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded-nowhere more so than Bolivia-by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored by looking at, in Escobar's words, 'the concrete struggles within particular communities'. Based on long-t…
Gendering the city
Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an importa…
Climate change perceptions and responses in Scotland's ski industry
The negative impacts of climate change for the ski industry have been well documented. However, research has largely focused on key ski markets in North America and Continental Europe. The study presented in this paper addresses climate change perceptions and responses in the more marginal ski destination of Scotland. Using a qualitative, interpretivist methodology, this paper contributes through a local-scale, single-site study of a ski area whe…
Evo's jumper
Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is ex…
Translation in cross-cultural research
Translation raises ethical and epistemological dilemmas inherent in cross-cultural research. The process of communicating research participants' words in a different language and context may impose another conceptual scheme on their thoughts. This may reinforce the hegemonic terms that Development Studies should seek to challenge. The article explores the idea that a reflexive approach to translation can not only help to overcome the difficulties…
Envisioning gender, indigeneity and urban change
La Paz, Bolivia, and its neighbouring city, El Alto, have been experiencing patterns of urban accumulation, dispossession and displacement that demonstrate the importance of social, cultural and historical logics to understanding the politics of urban space. A striking feature of these patterns is that the image of the person who has accumulated enough wealth to displace people, is that of an indigenous woman. The Aymaran woman, traditionally dre…
Disarming charisma? Mayoralty, gender and power in Medellín, Colombia
Sanity, “madness,” and the academy
Key Messages The “epidemic” of mental health crises in universities needs to be understood in the context of academic hierarchies and power dynamics. Contradictory pressures are exerted on early career researchers by the collision of elitism and neoliberalism. R. D. Laing's approach to mental illness can elucidate how the work culture of universities interacts with the experience of mental distress
Gender, risk and the Wall Street Alpha Male
From the outset, analyses of the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussions, have been gendered. In particular, rampant risk taking in an unregulated environment, widely deemed to be a principle cause of the crash, has been associated with masculine characteristics. In this article, I explore how the concepts of gender and risk entwine in two films on the financial crisis – The Other Guys and Margin Call. By looking at h…
(Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south
This paper looks at the use of economic and social ‘evidence’ in debates on microfinance. Microfinance was originally inspired by small-scale women's savings and credit organisations. When its potential to become a financially sustainable, even profit-making, development intervention was recognised, microfinance underwent a ‘revolution’ that was to convert it into a much lauded development ‘panacea’. Microfinance's reputation has, however, been t…
Shifts to Global Development
This special section on global development has been developed from a conference roundtable event run by the Development Geographies Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society. In this special section, we (some of the committee) introduce the four papers and their critical contributions to emerging debates. These extend early work on how the “global” is being made, focusing on the projects of multilateral development agencies and state insti…
Fashion in Bolivia’s cultural economy
This article explores the development of Chola Paceña fashions in La Paz, Bolivia. It traces the social and political lineage of the distinctive pollera dress, and its role in traditions that continue to underpin Aymaran social networks and economies, while it is simultaneously becoming a symbol of their consumer power. Bolivian gross domestic product (GDP) has tripled since 2006, and this wealth has accumulated in the vast urban informal markets…
Translation in cross-cultural research
Translation raises ethical and epistemological dilemmas inherent in cross-cultural research. The process of communicating research participants' words in a different language and context may impose another conceptual scheme on their thoughts. This may reinforce the hegemonic terms that Development Studies should seek to challenge. The article explores the idea that a reflexive approach to translation can not only help to overcome the difficulties…
Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives
Capitalizing on Women's Social Capital? Women-Targeted Microfinance in Bolivia
Both social capital and microfinance are central to mainstream development interventions, and both are predicated on the need to recognize the importance of social factors in development. Microfinance institutions mobilize social capital in the form of a group guarantee, and aim to support the development of sustainable financial institutions and income generation. Women are targeted in part because of the effectiveness of their social capital as…
Evo's jumper
Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is ex…
Gender, Risk and Micro‐financial Subjectivities
This article analyses the gendered contradictions of microfinance's celebrated “double bottom line” of social and financial impact. The example of microfinance is used to illustrate the gendered and colonial constructions of “risk” and “responsibility” that underpin neoliberalism and its gendered paradoxes. After revisiting the discursive critique of these terms, I draw on how indigenous women participating in a microfinance institution in Bolivi…
Naming the next generation
Climate change perceptions and responses in Scotland's ski industry
The negative impacts of climate change for the ski industry have been well documented. However, research has largely focused on key ski markets in North America and Continental Europe. The study presented in this paper addresses climate change perceptions and responses in the more marginal ski destination of Scotland. Using a qualitative, interpretivist methodology, this paper contributes through a local-scale, single-site study of a ski area whe…
Chachawarmi
Latin America's turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded-nowhere more so than Bolivia-by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored by looking at, in Escobar's words, 'the concrete struggles within particular communities'. Based on long-t…
Conclusion
The conclusion reflects on the policies, discourses, and politics of the Medellín Miracle, asking how these political processes could have been related to the dramatic decline in violence. It is argued that the distinctive elements of the Medellín Miracle, which distinguish social urbanism from other international models of urban development, are the political changes that accompanied these policies. The broader significance of the Medellín case …
New Political Spaces
Despite the continued dominance in many ways of traditional elites, political spaces have emerged in Medellín over the last 20 years that have enabled different political actors to have a seat at the table, influence the agenda, and in some cases gain power within the formal mechanisms of local government. The contention here is that in these new political spaces is seen the real potential of the miracle, as they represent a disruption to the lon…
Medellín
Throughout the twentieth century, Colombia was plagued by violence, as a bitter civil war was fought between the Liberal and Conservative parties, over a period which also saw the formation of Marxist guerrilla groups and paramilitary groups. However, violence in Medellín in the 1980s greatly exceeded levels of violence in the rest of the country and is particularly associated with the rise to power of Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel. This …
Introduction
Medellín, Colombia, was once the most violent city on Earth. In recent years, however, the city has gained prominence not for its association with narco-traffic and the notorious Pablo Escobar, but for the regeneration policies, known as ‘social urbanism’, which appear to have dramatically reduced the city’s violence. Social urbanism was designed to address violence by tackling inequality and exclusion in the city, with projects including innovat…
The Politics of Violence and Urbanism
This chapter provides the theoretical framing for the discussion of violence and social urbanism in Medellín, drawing on work from geography, urban studies, political science, and regionally specific explorations of violence in Latin American cities. Theories of violence have tended to situate the problem either with the individual, in terms of criminal pathology, or with structural inequality. This chapter proposes a more dynamic analysis of vio…
The Miracle? Social Urbanism
This chapter places social urbanism in a global context by examining the policies associated with the ‘Medellín Miracle’ alongside urban regeneration interventions from other ‘model cities’, including most notably Barcelona. City branding has become a global business as cities compete for foreign investment and various ‘mega-events’ such as the Olympics. Policies to achieve model city status tend to include the types of project that have been cen…
Social Urbanism and the Politics of Violence
Medellín, Colombia, used to be the most violent city on earth, but in recent years, allegedly thanks to its 'social urbanism' approach to regeneration, it has experienced a sharp decline in violence.
Behind the Miracle
This chapter analyses the political and economic changes, discourses, and dynamics that allowed leftist community leaders, social organisations, and activists to sit at a table with the city’s elites to develop and eventually implement social urbanism. During the 1990s, a number of changes at the global and national scales influenced narco-traffic and the struggles between guerrilla, paramilitary, and State actors in Colombia, and the Medellín Mi…
Social Urbanism and the Politics of Violence
(Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south
This paper looks at the use of economic and social ‘evidence’ in debates on microfinance. Microfinance was originally inspired by small-scale women's savings and credit organisations. When its potential to become a financially sustainable, even profit-making, development intervention was recognised, microfinance underwent a ‘revolution’ that was to convert it into a much lauded development ‘panacea’. Microfinance's reputation has, however, been t…
Sanity, “madness,” and the academy
Key Messages The “epidemic” of mental health crises in universities needs to be understood in the context of academic hierarchies and power dynamics. Contradictory pressures are exerted on early career researchers by the collision of elitism and neoliberalism. R. D. Laing's approach to mental illness can elucidate how the work culture of universities interacts with the experience of mental distress
Gender, risk and the Wall Street Alpha Male
From the outset, analyses of the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussions, have been gendered. In particular, rampant risk taking in an unregulated environment, widely deemed to be a principle cause of the crash, has been associated with masculine characteristics. In this article, I explore how the concepts of gender and risk entwine in two films on the financial crisis – The Other Guys and Margin Call. By looking at h…
Disarming charisma? Mayoralty, gender and power in Medellín, Colombia
Gendering the city
Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an importa…
Envisioning gender, indigeneity and urban change
La Paz, Bolivia, and its neighbouring city, El Alto, have been experiencing patterns of urban accumulation, dispossession and displacement that demonstrate the importance of social, cultural and historical logics to understanding the politics of urban space. A striking feature of these patterns is that the image of the person who has accumulated enough wealth to displace people, is that of an indigenous woman. The Aymaran woman, traditionally dre…
Fashion in Bolivia’s cultural economy
This article explores the development of Chola Paceña fashions in La Paz, Bolivia. It traces the social and political lineage of the distinctive pollera dress, and its role in traditions that continue to underpin Aymaran social networks and economies, while it is simultaneously becoming a symbol of their consumer power. Bolivian gross domestic product (GDP) has tripled since 2006, and this wealth has accumulated in the vast urban informal markets…
Women and Microfinance in the Global South
Women and Microfinance in the Global South achieves what many qualitative researchers who have tried to persuade economists and politicians of the validity of their work may well view as a Holy Gra
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Geography (13 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Urbanism (8 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (7 works)