Why does structuralism return to the forefront?

This chapter discusses the evolution of Latin American structuralist thought and the transformations it underwent after the neo-structuralist renewal. Contributions in the first decades after World War II increasingly introduced the role of power and domination in defining the structure of both domestic and international social relations in peripheral capitalism. The emergence of neo-structuralism after the Latin American crisis of the eighties implied a dilution or simply exclusion of the analysis of power and domination relations. The chapter discusses the consequences of such absence for the analysis and formulation of development strategies and suggests to revisit structuralist thought. Such revisiting demands both to attend the transformations that have taken place in capitalism in the last 40 years and to introduce some other elements that were initially weakly theorized.