Rural Social Movements In Latin America

"A remarkable collection. The chapters provide extremely useful information on a range of social movements generally not well covered in academic work--and the coverage is provided by people who are either activists within the movements themselves or long-time supporters."--Wendy Wolford, University of North Carolina "An original, unique, and excellent collection. The book has great theoretical value and political relevance."--Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Saint Mary's University (Halifax) All across Latin America, rural peoples are organizing in support of broadly distinct but interrelated issues. Food sovereignty, agrarian reform, indigenous and women’s rights, sustainable development, fair trade, and immigration issues are the focus of a large number of social movements found in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Peru. The contributors to Rural Social Movements in Latin America include academic researchers as well as social movement leaders who are seeking to effect change in their countries and communities. As a group they are at the forefront of some of the most critical environmental, social, and political issues of the day. This volume highlights the central role these movements play in opposition to the neoliberal model of development and offers fresh insights on emerging alternatives at the local, national, and hemispheric level. It also illustrates and analyzes the similarities--notably the struggle for sustainable livelihoods--as well as the difference among these various peasant, indigenous, and rural women's movements.

This clearly written and comprehensive text examines the uprising of politically and economically marginalized groups in Latin American societies. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines present original research from a variety of case studies in a student-friendly format. Part introductions help students contextualize the essays, highlighting social movement origins, strategies, and outcomes. Thematic sections address historical context, political economy, community-building and consciousness, ethnicity and race, gender, movement strategies, and transnational organizing, making this book useful to anyone studying the wide range of social movements in Latin America.

A thoughtful examination of social relations in Latin America, from one of the region's foremost political analysts.

This handbook covers social movement activities in Latin American countries that have had profound consequences on the political culture of the region. It examines the developments of the past twenty years, such as a renewed upswing in popular mobilization, the ending of violent conflicts and military governments, new struggles and a relatively more democratic climate. It shows that, from southern Chiapas to Argentina, social movements in the 1990s and especially in the 2000s, have reached new heights of popular participation. There is a lack of research on the politics of this region in the contemporary era of globalization, this volume partially fills the void and offers a rich resource to students, scholars and the general public in terms of understanding the politics of mass mobilization in the early twenty-first century. The contributors each address social movement activity in their own nation and together they present a multidisciplinary perspective on the topic. Each chapter uses a case study design to bring out the most prominent attributes of the particular social struggle(s), for instance the main protagonists in the campaigns, the grievances of the population and the outcomes of the struggles. This Handbook is divided into seven substantive themes, providing overall coherence to a broad range of social conflicts across countries, issues and social groups. These themes include: 1) theory of Latin American social movements; 2) neoliberalism; 3) indigenous struggles; 4) women’s movements; 5) movements and the State; 6) environmental movements; and 7) transnational mobilizations.

Rural movements have recently emerged to become some of the most important social forces in opposition to neoliberalism. From Brazil and Mexico to Zimbabwe and the Philippines, rural movements of diverse political character, but all sharing the same social basis of dispossessed peasants and unemployed workers, have used land occupations and other tactics to confront the neoliberal state. This volume brings together for the first time across three continents - Africa, Latin America and Asia - an intellectually consistent set of original investigations into this new generation of rural social movements. These country studies seek to identify their social composition, strategies, tactics, and ideologies; to assess their relations with other social actors, including political parties, urban social movements, and international aid agencies and other institutions; and to examine their most common tactic, the land occupation, its origins, pace and patterns, as well as the responses of governments and landowners. At a more fundamental level, this volume explores the ways in which two decades of neoliberal policy - including new land tenure arrangements intended to hasten the commodification of land, and new land uses linked to global markets -- have undermined the social reproduction of the rural labour force and created the conditions for popular resistance. The volume demonstrates the longer-term potential impact of these movements. In economic terms, they raise the possibility of tackling immiseration by means of the redistribution of land and the reorganisation of production on a more efficient and socially responsible basis. And in political terms, breaking the power of landowners and transnational capital with interests in land could ultimately open the way to an alternative pattern of capital accumulation and development.

This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.

This book develops a theory of collective empowerment that looks for change both from the bottom up, in civil society, and from the top down, from state interventions responding to such pressure. Reflecting on the advancement of Indigenous and peasant movements in Latin America since the neoliberal reformation of capitalism in the 1980s, the book outlines a path for progressive social action in which bottom-up pressure by social movements can help progressive parties to gain state power. The book considers how Indigenous and peasant movements in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico have tried to reshape crucial structures of society from the bottom up. While this mobilization from below is critical and necessary, the book argues that these movements must be supplemented by top-down change from progressive state interventions, as happened mostly in Bolivia and Brazil. The authors conclude that progressive societal action can have massive impact in transforming some of the main socioeconomic structures that determine humans’ relation to the extraction of natural resources, income and wealth inequality, and even the location of a nation’s insertion in world capitalism. This book will be an important resource for social-movement activists and for researchers working in political sociology, sociological theory, political studies, development studies, social movements, and Latin American Studies.

First published in 1990. The distribution of rural power in developing countries both shapes and is shaped by national politics. Focusing on Latin America and the Philippines, this volume addresses the question of why rural democratisation has proven to be so difficult across a wide range of national experiences.