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.

18 Conclusion: Theoretical and Political Horizons of Change in Contemporary Latin American Socia lMovements -- List of Acronyms -- Bibliography -- About the Book -- About the Series -- Index

Social movements are a key feature of the political and social landscape of Latin America. Ronaldo Munck explores their full range, emanating from different sections of Latin American society and motivated by many different concerns, including worker organizations, peasant and land reform movements, Indigenous groups, women's movements, and environmental groups. Although the mosaic of interlocking and connected issues and rights presents a complex map of social concerns and potentially a fragmented political force, these movements are likely to be at the centre of any future progressive politics in Latin America. As a result, they require careful understanding and a more nuanced theoretical approach. Drawing on insights from Latin American approaches to social movement theory, the book offers a distinctive contribution to social movement literature. The text incorporates detailed case studies and a methodological appendix for students wishing to develop their own research agendas in the field.

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.

Women's grassroots activism in Latin America combines a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to women's subordination to men. Women activists insist that issues such as rape, battering, and reproductive control cannot be divorced from women's concerns about housing, food, land, and medical care. This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women's grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile. Lynn Stephen communicates the ideas, experiences, and perceptions of women who participate in collective action, while she explains the structural conditions and ideological discourses that set the context within which women act and interpret their experiences. She includes revealing interviews with activists, detailed histories of organizations and movements, and a theoretical discussion of gender, collective identity, and feminist anthropology and methods.

This is the first comparative study of the relationship between social movements and citizenship rights. It identifies the main connections made between collective action and individual rights, in theory and history, and tests them in the context of modern authoritarian regimes. It does so bymeasuring both social mobilization and the presence of rights over time, and by analysing their mutual impact statistically - both within and across national cases. The results create a new perspective on democratic struggles in authoritarian conditions, and on processes of democratic transitions. The selected cases of Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Spain are similar enough to make comparisons possible, and different enough to make them interesting. Measuring mobilization and rights provides a comparative description of their forms and fluctuations, just as the statistical results promote acomparative analysis of their influence and interactions. The study uses statistical techniques, but employs them to illuminate historical processes. In sum, its quantitative methods work to enhance the qualitative inquiry, and together they come to constitute a robust defense of democracy as the direct result of collective struggles for individualrights.

How social movements of the past and present are shaping Latin American politics today These are uncertain times in Latin America. Popular faith in democracy has been shaken; traditional political parties and institutions are stagnating, and there is a growing right-wing extremism overtaking some governments. Yet, in recent years, autonomous social movements have multiplied and thrived. This book presents voices of these movement protagonists themselves, as they describe the major issues, conflicts, and campaigns for social justice in Latin America today. Latin America Bureau, a London-based, independent organization providing news and analysis on the region, spoke to people from fourteen countries, from Mexico to the Southern Cone. The book captures the voices indigenous activists, fighting oil drilling in their homelands; mothers from favelas seeking justice for their children killed by police; opponents of large-scale mining projects; independent journalists working, at great personal risk, to expose corruption and human rights violations; women and LGBT people confronting violence and discrimination; and students demanding their right to a free, universal and high-quality education system. Though their locations and causes are disparate, these people and their movements share learning and activism, and their cooperation helps to link the movements across national borders. Voices of Latin America is essential reading for students, travelers, journalists—anyone with an interest in social justice movements in Latin America.

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.

This book presents an overview of new approaches to the study of social movements emerging out of Latin America, based on original and innovative analyses of the recent changes in collective action across the region. The authors analyze a broad set of countries and social movements, while focusing on three key theoretical debates: the interactions between routine and contentious politics, the relationship between protest and context, and the organizational configurations of social movements.

The sociology of Latin America, established in the region over the past eighty years, is a thriving field whose major contributions include dependence theory, world-systems theory, and historical debates on economic development, among others. The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Latin America provides research essays that introduce the readers to the discipline's key areas and current trends, specifically with regard to contemporary sociology in Latin America, as well as a collection of innovative empirical studies deploying a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The essays in the Handbook are arranged in eight research subfields in which scholars are currently making significant theoretical and methodological contributions: Sociology of the State, Social Inequalities, Sociology of Religion, Collective Action and Social Movements, Sociology of Migration, Sociology of Gender, Medical Sociology, and Sociology of Violence and Insecurity. Due to the deterioration of social and economic conditions, as well as recent disruptions to an already tense political environment, these have become some of the most productive and important fields in Latin American sociology. This roiling sociopolitical atmosphere also generates new and innovative expressions of protest and survival, which are being explored by sociologists across different continents today. The essays included in this collection offer a map to and a thematic articulation of central sociological debates that make it a critical resource for those scholars and students eager to understand contemporary sociology in Latin America.