Drawing on social movement theory, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of collective action during Guatemalaa (TM)s democratic transition (1985-1996) and the accompanying impact of social movements on democratisation, focusing on three indigenous peoplesa (TM) social movement organisations.
This book analyses patterns of collective action that emerged during Guatemala’s democratic transition between 1985 and 1996, focusing in particular on the role of indigenous actors in the political processes undergirding and shaping democratisation and the respective impact of the transition upon indigenous social movements. Comparatively little has been written about collective action in Guatemala within the discipline of political science, despite the mobilisation of a wide range of social movements in response to the brutal armed conflict; rather, literature has focused principally on the role of elite actors in democratisation. This study presents a fresh perspective, presenting an analysis of the political evolution of three social movements and their human rights platforms through the framework of social movement theory.
Since the re-democratization of much of Latin America in the 1980s and a regional wave of anti-austerity protests in the 1990s, social movement studies has become an important part of sociological, political, and anthropological scholarship on the region. The subdiscipline has framed debates about formal and informal politics, spatial and relational processes, as well as economic changes in Latin America. While there is an abundant literature on particular movements in different countries across the region, there is limited coverage of the approaches, debates, and theoretical understandings of social movement studies applied to Latin America. In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements, Federico M. Rossi presents a survey of the broad range of theoretical perspectives on social movements in Latin America. Bringing together a wide variety of viewpoints, the Handbook includes five sections: theoretical approaches to social movements, as applied to Latin America; processes and dynamics of social movements; major social movements in the region; ideational and strategic dimensions of social movements; and the relationship between political institutions and social movements. Covering key social movements and social dynamics in Latin America from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements is an indispensable reference for any scholar interested in social movements, protest, contentious politics, and Latin American studies.
Given the brutality of mass atrocities, it is no wonder that one question dominates research and policy: what can we, who are not at risk, do to prevent such violence and hasten endings? But this question skips a more fundamental question for understanding the trajectory of violence: how do mass atrocities actually end? This volume presents an analysis of the processes, decisions, and factors that help bring about the end of mass atrocities. It includes qualitatively rich case studies from Burundi, Guatemala, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq, drawing patterns from wide-ranging data. As such, it offers a much needed correction to the popular 'salvation narrative' framing mass atrocity in terms of good and evil. The nuanced, multidisciplinary approach followed here represents not only an essential tool for scholars, but an important step forward in improving civilian protection.
Dealing with Peace presents the struggles of the Guatemalan campesino (peasant) social movement during the country’s post-conflict transition from 1996 to the present, focusing on efforts to obtain land and improve livelihoods within a shifting, yet consistently hostile, political-economic environment. With special focus on the relationship between the movement and the neoliberal state, Simon Granovsky-Larsen asks whether the acceptance of neoliberal resources – in this case, support for land access in Guatemala provided by the World Bank-funded Fondo de Tierras – reduces the potential for social movements to continue to work for transformative change. Positioned in contrast to studies warning that social movements cannot maintain their original vision after accepting such support, this book argues that organizations within the Guatemalan campesino movement have engaged strategically with neoliberalism, utilizing available resources to advance visions of social change. Using a wealth of primary data collected over more than a year of fieldwork, it contributes significantly to the study of Guatemalan politics and advances understandings of the grounded operation of neoliberalism. Exploring both the dynamics of a national neoliberal transition and the ways in which these play out within civil society, Dealing with Peace reveals the long-term and often contradictory negotiation of political and economic transitions.
This book examines the complex role identity and religion play in global peace processes. Based on multiple case studies, this book unveils the complex role identity and religion play in peace processes across the globe. It demonstrates that the success and sustainability of a peace process depends on the systemic application of the BRIDGE model that is introduced here. This model describes five major strategies (Bonding, Reassuring, Involving, Determining Guides, and Equalizing) and numerous tactics for how peace processes and accords can deal with the central issues as well as important common challenges that run through identity-based ethnonational or religious conflicts. This represents the first comprehensive account of how the transition from enemies to neighbors is achieved and how intergroup relations and engagement are transformed in peace processes, impacting power, access to resources, legitimacy, and representation in national identity. The model also discusses what forms of peacebuilding authentically represent the interests, needs, and values of religious constituencies, and what can be learned from how religious constituencies escalate and de-escalate conflict. The book demonstrates why religion must also be included in peace processes and permanent solutions, owing to religion’s capacity to enhance commitment to bonding and peaceful values, such as justice, compassion, nonviolence, stability, care for children, and care for the environment, for the sick, the wounded, the traumatized, and the bereaved. This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, intra-state conflict, religion studies, and International Relations.
This volume examines the ways in which the socio-economic elites of the region have transformed and expanded the material bases of their power from the inception of neo-liberal policies in the 1970s through to the so-called progressive ‘pink tide’ governments of the past two decades. The six case study chapters—on Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala—variously explore how state policies and even United Nations peace-keeping missions have enhanced elite control of land and agricultural exports, banks and insurance companies, wholesale and import commerce, industrial activities, and alliances with foreign capital. Chapters also pay attention to the ways in which violence has been deployed to maintain elite power, and how international forces feed into sustaining historic and contemporary configurations of power.
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.
Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives examines the relationship between legal pluralities and the prospects for greater gender justice in developing countries. Rather than asking whether legal pluralities are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women, the starting point of this volume is that legal pluralities are a social fact. Adopting a more anthropological approach to the issues of gender justice and women’s rights, it analyzes how gendered rights claims are made and responded to within a range of different cultural, social, economic and political contexts. By examining the different ways in which legal norms, instruments and discourses are being used to challenge or reinforce gendered forms of exclusion, contributing authors generate new knowledge about the dynamics at play between the contemporary contexts of legal pluralities and the struggles for gender justice. Any consideration of this relationship must, it is concluded, be located within a broader, historically informed analysis of regimes of governance.
