This reissue, initially published in 1989, considers the upsurge of locally-based movements attempting to improve living conditions in Third-World cities throughout the 1980s. The book presents qualitative, comparative research on the dynamics and constraints of these urban social movements, in a cross-cultural framework, using case studies from a variety of Latin American, African and Asian countries. As more democratic-type regimes establish themselves in the Third World, the possibilities for collective organisations and actions increase. Urban social movements therefore are playing an increasingly important role in the habitat of the poor.
Análisis teórico y político de los llamados “problemas urbanos”, surgidos de nuevos problemas en la vida cotidiana, nuevas contradicciones y conflictos sociales que afronta la población que habita las ciudades. El autor estudia cuatro movimientos significativos: la lucha contra la renovación urbana de París, los comités de ciudadanos de Montreal, el movimiento ecológico en Estados Unidos y las luchas del Movimiento de Pobladores en el Chile de la Unidad Popular.
Providing an overview of urban social movements from a diverse range of both empirical and theoretical perspectives, this Handbook includes not only a critical analysis of the transformations that have occurred in the urban landscape recently, but also sheds light on the strategies implemented by social actors in various socio-political and cultural contexts. It focuses on understanding better how and to what extent collective action around urban issues remains relevant in our modern world. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
The authors examine popular religion as a vital source of new values and experiences as well as a source of pressure for change in the church, political life, and the social order as a whole and deal with the issues of poverty and the role of the poor within the church and political structures. Exploring areas from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Chile, the authors analyze the transformation in popular religion and reevaluate the growth of grassroots organizations.
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.
Labor, Class, and the International System explores the interface between the labor process, class structure, and the global requirements of accumulation as a necessary complement to the analysis of capital and dominant institutions and focus on this interaction to clarify some of the apparent contradictions and bring the general models in line with empirical reality. The book provides analysis of concepts and hypotheses derived from general theory with available empirical knowledge on each particular topic. Each chapter addresses problem areas namely, international migration; pre-capitalist modes of production and the reproduction of the urban labor force; and dominant ideologies of inequality and class structure. Sociologists, political scientists, economists, researchers, and students of international studies will find the book very interesting and insightful.
Since the 1930s the state has played a primary role in the development process of Latin American countries, and political systems have had strong corporatist and authoritarian-centralist features. In the last several years, as that role has become increasingly incompatible with neoliberal reforms and the requirements of a transition to democracy, state power has been significantly decentralized, and the state has withdrawn from direct intervention in the economy. This book examines the consequences of the redefinition of the state for processes of democratization and statecivil society relations. }Since the 1930s the state has played a primary role in the development process of most Latin American countries, and political systems have had strong corporatist and authoritarian-centralist features. In the last several years, as that role has become increasingly incompatible with neoliberal reforms and the requirements of a transition to democracy, state power has been significantly decentralized, and the state has withdrawn from direct intervention in the economy. This book examines the consequences of the redefinition of the state for processes of democratization and statecivil society relations, looking, for example, at transfers of power to local and regional authorities, the role of NGOs and other interest groups in policymaking, the emergence of new social movements, and privatization and the introduction of market criteria. Several country case studies are also included. }
We live in a time of dynamic, but generally regressive regime change-a period in which major political transformations and a rollback of a half-century of legislation are accelerated under conditions of a prolonged and deepening economic crisis and a worldwide offensive against the citizenry and the working class. Written by two of the world’s leading left-wing thinkers, Imperialism and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century takes the form of a number of analytical probes into some of the dynamics of capitalist development and imperialism in contemporary conditions of a system in crisis. It is too early to be definitive about the form that capitalism and imperialism -and socialism-might be or is taking, as we are in but the early stages of a new developmental dynamic, the conditions of which are too complex to anticipate or grasp in thought; they require a closer look and much further study from a critical development and Marxist perspective. The purpose of this book is to advance this process and give some form to this perspective.
