Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on political agency and urban politics beyond a polemic of resistance or participation, drawing on a multi-layered ethnography of neighbourhood ‘activism and its politics in an impoverished and historically segregated Cape Town periphery.

Paper long abstract:

Political mobilisation has been a central element of post-apartheid urban politics, a set of practices through which the urban poor have built varied forms of political agency to secure resources and claim democratic rights. Polemical analyses of such acts and the urban politics generated, however, build overly stylized conceptualizations of state-society interactions, bound up either in notions of resistance or participation. This paper reflects on political agency and urban politics beyond this polemic through a multi-layered ethnography of neighbourhood 'civic', community-based activism and its politics in an impoverished and historically segregated Cape Town peripheral neighbourhood. Initiated thirty years ago, the Civic's genesis lies in the social trauma of forced removals and resistance to apartheid-era evictions, and in the period after apartheid, its occupation of land, and contestation of the city's razing of its shack settlement in Court. Yet, despite successfully winning this fight, the civic and its residents feel a stigma, as leaders and residents in a 'dysfunctional township', an impoverished, violent, gangster-ridden neighbourhood. Through a collaborative eight-year research partnership with the Civic and its activists, I analyze the ways in which activism and work for justice and transformation disrupts this view, drawing on political and symbolic mobilization and agency to build and perform 'community' locally and across the city.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focus the relations of printing workers union of BAMA with the State, social movements and political organizations under an analytical perspective that seeks to integrate union agenda activities and labour conflicts with the reconstruction of life trajectories and memories.

Paper long abstract:

Historical and sociological studies have emphasised the historical relations between unions and the State in Argentina since the 1940´s. These relationships have mainly been considered in the dichotomous terms of confrontations/subordination to the State, associated with others like labour/politics and unions/social movements. This kind of approach has contributed to hide the multiple political commitments of activists, as well as the role of the relations with other social actors. In this paper I analyse the practices of activists of printing workers union under a perspective that seeks to integrate union agenda activities and labour conflicts with the reconstruction of life trajectories and memories. This view allows visible simultaneous modalities of relations with state agencies, social movements and political groups. It does also contributes to understand how knowledge, traditions and memories interplay in the conformation of union practices and relations with other social actors, as well as the meanings attributed to their labour activities, to the politics and to the State.

Paper short abstract:

Through creative performances, activists have brought about a debate in Guadalajara’s public sphere over urban infrastructure. This paper suggests that their methods engage chains of affect by encouraging people to demand a built environment that is conducive to higher levels of equality.

Paper long abstract:

In 2007, the state government planned to impose a freeway through Guadalajara that would disrupt public transport and pedestrians' routes across an important section of the city. From initial protests against this freeway, a group of previously inexperienced activists came together. They challenged the government by questioning its priorities and its decision-taking methods. Their name, Ciudad para Todos (City for All), condensed the demand for inclusiveness in policymaking and projects for the city.

Through an ethnographic account of its activism and the 'civil ecosystem' that formed around CpT, this paper suggests that its popularity and attention can be explained through the concept of affect. The relational character of life in any city implies a crucial role of the built environment and its ongoing maintenance. CpT activists and others who formed similar groups brought the political into the public sphere as an experience-based way of living the city. In doing so, they strive to reconfigure political practice.

One of the main legacies of a single-party rule in Mexico during most of the twentieth century is the concentration of decision-making over public issues and resources. What CpT demands, therefore, is a politics of repair they consider necessary to achieve a longed-for democracy. A mapping of their performances and activities, however, shows that CpT activists concentrate most of their attention in the wealthier part of the city where they are from. The public debates that have ensued from their interventions have nevertheless implied a sense of shared yearning for change in political practice.

Paper short abstract:

The paper presents a new form of interpretation for what has been studied under the state-civil society relation’s frame. Using data collected from ethnographical research within Brazilian agrarian reform bureaucracy it explores a number of connections that transcend categories used on the state civil society approach.

Paper long abstract:

This article discusses the different forms by which state bureaucracy relates to social movements on the realm of agrarian reform policies in Brazil. There are a number of possible connections and very complex relations that have been going in for the last 30 years. Possible connections include institutional spaces for discussion but also a number of informal sites and forms of relations between bureaucrats and social movements mediators. I argue that participatory democracy literature is not the best approach to analyze this great scope of connections insofar as it assumes the existence of two different and separate actors, the state and the civil society, and two separate spheres of participation, representative democracy and deliberative democracy. The diversity of possible formats by which social movements relate to state bureaucracy can be apprehended more fully by the actor-network approach as it gives the researcher tools to account for connections taking place in different sites and with a multiplicity of formats, as well as tools to analyze its effects on actors' agency during the political process. Data that supports this argument is drawn from an ethnographical research within Brazilian State institution in charge of implementing agrarian reform policies. Focused on how the bureaucracy understands and reacts to one of the most organized and mobilized beneficiary publics in the Brazilian political arena the investigation presents some interesting findings regarding the complexity of networks in which bureaucrats are entangled and its effects on negotiation and implementation of policies claimed by rural social movements.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses de juxtaposition between NGO officials and social movements activists in the land conflicts mediation in the province of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa

Paper long abstract:

There is a historical linkage between land social movements and NGOs in South Africa. The literature points to the fact that due to apartheid constraints the non-governmental organisations were the only institutional form able to act in a legitimate way to represent rural residents during from the 1960 decade. After the end of racist regime the NGOs and social movements coexisted sometimes collaborating or conflicting over the same cases and communities. In this paper we analyse this conflicts and collaborations among Landless People´s Movement activists, NGO, State officials and political parties from 2005 to 2012.

Paper short abstract:

The paper consists of a comparison between mobilizations took place at a town from the country of Argentina, during the years 2001-2002 and 2008. It was taken into consideration material, political and symbolic issues.

Paper long abstract:

Argentina received the 21st century with a social context characterized by huge social conflicts, which had started in the mid-1990s. Within this framework, the town of Casilda - placed at the center of the country - were also able to witness these kinds of events. Furthermore, on 15 January there was an innovative protest because of its great magnitude, the determination of the claim and the major people's participation. This episode was known as the 'Casildazo'.

Years later, during 2008 the country faced again a period with social conflicts caused by the Agricultural Sector of the economy. It was against the Ministry of Agriculture of the state and the reason was the Resolution 125/08 that the Ministry created. The resolution turned the export aliquots into moveable aliquots and they were also called 'moveable withholdings'.

In this paper we are going to make a comparison between these two processes, analyzing the mobilized actors, reported claims and social relations occurred. Moreover, we are going to make a review about contexts in which these issues took place, the role played by the agricultural policies of the state and the relevant characteristics of the Casilda's protest. It was taken into account material, political and symbolic issues.

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Paper short abstract:

We present a study on the construction of subjectivity and youth participation in social movements in the Greater Buenos Aires (Argentina), focused on organizations of unemployed workers and social work in poor neighborhoods.

Paper long abstract:

We present some results of a research conducted with young people from two social movements in suburban Buenos Aires, the Central of Argentine Workers Youth (Juventud de la Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos, JCTA) and the Dario Santillan Popular Front (Frente Popular Darío Santillán, FPDS).

In both cases, and beyond the differences in institutional frameworks, strategies and ways of political action, we observe a process of construction of subjectivities that lead to community and social engagement of young boys and girls, as well as political participation. We consider the spaces and mechanisms where this involvement takes place and the ways they follow to became members of the social movement.

We identify differences and similarities with youth participation in the past decades, in terms of representation, types of action, structures, ideological frameworks and cultural aspects of activism and participation, in their intent to challenge the social and political structures.

Among the predominant elements, we see the importance of assemblies, horizontal modalities decision-making and the place of "youth" as a strategy for social and political action.

We also recognize the role of training processes (associates to lines of popular education), productive projects developed in local areas considered as "the territory" and the networks built with other social actors (of local, national and international level).

An innovative and emerging aspect is the main role of body and sexuality, that includes celebration and joy in their commitment, integrated with militancy in everyday life, that is typical of these youth groups we studied.

Paper short abstract:

Chilean High Student's Movement of 2006 gave the symbolic foundations for what is is today being contested at the political realm, over which was developed the huge students' mobilization of 2011.

Paper long abstract:

In 1989, once democratic order was reestablished in Chile - after a 17-years old dictatorship- the word politics commonly referred just as the process by which the ruling Center Left reached consensus with the Right. Similarly, during the 90's, social movements were practically absent of the public sphere. However, in 2011, the massive and Chilean student's movement became the biggest uprising after dictatorship and was internationally known. Such unrest was led by university's students the same generation that, in 2006, led a huge mobilization that surprised Chilean political lethargy.

This article is based on a 2008's qualitative research with ethnographical perspective. As its main conclusion, it proposes that the secondary school students' mobilizations of 2006 broadened the boundaries of the possible within the political sphere by contesting the common ideas that consensus establishment had constructed, in three different ways. Firstly, it created an image of social inequalities. Secondly, it allowed students to contest the extended idea that conceived youth as essentially apathetic because of their null interest in formal politics. Consequently, they felt invested with authority to claim proposals beyond political consensus by displaying new ways of relation and decision making with a youthful nuance of joy and festivity. Thirdly, they re-actualized what was considered to be lost in Chilean society: community and solidarity networks. I believe that 2006's mobilization gave the symbolic foundations for what is today thought as politics and how society can be transformed.

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Paper short abstract:

The objective of this study is to analyze the continuities and transformations of concepts and links were established between youth policy and state in Argentina in recent years. Particularly interested in forms of political action, and changes or continuities that lead in terms of concepts and relationships that young people and elaborated on the political and the state and its place as agents of political projects for the country

Paper long abstract:

The objective of this study is to analyze the continuities and transformations of concepts and links were established between youth policy and state in Argentina in recent years. The tradition of reading of youth born in Argentina to observe them as political subjects since the early twentieth century as it was one of the first cultural images for which they are more visible on the public sphere. The discontinuity of the democratic life of the country has produced changes in the forms of political expression of the general population, and youth sectors in particular. There are currently participating in an organized youth sectors in political action, some of them take the state as a means for the realization of the political project that meets and challenges. This situation, placed in historical perspective and linked to other experiences to not youth people and contemporary youth, to analyze dynamic changes in the conception of the state, and the political and the role of young people in the projects of nation.

The estudo is based on primary data drawn from three places: 1) current ethnographic work with youth in poverty in an average city, 2) training workshops for youth policy and 3) previous research by the author with other youth sectors; on the other hand analyzes are used by other authors as secondary sources. This will look for a comparative perspective, both in time and heterogeneity of experience and youth policy of relations between state, politics and youth.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will discuss the intellectual, legal and political issues raised by a black South African Christian woman in her eighties whose mother tongue is IsiZulu. SM leads a group of people who fight to get back the land they have been evicted from in the beginning of the 1970’s. Before the apartheid regime had collapsed, in 1987, SM in a visionary momentum, made a plea for restitution. Despite her diligence and hope in a democratic future, until now, she is waiting for the farm of her childhood, where she wants to be buried. SM and her fellows experience along this endless process raises political and conceptual questions on politics, gender, racism and religion.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will discuss the intellectual, legal and political issues raised by a black South African Christian woman in her eighties whose mother tongue is IsiZulu.

SM leads a group of people of her age who fight to get back the land they have been evicted from in the beginning of the 1970's.

Before the apartheid regime had collapsed, in 1987, SM in a visionary momentum, made a plea for restitution.

Despite her diligence and hope in a democratic future, until now, she is waiting for the farm of her childhood, where she wants to be buried.

The children of this nowadays middle-class woman don't agree their aged mother risks her life fighting against a violent white farmer, against a government that has failed them.

SM finds support among her fellows who still live in the township where they all have been relocated in the 1970's.

The still alive like SM are backing by their fellows who have passed away.

Living and dead fight against time together. In their cosmopolitical movement, gender, racial and religious issues are raised and weaved together in the process of continuously producing hope in a better future.

Paper short abstract:

The paper tries to reconnoiter the critical analysis to the very notion of "Politics" and carry forward the discussion on the same with reference to people's movement.

Paper long abstract:

The paper tries to reconnoiter the critical analysis to the very notion of "Politics" and carry forward the discussion on the same with reference to people's movement. Having changed politico- economy after the globalization process started, India has facing turmoil from different stakeholders in the country as the globalization had an adversary impact on lower and backward regions in the country. This crisis led to people's unrest and smaller states demands as well in the country-India. This entire changed political situation in the country gave the scope to redefine and refine existing definitions peoples and politics. In the light of this back ground, the paper tries assess the domain of political participation critically and focus the role of people's organization and movement in substantializing the very spirit of democracy by understanding the separate Telangana movement in the southern part of India for the separate state. This movement, it argues, a case to study further the notion of democracy and participation in post globalization. The question that the movement poses is: whether the substantive democratic urges make a difference to parliamentary politics or the latter will marginalize the democratic process? This paper probe into this new and emerging domain of knowledge.