Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the mobilisations in Argentina and Brazil in the 2010s, contrasting the responses by the Rousseff and Kirchner governments and different outcomes in terms of the forms of democracy strengthened.

Paper long abstract:

Argentina and Brazil have recently experienced some of the largest anti-government mobilisations since left-of-centre administrations came to power in the region in the early 2000s. This article examines the trajectory of these protests from the perspective of the different responses by the Rousseff and Kirchner administrations.The article contrasts the reactions by two governments and their effect in de-activating or not the source of the mobilisations. Rather than a static approach considering political opportunity structures simply as 'open' or 'closed', this article disaggregates the different ways by which governments shape understandings of protests and the subsequent implications for both governments and their opponents. While it has been common to suggest in general terms that protest and democracy are interrelated, the models put forward in this article provide novel and dynamic means towards understanding this relationship.

Paper Download (344 KB)

Paper short abstract:

This article reflects on the collective action frames of the Chilean student movement of 2011 to draw lessons for future mobilizations against neolibealism.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focusses on the collective action frame of and its relevance for social movements. For this purpose, the presentation uses the example of the Chilean student movement of 2011.

The first part gives a summary of the background of the movement, to then define the concept of collective action frames. Thirdly it summarizes the "no to profit" collective action frame and its relevance to create alternatives against the neoliberal hegemony. For the conclusion I give a comparison between the collective action frames of the Chilean student movement with the collective action frame of the student protest of 2010 in the UK.

Paper Download (371 KB)

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the urban social movements that have recently emerged in Chile and use heritage as a politic resource of reivindication to transformate the actual neoliberal system of urban governance.

Paper long abstract:

The military dictatorship in Chile imposed an ultra-neoliberal development model that had impacted the field of city planning. The implementation of these policies had several negative consequences in the cities including an abrupt growth of them to outlying areas, rampant property speculation, extreme spatial segregation of social classes, and the degradation of historic districts because of a massive internal migration.

Nowadays, after over twenty years of democracy in Chile, urban planning is still defined by private interests wich have priority over citizens' rights. As a part of this context, it has recently emerged in Chile certain urban social movements that seek to defend the right that every citizen can decide on the fate of its territory. They have initiated heritagization processes in their neighborhoods and have mobilized to demand that both their territory, architecture and traditional lifestyles were legitimized by the State as heritage. In this context, heritage is used as a political resource, which is activated to address threats to loss of ownness caused by the actions of the State in partnership with the private sector.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of those social movements that use the discourse of heritage as a reivindication strategy. From a multiple case study based on participant observation of social movements that emerged in Santiago (Chile) this article elaborates on how it is carried out the strategy of resistance and how this political use of heritage has allowed the movements to influence urban governance systems.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between the agrarian social movement La Via Campesina and the inter-state institution of ALBA as a means of understanding the limits and potentials to forging an effective post-hegemonic regional formation in Latin America.

Paper long abstract:

The centrality of social movements has been well understood within scholarship of contemporary Latin American politics and society. While analyses of social movement mobilisation often assumes transnational forms of resistance, the dominance of the sovereign-state system has always heavily circumscribed the efficacy of social resistance beyond the national level. With the increasing prominence of Latin American regionalisation projects, social movements have been provided the opportunity to mobilise new 'maps of grievance' at wider spatial scales. The emergence of ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) in particular represents a prime opportunity to examine the relationship between supra-state institutions and social movement mobilisation, given that ALBA offers the widest opening for institutional inclusion ('Council of Social Movements') and the most convergent ideological orientation (Bolivarianismo) with Latin America's anti-systemic social forces. This 'partnership of resistance' between states and civil society will be analysed by looking at the agrarian social movement La Via Campesina and its involvement in ALBA as a means of pursuing its call for 'food sovereignty'. Because of the close ideological fit between La Via Campesina and the ALBA states, it is important to identify the contradictions and contestation involved with this partnership, which will offer valuable insights into the structural and organisational obstacles to forging a meaningful and effective 'post-hegemonic' regional formation. Only by understanding the strategic difficulties encountered by social movement actors can we hope to establish new political models capable of nurturing sustainable and participatory approaches to everyday life.

Paper Download (307 KB)

Paper short abstract:

The paper seeks to explore through which mechanisms natural resource extraction is driving social movement mobilisation of indigenous minorities in Bolivia and if novel participatory resource governance measures are able to mitigate local grievances and appease contentious collective action.

Paper long abstract:

Under what conditions does natural resource exploitation lead to contentious mobilization of ethnic minorities and can contentious collective action be mitigated by (more) participatory governance measures such as prior consultation of local people?

Based on extensive semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with indigenous representatives and organisations the paper tries to answer these questions by realising micro-level analyses of three local cases of indigenous lowland minorities in Bolivia.

Using social movement theory approaches and more recent literature on the so-called resource-curse, comparative results indicate that apart from local organizational structures especially the broader dynamics of state appropriation of the local arena matters for explaining the mobilization effect of indigenous minorities in gas extraction areas: resource extraction seems to shape the local perception of the overall range of authority of the central state. This also has important implications for resource governance measures to address resource-related grievances.

Paper Download (416 KB)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Ecuadorian ecologist and indigenous movements understand current socio-environmental conflicts and operate accordingly. It also analyzes the forms that the movements converge in confronting Correa's post-neoliberal regime.

Paper long abstract:

Conventionally, two strands have been identified inside the Ecuadorian indigenous movement agglutinated under CONAIE, the National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, and its affiliates. The first strand organizes the struggles around land as a mean of production, assumes the form of class struggle with the historical subject being the peasant (the rural proletarian). The second strand emerged with a re-born indigenous identity as the historical subject, thus demanding cultural, political and economic autonomy. The classist and culturalist strands respond to the historical particularities of the Amazon and the Sierra indigenous organizations, the strongest of the country.

Each tendency influences the ways in which the indigenous movement approaches the ecologist movement in Ecuador today. It appears that the ethnic strand articulates with the ecologist movement against oil and mining developments that threatens territories mostly in the southern Amazon and the southern Sierra. Meanwhile, the classist strand prevails in the Central and Northern Sierra and appears to have a milder anti-extractivism character, thus the convergence with ecologists is virtually non-existent.

The paper argues that unless the movements are able to identify a common force of exploitation of bodies, territories, and cultures which can act as a unifier force, there are few possibilities to confront Rafael Correa's regime, which in some areas has reach important levels of violence.

Paper Download (224 KB)