El autor defiende la idea de que el origen del malestar de la política democrática está asociado a tres hechos: a la complejidad y a la incertidumbre que mueven el mundo contemporáneo; a la crisis de los supuestos sobre los que se asentaron las definiciones modernas de la política –especialmente la estabilidad del Estado-nación y la idea y la práctica del bienestar–; y a los nuevos problemas, no previstos o no resueltos, que impregnan la vida cotidiana de nuestras sociedades, como la crisis del mito de Occidente, la emergencia de nuevos modelos de modernización económica, la regionalización política, las nuevas formas de exclusión social, los efectos del multiculturalismo, el agotamiento de los tradicionales mecanismos de control político… Y todo ello en una época en que las ideas han de surtir efecto en el difícil territorio limitado por el ejercicio de la libertad, la necesidad de seguridad y las identidades, creadas, éstas, con ánimo de fundar, en ocasiones con materiales poco consistentes, una comunidad segura capaz de reestablecer el equilibrio psicológico y social allá donde éste aparece como imposible.

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.

In Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below, Dario Azzellini offers an account of the Bolivarian Revolution from below. While authors on Venezuela commonly concentrate on former president Hugo Chávez and government politics, this book shows how workers, peasants and the poor in urban communities engage in building 21st century socialism through popular movements, communal councils, communes and fighting for workers' control. In a relationship of cooperation and conflict with the state, social transformation is approached on 'two tracks', from below and from above. Azzellini’s fascinating account stands out because of the extensive empirical examples and original voices from movements, communal councils, communes and workers.