A study of the poor's movements in response to the ever-widening gap between the poor and the state in Latin American politics.

Taking a fresh thematic approach to politics and society in Latin America, this introductory textbook analyzes the region's past and present in an accessible and engaging style well-suited to undergraduate students. The book provides historical insights into modern states and critical issues they are facing, with insightful analyses that are supported by empirical data, maps and timelines. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text considers critical topics relevant to all countries within the region such as the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights and responses to human rights abuses, corruption, and violence. Each richly illustrated chapter contains a compelling and cohesive narrative, followed by thought-provoking questions and further reading suggestions, making this text a vital resource for anyone encountering the complexities of Latin American politics for the first time in their studies.

Legacies of the Left Turn in Latin America: The Promise of Inclusive Citizenship contains original essays by a diverse group of leading and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, and Latin America. The book speaks to wide-ranging debates on democracy, the left, and citizenship in Latin America. What were the effects of a decade and a half of left and center-left governments? The central purpose of this book is to evaluate both the positive and negative effects of the Left turn on state-society relations and inclusion. Promises of social inclusion and the expansion of citizenship rights were paramount to the center-left discourses upon the factions' arrival to power in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This book is a first step in understanding to what extent these initial promises were or were not fulfilled, and why. In analyzing these issues, the authors demonstrate that these years yield both signs of progress in some areas and the deepening of historical problems in others. The contributors to this book reveal variation among and within countries, and across policy and issue areas such as democratic institution reforms, human rights, minorities’ rights, environmental questions, and violence. This focus on issues rather than countries distinguishes the book from other recent volumes on the left in Latin America, and the book will speak to a broad and multi-dimensional audience, both inside and outside the academic world. Contributors: Manuel Balán, Françoise Montambeault, Philip Oxhorn, Maxwell A. Cameron, Kenneth M. Roberts, Nathalia Sandoval-Rojas, Daniel M. Brinks, Benjamin Goldfrank, Roberta Rice, Elizabeth Jelin, Celina Van Dembroucke, Nora Nagels, Merike Blofield, Jordi Díez, Eve Bratman, Gabriel Kessler, Olivier Dabène, Jared Abbott, Steve Levitsky

DIVExamines how Argentina's urban poor use political networks and informal webs of reciprocal help to solve their everyday survival needs/div

This book examines the tensions and convergences between social movements and twenty-first century progressive Latin American governments. Focusing on feminist, indigenous, environmental, rural, and labor movements, leading scholars present a well-rounded picture on a controversial topic and argue against the accepted view that robust Latin American social movements are independent of the state. This cutting-edge book will be an invaluable supplement for Latin American studies and beyond for courses on democracy, peace studies, labor studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies.

The sociology of Latin America, established in the region over the past eighty years, is a thriving field whose major contributions include dependence theory, world-systems theory, and historical debates on economic development, among others. The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Latin America provides research essays that introduce the readers to the discipline's key areas and current trends, specifically with regard to contemporary sociology in Latin America, as well as a collection of innovative empirical studies deploying a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The essays in the Handbook are arranged in eight research subfields in which scholars are currently making significant theoretical and methodological contributions: Sociology of the State, Social Inequalities, Sociology of Religion, Collective Action and Social Movements, Sociology of Migration, Sociology of Gender, Medical Sociology, and Sociology of Violence and Insecurity. Due to the deterioration of social and economic conditions, as well as recent disruptions to an already tense political environment, these have become some of the most productive and important fields in Latin American sociology. This roiling sociopolitical atmosphere also generates new and innovative expressions of protest and survival, which are being explored by sociologists across different continents today. The essays included in this collection offer a map to and a thematic articulation of central sociological debates that make it a critical resource for those scholars and students eager to understand contemporary sociology in Latin America.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists, Fractured Militancy tells the story of postapartheid South Africa from the perspective of Johannesburg's impoverished urban Black neighborhoods. Nearly three decades after South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, widespread protests and xenophobic attacks suggest that not all is well in the once-celebrated "rainbow nation." Marcel Paret traces rising protests back to the process of democratization and racial inclusion. This process dangled the possibility of change but preserved racial inequality and economic insecurity, prompting residents to use militant protests to express their deep sense of betrayal and to demand recognition and community development. Underscoring remarkable parallels to movements such as Black Lives Matter in the United States, this account attests to an ongoing struggle for Black liberation in the wake of formal racial inclusion. Rather than unified resistance, however, class struggles within the process of racial inclusion produced a fractured militancy. Revealing the complicated truth behind the celebrated "success" of South African democratization, Paret uncovers a society divided by wealth, urban geography, nationality, employment, and political views. Fractured Militancy warns of the threat that capitalism and elite class struggles present to social movements and racial justice everywhere.