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Emissions trading and nature‐based solutions, particularly REDD+, have lent themselves to the critical literature on the "socioecological fix" in neoliberal capital accumulation and state regulation. Prone to reversals, land conflict, and leakage, these mechanisms displace the burden of carbon emissions reductions to global South countries, promote new green commodities, and thus increase rather than curb the chance of capital accumulations by big polluters. Studies of existing REDD+ projects register the privatisation of forest management on the one hand and "aidification" on the other, suggesting impediments to fully commodifying forest carbon ranging from social movement resistance to technical issues. This case study of Brazil's national Amazon Fund points to global South protagonism in constructing and negotiating REDD+, challenging Northern and market hegemonies. Progressive Southern actors use the political space of the fix to defend rural communities' territorial rights and demand resources in line with historic responsibilities and climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behind the conjunctural growth of popular economies in Brazilian cities lies a set of entangled disputes over urban density with important political consequences. While popular economic agents are repressed by local governments, informal work hired through digital platforms grows exponentially and engenders new precarious forms of assembling labour relations in, and extracting value from, global South cities. The contrasts and indirect relations between digital platforms and popular economic agents are important in understanding the growth of platforms, which hinges on accessing low‐wage workers whose attempts to make an independent living are otherwise prohibited. This dynamic has resulted in the political mobilisation of popular economy agents and their alliances with urban social movements. Through this paper, I examine how their networking and particular disputes for a right to the city hold potential for the emergence of other economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the socio‐political dynamics after the financial crash in two countries governed by the left, Argentina and Brazil. Whilst the economic crisis had an effect on the general distributive capacity of leftwing coalitions, it remains unclear why the political resolution of such a crisis adopted anti‐regime features in Brazil and the form of an institutional alternation of power in Argentina. Our aim is to understand the new socio‐political dynamics and their implications in the crisis of the left turn, especially the relationship between social mobilization and political change in the context of Argentina and Brazil. In doing so, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature interested in the intersections between social movements and the state. Based on the analysis of original qualitative and quantitative data on social protests events in both countries 2011–2015, the paper suggests that the complexity of changes in the socio‐political dynamics can be captured by looking at three dimensions of the problem: grammar of mobilization, social imaginaries, and political representation. The main argument is that the different types of left turn strategy developed in both countries affected in turn the responses to the economic crisis and the new cycle of mobilization. The kirchnerist's movimentista strategy in Argentina contrasted with the demobilizing strategy of the PT in Brazil. Whilst the former contributed to channel the high and polarized levels of activism within the polity, the latter resulted in the crisis of the long cycle of political representation opened with the transition to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper appraises Pastoral Land Commission's (CPT) practice of documenting the violence and conflict that has taken place in the Brazilian countryside since 1975. Based on 10 interviews with CPT National members and other primary sources, the paper conceptually explores the organisations' subversive practice of compiling and publishing data on this type of violence, hence producing emancipatory knowledge that supports progressive agrarian change. Although the state benefits from having such knowledge obscured, CPT's efforts shine a light on conflicts in the countryside and frame them as such. Documenting as a technology of resistance has been crucial for Brazilian social movements and scholar‐activists and has significant potential for reproduction elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a qualitative study on the relationship between social movements and a Master's Program in youth and adult education in Bahia, Brazil. It pays particular attention to the importance of antiracism in and the decolonization of the program's curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Have rumors of the demise of liberation theology been greatly exaggerated? There is a prevailing belief among scholars and other observers that the Latin American Catholic Church has withdrawn from the preferential option for the poor, which had encouraged a combination of faith and activism for social justice. This article challenges that belief by means of qualitative data gathered during 8 months in Brazil that provide evidence of close connections between the Pastoral of the Street, a church program that mobilizes homeless people, and the National Movement of the Street Population (MNPR). The principal data came from 42 interviews with homeless or formerly homeless people, movement leaders, and religious sisters and lay workers in the pastoral program. Participant observation and documentary research supplemented the interviews. The findings demonstrate that the Pastoral of the Street helped to create the MNPR and continues to provide it with material and ideological support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale hydroelectric dams have—throughout their history—had adverse impacts on local population groups, natural resources, and entire eco‐systems furthering resistance and protest against them. In this paper, we aim to investigate the impact of social mobilization against large‐scale dams by considering political opportunity structures, actor constellations, and frames. We comparatively analyze three case studies in varying political systems, that is, Gibe III in Ethiopia, Belo Monte in Brazil, and Barro Blanco in Panama. Our investigation is based on field research in these countries comprising data collection of governmental reports, newspaper articles, materials published by civil society organizations, and semi‐structured interviews. The analysis reveals that the impact of mobilization against dams is certainly limited in contexts with authoritarian governments. In democratic contexts, the impact depends on the degree of external involvement, as well as the ability of movements to avoid fracture, especially in view of temporal dimensions of large infrastructure projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main subject is a classical one, and the overarching goal of the book is to conceive a new theory of workers' strikes as a contribution to class theory. For some time, studies in industrial relations have recognized the need to challenge established frameworks and loci of research to deal with the diversity of labour experiences worldwide, but in-depth research on the ground is not always available. Ultimately, we are told that the strikes presented in the empirical core of the book achieved limited gains, remained relatively isolated, and were followed by conservative reactions in India and Brazil. [Extracted from the article]

Relations between business, state, and civil society in Latin America are conventionally discussed in antagonistic or hierarchical terms. This article challenges this position, developing a qualitative case study tracing the activities of an informal network of Brazilian businesspersons that, over the last three decades, promoted an agenda of sustainability, transparency, and civil society participation. Drawing from concepts in social movement theory, it is argued that a dynamic movement‐like behaviour combining civil activism, organisational entrepreneurship, and fluid political alignment, allowed the group to establish lasting collaborative alliances with core actors in Brazilian democratic politics, and access relevant elite and policy‐making circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on the new sites of contestation of global capitalism and international geopolitics created by transnational ties between Brazilian and Mozambican social movements. With a special focus on the rural sector and land issues, the article examines how the internationalization of Brazil's public policies and companies set the context and opened opportunity to the rise of South-South advocacy networks and the setting up of renewed spaces of political dialogue. Building on the politics of mobilization, it identifies two major coalitions reflecting Brazil's domestic struggles and analyzes their different mobilization strategies and objectives influencing political outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Since the outbreak of the global economic crisis of 2008, many countries have witnessed labour unrest and industrial action. In the recent wave of mass strikes in emerging economies, one salient feature has been the forging of new forms of cooperation between workers' struggles and other social movements. Yet research on protest movements after 2008 has largely failed to consider these mass strikes or the organizational forms that erupted in their wake. This article aims to address that gap, using case studies of mass strikes in India and Brazil to explore whether these new alliances can be described within the framework of social movement unionism. It seeks to identify the features that distinguish new forms of mobilization from old ones, and to explore what re-conceptualizations of social movement studies and industrial relations research are necessary to capture the challenges facing these new alliances. In doing so, it also raises concerns about the limitations of the 'networks of labour' approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the role of key visual technologies in contemporary media activism in Brazil. Drawing on a range of media formats and sources, it examines how the aesthetic politics of activists in protests that took place in 2013 opened the way for wider sociopolitical change. The forms and practices of the media activists, it is argued, aimed explicitly at producing transformative politics. New media technologies were remediated as a kind of equipment that could generate new relationships and subjectivities, and thereby access to intentionally undetermined futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of biotechnology is part of a global process of structural change in agriculture characterized by an increased integration of world agriculture with high corporate control. However, as the legal competence to allow the planting and trade of genetically modified (GM) crops commonly lies at the level of the nation state, this remains strategic in the politics of GM crops, both for actors promoting the technology and for social movements struggling against it. This paper illustrates this argument with an analysis of the struggles over GM crops in Brazil. It shows how the implementation of a food regime based on biotechnology, corporate control and neoliberal globalism depended on the state and was a contested process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Solidarity economy (SE) initiatives constitute a worldwide phenomenon that is today at the heart of numerous economic and social debates. They are active in very diverse economic sectors, aiming for example to create employment for poor and low-qualified workers. We begin with presenting a Polanyian framework for the analysis of such economic activities, which enables us to develop a plural and integral conception of a productive organisation. We draw on Polanyi's thesis that economy is a political and institutionalised process and present a historic overview of the construction of the SE 'sector' in Brazil. We put forward the hypothesis that the SE today in Brazil represents a social movement. Then, we ask ourselves if the SE movement led to a change in grassroots economic initiatives, such as ' people's cooperatives'. We present the results of exploratory research undertaken on 15 people's cooperatives in the State of Rio de Janeiro and its conclusions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Covering more than 8.1 million square kilometres (3.127 million square miles), the Amazon is a vast territory that has captured people's imaginations and ambitions. These range from Henry Ford's attempt in 1928 to build a rubber company town near Santarém, Brazil, to more contemporary projects that have aimed to boost and connect the continent's economy. explores the failure of such totalising projects across time and asks why they might have proved inherently flawed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on regulatory enforcement has been showing that the best way to enforce protective regulations is to thoroughly adapt the remedy to the problem at hand. Unfortunately, this is far from easy, as organizations and work environments all too often encourage street-level bureaucrats to standardize and simplify their practices. In an attempt to bridge this gap, many scholars equate responsiveness to preprogrammed escalation. This article analyzes how the Brazilian Ministério Público (MP) promotes a more ambitious form of responsiveness, here called relational regulation. While most of the formal features of the MP encourage routinization, groups of reformist prosecutors identify important cases, recruit external allies, and jointly devise innovative and context-specific solutions to problems of non-compliance. Crucially, this mode of action is not an anomaly, the result of individual proclivities or specific and formal job assignments. Rather, it is systematically produced by a mostly parallel and covert organization that operates within and expands beyond the MP itself. These two logics - routinized and custom-made responses - compete, cooperate, interpenetrate, and find common ground within the same organizational umbrella, and through their interaction they create an enforcement agency that is more robust, reliable, and responsive than allowed by current theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses migration histories of residents in rural settlements of the Brazilian Amazon that resulted from direct action land reform (DALR), which involves organised land occupations. Our analysis evaluates two hypotheses. The ‘urban migration’ expectation asserts that urban experience is important for DALR participation, which links rural and urban areas via migration for land occupations. The ‘DALR efficacy’ hypothesis argues that migration and DALR are complementary livelihood strategies, such that participation in DALR obviates the need for further migration. Our findings support both hypotheses and bear implications for regional development and environmental change in the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RESUMEN En 1998, en San Pablo, Brasil, un movimiento de familias pobres exigió la revisión de los procedimientos legales que condujeron a la adopción de sus niños por parte de familias brasileras y extranjeras. El análisis de los fallos de pérdida de la patria potestad reveló que las autoridades judiciales permitieron que se llevaran a cabo adopciones “irregulares,” sin el consentimiento de las familias de origen y sin que éstas hayan podido defenderse legalmente de acusaciones de malos tratos y abandono. El estudio de este movimiento puso en evidencia la existencia de representaciones particulares sobre parentesco al interior de las clases populares, así como la percepción de la pobreza que prevalece en las élites del país. En este artículo planteo que los niños pobres son vistos por un sector de estas élites tanto como una amenaza para la sociedad, como un medio para satisfacer los deseos de eventuales padres adoptivos, especialmente si se trata de recién nacidos “blancos” o de piel clara. In1998, in São Paolo, Brazil, a movement of poor families demanded a revision of the legal procedures that led to their children being put up for national and international adoption. The examination of judicial records revealed that “irregular” adoptions were allowed by the legal authorities without obtaining the families' consent and bypassing their rights to defend themselves against accusations that included child abuse and abandonment. The study of this movement brought out particular kinship representations among the country's poorer classes as well as the perception of poverty held by the country's elite. In this article, I argue that one sector of the elite views poor children both as potential threats to society and as a means of fulfilling the desires of prospective adoptive parents, especially when the child is a “white” or light-skinned newborn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the political dynamics of the contemporary ‘transnational peasant network’ through a comparison of two movements: the Brazilian Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) and the South African Landless People's Movement (LPM). We argue that transnational visions of ‘peasants’ often obscure relations between or within rural movements. One tangible benefit of the transnational peasant network is the exchange of ideas, experiences and information, but this exchange does not happen in a vacuum, rather it happens in the historically-situated, power-laden context of an uneven world system. Organized in 1984, MST activists from Brazil helped to train, educate and inspire South African activists after the LPM formed in 2001, but key elements of the MST's success were inappropriate or unworkable in the South African context. Ultimately, the transfer of movement knowledge from the MST to the LPM may have worked against the long-term success of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the national and transnational character of mobilization against GM crops in India, South Africa and Brazil in the ten-year period to 2005. By examining the contexts and practices of mobilization across the three countries, and in particular the complex, often fraught, local and global connections, the paper examines the diverse mobilizations that have occurred. The paper argues that to understand these processes, particular national political and economic contexts must be appreciated, alongside how the GM debates articulate with other foci for activism and the complex and often fragile nature of alliances that make up activist networks. The paper shows how the debate about GM crops has become a much wider one: about the future of agriculture and small-scale farmers, about corporate control and property rights and about the rules of global trade. In sum, a debate not just about the pros and cons of a particular set of technologies, but about politics and values and the future of agrarian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces a debate on the World Social Forum (WSF). The fifth World Social Forum took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from January 26-31, 2005. After a one-year absence, when the Forum migrated to Mumbai, India, the original host city of the event in the southern State of Rio Grande do Sul, welcomed the more than one hundred and fifty thousand participants of the world's most global alternative political event back. Staged simultaneously with the World Economic Forum, the elite gathering in the Swiss Alps, the WSF has become the major focus of worldwide coordination of all kinds of anti-systemic activities at all scales, in urban and rural contexts, and of all cultures from around the world. Delegates from 120 countries participated in more than 400 cultural events and hundreds of more or less formal meetings. One newspaper estimated the number of marchers in the opening demonstration that filled the streets of Porto Alegre for hours at 200,000. Forum participants attended panels with some of the most well-known progressive public intellectuals from all corners of the world. And they listened to and debated with each other. Individual events range from the spectacular, the opening demonstrations, the mass meetings, the celebrities and the small conferences, the chance encounters, the music.

This paper analyses the attempt to create an ‘imagined community’ among members of the MST (Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Movement of Rural Landless Workers ) as a way of maintaining high levels of participation. As one of the most active rural movements in Brazilian history, MST owes much of its success to high levels of involvement among members who have already achieved their initial goal of access to land. Movement leaders and activists encourage participation by creating a community through ideas and practices and distilled into symbols, slogans and ritual. The lived experiences of community differ from the imaginings, however, and in this paper I show how MST members negotiate the movement's expression of community in ways that reflect historical experiences of economy and society. Ultimately, MST's imagined community is effective because the movement has established itself as a successful mediator between the settlers and the Brazilian State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evolution of the demand for women's land rights in the Brazilian agrarian reform through the prism of the three main rural social movements: the landless movement, the rural unions and the autonomous rural women's movement. Most of the credit for raising the issue of women's land rights rests with women within the rural unions. That women's formal land rights were attained in the constitutional reform of 1988 was largely a by–product of the effort to end discrimination against women in all it dimensions. The achievement of formal equality in land rights, nonetheless, did not lead to increases in the share of female beneficiaries of the reform, which remained low in the mid–1990s. This was largely because securing women's land rights in practice was not a top priority of any of the rural social movements. Moreover, the main social movement determining the pace of the agrarian reform, the landless movement, considered class and gender issues to be incompatible. By the late 1990s, nonetheless, there was growing awareness that failure to recognize women's land rights was prejudicial to the development and consolidation of the agrarian reform settlements and thus the movement. The growing consensus among all the rural social movements of the importance of securing women's land rights, coupled with effective lobbying, encouraged the State in 2001 to adopt specific mechanisms for the inclusion of women in the agrarian reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement, a social movement in Brazil. Impact of the Gaucho tradition to the people; Provision of a sense of belongingness; Birthplace of Gaucho traditionalism; Role of traditionalist intellectuals.

Presents information on the Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement (MST). Strategy of MST; Effect of agrarian reform; Implications of the MST strategy for social movement strategies and for human rights.

Focuses on the role of the Catholic Church and other institutional actors in the emergence of new urban social movements in Brazil. Discussion on the institutional perspective on external actors; Class dimension of the role of external actors and its implications; Perspective on neighborhood associations.

Provides information on basismo, a social movement in Brazil. Origins of basismo; Role of the Catholic Church; Reason for the reduction of the influence of the Catholic Church; Relation between basismo and the non-governmental organization.

Analyzes the most important social movements that have emerged since the late 1970s in rural areas of Southern Brazil. Political liberalization of the period; Structural changes in the state's agrarian economy; Action of progressive sectors in the Catholic Church; Development of the official union structure.

The article presents a case study from suburban Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that discusses the dynamics of clientelism. In 1979 an institutional arm of the various new social movements was created in Brazil in the form of the party called Partido dos Trabaihadores (PT), heralding the dawn of a new era in Brazilian politics based on grassroots political organization. While Rio de Janeiro was not an area that played an important role in the formation and organization of the PT, it was, nevertheless, one that experienced precipitous growth in social movement organization during this period, primarily in the form of neighbourhood associations. The state of Rio de Janeiro already boasted the oldest dweller association federation in Brazil. The Federacao de Associacoes de Favela do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAFERJ) was first established in 1962. During the first decade or so of existence, it served as a mechanism for state control of favela politics than as a vehicle for popular interest representation such that until the late 1970s the favelas of Rio de Janeiro represented the principal source of votes for clientelist politics in the region. In 1979 FAFERJ was reconstituted by a group of communities on the basis of their collective rejection of traditional clientelist political methods, in an attempt to remove the federation from its proximity and subordination to state interests.

The article discusses the ecologist movement in Brazil during 1974-1986. The history of Brazil's movement can be characterized in three Phases. The first of these phases, may be called "environmentalist" and is characterized by the existence of two parallel movements describing themselves as "apolitical," denouncing environmental degradation in the cities and setting up alternative rural communities. The second phase known as "transitional" is characterized by the partial confluence and the progressively explicit politicizing of the movements in addition to the vast quantitative and qualitative expansion. The third and final phase, called as the "ecopolitical option" begins in 1986 with the great majority of the ecological movement identifying itself as positively political and taking the decision to participate actively in the parliamentary arena. Some factors explain the development and emergence of ecological movements in Brazil. Firstly, the highly international character of the world ecological movement due to the socio-environmental degradation of the planet, secondly the fact that Brazil is a rising third world country, strongly internationalized in its system of production and in its communications, thirdly the excessively predatory character and finally the process of democratic transition.

The article summarizes the developments in the international conference on Urban Restructuring: Trends and Challenges, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sessions of the conference covered subjects such as worldwide urbanization patterns, social challenges posed by urbanization, and impact upon urban restructuring. Probably the most debated question concerned the difficulties of establishing a common framework by which to analyze the so-called urban restructuring. In this respect the emphasis placed by researchers from the capitalist countries on flexible systems of production did not correspond to South American realities. It also emerged from the debates that the fact that peripheral countries are constituent parts of the world capitalist system did not mean that they were experiencing the same changes as the central countries. While there may exist a global crisis of spatiality, the peripheral countries manifest it in a specific form. The sessions that focused on the relationships between social movements and the state, the territorial restructuring of the state, and transformations in the dynamic of the management and the impact of self-management in various contexts, led to a discussion centered mainly on the problems relating to citizenship, decentralization and crisis of the welfare state.

This article discusses the state of the urban reform movement in Brazil. In 1987, urban popular movements from various regions of the country gathered together to draw up the so-called Urban Reform Proposal. This was possible because any groups supported by 30,000 people was allowed to submit popular amendments to the National Constituent Assembly, which is responsible for drawing up the newest constitution of the country. Urban popular movements in the country are not coordinated on a national level, but are isolated due to their differing specific demands and their scattered geographical locations. In Brazil, urban land is subject to intense speculation with a resulting increase in housing costs, infrastructure costs, transport journey length and spatial segregation. The Urban Reform Movement demands legislation to prevent the speculative withholding of unused urban land. Other demands include the modification of certain private property ownership rights and the regularization of land ownership rights. Another aspect of the proposal concerns the management of urban affairs. The movement understands urban reform to refer not only to popular participation in community councils or state-created forums.