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This paper is a written dialogue among four activists from the Emancipa Popular Education Movement in Brazil, following the principles of Freirean pedagogy as a 'circle of culture'. It delves into how popular knowledge can be experienced as popular power, narrating the history, struggles, and strategies employed by the Emancipa movement in their pursuit of democratizing Brazilian universities. The discussion is set within the context of Latin American structural inequalities and the issue of educational exclusion in Brazil. It emphasizes the vital role of contesting culture and knowledge as part of the movement's fight against social injustices perpetuated by peripheral capitalism, including racist violence and gender oppression. The paper adopts emancipatory pedagogy as the method to empower and mobilize grassroots efforts in this transformative endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 2015–2016, high school students in Brazil occupied hundreds of schools across the country. Students fought to keep public schools open, funded, and functional, against outsourcing and privatisation, and in solidarity with teachers' trade unions and strikes. The 'primavera secundarista' ('student spring') was the most significant school student movement since the struggles against the military dictatorship (1964–1988). This paper firstly addresses the political dynamics of the primavera secundarista. Secondly, it discusses the movement's educational practices, which flourished in the months that students occupied their schools. Thirdly, it discusses the forms of community and solidarity that students built with other social actors and how they each learnt from this. In doing so, the paper builds on the work of Aziz Choudry and other scholars of social movement learning to argue that such student movements are prime sites of counter-hegemonic knowledge production and dissemination. Shown through the Brazilian high school occupations, the paper highlights how student movements are unusual in being situated in formal epistemic institutions, and yet are not widely recognised, especially in high schools, as blending formal and informal learning to produce and share knowledge-from-below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Struggles against eviction are key moments in the (re)production of informal housing in Brazilian cities, as they contest the uprooting and displacement of generally low-income families. While recent research has focused on displacement due to the World Cup and Olympic Games mega-events, this paper explores struggles against eviction that are less high profile, underscoring the distributed nature of evictions in processes of urban change. Drawing on long term fieldwork, this paper examines three cases of struggles against eviction in different cities in the southeast of Brazil. This comparison highlights the everyday contestations that take place across varied geo-political terrain; the morphological constraints and opportunities for collective action of building as opposed to land occupations; the punitive and cooperative state logics with which threatened communities must engage; and drawing on recent attempts in geography to combine theorisations of territory, place, network and scale, contributes to understanding the polymorphy of spatial struggles in contemporary Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notwithstanding the growing interest in cyberactivism in Brazil since the 2013 protests, not much is known about the previous unfolding of this kind of activism before it became a major actor in challenging the political system. Thus, this paper aimed to offer a first outline of cyberactivism's history in Brazil, taking into account which actors and practices were present in each moment, stressing their continuities and discontinuities. To this end, we used existing empirical literature – predominantly focused on particular actors, practices or moments – to gather data, facts and processes. Our investigation found out three moments of cyberactivism in the country, disrupted by an entaglement of socipolitical and technological factors and classified on the basis of existent actors, practices and platforms. First, the emergence, whereby web portals served as a source of information and a space for self expression and political articulation. Second, the consolidation, in which blogs provided networks for debates known as blogospheres. And, finally, the routinisation, when the emergence of social networks – stimulating debates, individual political manifestations, exchange of strategic information and calls for demonstrations – enabled cyberactivism to become part of everyday life. [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]

Copyright of Antipode 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.)

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]

Copyright of Critical African Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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.)

Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Educación is the property of Espacio, Tiempo y Educacion 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.)

Copyright of Revista Electrónica de Psicología Política is the property of Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas 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.)

The Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Teto (MTST)—Homeless Workers' Movement—is a social movement that struggles for housing and for a radical transformation of capitalistic socio-economic relations. The present paper offers a problematization of the movement's plea to social rights. They are part of the movement's discourse and strategy. However, the activists' objective is more radical: they aim at a complete transformation of the Brazilian economy and society. By first discussing two sets of literatures—Critical Legal Theory and Governmentality Studies—this article illustrates the complexity and the ambivalences of a radical politics of rights. Then, by contrasting my ongoing ethnographic research with the work of James Holston and Lucy Earle, I discuss the relevance of a citizenship framework for the MTST's struggle. Finally, inspired by Foucault's concept of counter-conducts, the article argues that the movement's politics of rights represents an effective tactic to contrast neoliberal governmentality and to create radical democratic spaces of struggle and collective resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article approaches the relationship between the aims of Paulo Freire's education for liberation and the praxis of popular communication in Brazil. The goal is to understand the extent to which aspects of Freire's thoughts can intersperse with concepts and practices of popular, community, and alternative communication in Brazil. The study is based on bibliographic research on Freire's work while reflecting on some of the principles of the education for liberation, particularly those embedding the praxis of popular communication in social movements. This paper concludes by arguing that principles such as 'communication as dialogue', 'critical consciousness', the ability to become a 'subject', 'education as a practice for freedom', 'connection to reality', and 'social transformation' lie prominently in the concept and practices of popular and community communication. [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]

Contradictions between impressive levels of economic growth and the persistence of poverty and inequality are perhaps nowhere more evident than in rural Brazil. While Brazil might appear to be an example of the potential harmony between large-scale, export-oriented agribusiness and small-scale family farming, high levels of rural resistance contradict this vision. In this introductory paper, we synthesize the literature on agrarian resistance in Brazil and situate recent struggles in Brazil within the Latin American context more broadly. We highlight seven key characteristics of contemporary Latin American resistance, which include: the growth of international networks, the changing structure of state–society collaboration, the deepening of territorial claims, the importance of autonomy, the development of alternative economies, continued opposition to dispossession, and struggles over the meaning of nature. We argue that by analyzing rural mobilization in Brazil, this collection offers a range of insights relevant to rural contention globally. Each contribution in this collection increases our understanding of alternative agricultural production, large-scale development projects, education, race and political parties in the contemporary agrarian context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contexts where political corruption is endemic, why would political elites build state capacity to prosecute corruption? Prior studies emphasize exogenous pressure from social movements or international organizations and the rise of political leaders committed to fighting corruption. While important, these factors are not sufficient to explain the case of Brazil, where politicians empowered investigative bureaucracies, even though several political elites later became victims of prosecution. Drawing on document analysis of charges and sentences and on 110 in-depth interviews with prosecutors, judges, and politicians, I develop a framework that focuses on the processes through which corruption is criminalized on the ground. By examining the initiatives of politicians in interaction with the actions of civil servants who investigate and prosecute cases of corruption, I show that political elites empowered investigators because, at the time, these steps seemed innocuous. Prosecutors later reframed how they talked about corruption—getting other colleagues to pay attention to this issue—and learned new strategies to uncover corruption schemes, but these changes happened under the radar: they were not visible to politicians. Popular pressure also led courts to broaden the definition of corruption and lower the threshold of evidence for it, but these decisions took place after the politicians' actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2011 to 2015 and the authors' long-term engagement in diverse aspects of HIV and human rights advocacy in Brazil, this paper explores key elements of the Brazilian sex workers' movement response to HIV and the broader political factors that profoundly influenced its trajectory. We argue that the movement has constantly challenged representations of prostitution by affirming sex workers' roles as political actors, not just peer educators, in fighting the HIV epidemic and highlight their development of a sex positive and pleasure centred response that fought stigma on multiple fronts. Moments of tension such as the censorship of an HIV prevention campaign and implementation of 'test and treat' projects are analysed, as are the complex questions that Brazil's 2016 political and economic crisis evokes in terms of how to develop and sustain responses to HIV driven by communities but with material commitment from the State. We conclude with what we see to be the unique, central components of Brazilian sex workers' approach to HIV prevention and what lessons can be learned from it for broader collective health movements in Latin America and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholars of “contentious politics” have paid increasing attention to the dynamics of space and place in the construction of organized resistance. To date, however, the literature has tended to focus on the social construction of space rather than the equally important spatial constitution of the social. In this paper, I analyze how particular understandings of space, or what I call “spatial imaginaries”—cognitive frameworks, both collective and individual, constituted through the lived experiences, perceptions, and conceptions of space itself—influenced the formation of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian history, the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (the MST). I analyze the decision to join the MST among small family farmers in southern Brazil and rural plantation workers in northeastern Brazil. People from both groups decided to join the movement, but the farmers from southern Brazil used their spatial imaginaries to embrace the act of occupying land and to create new frontiers for colonization while the rural workers from northeastern Brazil overcame the spatial imaginaries produced through the plantation labor system and joined the movement because they had few other options available to them. Because such imaginaries stay with people long after they engage in the initial acts of mobilization, incorporating this sort of analysis introduces an important dynamic component into the analysis of movement formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central aim of this paper is to outline an 'ethnographic theory of democracy,' and so contribute to a deeper understanding of the concrete mechanisms through which so-called representative democracy effectively functions. After some general observations, the article therefore focuses on exploring a series of events surrounding the participation of a segment of the black movement of Ilhéus (Bahia, northeast Brazil) in the municipal elections of 1992 and 1996. From this ethnographic base, the paper then seeks to develop an overview of the participation of electors in the self-named democratic processes of modern nation-states, exploring phenomena such as electoral promises and vote buying, as well as concepts such as reciprocity and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main land reform movements in the world are taking place in Brazil, where various social groups have coordinated their efforts to acquire legal possession of unproductive estates. Although the results achieved over time regarding this dispute are viewed as progress in terms of social inequality, there is no knowledge about the performance of these various movements to date. Based on this context, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the Brazilian states and the last four presidential terms in Brazil in minimising social conflicts over land and efficiently converting occupations into settlements. [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]

The struggle for healthy eating is a nascent social movement that represents active resistance to the hostile food environments created by multinational food and beverage corporations. Using a political economy approach and leveraging Winson's [2013.The industrial diet: the degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating. Vancouver: UBC Press] concepts of dietary regimes and the industrial diet, this paper will examine the strengths and limitations of Brazil's new dietary guidelines and discuss its role as a precursor to a new dietary regime that incorporates social justice and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By definition, interest groups are seen as self-interested, that is, organizations established to pursue the self-interest of their members. As such, this plethora of self-interested actors has been seen largely as a negative thing, cluttering the policy process, creating unmanageable demands, and leading to “iron triangles” of interest group/legislative/bureaucratic networks geared toward funneling benefits to narrow groups. In contrast, social movements, nongovernmental organizations, and the like typically are seen as positive, democratizing players in public policy. This paper seeks to muddy both sides of this neat distinction by bringing the Brazilian third-sector literature and field research on scientific and professional associations in the states of Sergipe and Santa Catarina to bear on the question of the self- versus public-interested stance of third-sector groups. On the one hand, social movements can be just as self-interested as the more traditional interest groups. On the other, interest groups often act wholly in the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social coordination by the Brazilian Black Movement in the area of Brazilian education. It explains how these developments relate to the construction of race-based public education policies in the country. Focus goes to the process of creation and implementation of law 10.639 in Brazilian Basic education. Using the concept ‘diffuse governance’, the argument is made that at present it are the multiple actions by the Brazilian Black Movement, in diverse arenas of dispute, and interacting with a range of actors, that enable us to understand the social coordination/regulation in the process of constructing and implementing Law 10.639. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the main innovations in the interaction between social movements and the state in Latin America since the democratisation processes is the use of courts as venues for social change and the intervention of social actors in constitutional politics. Drawing from the empirical study of the process of strategic litigation for abortion rights in Brazil, this paper aims to show what type of changes can take place when social actors set out to pursue a legal strategy on a highly controversial matter, and in a transitional context, where courts are in the midst of a redefinition of their institutional role in the political system, and movements have not yet been central actors in judicialisation processes. The study highlights how feminist organisations adapted their framing of the abortion issue and developed new alliances with legal actors in order to pursue a rights strategy and to interact with the constitutional court. It also points out how, when dealing with the abortion controversy, the Brazilian constitutional court (Supremo Tribunal Federal) expanded the legal opportunity for the participation of civil society actors and, in its 2012 decision that liberalised the abortion law, acknowledged the legal arguments advanced by social actors in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant conceptions of social movements consider their constitutive feature thedisruptionof order, not practices aroundbuildingit. In this paper, I challenge this notion by analyzing the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)'s relatively successful efforts toinstitutionalizethe practices of agricultural production developed by its members in cooperatives and agroecology. Through this analysis, I show that the movement's administration of a democratically managed form of agricultural production exemplifies a unique form of social movement resistance – namely, what I callself-governmentalresistance.Rather than reformist or revolutionary contention, self-governmental resistance – performed by movements like the MST –redevelopsstate policies by vying for and often taking control over the design and implementation of agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American Studies is the property of Cambridge University Press 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.)

In June 2013, widespread popular unrest unexpectedly shook Brazil whilst the FIFA Football Confederations Cup was taking place. Nicknamed as the 'demonstrations cup' by protesters, this was one of the greatest uprisings in the history of the country, with its effects still being felt and discussed nationally and internationally. Despite the general consensus on the more immediate causes that sparked the movement – such as the protests by the Movimento Passe Livre against a 20-cent bus fare hike in São Paulo, heavy-handed police repression and the use of social media – there still lacks a holistic explanation about the historical processes that formed the inflammable scenario that triggered those demonstrations and their rapid dissemination. Using quantitative and qualitative data related to recent urban socio-economic changes and civil society mobilisation trends, the present paper constructs an original genealogy of the June 2013 'demonstrations cup'. As a result, it indicates a unique confluence of multiple causal factors, such as the rapid and generalised erosion of real income in the Brazilian metropolises, the degeneration of political representativeness and traditional movements, the emergence of new mobilisation tools and the dissemination of anti-mega-events critical subjectivities – hence providing a comprehensive and empirically informed account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women in the Movement of Rural Women Workers (Movimento de Mulheres Trabalhadoras Rurais or MMTR) in southern Brazil envisioned a social movement that represented their interests both as women and as small farmers and agricultural workers, while also allowing for a plurality of voices and strategies. This article describes the feminist and democratic culture of militancy that these women sought, from the 1980s through to the 2000s, and shows how difficult it was to establish and sustain such a culture. These women not only confronted the deep, ongoing difficulties of challenging gendered social relations, but also the pain, shame and silencing that intertwined with gains in voice and equality. They also confronted larger social movements whose leaders understood power differently to the way these women did. For the women described in this article, women's activism requires a deep form of democracy where all voices are heard. Paradoxically, in the context of rural Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil and the panorama of movements that are active there, the rootedness in the everyday lived experience that made the movement relevant to women who advocated for this form of democracy also kept them from taking on powerholders within the movement who chose to ally with larger, more hierarchical movements, sacrificing significant forms of autonomy and voice in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we compare recent efforts towards the constitutionalization of the right to water in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru to understand the opportunities and limitations related to the attempts to enhance access to piped water to the highest normative level. Peru passed a constitutional amendment in 2017 while Brazil and Colombia have seen much right-to-water activism but have not succeeded in passing such reforms. We explore the role of the existing domestic legal frameworks on drinkable water provision and water management towards the approval of constitutional amendments. We find that all three countries have specialized laws, water governing institutions, and constitutional jurisprudence connecting access to water with rights, but the legal opportunity structures to enforce socio-economic rights vary; they are stronger in Colombia and Brazil, and weaker in Peru. We argue that legal opportunity structures build legal environments that influence constitutional reform success. Legal opportunity structures act as incentives both for social movements to push for reforms and for actors with legislative power to accept or reject them. Our findings also show that in some contexts political cost is a key element of constitutional reforms that enshrine the right to water; therefore, this is an element that should be considered when analyzing these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s and 1980s, a strong social movement of rubber tappers in the Amazonian state of Acre achieved remarkable policy goals, gaining new forms of land rights as well as political representation through their alliance with indigenous groups, environmentalists, political parties and human rights advocates. Allies of the social movement entered politics and took state power in 1999 as the 'Forest Government,' building on the rubber tapper's legacy to embrace the unique cultural and political history of the state, and implementing ambitious plans for forest-based development under the banner of 'forest citizenship.' In the past 25 years, however, rubber tapper identity has changed rapidly as many rubber tappers migrate to urban areas, or increasingly shift from traditional rubber tapping to more intensive land uses such as commercial agriculture and small-scale animal husbandry. This paper uses data collected from household surveys, key-informant interviews and ethnographic research to explore the idea of what it means to be a 'rubber tapper' and 'forest citizen' today. We examine the contradictory nature of changing land-use and cultural revitalization efforts among diverse rural and urban populations, and the implications of this diversity for the future of the Forest Government's policies, and the rubber tappers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The present paper considers a sometimes contentious process of land reform presently occurring in Brazil. This process, referred to in the paper as Direct Action Land Reform (DALR), involves organizations such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) and more spontaneous actions of individuals desiring a piece of land for their own. Results of a survey covering 751 households engaged in such land reform actions in the Brazilian Amazon are presented, in order to describe participants and land reform processes. Evidently, social movement organizations provide for a modest degree of wealth accumulation, a welfare improvement that must be set against potential environmental costs. The paper concludes by calling attention to the challenge DALR may ultimately pose to the Brazilian state. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There is a growing literature on the experiences of participatory democracy in Latin America. Largely focused on urban areas and municipal service provision, the literature provides important lessons as to whether, how, and why participation works to improve the quality of democracy. In this paper, I examine an unlikely case of participatory democracy: the struggle for land reform in the Brazilian countryside. Analysing the relationships between the federal agency in charge of land reform in Brazil (the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) and the largest grassroots social movement organised to fight for the distribution of land (the Landless Movement) provides evidence of participatory democracy by default rather than by design: government officials who lack the resources and technical capacity to carry out reform are forced to rely on social movement actors who demand attention by routinely transgressing at the margins of acceptable (and legal) behaviour. At the same time, the features of political life in Brazil that allow or force the Landless Movement to collaborate with the state make it difficult for individual settlers to do so. For those individuals who do not feel adequately represented by the movement and attempt to be included on their own, the political system and culture continue to privilege the most powerful, thereby reinforcing prior settlement inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the challenges involved in adopting an integrated approach to urban water policies and management, a particularly problematic issue in Brazil due to the incomplete nature of urbanization, defined as the lack of adequate and/or universalized access to infrastructure and services, informal housing and conflicts between environmental protection and social housing needs. In the last two decades strong social movements have influenced urban environmental policies from national to local levels. In Belo Horizonte since 1993, decision-making processes have involved important mechanisms of democratic inclusion, which have contributed to fairer urban policies. A brief discussion of the concept of governance follows, introducing the municipal urban policy within which drainage and sanitation policies have been implemented. This paper presents the constitutional and institutional role of the five municipal committees dealing with water governance issues, as they are important arenas for civil society participation. The main constraints to achieving integrated urban water governance at the local level and the extent to which such policies are able to reduce social inequalities and promote social environmental justice in the use and appropriation of urban water, are discussed. This paper is part of the SWITCH-Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrow's Cities' Health-research network [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for understanding social movements that address issues related to science, technology and expert knowledge. ‘Democratizing science movements’ contest, reframe, and engage in the production of official scientific research in order to achieve their goals. They contest the seeming objectivity and neutrality of science and seek to legitimate lay perspectives. In order to empirically explore why such movements arise and how they work, I discuss two cases: the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the USA. While there are obvious internal and contextual differences between these two movements, they both exemplify similar characteristics of democratizing science movements. In this sense, these cases are representative of a broader, transnational phenomenon. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements are purposeful, organized groups of people addressing the creation and reproduction of inequality, rights and access issues, seeking to transform sectoral policies. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, social movements have been acting in articulation with government and private companies and through other actions formulated within their networks, as service deliverers to the poor and vulnerable populations most heavily affected, often filling a gap created by unfulfilled policies. Our research with waste picker organizations in Brazil illustrates how their struggle for recognition has taken action in this context. Academic and government documents, social media and online material (blogs, posts, websites, etc.) and virtual meetings inform this research. We found that multiple actors have contributed to mitigate the urgent needs of waste pickers during the pandemic, but that at the same time, pre-existing challenges in waste management and the lack of wide-ranging social and economic inclusion have been further intensified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is liberation theology dead or in decline? This article analyzes factors that have led to that perception and provides evidence to the contrary. It demonstrates that the theology has survived multiple attempts by certain sectors of both church and state to eliminate it, and that it remains very much alive in grassroots pastoral programs and social movements. Support for this last statement is provided by the author's field research in Brazil. The article concludes with signs that liberation theology will endure as it continues to inspire spiritually motivated people who commit themselves to addressing human needs by promoting social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC/1995-2002) played a significant role in the consolidation of policies directed to the countryside and the agrarian reform process in Brazil. The aim of this paper was to reflect on the profile and stresses involved in agrarian reform policy of the FHC government, and the ramifications of this policy in light of the number of settled families and areas obtained for agrarian reform in Brazil. It was used as source texts of researchers who studied the ways and waywardness of the Brazilian agrarian reform and data from the "Fight for Land Database" (DATALUTA/NERA/Unesp/Presidente Prudente). It is understood that during the FHC government, despite the number of settled families and obtained areas have considerably advanced when compared to previous governments, agrarian reform was treated marginally, and the government sometimes denied the struggles and the leadership role of social movements in the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the Brazilian social movement of mothers whose children were killed by State's security agents between 2003 and 2017. Its purpose is to understand how these women define their claims for justice, as they struggle to see those responsible for the assassination of their children properly judged. Our hypothesis is that their activism politicizes motherhood and makes it a public matter. To investigate that, we conducted in-depth interviews with twelve activists on the mothers' movements against police violence. The interviews were conducted between June and August of 2017, in two metropolitan areas in the Southeast of Brazil, the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and Santos (SP). They confirmed the politicization of motherhood, redefining care as resistance and a matter of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many international analysts claimed that the Brazilian protests of June 2013 were a consequence of the country's rapid economic growth over the past few years, the rise of new middle classes, the heighten of expectations on government, the increase of citizen participation and the weakness of political institutions to handle all the above-mentioned situations. This explanation relied, explicitly or implicitly, on the modernization theory of Samuel P. Huntington, despite the fact more than forty years have gone by since the first appearance of Political order in changing societies (1968) -Huntington's most famous book on the political impacts of modernization. The purpose of this paper is to question whether Huntington's causality model actually explains the Brazilian protests. In order to do this, ethnographies of the protests that pay particular attention to their causes are contrasted with the model raised by Huntington. Based on the above, the scopes and limits of the modernization theory to explain contemporary social movements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Reflexión Politica is the property of Universidad Autonoma de Bucaramanga, UNAB 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.)

Purpose: This article explains the process of construction and configuration of the Brazilian social imaginary on the global '68 using the daily press as source material. Design/methodology/approach: It looks at the narratives conveyed by the press about the condition, situation, motivations, aspirations and capacity for action of young university students. The analysis is focused mainly on the usage of totalitarian language and permits an in-depth view of the reality of life in Brazil at the time and the role played by the students in the resistance to the dictatorship. It also includes an analysis of how other students' protests of 1968 – in Poland and Mexico – were portrayed through the media, and how they helped to shape the collective imaginary about Brazilian university students, situating it in a conjuncture of broader dimensions and connections. Findings: The youth of Brazil, Poland and Mexico were represented as active political and social subjects, capable of defying, and sometimes profoundly upsetting, the established order. Violence and the discourse of violence were constant unifying elements in the narratives created by the daily press. This helped generate an image of university students which portrayed them as a rebellious, revolutionary and/or subversive sector of the population, responsible for one of the most extensive and profound social and political crises which those countries had experienced in decades. Originality/value: This is the first study of the Brazilian reception of the '68 Polish and Mexican students' protest and its implications for the social narrative of students' resistance in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]