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In recent years, a growing body of literature has analyzed radical left parties in Europe. However, internal party life and the sociology of party elites have remained an understudied topic, mostly dominated by non-systematic accounts on party leaders. This article offers an empirical exploration of the sociology of Podemos party cadres, based on a prosopography of the elected members of the Consejo Ciudadano Estatal and the Consejo de Coordinación, its main internal institutions, since 2014. This research questions Podemos' status of "outsider" in the partisan landscape by quantifying three fundamental dimensions of its cadres' public image: their links with social movements, academia and Latin America. By measuring the social and biographical characteristics of Podemos' elites as they institutionalize, this article offers a new scientific lens to analyze the trajectory of radical left parties, and provides a method to test common hypotheses on contemporary political forces after the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This writing addresses a theme that is that of organized peoples as collective subjects of resistance to neoliberal capitalism and at the same time as creators of new worlds. The living experience of the peoples is the compass for theoretical reflection and to project the type of transition that we are experiencing towards the other worlds that are being built and the ways in which each people is defending them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate whether the interpretation of the social movements which emerged in the turn of the century as movements defined by their struggles against neoliberalism is applicable for Latin America. With this purpose, the text follows a methodology based on the discussion of some of the main social movements that are currently active in the region, through an analytical scheme, which prioritises the understanding of the historical formation of this subcontinent and its position in the world economy. The hypothesis is that these elements are crucial for a proper appreciation of the material and ideological ground in which these movements carry out their struggles, as well as the huge socioeconomic contradictions, which may create obstacles, but also impetus for contestation. Finally, the text debates the promotion of these movements on regional and international level, taking into consideration the potential of internationalisation related to four axes which were identified in the research—namely livelihood, territory, ethnical identity and sustainability. Through this analysis, the article contributes to the understanding of the raison d'être of these Latin American social movements, but also to the discussions on the emancipatory potential ingrained in their struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American has made remarkable progress in the last twenty years regarding LGBTQ+ rights. More recently, LGBTQ‐related issues have had major impacts on national and regional politics. However, most of the literature about Latin American social movements still largely ignores LGBTQ+ movements. This article argues that including LGBTQ+ movements in social movements research is essential to further our understanding of LGBTQ+ politics in the region and of Latin American politics and social movements more broadly, as well as to address the enduring lack of academic engagement with gender and sexuality as political topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes counter-hegemonic struggles in the face of the 21st century extractivism offensive in Latin America. First, it examines the emergence of a new generation of social movements against neoliberalism and subsequently against extractivism, shaped by the affected communities in alliance with a variety of subaltern groups that express the displacement of struggles towards the place for the reproduction and existence of life: the territory. In this context, the current Colombian scenario is presented, where one of the main banners of the new progressive government is the gradual de-escalation of the extractivist model within the framework of environmental justice, as an expression of an alternative hegemony. Finally, the paper highlights some of the main challenges of the struggle between capital and life in the face of the resurgence of extractivism in times of war, a socially and ecologically unsustainable model and one of the main obstacles in the construction of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article analyse the development of a sociological critical thinking in social movement in Chile during last decade. In the article I explore how this thought manage to mix some of the features of the four sociological trends in Latin America described by Torres. The article analyses the case of new think tanks that emerged from Chilean student movements in 2006 and 2011. These think tanks have a distinctive critical thinking that highlight the role of political economic analysis, the role of knowledge based on evidence, and incumbent vocation that connect intellectual projects with different political practices, closely related to social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La convocatoria del XVIII Congreso Internacional de Filosofía Latinoamericana se equivocó al afirmar que los estudios sociales latinoamericanos sobre ciencia y tecnología no habían establecido una relación explícita con la filosofía. Como contraejemplo, este artículo analiza un curso de extensión fuertemente influenciado por los dos campos. Este estudio buscó identificar cómo el caso problematiza la educación en ciencia y tecnología en Latinoamérica y para esto se orientó por preguntas clave de la filosofía latinoamericana. Los resultados superan una discusión apenas didáctica para cuestionar si dicha educación debe/puede crear condiciones para que diferentes actores/actrices estudien su relación con el conocimiento, la tecnología y la propia educación, asumiendo su lugar histórico en la transformación de estas instituciones y de las desigualdades que reproducen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franz Hinkelammert is one of the classic authors who in the line of stories that pronounced the resignation and fall of utopias, did not give up nor has he given up on continuing to reflect on it and, even more, contributing to show what these regulative ideas of practical reason are and what are its limits. One of these limits is precisely that of feasibility. For this reason, in Hinkelammertian literature utopia and feasibility go hand in hand. From this relationship between utopia and feasibility, a wide space for debate and discussion is opened that begins to be fruitful to think about the action of the practical subject, of social movements and struggles for liberation. And it is precisely in this space in which the present essay is placed, whose interest is to approach the category of feasibility specifically and contribute to place it in the contemporary debate of the theories of action and of social and popular movements, a space in which nowadays it has a marginal space if not forgotten or completely unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of communication, in Latin America and the Caribbean, does not have a single path; In this context, the totalizing arguments are always shown to be unnecessary. On the other hand, there are perspectives that point, as alternative or popular communication paths, to practices and experiences of journalism, other perspectives show work experiences both in the state media and in the development of public policies, which can be incorporated as work paths that seek to unite communication and emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept and trends of political strikes in Latin America as a family of contentious repertoires. Also cited are the types of strikes like economic and political strikes in the public and private sector employment, the conflicts between unions and governments over public issues, and how the free-market policies and programs threaten the citizenship rights of Latin Americans.

This article explores how a range of U.S. writers have generically, representationally, and linguistically engaged with radical left-wing social movements in the Global South. In staging their revolutions in Latin America and in employing insurgencies “from below” as a mode for imagining a political afterlife for the United States, these writers employ a deterritorialized and relational use of the term “Global South” to broadly refer to the kinds of “resistant political imaginaries” shared by persons of color and marginalized communities across the hemisphere and the world. However, this article argues the Global South in these multiethnic works is more than a simple device to connect to a collective memory shared by marginalized communities in the United States and populations who suffered under dictatorial regimes in Latin America. In fact, its deployment mimics the most effective counterinsurgency campaigns launched in the Global South. By taking the Global South as a dynamic framework for analyzing multiethnic U.S. literature, my essay prompts us to read the canon of U.S. multiethnic literature very differently and to see the long afterlife of the limits and failures of coopting Latin American social movements to imagine alternative futures in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in ancient Greece, public space has played a key role in the politics and democracy of cities. Its role has been degraded in post-modernity, and reached its deepest crisis in the full maturity of the post-Fordist system (from 1990 onwards). This economic and representation depression, as well as institutional legitimacy, that States are experiencing, have promoted the emergence and resurgence of different social movements that flood cities globally. Here is where the concern of the Frente Urbano Amparo Poch y Gascón collective lies, formed by the authors, to recognize and characterize, from a socio-urban logic, these manifestations and the sustained occupation that public spaces have experienced in different Latin American cities during the last decade. This research, framed within the Virtual Latin American Meeting, Utopías Líquidas, is proposed starting from a mixed methodology of collective mapping, recognizing public spaces, and characterizing their occupation exercised by Latin American social movements, in the dispute to redefine them and regain their political character, and thus value the different Latin American social movements and their struggles, in an act that encourages resistance and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Animita" is one of the most deeply rooted beliefs within popular culture, which is strongly present in Latin American religious practices, surviving and adapting to urban developments in the globalized world. The article that follows asks about the existence of a political dimension and social resistance present in this manifestation of popular religiosity. To elucidate this question, we will analyze the animita of deaths in the context of social and political movements, based on the mimetic theory of the philosopher and literary critic Rene Girard. With the aim of finding some connection between the idea of violent death and the cult of animitas, with the ritual of the scapegoat of Girardian theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a forum on Latin American praxis. Topics include queer theory's conceptions of the body and sexuality, the associations between sexuality, the body and genitality that are typical of both queer and nonqueer Anglo-European criticism, and the activism of the Galán Family which is a transgender movement in Bolivia.

The main goal of this article is to examine the theoretical-methodological perspectives of the study of social movements, internet and social network sites from 1997 to 2017, where we identified the academic texts, exploring how the studies have evolved during two decades and the research approach from a sociocultural perspective with the aim of having a panorama of challenges in the future about research in social movements, internet and social network sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the main historical traditions and contemporary debates in the field of alternative and community communication in the European and US contexts, and compares these research frameworks with Latin American theory with the aim of finding similarities and differences. Based on comparative research and critical literature review, this work raises the need for building bridges between European research and the long tradition of Latin American studies in order to strengthen an interdisciplinary and interregional dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream views for the study of democracy and of democracy in Latin America tend to center around a restricted model of democratic systems, which decides to ignore the wider social environment in which they exist. This article seeks to contribute toward a more sociological understanding of democracy and democratization in Latin America and the world. It does that through a review of structuralist and neo-structuralist theories of democracy and of Latin American democracy, which is put in dialogue and confrontation with mainstream political science views of democracy and more recent critical views of really existing democracy. From that exercise the article proposes what it calls a historical-structuralist view of Latin American democracy based on looking at the interaction of social structures, political institutions, and sociopolitical actors, to understand its democratic systems as determined by the possession or lack of sociopolitical power through resources within the inequalities of capitalist and global structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do political parties, seemingly focused on electoral politics, also mobilise within contentious arenas? Drawing on qualitative research with a centreleft Argentine party called Nuevo Encuentro (NE) in the city of Buenos Aires this paper demonstrates the importance of a geographical reading of "movement parties" for responding to this question. Specifically, the paper analyses NE's territorialisation, understood as a strategy for organisation building via the political appropriation of space, typically by opening branches and mobilising activists in neighbourhoods. Between 2007 and 2019 NE's strategy of territorialisation mobilised across multiple scales--the neighbourhood, city and national--yet in so doing its organisation became overstretched and struggled to engage across both contentious and electoral arenas. Through an analysis of NE's territorialisation, grounded in the historical and geographical context of contemporary Argentina, the paper provides an original attempt to spatialise the concept of movement party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the organizational structure of a social movement affects the tactics it is likely to adopt. Hybrid movements gained prominence at the start of the twenty-first century. Like movements of the past, they protested on the streets; but unlike the movements of the past, they also acted like interest groups by lobbying government over policy. Considered through the lens of traditional scholarship, this phenomenon presents a puzzle. Loose networks of activists are thought to be good at contentious politics but incapable of negotiating with government. By contrast, federations of interest groups are seen to be good at insider lobbying but subject to co-optation. This article theorizes the middle ground between social movements and interest groups by proposing a third structure for social movement organizing, the federative coalition, which incorporates some of the advantages of hierarchy while avoiding some of its pitfalls. The article illustrates this argument through a case study of Brazil’s AIDS movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the centrality in the study of the peasantry in Latin America, for various disciplines, this category is still bound to static images of a group defined according to the State and capital. In this article, we explain the need to study the situated reality -- historically, geographically and politically -- of the individuals and groups that fit into this category of the peasantry. The issue concerning peasants is a pressing one in view of the current economic, political and socio-environmental crisis affecting large sectors of the Latin American population. This crisis is due, among other dynamics, to the advance of extractivism, the exacerbation of inequality, environmental deterioration, the dispossession of marginalized communities, and criminalization of the social movement. In order to further the critical analysis of this issue, from a historical, spatial, relational, and political perspective, we will delve into recent conceptualizations of the peasant, and into how political subjects and spatialities are mutually constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agrarian question is multidimensional, multiscale and involves both moments of conflict, as well as conflict. The agrarian question is also part of the paradigmatic debate - Paradigm of the Agrarian Question and Paradigm of Agrarian Capitalism - in which both propose development models for the agrarian space. Since the 1990s, the Latin American agrarian space has been the target of the expansion of neoliberal policies that encourage agribusiness based on the production of commodities for export. At the same time, the peasantry and other traditional peoples of Latin America are organized into socio-territorial movements and promote counter-hegemonic development practices, ordered by popular land reform, agroecology, food sovereignty, rural education, among others. These development models are in conflict and in constant conflict, shaping the Latin American agrarian space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: In recent decades, international norms were created in Latin America to promote differentiated treatment of Afro-descendants. This article analyzes the interaction between transnational social movements, state institutions and international organizations in the approval and adoption of some of these international norms: the Santiago Declaration, the Durban Declaration and the Inter-American Convention against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Related Forms of Intolerance by the Organization of American States (OAS). Methodology: The information came from interviews conducted with social leaders, public officials and officials of international, the memories of these actors' speeches at international events, and United Nations, World Bank and OAS documentation. The information was organized and interpreted to delve the participation of each actor in the configuration of international norms for Afro-descendants. Conclusions: The main findings indicate that the specifics of the dynamic relations between those three actors (social movements, state actors and international officials) have triggered the configuration of international norms for Afro-descendants in Latin America. Originality: This findings adds up to previous research that have studied the interactions between Afro-descendant social movements at the national and international level, the effects of international Afro-descendant policy at the domestic level, and the interactions between the state and social movements at the national level. In this scenario, this article offers empirical evidence that has not been considered to contribute to the discussion of the construction of international norms for Afro-descendants, and to deepen the analysis of the impact of Afro-descendant mobilization at transnational level and the role of state and international officials in the construction of norms beyond national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a media sociology approach to untangle how multiple influences shape the way journalists cover left- and right-leaning protests on social media. Several studies have investigated how reporters portray social movements, finding that news marginalizes protestors by focusing on spectacle and violent tactics to the detriment of their ideas. In this study, we turn to journalists' Twitter accounts to analyze if these patterns are transferred to social media, as predicted by the literature on normalization of new affordances. Through a mixed methodology matching survey and social media data from 466 Brazilian journalists who tweeted about protests in 2013 and 2015, results revealed individual attitudes predicted coverage, indicating that social media was a space for personal, not professional, expression. Contrary to the literature, findings show that social media portrayals were more legitimizing during the left-leaning demonstrations than during the right-leaning elite-driven one. As a result, marginalizing patterns of protest coverage were challenged, not replicated, on Twitter. These findings suggest a limitation of the theory of normalization to explain how global journalists use social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most scholars working on resistance and decolonisation in Latin America and the Caribbean are familiar with the Zapatistas, far fewer have afforded committed attention to the parallel Maya land rights struggle and autonomous social movement in the region. Notably, a movement that is currently advancing in both Central America and the Caribbean, namely, Belize—a former colony of the British Crown. Accordingly, this piece offers a summary of the struggle of the Qʼeqchiʼ and Mopan Maya communities of Toledo District, Southern Belize. More specifically, it introduces readers to the Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA)—an ever-evolving grassroots coalition of Maya organisations, land defenders, and human rights activists that comprise the movement. We start by illustrating the current context of heightened tension that exists between the Maya and the state, and then share an overview of the movement's political aims and programme of activities in the face of the historical, structural, and ongoing colonial forces the Maya are up against. Ultimately, this profile will demonstrate how Maya communities in Belize are practising 'non-metaphorical decolonisation' and engendering 'Indigenous resurgence' whilst mobilising for land, dignity, and a peaceful future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variation in the emergence of college student protests in Latin America? This study uses an original dataset of 4,700 college student protests to carry out a systematic analysis of student mobilization in the region. This article tests three hypotheses based on two distinct but complementary explanations. The political explanation argues that stronger organizational linkages with ruling parties have a demobilizing effect, while the explanation based on grievances claims that increases in enrollments and private expenditures promote mobilization. Regression analyses are used to tests these claims. Increased private spending does not affect mobilization, while expanded access to college does increase the frequency of protests. To gauge the effect of party linkages, two student-party linkages scores, based on an expert survey, are used. The findings show that stronger linkages with ruling parties lower protest frequency whereas linkages with the opposition do not have a significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the phenomenon of globalization, which has resulted in the exclusion of entire peoples and their cultures, Pope Francis has proposed a pastoral geopolitics that is in keeping with the spirit of Vatican II and Latin American theology. Today's poor are not only the individually poor, but also "poor-peoples" (pueblos-pobres). Francis's pastoral geopolitics seeks to identify the new historical processes being formed on the peripheries, such as social movements for democratic and inclusive societies, processes that the Church should encourage by valuing and incarnating itself in poor-peoples' "cultures." His structural option for the poor brings together ecclesiology, geopolitics, and evangelization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an overview of the theoretical development and main lines of research regarding international communication. To this end, the emergence of communication in the structuring of power has been analysed with regard to four areas (hard, soft, sharp power, and the strategic narrative). The critical perspective has been reviewed as well as Anglo-Saxon dominance of the subject using evidence from France, Germany, and Latin America. Five main lines of future research have been forecast, the first of which involves strengthening the theoretical and methodological bases with interdisciplinary methods; the nature and characteristics of the international journalist (journalist versus fake news); the handling of populist communication when confronting political globalisation with leaders who challenge the conventional journalistic ethos; the analysis of structures and global information systems in the face of a multifaceted scenario with less "CNN effect" than expected, along with a dynamic situation of constant propagandistic innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Latin America, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) and abortion rights movements have progressed at divergent strengths and speeds, with significant variation among countries. The region is home to some of the most restrictive and discriminatory laws when it comes to these contentious issues. This Note explores some of the reasons behind the variation in LGBTQ and abortion rights throughout the region. This Note traces the economic and political history of Latin America to illustrate the climate in which these social movements are operating. Further, this Note offers a brief snapshot of recent global developments in LGBTQ and abortion rights, paying close attention to how the United Nations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights define and protect said rights. This Note provides a case study on the LGBTQ and abortion rights movements within Argentina, Uruguay, and El Salvador because these countries exemplify the immense variation in laws concerning LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights throughout Latin America. By extrapolating lessons from each country, this Note creates a "transnational toolkit" for law and policy change, which can be adopted and adapted to fit each country's unique socioeconomic and political climate. If applied effectively, the toolkit can help bring abortion rights up to speed with LGBTQ rights in Latin America and establish uniformity in human rights across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relevance of militant ethnography as a collaborative and politically engaged form of knowledge production for the study of Latin American social movements. Drawing on my militant ethnographic research with four autonomous groups from Chile and Mexico, the article presents a reflective account of my experience as a militant researcher throughout the different stages of the inquiry. More specifically, I describe the ethical and methodological procedures carried out in the field and their importance in fostering collaboration and horizontality. Furthermore, I discuss the challenges of conducting militant ethnography within Latin American autonomous movements whilst pursuing doctoral studies in a European university and an English-speaking country. Finally, by acknowledging the tensions resulting from my multiple and entangled roles, I suggest an alternative route to militant research that challenges the temporalities and spatialities of traditional research designs and proposes an ongoing process of collaboration and solidarity in the post-fieldwork stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a research which studies the modalities of power and the struggle for human rights in episodes of extreme violence carried out by members of criminal organizations linked to criminal economies against residents of popular neighborhoods of Rosario city. In the first place I analyze the relations of citizenship, power and resistance in the contemporary stage of capitalism in Latin America, for whose understanding I consider that the notions of the traditional models of Modernity are at least insufficient; that is the reason why I turn to other perspectives which, from different disciplines of Social Scienses, incorporate new inteligibilities, such as Michel Foucault's approach to the question of power, with his conceptions of biopower, biopolitics and govemmentability, and the contribution of Giorgio Agamben, who resumes them as keys for the interpretation of Western politics. Then I focus the murder of Mercedes Delgado in 2013 in Ludueña neighborhood (Rosario), which had a large social and political repercussion and contributed to draw attention and put in the public agenda the social conflicts sociales which affect other neighborhoods as well. In this analysis I emphasize the value of the testimonies of relatives and neighbors. Finally, I explore how the strategies of social movements and human rights activists were constructed and the practices of public servants for the access to justice and the struggle against impunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposed by Fukuyama the thesis of the end of history, a group of intellectuals dedicated efforts to demonstrate under the circumstances, the validity of Marxism. With a neo-Marxist vision, going to the 1844 Paris manuscripts, they validated the humanist side of Marxism, highlighting the thought of Antonio Gramsci. Therefore, adopting the analysis of political discourse, in a qualitative and descriptive manner, the theoretical characteristics and foundation of neo-Marxism and cultural revolution will be approached from a teleological perspective as a guide that marks the Latin American revolutionary process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the debate concerning the reasons for the emergence of revolutionary movements in Latin America in the post‐Cold War period. It uses the example of the Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP, Paraguayan People's Army) to question the hypothesis by McClintock that, whereas political factors were the principal cause of such movements during the Cold War, economic factors have dominated since then. After reviewing the structural context in which the EPP emerged, as well as its history, strategy and ideology, the article offers a contemporary understanding of the insurgency, examines its relevance to the debate about the prospects for revolution in post‐Cold War Latin America and proposes a reformulation of McClintock's hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, geographic analysis on social movements has emphasised the influence of actors' concepts, lived experiences and perceptions of space on the emergence of collective action. Cultural approaches to social movements in Latin America as well as feminist scholarship have revealed that women's collective action is shaped by their perceptions of institutional and societal challenges, which are rooted in authoritarian and patriarchal culture prevalent in their society. This article combines geographic and cultural approaches to social movements as well as transnational feminist theories to explore women's human rights mobilisation in Honduras after the coup d'état in 2009. It investigates how a group of urban and rural activists that included feminists, rural women, students and community leaders, adopted human rights discourses and practices to respond to the coup. The article draws on interviews and focus group discussions to suggest firstly, that protests in response to the coup shaped the interviewees' spatial imaginaries and particularly considers how urban feminists' spatial imaginaries were merged with those of rural women under the collective framework of human rights. Secondly, the study demonstrates that a collective identity as women human rights defenders was crucial for the emergence of collective action and also prompted the establishment of a national network. This case study contributes to research on women's collective action to negotiate women's rights, human rights and social justice in changing political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of geographic knowledge in Latin America is submitted to critical judgment from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, generating a dialogue between the sociology of absences and the production of absences in geographical thinking. It is question the spatial dimension of coloniality, proposing to integrate the concept of coloniality of being, and deepens the nature / culture and body of space dichotomies in present modern science. Subsequently, in the search for answers of the geography of absences, the urgent need of land is investigated as a critical noun of contemporary social movements that answers to the moderncapitalist- colonial-patriarchal reason of science, disputing spaces for the production of geographical knowledge - indigenous, peasants, afro-descendants, - that have been commonly denied. The conclusion of the article allow us to propose an approach to the concept of territory from ways of imagining, meaning, making and knowing with / in the territory generated by the communities, in order to contribute to the design of alternative territorialities to the prevailing modern-colonial territorial order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented which discusses article on social movement practices and the policies and practices of neoliberalisation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Topics include that articles on subjectivities, spaces and histories represent a range of critical engagements with neoliberalisation in Latin America and the Caribbean; and discusses that Latin American and Caribbean social actors have experience of conducting themselves faced with overtly neoliberal sets of policies.

As part of a planned series from Global Public Health aimed at exploring both the epistemological and political differences in diverse public health approaches across different geographic and cultural regions, this special issue assembles papers that consider the legacy of the Latin American Social Medicine and Collective Health (LASM-CH) movements, as well as additional examples of contemporary social action for collective health from the region. In this introduction, we review the historical roots of LASM-CH and the movement's primary contributions to research, activism and policy-making over the latter-half of the twentieth century. We also introduce the special issue's contents. Spanning 19 papers, the articles in this special issue offer critical insight into efforts to create more equitable, participatory health regimes in the context of significant social and political change that many of the countries in the region have experienced in recent decades. We argue that as global health worldwide has been pushed to adopt increasingly conservative agendas, recognition of and attention to the legacies of Latin America's epistemological innovations and social movement action in the domain of public health are especially warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and grassroots movements of working children are characterised by tensions. Working children's claim to participate in conceptualising child labour policy is increasingly rejected. Most recently, in November 2017, the Latin American Movement of Working Children and Adolescents (MOLACNATs) lodged a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child over violations of rights enshrined in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This article reconstructs the history of working children's movements and their communication with ILO since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contemporary challenge is inequality. This paper illustrates why ideas matter, and how they can change over time. Inequalities are reinforced when they are taken for granted. But this can be disrupted when marginalised people gain self-esteem; challenge hitherto unquestioned inequalities; and gain confidence in the possibility of social change. Slowly and incrementally, social mobilisation can catalyse greater government commitment to socially inclusive economic growth. This is illustrated with ethnographic research from Latin America, where income inequality has recently declined. Clearly, however, no single paper can provide a comprehensive account of political change in an incredibly diverse region. By highlighting some ways in which ideas matter (and the limitations of alternative hypotheses about increased fiscal space and democratisation), this paper merely seeks to persuade political economists to go beyond ‘incentives’. Future efforts to tackle inequality might harness the power of ideas: tackling ‘norm perceptions’ (beliefs about what others think and do); publicising positive deviance; and strengthening social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to decades of conflict in Colombia, a social initiative known as the Legión del Afecto began in Medellín as a peacebuilding effort among academics, community leaders, and young activists. Attention to the body, particularly bodily feelings, sensations, and emotions, has been central to the peacebuilding methodology of the Legión. The initiative has used a focus on the body not only to produce alternative practices of territory that help keep people alive but also (and therein) to materialize the possibility of feeling differently within targeted spaces. What ultimately drives collective action in the Legión is the possibility for increased autonomy over spatial structures of feeling. The ways in which body and territory have been merged in the initiative echo wider trends regarding territory as a theme in Latin American social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we draw on two cases-one of the reproductive justice movements in the wake of the Latin American Zika epidemic, and one of an environmental justice movements spurred by an epidemic of chronic kidney disease among sugarcane workers-to argue for social justice as an "elastic" technology of epidemic control. In its compressed form, social justice simply refers to the fair distribution of medical goods. In its expanded form, it emphasizes the recognition and representation not just of medical problems, but of entangled histories of racial, gendered, and economic inequity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a review of the most salient studies on Latin American social movements published in the last 25 years. It not only assesses the questions and empirical implications that these studies have uncovered, but it also points out theoretical and empirical puzzles that are currently investigated or are yet to be examined. In doing so, this article reviews two type of studies: those that in the author's opinion cover the most salient movements in the region and those that offer us most promising propositions for the development of the subfield in the future. With this review, the author hopes to open the debate and help include Latin American social movements within the systematic study of comparative social mobilization in sociology and comparative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1970s Latin America was a hotbed of theoretical and methodological innovation in the social sciences and the arts, developing novel approaches to studying social reality to support social movements. This article uses Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda's field notes and his four-volume work Historia doble de la Costa to analyze how he and his colleagues, working in collaboration with the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos on the Caribbean coast, developed the methodology of participatory action research, which attempted to erase the distinction between researchers and researched, and to rewrite the history of the peasantry from below using novel formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both critics and endorsers of the new Latin American constitutionalism (NLAC), as the wave of constitutional reforms carried out in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia between 1999 and 2009 is referred to, agree that these reforms have altered the countermajoritarian control devises in the above countries. However, this finding shows some conceptual flaws relating to several aspects such as: a) the nature of the countermajoritarian control devices; b) their logic of relationship with democracy; c) what the very existence of these devices reveals about the scope of democracy itself; d) the entity where these devises and democracy operate, and finally e) the actual novelty of NLAC compared to the past which, from some perspective, lacked a developed system of countermajoritarian control. This article proposes a new conceptual approach to resolve, at least partially, the above-mentioned conceptual dilemmas which need to be clarified before an empirical work could be properly tackled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current configuration of global land politics - who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North - brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the 'political moment' marked by the increasing intersection of issues and state and social forces that mobilise around these. This paper looks at whether and how the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (also known as the TGs) passed in 2012 in the United Nations Committee for Food Security (CFS) can contribute to democratising resource politics today. This work puts forward some initial ideas about how systematic research into the TGs can be done more meaningfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses gender mobilizations in Latin American countries in the social media era.

This article contributes to the current debate on social movements and popular politics in Latin America by exploring the trajectory of organizations within the unemployed workers movement in Argentina, also known as the piqueteros. Analysts agree that the recent history of this movement is characterized by a pronounced decline due to closing political opportunities. I suggest that a shift in the level of analysis toward organizational dynamics indicates a more complex scenario. While the influence of the movement as a political actor has declined, some piquetero organizations have in some aspects strengthened. I argue that this strengthening took place not despite the post-2003 context, but rather because of it. I advocate for an alternative conceptualization of piquetero groups, emphasizing their immersion in a particular political context and culture rather than their separation from it. I use interviews, participant observation, databases of contentious events, and a diverse literature to sustain my claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Democracy has emerged as a phenomenon that aims to transform the entire relation between state and society, potentially being able to fix the current crisis of liberal democracies. Despite the fact that reality is showing that we are far from that technological panacea, many government and social movements are using those tools to empower marginalized actors, to make governments more transparent and accountable, and to make policies more participatory. This article unpacks the opportunities and challenges digital democracy has to offer, and reviews specific cases from Latin America in which these tools are being used for improving the quality of democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes some aspects of Latin American social movements, especially their notion of participatory democracy. In order to explain what they are and how they solve the problem of political organization, following Zibechi, two countries are studied: Brazil and Bolivia. In the first, powerful rural social movements have emerged, but they have lost part of their political role during the years of the PT's progressive government. In the second, urban social movements have emerged that have transformed a country whose government lias decided to carry out an antiliberal political-economic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]