The Brazilian Anti-Dam Movement: Constructing a New Arena of Communicative Action.

This paper analyzes the anti-dam movement in Brazil, including its initiation, growth and current form. It argues that the anti-dam movement has constructed a new arena of communicative action to contest the construction of hydroelectric dams. The local meetings and organizing conducted by the anti-dam movement build this arena of communicative action to directly oppose governmental and corporate interests. As a result the anti-dam movement in Brazil has successfully halted the construction of many dams, including what would have been the largest dam in Latin America. It has garnered resettlement packages for previously ignored communities, and has altered discourse around dam-planning. Its instigation and success has been strongly shaped by governmental policy, institutions and connections. It has also relied heavily on an organizational form of internal cross-class alliances in the form of professionalized non-governmental organizations and grassroots groups. This paper argues that the scientization of governmental decision-making has been used to rationalize dam-building and has hence stimulated the movement?s attempt to create new forms of communicative action. It additionally argues that these norms and their supporting governmental structures shape activism. This paper is the first assessment of one of the most important transnational social movements in the world; one that played a critical role in initiating the global anti-dam movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]