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Abstract
In this article we discuss the failure of social movement theories to adequately understand and theorize locally based, grassroots social movements like the landless workers movement in Brazil, ‘livability movements’ in third-world cities, and living wage movements in the USA. Movements such as these come to the attention of most social movement analysts only when the activists who participate in them come together in the streets of Seattle or international forums like the World Social Forum. To date, it is the transnational character of these protests that have excited the most attention. Building on scholarship that looks at the link between participatory democracy and social movements, this article takes a different tack. We show how some social movements have shifted their repertoire of practices from large mass events aimed at making demands on the national state to local-level capacity building. It is the local struggles, especially the ways in which they have created and used institutions in civil society through extending and deepening democracy, that may be the most significant aspect of recent social movements, both for our theories and for our societies. Yet these aspects have received less attention, we believe, because they are less well understood by dominant social movement theories, which tend to focus on high-profile protest events. We look at the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles to illustrate the important terrain of civil society as well as the role of community organizing.
Notes
For example see Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’; Bond, ‘South Africa's Resurgent’; Luce, Fighting for a Living Wage.; Sohn and Luce, ‘New Directions’; Wright and Wolford, To Inherit the Earth; Erickson, et al. ‘Justice for Janitors’; Chun, Organizing at the Margins.
Our use of ‘spaces’ is largely descriptive and not analytical. We are aware that for geographers the term has very precise and often loaded connotations. While we agree with Massey (2004) and others who have argued that space is not simply an abstract term but is grounded in local places, each creating meaning, in this article we are not making an argument about space versus place. Rather we are interested to demonstrate that local practices are emerging in response to shifts in power between nation states and economic actors.
For example, see Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Tarrow, ‘Transnational Politics’; Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism; Barrel and Charles, ‘Globalizing Social Movement Theory’.
Mayekiso, Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa.
Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.; Khagram et al., eds., Restructuring World Politics.
Barrel and Charles, ‘Globalizing Social Movement Theory’; Kay, ‘Labour Transnationalism and Global Governance’; Smith and Johnston, eds., Globalization and Resistance.; Giugni, ‘The Other Side of the Coin’; Tarrow, ‘Transnational Politics’; Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.
Kolb, ‘The Impact of Transnational Protest’.
Evans, ‘Counterhegemonic Globalization’; Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy.
Routledge, ‘Resisting and Reshaping the Modern’; Heller, ‘Democratic Deepening in India and South Africa’; Etzo, ‘The Unfinished Business’.
Scholte, Globalization a Critical Introduction.
Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’.
Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’; Chun, Organizing at the Margins; Heller, ‘Democratic Deepening’; Williams, The Roots of Participatory Democracy.
Massey, ‘Geographies of Responsibility’.
Balanyá, ed., Reclaiming Public Water.
By ‘generative’ aspects, we mean forms of organizing that focus on building alternatives and new collective capacities for civic engagement rather than simply oppositional politics. See below.
For example. Tilly, Popular Contention.; McAdam, Political Process.; Tarrow, Power in Movement.
Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’; Bond, ‘South Africa's Resurgent’; Luce, Fighting for a Living Wage.; Sohn and Luce, ‘New Directions’.
Greenstein, ‘State, Civil Society’, 21–22.
In 2010 there were over 8000 local protests in South Africa, leading some commentators to call it the ‘winter of protests’. For example, Amandla!, a widely read political magazine, dedicated an entire issue to the protests (May/June 2010). The special issue ‘The State Versus the People’ covers the rise in protests in 2009 and 2010, linking the dramatic increase to the failure of the state to deliver services to communities.
For example, Armstrong and Bernstein, ‘Culture, Power, and Institutions’; Buechler, Social Movements.; Crossley, Making Sense of Social Movements; Escobar, Territories of Difference; Eyerman and Jamison, Social Movements; Goodwin and Jasper, ‘Caught in a Winding’; Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest; Johnston and Klandermans, ‘Cultural Analysis of Social Movements’; Melucci, ‘Getting involved’; Melucci, Challenging Codes.
Tarrow, ‘Cycles of Collective Action’; Tarrow, Power in Movement.
Meyer, ‘Protest and Political Opportunity’; Meyer and Staggenborg, ‘Movements, Countermovements’; Meyer and Minkoff, ‘Conceptualizing Political Opportunity’.
Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, and Giugni, New Social Movements.
Tilly, Social Movements and National Politics; Popular Contention, Tilly, ‘Why and How History Matters’.
McAdam, Political Process.
Tilly, Social Movements and National Politics, 297–317.
Tilly, Popular Contention.
Tilly, Ibid, 13–8, and passim
See Note 25.
Ibid.
McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, Comparative Perspectives.
Snow et al, ‘Frame Alignment’; Snow and Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance’; Snow and Benford, ‘Master Frames and Cycles’. .
McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention.
Walder, ‘Political Sociology’. .
Flacks, ‘Knowledge for What?’; Wood, Faith in Action.; Warren, Dry Bones Rattling.
Poletta, ‘Free Spaces in Collective Action’.
See, for example, Armstrong and Bernstein, ‘Culture, Power, and Institutions’; Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism; Goodwin and Jasper, ‘Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine’; Poletta and Jasper, ‘Collective Identity’; Poletta, ‘Free Spaces in Collective Action’; Poletta, It Was Like A Fever.; Taylor and Whittier, ‘Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities’.
See, for example, Kitschelt, ‘New Social Movements’; Melucci, Nomads of the Present.; Melucci Challenging Codes; Offe, ‘New Social Movements’; Routledge, ‘Resisting and Reshaping the Modern’; Touraine, The Voice and the Eye.
Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom.
Tilly, Popular Contention;' Social Movements and National Politics'; European Revolutions, 1492-1992.
Wright and Burawoy, ‘Sociological Marxism’, 3–4.
Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
Skocpol, Diminished Democracy.
Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory; Ferguson, Global Shadows.
The political process theorists would argue that mobilizing incorporates networks. We have chosen to distinguish networks from mobilizing in order to capture the recent importance of transnational networks, which has received a great deal of scholarly attention.
For an excellent example of movement practices at various levels in the Narmada Valley struggle, see Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’.
See Note 42.
Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
For example, movements such as the landless workers movement in Brazil, struggles against dams in India, ‘livability movements’ in third-world cities, ‘peoples planning’ in Kerala, India, and living wage and ‘justice for janitors’ movements in the USA all illustrate the efficacy of local organizing.
Williams, The Roots of Participatory Democracy.
Routledge, ‘Voices of the Dammed’.
For example, see Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders and Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco, Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics.
It is difficult to ascertain numbers for social movements as there is no central body that records their existence. As movements institutionalize and professionalize they often transform into NGOs for which there are many official bodies through which NGOs can register. Hence, most data available are for NGOs not social movements.
Sikkink and Smith, ‘Infrastructures for Change’, 31.
Kaldor, ‘Society and Accountability’, 16.
The cases are largely based on secondary literature as both movements have attracted an enormous amount of scholarly attention. In addition to the scholarship on both movements, we examined documents produced by the movements themselves, and in the case of the J for J movement, we also collected and analyzed newspaper articles on local, national, and international campaigns. To further substantiate the documentary material, we carried out six interviews with MST activists, three in in 2006 and three in 2008. We also had informal conversations in 2008 with MST activists.
Chun, Organizing at the Margins.
Christofolli, Unpublished Interview.
Wolford, Producing Community.
Jose, Interview at MST.
Wolford, ‘Families, Fields, and Fighting’. 207.
See Note 58.
Wolford, ‘Families, Fields, and Fighting’, 210.
Wolford, ‘Producing Community’.
See Note 58.
Ibid.
Jaque, Interview at MST.
Stedile, ‘Brazil's Landless Battalions’, 23–4.
See Note 60.
Christofolli, ‘Cooperatives, Decentralization, and Rural Development’.
Ibid.
Stedile, ‘Brazil's Landless Battalions’.
See Note 60.
The Brazilian Constitution stipulates that unproductive, fallow land can be redistributed, which provided a window of opportunity for the MST and helped it define the land occupations as legitimate.
Wright and Wolford, To Inherit the Earth, 82.
See Note 39.
This information is from a discussion with rural activists in South Africa who work closely with the MST. South African activists have gone to Brazil for training workshops and MST activists have come to South Africa for training workshops.
This discussion draws heavily on Fantasia and Voss, Hard Work. Fuller accounts of J for J campaigns in Los Angeles can also be found in Milkman, L.A. Story and Waldinger et al., ‘Helots No More’. Studies of Justice for Janitors in other cities are Rudy, ‘Justice for Janitors’ and Chun, Organizing at the Margins.
For statistics and discussion of the decline in union density in the USA, see Chun, Organizing at the Margins, 24–5 and Fantasia and Voss, Hard Work, chap. 2. For an analysis of the decline of unionization in the janitorial industry in Los Angeles, see Milkman, L.A. Story, chap. 2.
Milkman, L.A. Story, chap. 6.
Waldinger et al, ‘Helots No More’.
See Hector Delgato, New Immigrants, Old Unions for a discussion of the once dominant union view that undocumented workers could not be organized. In L.A., prior to the J for J campaign local union leaders had given upon organizing immigrant janitors altogether and turned their efforts elsewhere. See Fisk, Mitchell, and Erickson, ‘Union Representation of Immigrant Janitors in Southern California’, 203.
Some labor movement scholars and activists have criticized the J for J campaigns because it was innovated and initiated by activists on the staff of the union, rather than being initiated by the rank and file. We think the important point is that the SEIU activists set out to organize the janitors rather than mobilize them.
See Note 81.
Fantasia and Voss, Hard Work, 142; see Chun, Organizing at the Margins, chap. 1, for an extended discussion of symbolic leverage.
Fantasia and Voss, Hard Work, 142.
In the USA, labor law permits the use of permanent replacement workers, fundamentally undermining the right to strike. Undocumented immigrants additionally face the threat of deportation because striking makes them visible. See Getman, Restoring the Power of Unions for a discussion of the laws reregulating strikes and replacement workers, and see Western, Between Class and Market for a comparison of US and European labor market institutions and laws.
Brecher, Strike!, 343
Torres, ‘Talking Trash’; Baker, ‘Police Use Force to Block Strike March’.
Silverman and Meyer, ‘Fast Growing Union Hits Obstacles in L.A’.
Milkman, L.A. Story, 131–133.
Erickson et al., ‘Justice for Janitors in L.A. and Beyond’; Meyerson, ‘A Clean Sweep’.
Lerner, ‘Global Unions’, 23–37.; Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze.
Lerner, ‘Global Unions’; Lerner, ‘Global Corporations’, 364–70.
