Social Movements An Anthropological Reader

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ISBN: 9781405101097 | 1405101091
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 11/30/2004

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Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader expands on standard studies of social movements by offering a collection of writings that is exclusively anthropological in nature and global in its focus-thereby serving as an invaluable tool for instructors and students alike. Based on fieldwork carried out on four continents - North America, South America, Africa, and Asia - and in 14 countries Includes articles that address problems ranging from global health and the spread of diseases; loss of control over basic resources such as water and fuel; militarization; to the repression of indigenous peoples and of women Offers solutions formulated by local peoples

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Social Movements and Global Processes

(26)

June Nash

Part I Fragmentation and the Recomposition of Civil Society

(70)

1 When Networks Don't Work: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Civil Society Initiatives in Central America

(17)

Marc Edelman

As contemporary social movements network with one another, form coalitions, and seek to establish claims to constitute part of national and global civil society, new, hybrid organizational forms emerge. Analyzing the rise of transnational Central America-wide civil society initiatives in the 1990's (and their decline and re-emergence), Marc Edelman suggests that the new prominence of "networks," whether as political claims or as linked computers or social movements, exacerbates a problem with profound methodological, political, ethical, and representational dimensions that is acknowledged only occasionally in the social movements literature - the appearance of "fictitious" or "shell" organizations and, more recently, "dot causes" or internet-based advocacy organizations with minuscule or indeterminate constituencies.

2 The State and the Right Wing: The Village Scout Movement in Thailand

(20)

Katherine A. Bowie

The concept of a state-sponsored social movement, particularly a right-wing movement, contradicts assumptions identifying civil society as counter to the state and of social movements as ideologically left-wing. Katherine Bowie's study of the "Village Scouts," a state-sponsored social movement created in Thailand in 1971 to counter the simultaneous growth of communist insurgency and the pro-democracy movement in that country, challenges such assumptions. Because of the movement's dedication to "King, Nation, and Religion," the state's deployment of the symbolism of monarchy and family in the Village Scouts forged a temporary cross-class alliance, merging the hopes of the poor with the fears of the rich.

3 Gender, Citizenship, and the Politics of Identity

(12)

Lynn Stephen

Organizing requires the projection of "sameness" to outsiders. Strategically, demands must stem from a coherent social location understandable to those who are the audience for them - often, institutions of the state. This article compares the processes internal to social movements with their presentation of "self" to outsiders, through examining the tension between political identity formation as the constant and contingent negotiation of difference within organizations and the need to project unitary identities that usually result in essentialization, using a human rights case and indigenous autonomy movement.

4 Activism and Class Identity: The Saturn Auto Factory Case

(21)

Sharryn Kasmir

At the Saturn automobile plant in Tennessee the union has negotiated a path-breaking agreement that has transformed management-labor relations. Yet despite the effectiveness of this project in shaping workers' aspirations, expectations, and senses of self, activists mobilized an oppositional identity that was premised on working-class solidarity. Showing how class identity is shaped in the course of social action, this case study contributes to the ethnographic literature on working-class consciousness which argues that consciousness is made, not given, and that the anthropologist's job is to document the mutable character of workers' identifications and to determine the conditions in which different identities are made.

Part II Secularization and Fundamentalist Reactions

(78)

5 Print Islam: Media and Religious Revolution in Afghanistan

(18)

David B. Edwards

This article considers the role of three forms of print media in the development of radical Islamic political ideology and organization in Afghanistan. Through an examination of newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines, David Edwards considers the way in which textual forms have supplemented ideological content in helping to produce Islamic political militancy and authoritarian political parties in the Afghan context.

6 Local Islam Gone Global: The Roots of Religious Militancy in Egypt and its Transnational Transformation

117

(29)

James Toth

Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda network of Islamic "militants" have been well documented in the media, but understanding the roots of their emergence and growth remains insufficient. The spread of one group of Islamists, those in southern Egypt, highlights the economic, political, social, and ethical issues that nourish both the local and the global manifestations of the Islamic campaign. James Toth offers a number of models or interpretations that, in combination, may help explain how such parochial movements in the Egyptian Sa'id contributed to forming a global Islamic crusade.

7 Nationalism and Millenarianism in West Papua: Institutional Power, Interpretive Practice, and the Pursuit of Christian Truth

146

(22)

Danilyn Rutherford

Rutherford explores the prehistory of Papuan nationalist appropriations of Christianity by examining the practices of Biak islanders, who long have emphasized the inscrutable character of Christian meaning. In the Dutch colonial period, Biak adventurers presented the words and objects they acquired from the Protestant mission as proof of their mastery of distant worlds. At the same time, Biak prophets periodically initiated millennial uprisings by claiming to know the truth behind the missionaries' foreign words. This makes the case that Biak visions of divine potency have implications for today's Papuan nationalists, whose performances make Christianity central to the quest for global recognition and the transformation of local spaces and selves.

8 The Sarvodaya Movement's Vision of Peace and a Dharmic Civil Society

168

(9)

George D. Bond

The Sarvodaya Movement, which began as a grassroots development in Sri Lanka in the 1950's, has become, since the mid-1990's, the major advocate for a peaceful solution to that country's lengthy ethnic conflict. This chapter examines the Gandhian and Buddhist sources of Sarvodaya's vision of both peace and the construction of a civil society. Employing spiritual resources, Sarvodaya has sought to bring peace by fostering a non-violent grassroots revolution that would change both the economic and the political structures of the country.

Part III Deterritorialization and the Politics of Place

175

(60)

9 Defying Deterritorialization: Autonomy Movements against Globalization

177

(10)

June Nash

Evoking the issues that global change has wrought on peripheral populations - deterritorialization caused by land seizure, environmental degradation, forced migration in search of wage work, contamination of the environment, and cultural hybridization - the author asserts that far from losing their commitment to place and culture, identification to place becomes increasingly important as people are drawn into global circuits. People overcome distance by reasserting their claims to place with remittances, by recurrent return visits to their homelands, and by support of rituals in these homelands they have been forced to leave. She concludes that global issues of deterritorialization, hybridization, and fragmentation have to be rethought in ethnographic terms, relating this to her fieldwork in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemalan Ixcan settlements, where Mayan colonizers resisted the encroachment of the army on both sides of the Mexico-Guatemala border.

10 The Resilience of Nationalism in a Global Era: Megaprojects in Mexico's South

187

(16)

Molly Doane

This analysis contextualizes the social movement in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, that emerged in 1996 in response to the "Megaproject" development planned by the Mexican government, within contemporaneous protests against neoliberalism in Mexico. Like other post-1968 movements, the social movement against the Megaproject emphasizes identity politics and local autonomy rather than broad-based rights reflecting changes in the decentralized form of the state. Contrary to theoretical expectations, nationalism remains an important organizing ideology for both state and non-state actors in the global age.

11 The Politics of Place: Legislation, Civil Society and the "Restoration" of the Florida Everglades

203

(13)

Max Kirsch

Current discussions of globalization require a careful analysis of local-level interactions with larger social fields emphasizing the role of politics and community organizations on development. In his study of the current multi-billion dollar plan for the development of the Everglades in South Florida, Max Kirsch poses questions about the disjuncture among various sectors, including industry, development interests, and community concerns in the planning process.

12 "Land, Water, and Truth": San Identity and Global Indigenism

216

(19)

Renée Sylvain

For some groups of the San peoples of southern Africa, colonial rule and apartheid meant segregation on geographically remote homelands (or in game parks). However, for the majority of San they meant incorporation as a landless underclass of farm laborers, domestic servants, and squatters. This article discusses some of the ways in which international models of indigenism have colluded with essentialist conceptions of culture and ethnicity to obfuscate the various historical experiences and socioeconomic conditions that condition San identity and their claims for land and natural resources by transforming San struggles for social and economic justice into demands for "cultural preservation."

Part IV Privatization, Individualization, and Global Cosmopolitanism

235

(91)

13 Changing the Rules of Trade with Global Partnerships: The Fair Trade Movement

237

(12)

Kimberly M. Grimes

The growing support of fair trade proponents versus those pushing the free trade agenda marks one of the most important social struggles we face at the tarn of the century. The heterogeneous grassroots movement calls for "fair trade" - a decentralized, economically just, and environmentally sustainable system of global production and trade incorporating diverse civic, religious, and worker groups - promise to bring about a more equitable society worldwide

14 "The Water is Ours, Carajo!" Deep Citizenship in Bolivia's Water War

249

(23)

Robert Albro

The Bolivian Water War of April 2000 was a grassroots response to the ongoing neoliberal, democratic, and multicultural reforms in Bolivia. This Water War illustrates the new agency of a "plural popular" subject in Bolivia, neither "Indian" nor "elite," currently questioning the legitimacy of the nation-state as an effective representative of the Bolivian people in the global economy. Since such popular coalitions do not reflect any one national, ethnic, or cultural "unitary identity," a collaborative politics of recognition draws on an expanded cultural 'thorn of "citizenship" in blocking the government's sale of Bolivia's shrinking public commons to a transnational corporation.

15 From the Cosmopolitan to the Personal: Women's Mobilization to Combat HIV/AIDS

272

(13)

Ida Susser

This chapter addresses the issues of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa from the perspective of women who are at risk for HIV infection through their male partners. Focusing on the ongoing patterns of inequality, from the global to the interpersonal, with respect to the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS for women, Susser documents one case in which women's long-term efforts from the personal, through the local community and the national government, to the global have contributed to increasing the strategies available to women to protect themselves from HIV infection.

16 Political Organization among Indigenous Women of the Brazilian State of Roraima: Constraints and Prospects

285

(19)

Ligia T.L. Simonian

Indigenous women of Roraima State in the Brazilian Amazon have overcome the opposition of male kinsmen and community leaders in organizing social movements, leading to formal associations, unions, and even political parties. Even though women's empowerment through organizational strategies is in some cases supported by regional male indigenous leadership, the Catholic Church, the state administrations and, eventually, by NGOs, problems persist. By unifying their political organization at a supralocal level through the Association for the Development of Indigenous Women of Roraima, they have been able to surmount difficulties that attend their many successes.

17 At Home in the World: Women's Activism in Hyderabad, India

304

(22)

Deepa S. Reddy

Deepa Reddy traces the processes by which women's issues come to be reframed in the context of post-independence agrarian, civil liberties, and other people's movements. This emergent Indian feminism develops a stringent critique of the state, especially through its analysis of custodial rape and dowry-related violence. As religious nationalism became a defining feature of the late twentieth century, however, both in India and elsewhere in the world, feminists also began to distance themselves from their own prior liberalism, fashioning instead a broader, multiculturalist politics. Reddy shows Indian feminist activism to be resolutely focused on the needs of local communities, ever cognizant of the pitfalls of globalization, while also increasingly capable of drawing upon global networks and resources to facilitate grassroots initiatives for social change.

Index

326

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Social Movements An Anthropological Reader

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials