Social Movements and Globalization in Latin America

Abstract

“Globalization” refers to the growing web of economic, political, and cultural processes that connect people across national borders. In Latin America in the 1990s and beyond, the policies of globalized neoliberal capitalism coincided with regional democratization, new technologies of communication, and changing ideas on the Left to both generate varied grievances and facilitate varied forms of resistance. Harms were especially pronounced for the historically marginalized—precariously employed workers, rural people, women, and indigenous communities—who often took the lead in the social movement activism enabled by democratic circumstances and who were often joined by such other social categories as students and the middle classes. In so doing, these movements established new connections across borders that linked local, national, and transnational analyses and practices. The movements, therefore, were not only responding to the harms of injurious globalizing processes but were themselves globalizing actors who forged alternative global visions. Our analysis draws on world-system perspectives, the political sociology of social movements, and analyses of Latin American cultures of opposition and activism.