This Land Is Ours Now

Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil

Nonfiction, History, Americas, South America, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology
Cover of the book This Land Is Ours Now by Wendy Wolford, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Wendy Wolford ISBN: 9780822391074
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: January 27, 2010
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Wendy Wolford
ISBN: 9780822391074
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: January 27, 2010
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

In This Land Is Ours Now, Wendy Wolford presents an original framework for understanding social mobilization. She argues that social movements are not the politically coherent, bounded entities often portrayed by scholars, the press, and movement leaders. Instead, they are constantly changing mediations between localized moral economies and official movement ideologies. Wolford develops her argument by analyzing how a particular social movement works: Brazil’s Rural Landless Workers’ Movement, known as the Movimento Sem Terra (MST). Founded in the southernmost states of Brazil in the mid-1980s, this extraordinary grassroots agrarian movement grew dramatically in the ensuing years. By the late 1990s it was the most dynamic, well-organized social movement in Brazilian history.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Wolford compares the development of the movement in Brazil’s southern state of Santa Catarina and its northeastern state of Pernambuco. As she explains, in the south, most of the movement’s members were sons and daughters of small peasant farmers; in the northeast, they were almost all former plantation workers, who related awkwardly to the movement’s agenda of accessing “land for those who work it.” The MST became an effective presence in Pernambuco only after the local sugarcane economy had collapsed. Worldwide sugarcane prices dropped throughout the 1990s, and by 1999 the MST was a prominent political organizer in the northeastern plantation region. Yet fewer than four years later, most of the region’s workers had dropped out of the movement. By delving into the northeastern workers’ motivations for joining and then leaving the MST, Wolford adds nuance and depth to accounts of a celebrated grassroots social movement, and she highlights the contingent nature of social movements and political identities more broadly.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In This Land Is Ours Now, Wendy Wolford presents an original framework for understanding social mobilization. She argues that social movements are not the politically coherent, bounded entities often portrayed by scholars, the press, and movement leaders. Instead, they are constantly changing mediations between localized moral economies and official movement ideologies. Wolford develops her argument by analyzing how a particular social movement works: Brazil’s Rural Landless Workers’ Movement, known as the Movimento Sem Terra (MST). Founded in the southernmost states of Brazil in the mid-1980s, this extraordinary grassroots agrarian movement grew dramatically in the ensuing years. By the late 1990s it was the most dynamic, well-organized social movement in Brazilian history.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Wolford compares the development of the movement in Brazil’s southern state of Santa Catarina and its northeastern state of Pernambuco. As she explains, in the south, most of the movement’s members were sons and daughters of small peasant farmers; in the northeast, they were almost all former plantation workers, who related awkwardly to the movement’s agenda of accessing “land for those who work it.” The MST became an effective presence in Pernambuco only after the local sugarcane economy had collapsed. Worldwide sugarcane prices dropped throughout the 1990s, and by 1999 the MST was a prominent political organizer in the northeastern plantation region. Yet fewer than four years later, most of the region’s workers had dropped out of the movement. By delving into the northeastern workers’ motivations for joining and then leaving the MST, Wolford adds nuance and depth to accounts of a celebrated grassroots social movement, and she highlights the contingent nature of social movements and political identities more broadly.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Critique and Postcritique by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Subject Without Nation by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Sexuation by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Roy Cape by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Gaze and Voice as Love Objects by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Indigenous Media in Mexico by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book South Koreans in the Debt Crisis by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Bad Colonists by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Imagining Our Americas by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Fear of Small Numbers by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Down in the Dumps by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Repeating Žižek by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Living with Bad Surroundings by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book The Art of Being In-between by Wendy Wolford
Cover of the book Moral Spectatorship by Wendy Wolford
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy