Anthropology and the Study of Social Movements

Small-scale mining cooperatives and the state in Bolivia: Their histories, memories and negotiation strategies

“…Whereas in 1977 McCarthy and Zald still emphasized resource mobilization as the key approach to analysing the stand and actions of social movements, in later work (notably McAdam et al, 1996) they stressed that cultural features need to be included in the equation. Today, many scholars of social movements and social organizations stress that cultural features help to explain organizational features, reactions, strategies, growth or contraction, and success or failure (Alvarez et al, 1998;Campbell, 2005;Edelman, 2001;Lazar, 2006;Nash, 2005;Salman, 2002;Salman and Assies, 2007;Wolford, 2006). In such accounts, the issues of memories, feelings of belonging to specific groups (like miners) or regions, and class or ethnic identities often crop up (Damonte, 2008;Olick, 1998;Wolford, 2006).…”

Bali Tolak Reklamasi: The local adoption of global protest

“…This contribution looks at the evolving culture of the BTR and the various cultures and collective identities it draws on and is embedded in – from a (trans)national activist culture, to Balinese youth culture to local Balinese culture. It conceptualizes culture both as strategy to strengthen and legitimize BTR’s cause, but also as context that provides specific values and beliefs that shape movements (compare also Kavada, 2013; Salman and Assies, 2010: 211–212) but also challenge their unity due to frictions between different cultures.…”

Political ethics and social movement: The virtues and vices of a ‘fishing scab’

“…The accusatory tone in the use of the term mirrors the resentment felt towards the fishers, given that their choice to abstain from the movement translates into a substantial loss of symbolic capital to the cause. Such resentment is lodged in the realm of emotions, an affective sphere that must be taken into account given that most of the time the motivations that make movements tick are not based on rational choices (Rubin, 2004; Salman and Assies, 2007).…”

“…Lula, who served as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2011, himself a former union leader, described the pelego as someone who ‘moulds him or herself to any type of government’ (cited in Santana, 1999:107, my translation), implying that the pelego was dextrous in terms of adapting to new contexts. The term is relevant for the current analysis because it illuminates the contradictions within mobilizations, not least because its underlying connotations encompass the spheres of the political and the cultural, and belong to the latent, taken for granted, everyday culture (Salman and Assies, 2007) of this particular social movement.…”