Social Movements and the Bolivian State: Anarchistic Trends in Practice and Theory

Abstract

Abstract Latin America’s remarkable history of contentious politics has long been theorized through liberal, Marxist and post-Marxist paradigms of state-based social change. These paradigms follow a logic of hegemony by either pursuing a strategy of demand and integration within the current hegemonic system, or by seeking state power to reverse the relationship between the oppressed and their oppressors. Focusing on the Bolivian context, the paper explores how the dominance of these paradigms has had the effect of obscuring many non-hegemonic indigenous movements, tactics and practices which seek to escape the logic of hegemony – of reform/revolution – altogether. The paper then explores the affinity between major concepts of postanarchist philosophy and the way that these non-hegemonic movements, tactics and practices have been posited as the source of Bolivian collective capacity for mobilization and resistance by Bolivian politicians and activists, as well as students of Bolivia.