Urban Social Movements and the Politics of Inclusion in Latin America

Abstract

Abstract Manuel Castells’ work from the 1960s and early 1970s on urban social movements was both seminal and transitional. While most social movement research adopted a class-based theoretical perspective focusing on the working and middle classes, Castells’ work looked at how economically and politically marginalized urban residents mobilized based on where they lived, surprisingly independently of their social class. This reflected how Latin America’s unique capitalist economy distorted the evolution of class struggle. Castell therefore retained a Marxist theoretical perspective that postulated the necessity of an anti-capitalist revolution to achieve social equality and meaningful democracy—a revolution that would be led urban residents rather than the working class. Because Castell’s research largely ended before the region became dominated by violent authoritarian regimes, it was transitional. In the 1980s and 1990s, the legacy of violence and neoliberal economic reforms associated with those regimes contributed to the emergence of a growing number of urban social movements and a focus on democratic politics and citizenship rights associated with a new model of citizenship in the region: citizenship as agency. The region’s commitment to relatively free and fair elections based on universal suffrage creates a unique opportunity for the mobilization of urban social movements demanding improved collective consumption, respect for community culture and political self‐governance that urban social movements champion—the definition of urban social movements developed by Castells in his seminal work. The chapter ends with a discussion of the lack of resilience of these movements in the twenty-first century and future research priorities.