Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador

Extract

Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador. By James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2005. 288p. $90.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Anyone interested in the recent renewal of social movement activity and the rise of ostensibly left or center-left governments in Latin America might be tempted to pick up this book, with its provocative jacket photo and appealing title. Unfortunately, the book cover is nearly the only thing going for this sectarian jeremiad from James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer. If one is looking for serious scholarship, or even solid journalism, neither can be found here. Instead, one finds a poorly organized collage, including descriptions of recent history, critiques of government policies, and tendentious and contradictory evaluations of left strategy. Despite the promise of the title, the authors do not engage the literature on social movements, nor do they contribute much in the way of new analytical perspectives. The class analysis announced in the introduction only emerges occasionally in the subsequent chapters, and even then it is applied mechanically and reductively, yielding an extremely limited capacity to help us understand the character and trajectory of social movements or the nuances of political behavior in diverse contexts. Important cross-national differences in terms of political institutions, ethnic composition, and international constraints are not addressed, much less systematically compared. Furthermore, the book lacks consistent citations of sources, and serious empirical and orthographic errors are sprinkled throughout. Those knowledgeable about the countries in question might be amused by the almost congenital inability to spell correctly the names of politicians, political parties, and labor confederations; those without such knowledge, especially undergraduate students, will only be confused or misinformed.