Families, Fields, And Fighting For Land
The Spatial Dynamics Of Contention In Rural Brazil
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5771289 |
|---|---|
| Authors | W Wolford (0000-0002-5990-0404, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 157-172 |
| Publication date | 2003-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Mobilization An International Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1086-671X • E-ISSN: 1938-1514 |
| Publisher | Mobilization Journal (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.17813/maiq.8.2.w07526100r20h523 |
| OpenAlex | W2276428743 |
| Language | DE |
| Citations received | 43 |
| References cited | 31 |
This article analyzes the formation of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian history: the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST). In movement literature and academic discourse, MST's formation has been consistently attributed to three factors- agricultural restructuring, political transition, and religious organization. These three factors form what I call an "Official Genesis Story." I argue that although the Official Genesis Story fits together well at the macro level, it cannot explain who decided to join MST or why, because the story does not locate acts of resistance in either people or place. A comparison of MST members in two different regions of Brazil shows how the spatial constitution of production and reproduction informed individual decisions to join MST. By geographically situating the official story, we uncover the contentious actors behind the contentious actions
Contentious politics · Grassroots · Join (topology · Restructuring · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Political Economy and Marxism
The Electoral Consequences of Direct Political Action
Contentious Land Change in the Amazon's Arc of Deforestation
The Amazon Land War in the South of Pará
L’art du combat spontané
Peasants Make Their Own History, But Not Just as They Please
From Confusion to Common Sense
Liberation Theology and Social Movements
Insécurité à la périphérie
The Politics of the MST
Participatory Democracy in Action
Of Land and Labor
Movement Histories
Producing Community
Spatial dynamics of protest
Confronting Scale
The Spaces of Social Movements
How Civil Society Organizations Foster Insurgent Citizenship
Enabling food sovereignty and a prosperous future for peasants by understanding the factors that marginalise peasants and lead to poverty and hunger
Framing Symbols and Space
Ecological rationality and environmental governance on the agrarian frontier
Doing it for Themselves
The Place of Space in Theories of Social Movements
Extractive capital and multi-scalar environmental politics
Mapping terrains of struggle
Peasant prospects in the neoliberal age
Organization and Place in the Anti-U.S. Chinese Student Protests After the 1999 Belgrade Embassy Bombing
Emotions That Build Networks
The Mobilization of Opposition to Economic Liberalization
Isomorphism, Institutional Parochialism, and the Study of Social Movements
Street Power
Structuration du territoire de l’action collective et réseaux d’acteurs. L’ancrage local et les résistances à l’extension d’une association de défense de l’environnement périurbaine
Defining the “Tribal Advantage” in Kuwaiti Politics
Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? Tactics at the Bakery
Authoritarian power in space, time and exile
Between Relationality and Territoriality
Analyse de la transnationalisation de l'action collective
The Difference Ethnography Can Make
Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism in Brazil
Everyday forms of political expression
Just food transitions
Life in a shrimp zone
The legacy of social conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico
Place and tactical innovation in social movements
The origins of the civil rights movement
New social movements and the state in Latin America
The Brazilian Empire
Social conflict and social movements.
Geography and Social Movements
Frontier expansion in Amazonia
Brazil
A Concise History of Brazil
Peasants, Politics and Revolution
Dynamics of Contention
Space in Contentious Politics
The Logic of Collective Action
Power in Movement
Breaking New Ground Brazil’s Mst
The Politics of the Possible
Entangled Edens
The Popular Sector Response to an Authoritarian Regime
The landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil
The production of space
Culture in Action
Insurgency of the Powerless
Collective Action and Rational Choice
Reconceptualizing and Reconstituting Peasant Struggles
Without Fear of Being Happy
Peasants Against Globalization
Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal
The Misrule of Law
The Institutional Roots of Popular Mobilization
States and Social Revolutions
| Unique citing works | 43 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,87 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2025 (23) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 40 |