Land, Protest, and Politics - by Gabriel Ondetti (Paperback)

About the Book

Analyzes the development of the movement for agrarian reform in Brazil, and attempts to explain the major moments of change in its growth trajectory, from the late 1970s to 2006.

Book Synopsis

Brazil is a country of extreme inequalities, one of the most important of which is the acute concentration of rural land ownership. In recent decades, however, poor landless workers have mounted a major challenge to this state of affairs. A broad grassroots social movement led by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) has mobilized hundreds of thousands of families to pressure authorities for land reform through mass protest. This book explores the evolution of the landless movement from its birth during the twilight years of Brazil's military dictatorship through the first government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It uses this case to test a number of major theoretical perspectives on social movements and engages in a critical dialogue with both contemporary political opportunity theory and Mancur Olson's classic economic theory of collective action.

Ondetti seeks to explain the major moments of change in the landless movement's growth trajectory: its initial emergence in the late 1970s and early 80s, its rapid takeoff in the mid-1990s, its acute but ultimately temporary crisis in the early 2000s, and its resurgence during Lula's first term in office. He finds strong support for the influential, but much-criticized political opportunity perspective. At the same time, however, he underscores some of the problems with how political opportunity has been conceptualized in the past. The book also seeks to shed light on the anomalous fact that the landless movement continued to expand in the decade following the restoration of Brazilian democracy in 1985 despite the general trend toward social-movement decline. His argument, which highlights the unusual structure of incentives involved in the struggle for land in Brazil, casts doubt on a key assumption underlying Olson's theory.

Review Quotes

"Land, Protest, and Politics is an excellent piece of scholarship, and I recommend it to scholars and teachers of social movements and Latin American politics. Ondetti has made an enduring contribution that will shape how we understand the MST and the landless movement of Brazil."

--Paul Dosh Perspectives on Politics

"[Land, Protest, and Politics is] the best synthetic analysis of the MST to date. I know it will enhance my lectures on modern Brazilian and Latin American history."

--Peter M. Beattie The Americas

"Ondetti provides the most comprehensive and useful work [on this subject], giving a meticulous chronology, statistical report (through 2006), and a well-written analysis of the ebb and flow of invasion activity since it began in the 1980s."

--E. M. Dew Choice

"Gabriel Ondetti has written an important book. For those interested in Brazil's landless movement, this new and persuasive explanation of the rise of the movement combines a focus on the political opportunity structure with subjective and cultural factors left out of much mainstream analysis. For those wanting to learn about Brazil's agrarian reform, Ondetti provides evidence that the reform was a significant political achievement. His argument about how the landless movement avoided the Olsonian collective action problem will interest anyone curious about social science. Ondetti's book combines, in a rare fashion, in-depth research at the grassroots level, a rigorous theoretical argument, substantial use of macro-level data, and a comparative Latin American focus. It is the best work on this topic currently available."

--Anthony Pereira, Tulane University

"The Brazilian landless workers' movement has become an iconic social movement of the turn of the century. Land, Protest, and Politics provides an excellent overview of its origins and subsequent development. Gabriel Ondetti brings theoretical rigor to the study of this important movement, making a compelling argument that the movement's changing political opportunities were most important for shaping its comparative success."

--Kathryn Hochstetler, Balsillie School of International Affairs and University of Waterloo

About the Author

Gabriel Ondetti is Associate Professor of Political Science at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.