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    ‘The Power of Distance: Re-Theorizing Social Movements in Latin America Diane E. Davis Theory and Society, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Aug., 1999), 589-638. Stable URL: http flinksjstor.orgsicisici=0304-242 28 199908 2028%3 A4Z3C585%3ATPODRS%3E20.CO%SB2H Theory and Society is currently published by Kluwer Acadernic Publishers. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhupvful-jstor-orp/abouv'terms.himal. ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have ‘obtained prior permission, vou may not download an entire issue of a joumal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial us. Please contact the publisher cegarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bhupsfuk-jstor-orp/journals/kluwer.hen, Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transtnission. ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact support @jstor.org- hupsfuk.jstor.org/ ‘Sun Mar 6 04:20:48 2008 The power of distance: Re-theorizing social movements in Latin America DIANE E, DAVIS ‘Now School for Secial Research “Most scholars who work on Latin American social movements borrow frameworks developed by those who study Europe and North America Little effort has been made to formulate alternative models deliberately sensitive to the unique political, social, cultural, and economic develop- ments in Latin America, Furthermore, the two models most frequently utilized, mainly the political opportunity structure (POS) and new social movernent (NSM) approaches, are limited in their explanatory potential and scope because they are built on “western” assumptions about state formation and state-society relations that do not hold in the Latin American context. In what follows, {offer a new and more historically specific framework for the study of social movernents, built around a phenomenological understanding of space conceived as both a material and a social construct, By encouraging a sensitivity to space and how it articulates with historically given patterns of state forma- tion, class formation, and citizenship, as well as racial, ethnic, and gender-specific identity polities, my larger aim is to provide a new way of understanding and theorizing the origins, natute, and consequences of social movements in different comparative and historical contexts T argue that ance we more conscientiously develop what Anthony Giddens, Doreen Massey, and Alan Pred, among others, call the “space/time” dimension of out theorizing.' we can better understand social movements in Latin America and elsewhere, not just who joins them and the role that meaning and stragegy play in these decisions, bbut also their Larger implications for political and social change. “The article is divided into two main sections. In the first, lexamine and account for an intellectual gridlock in the study of Latin American social movements. In the second, [ seek to transcend the stalemate by proposing a new theoretical framework built around the concept of distance or, better said, citizens’ distance from the state, understood ‘Theory and Society 585-638, 1999. ©1999 Kluwer Academic Publisher Printed in he Netherlands 586 geogtaphically, institutionally, and in terms of class and culture. 1 discuss each of these four dimensions of distance and the overlaps ‘between them, offer an explanation for how and wy aggregate pat- terns of distance vary the way they do, and finally, theorize the “power” of distance; which is to say, T explain why I think this frame- work can better explain social mavement activity in Latin America, ‘even as it dispenses with counterproductive dichotomizations of POS and NSM paradigms. ‘Tracing the popularity of European and North American approaches European intellectual hegemony in the study of Latin American sociat mmoventents For the last decade or so, the field of social movements has been dominated by (wo theoretical frames of reference, the political oppor- tunity structure (POS) approach and the new social movernent (NSM) approach.” Both models have made considerable headway in Latin, America, but the latter has been much more popular than the former until recently, largely because its emphasis on the transformative power of civil society has appealed to the lived experience and norma- tive ideals of many Latin American intellectuals during an extended period of democratic transition.” In Latin America at least, NSM theory is perceived as being focused primarily on civil society or the public sphere* and as privileging questions of meaning and identity over strategy or “resource” mobi- lization.* For NSM theorists and their Latin American interpreters, what makes social movements “new” is precisely their autonomy or distance from state institutions and formal political processes;® and it is this autonomy and civil society-centeredness that is frequently sug- gested as prefiguring movement character and outcomes, ranging from. the emergence of non-class identities to the unfolding of truly demo- ‘eratie practices.” The POS framework,’ in contrast, has been ruch less popular, in no small part because it is viewed in practically the oppo- site terms® Most Latin American scholars perceive the POS model as being focused on the state and its actions, or at best on the political and social conditions that are likely to make state actors respond (or not} to movement demands, ranging from the degree of openness of 2 country’s institutionalized political system to the extent of state repression.” As such, this framework is considered state-centered (0 & 387 great degree, a theoretical kiss of death in a region where the state is, generally perceived as the enemy. To be suce, proponents of these approaches in the United States and Europe would probably challenge this stark characterization of differ. ence, Among US. and Buropean-based scholars great strides have ‘been made to marry the insights of POS and NSM approaches for the purpose of creating a richer and more powerful model of social move- ments." Moreover, POS theorists not only claim to consider the im- pact of internal movement dynamics on state responses;!” they also occasionally define political opportunities from the point of view of society, especially in terms of the stability of elite alignments and the existence of elite allies for movernent activists. Still, because most US-based POS proponents have not always clearly specified their definition of elites, it has been relatively easy for Latin American scholars to consider even these clements in civil society as just another arm of the state, thereby reinforcing their assessment of the model's state-ceatric focus. This owes not just to the popularity of nea-Marxist theorizing in Latin American social science, which has underscored the state’s cole as the executive committee for capitalists, but also ¢© the undeniable fact that economic elites, in practice, have more often than not worked alongside or within the state rather than against it to ‘wield power successfully in. Latin America, In short, although many POS theorists in the U.S. and European contexts have turned some of their attention away from the state and toward elites, and although they have paid considerable attention to citizen resources and the internal dynamics of the movements, these ‘maneuvers have not turned the tide in their favor. In Latin America at least, these analytic innovations have been dismissively viewed as evidence that POS theorists are mainly concerned with strategic caleu- lations made by movement actors as they assess political opportunities oF seck to influence the state. They ate not seen as evidence of any intrinsic political or theoretical concern with civil society ot the public sphere on the part of POS proponcats, Valid or not, this dichotomization of the POS and NSM paradigms has, been a major part of the academic discourse on social movements in Latin America, such that they are generally seen as two relatively irreconcilable ~ if not competing ~ frameworks for understanding social movements, their dynamics, and their main targets of action. In many ways, in fact, the initial popularity of NSM theory and its 588, persistent evocation througtout the 1980s and early 1990s may owe to this oversimplification — if not caricaturization — of the models, as much as it does to the perceived “empirical” fit or praiseworthy nor- ‘mative ideals that NSM embodies, since the latter convictions could be the effect as much as the cause of intellectual support for this body of theory. ‘But the popularity of NSM theory in Latin America owes to more than. its attendant propositions and their perceived utility for illuminating ‘the Latin American experience. Social networks also factored in, not to mention the possibility of a considerable dose of anti-Americanism combined with intellectual Eurocentristn. For decades, Latin American students journeyed primarily to Bucope for doctoral studies in the social sciences and philosophy, especially to France."® Many actually studied with the sociologists who first populatized the new social ‘movement paradigms in the aftermath of the 1968 student rebellions, Pechaps the most prominent was Alain Touraine; and it is probably fair to say that a majority of Latin America’s leading sociologists and social movement scholars studied with Touraine in France (or in his visits to Latin America) during the tate 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Fven in. the absence of direct dissertation supervision from Touraine, most Latin American scholars were deeply influenced by French intellectual training or their experiences in France; and they cartied these theoretical and personal influences when they returned to their home countries.” As such, they were much less likely to embrace ‘the POS framework and much more committed to NSM theory. Additionally, the Latin American allegiance to NSM theory also prob- ably owed to important differences in the character of European and North American social science, as well as most Latin Americans’ lective affinities for the former. In the United States, where the POS framework reigned practically unchallenged for years, Latin Ameri- cans perceived social anid political scientists as mainly concerning themselves with positivistic methods and rational calculation, and practicing a social science that was much closer to the hard sciences than to philosophy. In contrast, European scholars were seen as much ‘more willing to trespass the boundaries between philosophy and social theory and to engage Marxism, even when they attempted to move beyond it. This, in fact, is precisely what Touraine sought to accom- plish with NSM theory, mainly by using a focus on social movements to produce general propositions about large-scale societal develop- ‘ments and power in post-industrial, but stil capitalist, societies. These 389 differences between North American and European social sciences further reinforced the popularity of the more philosophically grounded, European-identified NSM model, even as they disadvantaged the more quantitative and empirical North American, models, such as POS, ‘which relied heavily on an understanding of social actors as calculating and strategic rather than as inspired by larger ideals, socialist or other- wise. In the captured marketplace of options, the NSM model sold extraordinarily well among Latin American scholars, New networks or apt paradigni? Liberalization, however, may be making its mark. Just as capital and ‘goods now routinely transgress borders between Latin America and the United States, so we are now witnessing a growing intellectual appreciation and consumption of North American models of social movements, especially the POS approach developed and popularized by US-based scholars like Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, Doug Mc- ‘Adama, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald. That this is occurring now is testament to the growth of anew cadre of Latin American students studying in North American institutions."* As time passes, and as liberalization changes the geopolitical and scholarly funding environ- iment, the intellectual linkages between U.S.-based and Latin Amer can institutions and scholars have deepened, even as the European influence has started to fade. One consequence is a shifting paradig- matic terrain in which the POS model is incteasing in popularity among scholars of Latin America Jc goes without saying that considerable caution is in order when suggesting that POS is primarity a North American theory. There certainly are Europeans who have employed this approach and still do, Among then Amsterdam-based Bert Klandermans, Ruud Koop- mans, Jan Duyvendak, and Geneva-based Hanspeter Kriesi are some of the best kaown; and they also must be considered among the found- ing proponents of the POS model. Yet most POS scholars themselves, be they Furopean or American in origin, tend to adopt this nomei clature, using the phrase “European and American approaches to social movements” to differentiate between the RM/POS and NSM models.” Moreover, it also is true that these particular Northern European scholars has systematically collaborated directly with US. political scientist Sidney Tarrow in their long-term research work on social movements. They and younger Furopean-based scholars, such as $90 Matco Giugni, who also embrace the POS framework, have been further influenced by the work of US.-based sociologist Charles Tilly whose multiple writings have laid the foundation for much of the political process and political opportunity structure theorizing of the 1980s and 1990s and with whom they have directly collaborated.'* As ‘such, the social networks that tie POS proponents to each other and to their model can be seen as primarily US.-based; and in these regards the growing popularity of the POS model docs indicate at least some shift in the theoretical balance between European and U.S. approaches. But even iliberalization and social networks help explain much of this shift, will they explain it all? Probably not. There also appear to be sound political and theoretical reasons for the slow but steadily gcow- ing popularity of the POS approach and its challenge to the singular hegemony of the NSM paradigm. For one thing, the POS model in itself is a great improvement on the previously available US. paca- digm, the resource mobilization (RM) approach, having been reformu- lated and developed in tandem with European scholars, as noted above, Thus, it may merely be that the POS has just taken a little longer to develop fully, to differentiate itself from its resource mobilization past, and thus to find a new more appreciative audience, Another possible explanation for the shift from NSM to POS models could be the rapidly declining popularity of Marxist scholarship in Latin American social sciences (another byproduct of liberalization?) which may be making Latin Americans more willing to consider a paradigm like POS, which is generally associated with non-Marxist rational choice scholars or Weberian-inspiced analysis of power and political institutions rather than capitalism. A third explanation, however, at least as Kenneth Roberts has argued, may be that the actual course of ‘events in Latin America in cecent years “has not been kind to the romanticized vision of the transformative potential of collective grass- roots actors” associated with NSM.” In an extensive review essay of ‘contemporary writings on Latin American social movements, Roberts claims that tae] best of the recent literature is mat content merely co elebrate the ‘emergence of grassroots organizations or the opening of space for auton ‘mous cultura] or politi] expression but is making a serious effort to under stand how social movements engage the formal arenas of institutional plitis and try t influence public policy. This approach avoids the temptation of viewing each new manifestation of popular organization as a harbinger of ‘change in power relationships and ig also sensitive co the structural and fastiwional constraints on popular empowerment. The new literature has sol ths provided impartan insight into many ofthe most siaiicaat challenges confronting social movementsin contemporary Lain America They include the tendeney for poplar mobilization to wane following transitions 0 democrats ue, the ileal of consructing Horizontal Lnkages between grassroots orgsnizations to enhance thee poiteal leverage, andthe stained felationdips Requenly existing besseen popula organizations an the for thal representative institutions of democrat epics." Yet surprisingly, even with these developments, the POS approach has not made as much headway as one might have expected. Yes, the approach has become much more popular among US.-based scholars of Latin America who study collective action or social movements. Recent work by Anthony Pereira, Jonathan Fox, Maria Lorena Cook, and Heather Williams is exemplary in this regard.”! But Latin Ameri- cans themselves, especially if they have not studied in the United States, are still much more likely to adopt the principal tenets of the NSM model,#? as are European-based scholars of Latin America, and a strong holdout of North Americans with Habermasian sensitivities to civil society.” The upshot is that social movement theorizing is in gridlock, at least in universities in Latin America, and it may owe as much to longstanding ideological battles over North American influence in the region, historically a real and pressing political con- cern, as to the demonstrated superiority or inferiority of either para- digm. As purveyors of POS and NSM approaches punch it out in the investigative battlefield of Latin American social movements, greater paradigmatic retrenchment looms on the horizon. One unfortunate result may be that Latin American scholars will continue to devote relatively little energy to developing alternative models for the study of Latin American social movements. To be sure, as in the US. and European contexts, there are occasional efforts to transcend the paradigmatic divide, with some Latin American scholars conscientiously seeking to integrate both the POS emphasis n politcal structures, processes, politcal opportunities, and strategic action with the NSM emphasis on culture, meaning, and identity into ‘one manageable framework ™ These efforts and the empirical works of ‘those who emphasize both identities and political institutions in their studies of social movements have taken us far in avoiding the polariz- ing conflict that now threatens to paralyze the field, But toa surprising degree, scholarly allegiances still push most analysts to side staunchly with one paradigm or the other, o the point that sometimes authors studying the same cases with different theoretical frameworks present contradictory claims about the same phenomena,” Pqually striking, $92. those unwilling to fuel the fires of academic battle by avoiding strict allegiance to a particular paradigm — and they are growing in number — seem. to be finding peace by bypassing theoretical frameworks altogether. The result: a growing number of studies of Latin American social movements that art empirically rich but noticeably undec- theorized. These empirical studies may increase our understanding of particular movements in particular places peopled by particular acti- vists, but precisely because they avoid theory they neither challenge nor theoretically advance our current understanding of Latin Ameri- can social movements, So is this a problem? After al, it is hardly unusual to see studies that are undertheorized and where larget mote universal frames and grand theoretical claims are avoided, especially now in the postmodern era vwhen grand narratives arc given little credence, Not is it surprising in academic circles to see vicious paradigm battles with winners and losers strewn along all sides of the warpath. Nor is it unreasonable to seek paradigmatic synthesis, as do some social movement scholars today, a tried and true strategy in other subareas of the discipline. The problem, however, docs not rest in the well-meaning strategies of scholars who acknowledge or accommodate the insights of both POS and NSM paradigms so much as in the models themselves. Indeed, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that both the POS and NSM paradigms were crafted to account for historically-specific develop- ments occurring in the United States or Europe, despite claims to universality; and as such, further efforts to salvage or integrate these {wo paradigms, let alone profess the superiority of one over the other, may be doomed to fail. History confeonts theory: The hermeneutics of movement paradigms Closer examination of the historical context within which scholars developed these models sheds considerable light on the emergence and content of POS and NSM theory. The development and appearance of the NSM paradigm, for example, can be traced to French sociologists’ ‘efforts to account for the student movements of 1968. The scholar who most made his reputation by studying these events, in fact, is Alain “Touraine. The subscquent emergenice of the envigonmental, feminist, and anti-nuclear movements flourishing across Europe in the 1970s and 1980s also influenced development of the paradigm, as did the work of another leading European-based sociologist, Jiirgen Haber- 593, ‘mas, who at the same time was theorizing the public sphere and how it changed in articulation with industrialization and the rise of welfare states.** The work of both these scholars served as much of the inspica- tion for development of the NSM paradigm, as did the movements and social changes in Europe that captured their attention. ‘Onc thing participants in the student, environmental, feminist, and anti- ‘nuclear movements shared was a desire to change culture and society as ‘much as the formal political system itself. Many of these movements were predominantly middle class in origins, moreover, and with few exceptions they generally found it difficult to sustain longstanding alliances with the working class. This was fist evident in tte student movernent of 1968, but it also characterized subsequent generations of feminists, arcens, and anti-nuclear activists, who made serious attempts to forge these alliances, atleast initially. Equally important, al of these movements emerged after 2 period of postwar reconstruction when national states (especially in France and Germany) were esteemed by citizens for their active efforts to steer the economy and society to new level of prosperity and political stability after the destruction and demoralization wrought by fascism during World War IT. Notably, the state's principal partner in these measures had generally been organ- ized labor, whose direct, semi-corporatist participation in the con- struction of the postwar welfare state and the project of national industrialization reinforced the working class's loyalty and political allegiance to the state (or at least 10 the socialist and social democratic parties through which they reinforced their links to the state) AS such, the growing opposition (o the state and to politics as usual, statting in the late 1960s and continuing in subsequent decades, not only represented a critical watershed and fundamental shift in postwar politics, it also was built on an understanding that the state and labor stood on one side of the strugale while citizens without primarily working-class allegiances, who were organized not in parties or unions tout in independent organizations of civil society, stood on the other Indeed, the labor movement was hardly scen as an oppositional “movement” anymore, after years of collaboration with the state, but instead, almost as part of it. These insights, produced from within the movements themselves as much as through scholarly analysis, were soon incorporated into the NSM model in the form of certain assump- tions about what made these movements “new?” of at least different from earlier collective actions in which labor played a key role. Ac cordingly, itis not so surprising that scholars who attempted to theo- 594 rize these movements conceptualized them as both non-class and “new,” embodying an entirely different social and political logic.”” In the United States, social and political conditions were entirely different, and so too were the assumptions underlying social movement theory building. To be sure, the student movement of the late 1960s and 1970s also helped direct scholarly attention to the field of social move- ments, just as in Europe: and this movement shared many similarities with the European-based student movement, including the timing of its appearance, the efforts to transform culture and society, and mini- mal articulation with the class concerns of organized labor or the ‘union movement. Moreover, the student movement in the United States set in motion several decades of feminist, environmental, and anti-nuclear activism, as had occurted on the continent, and by so doing put identity politics and citizen. claims about society and the public sphere on the agenda. But itis also true that the student move- ment in the United States came on the heels of another social move- ment ~ the civil rights movement ~ that was equally if not more inaportant jn setting the scholarly agenda for North American scholars of collective action. As such, the histocical sequencing and larger institutional context within which student and other identity-based movements emerged was quite different in the United States than in Europe, as were the targets of their actions, and thus, not surprisingly, the theories developed to account for them. First and foremost, as alluded to above, the U.S. student movement ‘owed much of its force and character to the civil rights movement that preceded it by a few years, as well as to the Vietnam War. The civil rights movement, as its namie implies, was a movement about citizen- ship rights and substantive inclusion of racially excluded peoples in formal political structures and processes, with much of the struggle devoted to making the political system work as well for American blacks as for American whites. Accordingly, not only was this move- ment overtly political in the traditional sense, self-consciously dicected toward formal polities and the state; it was fo ehe state (ie., the courts, the Democratic Party, the presidency) that movement activists turned ‘when they made claims and demands, not merely civil society. The antiwar movement as well, which was inseparable from the student movement in many ways, developed around specific citizenship and political demands to be addressed by state policy or congressional legislation, not only an elimination of the draft, but formal military and political withdrawal of the United States from Southeast Asia 595 Second, the structure and nature of the American state, and its rela- tionship to labor, let alone civil society, were very different from those in Burope. In the United States, the national state was never accorded the legitimacy it had in postwar Europe, nor was it seen as unilaterally involved in the life of citizens, at least to the same extent. As such, civil society was never considered to have been snuffed out anywhere near to the same degree as in Europe, perhaps owing to the longstanding hegemony of republican ideologies about grassroots democracy and 2 community-based national political culture. ICanything, in the United States it would have been the market and not the state that was considered to have “colonized” the lifeworld, at least for much of the American citizenry involved in movements in the 1960s and 1970s, ‘And when the state’s “colonization” was on the agenda for these move- ments, it was a truly destructive and lethal political colonization of Southeast Asia and its peoples, through massacte and warfare, not ‘a metaphoric or absttactly conceptualized colonization of “domestic” civil society that was at stake. More important, it was the lost life- Worlds of other peoples, mainly the Southeast Asian victims in the US-led Vietnam War, that generated and sustained much of the stu- dent activism, not necessarily their own. cis thus understandable that U.S. movements themselves, as well as those who studied them, had a very different view of the state than their Buropean counterparts, at least in the beginning stages of social movement activism during the 1960s and 1970s, not only how and why it might be the source of citizens’ grievances but also how it might be the solution. The state and formal polities did not fall from grace, so to speak, as they did in Western Europe; rather, they were still seen as the object of social mobilization for many activists as they struggled (0 get state actors and institutions, including political parties, involved in reating social conditions for a more just and democratic society. Whereas ia Europe a strong and socially benevolent welfare state attempting to achieve these goals was already well in place, and thus could be blamed when actuality did not match rhetoric; in the United States a tore socially benevolent or responsive welfare state and party system were still principal goals for many activists, even on paper. Accordingly, most US-based theorists who studied these movements developed 4 different perspective than did Europeans. They focused on and identified the state and formal polities ~ as well as the strategies and resources available to movements in pressuring this state to listen to their demands — as a central point of departure, not civil society 596 For most U.S.-based theorists, moreover, the issues of class allegiance and class identity were much less controversial in their study of social movements, In Furope, analysts identified the rejection of class identi- ties and class struggle as a cardinal feature of many contemporary social movements, a proposition that in turn reinforced claims about their “newness.” And in Europe, many social movements of the late 1960 and thereafter had indeed rejected working-class polities as the answer to the problems of the times. Yet this owed to the fact that working-class movements had become directly involved in formal politics, as key actors in the governing parties and coalitions of Euro- pean welface states, Thus, the failures of the state and of working-class politics were intricately interconnected in the Eucopean experience. In the United States, however, the role and relationship of the organized ‘working class to the state was quite different, owing to the political cculture in gencral and the cold war in particular. For one thing, even when labor did find a place in formal politics, it ‘was not in a socialist, communist, or social democratic party that ‘organized itself and its demands around class identities or concerns. Rather, labor was active mainly through its relationships to the Democratic Party, which was much more ideologically centrist and generally unwilling (0 use class identities or demands as a principal strategy for governance. For another, the U.S. labor movement was hardly a movement, but more like an interest group, which for the most part wanted racial exclusiveness, patriotic obedience, male dominance, and unfettered economic growth.” Also, some of the ‘most activist and progressive elements of the US. labor movement were struggling against their own leadership, using demands for grass- roots democracy as a rallying call, a state of affairs that made Euro- pean distinctions hetween “new” and “old” identities or tactics much fess clear in the US. context. Indeed, some of the renegade labor activists were more likely to consider themselves as truly embodying thenew” cultural, political, and organizational objectives of the Eura- peans social movements, and probably would have been loathe to see themselves dismissed as merely “old” working-class activists.” The upshot was that U.S. theorists as a whole, particularly those who initiated the study of social movements in the United States, neither dismissed class-based movernents as remnants ofthe past, nor did they craft their theorizing around the presence or absence of class-specific concerns in movement mobilizations. Whether working classes Were involved or not in social movements was merely a concern for the empirical record, relevant perhaps if it opened or closed political 397 opportunities for movement success, but not a litmus test for defining a movement's character or a theoretically significant point of departure for classifying a movement as political or social. State and society ix Latin America While the POS and NSM paradigms may reveal much about the US. and European cases and what was at stake in the social struggles in these two parts of the world, itis For precisely this reason that they do not travel well to Latin America.®® The basic problem is that both paradigms are built on “Western” assumptions about modernity and historically specific experiences of democracy, citizenship, and state formation that are more characteristic of Europe and the United States and thus fail to hold ¢rue in Latin America Buropean-based new social movernent theorists, for example, tend to see modernization as producing highly differentiated subspheres in which there is a clear and rigid conceptual differentiation of state and society. Infact, the Habermasian notion that the state could “colaniz the lifeworld is predicated on just such an understanding of state and civil society as two distinct spheres, and it is this particular dichotorni- zation. that encouraged many NSM theorists to sce civil society as distinct from and in opposition (o the state. Accordingly, any social movement that emerges in opposition to the state would, almost by default, be located in civil society or vice-versa. This may be an accu- rate accounting of the European experience, not to mention an impor- tant analytic precept for social theorizing in general, or even a valuable normative goal for countries in the process of democratizing: but in practice itis far from the case in most Latin American couatries, until recently at least, owing to unique processes of state formation and political development in the region. While there may be much more sate repression and control in Latin America than in the context of “modern” Buropean states, there is also much less conceptual differentiation between state and societal spheres. It may be worth remembering that a standard conceptual nomen- lature used to understand Latin American polities and society has been the elite-mass distinction," a distinction that no doubt has per- sisted for so Jong in studies of the region precisely because relations of power and privilege have so frequently cross-cut the state and society rather than differentiating neatly into these two discrete categories. 598 ‘The history of benevolent relations between nascent industrialists and, ascendant political leaders in alliance against old oligarchies is a case in point. Of course, this dichotomized clite-mass nomenclature has by no means reigned unchallenged in the Latin American literature. Nor ‘were alternative formulations used by the main critics of this particular nomenclature, among whom were class analysts who prioritized eco- nomic over political elites, preferred to see classes instead of masses, and thus questioned the silences that accompanied the preoccupation with unspecified elites and undifferentiated masses. Still, what both mass and class analysts shared was an understanding that the key principal divisions in Latin America were between economically and. politically powerful actors, on the one hand, be they located in the state or civil society, and the truly disadvantaged on the other. And until the NSM paradigm began changing the academic discourse about the state and its colonization of society, there was little reason to question this understanding of the selatively fluid and intercon nected relations berween state and societal domains. ‘Tobe sure, in many Latin American countries the state has operated in, all-encompassing if not “colonizing” fashion. Latin American slates, by and large, have been overwhelming and oppressive, visible and felt in everyday life, and willing and to intimidate citizens and constrain free debate in civil society. Yet Latin American state formation has proceeded quite unevenly, with the state reaching stcongly into some population sectors or geographic regions ofits territory while avoiding, ‘thers. More important, o acknowledge that the state is overwhelming. and oppressive, even if only partially, does not presuppose acceptance. of a clear distinction between state aud society, atleast in historical and empirical terms, and perhaps even analytically. [ndeed, despite the overwhelming power of central government authorities, i is also true that in many Latin American countries state and class structures have ‘been historically embedded in each other in ways that differ markedly fiom the European or American experience with modernization. This embeddedness, which generally owes to long histories of popular in- clusion that have blurred the institutional and conceptual fault lines betwcen state and societal actors, is under certain conditions as likely ta constrain as enhance the Latin American state's power over civil society. Moreover, some of the most mobilized societal actors in Latin America are in many cases also “state” actors, that is (0 say teachers and other public sector employees, who frequently organize independently and use languages of autonomy in their strugeles with the state.” To makes sense of these movements, among others, We 599 would need a theoretical framework that acknowledges these dual identities and that conceptually encompasses both state and civil society simultaneously, rather than analytically pitting them against each other. Just as the relationship of state and civil society is historically unique in Latin America, given the distinct processes of state formation and class formation, So too are the formal political structures that link citizens to the government. This sets further limits on the transfer- ability of US. and European models, One of the key claims of both POS and NSM theorists is the posited relationship between popular ‘mobilization and democratization, although both paradigms see ¢his as occurring in different ways for different reasons, With their focus on civil society, NSM theorists work under the assumption that it is the mere act of social mobilization in postindustrial society that con- stitutes democracy, either through empowerment or by virtue of the fact that, by offering alternative ways of “doing politics,” social move- ‘ments challenge the legitimate authority of the state to make decisions ‘on citizens’ behalf." In contrast, many POS theorists assume that democracy materializes in the context of social movement activism because, practically by definition, social movements emerge where there ate political opportunities (0 provoke state responsiveness ‘Obviously, these are two different views of democracy, one based on an understanding of the importance of public deliberation and free expression, and the other based on a more instrumental notion of democracy as those conditions under which relatively suecessful citizen claim-making against the state can be made. The preference for fone over the other definition may itself be historically bounded, although it is beyond the scope of this article to consider that issue What proponents of both. paradigms share, nonetheless, independent of any differences in how they define democracy, is the assumption that some sort of fortual democracy already exists, And while this may bea valid assumption in Burope and the United States, it clearly does not hold true across Latin America More important perhaps, the POS and NSM paradigms are built on an understanding of state structures and patterns of state formation which in many ways are specific to the US. and European experience ** ‘The basic contours of the POS paradigm, for example, are built on a certain liberal understanding of the U.S. democratic experience and its relatively decentralized state structures, In a decentralized political system, as in the United States, there are many built-in mechanisms 600 for government responsiveness to grassroots movements once they ‘emerge; and many of these mechanisms are identifiable and function- ing on the local fevel.?* What makes Europe different, in fact, is that it is the national and not the focal state that has generally been the. arbiter of most social protest. This itself is an artifact of historical patterns of state formation that strengthened the national state and centralized the national political system.*” NSM theorists, then, gen- erally have in mind a specific Eucopean experience where a highly centralized state, albeit a democratic one, leaves little scope for state response on the local level. It may be for precisely this reason that democracy has meaning for NSM theorists primarily in the sphere of political culture and in the language of publics, not in the state, formal politics, or policy responsiveness. These historical differences in patterns of centralized versus decen- tealized state formation and the balance of power between the local and national state shed light on why so many U.S, social movements start by directing their claims to the local state, even if their objective is to change national law or national politics."* They also shed light ‘on why POS theorists put so much emphasis on states and formal political mechanisms as the means for achieving sotial movement aims and democracy, while NSM theorists may coneentrate on the public sphere. More important for our purposes, however, these pat- terns underscore the limits to these models when applied to Latin America. In most countries of this region, states have not been for mally democratic in structure or practice, although changes are afoot: and in Latin America, the institutional mechanisms that channel so- cial movement demands and state responses ate entirely different from those in the United States or Europe, Specifically, although Latin American states replicate the centraliza- tion of modern European states, they lack the formal democratic structures and institutions that have characterized post-World War If European societies. And while Latin American governments some- times respond to citizen mobilizations on the local level, as in the more decentralized U.S, case, unique patterns of state formation and tuneven regional and political development mean they rarely do so uniforealy in juridically guaranteed ways. These state institutional dif- ferences not only help explain why not every Latin American social movement has contributed fundamentally to democratization (since in these conditions social movements often motivate states 10 repress rather than liberate), they also explain why social movements’ contri- 601 bution to democracy cannot be understood as occurring in either the autonomous “public” sphere or the state. Given the state's undemo- cratic and unevenly developed reach, most social movement. activists themselves understand that if democracy were to materialize in Latin America today, at least as a tangible political system built on a set of formal, constitutionally guaranteed participatory structures and prac- tices, 2 transformation of both the state and civil society must be on the agenda.” ‘Accordingly, to understand Latin American social movements we need a new framework that accords equal analytic weight to state and societal domains, and that is built on an understanding of these (wo ‘domains’ historically given but problematic and uneven relationship to each other. This framework should contain within it the elements for explaining whether and why certain movements might be more likely to engage the state, even as others would seck to preserve autonomy, and do so without assuming that social movements would by nature act in one way or the other. ‘Toward a new theoretical framework Taking space seriously | propose a new framework built on a more nuanced appreciation of spatiality. Space, or the “setting” in which people live and act, estab- lishes parameters on action even as it interacts with social forces, structures, and conditions to construct that action.*° As such, location directly influences the formation, objectives, and strategies of citizens as individuals and collectively in social movements, Still, it is not merely the free-floating concept of location, but also the notion of ance, and in particular the idea of citizens’ distance from the state, which I propose as the analytic point of entry for theorizing the nature and extent of social movement activity in Latin America My argument is that in Latin America, some citizens or groups of citizens are more distanced from the state than others, and it is the extent of citizens’ distance from the state that explains their likelihood of joining social movements, the strategies they are likely to pursue, the meaning they attribute to movement activism, and even the identities cashrined in these collective actions, Moreover, the origins and char- acter of social movement activism in Latin America will be different 602 from those in the United States and Europe precisely because overall patterns of citizens’ distance from the state are unique, owing to the historical differences in citizenship and state formation across these varying contexts. Equally important, there will be considerable varia- tion even within Latin American countries with respect to citizens’ distance from the state, and itis for this reason that we cannot theorize the nature and character of social movements in any particular locale without paying closer attention to these Forms and patterns of distance, To be sure, 2 focus on “spatiality® and even the concept of distance itself are not entirely new in the social sciences, despite the newfound attention paid to space these days. Both were present in a slightly different form in early sociological work by Georg Simmel and Emile Durkheim, in Talcott Parsons's writings on action space, and in some of Pitirim A, Sorokin’s theorization of “sociocultural distance” and “nearness.” Yet one lability interent in much of this early work was that there was no single point of reference for assessing overall social distance or proximity.*? Moreover, the state or political institutions ‘were rarely seen as central to understanding citizens's so-called dis- tance," and they certainly were not identified as the key point of departure for theorizing social agency“ Accordingly, my framework differs considerably by taking the state as the central point of reference for understanding distance. Through a focus on citizens’ distance from or engagement with the ‘main political institutions and practices of the state,“ I nat only hope 10 improve on most of these earlier sociological approaches to space, and even on more récent ones offered by geoaraphers and anthco- pologists. which tend to privilege economy or culture in their under- standing of social agency. I also hope to transcend the state versus civil society divide that has dominated much social movement debate, ‘mainly because “distance from the state” is, by definition and explicitly in my conceptualization, 2 relational notion that conceptually straddles state and societal domains simultaneously. Specifically, T argue that this particular framing bridges the oppositional divide between POS and NSM proponents, with respect (0 1) the unresolved controversy ‘ver questions of the class or anti-statist character of social move- ments, 2) debate over the meaning and extent of movement commit- ‘meat to autonomy, and 3) questions about the extent to which identity ‘or strategy spurs social movement activism. 603, Further, in my discussion of citizens’ distance from the state, I incor- porate the postmodern. assumption that there are multiple and well patterned ways in which people can be distanced from the state. My argument is that populations can be distanced ftom or connected to the institutions, practices, policies, procedures, and even discourses of the state in any one or more of four ways: geographic, institutional, cultural, and in terms of class. Wit our eyes open to multiple spatial- ities, we can gauge the myriad connections between and within ettizens (ic., civil society) and the state, as well as how these connections or lack thereof give both life and meaning to social movements,*” More- ‘over, the relationships among these four dimensions of citizens’ dis- tance from the state are just as important as any single one of these factors in accounting for the overall patterns, practices, and strategies of collective mobilization. Sources of distance Geographic. The history of Latin American political and economic development suggests that geographic location is one ofthe most long standing and contentious sources of citizens’ distance from the state. This, of course, is true everywhere to a certain extent. Scholars have Jong argued that “the question of membership is deeply geographical,’ especially with respect to the procedures and institutions of distributive justice Yer the geographic dimension of citizens’ inclusion of exclu- sion is particularly salient in Latin America, where most nation-states are built around highly centralized administrative apparatuses that are concentrated in space.*? In most Latin American countries, for example, the Scat of govern- ment is usually a large capital city endowed with activities, resources, symbolic meaning, and a political centrality that differentiates it from other places in the nation. In most capital cities of Latin America, residents generally live under relatively privileged material conditions, at least compared to those in the countryside or farther regions.%° In fact, virtually everywhere in Latin America the history of overurba- nization and the unparalled growth of a single dominaat city (usually the capital) means that far more tax revenues flow to the so-called, center ~ dominant metropolitan locales ~ than flow outward to the regions, Accordingly, social movements in large or capital cities have symbolic and substantive access to the state in ways that can affect citizen strategies of engagement as well as how the state responds." In 604 ‘contrast, in the provinces there is much greater isolation and estrange- ment, not to mention considerable material exploitation by those in the “center” ‘Ofcourse, in some countries, border regions, although geographically distant from the capital city and central state, will be well integrated institutionally because of the state's warmaking or defensive capacities This would be particularly true in Latin American countries with a long history of border skirmishes, where we might also see a history of repression and heavy handedness, precisely hecause of border uncer- Caines, which would increase sense of distance ftom the state. Yet ven in “distant” provinces there will be more or less geographically salient locales; and this geographic pecking order will also have ils impact on movement strategies and outcontes. Anthony Perera’s recent study of the rural labor movement in Northeast Brazil, for example, shows that those movements closer to the provincial capital were much more successful in organizing and having their demands met than were more distant movements, ‘One reason that geographic location matters is that there are many more obstacles to scaled-up collective action in rural than urban areas, ‘a paint made recently by Jonathan Fox in his study of rural democra- tization.* For another, the facilitators to scaled-up action are greater in bigger cities or provincial capitals, especially if a disproportionate bulk of the national or regional population resides there. Indeed, social movements in national and provincial capitals or other large locales with substantial populations seem to be more capable of gener- ating cross-class alliances (something that itself accelerates chances of success), and more cognizant of how to play state structures off against ‘cach other, theteby pushing the state (0 action. This occurs not just boecause these social movements appear in symbolically and institu tionally salient locales where the state is more than an abstraction, but also because in big cities, especially the capital, there are generally more dense and frequently overlapping state structures. In contrast social movements in rural areas or in provincial towns more distant from the capital, which because of theit size aso tend to contain smaller numbers of organized citizens, seem to have been more easily repressed, relatively speaking. They also are often less willing of able to bargain with state actors, and as a consequence, they have had much less routine impact on national politics and the state, unless of course they were able to coordinate their demands through larger structures that linked them to movements across the nation ot in the capital city, 605 Movements themselves frequently realize this; hence the emergence of various nationally integrated coardinadoras of teachers, urban so- cial movements, etc., during the 1970s and 1980s across many Latin American countries Of course, as authors such as Jeffrey Gould have demonstrated, rural movements will sometimes use distance as a (ool for mobilizing, taking advantage of their social, cultural, and economic isolation to foster ‘greater solidarity and revolutionary activism, thereby making a radical critique of the entire power structure instead of specific political de- ‘mands. Still, there is plenty of evidence that the places in which 2 movement emerges, as well as its distance from or proximity to centers of political and economic power, factors into strategic decisions, con- sciousness, and activism of the movements, Moreover, when rural- based social movements make their mark, their successes generally have been achieved not by maintaining distance from the state actors and institutions so much as by engaging them on their own behalf, something Maria Lorena Cook demonstrated well in her study of the rural teachers’ movement in Mexico.*® ‘That location matters, but has not been recognized in the general literature on Latin American social movements and democratization, js clear by the fact that a semarkably large number of the movements that scholars claim ereate democratic politcal cultures and engender democratic transition are in fact urban social movements, most fre- quently based in the largest cities of Latin America®’ Further, those ‘movements considered by scholars to be exemplary of “new” social movements also tend to be primarily urban movements, composed, either of city-based educated and middle-class residents or poorer folk organized in neighborhoods around urban service demands." Iu the entice body of new social movement literature, in faet, rural-based social movements are rately categorized as “neve” Yet if it were merely moment in time (.e,, postmodernity) or the overpowering weight of the state that mattered in movernent emergence and activism, as NSM. theory suggests, We would expect to see at least an equal number of s0-called “new” social movements in rural as in urban locales, mayhe even more, since rural areas in Latin America frequently tend to sulfer steater repression at the hands ofthe national state. This has not been the case, however, pethaps because most proponents of both NSM and POS theory have failed to pick up on the differences between rural and turban movements, and even fewer have tried to thearize them. 606 A closer examination of the spatial or territorial dynamics of these ‘movements, however, suggests a new way of understanding their char- acter, aims, and strategies." Indeed, urban movements are frequently much less radical in their demands and mare oriented toward negotia- tion and conciliation, something new social movement theorists might identify asa rejection of class identities or class-based radicalism and something that earlicr political theorists viewed through the lens of ppopulism.*! In highly centralized nations, moreover, as are most in Latin America, urban movements in the capital city tend to be much mote likely to pose somewhat maderated demands because of their location in the “backyard” of political and economic privilege. [n con- trast, movements in rural areas or regions far from the capital are fequently denied the same access ta the state, in no small part because they are geographically estranged or isolated, They are more distanced fom the state, so to speak, and it may be for precisely this reason that wwe tend to see some of the most radical social movements in Latin America in areas both isolated and distant from the capital cities.” ‘As examples, Peru's Shining Path and its Tupac Amaru rebels, as well as Mexico's Antorcha Campesina, the Zapatistas (EZLN), and the Rjército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) come to mind immediately, although several less radical but fiercely oppositional and quite visible social movements, like the middle-class Fl Barzon and the Navista movements in Mexico, have also come from gcogtaphically “distant” provinces where populations are also more likely to be institutionally and culturally isolated from the capital city and the rest of the nation. Tt may be telling that some of contemporary Latin America’s most radical movements tend to proliferate in Petu and Mexico, ¢wo coun- tries well known for extreme levels of overurbanization where a single dominant urban center dwarfs the test of the nation in terms of resour- ces, wealth, and power. As such, there is compelling evidence of relationship between territorial isolation or physical distance from the institutions, practices, and projects of the national state, on one hand, and social movement radicalism on the other, and this despite the fact ‘that most theorists — social movement and otherwise - have chosen to understand these more radical movements in terms of the values and culture associated with ideology, class, ot modernization (or its antinomy, backwardness) rather than location, Institutional, A second source of citizens’ distance from the state derives from engagement in or access to the formal institutions of governance. Tt is worth remembering the definition of the state, at least according 6oT to Weberian interpreters such as Joel Migdal, as “an organization, composed of numerous agencies led and coordinated by the state's leadership (executive authority) that has the ability or authority to make and implement the binding rules for all the people as well as the parameters of rule making for otber social organizations in a given territory...» Few scholars of contemporary Latin America would argue that the Latin American state has the ability or authority to make and implement binding rules for all the people equally, in all of its territory. As Guillermo O'Donnell succinctly reminds us, the Latin American state is extensive but weak, especially in the countryside, such that institutional and geographical distance are often correlated. In Brazil, for example, communities or localities in various parts of the country often are under the control of landlords, not the state.®* This fact helps help explain why one of the most talked-about and contem- porancously well-studied social movements in Latin America today is Brazil's Movimento Sin Terra (MST), or landless labor movement, ‘whose main targets of opposition are rural landlords and not the state Because in this region of Brazil landlords are as likely as the state to be ‘making the rules and imposing order, the MST has turned to the national government for help, clamoring for the strong state arm of social justice to intervene on behalf of the landless laborers being oppressed by landlords. It is the weak and uneven institutional reach of the state, in short, and citizens’ distance from its (potentially) pro- tective institutions, that drive chem to mobilize against landlords and to seek the state as an aly This situation is by no means unique or specific to Brazil. Across Latin America it is not unusual to find figures of considerable political authority outside the formal contours of the state, be they regional economic elites or purely political eaciques who establish their own patcon-client relations independent of the national state or of parties in power, In these situations, social movements may be as willing to turn to the state as ¢o challenge it. Moreover, it may be precisely because power docs not always lie where it “should,” that movement activism and success in Latin America can sometimes be so difficult.” Whatever the reason, it is precisely because the state's institutional strength is unevenly developed that the POS or NSM approaches ~ both of which presuppose efther engagement with or autonomy from the state - are equally inadequate. After all, movements can engage the state to fight landlords, or vice-versa; but whether they choose one strategy or the other will vary both within and between Latin Ameri- 608 ‘can countries, depending on the formal and informal institutions of governance that are available to citizens for making demands and seeking social redress. Stil, itis not merely the uneven development or limited institutional reach of the state that makes the context of social movement struggle in Latin America fundamentally different from that in the United States or Burope, and thus that limits the utility of these models Equally important is the fact that what institutionally constitutes the state is quite different int Latin America than in countries of the so- called developed world, especially thase with longstanding democratic systems. Because modern Latin American states are highly central- ized, owing to patterns of colonialism, mercantilism, warmaking, and ‘most recently, processes of urban-led industrialization, political power is often highly concentrated in certain institutions of the national state (6 the exclusion of others, primarily in the executive branch if aot the person of the president directly (presidencialismo), at least until re- cently. This does not only mean that many decisions about policies are made in the offices of the president and his aational cabinet members, themselves highly bureaucratized institutions that are excessively dis- {anced from the everyday lives of citizens. It also means that the power ‘of more intermediate institutional structures of the state, including the national congress or parliament, (ends to be highly circumscribed. Most important, it means that local political structures everywhere, ‘or those institutions with the greatest proximity to citizens in che bureaucratic and even the spatial sense, have hardly any power at all Accordingly, in Latin America most citizens live considerably dis- anced from the institutions, procedures, and formally sanctioned policymaking practices of the state; and this occurs primarily because the most viable and potent institutions of governance and policy- making are national and not local and because in most countries political parties are weak in comparison with the centralized state Equally important, this “weakness” of state institutions is not merely a problem for citizens in far provinces or in the infrastructurally under developed countryside, although it may be most exaggerated for them. ‘The state’s institutional weakness tends to affect Latin American citi- zens wholesale, although pethaps to different degrees across countries cis precisely because the state is so institutionally inaccessible and distant from individual citizens, bureaucratically and territorially or- ganized in such a way as to respond to national actors and problems rather than to the everyday affairs that unfold in communities and 609 ‘municipalities, that many in Latin America choose to organize locally into social movements — often on the neighborhood level ~ to express political preferences and make claims on the state, They are trying to narrow the distance between themselves and the ever more institu- tionally remote national state, so to speak, fo bring the representative and policymaking institutions of this inaccesible state down to a more attainable and manageable level, and thus “nearer” to their reach.” Recognizing that many citizens join movernents so they can participate in or use the institutions of the state for theit own purposes has important implications for social movement theorizing, since it sug~ gests that social movements in Latin America may in fact be trying (0 bridge the distance between citizens and state, not widen it, as most NSM theorists suggest. Put another way, far from trying to create greater social or institutional distance between themselves and the lifeworld-colonizing state, many Latin American citizens are seeking greater proximity or increased access to the procedures, perks, and formal governing institutions of the state.”” To make this claim is not to suggest that local organizations of social movements willfully invite abusive or corrupt state institutions or politicians into their everyday lives. NSM theorists may in fact be underscoring this through their focus on the strong commitment to movement autonomy. Yet by em- phasizing autonomy over engagement, these scholars tend to obscure the ways most movements make claims on the state for more dis- tributive justice as well as for government programs and resources, even as they herald their own autonomy. ‘To understand this seeming paradox, it may be helpful to differentiate between state and regime and to underscore that most citizens’ efforts to bridge distanice from the state by making claims on it entails some normative idealization of what states are supposed to do, For most

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