‘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. 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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