In Brazil’s International Activism Monika Sawicka questions how Brazil’s deep-rooted craving for greatness has led to the quest for status in the twenty-first century and contends that the categorization of Brazil as an “emerging middle power” enriches the understanding of modern Brazilian foreign policy. Drawing on the rich vocabulary of role theory, Sawicka sets out to establish an original theoretical framework that comprises the structural (status), the behavioral (role), and the cognitive-ideational (identity) to assess whether Brazil has performed roles distinguishing a middle power and how the state has reconceptualized them. The model is applied to scrutinize how ideational and material drivers impacted Brazil’s engagement as an integrator in Latin America, donor in Africa, mediator in the Middle East, and coalition-builder of developing states in global fora. Despite recent criticism of the concept of “emerging middle powers”, Sawicka argues that Brazil’s international activism stands as a precise embodiment of such a power. With an aim of theory development and contributing to the debate on Brazil’s international standing, Brazil’s International Activism provides a much-required reinterpretation of Brazilian foreign policy which will be of interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations and Latin-American Studies.

Brazil has risen. Its economic might and international activism are remarkable, but the limitations to its capacity and will to turn potential power into concrete international influence are equally significant. This book assesses the real impact of the rise of Brazil on other Latin American countries, and how these countries have responded.

This comprehensive study traces the transnationalization of activist networks, analyzing their changing compositions and characters and examining the roles played by the World Social Forum in this process. Comparing four of the largest global networks targeting the 'neoliberal triumvirate' of the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization: the Jubilee anti-debt campaigners Via Campesina peasant farmers Our World Is Not For Sale and the anarchistic Peoples’ Global Action. Written by a scholar-activist, the book highlights that despite their diversity, these collective actors follow a similar globalizing path and that networks in which solidarity is based on a shared identity perceived as threatened by neoliberal change are gaining strength. Social forums are depicted as a fertile ground to strengthen networks and a common ground for cooperative action among them, but also a battleground over the future of the forum process, the global anti-neoliberal struggle, and 'other possible worlds' in the making. Global Activism will appeal to students and scholars interested in globalization, international relations, IPE and social movements.

Collectively, The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology explores the contemporary terrain around new and emergent issues and forms of activism, and offers cutting edge conceptualizations of the methodological and practical applications of activist engagement, solidarity, and resistance.

Contentious Politics in Brazil and China: Beyond Regime is a highly accessible and compelling examination of two fast-emerging countries in the global arena. It is not common to see Brazil and China examined side-by-side, but authors December Green and Laura Luehrmann show the utility of this unorthodox comparison: By moving beyond region and regime, this book offers a thought-provoking analysis of two very different countries dealing with many concerns and problems in surprisingly similar ways. With a focus on current issues, Contentious Politics in Brazil and China covers migration, urbanization, criminality, the environment, sexual politics and HIV-AIDS response, foreign policy, and international relations. This text not only illuminates each country's realities more clearly than traditional regional or regime-type comparisons can, but it offers unexpected insights into the study of state-society relations.

This book sheds light on the outcomes of social movements in Brazil. It provides an extensive analysis of how and when collective mobilization and protest activities brought about social and political change. Charting the dynamics and characteristics of Brazil’s social movements from the abolition of slavery in 1888 to the present day, the contributors to this edited volume demonstrate the processes of social movement activism in Brazil, and its relations with political institutions across various types of governments and political regimes. They bring to light both political opportunity structures of different historical periods, and the political and cultural consequences of mobilization stemming from the collective action of social movements. Showcasing various approaches, the book encompasses a plurality of methodological perspectives including network analysis, collective memory, trajectories, and quantitative techniques of process analysis. Ultimately, the authors present new empirical evidence about social movement outcomes in Brazil, including the mobilization for housing rights, institutionalization processes in a re-democratized society, the effects of anti-dictatorship movements on activists, transformations of political agendas and the diffusion of social protests. Interdisciplinary at its core and highly engaging, The Consequences of Brazilian Social Movements in Historical Perspective offers essential reading on social movement studies to academics, activists and students.

Who should provide food, and through what relationships? Whose livelihoods should be protected? For over 20 years the peasant farmers of La Via Campesina have been engaged in the fight against injustice, hunger and poverty under the banner of food sovereignty, 'the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems'. They campaign for healthy, sustainable alternatives to an industrial food system controlled by agribusiness companies and the architects of unfair trade agreements. This book draws on grounded case studies of agrarian movements in the Americas and Europe as exemplars of a 'power shift,' as local opposition scales up to global action in an effort to wrest control of our food away from transnational corporations and back to communities.

This book provides an updated comparative overview of women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, filling some of the gaps left by the existing literature. It brings together case studies of nine countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru – and includes a comparative analysis of the overall evolution of women’s rights movements across the region during the past decades. This analysis shows Latin America as the home to the largest, strongest, and most densely regionally and globally interconnected women’s rights movements in the Global South. Each chapter in this volume seeks to understand where the struggles for women’s rights come from, how they stand today and where they are headed to. To do so, they all use qualitative methodologies, and most resort to first-hand accounts of the processes described and reflections by the actors on their own experiences, collected through surveys, in-depth interviews and/or ethnographic observations. The comparative analysis of the different national case studies reveals the main struggles in which women’s rights movements are currently involved in Latin America and the Caribbean: the quest for political representation within the State and its political institutions; the fight against gender violence and the struggle for sexual and reproductive rights – especially abortion rights. Women’s Rights in Movement: Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean will be a valuable resource for researchers, activists and policy makers interested in the struggles for women’s rights not only in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in different parts of the world. It will be of special interest to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and other social scientists working in interdisciplinary fields such as gender and social movements studies.

Brazil is a rapidly emerging country. Brazilian theology, namely the Theology of Liberation, has become well known in the 1970s and 1980s. The politically active Base Ecclesial Communities and the progressive posture of the Roman Catholic Church contrasted with a steadily growing number of evangelicals, mostly aligned with the military regime but attractive precisely to the poor. After democratic transition in the mid-1980s, the context changed considerably. Democracy, growing religious pluralism and mobility, a vibrant civil society, the political ascension of the Worker's Party and growing wealth, albeit within a continuously wide social gap, are some of the elements that show the need of a new approach to theology. It must be a theology that is both critical and constructive, resisting and cooperative, a theology that is able to give orientation to the churches, valuing and encouraging their contribution in society while avoiding attempts of imposition. The Churches and Democracy in Brazil, the fruit of years of interdisciplinary study of the Brazilian context and its main churches and theology, makes its case for an ecumenically articulated public theology. It seeks inspiration mainly in Luther and Lutheran theology, emphasizing human dignity, freedom, trust, the disposition to serve, and the ability to endure the ambiguities of reality, as well as a fresh interpretation of the doctrine of the two regiments. These are the fundamental elements of what makes human beings full members of the body politic: citizenship, their right to have rights and to be able to effectively live them, together with their corresponding duties, in a move of growing political participation conscious of their religious motivation in view of the commonweal.