We Are the State!
240 pages, 6 x 9
1 map, 11 halftones, 1 table
Hardcover
Release Date:28 May 2015
ISBN:9780816531561
We Are the State!
Barrio Activism in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution
The University of Arizona Press
Chavistas are the local leaders and activists in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, working to establish democracy through government-sponsored social missions, community self-governance, and popular collectives. We Are the State! tells the story of their grassroots activism. In perspectives gleaned from participant observation with barrio residents in workplaces, communal kitchens, city-wide forums, and grassroots meetings and assemblies, as well as family and recreational events, anthropologist Cristobal Valencia vividly recounts tensions between activists, local officials, and the wealthy opposition.
The author offers an anthropological analysis of the state, social movements, and democracy as lived experiences of the poor, gendered, and racialized residents of two parishes in Caracas, Venezuela, and Afro-Venezuelan communities nearby. Ethnographic research reveals the shift in relationships of power and the evolving political practices among the Chavistas, the Chávez government, and the opposition. Examining the subjective experiences of barrio residents in everyday processes of state formation, this book provides a new perspective on the Chavistas, arguing that they are a broad-based social movement and driving force behind a revolution struggling to transfer state power to organized civil society.
Through his intense engagement with the constantly changing social, political, and economic dynamics, Valencia dramatically challenges top-down understandings of the state and power in Venezuela. He shows the unequal relationships between sectors of civil society, and he shows state formation as a process enmeshed in the struggles for social justice, demonstrating that the state is a sociopolitical entity that acts through civil society, rather than above it.
The author offers an anthropological analysis of the state, social movements, and democracy as lived experiences of the poor, gendered, and racialized residents of two parishes in Caracas, Venezuela, and Afro-Venezuelan communities nearby. Ethnographic research reveals the shift in relationships of power and the evolving political practices among the Chavistas, the Chávez government, and the opposition. Examining the subjective experiences of barrio residents in everyday processes of state formation, this book provides a new perspective on the Chavistas, arguing that they are a broad-based social movement and driving force behind a revolution struggling to transfer state power to organized civil society.
Through his intense engagement with the constantly changing social, political, and economic dynamics, Valencia dramatically challenges top-down understandings of the state and power in Venezuela. He shows the unequal relationships between sectors of civil society, and he shows state formation as a process enmeshed in the struggles for social justice, demonstrating that the state is a sociopolitical entity that acts through civil society, rather than above it.
Often overshadowed by party politics and the mediatization of its charismatic leader, Valencia accounts for the role played by grassroots and neighbourhood organizations both in outlining unexpected forms of political participation and challenging unequal relations of power.’—Political and Legal Anthropology Review
‘Valencia is breaking ground through his research methods.’—Journal of Anthropological Research
‘An undeniable and welcome contribution to existing literature on popular organizing in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution’—Hispanic American Historical Review
‘Give[s] insight into some of the tensions present when a democratizing movement does not distinguish clearly between state, government, and civil society and [into] the extent to which popular actors might be agents for change.’—Latin American Perspectives
‘Very few anthropologists could have integrated into the urban barrios of Caracas as [Valencia] did, and fewer still could have attained this level of active participation. He knows many working class barrios of urban Caracas very well indeed.’—Leigh Binford, author of The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights
‘Highly original and, thanks to many years living in the barrios, rich and textured.’—Daniel Hellinger, author of Comparative Politics of Latin America: Democracy at Last?
Cristobal Valencia is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He conducts collaborative ethnographic research on the interrelated nature of race, class, and gender with the state, social movements, and democracy.
Introduction: Chávez’s Atomic Bomb
1. Upsetting Miss Universe
2. Ahora Venezuela es de Todos
3. We Are the State!
4. Or ga niz ing Barrio Metropolitano
5. Active Marooning
Conclusion: Counterhegemony as Statecraft
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Related Titles
