Description |
xxii, 308 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portrait ; 23 cm |
Contents |
Introduction: Debt Crisis, Social Crisis, Paradigm Crisis -- 1. The Rise and Demise of a Tropical Welfare State -- 2. "Iron Fist in a Kid Glove": Peasants Confront the Free Market -- 3. Organizing in "The Cradle of Maize" -- 4. "In Jail, We'll Eat Cement": Finale to a Peasant Strike -- 5. Movements Evolve, Organizations Are Born and Die -- Conclusion: Peasant Movements of the Late Twentieth Century -- App. The Costa Rican Security Ministry's View of the Agriculturalists' Organizations in 1988 |
Summary |
"This book tells the story of how small farmers responded to a free-market onslaught that devastated one of the Western Hemisphere's most advanced social-democratic welfare states. In the early 1980s, the Latin American debt crisis struck Costa Rica, leading to major cutbacks in the social programs that had permitted the rural poor to attain an acceptable standard of living and a modicum of dignity."--BOOK JACKET. "Peasants were in the forefront of movements against these cutbacks, marching, blocking highways, and occupying government buildings. In the struggle to preserve their livelihood, the rural poor also formed alliances with wealthy farmers, negotiated with politicians, and embraced and then repudiated charismatic outsiders who came to live among them and to speak in their name."--BOOK JACKET |
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"The author argues that the experience of rural activism in Costa Rica in the 1980s and 1990s calls into question much current theory about collective action, peasantries, development, and ethnographic research. The book invites the reader to rethink debates about old and new social movements, to grapple with the ethical and methodological dilemmas of engaged ethnography, to retrace the long history of development ignored by its postmodernist critics, and to come face-to-face with peasants stubbornly committed to survival."--BOOK JACKET |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-300) and index |
Subject |
Peasants -- Political activity -- Costa Rica.
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Globalization.
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Social movements -- Costa Rica.
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SUBJECT |
Costa Rica -- Economic policy.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114767
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LC no. |
99031301 |
ISBN |
0804736936 paperback |
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0804734011 cased |
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