Resumen de Social Movements and Nationalism in Latin America
Students of social movements in Latin America have employed the concept of nationalism rather loosely, while scholars of nationalism in the region primarily focus on the role of the state and, if at all, deal with social movements in a largely descriptive manner. In response, this chapter brings these two distinct bodies of work into conversation with each other and explores the relationship between nationalism and social movements in Latin America in a more systematic manner. The starting points are three major approaches to the conceptualization of nationalism: as (1) a set of political behaviors, (2) a collective sentiment, or (3) a form of ideology or discourse. Each of them leads to different ideas about how nationalism affects or is affected by social movements. Equipped with this conceptual lens, the chapter explores crucial turning points in the region's postcolonial history and examines the inersection between nationalism and social movements during the early nineteenth-century struggles for the formation of independent national estates, the mid-twentieth-century decline of oligarchic rule and the emergence of mass societies, and the late twentieth-century adoption of neoliberalism and the rise of multiculturalism and indigenous movements. Another issue covered is a Latin American peculiarity, namely the striking lack -from a cross-regional comparative perspective- of nationalist mobilization for secession and a separate state.