Latin America has been a major focal point for analysis of the global class war over land and labor. Taking the region as a useful window for understanding the conditions generated by the global advance and dynamics of free market and corporate capitalism at play all over the world, Henry Veltmeyer scrutinizes the shifting dynamics of class struggle in Latin America against the background of neoliberalism.With a central focus on the left and right swings of the electoral politics p...

The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies provides an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the field, challenging mainstream development discourse and the assumptions that underlie it.Critical development studies lays bare the economic, political, social, and environmental crises that characterise the current global capitalist system, proposing instead systemic change and different pathways for moving beyond capitalism into a new world of genuine progress...

In a primary commodities boom spurred on by the rise of China, countries the world over are turning to the extraction of natural resources and the export of primary commodities as an antidote to the global recession. The New Extractivism addresses a fundamental dilemma faced by these governments: to pursue, or not, a development strategy based on resource extraction in the face of immense social and environmental costs, not to mention mass resistance from the people negatively affected by ...

This book investigates how extractive capitalism has developed over the past three decades, what dynamics of resistance have been deployed to combat it, and whether extractivism can ever be transformed into being a part of a progressive development path.It was not until the 20th century that the extraction of natural resources and raw materials took on a decidedly capitalist form, with the global north extracting primary commodities from the global south as a means of capital accum...

This book explores the battleground between neoliberal capitalist development processes in Latin America and the challenges to these systems that can be found through innovative community-driven buen vivir/vivir bien initiatives.In the current climate of worldwide capitalist development, Latin America is caught between left-leaning proposals for progressive policies towards a more inclusive form of development, and the re-emergence of harsh austerity measures, neoliberal r...

The focus and concern of Agrarian Change, Migration and Development is the problem of labour migraton. Veltmeyer and Wise explore the dynamics and development implications of the migration processes set in motion by the capitalist mode of production. The dynamics of these processes are both international — in regard to the international or cross-border flows of labour migrants — and internal to countries that have undergone, or are undergoing, a process of agrarian change and social transf...

This book explores the dynamics of the recent ‘progressive cycle’ in Latin American politics, associated with a red and pink tide of regime change. With this cycle of centre-left regimes oriented towards an alternative post-neoliberal form of development now coming to an end, coinciding with the end of a ‘primary commodities boom’ (the demand for natural resources exported in primary form on the world market), the authors seek to explore the dynamics of the transition from a progressive cy...

Lessons from the Zapatistas is essential reading for anyone interested in liberation, democracy and radical social transformation. It tells the story of the Zapatista insurgency, including the contemporary breadth and depth of their territorial autonomy, tracing how an Indigenous uprising burst forth from southern Mexico’s Lacandon Jungle to stage the 21st century’s first and most electrifying example of autonomy in action. The book provides a succinct history of the Zapatistas wh...

We live in a time of dynamic, but generally regressive regime change-a period in which major political transformations and a rollback of a half-century of legislation are accelerated under conditions of a prolonged and deepening economic crisis and a worldwide offensive against the citizenry and the working class. Written by two of the world’s leading left-wing thinkers, Imperialism and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century takes the form of a number of analytical probes into some of the ...

This book concerns recent and current political developments in Latin America related to the emergence of left-leaning regimes riding the waves of anti-neoliberalism and a primary commodities boom. Based on five years of field research and a critical engagement with social movements in the region, the book documents the short-term advances and strategic weaknesses of these left-leaning regimes, highlighting their failure to take advantage of favourable economic and political conditions. Th...

The Class Struggle in Latin America: Making History Today analyses the political and economic dynamics of development in Latin America through the lens of class struggle. Focusing in particular on Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, the book identifies how the shifts and changing dynamics of the class struggle have impacted on the rise, demise and resurgence of neo-liberal regimes in Latin America.This innovative book offers a unique perspecti...

The world is at the crossroads of social change, in the vortex of forces that are bringing about a different world, a post-neoliberal state. This groundbreaking book lays out an analysis of the dynamics and contradictions of capitalism in the twenty-first century. These dynamics of forces are traced out in developments across the world - in the Arab Spring of North Africa and the Middle East, in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, in the United States, and in Asia. The forces released by ...