The effect of historical institutions on contemporary social movements: lessons from Santiago de Chile and Cape Town, South Africa
Date
DOI
Authors
Hatcher, Arlo
Version
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
In the past 30 years, newly democratized countries have seen an explosion in urban mobilization. From the Shantytowns of Chile to the townships of South Africa, now more than ever, urban citizens struggle to reverse the deleterious effects of authoritarian regimes as well as to hold democratic governments accountable. However, despite their manifold iterations, little work has been done in distinguishing these organizations from one another. Why do urban social movements organize, mobilize, and act differently, even when they share similar motivations for organizing? This paper seeks to address that problem by considering the cases of housing movements in Cape Town, South Africa and Santiago de Chile. While the movements in both countries attempt to challenge the inequalities developed in their respective authoritarian periods, they do so in opposing ways. Cape Town’s movements are highly inclusive, have a city-wide regional focus and a radical orientation, while Santiago’s are much more localized, exclusionary, and tolerant of the way housing is presently allocated. By investigating the causes of these differences, this paper argues for a theoretical understanding of urban social movements that considers the bases of their activism as central to their capacity to make claims. This new understanding asserts that movements which are more broadly inclusive, both in membership and in scale, tend to present radical challenges to the status quo. These differences, this paper will conclude, do not tend to be random, but rather arise as a consequence of historical processes affecting the degree to which a society has a developed state infrastructure for the provision of a certain good, as well the degree to which the benefits of their mobilization are targeted or dispersed among their recipients.
Description
License
Attribution 3.0 United States