In the second decade of the twenty-first century, social protests broke out wave by wave in many Latin American countries, including the political crisis in Venezuela, the impeachment parade in Brazil, the student movement in Chile, and the large-scale assembly in Colombia. On the surface alone, these protests seem to be similar, but in their different political and social backgrounds, each of them had different forms of expression.
The authors have noticed that while researching social unrest in Latin America, there have always been academic differences in the interpretation of macro-structural factors and micro-psychological factors. In short, these two groups of scholars hold their own views. One group of scholars believes that the root of social unrest in Latin America is related to the social stratification inherited from colonial times and the uneven consequences brought about by neo-liberal reforms, especially system failure and economic inequality which played a key role. Another group of scholars emphasized strongly that people’s feelings about inequality and political psychological variables were the core motivations of these street protests. However, it is the latter viewpoint based on Western social attitudes that is basically put forward. It is inappropriate to apply it directly to the unique historical and cultural context of Latin America, especially as there are still considerable deficiencies with regard to local social psychology. At the same time, the existing research still faces some problems, such as scattered regional research, insufficient cross-border comparison, and insufficient discussion on psychological processes such as collective emotion and identity. Based on the existing research results of scholars from Latin American, this book, edited by Hüseyin Çakal, David Sirlop, and Vanessa Smith-Castro, tries to integrate various theories and methods. It has also supplemented studies of specific countries and regions, indicated gaps in research, and systematically placed research on social unrest in Latin America into the global academic field.
This book makes an empirical analysis of the large-scale protests that broke out in many Latin American countries from 2018 to 2020, and also brings together different opinions of many Latin American scholars. By combining quantitative investigation and qualitative interviews, it not only reveals the ubiquity of social unrest in Latin America, but also points out its own particularity. By analyzing the situation of individual countries one by one and comparing cases in different regions, this book also responds to the problems of scattered regional studies and insufficient local theoretical framework. It breaks the either-or opposition between macro-structural factors and micro-psychological factors, and explores the interaction between the two. While enriching the theoretical framework of social movement, it also helps to promote cross-border dialogue between comparative politics and social psychology.
This book consists of 11 chapters, covering the perception of economic inequality, political cynicism, authoritarian tendencies, collective action psychology, and other aspects. It also analyzes Venezuela, Brazil, typical protests in Chile and other countries demonstrating the results of cross-border comparative studies. Although the specific topics discussed in each chapter are different, they all revolve around the political and psychological roots of social unrest in Latin America and dig deeply into the psychological driving factors behind these protests.
From the dual perspective of the combination of macro structure and micro psychology, this book proposes that the occurrence of social unrest is not only related to objective economic inequality, but is also related to the subjective feelings of the public. Emotional mobilization is closely related to these factors. By analyzing such micro-psychological processes as family cultural consumption and emotional mobilization, this book reveals how these factors motivate individuals to participate in collective actions.
With regard to the mobilization force of subjective cognition, the sense of fairness, the volume editors made an in-depth analysis of the psychological driving factors of social unrest through several case studies, pointing out that the occurrence of social unrest is not entirely determined by objective social and economic conditions. Taking the social unrest in Chile in 2019 as an example, the economic index of Chile was actually stable at that time, but the public felt very strongly about income inequality and the uneven distribution of education and medical resources. This perception of unfairness, coupled with people’s growing dissatisfaction with government policies, eventually triggered large-scale social protests. In this process, the individual’s ideological tendency has also played a significant role. The views of the left- and right-wing people on social issues vary greatly. These differences in ideas further aggravated the severity of the social unrest. In other words, the emergence of social unrest is related to the interaction of objective social and economic conditions and individual psychological processes.
In terms of the political attributes of protest and resistance against imperfect democratic systems, this book adopts cases such as Mexican feminist organizations protesting against the cuts in the budgets of women’s rights institutions and Brazilians protesting against corruption and unfair policies. It emphasizes that social protests in Latin America are not only motivated by economic interests, but also reflect people’s deeply held demands for improving democratic systems and extending political participation. For example, in Mexico, when the institutional budgets of women’s rights institutions are severely reduced and the implementation of the gender equality policies is weakened, feminist organizations, instead of demanding budget supplements, participate in large-scale collective actions such as the International Women’s Day parade, referring to the structural defects regarding gender equality in the democratic system. They not only demanded the restoration of budgets and the protection of basic rights, but also demanded more input from women into core political processes such as policy making and system design, in order to promote the transformation of democratic decision-making from form to substance.
On the issue of applicable boundary and localization adjustment of theories, this book emphasizes that Western hypotheses tend to ignore the specific historical and social background of Latin America. When analyzing social protests in Bolivia, the authors find that Western theories fail to explain why people still protest because they feel are not allocated their fair share of relatively abundant resources. In fact, the unfair allocation of resources is closely related to colonial-era historical, racial, and class attitudes. These deep-rooted social structure problems are the real determinants of social unrest.
The authors make a case analysis of the mechanism behind social unrest, the attributes of protests, and the applicability of various theories from multiple levels, which gives readers a more comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the political and psychological roots of social unrest in Latin America. The influence of these roots is not only reflected in the current social order and political pattern, but it is also of far-reaching significance to the future development of Latin America.
This book also has some shortcomings. The research covers a relatively short time span, mainly focusing on the social unrest from 2018 to 2020, lacking longitudinal research on the relationship between social psychology and turbulence in a longer period of time. This makes it difficult for readers to grasp the dynamic changes of social psychology before and after the turbulence. And then the countries involved in the study have uneven coverage. This limits, to some extent, the generalization of the research conclusion, and it is also difficult to fully present the heterogeneity and ubiquity of political psychology in the social unrest of Latin American countries.
The book’s core academic contribution lies in systematically validating, supplementing, and advancing the classical theories in the field of political psychology within the non-Western context of Latin America. Regarding the distributive justice theory, this book explores the role of subjective perceptions of fairness and objective inequality in driving collective action, supplementing the applicability of these theoeis in non-Western societies. It reveals the interaction between the historically entrenched social strata and the ideological legitimation of institutions unique to Latin America, making perceptions of fairness more stable and varying across groups. In the study of authoritarianism, this book transcends Altemeyer’s three-dimensional model of right-wing authoritarianism by demonstrating through cases from Brazil and Peru the localized structures of authoritarianism in non-Western societies, proving that classical theories must be adjusted in the light of regional historical and cultural contexts to maintain their explanatory power.
This book provides a fresh perspective for understanding social unrest in Latin America and lays an important foundation for the intersectional study of political psychology and comparative politics. As a locally-driven research achievement led by Latin American scholars, it breaks the constraints of Western-centric theories and constructs an analytical framework for unrest in non-Western democratic societies, making it a work of significant academic value.
