Federico Rossi’s comments on my book are insightful. Some of his remarks made me think more about certain themes, and others brought to my attention issues that I had only marginally considered. I thank him for taking the time to carefully read my work.
Concerning the issue Rossi raises regarding my theorization of tactics—namely, the historical trajectory of how I discuss extralegality—I am unsure whether my argument tends toward methodological individualism. In tracing such tactics’ development over time, I show how social movement leaders and members interacted with their respective historical contexts. I make the same argument with respect to certain forms of the landless movement’s institutional structure, as Rossi also notes. Yet, for my argument to show signs of methodological individualism, I would have had to rely less on historical analysis. I make this point in my discussion of neoliberalism (chap. 4), where I place the landless movement in comparative perspective with other Brazilian movements, showing how tactical adaptation took place within the context of changing economic conditions.
Still I see Rossi’s point; I understand how one reading of my argument seemingly privileges the choices of key individuals in the development of the landless movement. That I may have erred on the side of agency at times was due to the lively comments and stories I heard from lifelong landless activists. In my book, I tried to straddle not only different literatures (critical, Marxist, and social movement theories) but also different ways of writing about social movements. By that, I mean performing the difficult task of capturing the energy of movements in movement while also subjecting their actions to critical analysis to understand their successes, challenges, and failures.
However briefly, Rossi also draws attention to my conclusion where I attempt to make the landless movement speak to movements in the United States. On the one hand, I agree that this effort stretched the analysis. After all, Brazil—and the country’s economic, political, and historical dynamics—cannot be simply mapped onto the United States. Of course, I knew this as I was writing that section of the book, and I consciously stretched my analysis of the Brazilian case into a foreign context. One reason for this is that some people are already making such intellectual moves, not so much in strictly academic ways but in popular social movement circles. Exchanges take place between US activists and their counterparts in Brazil: members of movements have for years visited landless encampments, settlements, and schools to learn about what is happening in these spaces. They do not write books, but instead hope to acquire lessons to take home and to implement. My conclusion is an attempt to consider that initiative, uncovering past rural movements in the United States to connect them in a way that perhaps lets us understand the trajectory of contemporary struggles. In this fashion, my conclusion is really an opening or, in other words, a provocation that is incomplete. Where US movements in fact go, as well as whether the landless movement can help show them along the way, will be determined in the course of conflict.
