Pathways to Utopia

Time and Transformation in the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil

Alex Ungprateeb Flynn (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

260 Seiten

2025
Indiana University Press (Verlag)
978-0-253-07375-4 (ISBN)

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Pathways to Utopia explores how Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), against all odds, has endured for forty years as one of the world's largest social movements - while transforming the way we understand the temporality of activism. Taking his cue from MST members and their generational struggle for land and justice, anthropologist Alex Ungprateeb Flynn reveals how the movement's longevity stems not only from its strong organization and collective vision but also from the productive tensions between established utopian ideals and emerging counter-utopian practices. Perceived by some as a shortcoming, this friction has proven to be a generative force, sparking creative gestures that reimagine social relations and ensuring the MST's adaptability in an ever-changing political landscape.

Flynn chronicles the everyday lives of families navigating an extraordinary political reality over a fifteen-year period. At the heart of Pathways to Utopia is the realization that activism is not a momentary act but an ongoing, relational practice - one where even the smallest community actions reverberate, reshaping the very structures through which people seek to change the world.

Evocatively written and balancing careful ethnography with key theoretical interventions, the book illuminates the dreams and sacrifices that characterize a life lived as struggle. Unfolding across multiple points of time, Pathways to Utopia tells a story of hope and resilience - one that promises a lasting influence on our twenty-first-century political imagination.

Alex Ungprateeb Flynn is Associate Professor of Art and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Acknowledgments
Dramatis Personae
Introduction
Scene I – Promise
Pausa
1. Landlessness
Pausa
2. Willed Transformation
3. Productivity
Scene II – Contradictions
Pausa
4. Human Values
5. Time
Pausa
6. Encampment
Pausa
7. Institutionalization
8. Ruin
Scene III – Expression, Creative Gesture
9. The Culture Sector
10. Mística, Light on Your Feet
11. Occupy, Hold Firm
Pausa
Scene IV – Transformation
12. Remaking the Movement from Within
Pausa
13. Community, Small Spaces
14. Victory, In a Heartbeat
Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	01.07.2025
Zusatzinfo	19 b&w illus., 2 maps
Verlagsort	Bloomington, IN
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	363 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-253-07375-8 / 0253073758
ISBN-13	978-0-253-07375-4 / 9780253073754
Zustand	Neuware