The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below?

The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below?

– Chapter 15, from Territories in Resistance

If a specter is haunting Latin American elites at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is for sure living in the peripheries of the large cities. The main challenges to the dominant system in the last two decades have emerged from the heart of the poor urban peripheries.

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Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements

by Raul Zibechi (Author); Dawn Paley (Foreword); Ramor Ryan (Translation)

“Emancipation,” argues Raúl Zibechi, “is not an objective but a way of life.” For the last half century, new and emancipatory social formations have worked to carve out their own territories in Latin America, experimenting in rural and urban settings with new forms of liberatory politics that challenge neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the very basis of the state itself. Not limited to a single path, these “societies in movement” have adopted forms of communitarian relations that allow experimentation and innovation to flourish at a riveting pace. Blending case studies and history with social theory and analysis, Zibechi opens our eyes to the new world being born just outside our gaze. With a foreword by Dawn Paley, and an epilogue that brings Zibechi into conversation with Michael Hardt and Alvaro Reyes on the continuing revolution of everyday life in Latin America.

Praise for Territories in Resistance:

“Zibechi shows us not only that new worlds are possible but they exist and are constantly being invented in daily struggles throughout Latin America. A brilliantly original reformulation of the practices of popular action by a sophisticated, realistic, experienced, and daring observer of autonomous non-state spaces. More valuable than a ‘six-foot shelf ’ of tomes on social movement theory. It’s an education in itself.”?James C. Scott, author of  The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) and Seeing Like a State (1998)

“Rich and complicated…[Territories in Resistance] will be a key reference point in the development of anti-systemic thought.”? Gilberto López y Rivas, La Jornada

About the Author

Raúl Zibechi is one of Latin America’s leading political theorists, and is an international analyst for Brecha (Montevideo, Uruguay), professor at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and author of Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, among other works.

Ramor Ryan is an Irish writer and translator. He is the author of Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project and Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Coop (Coast Salish Territories). She has reported extensively on the impacts of extractive industries throughout the Americas, and is currently working on her first book.