Only the People Can Save the People : Constituent Power, Revolution, and Counterrevolution in Venezuela / by Donald V. Kingsbury.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kingsbury, Donald V., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social change--Venezuela--21st century.

Social change.

Social conflict--Venezuela--21st century.

Social conflict.

Political participation--Venezuela--21st century.

Political participation.

Venezuela--Political aspects--21st century.

Venezuela.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (232 pages)

Place of Publication:

Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, [2018]

Summary:

In a global historical moment of growing mobilizations against inequality, corruption, and exclusion, Only the People Can Save the People illustrates the necessity and challenges of more egalitarian approaches to collective life from one of the most tumultuous and compelling experiments in radical democracy. Donald V. Kingsbury examines twenty-first-century Venezuelan politics from the perspective of constituent power—the egalitarian, creative, and inclusive practice of radical democracy. In the aftermath of neoliberal structural adjustment, Venezuelan politics have been increasingly reconfigured according to principles of autogestión (self-management), social movement autonomy, protagonistic and participatory democracy, and anti-capitalism. However, inherited and intensifying challenges arising from Venezuela's status as a petrostate, the class and racial divisions that define its society, and the difficulties of defining what Hugo Chávez termed "socialism for the twenty-first century" have resulted in a tumultuous process of social change. Informed by ethnography, contemporary and comparative political thought, and global political economy, Only the People Can Save the People demonstrates how constituent power is shaping collective identity, political conflict, and infrastructural space in contemporary Latin America.

Contents:

The challenges of constituent power

Constituent power in the North Atlantic and Venezuela

Rupture, protagonism, and party : the Caracazo as event

Multitude, pueblo, and the ungovernability of constituent power

The structures of constituent power : the Caracas Metro and the right to the city

Escuálidos : the opposition, constituent power, and the problem with (and of) democracy

Rethinking constituent power.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438469652

1438469659

OCLC:

1032611998