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Protests and Parties in Latin America

Course Description
The dominant social science theories predict that collective action will happen only rarely—yet protest and revolution are a regular part of political life throughout the Americas. To understand this conundrum, this course joins theoretical explanations for collective action in social science with examples of artistic expression. This interdisciplinary approach will link efforts to explain the conditions under which protest emerges and the nature of its political impact with interpretations of the meaning that people attribute to engagement in revolutionary action. What leads people to engage in protest? What leads people to join together to challenge the status quo, in many cases risking their lives to do so? What impact does protest have, both in political terms and in terms of how it affects the lives of individual protesters? We will address these questions by studying various cases of mobilization in Latin America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We will devote most of our attention to the events surrounding the civil war in El Salvador during the 1970s and 1980s.

Click the link to view the syllabus for this class: PPLA syllabus S2013