Abstract
Struggles for Justice in Canada and Mexico: Themes and Theories about Social Mobilization seeks to understand 30 separate organizations and their struggles for social justice in Mexico and Canada. Author Linda Snyder’s intent is to analyze the stories, goals, challenges, structures, strategies, and outcomes of these groups within a context of national histories, neoliberalism, and what she calls “aggressive capitalism.” The author draws largely from social movements and social work literature on community organizing to frame her stories of women’s movements responding to neoliberalism and oppressions based in class, ethnicity, and gender.
Of the organizations examined, 23 were based in Mexico and 7 in Canada; the mandates of the organizations varied widely from income generation through production collectives, to natural health, to housing, to combating mining, to resource centers, to advocacy and grassroots support. The author’s Mexican cases were selected based on where she saw these forms of oppression as more significant than in other locales. In Canada, the author examined cases in Nova Scotia based on the presence of cooperatives, and sites in British Columbia were chosen due to the large number of First Nations communities there. Snyder studied this wide set of organizations over a combined period of two winters and two summers by using an undisclosed number of interviews and focus groups, some review of documentation, and an occasional observation of events. In addition, the author interviewed two independent community organizers.
Snyder provides some interesting accounts of these organizations drawn from her interviews. And the focus on goals, organizational structures, strategies, and outcomes is based in standard social movement research. As interesting as these stories are, however, the book is fundamentally flawed methodologically and substantively. The reader is offered no explanation for why the author chose these groups to study, or why they are in any way comparable within and across nations and organizational mandates.
Neither does Snyder tell us why she chose to study so many more Mexican organizations than Canadian ones. The methodological details are so sparse it is hard to unpack the analysis of so many separate organizations with different mandates and styles. Three chapters present relevant historical context, culminating in the global, Canadian, and Mexican experiences of neoliberalism and oppression, respectively. Political economy, however, is not brought into the analyses of organizational life.
Despite the hegemony of neoliberal theory and experiences, we know that the form and depth of penetration of neoliberal policy has differed across the global North and South. Variations occur due to the passage and implementation of neoliberalism as a seeming cure for varied crises, as well as different levels of state strength and the legacies of welfare systems. Although Mexican and Canadian experiences of neoliberalism are briefly described here, they are not analyzed with awareness of the nuances of how those differences were experienced nationally. Thus, we are left to question what is comparable about these experiences for these organizations.
The history chapters are also sufficiently sparse that political highlights are noted without any substantial reckoning of the majority’s neoliberal experience. The obligatory coverage of the Zapatistas in rural Chiapas, for example, is not matched by recognition of decades of urban Mexico’s struggle against neoliberalism. Although the author tries to offer some background on the impact of neoliberalism in these context chapters, she does not return to neoliberalism in subsequent chapters focusing on analysis of the actions and foci of these organizations. We are left asking how exactly neoliberalism influences organizational strategy and outcomes, in contrast to previous moments of capitalism.
After the contextual chapters and four chapters describing the 30 organizations, Snyder examines the themes of the organizational work, focusing on their purposes, “nature and structure” of their work, the way they mobilize, and their challenges. Here, the author successfully integrates a variety of literature, which helps us understand more about what these organizations have done and how their actions are similar to other organizational work.
Snyder’s analytic categories fit with basic social movement organizing concerns. What is absent throughout, however, is any analytical connection among the categories. How did goals influence the structure of the organizations? How did both goals and structure shape strategies? How were challenges overcome by strategic action, and what explains more positive and negative outcomes? We don’t know because the author fails to make the connections between conceptual chapters. Neither do we understand differences or similarities among the groups by the author’s grouping of mandates and purposes. Do advocacy organizations regularly pursue different strategies than production collectives, or anti-mining groups? Or do some strategies meet with greater success in Mexico rather than Canada? We are again left wondering what this grouping of organizations tells us.
Snyder is clearly sympathetic to the struggles of poor indigenous women and wants to champion their causes. Support for the oppressed and disenfranchised is a common position among social movement scholars; indeed, it is often what drives us. But a failure to hold any critical perspective often makes it hard for researchers to fully assess those whose struggles we deeply endorse. Snyder finds no problems with 30 different organizations, a position difficult to accept. For example, several of the organizations rely on external aid, but the uncritical position of the author makes it difficult for the reader to assess how intrusive that aid may be. Indeed, there is almost no critical lens applied to any of the groups, which provides an unrealistic image of organizations with no internal strife.
This book is most successful when the voices of organizers are offered. It is always useful and encouraging to hear how oppressed people stand up and fight back. The descriptions of strategies and challenges provide further concrete and helpful details. Those elements make this book a useful inclusion for a beginning undergraduate social movements or community organizing class. It will be up to the instructor of that class to make the connections between neoliberalism, hardships, and subsequent social movement actions and outcomes.