Jean-Pierre Reed

Political Cultures of Opposition Exploring Idioms, Ideologies, and Revolutionary Agency in the Case of Nicaragua

Using interview data from Nicaragua, we propose the concept of “political cultures of opposition” for bringing culture and agency into the study of revolutions, and linking the subjective elements of experience and emotion with the social structural ones of organizations and networks. We use evidence from the Nicaraguan uprising of the 1970s to show how a repressive political structure was experienced by ordinary citizens, who turned to two political cultures — liberation theology and Sandinismo. These cultural constructions enabled participants from diverse backgrounds to channel their experiences and emotions into revolutionary actions, most often with and alongside the Sandinistas.

Theorist of Subaltern Subjectivity: Antonio Gramsci, Popular Beliefs, Political Passion, and Reciprocal Learning:

Some recent positions on Antonio Gramsci portray him as a vanguardist who outright rejects common sense and popular culture as playing a role in counter-hegemony or political resistance. This manuscript seeks to provide a corrective to these recent portrayals. It does so by accurately evaluating Gramsci’s position on the dialectical relationship subaltern (popular) beliefs have to counter-hegemony; by considering his bottom-up stance on the relationship organic intellectuals have to the subaltern; by focusing on his cutting edge position on ideological articulation; and in light of his articulations regarding the role of subaltern passion and subaltern-centered pedagogy for counter-hegemony. As a way to illustrate the significance of the subaltern for counter-hegemony, the potential of popular religion for counter-hegemony is explored.

Religion as Custom and Political Resistance: An Unorthodox Interpretation of EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class:

While EP Thompson recognizes the regressive potential of popular religion, his work also makes it possible to evaluate this cultural scheme as a vehicle of political resistance. This article seeks to make a case for the significance of popular religion in a politics of resistance through an unorthodox interpretation of The Making of the English Working Class. A close reading of the history of orthodox and sectarian Methodism presented in this work reveals popular religion as a contentious custom and a vehicle of political resistance.

The Bible, religious storytelling, and revolution: The case of Solentiname, Nicaragua

Building on the storytelling, political storytelling, and religious storytelling literatures, I examined the role religious stories play in the formation of revolutionary convictions. This study’s primary sources of data are volumes I, II, and III of The Gospel in Solentiname, a historical record of religious discussions that took place in an isolated campesino community at a seminary-like setting under a growing national revolutionary scenario in 1970s Nicaragua. My analysis of these discussions reveals that religious discourse based on stories of prophecy, Christian virtue, miracles, and social challenges to revolutionary action allowed story-users to assert, explore, and promote models of action and moral orientation consistent with the making of revolution.

Social Movement Subjectivity: Culture, Emotions, and Stories

The study of culture, emotions, and stories has assumed a central place in the sociology of social movements and contentious politics. This shift to the subjective (‘away’ from the organizational or structural) had its initial start in the USA with the framing perspective (Snow et al., 1986) and the culture-as-toolkit approach to political action (Swidler, 1986). These initial approaches opened the door to more substantive explorations on the subjective, in particular the role of culture, in the 1990s and 2000s. Following (or building on) continental theoretical developments on new social movements (e.g. Castells, 1983; Habermas, 1987; Melucci, 1989; Touraine, 1988) discipline scholars earnestly investigated what by then had become known as ‘identity politics’, ‘cultural politics’, and ‘life politics’ (as opposed to emancipatory politics) (e.g. Giddens, 1991; Laraña et al., 1994; Taylor, 1989). Radical feminists had been referring to this type of politics as ‘personal politics’ (Evans, 1979). Focusing on culture, emotions, and stories essentially meant empirically grounding and conceptually strengthening our understanding of these dimensions of political activism that at one point were consistently downplayed, if not neglected. One may argue that by 1997 the cultural turn in social movement scholarship had been firmly established. Social Moments and Culture (Johnston and Klandermans, 1995) and The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Jasper, 1997) cogently exposed the relevance of culture for the study of the politics of social transformation. Culture promoted political mobilization, cultural processes maintained collective identities, even in the absence of political opportunities, and culture was at the center of the transformation of everyday practices and institutions in society. A paradigm shift was afoot. It would manifest itself

The Structural and Political Roots of Antineoliberalism: The Rise of the New Left in Latin America

Today, assessing the historical roots, nature, and impact of neoliberalism on Latin America has become a pressing intellectual concern for many, especially because the election of left-leaning presidents has become a historical pattern across the region starting in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and most recently culminating in the victory of Mauricio Funes of El Salvador in 2009. Some consider this pattern a turn for the worse because it presumably signals a return to caudillismo (Corrales 2008); others consider this a turn for the better because it represents a counterlogic to neoliberalism’s market-oriented individualism (Faulk 2008); an oppositional opportunity to govern more democratically, justly, and from below (Foran 2009); and turning to twenty-first-century socialism for solutions (Valencia Ramírez 2008; Wilpert 2006, 2005). The three volumes considered in this review article address this turn to the left for the most part as a positive development. Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective by William Robinson and Latin America After Neoliberalism Turning the Tide in the 21st Century? by Eric Hershberg and Fred Rosen do

Revolution, Revival, and Religious Conflict in Sandinista Nicaragua

In this volume Calvin Smith sets out to explore the relationship between Protestants and Sandinistas in revolutionary Nicaragua. The intended purposes of the book are to set the record straight regarding Protestant participation before, but primarily during, the period of Sandinista governance (1979–1990) and to call attention to the persecution Nicaraguan evangelicals suffered during the years of revolution. Smith’s main findings are as follows: (i) The scale of Protestant support during the insurrectionary period and the revolutionary years was smaller than previously estimated; (ii) stereotypes and mutual suspicion governed the relationship between evangelicals and Sandinistas; (iii) theological differences made for an impasse between the latter two actors, and as a result also fuelled the mistrust between them; and (iv) the legacy of Protestant persecution in Nicaraguan history assumed new heights during the Sandinista decade. To make his cases Smith relies on the extensive use of primary sources, including interviews, correspondence and historical documents connected to the period in question. He makes a strong case for putting into question the notion of Protestant support for the revolution. His claims that the Sandinista state was a totalitarian one and that it persecuted evangelicals are unconvincing. However, he brings to the fore a seldom-told dimension of revolutionary history in the Nicaragua of the 1980s because of the topic he explores. His detailing of the theological and social roots of Protestant and Sandinista antagonism from the perspective of both camps is significant and contributes to our socio-psychological understanding of revolutionary–counterrevolutionary dynamics. Smith begins by addressing the assumptions of unity that are associated with the view that Nicaraguan Protestants supported the revolution. Protestantism in Nicaraguan history, he shows, has never been monolithic. It has consisted of liberal and conservative variants, with the conservative variants (such classical Pentecostal groups as Assemblies of God (AoG) and Church of God) outpacing the liberal ones from the late 1970s. Support for the revolution, Smith argues, came from a Protestant minority, composed primarily of liberal Baptists, many of whom belonged to CEPAD (The Evangelical Committee for Aid and Development), and an even smaller number of dissenting Pentecostal pastors with small congregations. This Protestant minority was informed by Liberation Theology, and thus had an affinity with Sandinista ideology and its revolutionary agenda. It would be a mistake, Smith insists, to equate the revolutionary participation of these latter groups with wholesale Protestant Religion, State & Society, Vol. 38, No. 2, June 2010