Publications

One starting point for building a movement capable of unleashing multiple rounds of collective action is an incubator campaign—a period of widespread unrest around a particular issue that may last several months or longer. The mobilizing success of the incubator campaign provides the resource infrastructure for subsequent episodes of related movement activity in similar geographical locations, even years into the future. We test these assertions by examining immigrant rights campaign activity in over 260 cities in California between 2006 and 2019. The incubator campaign was positively associated with producing local-level collective action in a wide range of like-minded campaigns sustaining a larger immigrant rights movement in the state. The findings also suggest that an incubator campaign’s influence may eventually decay over time. Still, newly infused protest campaigns can reactivate immigrant activist momentum to counter ongoing hostile political environments faced by excluded populations.

Repressive and economic threats drive much of the popular mobilization in Central America, but those conditions need to be articulated to publics in a manner that emphasizes the need for collective action to ameliorate worsening harms. Examination of protest songs in both periods of heightened state repression (1970–1990) and heightened economic threats (1990–present) in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua demonstrates that musicians and cultural producers actively construct lyrics and musical styles that resonate with subaltern populations and encourage social movement participation in the face of state repression and neoliberal policy implementation.

Las amenazas represivas y económicas han inducido buena parte la movilización popular en Centroamérica, pero estas condiciones deben articularse ante los públicos de manera que enfaticen la necesidad de acción colectiva como respuesta a problemas cada vez más graves. Un análisis de las canciones de protesta pertenecientes a los períodos de mayor represión estatal (1970-1990), así como a aquellos con mayores amenazas económicas (1990 al presente) en Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras y Nicaragua demuestra que tanto músicos como productores culturales construyen activamente letras y estilos musicales que encuentren resonancia entre las poblaciones subalternas. Así fomentan la participación dentro de los movimientos sociales, aun frente a la represión estatal y la implementación de políticas neoliberales.