Tag: Venezuelan

Communes and the Venezuelan State The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis


Free Download Anderson Bean, "Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis "
English | ISBN: 179364084X | 2022 | 172 pages | EPUB, PDF | 2 MB + 5 MB
Since 2006, Venezuela has witnessed an explosion of different forms of popular power and participatory democracy. Over 47,000 grassroots neighborhood-based communal councils and 3,000 communes have been constructed. In Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis, Anderson Bean offers a critical analysis of these experiments in popular and workers’ power and their potential for societal transformation within and beyond Venezuela. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Bean demonstrates how workers and peasants, through networks of popular power, exercise agency over their own development while facing challenges from the capitalist state. Most importantly, this book connects with the far-reaching implications that the communal movement in Venezuela has for building a society responsive more to the needs of ordinary people than to the desires of the elites.

(more…)

Venezuelan Stick Fighting The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts


Free Download Michael J. Ryan, "Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts"
English | ISBN: 1498533205 | 2016 | 186 pages | EPUB | 4 MB
In Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts, Michael J. Ryan examines the modern and historical role of the secretive tradition of stick fighting within rural Venezuela. Despite profound political and economic changes from the early twentieth century to the modern day, traditional values, practices, and social imaginaries associated with older forms of masculinity and sociality are still valued. Stick, knife, and machete fighting are understood as key means of instilling the values of fortitude and cunning in younger generations. Recommended for scholars of anthropology, social science, gender studies, and Latin American studies.

(more…)