The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-class Revolt: Comparative Insights from Argentina

Adopting Argentina’s popular uprisings against neoliberalism including the 2001-02 rebellion and subsequent mass protests as a case study, The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt analyzes two decades of longitudinal research (1995-2018), including World Bank and Latinobarómeter household survey data, along with participant interviews, to explore why nonpolitically active middle-class citizens engage in radical protest movements, and why they eventually demobilize. In particular it asks, how do they become politicized and resist economic and political crises, along with their own hardship?

Theoretically informed by Gramsci’s notions of hegemony, ideology and class consciousness, Ozarow posits that to affect profound and lasting social change, multisectoral alliances and sustainable mobilizing vehicles are required to maintain radical progressive movements beyond periods of crisis. With the Argentinian revolt understood to be the ideological forbearer to the autonomist-inspired uprisings which later emerged, comparisons are drawn with experiences in the USA, Spain, Greece UK, Iceland and the Middle East, as well as 1990s contexts in South Africa and Russia. Such a comparative analysis helps understand how contextual factors shape distinctive struggling middle-class citizen responses to external shocks.

This book will be of immense value to students, activists and theorists of social change in North America, in Europe and globally.

Daniel Ozarow is a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, London. He is Chair of the Argentina Research Network and Co-editor of two books: Argentina since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering Reclaiming the Future (2014) and De la Crisis de 2001 al Kirchnerismo: Cambios y Continuidades (2016). He researches on comparative citizen responses to financial crises in Europe and Latin America, workers’ self-management, cooperatives, alternative postcrisis production models, transnational labor movements, and how both personal and national debt is resisted. Daniel has recently been published in academic journals, such as Economy and Society, Sociology, Labor History and Latin American Research Review. He blends his academic research with political activism and is Chair of Jubilee Debt Campaign’s Academic Advisory Network and a member of Action for Argentina UK. He regularly features as a political commentator on British and Argentinian affairs and has appeared on television, radio and newspapers, including Telesur, C5N, Al Jazeera, TN, Radio Nacional Argentina, The Conversation, Labour Briefing, Telam and Open Democracy.