Dealing with Peace: The Guatemalan Campesino Movement and the Post-Conflict Neoliberal State

Review

"The depth and breadth of the knowledge displayed in Dealing with Peace is striking. Drawing upon years of involvement with the Guatemalan people, in addition to formal fieldwork, Simon Granovsky-Larsen reveals impressive insights and represents an engaged researcher, winning the confidence of embattled peasant communities in a country that continues to be racked by violence." -- Laura Macdonald, Department of Political Science and Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University

"Theoretically informed, methodologically ambitious, and qualitatively rich, Dealing with Peace serves as a model for critical scholarship. Granovsky-Larsen demonstrates that the personal is political and that recognizing our subjectivity and solidarity with our research community is a strength, not a weakness." -- Catherine Nolin, Department of Geography, University of Northern British Columbia


Product Description

Dealing with Peace presents the struggles of the Guatemalan campesino (peasant) social movement during the country’s post-conflict transition from 1996 to the present, focusing on efforts to obtain land and improve livelihoods within a shifting, yet consistently hostile, political-economic environment. With special focus on the relationship between the movement and the neoliberal state, Simon Granovsky-Larsen asks whether the acceptance of neoliberal resources – in this case, support for land access in Guatemala provided by the World Bank-funded Fondo de Tierras – reduces the potential for social movements to continue to work for transformative change.
Positioned in contrast to studies warning that social movements cannot maintain their original vision after accepting such support, this bookargues that organizations within the Guatemalan campesino movement have engaged strategically with neoliberalism, utilizing available resources to advance visions of social change. Using a wealth of primary data collected over more than a year of fieldwork, it contributes significantly to the study of Guatemalan politics and advances understandings of the grounded operation of neoliberalism. Exploring both the dynamics of a national neoliberal transition and the ways in which these play out within civil society, Dealing with Peace reveals the long-term and often contradictory negotiation of political and economic transitions.

About the Author

Simon Granovsky-Larsen is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina.