{"id":1347,"date":"2023-02-11T16:39:25","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T21:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/?p=1347"},"modified":"2023-02-11T16:39:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T21:39:46","slug":"1347","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/2023\/02\/1347\/","title":{"rendered":"Toonder Response to The Sovereign Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia<\/em>, a major theme that I engaged the most with was the relationship between social roles, landscapes, and the capacity for protest actions. The ingenuity of the Bolivian people within urban areas allows them to adapt to and embrace the space around them, resulting in blockages in the city and protests on the streets. By determining \u201cmeaning-laden spaces (whose meaning is part of the racial and political geography of the city),\u201d grassroots activists enact practical and symbolic control, amplifying their impact and sending a message to the government that is difficult to ignore (11). Before reading this book, I was not very familiar with Bolivian social movements, so by following Dr. Carwil Bjork-James\u2019 methods, I quickly came to realize how they\u00a0achieved their title as \u201cthe Latin American country with the highest level of protest participation\u201d (24). Furthermore, based on our class discussions of ethnographic techniques, I was able to connect their practices of political action to the field work required to engage with and comment on\u00a0the peoples\u2019 efforts (24). I had not thought about how such movements are enacted, so it was useful to read the author\u2019s discussion of why alliances must be made to shut down a city, as one organization alone is often not sufficient. Logistically, \u201ctransport workers were the only sector to mount a paralyzing mobilization on their own\u201d because of their access to \u201cother people\u2019s circulation network\u201d (99). From my background in wildlife conservation research and advocacy, I value the interdisciplinary efforts required to promote \u201cmass participation\u201d and maintain the connections necessary to\u00a0attract attention to an important issue (99).<\/span><\/p>\n

I also want to address the author\u2019s commentary on racialized and gendered politics in Bolivia that exclude people from positions of power. Whereas, \u201cSpecific bodies have been constructed out of the imagination of authority,\u201d it is striking when \u201cno-longer-subordinate people enter the exclusive space or take on the forbidden role. Transgression of boundaries arouses powerful emotions, which can include fear, anxiety, disorientation, and revulsion\u201d (153). This way, not only the peoples\u2019 message, but the number of participants and demographic of \u201cout-of-place bodies\u201d must be \u201camplified in importance.. to [effectively] threaten the structure of division altogether\u201d (153).<\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia, a major theme that I engaged the most with was the relationship between social roles, landscapes, and the capacity for protest actions. The ingenuity of the Bolivian people within urban … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1349,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions\/1349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}