Social movements beyond the iron cage: weak links in territorial development

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Social movements beyond the iron cage: weak links in territorial development Part of the Special Issue on “Social Movements and the Dynamics of Rural Development in Latin America” – Accepted to be published in

World Development Ricardo Abramovay Professor in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Administration at the University of São Paulo, holder of the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Chair at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and researcher for the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CNPq), Brazil. www.econ.fea.usp.br/abramovay/ Reginaldo Magalhães PhD student of the Environmental Program of the University of São Paulo. reginaldo-sm@uol.com.br Mônica Schröder Doctor in Social Sciences (State University of Campinas). m.schroder@uol.com.br

Summary. - The incentives and governance system of organizations are important in explaining how they behave in localized development processes. This article builds on the observation that the literature on territorial development does not generally address the action of social movements. At the same time, research on social movements rarely studies their effects on the territories in which they act. This text is a contribution to fill this gap. It compares two social movement organizations, a trade union federation and a credit cooperative system operating throughout southern Brazil. Both organizations share common origins and social bases, yet their impacts on territories have been quite different. The analysis focuses on the social ties that link trade unions and cooperatives to their territories to show that governance systems may explain the performance of each organization, especially with regard to their capacity for innovation. Key words: Organizations; family farmers; credit cooperatives; trade unions.

1. Introduction Localized development processes do not spring from the spontaneous and mechanical evolution of "market forces." Rather, they are shaped by actors, by way of 1


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