Cultures in Conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru

This ethnography set in contemporary Peru provides an analysis of the making and unmaking of class consciousness among the urban poor. Its research strategy is multifaceted; through interviews, participant observation, and survey research it digs deeply into the popular culture of the social activists and shantytown residents it studies. The result is a penetrating look at how social movements evolve, how poor people construct independent political cultures and how the ideological domination of oppressed classes can shatter. The book chronicles the transformation of Peru’s poor from a culture of deference and clientelism in the late 1960s to a population mobilized for radical political action today.