Arturo Escobar

Arturo Escobar is a Colombian anthropologist whose scholarship links development, political ecology, collective identity, and social movements. The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, published by Westview Press in 1992, was coedited with political scientist Sonia E. Alvarez. Its essays examine organizations and campaigns across several countries, asking how culture, strategy, autonomy, gender, and democratization shaped collective action during the 1980s. Escobar and Alvarez organized the volume around theory, case studies, and changing political horizons rather than presenting a single national history. The work belongs to Westview’s Series in Political Economy and Economic Development in Latin America and gathers contributions on Indigenous authorities, women’s organizations, urban movements, ecological activism, and other forms of mobilization. Both scholars served as editors, a role essential to understanding the book’s multi-author structure. The Making of Social Movements in Latin America also anticipates Escobar’s continuing attention to movements as producers of knowledge, identity, and alternatives to dominant development models.