Over the past thirty-five years the Brazilian Landless Workers
Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Latin America,
has become famous for its success in occupying land, winning land
rights, and developing alternative economic enterprises for over a
million landless workers. In Occupying Schools, Occupying Land,
Rebecca Tarlau explores how MST activists have pressured
municipalities, states, and the federal government to implement their
educational program in public schools and universities. Drawing on
twenty months of ethnographic field work, Tarlau documents how the
MST operates in different regions. She argues that activists are most
effective using contentious co-governance, combining disruption and
public protest with institutional pressure to defend and further
their goals. Through an examination of the potentials, constraints,
failures, and contradictions of the MST's educational struggle, this
book offers insights into the relationship between education and
social change, social movements and states, and the barriers and
possibilities for similar reforms in democratic contexts throughout
the world.
