Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India: Popular Mobilisation in the Long Depression

Abstract

This review of Jörg Nowak’s Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India highlights the book’s ambition and hopefulness. It ambitiously explores an area of labor- and social-movement theory in which powerful minds have offered insights but important leaps forward are necessary to make sense of the current moment. The book is additionally ambitious because it tackles recent phenomena in two disparate, enormously complex, and influential countries: Brazil and India. The book is hopeful in its identification of patterns and openings, seen through the lens of mass strikes in these countries, by which working classes might lead a transition from the current “long depression” into a more socially just and equitable socialist future.