Violent Democracies in Latin America edited by Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel M. GoldsteinViolent Democracies in Latin America. by Enrique Desmond Arias; Daniel M. GoldsteinReview by: Magaly Sanchez RAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 116, No. 6 (May 2011), pp. 2042-2045Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660674 .

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American Journal of Sociology

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century historiographies to contemporary work by sociologists, genderscholars, and historians.

Criticism is difficult with regard to a book as well crafted and as en-joyable to read as this one. I would have appreciated knowing more aboutthe methods Gordillo employed. Were there any difficulties in the inter-viewing process or were all respondents as forthcoming as they seemedto be throughout the book? In addition, I wanted more structured infor-mation on the men interviewed for this study, as in the comprehensivetable for the women (pp. 62–65). Finally, one of the greatest strengths ofthe book—its historical span from the 1940s through the 2000s—some-times made it confusing to move back and forth in time with the author.

This extraordinary monograph, replete with rich ethnographic, archi-val, and oral history data, represents a valuable addition to the libraryof any scholar of migration, gender, or transnational studies. It would besuitable for graduate students or advanced undergraduates in topical sem-inars in sociology, history, or area studies. In sum, because it takes genderseriously with regard to the lives of both men and women, it is a welcomeaddition to a field of inquiry where the concept is often as segregated asthe sexes themselves.

Violent Democracies in Latin America. Edited by Enrique Desmond Ariasand Daniel M. Goldstein. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.Pp. viii�324. $24.95 (paper).

Magaly Sanchez RPrinceton University

Violent Democracies in Latin America is an edited book that containsseveral articles based on different national case studies. In the introduc-tion, the editors Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel M. Goldstein offera dense and complicated but nonetheless important contribution to ourunderstanding of violence in Latin American democracies. They arguethat the existence of armed actors and the constitution of democracies inLatin America stem from a complex relation of power, clandestine links,illegality, and hidden authoritarian regimes.

Arias and Goldstein introduce a new approach to understanding howLatin American democracies coexist with violence, proposing a new con-ceptualization of politics that recognizes the plural nature of contemporarydemocracies, in which the existence of violence does not necessarily in-dicate the failure of a regime. They consider the multiple ways in whichthe politics of violence concretely shape political national circumstancesand are fundamentally integrated into the production and maintenanceof “democratic transitions” throughout the region, as well as in the op-eration of democratic states and civil societies more generally.

Arias and Goldstein maintain that widespread violence in Latin Amer-

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ica is best understood not as a failure of institutions and democracy butas an integral element in the configuration of those institutions and as aninstrument for popular challenge to their legitimacy (p. 4). The authorsargue that Latin American democracies can be conceptualized as “vio-lently plural” (p. 4), with violence constituting a basic element in thefoundation of democratic states and the political behavior of democraticcitizens throughout the region. In this sense, violence is an instrumentthat allows democracies to remain in power despite the unpopularity oftheir neoliberal policies.

Arias and Goldstein use violent pluralism as a sociological and an-thropological concept to refer to cycles and continua of violence thatpresently characterize Latin American democracies and that constitute anindissoluble reality that links civil society, violent actors, and the state.This approach is intended to account for the new forms of political orderin Latin America without perceiving violence as democratic failure ordeviance from the established order, in contrast to a standard, develop-mental model of democracy. They call for interpreting the new democraticorder as being created by autonomous violent actors operating inside andoutside the political system. Violent pluralism refers to the paradox ofdynamic, democratic practices that elect certain actors to political powerwhile coexisting with other actors who are fighting for control of territoryand other groups in societies where corruption, oppression, and coerciveforms are necessary to maintain democracy.

In the book we find bright contributions with different country casesof violent plurality. In the analysis of the Mexican case, Diane E. Davisshows how police corruption, militarization, and recently the constitutionof private security corps have been ways in which politicians in powertried to establish or reestablish the order to govern. With the Colombiancase, Mary Roldan examines the violent pluralism in the trajectory of the“Oriente Nonviolence Movement” which emerged in the late 1990s ad-vocating for a neutral space of interaction for the discussion of politicaland economic alternatives to the conflict (p. 77). Marıa Clemencia Ramirezanalyzes how democracy in Colombia has been only possible with theexistence of a state of exception, allowing military and authoritarian actorsto impose a model that recognized two political parties, excluding othersthat later on become violent actors. In the Argentinean case, Javier Auyeroshows how in 2001 collective violence for food and squatters’ rights waspromoted under informal links between political parties, corrupt police,and inhabitant mobilization; and Ruth Stanley bases her analysis on thevictims of violence, showing brutalities by armed actors with detailedethnographic work. Lilian Bobea, with the Dominican case, examines theconnection between interpersonal violence and corporate violence andalso details the differences between the pandillas, naciones, and tigueresthat represent the violent actors in the barrios. She incorporates analysisof the Democratic Security Plan introduced in 2005. In the Rio de Janeirocase, Robert Gay shows how the violence in Brazil has increased due to

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the globalization of the illegal drug trade, intensifying the bloody warbetween armed violent actors, which then spread to youths in poor neigh-borhoods. Finally, Todd Landman’s article analyzes violence, showinghow democracies in the region have not controlled violence, resulting inan increase of human right claims in the region denouncing the legal,nonlegal, and nonstate violence practices.

From a sociological perspective, my major concerns with the centralargument are basic aspects of its conceptualization. I agree that currentunderstandings of how Latin American democracies function need moreflexibility than allowed by traditional theoretical approaches, which viewthe existence of violence only as indicating system failure. Defining politicsin Latin America as violent democracy is a dangerous argument, however,because it erases the history of human rights, peace mobilizations, andnonviolent democratic struggle in Latin America. Politicians should notbe corrupted and new policies should be vetted in civil society before theyare imposed by authoritarian means, and private security forces shouldnot emerge as a substitute for a national police force and judiciary.

Arias and Goldstein focus mainly on new or transitional democraciesin Latin America, and given the novelty of the democratic experience andpolitical life, relations between the state and violent political actors, le-gitimized or not, can be expected to disappear over time as political lifeevolves to a point where all groups peacefully participate. Understandingthe state’s “tolerance” of violent actors may be useful for students of LatinAmerican democracy, but another interpretation is that citizens have rec-onciled themselves with violence while searching for a better “quality oflife” in territories of fear and insecurity that lack institutional protections.It is dangerous to conclude that democracy in Latin America is onlypossible under conditions of violent pluralism, where state authoritiestolerate and integrate a variety of violent actors. One could argue thatthis line of thinking justifies violent actors as somehow “natural” andinevitable, and thus somehow functions as an apologia for continuingviolence.

Violent actions are not always the result of state coercion or state vi-olence, but emerge also from inequalities that have become increasinglycommon in Latin America, as evidenced by the rise of informal and illegalactivities. Violence has been growing in reaction to the imposition ofneoliberal economic schemes, drug control measures, and territorial pac-ification, and let us not forget that violence has also increasingly becomethe coeur of economic power (Magaly Sanchez R, “Insecurity and Violenceas a New Power Relation in Latin America,” Annals of the AmericanAcademy of Political and Social Science 606 [2006]: 178–95). Perhapsowing to the fact that Latin American societies have been constitutedthrough both formal and informal means from the beginning, not onlyin the creation of the physical habitat through urbanization but also inthe re-creation of survival activities, violence emerges as reactive oppo-sition in the game of legitimizing power. Far from a linear democratic

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progression, we should at least hope that violence can be replaced byother social mechanisms in which humankind advances through ideasrather than bullets and where young people have other opportunities otherthan short, violent lives connected to crime and murder.

Learning by Example: Imitation and Innovation at a Global Bank. ByDavid Strang. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp.xvi�284. $35.00.

Rosabeth Moss KanterHarvard University

David Strang’s Learning by Example is a case study of benchmarking atGlobal Financial, the pseudonym for a not-completely-disguised, NewYork–headquartered bank, one of the world’s largest. This case study isused to shed light on the diffusion of managerial innovations, organiza-tional learning, and organizational change.

The benchmarking program, called Team Challenge, was part ideasearch, part management development program. Between 1996 and 1998,166 high-potential employees were put into 21 teams for a month-longspecial assignment to study an issue, visit other companies for a day ormore, and make recommendations for Global Financial. The 13 issues,some studied by multiple teams, varied in ambiguity and complexity andhad minor to significant political implications.

Strang positions benchmarking as an effort to transcend the limits ofproximate social interaction in seeking ideas for improvement; the teammembers are “issue sellers in a conversation between middle and topmanagement” (p. 247). He studied the teams’ decision making in fine-grained detail through carefully crafted surveys and interviews, and withfield observations of one bankwide quality program. Strang found thatthe case for change was made through pointing to external successes butinternal failures. The benchmarking teams were more likely to recommendlearning from well-established programs of highly prestigious companiesin areas where the bank had little experience. Only a few recommenda-tions were implemented. Overall, Team Challenge had a greater impacton the individuals involved than on the bank. In 1998, when the bankwas acquired, the formal benchmarking program ended.

Learning by Example is an informed and engaging corrective for so-ciologists whose view of the diffusion of innovation is shaped by theoriesof the supposedly spontaneous magic of social networks or the almost-invisible hand of institutional imitation to gain legitimacy. A great dealof sociology is written in the passive voice. If there is intentionality, ittends to reside at the system, not the individual, level. But in Strang’ssophisticated critique of the literature and rendering of his case, intentionand agency loom large. Formal, officially sanctioned processes were es-

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