What is ephemera: theory & politics in organization? ephemera is an independent journal, founded in 2001. ephemera provides its content free of charge, and charges its readers only with free thought. theory ephemera encourages contributions that explicitly engage with theoretical and conceptual understandings of organizational issues, organizational processes and organizational life. This does not preclude empirical studies or commentaries on contemporary issues, but such contributions consider how theory and practice intersect in these cases. We especially publish articles that apply or develop theoretical insights that are not part of the established canon of organization studies. ephemera counters the current hegemonization of social theory and operates at the borders of organization studies in that it continuously seeks to question what organization studies is and what it can become. politics ephemera encourages the amplification of the political problematics of organization within academic debate, which today is being actively de- politized by the current organization of thought within and without universities and business schools. We welcome papers that engage the political in a variety of ways as required by the organizational forms being interrogated in a given instance. organization Articles published in ephemera are concerned with theoretical and political aspects of organizations, organization and organizing. We refrain from imposing a narrow definition of organization, which would unnecessarily halt debate. Eager to avoid the charge of ‘anything goes’ however, we do invite our authors to state how their contributions connect to questions of organization and organizing, both theoretical and practical. ephemera 20(1), Feb 2020 América Latina / Latin America: Again (and again) Maria Ceci Misoczky, Paulo RZ Abdala and Steffen Böhm Published by the ephemera editorial collective: Bernadette Loacker, Birke Otto, Christian Garmann Johnsen, Christos Giotitsas, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Emil Husted, Helen Delaney, Justine Grønbæk Pors, Jette Sandager, Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając, Kenneth Weir, Konstantin Stoborod, Lena Olaison, Lisa Conrad, Márton Rácz, Mie Plotnikof, Nick Butler, Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar, Randi Heinrichs, Rowland Curtis. First published for free online at www.ephemerajournal.org. ISSN (Online) 1473-2866 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Cover credits: Grafitti on Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires by Red Sudakas, L. Quinto, S. Candori and Fileteadores del Conurbano (2017); edition by Paulo Abdala on photos by Diego Szlechter. Table of Contents Editorial América Latina / Latin America: Again (and again) 1-16 Maria Ceci Misoczky, Paulo RZ Abdala and Steffen Böhm Articles The two faces of the common? Communal forms of government from below as counter-hegemonic alternatives 17-49 José Francisco Puello-Socarrás and Carolina Jiménez Martín Movimento das Comunidades Populares: A Brazilian uchronic utopia 51-89 Mariana Affonso Penna From the picket to the women’s strike: Expanding the meaning of labor struggles in Argentina 91-115 Liz Mason-Deese Methodologies of resistance: Facilitating solidarity across difference in inter-movement encounters 117-145 Johanna Leinius Grassroots media activism and the counter-hegemonic narrative of politics 147-175 Antonio Claudio Engelke Menezes Teixeira América Latina siglo XXI: Golpes, derechos y cientificidio 177-209 Nuria Giniger and Rocco Carbone Reviews The protagonism of social movements transforming the world as we know it... 211-222 Guilherme Dornelas Camara Rethinking workers self-activity and mobilization: Solidarity as the foundational moment 223-231 Fernando Nichterwitz Scherer and Fabiano Milano Fritzen A critical theory of hope 233-239 Lara Monticelli the author(s) 2020 ISSN 1473-2866 (Online) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 20(1) América Latina / Latin America: Again (and again) Maria Ceci Misoczky, Paulo RZ Abdala and Steffen Böhm In 2006, ephemera published its first special issue dedicated to Latin America. It aimed ‘to inform readers across the globe about the organization of the ongoing struggles and resistances and the tensions lived and experienced by so many Latin Americans’. We tried to make present the multiplicity of social movements on the continent, avoiding ‘a naïve monovoice and an over-optimistic view of the intensity of movements throughout the continent’ (Misoczky, 2006: 228). Our intention was to bring organisation studies closer to the daily realities of the struggles in grassroots social movements, putting our finger on what we regard as a sore area of neglect in our field. Perhaps surprisingly, ephemera, or any other organization studies oriented journals from the Global North, has not published a special issue dedicated on Latin America nor on any other regions located in the Global South since then. In fact, the only other dedicated issue on Latin America appeared in Organization in the same year (Ibarra-Colado, 2006). Our field, it seems, remains as Eurocentric as ever, if we consider eurocentrism as the underlying politico-economic and cultural modus operandi of globalization (Dussel and Ibarra-Colado, 2006). Yet, to make such a statement is perhaps itself Eurocentric. There are plenty of organization studies journals that many Global North readers may have editorial | 1 ephemera: theory & politics in organization 20(1) never heard of. Administración y Organizaciones from Mexico and Organizações & Sociedade from Brazil are just two examples. The multiplicity of organizational perspectives from around the world is astonishing, if one dares to explore and see it. Yet, academic careers in the North are made on the back of publishing in ‘prestigious’, highly ranked journals, most of which are located in countries of the Global North, edited by those employed in the ‘leading’ universities of the North. The institutional blindness towards academic diversity and otherness is astonishing – even amongst so-called ‘critical’ voices in academia. Of course, there are exceptions. Some journals, such as critical perspectives on international business, have made honest attempts to reach out to the Global South. EGOS has tried to establish the LAEMOS ‘brand’ in Latin America, which, however, ended in controversy and accusations of Eurocentric domination through the back-door (Laemos, 2018). So, the problem of Eurocentrism has certainly been recognised by the field, but ‘we’ are arguably very far away from actually doing anything about it. ‘We’, and any other voice that speaks, has to be problematized right from the start. We, the editors of this special issue, have ourselves been involved in this journal, ephemera, as well as the wider, interdisciplinary field of organization studies. We are also to blame, even though, over the years, we have tried to shift the field towards a more equal perspective of organization around the globe. It is not even about blaming. It is about strategies for emancipation. The call for papers that resulted in this special issue was made in the context of a crisis that started in 2015 and 2016 with the victories of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, the rise of the opposition coalition in the Venezuelan National Assembly, the parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and the candidacy of Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, followed by his election and the following rupture with the movement led by Rafael Correa. Stolowicz (2017) indicates that the understanding of this situation demands an analysis that problematizes the relationship between economy and politics, between economy and the reconfiguration of the social, and between this reconfiguration of the social and its political-ideological effects. Of course, this kind of analysis must consider the internal specificities of each country, as well as the impact of the capitalist crisis. This exceeds the remit of this 2 | editorial Ceci Misoczky, RZ Abdala and Böhm América Latina / Latin America brief introduction to this special issue. Instead, what we want to emphasize is that the current political scenario is an evidence that there are political, economic, cultural – and organizational – issues that appear in the Latin American context again and again. Hence, there are obvious connections between the two special ephemera issues on Latin America. Connecting the special issues: 2006 and 2019 Organization, as a necessity to achieve emancipation and liberation, was indeed the underlying connecting theme amongst the articles of the original ephemera special issue on Latin America, published in 2006 (Misoczky, 2006). Directly addressing this issue, Mazzeo (2006) criticized the institution / social movement dichotomy, which expresses the opposition between conservatism-bureaucratization and change-horizontality. His paper offered a reflection and practice that allowed him to move towards a dialectic relationship between social organization and political movement, a relationship that transforms each part and gives rise to something different. What this paper and many others in that special issue showed is that ‘organization’ cannot be reduced to a narrow institutionalism, nor can it be simply seen within a social movement frame. Along similar lines, the original special issue featured an article by Ramirez (2006) who wrote