Based on in-depth interviews with 74 intellectuals of the Lefts in Cuba and Mexico, Reinventing Revolution explores the rapidly changing thinking of progressives on the big?and enduring?questions of democracy, economic alternatives, and national sovereignty. Offering a unique world-systems perspective on the sociology of intellectuals and ideology,

Based on in-depth interviews with 74 intellectuals of the Lefts in Cuba and Mexico, "Reinventing Revolution" explores the rapidly changing thinking of progressives on the big--and enduring--questions of democracy, economic alternatives, and national sovereignty. Offering a unique world-systems perspective on the sociology of intellectuals and ideology, Edward McCaughan concludes that the collapse of state socialism, the rise of neoliberalism, and accelerated economic globalization have deeply challenged the old paradigms of Latin America's socialist and nationalist lefts and have given rise to renovative ideas that defy both Marxist and liberal orthodoxies. The book's findings are relevant not only throughout Latin America but in Eastern Europe, Russia, South Africa, India, and other regions of the world where political, social, and intellectual forces continue to defy predictions about the "end of history." "Reinventing Revolution" will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Latin American politics and political theory, the sociology of intellectuals and ideology, and nationalism and revolution in the Third World.

"Art and Social Movements "offers a comparative, cross-border analysis of the role of visual artists in three social movements from the late 1960s through the early 1990s: the 1968 student movement and related activist art collectives in Mexico City, a Zapotec indigenous struggle in Oaxaca, and the Chicano movement in California. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, Edward J. McCaughan explores how artists helped to shape the identities and visions of a generation of Mexican and Chicano activists by creating new visual discourses.

McCaughan argues that the social power of activist artists emanates from their ability to provoke people to see, think, and act in innovative ways. Artists, he claims, help to create visual languages and spaces through which activists can imagine and perform new collective identities and forms of meaningful citizenship. The artists' work that he discusses remains vital today--in movements demanding fuller democratic rights and social justice for working people, women, ethnic communities, immigrants, and sexual minorities throughout Mexico and the United States. Integrating insights from scholarship on the cultural politics of representation with structural analyses of specific historical contexts, McCaughan expands our understanding of social movements.