Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez's Venezuela (review)

Hugo Chávez and his national project are often described as anti-neoliberal. Fernandes, however, argues that the term post-neoliberal is a more appropriate descriptor of the state in Venezuela than anti-neoliberal. She explains that while many state agencies under Chávez have undergone a change in policy toward a more anti-neoliberal, pro-poor agenda, they continue to make decisions based on market logic. Consequently, she claims a hybrid state has emerged — a state that challenges the neoliberal order, but at the same time remains subject to the constraints of global capital.

Fernandes' book is a well-researched account of life in the barrios of Caracas. Through ethnography, interviews and archival research, she pieces together a historically grounded account of urban social movements and their changing relationship to the state. She effectively employs her ethnographic and interview data so that the reader can visualize life in the barrio, the challenges the residents confront and the impressive, creative activity underway today. This book addresses a number of distinct topics, weaving them together into a cohesive argument. She describes the efforts of barrio residents to reclaim public space that disappeared as a result of neoliberal policies and their impact. She explains how the light-skinned middle class have appropriated the term civil society in Venezuela, pitted themselves against the state and excluded the darker-skinned, lower-class barrio residents, many of whom support the government's project. In turn, the excluded have formed an urban cultural identity through the transplantation of popular fiestas from their rural roots to urban areas and projected this new identity barrio-wide through the creation of community media. This identity has been used as the basis for forging urban-rural coalitions that have challenged the state to live up to its anti-neoliberal agenda. And, finally, she describes the conflicts that emerged between the state and barrio residents as a result of the market logic infused in the projects and approach of the state, as well as the state's attempt to use culture as a tool of political integration and community development rather than valuing culture in and of itself.

Fernandes' ethnographic research took place for the most part within the barrio, not within the state. While she does an excellent job at describing the contradictions within the state between market utilitarian rationalities and its anti-neoliberal position, without first doing an ethnographic study from within the state it seems a stretch to conclude that the forces of global capital are the main factor shaping the market-based approach of the state in the realm of culture. Fernandes refers at several points to the demands of foreign investors as shaping the contradictory behavior of the state in its administration of culture and media, but does not provide detailed examples of how exactly foreign investors have put pressure on the state to act in certain ways. The demands of global capital may be an important factor in shaping the actions of the state, but there are other possible factors as well. For example, it could be that the hegemony of the market ideology has so thoroughly permeated the universities, the mainstream media and the state that actors within the state are accustomed to seeing goals and solutions through this lens.

Fernandes unearths not only the complex dynamics within the state, but also the complexities within popular movements. In her account of a national network of community media organizations, she points out that some of the same dynamics that plague the government existed within this network as well. She found that decision-making was centralized in Caracas and was often dominated by men, bringing into question how truly participatory the community-based organization was. Similarly, in her examination of the reclaiming of the Alameda Theater by the community, she shows how a corrupt clique took over the administration of the theater and the funds it...