Table of Contents

Introduction: Rising powers, people rising: neo-liberalization and its discontents in the BRICS countries

Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Karl von Holdt

1. China’s precariats

Ching Kwan Lee

2. Social mobilizations and the question of social justice in contemporary Russia

Karine Clement

3. Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa

Karl von Boldt and Prishani Naidoo

4. Uncovering a politics of livelihoods: analysing displacement and contention in contemporary India

Gayatri A. Menon and Aparna Sundar

5. A precarious hegemony: neoliberalism, social struggles, and the end of Lulismo in Brazil

Ruy Braga and Sean Purdy

6. Neo-development of underdevelopment: Brazil and the political economy of South American integration under the Workers’ Party

Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos

About the Author

Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on the political economy of democracy and development in the Global South. His most recent books are Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India’s Bhil Heartland (2018) and Indian Democracy: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations (2019).

Karl von Holdt is Professor in the Society, Work and Politics Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. Publications include Transition from Below: Forging Trade Unionism and Workplace Change in South Africa; Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment (with Michael Burawoy); and Beyond the Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition, co-edited with Edward Webster, as well as numerous articles. His research interests centre on movements, democracy, corruption, and violence.