Ideal interest mobilization: Explaining the formation of Brazil's landless social movement

This dissertation provides an account of the origins of one of the world's most remarkable peasant organizations and one of the longest sustaining social movements ever recorded in history: the Movement of Landless Rural Workers, best known by its acronym MST (in Portuguese, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra). The history of the MST is intimately entwined with the Catholic Church and the theology of liberation. Nowhere in the chronicle of world religion, has a predominant religious institution played as significant a role in support of land reform as has the Brazilian Church. This study offers a close review of the 1981–83 landless mobilization in Ronda Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state—a critical episode in the formation of the MST, Brazil's premier grassroots organization.; Theoretically, the thesis develops Max Weber's unexplored concept of ideal interest (or value rational) action to explain the drive propelling Brazil's land reform mobilizations, and clarify the convergence of Church and peasant actors. Weber's notion of ideal interest behavior—which involves the conscious and consistently planned orientation towards the fulfillment of an unconditional demand—offers a valuable heuristic tool for appraising religious, ethnic, nationalist and other patterns of value-oriented social action that usually display intense levels of human commitment.; Ideal interest mobilizations present the following qualities: (i) value-oriented behavior, rather than success-driven ones; (ii) a behavioral mode based on a fusion of striving and attaining, instead of optimizing; (iii) strong feelings propelling and resulting from social action; (iv) collective interaction powerfully altering individual calculus; (v) dense symbolic repertoires that stir courage and vitality; (vi) partnerships grounded on elective affinities, as opposed to strategic and instrumental alliances; and (vii) the observed presence of people acting as though they cannot be bought.; This study seeks to elevate the ideal interest concept into an explanatory mechanism for the social sciences. It places the term along with other well-known frameworks for understanding collective action—namely, the theories of rational choice, resource mobilization and political opportunities.