Occupying Schools, Occupying Land

Winner of the 2020 ASA Sociology of Development Book Award
Winner of the 2020 APSA Michael Harrington Book Award
Winner of the 2020 Comparative and International Education Society Globalization and Education Book Award
Winner of the 2020 Latin American Studies Association Brazil Section Best Book Prize in the Social Sciences
Winner of 2019 Robert Reis Best Book Award


Over the past thirty-five years the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Latin America, has become famous for its success in occupying land, winning land rights, and developing alternative economic enterprises for over a million landless workers. In Occupying Schools, Occupying Land, Rebecca Tarlau explores how MST activists have pressured municipalities, states, and the federal government to implement their educational program in public schools and universities. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic field work, Tarlau documents how the MST operates in different regions. She argues that activists are most effective using contentious co-governance, combining disruption and public protest with institutional pressure to defend and further their goals. Through an examination of the potentials, constraints, failures, and contradictions of the MST's educational struggle, this book offers insights into the relationship between education and social change, social movements and states, and the barriers and possibilities for similar reforms in democratic contexts throughout the world.