posted on 2024-09-06, 07:19authored byPeter P. Houtzager
What modalities of legal change can social movements set in motion to diminish systemic and durable
forms of social exclusion? This paper focuses on the Movement of the Landless (MST) in Brazil, which
through a number of legal strategies has helped produce watershed high court rulings, contributed to the
process of constitutionalising law, and made access to land more equitable in parts of Brazil by redefining
property rights in practice. The paper explores legal change triggered by the strategic action through what
Bourdieu (1987) calls the juridical field. The MST has been successful in pushing forward legal change
through this field, I argue, for two broad reasons. First, it has a remarkable ability to concentrate the
talents of diverse juridical actors – lawyers, judges, law school professors – on defending its claims. This
ability has been built by mobilising across multiple fields, including the political, and not just in the
juridical field. Second, the movement’s capacity for strategic legal action, and the impact of such action,
has been contingent on substantial changes during the 1990s in both the social movement and juridical
fields triggered by the unfolding of the country’s democratic transition and shifts in the transnational
Catholic Church.
Keywords: access to justice, social movement, Movement of the Landless (MST), Brazil, property rights
History
Publisher
IDS
Citation
Houtzager, P.P. (2005) The Movement of the Landless (MST) and the juridical field in Brazil. Working paper series, 248. Brighton: IDS.