Market Justice

Market Justice explores the challenges for the new global left as it seeks to construct alternative means of societal organization. Focusing on Bolivia, Brent Z. Kaup examines a testing ground of neoliberal and counter-neoliberal policies and an exemplar of bottom-up globalization. Kaup argues that radical shifts towards and away from free market economic trajectories are not merely shaped by battles between transnational actors and local populations, but also by conflicts between competing domestic elites and the ability of the oppressed to overcome traditional class divides. Further, the author asserts that struggles against free markets are not evidence of opposition to globalization or transnational corporations. They should instead be understood as struggles over the forms of global integration and who benefits from them.

'Passionate, insightful, and careful, Brent Kaup's study reveals the many ways in which Bolivia's twenty-first-century experiment in capitalism is structured as much by earlier experiences of neoliberalism and the developmental state as by aspirations for some sort of post-neoliberal future … One of the most rigorous and scholarly accounts of the Morales regime available. A great piece of work.' Anthony Bebbington, Clark University, '… a definitive account of the past sixty years of political and economic history in Bolivia, exploring the dilemmas of underdevelopment and possibilities created by various forms of political change and popular resistance … a surprisingly evocative tale, beautifully written, bolstered by statistical tables and figures but also illustrated with photos and pithy, telling informant quotes from his recent fieldwork. A must-read … and its clever and accessible prose makes it attractive for teaching and course adoption, too.' David A. Smith, University of California, Irvine, and Editor, International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Brent Z. Kaup is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The College of William and Mary.