This chapter discusses the ways in which collective identity fuels mobilization in Chile’s urban margins. It looks at how activists’ cohesiveness and their differentiation from other social actors produce a mobilizing identity that advances contentious politics. The chapter draws on participant observations and interviews to outline the contents and dynamics of political consciousness production in Santiago’s urban margins. In their interactions, activists wield discourses of informality and marginality to strengthen a sense of pride in their neighborhood that is immune to hegemonic narratives of stigmatization. The thick boundaries that local activists use to promote mobilization depend on them dynamically differentiating between two realms of collective experience: the formal and the informal. On the one hand, the informal represents the protected sphere of confidence and close connections within neighborhood organizations. Activism works as a way of keeping the informal alive. The formal, on the other hand, is seen as a threat that motivates protective collective action. Finally, the chapter shows how activists’ reactive and defensive mobilization generates a sense of self-determination.

To what extent can an ethnographic sensibility enhance comparison? We argue that approaching comparison with an ethnographic sensibility – that is, being sensitive to how informants make sense of their worlds and incorporating meaning into our analyses – can strengthen comparative qualitative research. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility would enhance the quality of scholarly arguments by incorporating the processes through which actors ascribe meanings to their lived experiences and the political processes in which they are enmeshed. Because social science arguments often involve accounts of individual actors’ interests, ideas, or impressions, it is imperative to place such cognitive arguments in a broader cultural context. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility requires attention not only to that context but also to the political and social meanings which make that context intelligible. We elaborate these arguments through the lens of two comparative ethnographic works: a study of political mobilization in Bolivia and Mexico and a study of vigilantism in two South African townships.

Given the relative dominance of positivist epistemologies in political science, the most common mode of comparison is that of variation finding. Although such models can take many forms, the objective is to identify what factors or variables differ across the cases as a means to explain that variation. But other modes of comparative analysis are available. In particular, Charles Tilly’s notion of encompassing comparisons – examining similarities and differences across cases while recognizing that they are inextricably connected or related to some larger whole – may be a better model for explaining long-term political processes, such as state formation, colonialism, capitalism, or even the spread of massive protests across a large number of cases. In this chapter, I develop an encompassing comparison of the Arab uprisings. The approach does not see the uprisings as individual cases whose diverse outcomes yearn for explanation but rather as instances of mass resistance to larger, transnational processes, notably including securitization and neoliberalism. This is not to suggest that these processes caused the uprisings. But the idea is to explore the ways in which the different governments were connected to these larger processes and networks and the extent to which those supranational factors help explain the outcomes of the individual cases.

This chapter analyzes the dramatic expansion of social policy to traditionally unprotected labor-market outsiders (i.e. the informal sector, unemployed, rural workers and dependents) in Latin America. Comprising between 40 and 80 percent of the regional population, outsiders had been historically marginalized from social protection. Focusing on the countries analyzed in Shaping the Political Arena (Collier and Collier 1991) it asks, why did incumbents adopt social policy for outsiders? Why did some expand broad-reaching, nondiscretionary benefits while others refrained from launching significant protections or launched discretionary benefits? The political regime type as well as the presence of either electoral competition for the vote of outsiders or social mobilization by movements representing outsiders and labor unions help explain whether expansion occurred and what pattern of social policy emerged. Moreover, among governments that expanded nondiscretionary and broad-reaching policies, some created more generous and encompassing inclusive benefits in which groups often participated in policy implementation, while others provided more restrictive benefits, with less coverage, lower benefits, and bureaucratic implementation. I show that the balance of partisan power and the involvement of social movements in policy design accounts for whether inclusive or restrictive benefits were launched across three areas – pensions, healthcare, and income support.