Eric Larson is a comparative scholar of race, labor, and social movements in the neoliberal Americas. He is author of Grounding Global Justice: Race, Class, and Grassroots Globalism in the U.S. and Mexico, which will be published by the University of California Press in September 2023. The book reconsiders the emergence of “anti-globalization” movements at the turn of the twenty-first century in the U.S. and Mexico. What does that moment mean for today, when Trumpism has once again centered the notion of globalization in political debates? By situating social movements amidst the twin forces of racialized criminalization and state-sponsored multiculturalism, the book details the way poor people helped challenge official understandings of globalization. Larson has published in Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, and the Labor Studies Journal, and his most recent work discusses racialized criminalization and social movements in southern Mexico (Oaxaca). He edited Jobs with Justice: 25 Years, 25 Voices (PM Press, 2013), a book to which he contributed a prologue. His work is informed by local justice struggles and popular education. At the university, Larson teaches courses on borders, criminalization, racism, social movements, and social theory. He also teaches in prison and leads a comparative justice studies course as a Study Abroad experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University in 2011.
This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a cruci... more This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a crucial tool for unions to respond to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a way that supports and respects its main demands. It suggests that unions are unlikely to answer the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization's (AFL-CIO) call for the labor movement to be "partners, allies, and fellow community members" of the BLM movement unless they recognize the structural nature of contemporary "colorblind racism" and confront the root causes of divergent attitudes about the fairness of the criminal justice system. Such causes include the long-standing associations of blackness with criminality and whiteness with innocence, which have long justified the punishment of black workers and the control of all U.S. workers. This article highlights the structural violence of mass incarceration, the spectacular violence of police murder, the symbolic violence of anti-black cultural production, and the sexual violence directed at black women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) blacks. Building on black feminist theory, it argues that labor education that foregrounds the interwoven histories of race and crime, and examines how racism works through class, gender, and other kinds of hierarchies, could serve to capacitate grassroots bridge-builders inside unions. The article suggests that the history of domestic work could be a particularly valuable way for labor educators to discuss the fundamental messages of the Movement for Black Lives.
Why did Mexico’s disruptive indigenous movement begin to fade during the ‘indigenous boom’ years ... more Why did Mexico’s disruptive indigenous movement begin to fade during the ‘indigenous boom’ years of the 1990s? Containing the influence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Oaxaca, a state with a large indigenous population and a long history of radicalism, had much to do with it. This article suggests that neoliberal multicultural reforms created a new formula for distinguishing an ‘indio permitido’ from its unauthorized Other and helped sideline one of the state’s most powerful indigenous coalitions, the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magón. By examining the cultural politics of Mexican divide-and-conquer strategies in a moment of insurgency, this article highlights how a tradition-and-transition mode of neoliberal governance emerged in Oaxaca in the 1990s. It divided and isolated a ‘participating’ indigenous subject from a protesting one, and played a key role in preventing the further consolidation of indigenous movements in southern Mexico.
To cite this article: Eric D. Larson (2018) Tradition and transition: neoliberal multiculturalism and the containment of indigenous insurgency in southern Mexico in the 1990s, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 13:1, 22-46.
How can the U.S. labor/left navigate – and confront – Trumpism and "America First" politics? This... more How can the U.S. labor/left navigate – and confront – Trumpism and "America First" politics? This article seeks to answer this and other questions by looking back to the 1980s, when a hauntingly similar form of white populism took shape in everyday politics.
This research examines the founding of Jobs with Justice, one of the most influential union-community coalitions of the post-New Deal order. More than two decades before the Occupy Movement mobilized scorn against the “One Percent,” and long before Trumpian populism advanced its nationalistic racism against outsiders, Jobs with Justice sought to re-direct populist ire away from a distant “Big Government” and toward “Big Corporations.” By marshalling the moral weight of family, community, and Middle America, the coalition’s vision of class and nation – driven by what I call "ambivalent Americanism" – both animated and blurred the antagonism between workers and “robber barons” the coalition so energetically developed. Ultimately, the labor-left’s nostalgic “Ode to the American Century” framework for understanding early neoliberal reform mostly reflected experiences of white breadwinners.
Scholars of the post-1968 transnational left have increasingly criticized liberal frameworks that... more Scholars of the post-1968 transnational left have increasingly criticized liberal frameworks that suggest that transnational politics fundamentally revolve around solidarity relationships between full-citizens of distinct nation-states. The literature on the movements that opposed US military and political intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s has also shifted to better illuminate the fundamental roles migrants, refugees, politically targeted activists, and minoritized groups have played in contesting US intervention, particularly in Central America. This article adds a layer to that discussion by examining how diasporic Puerto Rican activists helped galvanize anti-intervention movements in Boston in the 1980s. It shows how el Colectivo Puertorriqueño de Boston (the Puerto Rican Collective of Boston) developed what I call a politics of “anticolonial anti-intervention” that directly related empire “over there” to racialized colonialism in the urban US They grappled with what it meant to live in a colonial diaspora as they helped build anti-intervention organizing in Boston. They centered the demand for Puerto Rican independence, yet linked it to their resistance to US intervention elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean. They re-calibrated independentista visions of self-rule, including through an updated version of community control, in the Reagan era. In doing so, they challenged the implicitly white politics of rescue, aid, and de-racialized Marxism that prevailed in much of Boston’s anti-intervention movement.
This articles provides a glimpse of life in Oaxaca in the aftermath of the 2016 repression of the... more This articles provides a glimpse of life in Oaxaca in the aftermath of the 2016 repression of the Oaxaca education workers' (CNTE) struggle against neoliberal education reform. The education workers are known well beyond Mexico for their role in the Oaxaca insurgency of 2006 and the creation of the APPO (Popular Peoples' Assembly of Oaxaca).
Oaxaca’s education workers build on the struggles of 2006 to fight corporate-driven education ref... more Oaxaca’s education workers build on the struggles of 2006 to fight corporate-driven education reforms.
This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a cruci... more This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a crucial tool for unions to respond to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a way that supports and respects its main demands. It suggests that unions are unlikely to answer the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization's (AFL-CIO) call for the labor movement to be "partners, allies, and fellow community members" of the BLM movement unless they recognize the structural nature of contemporary "colorblind racism" and confront the root causes of divergent attitudes about the fairness of the criminal justice system. Such causes include the long-standing associations of blackness with criminality and whiteness with innocence, which have long justified the punishment of black workers and the control of all U.S. workers. This article highlights the structural violence of mass incarceration, the spectacular violence of police murder, the symbolic violence of anti-black cultural production, and the sexual violence directed at black women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) blacks. Building on black feminist theory, it argues that labor education that foregrounds the interwoven histories of race and crime, and examines how racism works through class, gender, and other kinds of hierarchies, could serve to capacitate grassroots bridge-builders inside unions. The article suggests that the history of domestic work could be a particularly valuable way for labor educators to discuss the fundamental messages of the Movement for Black Lives.
Why did Mexico’s disruptive indigenous movement begin to fade during the ‘indigenous boom’ years ... more Why did Mexico’s disruptive indigenous movement begin to fade during the ‘indigenous boom’ years of the 1990s? Containing the influence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Oaxaca, a state with a large indigenous population and a long history of radicalism, had much to do with it. This article suggests that neoliberal multicultural reforms created a new formula for distinguishing an ‘indio permitido’ from its unauthorized Other and helped sideline one of the state’s most powerful indigenous coalitions, the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magón. By examining the cultural politics of Mexican divide-and-conquer strategies in a moment of insurgency, this article highlights how a tradition-and-transition mode of neoliberal governance emerged in Oaxaca in the 1990s. It divided and isolated a ‘participating’ indigenous subject from a protesting one, and played a key role in preventing the further consolidation of indigenous movements in southern Mexico.
To cite this article: Eric D. Larson (2018) Tradition and transition: neoliberal multiculturalism and the containment of indigenous insurgency in southern Mexico in the 1990s, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 13:1, 22-46.
How can the U.S. labor/left navigate – and confront – Trumpism and "America First" politics? This... more How can the U.S. labor/left navigate – and confront – Trumpism and "America First" politics? This article seeks to answer this and other questions by looking back to the 1980s, when a hauntingly similar form of white populism took shape in everyday politics.
This research examines the founding of Jobs with Justice, one of the most influential union-community coalitions of the post-New Deal order. More than two decades before the Occupy Movement mobilized scorn against the “One Percent,” and long before Trumpian populism advanced its nationalistic racism against outsiders, Jobs with Justice sought to re-direct populist ire away from a distant “Big Government” and toward “Big Corporations.” By marshalling the moral weight of family, community, and Middle America, the coalition’s vision of class and nation – driven by what I call "ambivalent Americanism" – both animated and blurred the antagonism between workers and “robber barons” the coalition so energetically developed. Ultimately, the labor-left’s nostalgic “Ode to the American Century” framework for understanding early neoliberal reform mostly reflected experiences of white breadwinners.
Scholars of the post-1968 transnational left have increasingly criticized liberal frameworks that... more Scholars of the post-1968 transnational left have increasingly criticized liberal frameworks that suggest that transnational politics fundamentally revolve around solidarity relationships between full-citizens of distinct nation-states. The literature on the movements that opposed US military and political intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s has also shifted to better illuminate the fundamental roles migrants, refugees, politically targeted activists, and minoritized groups have played in contesting US intervention, particularly in Central America. This article adds a layer to that discussion by examining how diasporic Puerto Rican activists helped galvanize anti-intervention movements in Boston in the 1980s. It shows how el Colectivo Puertorriqueño de Boston (the Puerto Rican Collective of Boston) developed what I call a politics of “anticolonial anti-intervention” that directly related empire “over there” to racialized colonialism in the urban US They grappled with what it meant to live in a colonial diaspora as they helped build anti-intervention organizing in Boston. They centered the demand for Puerto Rican independence, yet linked it to their resistance to US intervention elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean. They re-calibrated independentista visions of self-rule, including through an updated version of community control, in the Reagan era. In doing so, they challenged the implicitly white politics of rescue, aid, and de-racialized Marxism that prevailed in much of Boston’s anti-intervention movement.
This articles provides a glimpse of life in Oaxaca in the aftermath of the 2016 repression of the... more This articles provides a glimpse of life in Oaxaca in the aftermath of the 2016 repression of the Oaxaca education workers' (CNTE) struggle against neoliberal education reform. The education workers are known well beyond Mexico for their role in the Oaxaca insurgency of 2006 and the creation of the APPO (Popular Peoples' Assembly of Oaxaca).
Oaxaca’s education workers build on the struggles of 2006 to fight corporate-driven education ref... more Oaxaca’s education workers build on the struggles of 2006 to fight corporate-driven education reforms.
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Papers by Eric Larson
To cite this article: Eric D. Larson (2018) Tradition and transition: neoliberal multiculturalism and the containment of indigenous insurgency in southern Mexico in the 1990s, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 13:1, 22-46.
This research examines the founding of Jobs with Justice, one of the most influential union-community coalitions of the post-New Deal order. More than two decades before the Occupy Movement mobilized scorn against the “One Percent,” and long before Trumpian populism advanced its nationalistic racism against outsiders, Jobs with Justice sought to re-direct populist ire away from a distant “Big Government” and toward “Big Corporations.” By marshalling the moral weight of family, community, and Middle America, the coalition’s vision of class and nation – driven by what I call "ambivalent Americanism" – both animated and blurred the antagonism between workers and “robber barons” the coalition so energetically developed. Ultimately, the labor-left’s nostalgic “Ode to the American Century” framework for understanding early neoliberal reform mostly reflected experiences of white breadwinners.
Public Writing by Eric Larson
Books by Eric Larson
To cite this article: Eric D. Larson (2018) Tradition and transition: neoliberal multiculturalism and the containment of indigenous insurgency in southern Mexico in the 1990s, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 13:1, 22-46.
This research examines the founding of Jobs with Justice, one of the most influential union-community coalitions of the post-New Deal order. More than two decades before the Occupy Movement mobilized scorn against the “One Percent,” and long before Trumpian populism advanced its nationalistic racism against outsiders, Jobs with Justice sought to re-direct populist ire away from a distant “Big Government” and toward “Big Corporations.” By marshalling the moral weight of family, community, and Middle America, the coalition’s vision of class and nation – driven by what I call "ambivalent Americanism" – both animated and blurred the antagonism between workers and “robber barons” the coalition so energetically developed. Ultimately, the labor-left’s nostalgic “Ode to the American Century” framework for understanding early neoliberal reform mostly reflected experiences of white breadwinners.