Santiago Anria Q&A
What is your research about?
I study the relationships between social movements, labor unions, and political parties in Latin America. My work shows that these relationships are a key explanatory factor in shaping political and socio-economic outcomes, such as the creation of new forms of democratic representation and the expansion of social citizenship rights.
My first book, When Movements Become Parties, shows that independent organizations representing workers are central to understanding party-building processes. It also emphasizes the strength and autonomy of movement/union actors to prevent parties from becoming top-down and oligarchic in operation by examining three prominent leftist political parties in Latin America. My current book project is more macro-level and comparative-historical in orientation and traces the trajectories and societal grounding of seven leftist parties in power in Latin America. A second project in the works studies the role of social movements in the defense of previous inclusionary gains.
How did you become interested in your field?
When I was an undergraduate student in Argentina in the early 2000s, the country was engulfed in social protest. Several neighboring countries were experiencing mass social protests as well. I became interested not only in the protest dynamics but how they translated into institutional arenas. I began to study that question more systematically a few years later when I was writing my master’s thesis on the rise of Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism – a political party that emerged as the institutional expression of a coca growers union, and one remarkably effective at translating social mobilization into electoral mobilization and state power.
What impact do you hope your research will have?
I hope my research can generate insight into how subordinate actors (those with no privilege or power) in highly unequal contexts move from the streets and the workplace into formal arenas of representation – arenas where elections are contested, governments are formed, and resources are allocated through public policy. I also hope that some of my current work helps us understand how those groups can mobilize to defend policies that seek to promote inclusion against conservative rollbacks. Efforts to roll back inclusionary gains are at the heart of contemporary attacks on democracy globally, so I think this is an especially pressing question today.
What attracted you to the ILR School?
The opportunity to join a diverse intellectual community that is concerned about substantive questions about labor and work – a community focused on a theme at the core of my own research on labor-based forms of representation but open to different disciplines and methodological traditions. My new academic department, Global Labor and Work, is also a perfect blend of my interests. It values comparative and historically grounded analyses, the approaches that have influenced my own intellectual development the most.
What are you most excited for about your time at ILR?
In my research, I seek to build strong analytical bridges between political science, which tends to focus on formal institutional arenas, and sociology, which is more open to the study of social actors and networks. I’m eager to deepen these connections and build broader synergies between my colleagues’ cognate fields and my own. I’m also excited to work with undergraduate and graduate students who are pushing the research frontiers in the study of labor and work.
Cornell’s “Any Person, Any Study” ethos – how will you be part of that?
My courses serve as my inclusionary campaign: to make everyone an informed and globally aware citizen through the study of comparative politics and societies. I tend to think that in my classes, like in Cornell’s “Any Person, Any Study” motto, there’s something for everyone.
If you could share one piece of advice with your students, what would it be?
Ask big questions that you’re passionate about, motivated by what happens in the social world. Answers to big questions, however imperfect and preliminary they may be, are immensely valuable and generative.