Abstract
Landless farmworkers in Brazil typically occupy land that is legally eligible for expropriation, but the state normally does not expropriate until a land occupation forces the hand of authorities. Landowners and local authorities in the Brazilian countryside frequently respond to occupations with violent repression. Their action reflects the hybrid character of the Brazilian state, modern and rational in cities and at the federal level but, in many rural areas, still clientelistic and marked by nonlegitimate violence. Land occupiers, landowners, and authorities jointly enact a repertoire of collective action that corresponds to the backward character of the state in those areas. The action of the land occupiers, however, is legitimated by the claim of civil disobedience while the efforts to repress them cannot lay claim to legitimacy on that basis.
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