Theoretical perspectives for the study of sociopolitical movements in Latin America: Drastic change or a lost decade?

Abstract

During almost a decade that comprises of the last part of the 20th century and the first years of the 21 ^st century, Latin America lived an extraordinarily vigorous cycle of socio-political mobilization. In light of these events a remarkable theoretical and conceptual effervescence in the field of the sociopolitical movements studies, the collective action and the processes of political subjectivization was produced. In this article, the authors argue that although it is possible to recognize suggestive exercises about theoretical problematization, an alternative paradigm to understand the processes of social and political mobilization that could displace, in academic analysis and in the intellectual field, the prevailing theories and approaches from Europe and the us has not been set up yet. To explain this relative iconsistency, weak coordination and insufficient projection of these theoretical efforts, the authors test some hypotheses that relate to historical and structural factors shaping the social sciences in the region, and to epistemological and political attitudes and positions of Latin American critical scholars that foreshadow a new conceptualization of social movements and the construction of knowledge.