Social Movements in Latin America: Paradigms, People, and Politics

• Author: Ronaldo Munck
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20927007
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20927007

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 233, Vol. 47 No. 4, July 2020, 20–39

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20927007

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

20

Social Movements in Latin America

Paradigms, People, and Politics

by

Ronaldo Munck

Social movements in Latin America have always attracted attention, but there is no

agreed-upon paradigm, certainly not one accepted in Latin America. A review from a

Latin American perspective of the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical para-

digms used to understand these movements suggests a revitalized paradigm that fore-

grounds the agency of people and, above all, brings politics back in. A proposed new,

poststructuralist Marxist frame for research on both theory and practice puts a

Foucauldian emphasis on the dissoluble links between power and resistance and a

Laclau-inspired emphasis on the national-popular.

Aunque los movimientos sociales en América Latina siempre han llamado la aten-

ción, no hay un paradigma acordado; ciertamente, no uno que se acepte en la región. Un

análisis desde una perspectiva latinoamericana de las fortalezas y debilidades de los

paradigmas teóricos utilizados para entender estos movimientos sugiere un marco revi-

talizado que pone en primer plano la agencia de las personas y, sobre todo, recupera el

tema de la política. El nuevo paradigma marxista postestructuralista aquí propuesto

para la investigación tanto teórica como práctica pone un énfasis foucauldiano en los

vínculos disolubles entre el poder y la resistencia, así como un énfasis en lo nacional y

popular inspirado por Laclau.

Keywords: Social movements, Paradigms, Agency, Politics

As the wave of progressive governments that came to power after 2000

begins to subside, it would make sense to focus again on social movements as

the drivers of social transformation in the future. Social movements in Latin

America have always attracted a lot of attention and not a little passion, but

there is no agreed-upon paradigm, certainly not one accepted as valid in Latin

America. I believe we need to review, from a Latin American perspective, the

strengths and weakness of the theoretical paradigms used to understand these

movements. A revitalized paradigm would foreground the agency of people in

our theoretical frameworks and methodologies and, above all, bring politics

back in. To start with, I will seek to set the context in which the Latin American

social movements have operated from the national-popular period through the

long neoliberal night to the progressive or post-neoliberal period now coming

to an end. This is followed by a section on theories that critically but inevitably

Ronaldo Munck teaches at Dublin City University (Ireland) and the Universidad Técnica Particular

de Loja (Ecuador) and is a participating editor of Latin American Perspectives. His most recent book

is Social Movements in Latin America: Mapping the Mosaic (2020).

927007LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20927007Latin American PerspectivesMunck / Social Movements in Latin America

research-article2020

Munck / SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA 21

only very generically examines the resource-mobilization framework originat-

ing in the United States, the “European” new-social-movement approach, and

the more recent autonomy and political-economy approaches. This is followed

by what I call a “mosaic,” composed of summary sketches of exemplary or

paradigmatic social movements, from the labor and peasant movements to the

more recent women’s and environmental movements. The purpose is to show

the complexity of social movements in Latin America and why those devel-

oped in very different contexts, in particular, are resistant to capture by any one

theoretical frame. (To be clear, there is another layer of complexity—the social-

movement/political-party interface—that is, of course, important, but space

does not allow for its treatment here.) A final section entitled “Beyond the

Fragments” takes up, in a tentative way, some learning from the sections pre-

ceding and begins to develop a new research program on both theory and prac-

tice. This poststructuralist Marxist frame also puts a Foucauldian emphasis on

the inextricable links between power and resistance and a Laclau-inspired

emphasis on the national-popular.

Context

The rise and fall of social movements in Latin America is set in the context of

the broader political economy of development, the particular regimes of accu-

mulation, and the dominant hegemonic order (for an overview see Munck,

2015). The agro-export economic model had served the dominant classes well

from around 1870 to World War I. The main social movement in this period was

the labor movement, shaped largely by immigrant workers and the ideologies

they brought with them or developed in the new world, such as anarchism,

syndicalism, and socialism. The relative areas of strength of this movement

reflected the patterns of economic development that gave bargaining power to

the dockers, railway workers, and miners. Despite some industrialization in

some countries, the agro-export model prevailed up to the 1930s, and it was

only after World War II that a new regime of accumulation emerged that set the

context for a flourishing of social movements in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the postwar period most of Latin America moved toward a state-led

industrializing regime of accumulation and some form of national-popular

state. This was a national development model with import-substitution indus-

trialization displacing—with greater or less success—the agro-export model of

the oligarchic state. Social actors were based in the workplace, on social class

belonging or political affiliation. The institutions of the state were often weak,

and the state was based on a loose class compromise. In some countries the

level of industrialization was too weak or the oligarchic class bloc too strong to

allow for transition to a new developmentalist regime of accumulation. Where

it was successful—in the Southern Cone countries, Brazil, and Mexico, in par-

ticular—there was considerable increase in employment both in industry and

in the new white-collar sectors. There was some degree of income redistribu-

tion and widening of consumption patterns as a mass market emerged. This

generated tangible popular support for the state and the emergence of nation-

alist-populist social movements.