We first need to ask ourselves: what is a social movement? An often cited definition is that of Mario Diani, for whom “social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities”. Social movements are not necessarily progressive, as some analysts assume; they can be revolutionary, reformist and, indeed, reactionary, as I have shown elsewhere. Furthermore, social movements cannot, in my view, be reduced to a bland category of “civil society”, sometimes conflated with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or placed in a generic basket called “social protest”. The question of human agency will loom large in this account of social movements.

I then move on to answer the question: why Latin America? As a continent that lies betwixt and between the global North and South, it has generated internationally significant social movements, and it may provide global lessons, not least, on how we should approach the study of social movements. By grounding the studies in a particular region, I hope to avoid the tendency to seek universal validity for what is sometimes known as “social movement theory”, seen as a self-contained discipline.

Finally, I propose an open paradigm, which will serve as a backdrop to the chapters that follow on specific social movements in Latin America. Although I agree in general with the “grounded theory” approach (basically, that theory needs to be based on experience), I will argue that two opening sensitizing concepts will serve us well: Michel Foucault's intuition that “where there is power there is resistance”, and Karl Polanyi's vision of history as a “double movement” of market expansion and societal reaction for self-protection. It is the practice of the social movements in Latin America, however, that will help us build and refine a grounded framework subsequently.

What is a social movement?

The first thing we need to recognize is the complexity and fluidity of social movements. Anyone who has been part of a social movement will understand that there is a degree of unknowability about such movements, something that cannot be captured by sociological theory alone.