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Social Movements in Brazil:

Characteristics and Research

Maria da Glória Gohn

INTRODUCTION at the end of the 1970s and during part of the
1980s, the popular social movements articu-
This chapter presents a brief panorama of lated by groups opposed to the military
the social movements in Brazil in the last regime became famous. They were mainly
decades of the twentieth century and at the movements with a Christian base, inspired by
beginning of this millennium; and character- the Theology of Liberation. When we talk
izes the changes in the collective actions about popular movements, we consider the
and in the new forms of cooperation in civil poor as the agents of the movements, and not
society in recent years, in urban and rural the common people or citizens participating
areas. The chapter also presents the principal in grassroots movements, as in several other
authors in the literature about social move- countries, including the United States. At the
ments and the theoretical paradigms used by end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, the
the Brazilian researchers in their research social political panorama suffered a radical
describing the setting for ‘associativism’ 1 change. Initially, street demonstrations,
during recent decades. Initially we point out which made popular movements visible in
that we are using the concept social move- the cities, decreased. Some analysts diag-
ments as used by Alain Touraine in his analy- nosed a crisis within the movements because
ses. In that sense, social movements are they had lost their target and main enemy: the
collective actions of civil society: where there military regime. In reality, there were many
are collective actors making demands, there is causes for this demobilization. It is an
an opposition that constitutes a social adver- unquestionable fact that through their demands
sary, a conflict that impels the movement and and organized pressure, the social move-
a project based on the subject of the demands. ments of the 1970s and 1980s contributed
The collective action develops a sense of iden- decisively to the recognition of several social
tity among the participants (Touraine, 1978). rights, which became law in the new
It is important to remember that in Brazil Brazilian Constitution of 1988. The appear-
and in many other Latin American countries, ance of other forms of popular organizations,