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observations (Auyero, 2003). Cultural ele- which individuals frame their worldview, we
ments, which are by definition highly com- get much more than information on their
plex and socially situated (i.e., they are intentions, interests, actions, and environ-
rooted in history and subjectively actualized ment. As we will see, certain regularities in
in everyday life), add to the ‘magma of their discourse reveal the presence of cogni-
empirical components’ that makes every tive structures that have been internalized.
social movement unique. How can we then This paper’s goal is to analyze relevant data
associate particular cultural understandings about current social mobilization in Latin
with general effects? America and also to show the heuristic
We have first to consider the objective potential of this particular approach.
transnationalization of social activism along While there is ample evidence of the trans-
the lines of an emerging ‘masterframe’ of formation of movement activity since the
‘global social justice’ (Della Porta and 1970s, McAdam, Sampson, Weffer, and
Tarrow, 2005: 12). This has led both to an MacIndoe point out that almost all of the
ideological convergence among social move- work on changes in social mobilization has
ments and to extended chains of argumenta- been ‘speculative in nature’ (2005: 5). This
tion, that is, discursive linkages between gap must be filled with more ‘event
local conditions as directly experienced by research’, as these authors suggest, and also
actors and more general issues. This, of with more and better ‘discourse analysis’.
course, is not a new phenomenon: a common We contend that the systematic analysis of
Marxist masterframe allowed activists in discursive patterns can help to unveil social
very different cultural contexts to link every- representations in a way that quantitative
day injustices to the wider – and more polls and qualitative in-depth case studies
abstract – issues of ‘class struggle’ and ‘the cannot (Abric, 2003). People freely and
proletariat’s historic mission’. However, we spontaneously create unique narratives to
need to point out an important difference: the make sense of their world, but they do so by
emerging masterframe, as opposed to the referring to a limited and socially determined
sternly universalist and positivist Marxist set of available cognitive and normative
one, actually puts cultural particularism – on a frames (Snow and Benford, 1992). Much
national, ethnic, group, and even personal level more empirical research is still needed in
– at the centre of people’s narratives. In brief, order to gain a better understanding of the
we see a global call to assert local identities. mechanisms through which the individual
But that is only part of the whole picture. and the collective coalesce in social mobi-
It is obviously true that the ‘local’ argument lization. By ‘treating individual statements as
has acquired social and political legitimacy, texts’ (Hawkesworth, 2003: 533) and, partic-
that movement leaders meet and develop a ularly, through the observation of recurrent
common vocabulary at international forums, word choices and their articulation in con-
and that organized civil society tends to ceptual networks, we can explore ‘the way a
adopt the anti-globalization and human given structural situation is defined and expe-
rights rhetoric. However this simplistic per- rienced and the meanings that will be
spective (‘activists talk the activist talk’) attached to actions’ (Oliver et al., 2003: 12).
does not suffice and should be comple-
mented by a sociological analysis of social
representations. As Pierre Bourdieu, building
on Émile Durkheim’s theory of social repre- SOCIAL MOBILIZATION IN EL
sentations, points out, the social order is SALVADOR AND HONDURAS
maintained through the correspondence of
‘objective and mental structures’ (Bourdieu, Several new movements have emerged in
1994). By methodically observing the way in Latin America during the past decade, ranging