ABSTRACT

It is important to emphasize the fact that in Latin America today all social movements enact a cultural politics. This chapter shows that the conceptualization and investigation of the cultural politics of social movements is a promising theoretical detour that heeds Hall's call. But perhaps the most important angle from which to analyze the cultural politics of social movements is in relation to its effects on political culture(s). One particularly fruitful way to explore how social movements' political interventions extend into and beyond political society and the state is to analyze the configuration of social movement networks or webs. There is an evident link between the importance of democratizing struggles within civil society and the cultural politics of social movements. It is necessary to consider the myriad ways in which globalization and the neoliberal economic project in vogue throughout Latin America have affected the cultural politics of social movements in recent years.