This chapter looks at some of the most salient aspects of contemporary social movements theory and research. It presents a critical view of development and modernity that highlights their fundamental role in shaping the context within which contemporary social movements emerge and exert their action. The chapter attempts to develop a framework and methodology that may allow researchers to understand and examine the cultural aspects of contemporary collective action in the context of changing global economic and political conditions. It relies on a critical and selective use of existing theories of social movements and popular culture in various parts of the world. The crisis of modernity has been intensified in Latin America, as perhaps in no other place, by the global restructuring of capital. The chapter concludes with a reinterpretation of the "epistemo-politics" of theory production in the area of social movements research worldwide.