ABSTRACT
Many scholars and activists in Latin America have tended to consider some leading contemporary trends as general blueprints that do not require detailed research of local political conditions before being applied. The new cultural approach to Latin American social movements certainly learned from previous cultural studies in Great Britain and elsewhere to avoid the trends toward "closure". The focus on contract relations may thus enhance the understanding of Latin American democratization in the context of "non-liberal or hierarchical societies". Nevertheless, much work is yet to be done to clarify how the articulations between social practices and discourses of "subaltern counterpublics" can influence democratic institutionalization in Latin America. And the new emphasis on "collective citizenship" runs the risk of simply renaming an old bias of previous studies of Latin American social movements, namely their refusal to integrate the personal and the individual into their focus of analysis.
