ABSTRACT
In a globalized world system, society has become a whole, a planetary society. The conflicts just described are eminently relational, dynamic, and cultural because they invest the sphere of meaning formation; but they are nevertheless structural in character because they affect the forms of domination of a society based on information. An example is provided by the emergence of the ethnic issue in Latin American societies via the mobilization of the native populations or of certain minorities. In mobilizations that assert claims simultaneously involving ethnicity and land, there mix and merge the struggle against economic discrimination, political claims for territorial autonomy, and the symbolic appeal championing traditional language and culture. Class analysis is still able to interpret the mechanisms and structure of many of the inequalities, and collective action in these societies necessarily involves the mobilization of marginalized and excluded social groups.
