ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a number of analytical themes that are important features of both progressive social movements and authoritarian religious movements, and implicit sociological comparisons are frequently made between them. Giddens’ theory of structuration or Bhaskar’s transformational model of social action, are useful sophisticated counterpoints to this discursive evaporation of society. Indeed, the burden seems to be on Laclau to explain how any social institutions manage to reproduce themselves at all, even if partially. Soja is concerned to explicate a sociospatial dialectic that attempts to deal with the ontological fractures that the above schematic throws up. The relevant thrust of his argument is that Spatiality is a substantiated and recognisable social product, part of a “second nature” which incorporates as it socialises and transforms both physical and psychological spaces. Social movements place extraordinary political emphasis on activism and organization within and across civil societies.
