ABSTRACT
Despite technological and scientific developments, predicting the conditions for social change at a given place and unit of analysis is still beyond the capacity of social science theory. In the post-modern debate, social science is considered relativistic and social change is no longer explained with universal or unitary variables, but rather with a multiplicity of images in which different changes interact in concrete scenarios. This chapter reviews theories of change in the life-world, including social movements theory and Habermas’ meta-theory. It establishes relations between these theoretical models and my own ethnographic material with a focus on structural change. The chapter deals with the paradigm that is still used for studying the agricultural labour process. Mexican workers’ movements are better at ameliorating bad treatment and transportation problems than at winning better salaries and housing. The literature on farmworkers is still dominated by a structuralist, systemic approach that fails to interpret social change in everyday circumstances.
