ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the distinctions between class-based organizations and social movements. It is astonishing to contemplate the number and variety of collective activities pursued by Latin Americans that have come to be grouped together under the general heading "new social movements". The activities of participants in new social movements are thought to unfold somewhere out in "civil society" or in the "realm of everyday life" rather than in what is normally conceived as the political arena. The chapter gives a more detailed look at specific cases to reveal that the new social movements are neither so new nor so isolated from class and partisan struggles as some have asserted. Even when new social movements remain aloof from partisan and union politics, they may, nonetheless, contain many characteristics that might associate with class-based organizations. Social movements are often posited as having an important contribution to make to the overall process of democratization in Latin America.
