Social movements and political-emotional communities: an approach from the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity in Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT How are social ties formed in the contentious campaigns led by relatives of victims of criminal and political violence? Drawing on the work of Latin American social anthropologists such as Myriam Jimeno, Morna Macleod and Natalia De Marinis, I argue that the contentious campaigns of a victim-led social movement provide the physical and symbolic spaces where the participants form a political-emotional community by sharing testimonios (testimonial narratives) and developing a victim-centered ethos. To substantiate my claim, I discuss the case of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad) in Mexico drawing on twelve in-depth interviews and a documentary review. This article opens a dialogue between the literature on political-emotional communities and the scholarship on social movements offering a new perspective to analyze the development of social ties. In other words, future research projects can make use of the introduced theoretical proposal to understand victim-led activism more in-depth. The approach of this article can be of interest, for example, for scholars dedicated to the study of contention by survivors of genocide, mobilizations against racial violence, and protests in contexts of armed conflict.