Urban Social Movements in Brazil

Abstract

An intriguing feature of the Brazilian debate on urban social movements as it has developed over the past 15 years or so is the shifts in theoretical approach. The vicissitudes of the debate derive from the particular relation of the social sciences to their object or what we might call the recursive character of the social sciences (Giddens, 1984: 348). Social theorizing reflects upon and contributes to the transformation of its own object (Taylor, 1983) and theoretical debate has played a role in the shaping and development, the social construction, of urban social movements in Brazil. Although the connotations of social science (Giddens, 1984: 348) do indeed deserve attention (Escobar, 1992: 63), it should not be forgotten that the social sciences do not practice themselves. If they inevitably are involved in a subject-subject relation with what they are about (Giddens, 1984: 348), this relation is one between socially situated subjects. In this article I shall discuss the development of theorizations of urban social movements in Brazil in their reflexive relation to current sociopolitical questions and to general debates and trends in social and political theorizing. A fuller understanding of this development and its practical connotations, however, requires that certain transformations in the Brazilian social structure be considered. Taking account of the professional trajectory of certain segments of the Brazilian middle classes is indispensable for an understanding of the epistemo-politics (Escobar, 1992: 64) of theory development. I shall show how the theorizations of urban social movements developed in Brazil accompanied the emergence, from the mid1970s onward, of new forms of neighborhood associativism and, at the same time, were related to the pursuit of a political project to replace the bureaucratic-authoritarian one imposed in 1964. In this context the relevance of urban movements initially