Political Cultures, Social Movement Dynamics, and the Life Course: Understanding the Impacts of Biographies on Mobilization

• In Event: 226 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. How Political Culture Matters

Abstract

The state, social movements, and patronage politics are usually analyzed separately, yet a growing scholarship pays attention to the multiple overlaps between these political fields and their organizational forms (respectively, state institutions, social movement organizations, and political machines). Based on twelve months of fieldwork in Argentina developed between 2003 and 2013, in this paper I engage this literature to shed light on two analyses. First, I inspect the ways in which social movement participants understand politics on their own terms, including ambivalent views towards patronage politics. Then, I analyze the trajectories of two leaders: one traversing from patronage politics to a social movement, and the other transferring from a social movement to the state. I argue that social movement leaders socialized in different political cultures develop different styles of relationship with the rank-and-file. This, in turn, has an impact on the strategies (and ultimately the fate) of a social movement. I discuss the implications of these findings for the study of political cultures and social movements in current Latin American politics.

Author

• Pablo Lapegna, University of Georgia