Social Mobilisation and Politics in Argentina: Peak and Crisis of the Left Turn

• In Event: Social protest in Latin America within the crisis of the left turn

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the socio-political dynamic in the light of social mobilisation. Is it possible to transfer mechanically the logic of polarisation which marked the political field between 2011and 2015 to the field of mobilisation? What was the political impact of the mobilisation and how it anticipated the crisis of the left turn in Argentina? The argument is that the field of mobilisation did not follow the same logic as the political field: while the latter was signed by a logic of polarisation (K versus anti-K; populism versus republic), mobilisation followed a logic of heterogenisation in terms of actors, demands and repertoires. But the configuration of new social subjects and new forms and levels of institutionalisation generated new problems that Kirchnerism was not able to solve. This had two major consequences. First, Kirchnerism showed signs of exhaustion regarding policy innovation, incorporation capacity, and articulation power. Second, emerging alternative organisations ‘from below’ expressed a new complexity of demands which the government was not able to reabsorb

Author

• Ana Laura Natalucci, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)