In the wake of the plebeian revolt: Social movements, ‘progressive’ governments, and the politics of autonomy in Latin America

Abstract

The article takes the debates surrounding the ‘politics of autonomy’ in Latin America as its point of departure and investigates the transformations of the political notion of autonomy against the background of developments that have characterized the so-called long decade of the new ‘progressive governments’ in the region. Moving beyond the alternative between ‘conflict’ and ‘cooptation’ that has shaped academic and political debates on the topic, the authors analyze the relations between ‘social movements’ and ‘progressive governments’ from the angle of the transformations of capitalism in Latin America and of emerging new forms of activism rooted within everyday life (particularly within ‘popular economies”). The article critically discusses such notions as neoliberalism and neo-extractivism in order to build an analytical framework within which to reconstruct the history of Latin American social movements since the early 2000s and to test the productivity and the limits of the very notion of ‘social movement’ in the present political conjuncture.