Social movements: A poststructuralist reading.

Abstract

The present article tries to rethink social movements from a poststructuralist position, going beyond Synthesis Theory. For the last twenty years the synthesis of the theories of Resource Mobilization, Political Opportunity and Cognitive Framing has been taken to be the last word in the sociology of social movements. Nevertheless, far from being any sort of advance, Synthesis Theory has merely perpetuated previous theories, without, in my opinion,managing to reconceptualize the constitution of power, or the force and embodiment of movement. The lack of theoretical attention to the definition of movement is a curious absence which needs to be redressed . My aim is approach it not from the notion of "subject" or any other type of "institution", but rather in terms of the contingencies of everyday life.