Tese de doutoramento, Sociologia (Sociologia das Desigualdades, das Minorias e dos Movimentos Sociais), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 2013This sociological research deals with the problematic of the genesis and formation of
social movements. The latter is approached through the study of Portuguese alterglobalisation
social movements, and more precisely via an emphasis on their mobilisations,
praxes and identities.
I explore the conditions or possibilities of social movements (their socio-cultural and
historical context and their structures – the how of social movements), the sense of militant
action (activists’ motives and reasons – the why of social movements), and the ontology of
social movements (collective and individual identities, otherness, and their co-relativity – the
what and who of social movements).
For this purpose, I have followed what is habitually called “qualitative sociology”, that
is, I have opted for an ethnography carried out among three Portuguese movements, in
Lisbon, between 2010 and 2012. This methodology led me to conduct interviews with
activists, to consider their diverse practices, oral discourses and “emic” writings, to engage in
“participant observation”. Thus, I have followed a certain idiographic approach by focusing
upon the people who compose social movements. This idiography is irreducible to
subjectivity. On the contrary, it allows one to observe collective or trans-subjective features of
militant actions and representations, that is, their objective dimension.
This empirical work has been necessarily complemented by a theoretical study, which
have conduced to an analysis of the social phenomenon in question. The chosen theoretical
perspective comprehends and goes beyond the main traditional theories in the sociology of
social movements. Whilst these latter theories offer significant insights, they remain limited in
their explanatory potential. Consequently, they have to be completed by a larger paradigm,
notably to tackle the problems posed by current militant collective action. It therefore seems
necessary to consider the contributions of the sociology of action and of identity in more
depth.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, SFRH/BD/63298/2009
