Social Movement Discourses and Conditions of Possibility in Bolivia and Mexico

Résumé 0

: This work presents a comparative analysis of two Latin American social movements. The first case is the movement of opposition against the privatisation of water and sanitation services (ESS) in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000 and the second case is the movement of opposition against the project for a new international airport in Mexico City between 2001 and 2002. Both case studies illustrate how the study of collective discourses or collective action frames (CAFs) can be used to improve our understanding of social movements that emerge in the context of large infrastructure projects. The work argues that an important determinant in the development and life-span of a social movement is the extent to which the dialogical relation between collective discourses and processes of identity formation at the micro-sociological level is allowed or hampered by other contextual and organisational variables.