How to Change the World? Social Movements and Fact

Abstract

A contemporary version of social movements should emphasize the possibilities of creating resistances that focus on the prospect of achieving other lifestyles or modes of living. "e authors propose a factual or event-based (évènementiel) perspective of social movements that leaves no room for culturalist connotations founded on the assumption that emancipation processes manifest de-identification in a search for ways to achieve other, “better” identities. If an attempt at a factual or event-based definition of social movements is worthwhile, it is because we harbor the hope they other a better fate. What matters is the freedom and the collective creation of ethical alternatives concerning how to build another life. The idea is to defend an event-based approach as the basis for understanding social movements. The question is: What policy implications or consequences can be drawn from considering social movements, assuming they re!ect a cruelty in life and an inevitable violence that breaks worlds apart, but demands the construction of others?