Looking at democracy from below: the popular movement (or social materialities) in the experience of democratization

Abstract

The article aims to revisit the "democratic transition", moving away from the conceptualization that identifies this process as the passage from one regime to another, from an authoritarian to a democratic one. The proposal to "look at democracy and democratization from below", as something that was not given but had to be achieved, implies the question of what social materialities this experience is made of. Thus, from the recovery of the ideas on the subject that are deployed in the book Zona Sur, we propose a problematization of the democratization process embodied in popular collective action, in specific places. From these conceptual premises, the text addresses the continuities and changes linked to the end of the dictatorship. On the other hand, the links between the popular movement and the Human Rights movement are problematized. Finally, some possibilities of establishing dialogues with the present are mentioned.