Modernity and Democracy in Latin-American The Vision of Alain Touraine

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the French sociologist Alain Touraine's diverse analytical and theoretical contributions on the social, cultural and political realities of Latin America. Starting from the idea that the author's main concerns refer to the dynamics of Latin American modernity, the study seeks to understand how this theme is complemented with observations about democracy and the social subject. It intends to show that for Touraine, Latin American modernity is characterized by an inevitable tension between an "instrumental universe" and a "symbolic universe," correlate of an ever-present dual image of rationalization and subjectivism. From here, Touraine moves on to analyze the political and social potential underlying the idea of subject and social actor. Finally, we emphasize the contributions perceived in his concrete analyses of social movements that today make up part of the heterogeneous Latin American scene: the neo-Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico; the landless peasant and rural workers movement in Brazil; and in a broader sense, urban movements, ecology, Black, youth, women's and intercultural education movements.