Participative political culture and emerging actors: approaches from the venezuelan experience (1999-2014).

Abstract

In recent years, the political camp of popular organization in Venezuela has seen the emergence of new social actors who have created tensions and contestations in the realm of popular participation. The complexity of these processes have given rise to multiple analyses which tend, on the one hand, to romanticize the actors who mobilize in popular territories, and on the other, to delegitimize their practices and political importance. This article seeks to trace the tensions in the political process of participation in Venezuela. Based on ongoing fieldwork in various sectors of Caracas, we seek to show how Community Councils, and their offshoots , “Communes”, have brought together a series of unexpected, and sometimes ‘undesirable’ actors (the so-called ‘colectivos’, groups of young people without political affiliations and construction unions) that antagonise and cut through the social practices deployed by participation. In this context, we address questions about the nature and potential of the Communes. In particular, we analyse the different types of rupture and/or reproduction that are generated by.