Limits of the new social movements theory to comprehend the environmentalism of the poor: A brief tematic overlook

This presentation raises questions for the post-materialist analysis of the New Social Movements Theory  for understanding the (re)emergence of social movements from less urban and less industrialized Southern societies. In the  Brazilian rural context, these movements highlight  the new statute of the so-called Traditional Peoples and Communities. The text is empirically based on the political struggles of the social movement known as Articulação Puxirão de Povos Faxinalenses in the state of Paraná, which resembles some of the  political iniciatives of organized indigenous and peasant populations in countries such as  India, Mexico and Kenya. It was produced as a response to conflicts and controversies concerning ecological distribution.  We thus attempt  to identify the contributions of the environmentalism of the poor or of political ecology to this perspective, as suggested by Martinez-Alier, Ramaschandra Guha, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Enrique Leff, as a possibility for new epistemes derived from new practices with great significance to the recent social transformations underway  in Southern countries.