Pleyers, G. (2024). Change is never linear: Social movements in polarized times. CLACSO.

Abstract

Why don't great social mobilizations always crystallize into lasting transformations? The answer is condensed in the central argument and in the title of the book "Change is never linear: social movements in polarized times" (2024), a work written by the prominent global sociologist, Geoffrey Pleyers, published by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). The plot of the work questions both the triumphalism that proclaims "the end of the model" after each revolt, and the fatalism that reduces the struggles to simple passing illusions. Instead, it proposes a procedural approach that moves between the conjuncture, structure and subjectivity. This approach is organized in the book from five ideas-force proposed in the introduction, and that cross the four divisions of the text (Part 1. The emergence of new actors, Part 2. From the pandemic to social change, Part 3. Religious actors: a far-reaching change, and Part 4. A global sociology). Based on different case studies, from the Chilean social outbreak of 2019, the expansion of Brazilian evangelical networks, to the global phenomenon of the pandemic, the author shows that the course of social change is sinuous and that its meaning is disputed on multiple scales.