A Cultural Reading of Human Action Organized From the Theory of New Social Movements

Abstract

Human organizations of all types are determined by the existence of some common objectives in its members and the solution of a specific situation. These objectives are manifested in several shared value systems and in particular organizational cultures. Nevertheless, much of the literature on the concept of organization has analyzed well-defined, formally constituted, and institutionalized human groups. Companies and the state apparatus, in particular, have been repeatedly analyzed by said perspective. This theoretical void generated the appearance of alternative theories that have studied how certain human groups and policy promoters have chosen cultural symbols to turn them into frameworks for collective action. Today, to the panorama of organizations that previously centered on products and the capacity to produce them, we must add an approach that addresses other types of organizations with cultural, rather than material, reasons: the New Social Movements (NSM). The aforementioned agrees with a theoretical and methodological approach that seeks to overcome the reductionism of the preponderant intellectual production over organizations. With this, the traditional economic-administrative theory, which tends to tie the definition of ‘organization’ to the profit that can be generated by acting as a group is left without argument upon confronting the recent demonstrations of organized social action.

Key words: Organization, culture, new social movements

Submission date: 2012-12-15
Acceptance date: 2013-05-13