It depends a bit on who you take your cues from (Castells, Touraine, Melucci, etc) but in broad terms new social movement theory sought to respond to the limited explanatory power of earlier functional conceptions of mass movements - which viewed them as attached to negotiations over material resources and/or largely dysfunctional or 'deviant' forms of collective action. New social movement theorists, tracing the evolution of the student, peace, second wave feminist and environment movements from the 1960s to 80s and identity politics movements from the 1970s on, viewed NSMs as values-based and grounded in democratic consciousness rather than simply a collective manifestation of personal self-interest fulfilment. These theorisations developed in parallel with resource mobilisation theories of social movements, which had their genesis in north America. While each shared a view that social movements are not irrational, RMT was underpinned by a rational actor model of collective action based on resource acquisition that is largely rejected or ignored by NSM theorists. More recently (but still a fair while ago), Diani and others have promoted the network characteristics of contemporary social movements as a key factor for exploration. Obviously, the advance of online and mobile technologies has influenced network capabilities and characteristics of collective action over the last 20 or so years and some writers are now more concerned with 'connective action' - more episodic forms of engagement - than collective action as conceived in the pre-internet world.

Many thanks Jo for your constructive response. Neo-Gramscian scholars and activists have developed interesting ideas in this regard having the World Social Forum as an example of counter-hegemonic resistance. New concepts wich enrich the academic debate, such as 'networks of equivalence' and 'invented spaces', have been posited. The theorization of Latin American new social movements, such as the Zapatista and land-less movement, has been quite prolific in developing a new vision about power and social transformation towards an emansipatory horizon. However, it is still a quite controversial arena of academic debate.

In my fieldwork among the Obo Manobo tribe in Mindanao, southern part of the Philippines, I appreciated what I called "cultural energies". In Mount Apo, one of the few remaining biodiversity areas in Southeast Asia, the Philippine government built a geothermal power plant that was resisted by environmental protest movements. But my research was attracted to a small budding cultural regeneration movement that took a different stand on both the imposed development project as well as the imported political protest movement. The small group that started their own indigenous action used their own notion of "family reunion" as a platform for asserting their unique approach to development. I realize that there is a kind of power in empowerment that is neither power over (domination) nor power against (resistance). This "new" social movement involves a power to be. When they renewed their dancing within the context of a family or clan reunion, the energy project became suspicious and the political protest groups dismissed it as weak. In the end, the tribal cultural regeneration movement earned 4,000 hectares of land carved out of the National Park, and legally titled in the name of the tribe. I believe there is something here to be added in the discourse of social movements. Interested readers might want to pick up my Generating Energies in Mount Apo: Cultural Politics in a Contested Environment.

Les mouvements de citoyens ne se décident pas (pas davantage que les mouvements sociaux).

Mais on peut informer et prévoir des enseignements qui permettent (à tous les citoyens et les futurs citoyens) de comprendre comment on peut définir (et redéfinir) l'organisation de systèmes techniques.

Le passage à la pratique dépend surtout d'eux-mêmes.

Certainly, the most important they are.

Many thanks for your additional comments. Some of the main characteristics of the new social movements in Latin America can be summarised as follows: territorialisation, radical autonomy, direct democracy, reaffirmation of culture and identity, formation of its own intellectuals, new role for women, collective and horizontal organization of work, innovative ways of developing the productive forces oriented to social necessities and in harmony with nature. It is important to notice that in this realm counterhegemony has a broad meaning: anti-systemic, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonialist.

This implies, in my opinion, a new conception of resistance an rebellion which is not passive and reactive. It means building since now a new world in which many worlds can fit (as portrayed in the Zapatista motto).

But in Brazil we have a new type of social movement: the rightist groups of midia, like MBL - Movement Brasil Liberal. They are against the left, they are liberals, they are agains sexual liberties, they are conservatives, they are pro a new politics that they dont define very well and they know use the new technologies of communication very well. They are few but very organized and actives.

You are right ANTONIO, it is important to broaden the object of Study. Many thanks.

but i'think,,the social movement have any deferent caracteristic

in my recent research on social movements, I have focused on the dynamics of micro-social change, not the focus on the macro-social scale. My finding that in a village conducting a reclaiming movement demands customary rights to land unilaterally occupied by plantations palm oil (CPO) in Indonesia, but the characteristics of the rural community movement more specifically utilize the strength of local culture called is the social movement tahinting (a kindly of rootsblock movement). Members of the movement are limited to recruitment of family members related to land history, recruitment of members of the movement using primordial cultural networks, the purpose of the movement is not to pursue the target of cost and benefit calculation (based on mobilization recources paradigm), but the social rights of cultural meaning, the type of non-formal movement (a kind of rational organization), etc..... please read in the my article that I open for public ...