Paper short abstract:

The intention is to investigate the processes of giving meaning to the situation of "to participate of a social movement", specifically at the homeless movement, in São Paulo city, Brazil. The meanings, we noticed, are constructed in narratives.

Paper long abstract:

Our intention in this research is to investigate the processes of giving meaning to the situation of "to participate of a social movement". We chose the homeless movement in São Paulo city, Brazil, and have noticed links and stress between i) the urgency of material demand and ii) the production of sense of being in the world. We have participated of manifestations at the streets, interviewed militants and also attended meetings of an specific organization of the movement (so-called MMC, portuguese acronym for movement of the homeless of downtown). Finally, we applied a survey at the 11th State Meeting of Popular Housing, in São Paulo, May 2009. As research results we present discussions whose main issues are: the profile of the militant of the homeless movement in São Paulo; the strategies and forms of action they adopt and discuss; and the narratives and elements that are mobilized to give sense to the participation. One of the most challenge of the social movement is how to articulate past, present and future in order to create intelligible narratives (full of meaning). The major conclusion is a methodological and analytical contribution: that we must attempt to the relations that the social movement (as a reserch object) establishes and reconfigurates with surrounding elements. We can even go beyond that and assume the social movement itself as a relational object, and for that we must recognize its contingencies and definitions as situational, albeit within an ethical-political spectrum.

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