Produkzio kognitibo modu berriak: intelektualak gizarte mugimendu garaikideetan

Abstract

Facing the diagnoses that herald the decline of the modern intellectual, this article argues that each historical period offers its own conditions and spaces of action for intellectual activity. In this respect, the contemporary social movements have been analysed as institutional scenarios that are favourable for the reconstruction of their roles and identities by the cultural agents in late Modernism. Thus, instead of analysing the movements from the traditional perspective —that is, from the point of view of organisation and mobilisation in the conventional political field— they have been studied as spaces of cognitive creation formed by a multitude of agents that interact within them. As a result, the movements are considered to basically constitute nuclei of knowledge production, and it is in these conceptual and intellectual spaces that interpretative frameworks are created that are alternative to the dominant definitions of social reality. The movements mobilise a multitude of resources to achieve their objectives, that is, for the construction of new frameworks of interpretation. Amongst these resources an outstanding position is occupied by the intellectuals, who are essential agents in all symbolic struggles that develop within developed societies.