Abstract

The recent literature on social movements has highlighted the fundamental role of leaders in their emergency and development. One of the most important discussions in this regard has focused on understanding the relationship between agency and structure in the context of collective protests. Using conceptual tools proposed by Bourdieu (1986), it has been suggested that the performance of the leaders of a social movement can be understood from their social position in the different fields in which they move, which in turn is determined by the habitus and the types of capital they own. In order to overcome obstacles and recognize and catalyze political opportunities in the emergence and development of a mobilization, the use of several types of capital other than economic is required. From a qualitative perspective and analyzing the discourse of the leaders of two territorial social movements that occurred in two regions of the south of Chile between 2011 and 2012, we seek to understand the relative importance of the different capitals of the leaders in the emergence, development and results of a social movement. Territorial movements are particularly interesting for this purpose, as it has traditionally been studied leaders based on functional (e.g. students, workers), ethnic, gender and other socio-demographically homogeneous movements, while territorial movements tend to summon people from different ages, gender, economic activities, ideologies and social levels, which complicates the work of leaders and makes it difficult to achieve the confluence of interests, forcing leaders to deploy and complement their networks, knowledge, skills and resources in order to achieve the success of the movement.