Abstract
This study analyzes the Alain Touraine’s contributions on the broad debate on democracy in the context of radicalized modernity, marked by the diversity of social movements related to identity issues. Considering that the concern about both the human emancipation and democracy pervades the whole work of the author, his proposal of “democratic culture”, centered on the “subject”, results from Touraine’s perspective on Western modernization processes, which includes his studies on Latin America and the conflict between the two opposing faces of modernity - the objective world (instrumental) and the subjective one of symbolic contents. Focused in the author’s third phase, this article seeks to show both the contributions and limits of the two mentioned concepts in order to reflect on the current democracy, addressing the connections between the construction of those two concepts and the author’s perspective on South American democratic experiences.
Keywords:
Democratic Culture; Subject; Social Movements; Latin America; Democracy