FLORESTAN'S INTERPRETATION OF BLACK MOVEMENTS.

Affinities with the theories of new social movements

Abstract

In 1964, Florestan Fernandes defended his thesis, A integração do negro na sociedade de classes. [The Integration of the Negro in class society] It is undeniable that this is one of his most discussed works, and it has generated an extensive literature, both condoning and denying it.  His work demarcates an antagonistic field in relation to the hitherto prevailing analyses of the racial question and how to understand the transformation of Brazilian society into a new social order, a competitive social order, tied to the end of a social order that included slavery. Although the book has become a landmark in this debate, an analysis of black movements has been overlooked in the exuberant literature produced on social movements that has marked the social sciences in Brazil since the 1970s, with the emergence of the New Social Movement Theories. In this article, we discuss the fundamental issues addressed by Florestan Fernandes, which later became central to the emerging theories on new social movements, both from a conceptual and methodological point of view.