Abstract
Forms of participation and engagement of social movements have been undergoing profound changes in recent decades, and have followed the structural and cyclical changes in society. In Brazil and around the world, the resurgence of large mobilizations and demands for democracy show that social, political and cultural struggles have presented new outline strategies and organizational forms that require reflection. In this sense, social participation in health has also followed the flow of social dynamics and reveals interfaces with the environment, the models of development and the organization of society. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a proposal for matrix of analysis of democratic participation and intensity of social movements’ actions – in the light of the Boaventura Sousa Santos’ concept of democratic intensity. This paper also discusses the process of theoretical and methodological construction, as well as the applicability of this matrix of analysis. This matrix is built since 2010 (Hoefel et al, 2010) and arises primarily linked to research on forms of social participation in health, work and environment in the context of Latin America. It is later reformulated into a second version (Hoefel et al, 2011), built during the development of a survey conducted in the Chapada do Apodi, Ceará region, whose overall objective was to analyze the processes of resistance (participation) and violence in the context of environmental conflicts. The results suggest that the matrix expresses categories of the adopted framework, signaling its potential and its applicability regarding the analysis of democratic participation and intensity of social movements’ action.
