Political Psychology Approach to Militancy and Prefigurative Activism

Andre Luis Leite de Figueirêdo Sales is a Brazilian political psychologist currently holding a post-doctoral position at Sao Paulo Pontifical Catholic University and pursuing a second PhD in Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has years of experience working as a community psychologist in underprivileged neighborhoods and as public policies consultant in Brazil. His work focuses on contemporary social movements, prefigurative activism, and political imagination. At the core of his scholarship lays the desire of understanding how people transform the prevailing social norms in the same process of transforming themselves. Over the last six years, he has been a fellow at the São Paulo Research Foundation, FAPESP, a leading scientific research funding agency in Brazil.  In the research informing this book, Dr. Sales worked in partnership with renowned sociologists, psychologists, and political scientists in Brazil, the United States and Canada.

• 1. When words no longer fit.- 2. Ativismo and prefigurative activities: the sit-ins in the state of São Paulo.- 3. Rethinking resistance and refusal to understand prefigurative praxes.- 4. Brazilian Ativismo: a collectividual autonomist strategy.- 5. Militância and Ativismo: two forms of political consciousness.- 6. Conclusions: reflections and aspirations.- 7. Appendix: The anchor points for the militant strategy.