The article details the trajectory of the social movements in the national reality, highlighting their relationship with the State, the changes in their forms of struggle in different historic contexts and the analytical focuses of the relationship produced between civil society and social movements. It then analyzes the initial results of a study still underway of the formative, ideological and practical political characteristics of the social movements existing in a municipal reality. The analysis of the social movements in the national reality and of the preliminary results of the study undertaken is guided by the concept of civil society as a space in which political processes occur that seek to organize the interests of the subaltern classes and project them in terms of hegemonic action in the direction of the construction of a new social project.
civil society; social movements; national reality; municipal reality