Cultura social en movimiento: La nueva era en Buenos Aires

Abstract

The article is based on the assumption that social culture –understood here as the set of cognitive representations of social phenomena- is primarily acquired through practice. Consequently it expects that cultural cognitive schemes regarding social relations will be linked to the actual organization of interaction situations within a group. The work depicts one of the mechanisms allowing social, cultural and religious movements to modify and diversify social culture. This mechanism involves the systematic transformation of situations organized and portrayed within a network or group through the imposition of a common modifying key. Analysis is based on data about the New Age movement in Buenos Aires. This movement has transformed the social culture sustained by a considerable number of urban, educated, middle class baby boomers, leading them to conceive collective social change as a consequence of individual spiritual transformation.