Discourse and counter-hegemony in the Global South: the case of the socio- environmental struggle in Chubut

Abstract

This article exposes the study of a social and political dispute around the attempt to impose large- scale mining in an Argentine province. The focus is on two discursive networks facing each other: one is managed by the mining lobby and the other by the socio-environmental movement. The theoretical perspective adopted corresponds to Critical Discourse Studies and recovers concerns typical of the decolonial turn of social studies. The work follows two objectives: .

1) to characterize and analyze the two discursive networks in dispute and 2) to propose useful categories for the study of counter-hegemonic militancy in online groups. The methodology is located in the field and is based on the experiences of the researcher as a participant in the events analyzed. The corpus is made up of statements by political figures, a socio-environmental group and an excerpt from a chat by the latter. The results obtained include the proposal of some categories that may be useful for the study of online communication in general and counter-hegemonic activism in particular. In the end, there is a balance about the possibilities of a discursive study with a decolonial claim.