An analysis of the relationship between ‘moral’ and ‘politic’ in a justice demanding movement

Abstract

Unlike the way in wich some researchs on victim’s relatives movements have addressed the relations between ‘moral’ and ‘politics’, in this article I suggest that they should not be treated as autonomous and conflicting universes. Instead, I argue that the activities that social actors define as ‘politics’, are morally informed, that is, are crossed by moral judgments and are products of such kind of assessments. I draw on the material produced over extended field work carried out in the so-called ‘movement Cromañón’. So, I will analyze the process of creation and dissolution of ‘families of Cromañón assemblies’, that took place in the context of tensions between politicized and non-politicized relatives. I suggest here that moral evaluations made by social actors are a central key in understanding how they guide those practices and situations they define as politics. Through these kind of judgements they show what they consider proper, desirable and, under it, most suitable for their struggle.