Abstract
Perceptions of the political importance of social movements and popular organizations often err by seeing only one of their many possible roles. An analysis of the evolution of the Brazilian environmental movement in the 1980s, as they themselves perceive it and through its impact on Brazilian politics, shows how the myriad groups went through different combinations of four important political roles. Although with less impact on the first of these—state transformation (the usual focus of analysis)—the environmental groups showed significant activity in other roles: representation of popular interests, cultural politics, and action in the informal polity.

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