The rural social movements have been the focus of several studies that point to its active role in the struggle for rights to excluded groups within Brazilian society. Through the collective actions, act as exclusion of resistance and provoke new social dynamics in the field. Starting from the theoretical concept of social movements of Alain Touraine, this paper set out mapping and discussing the state of the art in relation to theses and dissertations on rural social movements. The period adopted to map the theses and dissertations was from 2002 to 2014 and from 1980 to 2015 to the thematic analysis related to the social rural movements. The Alceste software (Analyse Lexicale par Contexte d’un Ensemble de Segments de Texte ) was used for the analysis. The results showed that the period after 2003 highlighted the passage of combative bias for the routinization of social movements, once the social contestations changed from the work life to the everyday life, with a plurality of material and symbolic demand surrounding the recognition of identities and the rural people life styles. This highlights the politics of the customs and practices related to the traditional life style.