In this paper, we propose to rethink the place of populism in contemporary political theory to propose a sociology of popular action focused on the political use of the notion of "people". Rethinking populism "from below", through a sociological cartography of the operations associated with the name of "people", should serve well to set milestones against a number of defects in political theory from the time trying to understand this "political pathology" that is populism. Therefore, it is the resurgence of the "Populist Reason" in Latin America, under the new formula of "participatory populism" (joint intervention unprecedented national-popular and participatory democracy that can be seen in Chavez's Venezuela, the Evo Morales's Bolivia or Ecuador of citizens' revolution). This allows the sociologist, who has become an ethnographer of participative practices in Venezuelan and Bolivian neighborhoods, open the black box of thinking populist regime with a new attention to the ordinary relations populist politician. Our argument, based on an important empiricial material - semi-directly interviews with leaders of the districts "participatory", stories of life, micro-street interviews with members not involved in the community - will be articulated in three times. In a first time, we will try to return to the main sociological mechanisms put into light by the political sociology of populism (eruption of the masses - Germai, democratic legitmacy O'D0nnell, national-popular intevention - Touraine, leadership/democratic legitimacy- A. Dorna, formation of a hegemoney - Laclau). We show in this paper that all these frameworks adopt a top perspective about making popular identities (or reduce the effective performativity of discourse as in the case of Laclau). We focus in the analysis on the production of populism. We centre, on the excavation between discourses and practices, coming from the "people" solidarity to their populist regime. We propose three figures of horizon of policy, people as the waiting horizon for the action and people as utopian horizon of policy). We identify, in conclusion, a number of epistermological shifts useful for a "sociology of populism from below" (axiological neutrality /relationship to values, relationship-wise popular intelligibility of political emotions, interdisciplinary sociology / political philsophy).
