Demodiversity
We are living in a time when social and political authoritarianism appear to be gaining ground around the world. This book presents the democratic practices, spaces and processes that engage directly with the theoretical assumptions advanced by the epistemologies of the South, summoning other contexts and empirical realities that attest to the possibility of a renewal and deepening of democracy beyond the liberal and representative canon, which is embedded within a world capitalist system.
The chapters in this book put forward the ideas of demodiversity, of high-intensity democracy, of the articulation between representative democracy and participatory democracy as well as, in certain contexts, between both these and other forms of democratic deliberation, such as the communitarian democracy of the indigenous and peasant communities of Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The challenge undertaken in this book is to demand utopia, imagining a post-abyssal democracy that permits the democratizing, decolonizing, decommodifying and depatriarchalizing of social relations. This post-abyssal democracy obliges us to satisfy the maximum definition of democracy and not the minimum, transforming society into fields of democratization that permeate the structural spaces of contemporary societies.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Director Emeritus of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). He has written extensively on globalization, the sociology of law and the state, epistemology and social movements. His most recent publications are (with Maria Paula Meneses) Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (2019) and The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018).
Jos Manuel Mendes is an Associate Professor with Aggregation at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He is also a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, where he works in the fields of risk and social vulnerability, planning, public policies and citizenship. His most recent work in English is (with F. Freitas) Disaster, Reconstruction, and Data for Social Good: The Case of Wildfires in Portugal, International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment (2019).
Epistemologies of the South
The Global North has faced growing difficulty in making sense of the broad changes sweeping the world, from the financialization and neoliberalization of the world economy to the growth of inequality on an unknown scale in its persistence, extension and diversification of segregation, discrimination and violence. Uneasiness has been growing within the social sciences at the feeling of inadequacy and even irrelevance of current work and established theory in its attempt to get to grips with such a world.
The main idea underlying this series is that the experience of the world is much broader than the Eurocentric understanding, and what is known as the Global South has been for centuriesand remains in contemporary timesan inexhaustible source of experiences, knowledges, political and social innovations, and celebrations of difference. Challenging the canonical and Eurocentric epistemological tradition, including the social sciences and humanities themselves, this series innovates through the encounter and dialogue with other epistemologies that have historically emerged in the South.
Series Editor: Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra (Portugal)
Epistemologies of the South
Justice Against Epistemicide
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Knowledges Born in the Struggle
Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South
Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses
Demodiversity
Towards Post-Abyssal Democracies
Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Jos Manuel Mendes
First published 2021
by Routledge
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The right of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Jos Manuel Mendes to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-0-367-51229-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-51231-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05293-7 (ebk)
This book was developed in the context of the research project Alice Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons, coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra Portugal between 2011 and 2016. The project was funded by the European Research Council, 7th Framework Program of the European Union (Fp/2007-13/ERC Grant Agreement n. [269807]. This publication also benefits from the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the strategic Program UID/SOC/50012/2019 and BLEND PTDC/CVI-ANT/6100/2014 POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016859, which also counted upon funding from FEDER through the Program COMPETE 2020.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Director Emeritus of the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). He has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, the sociology of law and the state, epistemology and social movements. Among his most recent publications are Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (2007); Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (2014); If God Were a Human Rights Activist (2015); pistmologies du Sud (2016); Decolonising the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice (2017); The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018); Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (2019), edited with Maria Paula Meneses.
Houria Bouteldja is a founding member of le Parti des Indignes de la Rpublique that promotes decolonial politics. She is based in France. She has written numerous theoretical or strategical articles on decolonial feminism, racism, autonomy and political alliances as well as articles on Zionism and state philosemitism. Together with Sadri Khiari she is co-author of
