Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins - The Pluriverse of Human Rights: The Diversity of Struggles for Dignity (Epistemologies of the South)

The Pluriverse of Human Rights

The impasse currently affecting human rights as a language used to express struggles for dignity is, to a large extent, a reflection of the epistemological and political exhaustion which blights the global North. Since the global hegemony of human rights as a language for human dignity is nowadays incontrovertible, the question of whether it can be used in a counter-hegemonic sense remains open. Inspired by struggles from all corners of the world that reveal the potential but, above all, the limitations of human rights, this book offers a highly conditional response. The prevailing notion of human rights today, as the hegemonic language of human dignity, can only be resignified on the basis of answers to simple questions: why does so much unjust human suffering exist that is not considered a violation of human rights? Do other languages of human dignity exist in the world? Are these other languages compatible with the language of human rights? Obviously, we can only find satisfactory answers to these questions if we are able to envisage a radical transformation of what is nowadays known as human rights. Herein lies the challenge posed by the Epistemologies of the South: reconciling human rights with the different languages and forms of knowledge born out of struggles for human dignity.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). He has written extensively on globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology and social movements. One of his most recent publications The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018).

Bruno Sena Martins is a senior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra and co-coordinator of the Doctoral Program Human Rights in Contemporary Societies . He was Vice-President of CES/UC Scientific Board and Co-coordinator of the Democracy, Citizenship and Law Research Group (DECIDe). His research interests include racism, disability, human rights and colonialism.

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 neo-liberalization 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 Maria Paula Meneses

The Pluriverse of Human Rights
The Diversity of Struggles for Dignity
Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins

The Pluriverse of Human Rights

The Diversity of Struggles for Dignity

Edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins

First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, editor. | Martins, Bruno Sena, editor.
Title: The pluriverse of human rights: the diversity of struggles for dignity/edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Epistemologies of the south
Identifiers: LCCN 2020055587 | ISBN 9781032012216 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032012223 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003177722 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rights. | Dignity. | Social change. Classification: LCC JC571 .P575 2021 | DDC 323dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055587

ISBN: 978-1-032-01222-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-01221-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-17772-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins

PART I
Human Frontiers

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Joo Arriscado Nunes

Nelson Maldonado-Torres

PART II
Struggles and Emergences

Bruno Sena Martins

Khalid Anis Ansari

Pratiksha Baxi

Maria Paula Meneses

Ceclia MacDowell Santos

Marta Arajo and Silvia R. Maeso

Cayetano Fernndez

Julia Surez-Krabbe

Angeles Castao Madroal

Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins

Khalid Anis Ansari is Senior Assistant Professor (Sociology) and Director of Dr. Ambedkar Centre for Exclusion Studies & Transformative Action (ACESTA) at Glocal University, India. He broadly works in the field of social and cultural theory and takes keen interest in both grassroots organizing and scholarly interventions to publicize the history of resistance movements, particularly the socio-political aspirations of subordinated caste Pasmanda Muslims. He was awarded the HIVOS PhD FellowshipPluralism Knowledge Programme (20102013) for his doctoral work on caste movements among Indian Muslims with the University of Humanistic Studies (UvH), Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Marta Arajo holds a PhD from the University of London (2003). She is Principal Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) since 2005, where she lectures in the PhD Programmes Democracy in the 21st Century and Human Rights in Contemporary Societies. She is Guest Lecturer in the Black Europe Summer School (International Institute for Research and Education, Amsterdam). She has published internationally, and currently is a member of the Editorial Board of publications on sociology, race and education, in Brazil, Britain, Portugal and the United States. Her research interests centre on the (re)production and challenging of racism and Eurocentrism, with a particular interest in education.