In a world of appalling social inequalities people are becoming more aware of the multiple dimensions of injustice, whether social, political, cultural, sexual, ethnic, religious, historical, or ecological. Rarely acknowledged is another vital dimension: cognitive injustice, the failure to recognize the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. This book shows why cognitive injustice underlies all the other dimensions; global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. (...) Santos s argument unfolds in two inquiries. No matter how internally diverse, Western Modernity provided the knowledge underlying the long cycle of colonialism followed by global capitalism. These historical processes profoundly devalued and marginalized the knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. Today, working against epistemicide is imperative in order to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Such recovery and valorization is the book s second inquiry and is based on four key analytical tools: sociology of absences, sociology of emergences, ecology of knowledges, and intercultural translation. The transformation of the world s epistemological diversity into an empowering instrument against hegemonic globalization points to a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism. It would promote a wide conversation of humankind, celebrating conviviality, solidarity, and life against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism and the destruction of life to which world populations large and small are condemned by the dominant forces of globalization. --Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In _The End of the Cognitive Empire_ Boaventura de Sousa Santos further develops his concept of the "epistemologies of the south," in which he outlines a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical framework for challenging the dominance of Eurocentric thought. As a collection of knowledges born of and anchored in the experiences of marginalized peoples who actively resist capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, epistemologies of the south represent those forms of knowledge that are generally discredited, erased, and ignored by dominant (...) cultures of the global North. Noting the declining efficacy of established social and political solutions to combat inequality and discrimination, Santos suggests that global justice can only come about through an epistemological shift that guarantees cognitive justice. Such a shift would create new alternative strategies for political mobilization and activism and give oppressed social groups the means through which to represent the world as their own in their own terms. (shrink)

Exploring the struggles against moral and cultural imperialism.

Un discurso sobre las ciencias -- Hacia una epistemología de la ceguera : por qué razón las nuevas formas de "adecuación ceremonial" no regulan ni emancipan? -- Hacia una sociología de las ausencias y una sociología de las emergencias -- Más allá del pensamiento abismal : de las líneas globales a una ecología de saberes -- El fin de los descubrimientos imperiales -- Nuestra América : reinventando un paradigma subalterno de reconocimiento y redistribución -- Entre Próspero y Caliban : colonialismo, (...) poscolonialismo e inter-identidad -- De lo posmoderno a lo poscolonial y más allá de uno y de otro. (shrink)

There are those who believe that modern society's reliance upon law, politics and science to both regulate and emancipate society has reached a crisis point and can no longer provide answers to current social problems. Toward a New Legal Common Sense engages in a series of sociological analyses of law in order to illustrate the need for a profound theoretical reconstruction of the notion of legality based on locality, nationality and globality. In this way the author shows how developments including (...) suprastate organisations such as the European Union and international human rights law can be given their proper place in the sociology of law, and suggests a new set of social structures that might sustain the emancipatory elements that have disappeared from modern society. This 2002 edition, of a title originally published by Routledge, is part of the acclaimed Law in Context Series, whose aim is to develop broad interdisciplinary perspectives on law. Toward a New Legal Common Sense is written for students taking law and globalisation courses, and political science, philosophy and sociology students doing optional subjects. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, in spite of the apparently unshakable hegemony of the historical, philosophical and sociological arguments invoked by the canonical history of Europe and the world to demonstrate the uniqueness of the West and its superiority, there is room to think of a non-Occidentalist West. By that I mean a vast array of conceptions, theories, arguments that, though produced in the West by recognized intellectual figures, were discarded, marginalized or ignored because they did not fit the (...) political objectives of capitalism and colonialism at the roots of Western modernity. In the article I tackle specifically three topics: the conceptions of antiquity, modern science and a teleology of the future. Among many others who might be selected, I resort to three eccentric figures — Lucian of Samosata, Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal — to exemplify some of the paths that might guide us in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-colonialist inter-cultural dialogue. Such paths are here designated as those of learned ignorance, ecology of knowledge, wager on another possible world and artisanship of practices. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, in spite of the apparently unshakable hegemony of the historical, philosophical and sociological arguments invoked by the canonical history of Europe and the world to demonstrate the uniqueness of the West and its superiority, there is room to think of a non-Occidentalist West. By that I mean a vast array of conceptions, theories, arguments that, though produced in the West by recognized intellectual figures, were discarded, marginalized or ignored because they did not fit the (...) political objectives of capitalism and colonialism at the roots of Western modernity. In the article I tackle specifically three topics: the conceptions of antiquity, modern science and a teleology of the future. Among many others who might be selected, I resort to three eccentric figures — Lucian of Samosata, Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal — to exemplify some of the paths that might guide us in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-colonialist inter-cultural dialogue. Such paths are here designated as those of learned ignorance, ecology of knowledge, wager on another possible world and artisanship of practices. (shrink)

Em "O Fim do Império Cognitivo" Boaventura de Sousa Santos desenvolve o seu conceito de «Epistemologias do Sul», delineando um universo teórico, metodológico e pedagógico que desafia o domínio do pensamento eurocêntrico. À semelhança de uma coleção de con.

The pace, the scale, the nature and the reach of social transformation are such that moments of destruction and moments of creation succeed each other in a frantic rhythm without leaving time or space for moments of stabilization and consolidation. This is precisely why I characterize the current period as one of transition.

. Time, baroque codes and canonization. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 403-420.

According to Hegel, universal history goes from the East to the West. This idea underlies the dominant conception of the 20th century as the European American Century. In this article, I submit that there has been another, subaltern 20th century, the Nuestra AmericaAmerican Century. The European American Century carries into the new millennium its empirical arrogance in the form of neoliberal globalization; the Nuestra AmericaAmerican Century, to be reinvented, bears the seeds of counter-hegemonic globalization. Counter-hegemonic globalization is understood as a (...) set of transnational alliances and struggles focused on the dynamic equilibrium between the principle of equality and the principle of difference. The article identifies five main themes in which the clash between the two alternative globalizations will occur in the next decades. (shrink)

The book's main argument is that global social injustice is by and large epistemological injustice. It maintains that there can be no global social justice without global cognitive justice.

Even though the university has the potential to help humanity in what amounts to a paradigmatic transition, it has been very restrictive and very selective in the kinds of knowledges it validates. In fact, the kinds of knowledges in which it has excelled are those most responsible for the paradigmatic crisis in which humanity finds itself. In a nutshell, the paradigmatic change calls for cognitive justice, justice for the different ways of knowing that circulate in society. Cognitive justice is the (...) polar opposite of ‘anything goes’. The assumption is that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice, justice among knowledges. Looking back, while privileging one specific kind of knowledge and, indeed, granting it a cognitive monopoly, the university has been the privileged site for producing and legitimating cognitive injustice. As a result, the immense epistemic diversity of the world has been ignored or suppressed. In the following, I identify the problem and the promise for overcoming it. (shrink)

What is generally called globalization is a vast social field in which hegemonic or dominant social groups, states, interests and ideologies collide with counter-hegemonic or subordinate social groups, states, interests and ideologies on a world scale. Even the hegemonic camp is fraught with conflicts, but over and above them, there is a basic consensus among its most influential members. It is this consensus that confers on globalization its dominant characteristics. The counter-hegemonic or subordinate production of globalization is what is called (...) insurgent cosmopolitanism. It consists of the transnationally organized resistance against the unequal exchanges produced or intensified by globalized localisms and localized globalisms. (shrink)

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to put the development of the World Social Forum within a broad theoretical and historical context. Specifically, my goal is to understand the WSF in relation to the crises of left thinking and practice of the last thirty or forty years. Second, it offers an analysis of some recent debates about the future of the WSF. It raises questions concerning its organizational makeup and asks whether it should continue as it is, or (...) rather give way to other kinds of initiatives and struggles. Against critics such as Walden Bello, I argue that the WSF should continue and, given certain organizational changes, will contribute to the theory and practice of left movements throughout the world in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

What is generally called globalization is a vast social field in which hegemonic or dominant social groups, states, interests and ideologies collide with counter-hegemonic or subordinate social groups, states, interests and ideologies on a world scale. Even the hegemonic camp is fraught with conflicts, but over and above them, there is a basic consensus among its most influential members. It is this consensus that confers on globalization its dominant characteristics. The counter-hegemonic or subordinate production of globalization is what is called (...) insurgent cosmopolitanism. It consists of the transnationally organized resistance against the unequal exchanges produced or intensified by globalized localisms and localized globalisms. (shrink)

According to Hegel, universal history goes from the East to the West. This idea underlies the dominant conception of the 20th century as the European American Century. In this article, I submit that there has been another, subaltern 20th century, the Nuestra AmericaAmerican Century. The European American Century carries into the new millennium its empirical arrogance in the form of neoliberal globalization; the Nuestra AmericaAmerican Century, to be reinvented, bears the seeds of counter-hegemonic globalization. Counter-hegemonic globalization is understood as a (...) set of transnational alliances and struggles focused on the dynamic equilibrium between the principle of equality and the principle of difference. The article identifies five main themes in which the clash between the two alternative globalizations will occur in the next decades. (shrink)

Este trabajo plantear algunas ideas para descolonizar la historia. Realizar esta tarea requiere concebir el pasado como campo de conflicto entre fuerzas sociales y negar la existencia de una sola historia. Descolonizar es una intervención intelectual que se opone a las interpretaciones de la historia que reproducen la dominación moderna, capitalista, colonialista y patriarcal. Dichas interpretaciones utilizan el concepto de “línea abisal” para separar social y racialmente a los seres humanos, y el concepto de “tiempo lineal” para sostener una temporalidad (...) unidireccional, acumulativa, irreversible y progresiva. Descolonizar la historia significa denunciar la existencia de esa forma dominante de concebirla, y afirmar la construcción de una historia post-abisal y no-lineal que tome en cuenta la irrupción de los oprimidos en los procesos sociales. La “historia de las ausencias” y la “historia de las emergencias” son herramientas para descolonizar la historia ya que muestran que el pasado no está cerrado y exhiben cómo los oprimidos confrontan las formas de dominación utilizadas por los opresores para caracterizar a los vencidos: “epistemicidio”, “kairocidio” y “timécidio”. (shrink)

My starting point in this paper is the artistic structures of the Renaissance. Resorting to what I call an epistemology of blindness, I set out to identify the limits of representation in modern science. This epistemology applies to different sciences in different degrees. I argue that the degree is particularly high in the case of mainstream economics. At the end of the paper I indicate some possible ways of advancing from an epistemology of blindness toward an epistemology of seeing.

We are living in a period where the balanced interdependence of fear and hope seems to have collapsed as a result of the growing polarization between the world of hopeless fear (great majority of the population) and the world of fearless hope (a strictly small but all powerful minority). It is a world where uncertainties tend to become abysmal ones which, for the poor and powerless, ultimately translate into unjust fate and, for the rich and powerful, a reckless mission to (...) appropriate the world. Under the present circumstances, the revolt and the struggle against the injustice must be waged in such a way as to bring about a new social redistribution of fear and hope to put an end to the hopelessness of the oppressed and the fearlessness of the oppressors. The struggle will be more successful if people come to realize that the hopeless fate of the powerless majorities stems from the fearless hope of the powerful minorities. (shrink)

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright, considers Wright’s project of constructing and identifying real utopias. It confronts a tension in Wright’s oeuvre, the question of the knowledge by means of which reformers can identify the utopias that ground the really existing real utopias.

En el artículo se exponen las ideas principales de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, extrapoladas de sus libros más representativos. Una breve introducción a su reflexión política y a su crítica sociológica; vale decir, se interpreta la razón estratégica y globlal del telos de la Modernidad; a la vez que,..

Resumen: Este trabajo se propone revisar la tesis de la proliferación de alternativas, expuesta por Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a la luz de algunas críticas a la tesis de la proliferación de teorías, expuesta por Paul Feyerabend. Se defiende que, aunque no de modo explícito, hay una afinidad entre ambas tesis y, en consecuencia, las debilidades de la segunda afectan a la primera. No obstante, el objetivo básico consiste en mostrar cómo propuestas emergentes, como la ecología de (...) los saberes, antes que insistir en su carácter contraepistemológico, podrían beneficiarse de una discusión epistemológica amplia.: In this paper I review the thesis about the proliferation of alternatives by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, from some criticisms to the thesis of the proliferation of theories by Paul Feyerabend. I claim that, though not in explicit way, there is an affinity between them, therefore the weakness from the second one affects the first one. However, the point is to show how some emergent proposals, as the ecology of knowledges, could benefit from a full epistemological discussion, instead of insisting on its counter-epistemological nature. (shrink)

This article discusses the issue of Christianity in a pluralistic society on the basis of the book "If God Were a Human Rights Activist", by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. In this book the author confronts the challenges that the "movements that demand the presence of religion in the public sphere" place for human rights in the context of ”ecology of conceptions of human dignity." This article begins by presenting the problem of Christianity in a pluralistic society and (...) indicating two fundamental forms of dialogue and interaction between religious traditions and society as a whole. The text goes on to show, from the aforementioned book, how traditions and religious movements are a privileged place of affirmation and defense of human dignity and how theologies that sustain them constitute a 'defense grammar of human dignity. The article concludes by showing how the affirmation and defense of human dignity, understood and lived in the context of social struggles for justice, constitute the core of the Christian experience of God or, in any case, one of its fundamental features or marks. (shrink)

A partir de la definición de la globalización neoliberal como un localismo occidental globalizado, expresión de un nuevo tipo de imperialismo cultural, el objetivo principal de este artículo es el de llevar a cabo una exposición analítica de la propuesta de traducción intercultural e interpolítica d..

RESUMO O presente estudo analisa a narrativa de Milton Hatoum utilizando como corpus as crônicas “Um sonhador” e “Margens secas da cidade”. Objetiva problematizar as características discursivas e estéticas da criação literária de Hatoum, a partir da perspectiva dialógica proposta por Mikhail Bakhtin, explorando, no discurso artístico-literário do escritor amazonense, as posições axiológicas refratadas em sua narrativa. Relaciona ainda a perspectiva epistemológica de Boaventura Santos acerca do desperdício da experiência social na modernidade/pós-modernidade, discutindo a crítica ao paradigma da (...) racionalidade atual denominado pelo autor de razão indolente. As análises iniciais alicerçadas nestas abordagens teórico-metodológicas evidenciam indícios, na narrativa cronística de Hatoum, que a aproxima de uma perspectiva contra-hegemônica e responsiva de representação literária. Pretende, assim, com esta inter-relação entre literatura, dialogismo e teoria do conhecimento, evidenciar as imbricações existentes entre o discurso sócio-histórico-econômico produzido pela crítica à modernidade/pós-modernidade e o discurso literário de Milton Hatoum. ABSTRACT This study analyzes Milton Hatoum’s narrative using the crônicas Um sonhador [A Dreamer] and Margens secas da cidade [Dry Riverbanks of the City] as corpus. It aims to ascertain the discursive and aesthetic characteristics of Hatoum’s literary creation from the dialogical perspective proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin, exploring the artistic-literary discourse of the Amazonian writer, the axiological positions refracted in his narrative. It also relates Boaventura Santos’ epistemological perspective about the waste of social experience in modernity/post-modernity, discussing the criticism of the paradigm of current rationality called by the author as indolent reason. Initial analysis based on these theoretical-methodological approaches show evidence in Hatoum’s cronistic narrative that brings it closer to a counter-hegemonic and responsive perspective of literary representation. Thus, with this inter-relationship among literature, dialogism and theory of knowledge, we intend to highlight the existing overlaps between the socio-historical and economic discourse produced by the critique of modernity / postmodernity and literary discourse of Milton Hatoum. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aims to analyze sociohistorically how the normative patterns of hegemonic masculinity produced impacts on men’s health/mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA qualitative study from a socio-historical perspective was conducted with 50 men based on an online survey. A semistructured form was applied. The data were analyzed by the Collective Subject Discourse method, interpreted in the light of the context of epidemic disease and hegemonic masculinity.ResultsThe experience of the pandemic exposed the normative patterns of masculinities from (...) the consummation of acts representative of the pandemic context, which incited men to deny the existence of COVID-19 disease and to delay the understanding and adoption of measures to protect and control COVID-19. As a repercussion, men presented conflicts in the regulation of emotions; presented emotional suppression; were more reactive; felt threatened regarding the loss of the role of family provider, virility; and revealed a sense of invulnerability, added to the weakening of self-care.ConclusionThe discourse revealed that the men’s behaviors are consistent with the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, but express signs of recognition that this behavior causes harm to themselves and their health. (shrink)