The gloomy prospect of climate change and ecosystems' collapse calls for an urgent rethinking of all aspects of our life: how we work, produce, eat, spend, take care of each other, relate to nature, and organize our societies. Prefigurative initiatives are attracting a growing amount of attention from scholars and activists precisely because they are envisioning alternative futures by embodying radically different ways of living in the present. Thanks to the contribution of leading researchers, 'The Future is Now' represents the go-to book for anyone seeking a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and thought-provoking introduction to the thriving field of prefigurative politics.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply shaken societies and lives around the world. This powerful book reveals how the pandemic has intensified socio-economic problems and inequalities across the world whilst offering visions for a better future informed by social movements and public sociology. Bringing together experts from 27 countries, the authors explore the global echoes of the pandemic and the different responses adopted by governments, policy makers and activists. The new expressions of social action, and forms of solidarity and protest, are discussed in detail, from the Black Lives Matter protests to the French Strike Movement and the Lebanese Uprising. This is a unique global analysis on the current crisis and the contemporary world and its outcomes.

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth. Noting that most design-from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments-currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an "autonomous design" that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. Such design attends to questions of environment, experience, and politics while focusing on the production of human experience based on the radical interdependence of all beings. Mapping autonomous design's principles to the history of decolonial efforts of indigenous and Afro-descended people in Latin America, Escobar shows how refiguring current design practices could lead to the creation of more just and sustainable social orders.

The gloomy prospect of climate change and ecosystems' collapse calls for an urgent rethinking of all aspects of our life: how we work, produce, eat, spend, take care of each other, relate to nature, and organize our societies. Prefigurative initiatives are attracting a growing amount of attention from scholars and activists precisely because they are envisioning alternative futures by embodying radically different ways of living in the present. Thanks to the contribution of leading researchers, 'The Future is Now' represents the go-to book for anyone seeking a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and thought-provoking introduction to the thriving field of prefigurative politics.

During the last decade, Latin American social movements have brought about a profound transformation in the nature and practice of protest and collective action. This book surveys the full spectrum of movements in Latin America today-from peasant and squatter movements to women's and gay movements, as well as environmental and civic movements - exa

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply shaken societies and lives around the world. This powerful book reveals how the pandemic has intensified socio-economic problems and inequalities across the world whilst offering visions for a better future informed by social movements and public sociology. Bringing together experts from 27 countries, the authors explore the global echoes of the pandemic and the different responses adopted by governments, policy makers and activists. The new expressions of social action, and forms of solidarity and protest, are discussed in detail, from the Black Lives Matter protests to the French Strike Movement and the Lebanese Uprising. This is a unique global analysis on the current crisis and the contemporary world and its outcomes.

In "Territories of Difference," Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book "Encountering Development," analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. His analysis is based on his many years of engagement with a group of Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia's Pacific rainforest region, the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN). Escobar offers a detailed ethnographic account of PCN's visions, strategies, and practices, and he chronicles and analyzes the movement's struggles for autonomy, territory, justice, and cultural recognition. Yet he also does much more. Consistently emphasizing the value of local activist knowledge for both understanding and social action and drawing on multiple strands of critical scholarship, Escobar proposes new ways for scholars and activists to examine and apprehend the momentous, complex processes engulfing regions such as the Colombian Pacific today.

Escobar illuminates many interrelated dynamics, including the Colombian government's policies of development and pluralism that created conditions for the emergence of black and indigenous social movements and those movements' efforts to steer the region in particular directions. He examines attempts by capitalists to appropriate the rainforest and extract resources, by developers to set the region on the path of modernist progress, and by biologists and others to defend this incredibly rich biodiversity "hot-spot" from the most predatory activities of capitalists and developers. He also looks at the attempts of academics, activists, and intellectuals to understand all of these complicated processes. "Territories of Difference" is Escobar's effort to think with Afro-Colombian intellectual-activists who aim to move beyond the limits of Eurocentric paradigms as they confront the ravages of neoliberal globalization and seek to defend their place-based cultures and territories.

In Pluriversal Politics Arturo Escobar engages with the politics of the possible and how established notions of what is real and attainable preclude the emergence of radically alternative visions of the future. Reflecting on the experience, philosophy, and practice of indigenous and Afro-descendant activist-intellectuals and on current Latin American theoretical-political debates, Escobar chronicles the social movements mobilizing to defend their territories from large-scale extractive operations in the region. He shows how these movements engage in an ontological politics aimed at bringing about the pluriverse-a world consisting of many worlds, each with its own ontological and epistemic grounding. Such a politics, Escobar contends, is key to crafting myriad world-making stories telling of different possible futures that could bring about the profound social transformations that are needed to address planetary crises. Both a call to action and a theoretical provocation, Pluriversal Politics finds Escobar at his critically incisive best.

Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary contains over one hundred essays on transformative initiatives and alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. It offers critical essays on mainstream solutions that 'greenwash' development and presents radically different worldviews and practices from around the world that point to an ecologically wise and socially just world.

This is the first book in English profiling the work of a research collective that evolved around the notion of "coloniality," understood as the hidden agenda and the darker side of modernity and whose members are based in South America and the United States. The project called for an understanding of modernity not from modernity itself but from its darker side, coloniality, and proposes the de-colonization of knowledge as an epistemological restitution with political and ethical implications.

Epistemic decolonization, or de-coloniality, becomes the horizon to imagine and act toward global futures in which the notion of a political enemy is replaced by intercultural communication and towards an-other rationality that puts life first and that places institutions at its service, rather than the other way around.

The volume is profoundly inter- and trans-disciplinary, with authors writing from many intellectual, transdisciplinary, and institutional spaces.

This book was published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Since its inception, anthropology's authority has been based on the assumption that it is a unified discipline emanating from the West. In an age of heightened globalization, anthropologists have failed to discuss consistently the current status of their practice and its mutations across the globe. World Anthropologies is the first book to provoke this conversation from various regions of the world in order to assess the diversity of relations between regional or national anthropologies and a contested, power-laden Western discourse. Can a planetary anthropology cope with both the 'provincial cosmopolitanism' of alternative anthropologies and the 'metropolitan provincialism' of hegemonic schools? How might the resulting 'world anthropologies' challenge the current panorama in which certain allegedly national anthropological traditions have more paradigmatic weight - and hence more power - than others? Critically examining the international dissemination of anthropology within and across national power fields, contributors address these questions and provide the outline for a veritable world anthropologies project.

Since its inception, anthropology's authority has been based on the assumption that it is a unified discipline emanating from the West. In an age of heightened globalization, anthropologists have failed to discuss consistently the current status of their practice and its mutations across the globe. World Anthropologies is the first book to provoke this conversation from various regions of the world in order to assess the diversity of relations between regional or national anthropologies and a contested, power-laden Western discourse. Can a planetary anthropology cope with both the 'provincial cosmopolitanism' of alternative anthropologies and the 'metropolitan provincialism' of hegemonic schools? How might the resulting 'world anthropologies' challenge the current panorama in which certain allegedly national anthropological traditions have more paradigmatic weight - and hence more power - than others? Critically examining the international dissemination of anthropology within and across national power fields, contributors address these questions and provide the outline for a veritable world anthropologies project.

During the last decade, Latin American social movements have brought about a profound transformation in the nature and practice of protest and collective action. This book surveys the full spectrum of movements in Latin America today-from peasant and squatter movements to women's and gay movements, as well as environmental and civic movements - examining how this diverse mosaic of emergent social actors has prompted social scientists to rethink the dynamics of Latin American social and political change.Whereas the prevailing theories of social movements have largely drawn on Western cases, this volume includes the work of prominent Latin American scholars and incorporates analytical perspectives originating in the region. Contributors discuss the three dimensions of change most commonly attributed to Latin American social movements in the 1980s: their role in forging collective identities; their innovative social practices and political strategies; and their actual or potential contributions to alternative visions of development and to the democratization of political institutions and social relations.This interdisciplinary text provides both specialists and students of social movements with a unique, comprehensive, and accessible collection of essays that is unprecedented in theoretical and empirical scope. It will be useful in a wide range of graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in Latin American studies, comparative politics, sociology and anthropology, development studies, political economy, and contemporary political and cultural theory.

The chapters in this captivating volume demonstrate the importance and power of design and the ubiquitous and forceful effects it has on human life within the study of anthropology. The scholars explore the interactions between anthropology and design through a cross-disciplinary approach, and while their approaches vary in how they specifically consider design, they are all centered around the design-and-anthropology relationship. The chapters look at anthropology for design, in which anthropological methods and concepts are mobilized in the design process; anthropology of design, in which design is positioned as an object of ethnographic inquiry and critique; and design for anthropology, in which anthropologists borrow concepts and practices from design to enhance traditional ethnographic forms. Collectively, the chapters argue that bringing design and anthropology together can transform both fields in more than one way and that to tease out the implications of using design to reimagine ethnography--and of using ethnography to reimagine design--we need to consider the historical specificity of their entanglements.

In Pluriversal Politics Arturo Escobar engages with the politics of the possible and how established notions of what is real and attainable preclude the emergence of radically alternative visions of the future. Reflecting on the experience, philosophy, and practice of indigenous and Afro-descendant activist-intellectuals and on current Latin American theoretical-political debates, Escobar chronicles the social movements mobilizing to defend their territories from large-scale extractive operations in the region. He shows how these movements engage in an ontological politics aimed at bringing about the pluriverse-a world consisting of many worlds, each with its own ontological and epistemic grounding. Such a politics, Escobar contends, is key to crafting myriad world-making stories telling of different possible futures that could bring about the profound social transformations that are needed to address planetary crises. Both a call to action and a theoretical provocation, Pluriversal Politics finds Escobar at his critically incisive best.

How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. "Development" was not even partially "deconstructed" until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific "Third World" cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era.

Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "gaze of experts."

In a substantial new introduction, Escobar reviews debates on globalization and postdevelopment since the book's original publication in 1995 and argues that the concept of postdevelopment needs to be redefined to meet today's significantly new conditions. He then calls for the development of a field of "pluriversal studies," which he illustrates with examples from recent Latin American movements.

This is the first book in English profiling the work of a research collective that evolved around the notion of "coloniality", understood as the hidden agenda and the darker side of modernity and whose members are based in South America and the United States. The project called for an understanding of modernity not from modernity itself but from its darker side, coloniality, and proposes the de-colonization of knowledge as an epistemological restitution with political and ethical implications. Epistemic decolonization, or de-coloniality, becomes the horizon to imagine and act toward global futures in which the notion of a political enemy is replaced by intercultural communication and towards an-other rationality that puts life first and that places institutions at its service, rather than the other way around. The volume is profoundly inter- and trans-disciplinary, with authors writing from many intellectual, transdisciplinary, and institutional spaces. This book was published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

This is the third volume of the series Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards New Manifestoes. Another Knowledge Is Possible explores the struggles against moral and cultural imperialism and neoliberal globalization that have taken place over the past few decades, and the alternatives that have emerged in countries throughout the developing world from Brazil and Colombia, to India, South Africa and Mozambique. In particular it looks at the issue of biodiversity, the confrontation between scientific and non-scientific knowledges, and the increasing difficulty experienced by great numbers of people in accessing information and scientific-technological knowledge.

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth. Noting that most design-from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments-currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an "autonomous design" that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. Such design attends to questions of environment, experience, and politics while focusing on the production of human experience based on the radical interdependence of all beings. Mapping autonomous design's principles to the history of decolonial efforts of indigenous and Afro-descended people in Latin America, Escobar shows how refiguring current design practices could lead to the creation of more just and sustainable social orders.

This ambitious work provides a unique statement on the question of place-based activism and its relationship to powerful forces of international capital. Arguing that specific places around the world are sites for the defense and enhancement of daily life in the context of rapidly expanding global technologies and investment options, the contributors reach for a vision of social development that supports sustainable, humane cultures. Bringing together the local and the global, this work provides the first sustained linkage of ethnic groups in diaspora to macrocosmic processes of world capital that inevitably reach down to mediate even the most local experiences. The essays, ranging in their discussion of place from Los Angeles and New York to New Zealand and Indonesia, offer both reasoned argument and authoritiative information on how local experience interacts with larger processes of global capital and the diasporic phenomenon. The book will be an invaluable resource and launching point for scholars and students in ethnic and identity studies and will interest all readers exploring the production of place and identification.

To reshape the field of development communication, Redeveloping Communication for Social Change proposes situating theory and practice within contexts of power, recognizing both the ability of dominant groups to control and the potential for marginal communities to resist. Contributors from communication and anthropology explore the global and institutional structures within which agencies construct social problems and interventions, the discourse guiding the normative climate for conceiving and implementing projects, and the practice of strategic interventions for social change. Examining early and emerging models of development, power dynamics, ethnographic approaches, gender issues, and information technologies, they speculate how a framework accounting for power might contribute toward new directions and applications in the field. Instead of mourning the demise of development communication, this volume should provoke critical debate that will help us change our approaches to meet new challenges.