The first volume of the collection Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards New Manifestos.

The major conflicts between the Global North and the South can be expected to result from the confrontation of alternative conceptions of democracy, mainly between liberal or representative democracy and participatory democracy. The hegemonic model of democracy, while prevailing on a global scale, guarantees no more than low-intensity democracy. In recent times, participatory democracy has exhibited a new dynamic, engaging mainly subaltern communities and social groups that fight against social exclusion and the suppression of citizenship. In this collection of reports from the Global South—India, South Africa, Mozambique, Colombia, and Brazil—De Sousa Santos and his colleagues show how, in some cases, the deepening of democracy results from the development of dual forms of participatory and representative democracy, and points to the emergence of transnational networks of participatory democracy initiatives. Such networks pave one of the ways to the reinvention of social emancipation.

Contributors include: D.L. Sheth, Sakhela Buhlungu, Rodrigo Uprimny, Mauricio García Villegas, Shamim Meer, Conceição Osório, Maria José Arthur, Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, Ana Maria Jaramillo, María Clemencia Ramírez, Mauricio Romero, María Teresa Uribe de H, Leonardo Avritzer, Patrick Heller, T.M. Thomas Isaac, and Emir Sader.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and ILS Distinguished Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been an active participant in the World Social Forum. His most recent books in English are Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization and Emancipation and Law and Counter-Hegemonic Globalization: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality, co-edited with Cesar Rodriquez-Gavarito. His Another Production Is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon and Another Knowledge Is Possible are also available from Verso.

550 pages

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 041 3
US$65 / £40 / CAN$91

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 147 2
U$34.95 / £24.99
CAN$43.50