Librería Portfolio

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.



Table of Contents:
Preface to the English Edition ix
Prologue xxxv
Acknowledgments xxxix
Introduction: Another Possible Is Possible 1
1. Theory and the Un/Real: Tools for Rethinking ´Reality´ and the Possible 13
2. From Below, on the Left, and with the Earth: The Difference that Abya Yala/Afro/Latino América Makes 31
3. The Earth-Form of Life: Nasa Thought and the Limits to the Episteme of Modernity 46
4. Sentipensar with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South 67
5. Notes on Intellectual Colonialism and the Dilemmas of Latin American Social Theory 84
6. Postdevelopment @ 25: On ´Being Stuck´ and Moving Forward, Sideways, Backward, and Otherwise (a Conversation with Gustavo Esteva) 97
7. Cosmo/Visions of the Colombian Pacific Coast Region and Their Socioenvironmental Implications: Elements for a Dialogue of Cosmo/Visions 120
8. Beyond ´Regional Development´ A Design Model for Civilizational Transition in the Cauca River Valley, Colombia 136
Notes 159
References 175
Index 185