The world social forum and the global left

Politics and Society

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 247-270

  De Sousa Santos, Boaventura ^a,b,c,d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA   (Portugal)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK   (United Kingdom)

^d UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA   (Portugal)

Author keywords

Global left; Globalization; Intercultural translation; Strong questions weak answers; WSF

Indexed keywords

EID: 43949096559     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329208316571     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (30)

1. For a better understanding of the political character and goals of the World Social Forum, see the Charter of Principles, available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br.
2. One of the most paradigmatic examples is the poverty - conceptual hubris coupled with bloodless narrow positivism - of the mainstream U.S. sociology of social movements. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
3. and Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
4. On the concern with global cognitive justice, see most recently Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges," Review Fernand Braudel Center XXX, no. 1 (2007): 45-89;
5. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ed., Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007);
6. and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ed., Another Knowledge is Possible (London, UK: Verso, 2007).
7. This position is a direct critique of Jurgen Habermas, Die Moderne, ein unvollendetes Projekt: philosophisch-politische Aufsätze (Leipzig, Germany: Reclam, 1990).
8. On this subject see Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition (London, UK: Routledge, 1995).
9. Paraphrasing Lucien Goldmann, weak-strong answers represent the maximum possible consciousness of a given epoch, Sciences Humaines et Philosophie. Suivi de Structuralisme Génétique et Création Littéraire (Paris, France: Gonthier, 1966);
10. and Lucien Goldmann, Structures Mentales et Création Culturelle (Paris, France: 10/18 Union Générale d'Editions, 1970).
11. By "utopia," I mean the exploration of new modes of human possibility and styles of will, and the use of the imagination to confront the apparent inevitability of whatever exists with something radically better that is worth fighting for, and to which humankind is fully entitled. (Santos, Toward a New Common Sense, 479).
12. On the concept of conservative utopias, see Franz Hinkelammert, Crítica de la Razón Utópica (Bilbao, Spain: Desclée de Brouwer, 2002).
13. John Holloway, Change the World without Taking the Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2002).
14. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
15. On this topic see note 3 and the bibliography cited there.
16. See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "A Critique of Lazy Reason: Against the Waste of Experience," in The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, ed. I. Wallerstein (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), 157-97;
17. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (London, UK: Zed Books, 2006);
18. and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "The World Social Forum: Where Do We Stand and Where Are We Going?" in Global Civil Society 2005/6, eds. M. Glasius, M. Kaldor, and H. Anheier (London, UK: Sage, 2006), 73-78.
19. A good example was the first European. Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence in November of 2002. The differences, rivalries, and factionalisms that divide the various movements and NGOs that organized it are well known and have a history that is impossible to erase. This is why, in their positive response to the WSF's request to organize the ESF, the movements and NGOs that took up the task felt the need to assert that the differences among them were as sharp as ever and that they were coming together only with a very limited objective in mind: to organize the Forum and a Peace March. The Forum was indeed organized in such a way that the differences could be made very explicit.
20. I deal with this issue in greater detail in Santos, The Rise of the Global Left.
21. See Santos, The Rise of the Global Left;
22. and Santos, "The World Social Forum."
23. Walden Bello, "The Forum at the Crossroads," Foreign Policy in Focus 19, no. 2 (2007). At http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4196 (accessed on May 10, 2007).
24. Santos, "The World Social Forum."
25. Bello, "The Forum at the Crossroads."
26. Bello, "The Forum at the Crossroads."
27. Bello, "The Forum at the Crossroads."
28. See source at Chico Whitaker, Crossroads Do Not Always Close Roads (Reflection in continuity to Waiden Bello). At http://www.wsflibrary.org/ index.php/Crossroads_do_not_always_close_roads (accessed on June 10, 2007).
29. Thomas Ponniah, The Contribution of the U.S. Social Forum: A Reply to Whitaker and Bello's Debate on the Open Space. At http://www.lfsc.org/wsf/ ussf_cont.ribution_t.homas.pdf (accessed on May 4, 2007).
30. As an example, Llancaqueo has compiled the most recent chronology of criminal repression targeting social protest by the mapuches ( the main indigenous group in Chile-see Victor Toledo Llancaqueo, "Cronologia de los Principales Hechos en Relación a la Represión de la Protesta Social Mapuche - Chile 2000-2007," Revista del Observatorio Social de América Latina 22 (2007): 277-93.