III Fórum Social Mundial


Book Description




Handbook on World Social Forum Activism


Book Description

The World Social Forum (WSF) has become the focus for a diverse array of movements advancing alternative visions of globalisation. The numerous WSF's have helped to connect activists in an increasingly dense network of advocates for radical social change. They have mobilised hundreds of thousands of people and may be one of the most important political developments of our time. The Handbook of World Social Forum Activism brings together leading scholars of the social forum process from North America and Europe. The collection contributes to the ongoing process of reflection from the WSF experience, and is accessible to activists, students and scholars alike.




The Rise of the Global Left


Book Description

Leading sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos makes an impassioned case for the politicisation of the World Social Forum, arguing that its full potential as a force for social, economic and political change can be achieved only by taking a stand against neo-liberal globalization, war, famine and corruption. However, since its inception in Porto Alegre in 2001, the World Social Forum has refused to adopt political positions on world events, preferring instead to provide a platform that facilitates cooperation between diverse social movements. Through a detailed analysis of the WSF's history and organization, he demonstrates that it has always been an inherently political organization, and argues that if the WSF is able to realise its potential as an institution for a new form of politics, it will become a global power to be reckoned with in the 21st century.




World Social Forum


Book Description

The Annual World Social Forum has become a key part of the international global justice movement, attracting activists from around the world. Here Leite lays out the origins, development and challenges of this international movement for social, political and economic justice.




Movements of Movements


Book Description

Our world today is not only a world in crisis but also a world in profound movement, with increasing numbers of people joining or forming movements: local, national, transnational, and global. The dazzling diversity of ideas and experiences recorded in this collection captures something of the fluidity within campaigns for a more equitable planet. This book, taking internationalism seriously without tired dogmas, provides a bracing window into some of the central ideas to have emerged from within grassroots struggles from 2006 to 2010. The essays here cross borders to look at the politics of caste, class, gender, religion, and indigeneity, and move from the local to the global. Rethinking Our Dance, the second of two volumes, offers a wide range of essays from frontline activists in Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Niger, and Taiwan, as well as from Europe and North America that address the question, “What do we need to do in order to bring about justice and peace?” The Movements of Movements aims to make the bewildering range of contemporary movements more meaningful to the observer and also to be a space where global movements speak to each other. This book will be useful to all who work for egalitarian social change—be they in universities, parties, trade unions, social movements, or religious organisations. Contributors include Kolya Abramsky, Ezequiel Adamovsky, Ousseina Alidou, Samir Amin, Chris Carlsson, John Brown Childs, Lee Cormie, Anila Daulatzai, Massimo De Angelis, The Free Association, David Graeber, Josephine Ho, John Holloway, François Houtart, Jeffrey Juris, Michael Löwy, Tomás Mac Sheoin, Matt Meyer, Muto Ichiyo, Rodrigo Nunes, Michal Osterweil, Shailja Patel, Geoffrey Pleyers, Stephanie Ross, and Nicola Yeates.




Cynical Citizenship


Book Description

This anthropological study of grassroots community leaders in Porto Alegre, Brazil’s leftist hotspot, focuses on gender, politics, and regionalism during the early 2000s, when the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) was in power. The author explores the ways community leaders make sense of official notions of citizenship and how gender, politics, and regional identities shape these interpretations. Junge further examines the implications of leaders’ deep ambivalence toward normative participation discourses for how we theorize and study participatory democracy, citizenship, and political subjectivity in Brazil and beyond.




Reclaiming the Public Sphere


Book Description

This volume brings together a range of different specialists in the arts and cultural industries, as well as international academics and public intellectuals, to explore how media and communication practices for social change are currently being reconfigured in both conceptual and rhetorical terms.




International Encyclopedia of Human Geography


Book Description

The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world. This groundbreaking project covers every field of human geography and the discipline’s relationships to other disciplines, and is global in scope, involving an international set of contributors. Given its broad, inclusive scope and unique online accessibility, it is anticipated that the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography will become the major reference work for the discipline over the coming decades. The Encyclopedia will be available in both limited edition print and online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/ref_works/coming/ Available online on ScienceDirect and in limited edition print format Broad, interdisciplinary coverage across human geography: Philosophy, Methods, People, Social/Cultural, Political, Economic, Development, Health, Cartography, Urban, Historical, Regional Comprehensive and unique - the first of its kind in human geography




Religion in the Neoliberal Age


Book Description

This book, together with a complementary volume 'Religion in Consumer Society', focuses on religion, neoliberalism and consumer society; offering an overview of an emerging field of research in the study of contemporary religion. Claiming that we are entering a new phase of state-religion relations, the editors examine how this is historically anchored in modernity but affected by neoliberalization and globalization of society and social life. Seemingly distant developments, such as marketization and commoditization of religion as well as legalization and securitization of social conflicts, are transforming historical expressions of 'religion' and 'religiosity' yet these changes are seldom if ever understood as forming a coherent, structured and systemic ensemble. 'Religion in the Neoliberal Age' includes an extensive introduction framing the research area, and linking it to existing scholarship, before looking at four key issues: 1. How changes in state structures have empowered new modes of religious activity in welfare production and the delivery of a range of state services; 2. How are religion-state relations transforming under the pressures of globalization and neoliberalism; 3. How historical churches and their administrations are undergoing change due to structural changes in society, and what new forms of religious body are emerging; 4. How have law and security become new areas for solving religious conflicts. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy.




Communism in the 21st Century


Book Description

A compelling three-volume exploration of the philosophical, social, and political facets of the theory and practice of communism within the conditions of 21st-century world politics and late capitalism. The world has changed significantly, and so has communism. This groundbreaking three-volume series comprises contributions from over 30 experts that thoroughly address the past, present, and future of communism. The entries assess the modern re-articulation of the notion of communism and its potential emergence against the backdrop of recent historical conditions and contemporary world politics, taking into account the ongoing global financial crisis, recent revolutions throughout the Middle East, Occupy protest events, and anti-globalization movements. The first volume reexamines Marx's ideas from many distinct viewpoints while the second volume considers the numerous challenges facing existing communist parties, including those in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. The last volume explores the future of communist thought and practice in the context of the modern world and the recurrent crises of capitalism.