The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope
Abstract
Dinerstein offers a much-needed review of the concept and practice of autonomy. She argues that defining autonomy as either revolutionary or ineffective vis-à-vis the state does not fully grasp the commitment of Latin American movements to the creation of alternative practices and horizons beyond capitalism. By establishing an elective affinity between autonomy and Bloch's principle of hope, the author defines autonomy as 'the art of organizing hope', that is, the art of shaping a reality which does not yet exist but can be anticipated by the movements' collective actions. Drawing from the experience of autonomous resistance of four prominent indigenous and non-indigenous urban and rural movements, Dinerstein suggests that the politics of autonomy produce an excess that cannot be translated into the grammar of power. This involves an engagement with a reality that is not yet and, therefore, counters value with hope. The book also offers a new critique of political economy, reading Marx's philosophy in key of hope, and emphasises the prefigurative features of autonomy at a time when utopia can no longer be objected.
... I also intend to unfold the transformative experiences the residents gain by simply living in Suderbyn and the various challenges and struggles of the community arising from different pressures of the predominant societal structures while trying to create a more sustainable way of life. With this thesis I aim to contribute to the existing knowledge web around transformative learning and experiences in international communities and ecovillages (Pisters et al., 2019(Pisters et al., , 2020(Pisters et al., , 2023 but also present new perspectives and ideas for other researchers on how these communities can prefigure alternative ways of living (Dinerstein, 2015;Monticelli, 2022b) for both the present and future. ...
... Researchers investigating ecovillages from the perspective of prefiguration highlight the potentials of realizing of alternative visions in the presence through everyday sustainable practices as well as creating networks and sharing knowledge among the communities (Casey et al., 2020;Monticelli & Munk Petersen, 2023;Schiller-Merkens, 2022). The scholarship around prefiguration points out the embeddedness of sustainable initiatives in the hegemonic societal structures and the confrontations and contradictions in maintaining their practices and autonomy through struggle against the logic of power (Dinerstein, 2015;Monticelli, 2022b;Monticelli & Munk Petersen, 2023;Schiller-Merkens, 2022). ...
... This perspective is also coined by marxist and feminist scholars who emphasize the political nature of personal and private life (Ghodsee, 2023;Gibson-Graham, 2006;Hanisch, 1970). To sum up, prefiguration entails a critique and confrontation of realities such as the hegemonic capitalist system and the state while presenting seeds of alternative futures and new realities in the present (Dinerstein, 2015(Dinerstein, , 2021Kokkinidis, 2015;Schiller-Merkens, 2022). ...
Departing from my interest and experiences in sustainable communities, I explore the transformative learning experiences of residents in Suderbyn Ecovillage, focusing on sustainable practices that reshape their understanding of living together as a community in harmony with nature. I demonstrate that the community members undergo a profound shift in how they perceive everyday life, fundamentally changing their thoughts, actions, and relationships with one another and the surrounding ecosystem, while simultaneously challenging the prevailing societal structures. I also examine tensions Suderbyn faces as it navigates contradictions within the dominant capitalist system and argue that, despite its uncertain future, participation in ecovillage's daily life transforms residents' visions for an alternative future and expands a network of sustainable organization.
... Federici powerfully connects the obliteration of indigenous people with the population crisis and the problem of reproduction. The conquerors dreamt of an infinite labour supply (Federici 2018: 93), and they were confronted with a severe population decline of 75 million in South America and the largest holocaust in human history, with eight million people killed (Dinerstein 2015). The later 'turned reproduction and population growth into state matters' (Federici 2018: 97). ...
... If the 'barbarian resisted the civilising redemptive action of the modern and advanced, violence was applied [again] so that the victims became guilty of resisting development, while modernity remained innocent (Dussel 1993: 75). This is still a commonplace in the twenty first century modern world (Dinerstein 2015). ...
... In those territories where capitalism has been the product of colonial expansion, there has not been a total generalisation of the law of value, and therefore, capital creates 'blind spots' that need to be explored to capture the composition of radical subjectivity, such as the formation of the 'national-popular' elements of radical subjectivity in Bolivia and other Latin American countries. These types of society combine different forms of subsumption (real, formal and subsumption by exclusion) (Dinerstein 2015), which Zavaleta Mercado (1986) called sociedades abigarradas (motley societies), coining this term to designate those societies where there is a combination of different forms of subsumption under the law of value. One of the most important aspect of the sociedades abigarradas is that they produce a 'superimposition of several historical times in the same territory' (Tapia 2016: 69). ...
The article enhances Frigga Haug’s theses on Marxism-feminism by discussing a silence in the theses regarding the internal colonialism of the feminist movement that continue creating racialised hierarchies among White feminist and indigenous people and women of colour and their struggles. The author contends that Marxism-Feminism is failing to find new ways to understand diversity due to the influence of traditional Eurocentric Marxism. To tackle the problem, Marxism-feminism requires a decolonising Marxism that draws on ‘late Marx’ and recent Marxist and feminist theoretical developments aiming to criticise and de-Westernise and de-Eurocentralise Marxism. The author explores four elements for a ‘decolonising’ Marxism (value theory, subsumption and social formation, linear development of radical change and temporality of struggles) and discusses its implications on Marxism-feminism towards a possible thesis 14 on Marxism-feminism.
... However, decolonial authors have suggested that the prefigurative focus on "abstract utopias" detaches these efforts "from the reality of struggle" (Dinerstein, 2020: 3) and the limits imposed by "a capitalist, patriarchal society" (Gordon, 2018: 11) perpetrated by a coloniality of power (Grosfoguel, 2007;Quijano, 2000), thus restricting its political change potential (Chase-Dunn and Nagy, 2019; Young and Schwartz, 2012). In response, these scholars have started investigating the role of translation processes in recognizing and converting local initiatives into supportive political and legal change tools (Baker, 2020;Buts, 2020;Dinerstein, 2015Dinerstein, , 2017Dinerstein and Pitts, 2021). ...
... To value and promote the local knowledges and practices within this adversarial context, Dinerstein and colleagues (Dinerstein, 2015(Dinerstein, , 2016(Dinerstein, , 2017Dinerstein and Ferrero, 2012;Dinerstein and Pitts, 2021) proposed a prefigurative translation framework based on Bloch's (1995) "concrete utopianism." As a form of decolonizing prefiguration (Dinerstein, 2022), concrete utopias challenge criticisms of open-ended neutrality (Parker, 2023), by centering on "real struggles connected to people's everyday life" (Dinerstein, 2016: 50). ...
... Authors have given examples of prefigurative translation processes (Dinerstein, 2015;Dinerstein and Ferrero, 2012), which clearly reject the given order through a "process of shaping absences and elaborating alternatives" (Dinerstein, 2015: 224). They also identified the production of prefigurative "untranslatable excess" (Vázquez, 2011), that is, an inevitable output representing the "still unfulfilled desire for utopia" (Dinerstein, 2020: 42). ...
Social movement scholars have been discussing the limits of prefigurative initiatives, based on the present enactment of desired futures, in promoting supportive institutional structures. However, research has yet to explore fully how prefigurative means can be meaningfully converted into structural ends. Our paper explores the role of decolonial social movements, centered on challenging institutional legacies of colonialism, and their translating processes into filling this gap. Through our decolonial analysis of the International Monsanto Tribunal, we show how prefigurative translation-that is, process through which alternative organizing principles are converted into proposals of enabling policies and laws-connected prefiguring principles to structuring efforts by bridging alternative voices and negating Monsanto's damaging actions. As a result of bringing together actors' sharing similar struggles and horizons and deconstructing current problematic structures, they helped translating their principles and practices into political and legal change tools. Our research contributes to the nascent perspective of decolonial social movements as translators by exploring the process through which they help to defend and promote alternatives from a position with, against, and beyond entrenched hostile structures, often a product of colonial heritage. Furthermore, we propose the prefigurative translation role of negating actions as essential to creating "concrete utopias" anchored on real-world struggles and deconstructing problematic translations. Finally, our analysis suggests that, in this process, the presence of "translation arbiters" is important in recognizing, connecting and balancing alternative organizing principles that are traditionally hidden or devalued.
... Externally, CCs as an alternative form of organizing face severe constraints from the dominant system and are often repressed by or co-opted within the capitalist structure (Dinerstein, 2015;Gibson-Graham, 2006). Internally, CCs are confronted with entrenched inequalities and the resulting marginalization of certain social groups (Bhatt, 2022;Cucchi, Lubberink, Dentoni, & Gartner, 2022;Hota, Bhatt, & Qureshi, 2023;Riaz & Qureshi, 2017), particularly in heterogeneous and hierarchical contexts, such as caste-based stratification (Bhatt, Qureshi, & Sutter, 2022;Chrispal, Bapuji, & Zietsma, 2021;Qureshi, Sutter, & Bhatt, 2018). ...
... One example is the struggle of marginalized communities, particularly indigenous, to defend their way of life and livelihood and protect the environment (Gomes, 2012). Evidence shows various constraints on their quest for freedom from oppression, recognition of their rights, control over resources, and authority to make independent decisions to reach the imagined future (Dinerstein, 2015). In this context, some argue for exiting the dominating system (Day, 2005), strengthening community decision-making, and promoting deliberative processes to exert their autonomy (Bell & Reed, 2021). ...
... Second, we build on the insights from the anarchist tradition and the recent work on concrete utopia. This research conceptualizes prefigurative organizing as the contestation and negotiation of the role and manifestations of autonomy (Dinerstein, 2015;Holloway, 2010). We extend this work by introducing the concept of tempered autonomy, as a cross-cutting theme of prefigurative organizing, that manifests in prefiguring self-governance, commoning and cultivating discursive spaces due to the multifaceted struggles of communities against internal and external marginalization. ...
In this paper, we examine community collectives—place-based, community-led initiatives for sustainable livelihood, as an alternative to the top-down, efficiency-driven economic model. Drawing on the theoretical framework of prefigurative organizing, we examined the strategies employed by community members in confronting entrenched inequalities and overcoming marginalization as they envision and engage in inclusive futures. We conducted a comparative case study of two exemplary community collectives in India that exhibited differences in the degree of internal and external marginalization. We identify two key cross-cutting themes of prefigurative organizing: projective cultural adjustment - whether a community leverages their traditional culture or breaks away from it, and tempered autonomy – negotiating autonomy without overtly challenging dominant groups, and exercising self-imposed restraints to make independent decisions. We show how these two themes manifested across three key processes of prefigurative organizing: prefiguring self-governance; commoning; and cultivating discursive spaces. These findings help us theorize that in communities where the degree of internal marginalization is high due to persisting social hierarchies, breaking away from past discriminatory practices, incorporating suspension of consent in the decision-making process, and introducing multiple constructive works are essential components of prefigurative organizing. In communities where the degree of external marginalization is high, building on the past, incorporating refusal in decision-making, and introducing unified constructive work are important components of prefigurative organizing. We suggest that prefigurative organizing against the dominant power structure, whether within community social hierarchies or external exploitative political-economic structures, is based on selective and strategic engagement without seeking an exit, as exit might not be an option for place-based communities. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research for alternative organizing and grand challenges.
... As discussed in the next sections, the Oaxacan experience because of its indigenous mobilisation background has found tactics and strategies of survival that challenge the liberal and pro-extractive state through normative frameworks, governance arrangements and daily organising, that in line with Dinerstein's (2014) argument, have helped to implement the "art of organising hope". The organisation of hope consists of four moments: negation, contradiction, creativity and excess; which we interpret as the rejection to carry on experiencing exclusion and the creativity to find ways to navigate (albeit contradictorily) institutions and processes through in and against the state in order to generate alternative options (excess) to overcome exclusion. ...
... Beyond the links between law and politics that collective struggle can make, we argue that a history of collective mobilisation is also required to reconfigure the meaning of mining infrastructure. The latter is important to ensure that these collective practices count with the know-how to organise and create alternative projects (Dinerstein, 2014;Zibechi, 2018 The labour movement in Sonora has been confined to the municipality of Cananea and although attempts to build alliances with environmental movements as a result of the spill emerged, they were short lived. The spill's environmental, health and social effects generated a new type of activism along the seven municipalities located in the basin of the Sonora River. ...
... However, as Tetreault (2019) argues, mining and its infrastructure impacting the environment through destruction of landscapes and contamination of land and water aquifers has increasingly prompted communities, indigenous or not, to question the value of mining at the expense of resources that build their basic wellbeing and dignity. Following Dinerstein's (2014) argument, when communities are impacted by exclusion it is possible to identify common grounds for new forms of struggles despite their cultural, ethnic or national diversities. It has been this common experience of exploitation, neglect and displacement which led our comparison. ...
This paper offers an analytical framework to identify how communities that have been negatively affected by mineral extraction and its infrastructure can begin to transition toward an emancipatory approach to overcome their marginalization, which has been accentuated by the socio-environmental conflicts caused by mining. We argue that through the extractivism–infrastructure nexus, alternative options to overcome these conflicts can be unveiled and unpacked. By comparing two Mexican mining cases—the Sonora River region in the northwest of the country and the Oaxaca highlands in the southeast—we identify the instances of everyday resistance, struggle, and contestation that are important to assessing emancipation. The cases show how non-Indigenous communities, inspired by Indigenous groups, can begin to think differently and move toward a transition that is more socio-environmentally just. Building on interlegal and municipalism debates, we argue that this transition can be accomplished through a focus on narratives, practices, and norms within four analytical factors: normative frameworks, legacies of social movements, local governance, and alternative economies. Our argument offers an alternative way to investigate the function infrastructural projects have in municipal policy-making.
... As such, these accounts further reify rather than imaginatively rethink the neoliberal status quo of technological realities they set out to critique. Against this prevailing approach, however, a growing number of scholars have contended that the 'crisis of imagination' afflicting all capitalist societies (Haiven, 2014), including surveillance capitalism--cannot be overcome through predictable scenarios but instead must be confronted through the 'radical imagining' of 'more desirable futures' (Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2024;Komporozos-Athanasiou & Fotaki, 2015) and of more hopeful and caring modes of being with each other, the environment and the technology (Alacovska, 2019;de la Bellacasa, 2017;Dinerstein, 2015). ...
... Although recent studies have outlined 'escape' visions (Bodrožić & Adler, 2022) and acknowledged individual agency within 'dehumanizing technological regimes' (Scherer et al., 2023;Weiskopf & Hansen, 2023), identified 'algoactivism' as a form of individual and collective resistance to putatively inscrutable algorithmic control (Kellogg et al., 2020), and observed 'digital disobedience' in everyday and workplace acts of refusal to automation and incessant monitoring (Harcourt, 2015), these studies rarely unpack the dominant technological imaginaries and counter-imaginaries that significantly shape technological values, norms, and expectations. Indeed, such scholarship neither typically converses with scholarship that has emphasized 'the organizational turn of the arts' (Alacovska et al., 2023;Holm & Beyes, 2021), nor engages with the argument that artivism has the capacity to counteract deeply ingrained constraints on our collective imagination and thus help actors to reimagine, revitalize and reinvigorate hope, care and resistance in the face of putatively unavoidable and inescapable, yet biassed and discriminatory, technological outcomes (Dey & Mason, 2018;Dinerstein, 2015;Hjorth, 2017;Serafini, 2022). A focus on art-fully induced enchantment as a mood with ethical potential that I propose will, no doubt, bring about more balanced discussion of agency in a disenchanted technological world and bolder re-imagination of a more just and equitable future technological world. ...
Focussing on anti-surveillance art, this article makes the case that the arts have the unique capacity to induce and energize hope and caring in the otherwise hopeless context of a technologically disenchanted world of surveillance capitalism, characterised by a wholesale loss of privacy due to ubiquitous data capture, and an algorithmically powered exacerbation of social inequalities and discrimination. Drawing on theories of enchantment from literary studies, art history, philosophy and political thought, I theorize anti-surveillance art as an art-full means of enchantment generating an ‘ethical energetics’ that is capable, however momentarily or imperfectly, of dissolving the constraints of our imagination and moving people to act hopefully and caringly in spite of technology-induced malaise. Through an affirmative critique of anti-surveillance art practices, I illustrate the processual mechanisms and dynamics of activist art (artivism), showing how these art forms not only critique and subvert entrenched imaginaries of surveillance capitalism but also enact the ethical imperative of re-imagining better future worlds even in the face of present technological toxicity and breakdown. This article contributes knowledge on the ethico-political import of the arts in troubled social, business and organisational contexts.
... Concerned with the necessity to understand contemporary forms of grassroots resistance, Dinerstein (2015Dinerstein ( , 2017 has disputed the Adornian focus on negation in Holloway's work, articulating an alternative critique that embraces 'critical affirmations' based on Bloch's philosophy of hope and the Zapatistas. By establishing a clear distinction between positive autonomism and 'critical affirmations', Dinerstein argues that the latter simultaneously affirm life and negate capital. ...
... The focus on de-mediation returns OM to the state as a political form of the capital relation, pointing to the problem of translation, referring to how social struggles are integrated into and continuously mediated by institutional, legal, and political dynamics around the law, welfare, and money. According to Dinerstein (2015;2017), the social struggle does not end with their 'translation' into the logic of the state. First, all struggles entail a struggle over the meaning of translation, i.e., translation is a struggle; second, there is a surplus utopia or 'excess' that remains beyond translation, in what she calls the 'beyond zone' of the radical struggle. ...
Open Marxism is a strand of Marxism that argues that Marx's critique of political economy should be understood in the first place as the subversive critique of the economic categories of bourgeois society, its philosophical concepts, moral values, and political institutions. Contrary to structural Marxism, which conceptualizes social forms as a kind of false appearance overlaid upon material reality, OM conceptualizes them as specific manifestations of how labour is mediated in and against capital at a particular time. Central to OM analyses is the state, which is the political form of capitalist social relations. Class struggle is intrinsic in the analysis of the state, not external to it, as often posited-the last iterations of OM point to critical affirmations as prefigurative struggles for alternative forms of social reproduction. OM's advocacy of insubordination and emancipation rests upon labour struggles moving 'in, against, and beyond' the social forms of domination on which capitalism is based.
... Concerned with the necessity to understand contemporary forms of grassroots resistance, Dinerstein (2015Dinerstein ( , 2017 has disputed the Adornian focus on negation in Holloway's work, articulating an alternative critique that embraces "critical affirmations" based on Bloch's philosophy of hope and the Zapatistas. By establishing a clear distinction between positive autonomism and "critical affirmations," Dinerstein argues that the latter simultaneously affirm life and negate capital. ...
... The focus on de-mediation returns OM to the state as a political form of the capital relation, pointing to the problem of translation, referring to how social struggles are integrated into and continuously mediated by institutional, legal, and political dynamics around the law, welfare, and money. According to Dinerstein (2015;2017), the social struggle does not end with their "translation" into the logic of the state. First, all struggles entail a struggle over the meaning of translation, that is, translation is a struggle; second, there is a surplus utopia or "excess" that remains beyond translation, in what she calls the "beyond zone" of the radical struggle. ...
Open Marxism: chapter 12, Encyclopedia of Critical Political Theory, Edward Elgar Publishing, edited by Clyde Barrow
https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781800375918/9781800375918.xml
... Movements such as the Piqueteros in Argentina, the Indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, and student and feminist groups, among others, have been vital in highlighting democratic deficits and economic inequalities over the last twenty years (Rossi, 2017;Silva & Rossi, 2018;Veltmeyer et al., 2016). The common thread within these social movements is twofold: firstly, they do not depend upon traditional left-wing parties, favoring instances of deliberative and horizontal democracy (Dinerstein, 2014), and secondly, their demands are raised by 'territorially based forms organizations' (Silva, 2009, p. 271) rather than those based on the main point of production as with industrial labor. ...
... The leaders of some of the most important pobladores organizations argue that in order to solve the problem of a precarious life due to the housing crisis, it is necessary to take over state power and resources at the local, municipal level and develop self-management practices (specifically, self-construction and self-education practices in communities) that enable them to update their values, norms, and practices. In other words, strategies that allow them to prefigure aspects of the dignified life that they demand (Dinerstein, 2014). ...
The Chilean pobladores housing movement gained prominence among Chile’s 2019 wave of protests. The contemporary pobladores movement re-emerged in 2000 and since then has mobilized for the right to dignified housing and a dignified life. Values like work, effort, and collective commitment have been fundamental within its historical narratives since the 1960s, but these have significantly evolved over time, reflecting the major changes in the social and political environments in which it operates. Using framing analysis and drawing on an empirical qualitative study which includes interviews with leaders, activists, and participants in housing committees, in this article we explore how the dignity frame, as elaborated by four pobladores organizations, has contributed to the remobilization of the urban poor in Chile, a country which stands out for its neoliberal urban policies in Latin America and the Global South.
... In recent decades, an academic conceptualization of autonomy has emerged through the work of scholars writing at the intersection of social movements and political ontology (Escobar 2008(Escobar , 2020Dinerstein 2014;Gonzales and González 2015;González 2015;López Flores and García Guerriero 2018;Rosset and Pinheiro Barbosa 2021;Sieder and Barrera Vivero 2017;Schavelzon and Pitman 2019). For these scholars, autonomy is understood in terms of "the integration of people and nature, traditional management practices, the role of traditional authorities, and the resulting conservation of the environment" (Escobar 2008, 58). ...
Where there is colonial power, there is Indigenous resistance. Latin America offers many case studies for an analysis of Indigenous cultural survival, historically and to the present day. While some have received considerable popular and academic attention, most have gone comparatively unknown, particularly in the Anglophone academic mainstream. My research aims to address this gap by interpreting processes of cultural reproduction among the Kamëntšá, a culturally and linguistically unique people of the Sibundoy Valley of southwest Colombia. Building on ethnographic data collected during three months of fieldwork with artisans, shamans, land defenders, and community members in the Sibundoy Valley, I argue that the Kamëntšá, while facing cultural, political, and ecological threats on multiple fronts, are engaged in the integral reproduction of their culture to ensure the survival and vitality of their community. The Kamëntšá experience demonstrates the viability of Indigenous cultural survival and autonomy outside of the settler-colonial and neoliberal status quo. I conclude by arguing that Kamëntšá processes of cultural reproduction contribute to ensuring their cultural autonomy, demonstrating the pluriversal dictum that “another world is possible,” and that the Kamëntšá case sheds light on cultural reproduction and autonomy construction as they operate in other subaltern contexts.
... However, as we will see, participating in this debate is crucial for these social movements. The bottom-up LFFU movement is involved in what we can call "beyond-resistance strategies"-a clear case of social movements being crucial agents in imagining the "not yet" (Dinerstein, 2015). To understand this dimension of Latin American LFFU movements, this chapter also addresses the role of imagination and cultural politics. ...
... Al desdibujarse los canales de representación tradicionales, el Estado ha visto afectada su capacidad para ejercer un monopolio sobre la regulación y el control de los procesos de urbanización. Con ello, muchos movimientos pasaron de utilizar un repertorio centrado en la petición y la protesta a uno anclado en la praxis y el hacer (Dinerstein, 2014). Forzados a configurar soluciones prácticas para la reproducción de la vida cotidiana, gran parte de la acción de los colectivos se concentró en la construcción y organización de infraestructuras locales de subsistencia: comedores, escuelas, fábricas populares o cooperativas de vivienda. ...
... Resistance and protest movements are rarely perfectly identifiable instances or assemblages, rather there are connections, contradictions and perplexing elements that become part and parcel of them. Hence, why I am using the concept of tapestries and weaving (Dinerstein, 2015; Clua-Losada and Garcia, forthcoming), following some of the thinking on autonomous indigenous movements. Much of the mainstream scholarship on social movements focuses on successes, or the ability of movements to influence the political opportunities' structures (McAdam et al., 2001). ...
SpaceX’s launch site on the US–Mexico border, in the Rio Grande Valley, is an ideal example of the interconnected relationship between racial capitalism and authoritarian neoliberalism, the neoliberal expropriation of spaces and communities, and the tapestries of resistance weaved against these processes. The privatisation of space exploration is an illustration of the development of authoritarian modes of governance that are designed to facilitate such expropriation of spaces and communities. In the case considered in this article, these processes are directly related to the development of racial capitalism on the US–Mexico border. This article places the focus on how racial authoritarian neoliberalism is a response to capitalism’s inability to successfully impose a hegemonic project.
... In this sense, postcapitalist transformation emerges for Open Marxism from the struggle for negation and demediation of the social relations constituting subjectivities, relations and livelihoods, such as in the case of the Zapatista experience. An autonomous space of counterpower building community support systems independent of capitalist logic, such experience is considered a real-life case of postcapitalism (Dinerstein, 2014). ...
... The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, erupting on the day NAFTA took effect, once again challenged the old orthodoxies of the left. Their community-based model of organizing from below, like a growing number of other projects of prefigurative politics (Dinerstein, 2015;Stahler-Sholk, 2022), raises important questions about the potential for movement-led radical change without taking state power. The Zapatistas and other Indigenous movements in the region have challenged hegemonic models by demanding autonomy and practicing alternative modes of social relations and self-governance. ...
... 'geopolitics of knowledge') -and through the reproduction of study programmes, publications, and entire faculties devoted to canonizing and commodifying the decolonial tradition (González, 2022, p. 16). Academic overspecialization and the institutionalization of decolonial thought combines to reinforce and celebrate a condescending form of liberal recognition (Coulthard, 2014;Panikkar, 2000;Ulloa, 2013;Wiegink, 2020), taking the form of plurinational statism (Dunlap, 2022) and, consequently, embodying a Eurocentric, capitalist and patriarchal leftist parliamentary strategy (Dinerstein, 2015;Escobar, 2020;Zibechi, 2022). The old formula of revolution (Esteva, 2009;Ryan, 2012), but, more recently, Latin American 'Pink Tide' governments (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico) have cloaked social justice reforms under new extractivist policies, imposing the same teleological model of development/modernization and substituting one dominant class for another (Machado & Zibechi, 2017;Tapia, 2020). ...
Where did postdevelopment thought go? Was its anti-development message too much for academia? While acknowledging some overlap between postdevelopment and mainstream academic decolonial thought, we argue that postdevelopment, and its conceptualization of the pluriverse directly challenges extractivism, statism, and capitalism or, in a word, development. After discussing aspects of mainstream decolonial thought, seven main points of postdevelopment criticism are reviewed and debunked. We demonstrate that resistance and 'attack' are enduring feature of postdevelopment praxis from the Zapatistas to the countless other (socio)ecological struggles across the world. Responding to critique, this article presents three postdevelopment practices: the Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (OPFVII) in the Acapatzingo community, Mexico City; the Zone-to-Defend (Zone à Défendre, ZAD) concept formalized in France; and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) initiative. The conclusion stresses the importance of postdevelopment and a pluriverse working towards anti-capitalism/statism/extractivism/patriarchal world to avoid (neo)colonial recuperations of anti-colonial/statist struggle.
... Yet here, we are particularly interested in the implications of studying emotions as temporal, processual, collective phenomena. In this way, a range of emotional orientations link the present with the future in ways that are directive as well as expressive, for example and especially through what has been called the 'politics of hope' (A. C. Dinerstein, 2015;C. A. Dinerstein & Deneulin, 2012). ...
... Por ello, es preciso comprender cómo los pueblos luchan desde abajo, al abrir espacios de educación autónoma, y al recrear lugares y tiempos nuevos para interaprendizajes que sean culturalmente pertinentes y socialmente útiles. Desde los procesos de construcción de autonomía política protagonizados por las comunidades (Dinerstein, 2014;Calveiro, 2021), se alcanzan concretar las propuestas educativas generadas por actores de movimientos sociales como los educadores radicales y artivistas, quienes han abierto un horizonte político propicio a discusiones sobre praxis y teoría pedagógica. En este horizonte de posibilidades de transformación intervienen factores, valores e ideales que se expresan en las alternativas autónomas a la escuela oficial y que son asimilables a experiencias contemporáneas de educación popular que se inscriben dentro del vasto impulso político que le confiere el movimiento social al sector cultural-artístico en defensa del territorio y la vida. ...
Este capítulo examina las experiencias significativas de redes activistas indígenas en el campo educativo, en especial los procesos de autonomía en materia de educación a lo largo de diferentes intercambios públicos que tuvieron miembros de la delegación marítima del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional con una diversidad de activistas de Europa durante el verano del año 2021. Se analizan aquí las aportaciones del zapatismo en términos de sus experiencias con la educación de la niñez en la construcción de la autonomía política y sus estrategias actuales en tiempos de pandemia. A partir de un acercamiento socio-antropológico original, se problematizan el lugar y el papel que tuvo la temática escolar en las palabras compartidas por los siete miembros del llamado Escuadrón 421 con sus anfitriones de Europa, en especial de Suiza, en el marco de su Gira, Viaje o Travesía por la Vida anunciada en octubre 2020 en plena crisis sanitaria, educativa y económica mundial. Los pueblos originarios en lucha en México, muchos de ellos agrupados en el Congreso Nacional Indígena, no han esperado la pandemia reciente para resistir activamente al descompromiso estatal en el sector escolar oficial.
¿Qué significa construir en colectivo una alternativa comunitaria de educación autodeterminada desde abajo, cuando el Estado cierra desde arriba los recintos escolares como medida de precaución ante las olas de contagios? En efecto, las fronteras abiertas al turismo y al mercado internacional contrastan con los cierres casi sistemáticos de las instituciones educativas públicas y privadas. Así como prevalece una continuidad de las opresiones estructurales y del neoliberalismo extractivista, observamos signos marcados de (re)emergencia y consolidación de prácticas autonómicas de libre determinación en la construcción de las políticas comunales de educación propia.
Este capítulo contribuye asimismo a repensar los límites y desafíos de las estrategias de formación política para acompañar los cambios pedagógicos impulsados por las y los educadores en los pueblos en movimiento del Sur Global hacia una educación emancipada mucho más antirracista, intercultural y autodeterminada. Desde el contexto pospandémico actual, presentamos un panorama analítico de distintas estrategias indígenas originales y vigentes en etnoterritorios de México, pero que siguen siendo subfinanciadas, marginadas y reprimidas. Se problematiza más en profundidad algunos retos comunes que actualmente conciernen a las y los formadores en educación e interculturalidad en Abya Yala.
"Las luchas educativas de los pueblos originarios mexicanos en tiempos de pandemia", in J.L. García, S. Sartorello & P. Vommaro (coords.), Nuevas prácticas, añejas tensiones: alternativas político-educativas desde el Sur. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, pp. 89-113.
... We write as early career scholars who have ourselves struggled with realising an underlying commitment to Open Marxist theoretical insights in application to empirical studies of work and economic life, particularly where qualitative methods like interviews and ethnographies have been used to collect data about human practice and experience. We recognise that foundational Open Marxists (for example Dinerstein, 2015) have a consistent record of analytical and practical engagement with social movements, and a new generation of scholars have begun deploying Open Marxist perspectives to study empirical phenomena (see for examples Alami, 2021;Copley & Giraudo, 2019;Donmez, 2019;Moraitis, 2020;Pesterfield, 2020;Warner, 2019). But these do not so much answer as circumnavigate longstanding criticisms raised about the underpinning theoretical problems of OM in these pages and elsewhere, producing sometimes impressive empirical insights less because of, than in spite of, the conceptual apparatus of OM, which is typically worn very lightly and loosely if at all. ...
The opportunities and limitations of Open Marxism for understanding structure and agency in capitalist society and political economy has been subject to various debates. Critics assert that, in spite of an auspicious commitment to keeping struggle in view, OM as a theoretical approach nonetheless tends to dialectically intertwine structure and agency in such a way that the latter disappears into the former. Critics argue that this presents an unassailable challenge for empirical work and practical politics. Contributing towards its further development, this article seeks to reopen OM against the possibility of its closure. It does so through using 'Radical Historicism', which represents a methodological intervention that treads a different path through the dialectical unity of agency and structure, avoiding closure. We argue that, as a potential modification of OM geared towards methodological operationalizability, Radical Historicism provides a philosophical foundation for both empirical research agendas and political praxis.
... Prácticamente a lo largo y ancho del subcontinente y a través del transcurrir de los siglos, las luchas y búsquedas de diferentes expresiones de autonomía han impregnado o estado presentes entre los pueblos y comunidades de Nuestra América (Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2000;Holloway, 2002). En décadas recientes y como resultado del reconocimiento de las nuevas heteronomías y autoritarismos populares que paradójicamente suplantan tanto los socialismos reales como las alas progresistas de los Estados-nacionales (Dinerstein, 2015;Vergara-Camus & Kay, 2017), muchos pueblos y comunidades se están distanciando de las improntas e influencias ideológicas de las viejas izquierdas partidistas y los anarquismos urbanos, para recuperar sus bases ontonómicas (filosofías de vida propias), establecer alianzas estratégicas con actores extraterritoriales clave, ensayar nuevos dispositivos de legitimación territorial y articularse rizomáticamente en redes de movilización (Rocheleau & Roth, 2007;Rosset & Pinheiro Barbosa, 2021). ...
En este artículo planteo que, grosso modo, la industria conservacionista y el correspondiente establecimiento y administración de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, a pesar de sus múltiples intentos de flexibilización y renovación de las últimas décadas, no ha podido y será muy difícil que realmente logre compaginarse con los modos y mundos de vida de una gran mayoría de pueblos originarios y comunidades campesinas de América Latina. En consecuencia, comienza a amalgamarse una búsqueda creciente y colectiva por parte de los propios pueblos y comunidades, en sinergia con organizaciones civiles y la militancia académica, para articular procesos de reterritorialización, formación discursiva y contra-gubernamentalidad que aquí traduzco académicamente como 'post conservación' territorial. A partir de más de una década de experiencia etnográfica en pueblos y comunidades inmersas en dinámicas de conservación, del escrutinio académico y del análisis secundario de casos en el subcontinente, observo cuatro pilares centrales en la post conservación de los territorios indígenas y campesinos: (i) legados bioculturales, (ii) bases ontológicas relacionales de interexistencia, (iii) defensas legales, y (iv) búsquedas de autonomías relativas. Después de desarrollar conceptualmente e ilustrar empíricamente dichos pilares constitutivitos a partir de casos en México y en Guatemala, concluyo reflexionando de qué manera los pueblos originarios y las comunidades campesinas movilizadas de América Latina pueden representar una fractura y frontera, desde el Sur Global, para poner en entredicho los intentos impositivos y cuantitativos de ampliar el sistema de Áreas Naturales Protegidas a una tercera parte de las superficies terrestres y los océanos del planeta.
... At issue is, then what? This lies at the centre of much work on critical hope, which: broadens human potential in ways that do not occlude subjectivity (Hudson, 1982); is not bland optimism, rather a site of potential strength (Thompson & Žižek, 2013); enables a balance between 'creative possibility and conformity' (Daly, 2013, p. 165); and, is generative of awakening, substance and existence, rather than reproducing disillusionment (Dinerstein, 2015). Hope enables creative human beings (in partnership with robot-simulants?) to attend to their material reality, and to realise freedom dreams (Kelley, 2002). ...
This article situates the potential for intellectual work to be renewed through an enriched engagement with the relationship between indigenous protocols and artificial intelligence (AI). It situates this through a dialectical storytelling of the contradictions that emerge from the relationships between humans and capitalist technologies, played out within higher education. It argues that these have ramifications for our conceptions of AI, and its ways of knowing, doing and being within wider ecosystems. In thinking about how technology reinforces social production inside capitalist institutions like universities, the article seeks to refocus our storytelling around mass intellectuality and generative possibilities for transcending alienating social relations. In so doing, the focus shifts to the potential for weaving new protocols, from existing material and historical experiences of technology, which unfold structurally, culturally and practically within communities. At the heart of this lies the question, what does it mean to live? In a world described against polycrisis, is it possible to tell new social science fictions, as departures towards a new mode of higher learning and intellectual work that seeks to negate, abolish and transcend the world as-is?
... This conflict around town planning and other misgivings regarding the development of various aspects of the community and how it embodies its values are a strong source of disappointment and internal criticism within the community. Let us turn now to the question The role of hope, disappointment and criticism: sustaining a communal utopian practice Hope features strongly in the new body of theoretical and ethnographic work on utopian practice, following utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch's (1986) path-breaking work The Principle of Hope (Dinerstein and Deneulin, 2012;Dinerstein, 2015;Monticelli, 2018). For Bloch (1986: 3), utopian practice is 'a question of learning hope. ...
... He o ers a 'concept of (collective) agency' ( Rehmann, 2020 , p 78) positioned within, but also challenging, the capitalist world's reality. Above all, Bloch presents us with a non-linear reading of history and time ( Tomba, 2019 ) and a decolonizing ( Dietschy, 2017 ), intercultural ( Hahn, 2007 ) and prefi gurative ( Dinerstein, 2015 ) critical perspective. ...
... Sarvodaya, Gandhi argues, can be achieved through Antyodaya, which is a Gandhian term for the upliftment of the most marginalized members of society. Thus, Antyodaya represents a concrete utopia 1 (Bloch, 1986;Holloway, 2010;Monticelli, 2018) and a way to prefigure 2 (Dinerstein, 2015;Pellizzoni, 2021) a more equitable society (Javeri et al., this volume). Social entrepreneurs who embrace this tenet recognize that a society's progress should be measured by the well-being of its most marginalized members. ...
The rampant consumerism, wasteful lifestyle, and unchecked greed have pushed our planet to the brink and exacerbated social inequalities. Business as usual is no longer a viable option, as it threatens biodiversity and the survival of future generations. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the systemic unsustainable practices of our market and society. The traditional model of development, which prioritizes infinite growth, resource extraction, and increased consumption, inevitably leads to the dispossession of marginalized populations. It is necessary to adopt approaches that challenge our ever-increasing demands on limited resources and prioritize responsible innovation, production, and consumption that promote greater equity.In this chapter, we adopt the Gandhian approach and develop the Sarvodaya framework to create a self-reliant, locally based economy that benefits the base of the pyramid. Social entrepreneurs, influenced by Gandhian philosophy, have developed initiatives that offer viable alternatives for building a relatively more self-reliant, locally based economy. Through constructive work, trusteeship, Sarvodaya, Swaraj, Antyodaya, village-centric development, and communities of care, these entrepreneurs are creating self-sufficient and resilient communities and prefiguring a more sustainable and equitable future. These concepts can serve as a starting point for creating viable alternatives that benefit not only marginalized populations but also save the planet.KeywordsMutually beneficial interdependencies
Aparigraha
Sarvodaya
Antyodaya
Commoning
Technoficing
Social intermediation
Prefiguration
... Incluso momentos de interpelación hegemónica como las transiciones políticas o el fin del conflicto armado, se reducen a instantes que reconfiguraron sólo de manera ambivalente los horizontes de inclusión y características socioculturales del ejercicio de poder. En consecuencia, permiten ampliar el manejo patrimonial de las mediaciones estatales y, en el caso de la sociedad guatemalteca de posguerra, profundizar las pautas de "subsunción por exclusión" (Dinerstein, 2015). En estos términos, importantes segmentos de la población son supeditados a la modernidad capitalista y formalmente integrados al proyecto nacional, pero a partir de procesos simultáneos de expropiación, invisibilización y expulsión. ...
El presente libro2 constituye un conjunto de quince ontribuciones teóricas sobre diversos asuntos urgentes del Estado, entendido éste en un sentido integral. Son cuestiones relacionadas con la disputa de fuerzas y proyectos en la situación actual de crisis de la hegemonía en América Latina. Se realizó para esclarecer y con la intención de profundizar y complejizar desde nuestra región,con horizontes universales, las concepciones teóricas y de método para entender la crisis y sus alternativas de avance político democrático y emancipación social.
Supongo que escribir de la crisis en sus manifestaciones concretas no es necesario para lectores atentos a la inestabilidad, conflictos y cambios recurrentes por los que desde 2013 atraviesa la región de América Latina.
... Who should invest in the drinking water plant, given that it is a legal obligation of the municipio to provide the communities with drinking water, but that the river (which is public) has been partly polluted by oil firms, because of present and past oil exploration and extraction projects? On the other hand, why would 33 Different illustrations of this extremely common tension can be found in Dinerstein (2015), Sheild Johansson (2018), Carrasco (2016), and Alderman (2021) in the Latin American context. ...
... The negation and refusal of present unacceptable conditions help to avert the risk of the search for alternatives becoming a form of pacification in which 'hope and hopefulness are offered to those to whom the world is unable or unwilling to offer anything else else' (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2019). Instead, they direct mutual learning towards what Ernst Bloch, the philosopher, calls educated hope (Dinerstein, 2015;Siebers, 2013). This negation is fuelled by an underpinning analysis that the world is not now perfect and equally that it is not yet finished, that its structures and systems are not all that they might yet be. ...
... The negation and refusal of present unacceptable conditions help to avert the risk of the search for alternatives becoming a form of pacification in which 'hope and hopefulness are offered to those to whom the world is unable or unwilling to offer anything else else' (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2019). Instead, they direct mutual learning towards what Ernst Bloch, the philosopher, calls educated hope (Dinerstein, 2015;Siebers, 2013). This negation is fuelled by an underpinning analysis that the world is not now perfect and equally that it is not yet finished, that its structures and systems are not all that they might yet be. ...
... The negation and refusal of present unacceptable conditions help to avert the risk of the search for alternatives becoming a form of pacification in which 'hope and hopefulness are offered to those to whom the world is unable or unwilling to offer anything else else' (Lindroth & Sinevaara-Niskanen, 2019). Instead, they direct mutual learning towards what Ernst Bloch, the philosopher, calls educated hope (Dinerstein, 2015;Siebers, 2013). This negation is fuelled by an underpinning analysis that the world is not now perfect and equally that it is not yet finished, that its structures and systems are not all that they might yet be. ...
América Latina En El Mundo: Globalización y Buen Vivir constituye un esfuerzo imaginativo y riguroso de problematizar el Buen Vivir como concepto, contribución, mito y horizonte emancipatorio, pero sobretodo como vía para contrarrestar el neo
liberalismo. Desde la colonialidad del poder, la teoría de la dependencia y sus fisuras, elabora una lectura marxista, poco frecuente, que sitúa el Buen Vivir en la larga trayectoria de pensamiento crítico en América Latina. Un libro fundamental para entender entre otros elementos, la posibilidad teórica, epistémica y política de la Amerindia en un contexto de crisis del capitalismo, colapso ecológico, autoritarismo y crisis de los Estados.
Alejandra Santillana Ortiz, Socióloga. Directora e
investigadora del Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos.
Social movements can be seen as key drivers of social transformation. Latin America during the period of the progressive governments’ post 2000 can be seen as a laboratory to study social movements in actions. We examine some of the salient women’s, indigenous and labor movements also the human rights movements. They all pose a social logic against the prevailing market logic. The notion that ‘another world is possible’ is also critically examined to see if it can go beyond a rhetorical device to an actually implementable strategy for social movements.
The governance of artificial intelligence (AI) is at a historical juncture. Legislative acts, global treaties, export controls, and technical standards are now dominating the discourse over what used to be a predominantly market-driven space. Amidst all this frenzy, this paper explains why none of these projects will achieve ‘alignment’ of AI with the prospect of a sustainable model of production authentically committed to the rights and freedoms of people and communities. By reflecting on the role of law in consolidating the visions and logics of few multinationals in the global value chains of AI, it warns against the peril of regulating AI without looking at the methods and logistics of its material production. Following a detailed overview of the various (techno-)legal ways through which law enables the flow of materials, capital, and power from Global South to Global North, and from small players to lead firms, the paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts on a transformative agenda for the transnational regulation of infocomputational production.
Every New Year's Eve, the Dutch anarchist scene gathers to celebrate the upcoming year at a detention center. Detention Center Schiphol, near Amsterdam Airport, is the place where 'illegal' refugees are kept before they are deported back to the country they've fled. The people on the other side of the wall not only hear new year's wishes in several languages, and music to dance to, but also slogans like "No borders, no nations, stop deportations" and "tout le monde déteste la police." The anarchists demand the abolition of the prison system and scream at the top of their lungs to communicate their dislike of borders and the nation-state. The new year ritual, however, is more than a symbolic protest, it is an act of solidarity and a way of interacting with, and caring for, each other right now. Marx's name justified some of the most horrific regimes because it takes time and strong leaders to bring the perfect communist socialist society into existence. But also in the rare cases when fighting for communism didn't result in an authoritarian leader taking over, the primacy of one specific struggle-class struggle-over others has caused many movements to neglect important hierarchies and power relations within the group and society at large. Most anarchists agree with large parts of the problem analysis developed by Marxists: capitalism is a problem because it exploits workers. We should strive to eliminate the division of labor, and the unjust valuation of capital in respect to labor, rather than leading a life dictated by capital. Anarcho-capitalists aside-who aren't considered anarchists by the other currents of anarchism anyway-anarchists of all kinds share a large part of the Marxist analysis. Bakunin and Marx agreed on a lot of things, but fell out over the question of how to accomplish the society in which those problems were not present. "Free-dom without socialism is privilege and injustice, but socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality", wrote Bakunin. Marx gave an analysis of the problems with capitalism, but how to proceed was less clear, as underlined by the results of the different attempts of implementing Marx's thought in different countries. As Peter Hudis reminds us, Marx did not mention the state in the first chapter of volume 1 of Das Kapital, nor does it come up in the discussions on a post-capitalist society in Friedrich Engels' third volume (2012, 175). At Marx's 200 th birthday we've seen attempts to, in Marx's name, establish communism, and the result of the so-called 'end of history' under global capitalism. What we're left with is freedom without socialism: there is privilege and injustice, but we are afraid to act because of social-ism's history of slavery and brutality. The term 'state illusion' refers to the idea that a radical transformation of society is best accomplished through winning state power. Anarchist Gustav Landauer wrote that "The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another" (2010, 214). We thus don't have to win over state power-where possible we can already start behaving differently today.
The crisis leads to multiple denials in the face of everyday life and the conditions of reproduction of work it imposes. In this paper, I describe the basic denials in spaces of creative resistance in Athens during multiple crises. Through a systematic study of collaborative economy spaces, solidarity structures, and independent art spaces, I discern a progression of individuals from denial to creation and ultimately to action. I also strive to articulate the emerging modes of mobilization within these spaces. Faced with this reality, the act of denial emerges as the primary and transformative catalyst, sparking the forces of creativity and resistance. The denials of everyday life imposed by neoliberalism, as witnessed in Athens during the crisis, resulted in the creation of autonomous and self-organized spaces.
Autonomous spaces are part of a long historical tradition of radical self-organisation. To understand the practical and theoretical significance of the autonomous learning spaces that are examined in this book, the chapter explores the intellectual traditions and sensibilities that underpin autonomous spaces and radical self-organisation. An important concept and practice that emerges from this exploration is prefiguration, which is described as the experimentation with practices now that people wish to see in future organisations and societies (Juris, Networking futures: the movements against corporate globalisation. Duke University Press, Durham, 2008; Sitrin, Ruptures in imagination: horizontalism, autogestion and affective politics in Argentina, 2007). Prefiguration has been influenced by both anarchist and Marxist thought (Böhm et al., Soc Mov Stud 9(1):17–32, 2010; Haworth and Elmore, Out of the ruins: the emergence of radical informal learning spaces. PM Press, Oakland, 2017)—two traditions which are considered theoretically incompatible (Grubacic and O’Hearn, Living at the edges of capitalism. University of California Press, California, 2016). However, this chapter argues that despite these perceived theoretical incompatibilities, more recent tendencies, such as small-a anarchism (Graeber, New Left Rev 13:61–73, 2002), Autonomous Marxism (Cleaver, Reading ‘capital’ politically. The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1979), Open Marxism (Bonefeld et al., Open Marxism – vol. 2: theory and practice. Pluto Press, London, 1992b), and Libertarian-Marxism (Holloway, Change the world without taking power. Pluto Press, London, 2002, Crack capitalism. Pluto Press, London, 2010), have much in common. These commonalities highlight the potential for prefigurative practices to merge anarchist and Marxist traditions as well as a diverse range of practical, theoretical, ideological, and cultural tendencies (Cleaver, Rupturing the dialectic: the struggle against work, money and financialisation. AK Press, Chicago, 2017a, Rupturing the dialectic: the struggle against work, money, and financialization. AK Press, Edinburgh, 2017b). The chapter draws upon these tendencies to better understand how people can work together in autonomous learning spaces (and similar projects) to challenge the exploitation, oppression, and discrimination they face in their everyday lives—a process which is referred to as left-wing convergence (Prichard & Worth, Cap Class 40(1):3–17, 2016). The chapter concludes by arguing that the practical and theoretical significance of autonomous spaces, and the prefigurative practices that are found within them, is that they provide hope, albeit fragile, that post-capitalist futures are possible by having the potential to question, challenge, and rupture the contradictory and exploitative nature of capitalist social relations by creating cracks (Holloway, Crack capitalism. Pluto Press, London, 2010) within these relations that function as a negative dialectic in, against, and beyond capitalist social relations (Dinerstein, The politics of autonomy in Latin America: the art of organising hope. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014).
This chapter documents and reflects on the experience of creating and running an autonomous learning space that I was an active member of between 2012 and 2014 (I was general secretary of the Social Science Centre between 2013 and 2014: ‘My responsibilities for general secretary of the Social Science Centre were agreed on 11th May 2013 and included: dealing with all emails, updating the membership list, managing the website, and organising public events’ (Field Notes 2013), the Social Science Centre. The chapter provides an overview of how the Social Science Centre was created, some of the different courses it ran, and how it experimented with a co-operative organisational form. This reflection is based on my own experiences and the experiences of others who were members of the Social Science Centre using a mixture of active participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and web-based analysis that examined minutes of meetings, blogposts, and study notes. This formed part of a participatory action research (PAR) project which, along with other members of the Social Science Centre, was an attempt to reflect on and develop our working practice. The chapter draws to a close the key lessons learned from our experience of creating and running the Social Science Centre.
The previous chapter provided practical points of advice for anyone who might be interested in developing an autonomous learning space or similar projects. However, the aim of the book is not solely about the creation of autonomous learning spaces that can survive within capitalist social relations. It is about how we can get beyond capitalist social relations. Here, it is worth returning to the title of the book, Prefiguring the Idea of the University for Post-Capitalist Society, which is the focus of this chapter. The chapter argues that one possible organisational form that has the potential to do this is the emerging idea of the co-operative university (Cook, Realising the co-operative university, 2013; Neary and Winn, Learn Teach 10:87–105, 2017; Forum 61:271–279, 2019; Somerville and Saunders, Beyond public and private: the transformation of higher education?, 2013; Sperlinger, Is a co-operative university model a sustainable alternative?, 2014; Winn, Democratically controlled, co-operative higher education, 2015). The idea of the co-operative university has the potential to function as a new form of social institution that has as its basis the creation and dissemination of knowledge that is socially useful (Neary and Winn, Forum 61:271–279, 2019). The idea of the co-operative university has the potential to function as a new form of social institution that has as its basis the creation and dissemination of knowledge that is socially useful (Neary and Winn, Forum 61:271–279, 2019) and functions as a new form of wealth (Saunders, Why student as producer, 2022) that is grounded in development and nurturing of humans, non-human animals and the environment and based on democratic and non-horizontal principles in a way that allow it to function in, against beyond capitalist social relations (London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, In and against the state: Discussion notes for socialists. Pluto Press, London, 1979) and prefigure and post-capitalist idea of the university (Saunders, Reclaiming the university for the public good: Experiments and futures in co-operative higher education. Bloomsbury, London, 2019).
This chapter provides 10 practical points of advice for people who might be thinking of setting up an autonomous learning space (or similar project) either now or in the future. These practical points of advice emerged out of the PAR project at the Social Science Centre and research conducted with six autonomous learning spaces. While this practical advice is no guarantee of survival for an autonomous learning space in an increasingly hostile neoliberal, populist, and nationalist environment, it is hoped it will give similar projects a greater chance by learning from the successes and failures of those who have attempted to create alternative models of higher education provision. Experimenting with and documenting alternative ways of being now which we hope to see in future societies is the spirit of prefiguration—and the aim of this chapter.
This chapter concludes the book by providing an overview of the main arguments. The chapter summarises key policies and reforms that have attempted to impose a neoliberal model of higher education. While the idea of neoliberal university is in crisis, this chapter provides some hope that alternative forms of higher education may be possible. This hope is derived from the autonomous learning spaces that have been documented in the book and the ways in which they are grounded in experiments with democratic and horizontal forms of decision-making that have the potential to prefigure post-capitalist alternatives. The chapter draws to a close by outlining how the lessons learned from these autonomous learning spaces have been used to develop the idea of a co-operative university that embodies these values and has the potential to attack the groundwork of capitalist social relations.
The chapters in this collection reverberate in relation to Aimé Césaire’s (1956/1969, p. 39) invocation: ‘I must begin//Begin what?//The only thing in the world that is worth beginning: //The End of the World, no less.’ In this, they are a gift, precisely because they demonstrate the breadth and depth of struggle and refusal against the materiality of capital. They are a gift, precisely because they reverberate with the potential for (re)imagining the world otherwise. They are a gift, precisely because they center humanity and humane values of courage, faith, dignity, justice, and hope.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2023.2243751?src=
El giro decolonial se ha convertido en una de las principales fuentes del pensamiento crítico en América Latina. A pesar de sus contribuciones, las cuales parten de una crítica a la naturaleza racial, extractiva, patriarcal y colonial del capitalismo, algunos de sus promoventes han sistemáticamente separado el pensamiento de las sociedades en movimiento y las luchas autonómicas por la vida, enfocándose en la producción de conocimiento académico y convirtiéndose así en un aliado (a veces incómodo) de los intereses de la academia neoliberal. Este texto busca recuperar y organizar varias de estas críticas trayéndolas a un diálogo con el pensamiento de Gustavo Esteva, un intelectual desprofesionalizado cuyas aportaciones son clave para superar muchas de estas limitaciones. Al mismo tiempo, el artículo busca enriquecer el giro decolonial al presentar la crítica al capitalismo, el pensamiento del postdesarrollo y la pluralidad radical de Esteva como una contribución significativa
RESUMEN En las postrimerías del siglo XX y los inicios del XXI, en distintos países de América fuerzas identificadas con la izquierda institucional llegaron al poder por la vía electoral, como re-sultado, en algunos casos, de amplias movili-zaciones populares. Esos gobiernos, denomi-nados progresistas para distinguirlos de las orientaciones neoliberales, pero señalando también sus límites frente a opciones no ca-pitalistas, se caracterizaron por una redistri-bución de la riqueza y la inclusión política de algunos sectores excluidos tradicionalmente. Sin embargo, las esperanzas que despertaron fueron frustradas por el retorno de gobiernos alineados a la derecha. Este "fracaso" del pro-gresismo dio lugar a un debate en torno a la existencia y el fin de un ciclo progresista. En este trabajo ofrecemos algunos elementos para comprender el surgimiento y el desplie-gue de los gobiernos progresistas en el marco de la dinámica global del capital, así como un cuestionamiento de las explicaciones de su fracaso en términos de su distanciamiento de los movimientos sociales que los llevaron al poder. En este respecto, discutimos las capa-cidades emancipadoras de los movimientos sociales desde la perspectiva de considerar-los un modo de existencia de la lucha que, al mismo tiempo que la expresa, la niega. ABSTRACT At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, in different countries of America, forces identified with the institutional left came to power through elections, as a result, in some cases, of broad popular mobilizations. Those governments, called "progressive" to distinguish them from neoliberal orientations but also pointing out their limits in the face of non-capitalist options, were characterized by a redistribution of wealth and the political inclusion of some traditionally excluded sectors. However, the hopes they aroused were dashed by the return of right-aligned governments. This "failure" of progressivism gave rise to a debate about the existence and the end of a progressive cycle. In this paper we offer some elements to understand the emergence and deployment of progressive governments within the framework of the global dynamics of capital, as well as a questioning of the explanations for their failure in terms of their distancing from the social movements that led them to power. In this regard, we discuss the emancipatory capacities of social movements from the perspective of considering them a mode of existence of the struggle that, while expressing it, negates it.
This chapter explores the example of Fábrica Sin Patrones/FaSinPat, or “The Factory without Bosses,” the former site of Cerámica Zanón (Zanón Ceramics) in the southern Argentine province of Neuquén. Through a focus on the history, organizational development, relationships with subaltern groups, communities, the state, and its role in the Argentine economy, the chapter places the case of FaSinPat in dialogue with the concept of incipient practice. Additionally, the chapter demonstrates the simultaneity of cultural and industrial nonmarket production through the concept of “disalienating artifacts,” and it critiques and affirms the role of concepts similar to incipient practice: constituent power and instituent praxis.
The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter-century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established and emerging leaders in the field and makes the results of this fast-growing body of diverse research available in one volume. Topics covered include: the philosophical and other intellectual sources of the ethical turn; inter-disciplinary dialogues; emerging conceptualizations of core aspects of ethical agency such as freedom, responsibility, and affect; and the diverse ways in which ethical thought and practice are institutionalized in social life, both intimate and institutional. Authoritative and cutting-edge, it is essential reading for researchers and students in anthropology, philosophy, psychology and theology, and will set the agenda for future research in the field.
Based on a case study from southwest Colombia, this paper provides hopeful example of an intercultural social movement popular education initiative which brings together social movements across territorial, political and cultural borders in order to generate unity and collaboration between these counter-hegemonic forces in the southwest of Colombia. It examines the learning and knowledge which have emerged from this initiative, led by a small, radical human rights organisation called Nomadesc, which over the course of two decades has brought together activists from diverse movements and territories across southwest Colombia in order to empower them to deal with the violent context, reimagine alternatives, and strengthen and interweave their struggles.
This chapter explores Brazilian protesters’ preference for the terms militância or ativismo using the Political Conscientiousness model. This framework understands consciousness as a mosaic of changing information, shifting emotions, and fluid meanings. Individual and collective consciousness are informed by seven intertwined dimensions: societal beliefs and expectations, collective identity, perceived collective interests, political efficacy, feelings toward adversaries, willingness to act collectively, and persuasive action proposals. I adopt the model to revisit previous studies and argue that the tension in the duo militância-ativismo stems from distinct configurations of political conscientiousness and informs two strategic rationales. Militância is an antagonist strategy driven by a rigid morality and designed to transform the current social norms entirely under the premise of a better life in an ideal Future. Consequently, it leads militantes to frame their opponents as enemies and develop their tactical actions to exterminate anything that could jeopardize the conquest of the sought-after Future they are fighting for. It intends to completely transform the current social norms so that people can experience an ideal society in a distant Future. Ativismo refers to a prefigurative agonist strategy taylored to allow an exploratory approach in the political arena. It is driven by a flexible ethic encouraging ativistas to experiment with nonhegemonic social norms through their protest activities. It intends to make protesters taste here and now modes of sociability aligned to the sought-after Future they are fighting for.KeywordsPolitical consciousnessBrazil
Militância
Ativismo
Militancy, prefigurative activismLatin AmericaProtest, political participation
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