Democratizing Democracy (Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward New Manifestos) Book

The first volume of the collection Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards New Manifestos. The major conflicts between the Global North and South can be expected to result from the confrontation of alternative conceptions of democracy, mainly between liberal or representative democracy and participatory democracy. The hegemonic model of democracy, while prevailing on a global scale, guarantees no more than low-intensity democracy. In recent times, participatory democracy has exhibited a new dynamic, engaging mainly subaltern communities and social groups that fight against social exclusion and the suppression of citizenship. In this collection of reports from the Global South – India, South Africa, Mozambique, Colombia, and Brazil – de Sousa Santos and his colleagues show how, in some cases, the deepening of democracy results from the development of dual forms of participatory and representative democracy, and points to the emergence of transnational networks of participatory democracy initiatives. Such networks pave one of the ways to the reinvention of social emancipation. This is volume 1 of the Reinventing Social Emancipation project, edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos.Read More