Debates - GWG Beyond Development

Commenting on “Revolutionary Immanence?”

Post Author By Aram Ziai

by Aram Ziai The article is a highly interesting piece which demonstrates the author‘s familiarity with the theoretical debate about anti-capitalist revolutions as well as with current oppositional social movements. However, coming from a different theoretical tradition than the author I found its argument sometimes hard to follow and was not quite convinced by a number of theoretical claims – also in the light of its own analysis of social movements. If […]

Debates Theoretical papers

Revolutionary immanence? Exploring the political idea of social movements

Post Author By Soumitra Ghoshs

by Soumitra Ghoshs Introduction: theories of movements, but where is the praxis? Murray Bookchin once commented that the tragedy of Marxism was that it had become a subject of cloistered academic seminars and not living movements (Bookchin 2015). Today’s anti-capitalist mobilisations do not call themselves Marxists, he observed. The recorded experiences of the various square movements, insurrections and revolutions of recent years tend to bear this out. Precious few important theoretical works […]

Theoretical papers

Can social movements democratise democracy?

Post Author By Maxime Combes

Lessons from the Yellow Vests movement in France by Maxime Combes “Extraordinary events are beyond the scope of ordinary explanations” Edgard Morin “Democracy is not about Saturday afternoons”, French president Emmanuel Macron said, speaking about the Yellow Vests movement (YVM) that have been protesting every Saturday afternoon since November 17, 2018. Such a statement aimed to close the door to any new political, economic or social measures in response to the Yellow […]

Current movements Debates

What mark have the Yellow Vests left on French democracy?

Post Author By Ethan Earle

by Ethan Earle Almost two years after the first protests and shortly after the 2020 Bastille Day: What to make out of the Yellow Vests and the state of French democracy? What to take away from the recently Macron-initiated citizens’ assemblies? Have the Yellow Vests and other protest shaken the French political establishment? Initially launched as a protest against rising fuel prices, the yellow vests in France quickly turned into a popular […]

Current movements Theoretical papers

“For the democratic production of democratic societies” – Lessons from the transition from social-movement-driven to state-legislated consultations on extractive projects in Peru

Post Author By Raphael Hoetmer

by Raphael Hoetmer Over the last two decades, various consultation practices regarding extractive activities have emerged and been implemented throughout Latin America. Some practices adopt a completely autonomous and communitarian approach, some are based on alliances between civil society and local government, while others are also increasingly centred around national governments in connection with new legislation as per international standards on indigenous peoples’ rights. These consultation practices come from two related sources. […]

Case studies and Videos Debates

Overcoming crises of representation? Arts in anti-coal struggles in Colombia and California

Post Author By Beatriz Rodríguez Labajos

by Beatriz Rodríguez Labajos Raw material extraction, transportation and waste disposal are triggering environmental conflicts worldwide. All types of material throughput in the global economy bear consequences for social justice and sustainability. Yet very few materials better represent the economic, social and moral tensions intertwined in societal metabolism, i.e. material and energy use of human societies, than coal. Data collection on environmental conflicts – including coal conflicts (Roy 2018) – has emphasised […]

Case studies and Videos Debates

Guendalizaá: The reconstruction of the “We”

Post Author By Arturo Guerrero Osorio

by Arturo Guerrero Osorio The Zapotec word Guendalizá or Guelaguetza means “familiarity”, “friendship” or “neighborhood”; It is mutual help and is expressed when an person is with the others in the crucial moments of life, the happy and the sad. It is a cultural pattern that comes from the deepest roots from the towns of Oaxaca, Mexico (let’s think about 11 thousand years ago). Today, in the Oaxaca Isthmus and other places […]

Case studies and Videos Debates

Challenges to intercultural democracy in the Plurinational State of Bolivia: case study of the Monkoxɨ peoples of Lomerío

Post Author By Iokiñe Rodriguez and Mirna Inturias

by Iokiñe Rodriguez and Mirna Inturias Introduction The adoption of Bolivia’s new political Constitution in 2009 marked the birth of a new plurinational state. One of the most important constitutional changes was a new state system of territorial division that recognises departmental, municipal, regional and indigenous autonomies as new plural forms of political organisation seeking to decentralise decision-making power and the management of public funds, wresting them away from central government. Whereas […]

Current movements Debates

On the Cusp: Reframing Democracy and Well-Being in Korchi, India

Post Author By Neema Pathak Broome, Shrishtee Bajpai and Mukesh Shende

Women Parishad's meeting, January 2018. @Neema Pathak Broome

by Neema Pathak Broome, Shrishtee Bajpai and Mukesh Shende Introduction Mainstream governance and development models – characterised by seemingly democratic but inherently centralised and top-down governance systems and extractive, commercially motivated, capitalist economic policies – have failed to achieve minimum levels of well-being for a very large part of humanity. They have in fact caused large-scale human and environmental injustice. However, there are also countertrends either resisting current models or developing and […]

Debates Introduction

Introduction to the Democracy debate

Post Author By Miriam Lang

Is democracy a stronghold of social struggles or is it rather an institutional framework imposed by capitalism? Why are fascism and different kinds of authoritarianism coming back through elections? How can the scandalous inequality that structures contemporary capitalism and obviously limits democratic decision making strongly be dealt with?

Debates Discussion

Soumitra Ghosh’s “Revolutionary Immanence? Exploring the Political Idea of Social Movements”

Post Author By Larry Lohman

by Larry Lohman Soumitra asks: What creates the oppositional “non-state non-capital” knowledge “that makes movements both necessary and possible” (p. 2)? And that ensures that they have “political continuity” rather than being mere “singularities fixed in time and space” (p. 2)? In part, Soumitra’s answers are negative. Transformational social movements are not built just by participating in fixed organizations, spectacular events or, for that matter, purely reactive exercises in un-organizational horizontality (p. […]

Debates Democracy in times of COVID-19

Democracy and transformation in the time of pandemic politics

Post Author By Mary Ann Manahan and Miriam Lang

As the world reels from historically unprecedented socio-economic and political impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19), many governments are rolling out emergency measures and guidelines for physical distancing, lockdowns, and quarantines, closing of borders, and restrictions of people’s movements in an effort to flatten the curve. Of great concern among social and labor movements, civil society, and people at large is how this global health emergency reshapes democratic institutions and democratization processes, for […]

Debates Theoretical papers

New Political Horizons: Beyond The “Democratic” Nation-State

Post Author By Gustavo Esteva

by Gustavo Esteva In these pages, I explain why it is not possible to eliminate the despotic nature of the “democratic” nation-state. Recognizing its limits opens up the exploration of many options for the people to rule themselves. Democratic despotism Small groups of people have ruled themselves, freely formulating the norms of their ways of living and dying in their localized settings. This democratic idea has been in fact used as a […]

Debates Discussion

On reading Esteva’s ‘Beyond the Democratic Nation-State’

Post Author By Ariel Salleh

by Arie Salleh Sydney January 10th, 2020. Gustavo Esteva writes with the sincerity and simplicity of one deeply experienced in the politics of everyday life. He rarely calls on academic terms, unless there is good reason. So his essay opens by tracing the idea of democracy from Ancient Greece, through the Treaty of Westphalia, French Revolution, and on to the US Constitution. At every turn, he shows the practice of democracy has […]

Case studies and Videos Debates

Community resistance to a Power Plant in Senegal

Post Author By Ibrahima Thiam

by Ibrahima Thiam A fisher community leaving in Bargny at 15km from the city of Dakar is facing the consequences of an industrialization program of the Senegalese state praised to be the way for economic emergence. The socioeconomic change and mutations resulting from the series of projects have deep impacts on the community’s livelihoods. The economy of Bargny employing more than thousand fishermen and at least one thousand women drying, and packaging […]