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The Global Working Group “Beyond Development”: An Introduction by Miriam Lang, Ashish Kothari and Mabrouka M’barek Our world is facing unprecedented challenges: the rise of the political right in many countries, a historical level of environmental destruction and loss of biodiversity, a crisis of the political mechanisms of decision making, within liberal, representative democracies, abysmal levels of economic inequality that intersects with gender, caste, race, and ethnicity. At the same time, there […]

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Debates Discussion

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

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. […]

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Debates Democracy in times of COVID-19

Democracy and transformation in the time of pandemic politics

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 […]

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Debates Theoretical papers

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

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 […]

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Debates Discussion

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

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 […]

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Case studies and Videos Debates

Community resistance to a Power Plant in Senegal

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 […]

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Case studies and Videos Debates

Resistance and devotedness: learning democracy under pressure

by Kitti Baracsi If we imagine democratic education as entire school communities practising participation, to what extent can schools escape the current approach taken in the public education system? What if they encounter hostility and restrictions? Can we learn democracy through transgressions and resistance? This article tells the story of three school communities where participation and solidarity are growing under pressure.[1] Examining democratic practices on the ground and the conflicts that arise […]

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Publications

Alternatives in a World of Crisis – 2nd edition

This book is the result of a collective effort. In fact, it has been written by many contributors from all over the world – women, men, activists, and scholars from very different socio-cultural contexts and political horizons, who give testimony to an even greater scope of social change. Their common concern is to show not only that alternatives do exist, despite the neoliberal mantra of the “end of history”, but that many […]

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Publications

Stopping the Machines of socio-ecological destruction and building alternative worlds

The present text is the result of a collective process of analysis, dialogue, and editing based on the second meeting of the Global Working Group Beyond Development in the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, and in Nabón County, in Azuay province, in May 2017. It represents an effort to understand the historical moment our world is living through, its patterns of domination and the tendencies, prospects, and challenges of a multidimensional transformation. Our discussions […]

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[2018] Urban Transformations (Barcelona) Meetings

2018-19 Cities of Dignity

URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS AROUND THE WORLD The book Cities of Dignity: Urban Transformations Around the World (July 2020) is the third publication of the Global Working Group Beyond Development. Cities of Dignity, which will be available for free download, explores seven urban experiences: the self-determination and organization of slum dwellers in Buhj in India, Black-led urban commons in Birmingham, Jackson, and Detroit in the U.S., the San Roque popular market in Quito, Ecuador, […]

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[2017] Alternatives in a World of crisis (Quito) Meetings

2017-18 Alternatives in a World of Crisis

FROM STOPPING THE MACHINES OF SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION, TO THE BUILDING OF ALTERNATIVE WORLDS: RETHINKING OUR STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Jun 15th, 2017 by Raphael Hoetmer From 12th until 19th of May the Global Working Group Beyond Development, hosted by the Brussels office of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, held its second meeting in Ecuador, Latin America, in order to collectively analyze the opportunities and challenges, as well as the practical strategies, for the construction of multidimensional alternatives which […]

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[2017] Alternatives in a World of crisis (Quito) Meetings

International conference “World in crisis. Alternatives from the five continents “

The graduate program of Latin American Cultural Studies from the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito Ecuador, in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation organized the international conference “World in crisis. Alternatives from the five continents ” with participants of the Global Working Group Beyond Development on May 18th 2017. Program 10h30-10h50 Opening Jaime Breilh, Rector of the UASBClaus-Dieter König, Deputy Director Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Brussels 10h50-11h10Miriam Lang, Universidad Andina Simón BolívarCivilizational crisis […]