The Pluriverse of Human Rights

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa; Martins, Bruno Sena

doi:10.4324/9781003177722

Cited by 15 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This criticism takes issue with their very foundations of human rights, which are seen as legal norms taking shape in the context of European modernity (de Sousa Santos and Sena Martins, 2021). Legalistic approaches to human rights are dominant in both the scholarship of human rights and the practice of NGOs (Nash, 2015).…”

Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Perolini

2023

Sociology

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Human rights often fall short of challenging oppression because they are enmeshed with conservative institutions, such as the law and the state. Despite these shortcomings, grassroots organisations contesting border regimes in Berlin often make use of human rights in their everyday mobilisation. They engage in autonomous forms of mobilisation outside the state and construct non-legal notions of human rights that are emancipatory for racialised migrants. However, these same organisations also address demands to state authorities by using legal notions of human rights. In this article, I draw on the framework focusing on abolition and non-reformist reforms, which have been developed by activists and scholars in their resistance to policing and the Prison-Industrial Complex. I innovatively extend its use to propose a nuanced understanding of grassroots approaches to human rights. Specifically, I argue that these approaches entail the concurrent pursuit of short-term reformist reforms and border abolition.

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Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Perolini

2023

Sociology

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“…Therefore, four challenges stand out: (1) to consider the agency and the interdependency of humans and nonhumans for a better understanding of social practices [61]; (2) the recognition of different forms of social participation through the engagement of communities with the social-cultural world and nature, implying bottom-up policies to face the effects of climate change [62]; (3) the conception and implementation of policies that consider effectively the local sociocultural specificities and needs, and local effects imposed by climate change, to deal, sustainably and inclusively, with the ecological and environmental crisis [63]; (4) to consider in the deliberative and participatory settings different forms of knowledge (traditional, erudite, ecological, local, scientific, artistic, popular, lay, among many others), language and actors. Also, it includes the kind of knowledge born out of the struggles of the social movements for human dignity and, thus, the epistemological diversity of the world against the dominant ways of knowing [64][65][66].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natures instead of nature—plural perceptions and representations of nature and its challenges for ecological transition: a systematic review of the scientific production

Vidal,

Alves,

Valentim

et al. 2024

Environ Sci Eur

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Background Recognizing nature and the environment as sociocultural constructions is critical to enhancing a transformational ecological change. This involves understanding their diverse sociocultural meanings and societal approaches and how these understandings affect equitable ecological transitions. We reviewed empirical studies and essays, categorizing 161 studies into three main categories: opposition, domination, and interdependencies, reflecting varying knowledge, power dynamics, cultures, and contexts. These studies aim to uncover how societies conceptualize, explain, and engage with nature and the environment, shaping society–nature relationships and influencing ecological transitions. Results This study underscores the diverse perceptions and representations of nature, from a controllable resource to an integrated web of life. Three main categories emerged: (i) nature against society, in a logic of opposition; (ii) nature subordinated to society, in a logic of domination, although integrated into society; and (iii) nature united with society, in a logic of interdependence. Thus, this study advocates discussing “natures” as sociocultural constructs, highlighting the plurality of social perceptions and representations, which can inform policies and challenge socio-political and socio-economic systems. Conclusions This review may pave the way to, first, give visibility and value that diversity and plurality as an instrument that can enrich policies and defy socio-political and socio-economic systems to change and, second, identify the main drivers and resistances that the implementation of an ecological transformation change may face in different sociocultural contexts.

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“…One important way to explain the existence and continuity of radical exclusions is reflected in the idea of a Global South that remains mainly in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Asia as an active construction of social and political nonexistence. More than a geopolitical definition, it is a metaphor for the human suffering caused by radical exclusions resulting from colonial inheritances that affect not only the exploited workers, but all groups who are ontologically disqualified by the Eurocentric and capitalist modernity (Santos and Martins, 2021). The radically excluded groups encompass indigenous populations, Afro-descendants, agricultural workers, and even entire fractions of the racially and socially dominant groups, such as women and the LGBTQI+ community, although these latter two groups also suffer intersectional violence and discrimination in the context of the Global North, which are confronted through social struggles and agendas that are sometimes quite different in relation to the Global South.…”

Section: Introduction: Rethinking Urban Greening In the Global Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Global South, more than a geographical space, represents the metaphor of human suffering that results from radical exclusions and, one should add, based on the contempt for other ways of being, living and knowing that diverge from the Eurocentric world. It is in this sense, that the Global South refers not only to the complaints, but to the announcements that bring hope and alternatives for the paradigmatic and civilizing transition rooted in the recognition and dialogue with other possible worlds, not just one universe, but a pluriverse (De La Cadena and Blaser, 2018) of relationships between humans and non-humans, including those who are seen as coming from other planes of existence (Santos and Martins, 2021). In these spaces the institutions that correspond to modernity (State-Law-Science) predominantly give way to forms of plunder and violence without the protection of Laws and the State, even if they exist and are said to be democratic.…”

Section: Introduction: Rethinking Urban Greening In the Global Southmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipatory Urban Greening in the Global South: Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Dialogues and the Role of Traditional and Peasant Peoples and Communities in Brazil

Porto¹,

Fasanello²,

Rocha³

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain. Cities

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This article discusses theoretical, methodological and political issues related to urban greening in the Global South, as well as emancipatory alternatives to envisioning more inclusive, democratic, sustainable and healthy cities. We sustain that the role of traditional and peasant peoples and communities – including indigenous, quilombolas and others - is strategic for thinking about alternatives and actions aimed at the paradigmatic transition that surpasses the vision of Eurocentric modernity. It generates artificial barriers that divide countryside and cities, society and nature, life and economy, as well as subjects and objects in producing and sharing knowledge. These peoples and communities designates a diversity of social situations that have as a common denominator conditions of existence considered to contrast with “modernity,” situated on the margins of the representations of “development” and “progress” of the hegemonic economic and political powers. Our arguments are empirically based on experiences developed in Brazil with interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogues carried out in recent years. The events called “Meetings of Knowledges” brought together academic groups and different social movements and community organizations involving social struggles and topics such as health, environmental conflicts and justice, food security and sovereignty, agroecology, among others. These meetings intend to enhance intercultural and interdisciplinary interactions between agents working together in different territories with concrete knowledges and experiences. The contents generated by the debates held at these events and their developments depict social experiences that reinforce the underlying hypothesis behind this article: the social struggles involving the interaction between traditional and agricultural populations with urban spaces in the Global South provide important evidence for research agendas about emerging emancipatory processes related to urban greening. In the first part of the text, we analyze the historical, social and epistemological meaning of indigenous, quilombola and peasant peoples in the Brazilian context, analyzing both recent contradictions and threats, as well as their role in the emergence of ongoing emancipatory agendas, including interaction with cities. Finally, we show examples related to social struggles, first of an indigenous ethnic group in the Amazon region, and then in two big Brazilian cities, involving social movements and community organizations that integrate actions for decent housing, sanitation, health care, and food along with the rescue of ancestral knowledge.

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The Pluriverse of Human Rights

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Natures instead of nature—plural perceptions and representations of nature and its challenges for ecological transition: a systematic review of the scientific production

Emancipatory Urban Greening in the Global South: Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Dialogues and the Role of Traditional and Peasant Peoples and Communities in Brazil

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