Books by Arturo Escobar

Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory by arguing for the creation of what he calls "autonomous design"-a design practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth.

Reflecting on the experience, philosophy, and practice of Latin American indigenous and Afro-descendant activist-intellectuals who mobilize to defend their territories from large-scale extraction, Arturo Escobar shows how the key to addressing planetary crises is the creation of the pluriverse-a world of many epistemological and ontological worlds.

This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.

How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. "e;Development"e; was not even partially "e;deconstructed"e; until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific "e;Third World"e; cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era. Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "e;gaze of experts."e; In a substantial new introduction, Escobar reviews debates on globalization and postdevelopment since the book's original publication in 1995 and argues that the concept of postdevelopment needs to be redefined to meet today's significantly new conditions. He then calls for the development of a field of "e;pluriversal studies,"e; which he illustrates with examples from recent Latin American movements.

Analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. This book offers an ethnographic account of Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN's) visions, strategies, and practices, and chronicles and analyzes the movement's struggles for autonomy, and territory.

"During the last decade, Latin American social movements have brought about a profound transformation in the nature and practice of protest and collective action. This book surveys the full spectrum of"