Description
Book SynopsisExploring the historical experience of the Global South, Boaventura de Sousa Santos argues that state law excludes populations and peoples by deeming them invisible, irrelevant, or dangerous. Demonstrating the suffering caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, he pursues real legal utopias by proposing realistic yet hopeful alternatives.
Trade Review'At a moment when the world confronts multiple existential crises, this book-synthesizing a half-century of wisdom-is magisterial, essential, and poetic. De Sousa Santos sustains the impossible tension between optimism and pessimism by presenting examples of 'real legal utopias', a seeming oxymoron that captures the necessity to engage law as both a realist and a utopian.' Richard L. Abel, UCLA
'This commanding volume offers a penetrating analysis of extreme inequality and the concurrent failure of social democracy globally. It encourages learning from counter-hegemonic real legal utopias and a vast plurality of social practices. Reflecting on his own intellectual travels and activism over decades, de Sousa Santos reveals a story of immense intellectual and ethical courage, constantly searching for new sociolegal insight applicable to today's unprecedented times.' Eve Darian-Smith, University of California - Irvine
'This is the magnum opus of Boaventura de Sousa Santos's life and work, a compendium and reflection on the many pioneering achievements of a life lived well. His commitment to epistemic and cognitive decolonisation and his unwavering confrontation of the devastations of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy make de Sousa Santos the intellectual for our troubled times.' Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck - University of London
'The book offers a clear-eyed account of the possibility of progressive transformation. Drawing on his incomparable experience across multiple continents, nation-states, and political stakes, this is classic Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Encyclopaedic in scope and detail, it is magisterial in reach. A reference book for our times.' David Theo Goldberg, University of California - Irvine
Table of ContentsPart I. The Tragic Optimism of the Law: The End of a Story: 1. Unsettling times; 2. The end of legal reformism? Lineages of legal reformism; 3. The early demise of legal reformism: my journey through the Law and Modernization Program at Yale University; 4. Room for manoeuvre: Paradox, programme, or Pandora's Box?; Part II. Epistemologies of the South and the Law: 5. Introducing the epistemologies of the South; 6. The epistemologies of the South and law: towards a post-abyssal law; 7. Is post-abyssal law possible? Part III. The Abyssal Law under the Mode of Abyssal Exclusion: 8. Lawfare: a long history; 9. Colonial law and imperial law; 10. Colonial legal duality: the creation of legal codes for indigenous populations; Part IV. Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting the State: 11. The heterogeneous state, legal plurality and traditional authorities in Africa: the case of Mozambique; 12. The rise of a micro dual state: a case of highly politicised legal pluralism; 13. The refoundation of the state in Bolivia and Ecuador?; Part V. Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting the Law: 14. Law and revolution in Portugal: experiences of popular justice after the carnation revolution of 1974; 15. Popular justice in cape verde; 16. The landless rural workers' movement in Brazil and its struggles for access to law and justice; 17. The law of the excluded: indigenous justice and plurinationality in Bolivia and Ecuador; 18. Decolonising justice and democratic peace in Colombia; Part VI. Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting Hegemonic Human Rights: 19. Human rights in a post-secular age: counter-hegemony and progressive theologies; 20. Towards an insurgent, intercultural and cosmopolitan declaration of human rights and duties; 21. Rights of nature.
