General information

SUMMER SCHOOL "LEARNING FROM THE SOUTH: TOWARDS INTERCULTURAL TRANSLATIONS"

CURIA, PORTUGAL, JUNE 30TH – JULY 8TH, 2014

This international summer school is part of a larger political and intellectual initiative, the ALICE project. At its outset, ALICE seeks to re-think and renovate socio-scientific knowledge in light of the epistemologies of the South, proposed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. The objective is to develop new theoretical and political paradigms of social transformation. This summer course is composed of several seminars, all of them conducted in English.

Haunting Europe, and the Global North as a whole, there is a sentiment of intellectual and political exhaustion which translates as incapacity to confront innovatively the various challenges of justice that interpellate the world in the first decades of the twenty-first century: social, environmental, inter-generational, cultural, historical and cognitive justice. In contrast, the Global South, in its immense diversity, presents itself today as a wide field of economic, social, cultural, and political innovation.

ALICE is grounded on a wager that social, political and institutional change may largely benefit from the innovations occurring in the Global South. A demanding wager, to be sure, for it presupposes availability for mutual recognition, intercultural understanding, political and ideological convergence, respect for identity, and celebration of diversity.

Please watch Boaventura's invitation:

THIS SUMMER SCHOOL, LIVING UP TO THE MOTTO “LEARNING FROM THE SOUTH AND WITH THE SOUTH”, SEEKS TO PROVIDE CLUES ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES OF SOCIAL POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION FROM INNOVATIONS TAKING PLACE IN VARIOUS CONTEXTS OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH.

The seminars, to be coordinated by world-known scholars, cover several topics, such as:

• the democratic diversity of the world;

• social struggles in the Global South around the democratization and colonial and post-colonial liberation;

• movements for the refoundation of the State and bottom-up re-writing of constitutions;

• alternatives to capitalist infinite accumulation and environmental degradation;

• human rights from the perspective of  intercultural dialogues and other grammars of human dignity;

• transnational legal mobilization as a strategy to promote (women’s; indigenous’; peasants’, etc.) policies and rights;

• struggles for alternatives to development, among others.

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This course is offered through the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra,  Portugal.

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Among affiliated faculty are internationally recognized scholars:

Boaventura de Sousa Santos; Valentin Mudimbe; Cecilia M. Santos; José Manuel Mendes; César Rodríguez-Garavito; Maria Paula Meneses; Cristiana Bastos: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera; Albie Sachs; Sharit Bhowmik.

(see HERE detailed faculty info)

The aim is to provide students with a calm and reflective environment, enabling them to enjoy lively discussions with fellow students and faculty.

Contact
alicesummerschool@ces.uc.pt