Advanced research seminar – Project ALICE

From Universalism to Multiversalism: Decolonizing Western Concepts of Democracy

Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley)

December 6, 2012, 17h00-19h00

Room 1, CES-Coimbra

Commentators: Luciane Lucas dos Santos and Teresa Cunha


Abstract

This talk will discuss the implications of an "ecology of knowledges" for other ways of conceptualizing Democracy away from the Western Liberal conception of Democracy. The talk will be divided in two sections: non-Western concepts of Democracy and the challenges the latter implies for a Multiversal as opposed to Universal world (Boaventura's concept of 'translation' being one method to articulate the Multiversal).
 

Bio

Ramón Grosfoguel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Research Associate of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. He has published on the political economy of the world-system and on Caribbean migrations to Western Europe and the United States.