Other Worlds are Possible: An Interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos

摘要

Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, where he is the director of the internationally renowned Centro de Estudos Sociais. He is also Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. His research interests are in Political Sociology, Sociology of Law and in questions of epistemology. His research has embraced the struggles of colonial and postcolonial contexts in Brazil, Colombia, India, South Africa and Mozambique amongst others and he is a leading exponent of theories of Portuguese identity. In recent years his intellectual attention and political engagement has turned to the World Social Forum as a site of what he calls 'counter hegemonic globalisation' and resistance (see www.forumsocialmundial.org.br). His work draws upon rich linguistic and intercultural contexts, refusing to seek out simple technicist or positivist solutions to the vast array of complexities inherent in the 'localised globalisms and globalised localisms' - the terms he uses to describe different relationships and positions within 'neoliberal hegemonic globalisation'. In the relatively new field of interdisciplinary research, the aspects of power, resistance, complexity and hegemony take time to theorise. The work of Professor Santos offers a rich vein of theoretical reflection and translation for language(s) and intercultural communication. The following interview is an edited version of a dialogue that took place on 27 April 2006 in the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal.