Por que razão, nos dois últimos séculos, a epistemologia dominante eliminou da reflexão epistemológica o contexto cultural e político da produção e reprodução do conhecimento? Quais as consequências desta descontextualização?São hoje possíveis outras epistemologias? Este livro procura dar resposta a estas perguntas. Não se confirmando à mera crítica, propõe uma alternativa,(...)

In an essay published fifteen years ago, I identified three crises facing the university (Santos, 1994). First, the crisis of hegemony was the result of contradictions between the traditional functions of the university and those that had come to be attributed to it throughout the twentieth century. When it stopped being the only institution of higher education and research production, the(...)

When, in the mid-1980s, I started using such phrases as “postmodern” and “postmodernity”, my context was the epistemological debate. I had reached the conclusion that science in general, and not just the social sciences, was presided over by an epistemological paradigm and a model of rationality that were all but exhausted. The signs of exhaustion were so clear that we could even speak(...)

Abstract The decade from 1990 to 2000 was a period of sustained political activity in Africa, leading towards democratisation. Under this scope, Mozambique is widely seen as one paradigmatic success story. Yet, the country’s multiparty democratic system remains challenged by a strong authoritarianism that hampers open deliberation in political public discourse. This paper discusses some(...)

Abstract In this article I argue that, in spite of the apparently unshakable hegemony of the historical, philosophical and sociological arguments invoked by the canonical history of Europe and the world to demonstrate the uniqueness of the West and its superiority, there is room to think of a non-Occidentalist West. By that I mean a vast array of conceptions, theories, arguments that, though(...)

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Abstract Citing the inability of conventional human rights thinking to address the ‗strong‘ questions raised by our times, this article pursues a twofold objective: to identify the major challenges that the rise of political theologies at the beginning of the twentieth-first century posed to human rights; and second, to select within a broad landscape of theological analysis the types of(...)

One day Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western democracy. He replied: “it would be a good idea”. If Gandhi were able to return to earth today to tell us what he thought of the rule of law and access to justice, he would most certainly respond in the same way. In fact, in most countries of the world, if the notions of rule of law and access to justice were taken seriously, there(...)

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For the past few years I have been puzzled by the extent to which human rights have become the language of progressive politics. Indeed, for many years after the Second World War human rights were very much part and parcel of cold war politics, and were so regarded by the Left. Double standards, complacency towards friendly dictators, the defense of tradeoffs between human rights and(...)