The World Social Forum and the Global Left

Boaventura De Sousa Santos
Additional contact information
Boaventura De Sousa Santos: University of Coimbra (Portugal), bsantos@wisc.edu

Politics & Society, 2008, vol. 36, issue 2, 247-270

Abstract: This article has two purposes. First, it aims to put the development of the World Social Forum (WSF) within a broad theoretical and historical context. Specifically, my goal is to understand the WSF in relation to the crises of left thinking and practice of the last thirty or forty years. Second, it offers an analysis of some recent debates about the future of the WSF. It raises questions concerning its organizational makeup and asks whether it should continue as it is, or rather give way to other kinds of initiatives and struggles. Against critics such as Walden Bello, I argue that the WSF should continue and, given certain organizational changes, will contribute to the theory and practice of left movements throughout the world in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: WSF; Globalization; Global Left; Intercultural Translation; Strong Questions/Weak Answers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329208316571 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:36:y:2008:i:2:p:247-270

DOI: 10.1177/0032329208316571

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().