Radha D'Souza

Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom.Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front.Why are activists and activist scholars unable to 'let go' of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries?This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to 'human' rights and in the argument 'our understandings of rights are better than theirs' that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship.

Social Movements and Legal Imaginations

What's Wrong with Rights?

Sunera Thobani

Interdisciplinary scholars rethink strategies for moving contemporary decolonization politics forward by revisiting the writings of the mid-20th century anti-colonial movements' leading intellectuals. Decolonizing Knowledge draws on intellectual histories of anti-colonial thinkers who developed their ideas of decolonization through practical engagement with struggles for freedom from colonialism. Reading works by J.P.S. Uberoi, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James and Andaiye, among others, interdisciplinary activist scholars reflect on the meaning of decolonization that emerged from anti-colonial struggles of the past and its relevance today. Each chapter in the volume reflects on one or more texts from anti-colonial thinkers of the past to draw out the meaning of decolonization as conceptualized by earlier generations, providing key insights from their thinking and examining their relevance for contemporary struggles for racial, gender and class justice. With authors writing from multiple disciplines, these essays straddle a range of themes from theory and practice, art and literature, gender and violence, and political economy, to address a subject that is preoccupying academia and activists in the 21st century. Decolonizing Knowledge is an intervention into contemporary debates on decolonizing curricula and universities, arguing that these calls need to be firmly engaged in wider social practices for justice, and that they can learn much from those who wrote on the topic amid the 20th century's many struggles for freedom.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Decolonizing Knowledge

Abdullah Ocalan

Abdullah Öcalan makes the convincing argument that capitalism is not a product of the last four hundred years but a continuation of classical civilization. Unlike Marx, Öcalan sides with Braudel by giving less importance to the mode of production than to the accumulation of surplus value and power, thus centering his criticisms on the capitalist nation-state as the most powerful monopoly of economic, military, and ideological power. He argues that the fundamental strength of capitalist hegemony, however, is the competition in voluntary servitude that a market economy has given rise to--not a single worker would reject higher wages--resulting in an unprecedented ability to convince people to surrender their individual power and autonomy. Öcalan further contends that the capitalist phase of city-class-state-based civilization is not the last phase of human intelligence; rather, the traditional morals upon which it is based are being exhausted and the intelligence of freedom is rising in all its richness.

The Age of Unmasked Gods and Naked Kings (Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization)

Capitalism

" Contextualises the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal allocating the waters of the river Krishna between the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh " Provides a new framework of analysis that may be extended to other developmental questions " Is the first critical analysis of interstate water conflicts within federal constitution in a developing country such as India " Integrates law and science into social theory and into development questions " Brings back the discourse of law and development with new theoretical insights that had receded after the late 1960s " Introduces the legal and institutional dimensions into the debate on large dams " Includes an insert map and foldout maps of the Krishna basin and sub-basins

Radha D'Souza

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