Abstract
In this book, Boaventura de Sousa Santos analyzes how the recent constitutional reforms in Bolivia and Ecuador are transforming the state, and sets the foundations for a new sociology to understand these and other similar transformations in Latin America. In the first part of the book, Santos argues that the ‘Eurocentric critical tradition’ is insufficient to understand what these constitutional reforms represent. In addition to the European tradition, he proposes a ‘transgressive sociology’ made up of the ‘sociology of absences’ and the ‘sociology of emergencies.’ The ‘sociology of absences’ sets its eyes on the present. Its task is to bring back to life the ‘empirical objects’ that the dominant way of thinking disregards and ultimately makes invisible by using terms like ‘ignorance,’ ‘backwards,’ ‘inferior,’ ‘local or particular,’ and ‘unproductive and sterile’ to describe them. The ‘sociology of emergencies,’ in turn, sets its eyes on an imaginable future. Its task is to cultivate the realities reinvigorated by the sociology of absences in the present, and to expand the political horizon based on the possibilities they offer. This new transgressive sociology involves a shift towards an ‘epistemology of the South,’ which is based on the idea that all ignorance is relative and that there are multiple forms of knowledge that can benefit from each other through a process of ‘intercultural translation.’ This new sociological framework also involves a deep affective transformation, because it requires us to acknowledge and embrace the idea of a possible but uncertain future. To emphasize the hopeful nature of his proposal, Santos grounds transgressive sociology on the notion of ‘Not Yet’ (Noch Nicht), which the utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch developed as a response to what he saw as the rigid philosophical duality of ‘Everything’ (Alles) versus ‘Nothing’ (Nicht). With this, Santos sets his work within the broader tradition of utopian thinking.
In the second part of the book, Santos characterizes the current Latin American context as being shaped by a series of political dynamics that involve ‘primitive’ and ‘amplified’ capital accumulation, ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ struggles against dominant ways of seeing the world, and the counter-hegemonic use of hegemonic instruments, all of which have given way to a ‘civilizing debate’ that manifests itself in different ways. He then argues that the constitutional reforms in Bolivia and Ecuador, two concrete manifestations of this debate, lay out a state that differs ‘radically’ from the European modern state in its anticapitalist and postcolonial aspects. In contrast to the old European homogenizing machine with a monopoly on violence, Santos argues that the ‘plurinational state’ tends towards heterogeneity and towards multiple sites of legitimate power. Instead of a national economy, a national law, or a single form of democracy, for example, the plurinational state recognizes the existence of multiple economies, multiple laws, and even multiple forms of democracy, and incorporates them into its institutional order. Moreover, in contrast to the capitalist mode of thinking, this new type of state is guided by the concept of ‘Good Living’ (Sumac Kawsay in Ecuador and Suma Qamaña in Bolivia), which recognizes human beings as part of nature or Pachamama (Mother Earth).
Santos’s proposal of a transgressive sociology based on an epistemology of the South is part of a broader effort to ‘decolonize knowledge’ in Latin America. This effort addresses the need to approach, translate, and vindicate the region’s realities against the dominant ways of seeing, and the need to construct a future based on plausible alternatives. Perhaps something missing from Santos’s book is a discussion on how transgressive sociology relates to other fields where similar work has been done in the past. His proposal would benefit from a comparison between transgressive sociology and anthropology, for example, or between transgressive sociology and cultural studies. In addition, it would be useful if Santos had included a discussion on why he advocates for a specific discipline and not for an interdisciplinary approach. From what he says in the book, interdisciplinary scholars like Arturo Escobar, with his work on ‘development’ as a discourse, or Walter Mignolo, with his work on ‘epistemic disobedience,’ seem to be doing something similar to what a transgressive sociologist would do. Given that Santos seems to prefer to ground his contribution on a specific sociological tradition, a discussion about the virtues of this field in relation to others would be relevant.
Perhaps a deeper critique can be made of Santos’s idea about the plurinational state being ‘radically’ different from the European model of the nation-state. Indeed, what we see emerging in Ecuador, and perhaps more clearly in Bolivia, is what he calls an ‘experimental state,’ in which old European traditions of governance and ways of seeing the world coexist with reinvigorated traditions and worldviews from Latin America. Some may agree with Santos and argue that the states laid out in the constitutions of these countries represent radical breaks from the European idea, but others can argue that these states are just augmented versions of the same centralizing and coercive model. A state that ‘grants’ rights to Pachamama, for example, might seem a liberating institution for some, but for others it might seem as an all-encompassing machine in which every single aspect of life is regulated by a gigantic apparatus. This is already evident in a conversation with Bolivia’s former vice minister of strategic planning, who Santos quotes, in which the former official explains that in order to organize all the different economies recognized by the state they are going to need a ‘superministry of economy’ (p. 96). This is less evident in overarching institutions that are intrinsically heterogeneous in terms of representatives and the ways in which they are elected, such as the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal in Bolivia that Santos analyzes. This is also less evident in Santos’s suggestion of institutionalizing the ‘civilizing debate’ through the public education system, so that new generations that embrace the multiplicity of worldviews and uncertainty that the plurinational state represents can emerge. The risk lies in the institutions narrowing the dynamic range of possibilities that these heterogeneous states offer. The challenge is to find a way to avoid this.
Perhaps a truly radical break from the European idea would have been a move towards a form of political organization different from the state, and not just a move away from a specific model. This could have opened up the political horizon not only to the possibility of a postcolonial and anticapitalist future, but also to the possibility of a future beyond the state, which would have certainly brought the ‘experimental’ aspect that Santos notes to a different level.