Book review: Designs for the Pluriverse Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Arturo Escobar (2018)

Resumen

Arturo Escobar´s work Designs for the Pluriverse - Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds is an in-depth intention to look at the possibilities for life-sustaining other worlds. The book becomes only more and more relevant standpoint in the current multicrises, bringing economical volatility, political tensions and socio-ecological emergencies, all of them experienced in Bolivia as well as in numerous other contexts. Escobar calls for deeper understanding of the ontological roots behind the woeful situation, and even more, to ask if there are any alternatives for the current paths of development.

While the expanding idea, that the current socio-ecological crisis would be a structural consequence of capitalism, is still considered as a radical claim, Escobar dives even deeper, and explores the ontological questions behind the capitalist development and modern thinking, being an eminent thinker at the field of post-developmentalist studies. The Colombian anthropologist scholar has worked decades with communities in the Colombian Cauca territories and draws his theoretical thinking from these empirical experiences in the territorial struggles.