Arturo Escobar (anthropologist)

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Arturo Escobar
Born (1951-11-10) November 10, 1951 (age 72)
Manizales, Colombia[1]
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  • 21st-century philosophy
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Arturo Escobar (born November 20, 1951) is a

social movements, anti-globalization movements, political ontology,[2] and postdevelopment theory.[3]

Escobar is a major figure in the post-development academic discourse and has been described as a "post-development thinker to be reckoned with".[4] He has authored influential books criticizing development practices championed by western industrialized societies and exploring possibilities for alternative visions of development, including Encountering Development (1995) and Designs for the Pluriverse (2018).

Education and career

Escobar was born in Manizales, Colombia.[1] He currently holds Colombian and American citizenship and publishes in both English and Spanish.

He received a Bachelor of Science in

Bogota, from 1981 to 1982,[5] in 1987 he received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in Development Philosophy, Policy and Planning.[5]

He has taught mainly at

U.S. universities, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but also abroad at institutions in Colombia, Finland, Spain, and England. He retired[when?] as professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he taught courses in development theory and social change, often co-teaching with long-time mentee Dr. Michal Osterweil of UNC's Department of Global Studies. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Design Research Journal Designabilities.[6]

Scholarship

Anthropological approach

Escobar's approach to anthropology is largely informed by the

Latin American development and politics. Escobar's research uses critical techniques in his provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general. He also explores possibilities for alternative visions for a postdevelopment
era.

Criticism of development

Escobar contends in his 1995 book, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, that

post-structuralist
approaches, which offered much more than an analysis of mainstream development economics or the sprawling array of development actors and institutions it spawned, giving rise to a coordinated and coherent set of interventions that Escobar calls the "development apparatus".

Escobar theorizes that the development era was produced by a discursive construction contained in

American hegemony
.

Escobar encourages scholars to use

ethnographic methods to further the post-development era by advancing the deconstructive creations initiated by contemporary social movements (without claiming universal applicability). Indeed, the Colombia case study in Encountering Development demonstrates that development economists' "economization of food" resulted in ambitious plans but not necessarily less hunger. A new 2011 edition of the book begins with a substantial new introduction, in which he argues that "postdevelopment" needs to be redefined and that a field of "pluriversal studies" would be helpful.[8] He further explored the concept of a plurivrse in his 2018 book Designs for the Pluriverse
.

Political ecology

Escobar received a fellowship from the

Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia's Pacific rainforest region called the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN).[10]

Bibliography

  • 2020. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • 2016. Territorios de diferencia. Lugar, movimientos, vida, redes Popayán. Editorial Universidad del Cauca. Colombia, 2016.
  • 2016. Autonomía y diseño. La realización de lo comunal Popayán. Editorial Universidad del Cauca. Colombia, 2016.
  • 2014. Feel-thinking with the Earth (in Spanish: Sentipensar con la tierra). Medellin, Colombia: Ediciones Unaula, 2014.
  • 2012. La invención del desarrollo Popayán. Editorial Universidad del Cauca. Colombia, 2012.
  • co-edited with Walter Mignolo. 2010. Globalization and the Decolonial Option London: Routledge.
  • 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Co-edited with Gustavo Lins Ribeiro. 2006. World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations in Contexts of Power. Oxford: Berg.
  • Escobar, A. and Harcourt, W. (eds) 2005 Women and the Politics of Place. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
  • Co-edited with Jai Sen, Anita Anand, and Peter Waterman. 2004.
    The World Social Forum
    : Challenging Empires    . Delhi: Viveka. German edition: Eine andere Welt Das Weltsozialfoum. Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2004.
  • Co-edited with Sonia Alvarez and Evelina Dagnino 2000. Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Revisioning Latin American Social Movements. Boulder: Westview Press. (Also published in Portuguese and Spanish). Portuguese edition: Cultura e Política nos Movimentos Sociais Latino-Americanos. Belo Horizonte: Editoria UFMG, 2000.
  • 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Best Book Award, New England Council of Latin American Studies, 1996. (In Spanish)1998. La invención del tercer mundo: Construcción y Deconstrucción del Desarrollo. Bogotá [Colombia]: Norma.
  • Co-edited with Sonia Alvarez. 1992. The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy. Boulder: Westview Press.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Escobar, Arturo. "Resume: Arturo Escobar". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
  2. S2CID 210507161
    , retrieved 2022-09-21
  3. ^ a b c Simon Reid-Henry (5 November 2012). "Arturo Escobar: a post-development thinker to be reckoned with". The Guardian.
  4. ^ Reid-Henry, Simon (5 November 2012). "Arturo Escobar: a post-development thinker to be reckoned with". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  5. ^ a b "People: Arturo Escobar". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Anthropology. 11 November 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
  6. ^ "DESIGNABILITIES Design Research Journal". DESIGNABILITIES Design Research Journal. 2023. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  7. ^ a b "UMass Amherst Anthropology Professor Arturo Escobar Wins Guggenheim Fellowship". University of Massachusetts Amherst News & Media Relations. 23 April 1997.
  8. ISBN 9780691150451
    . Retrieved 24 September 2014.
  9. ISBN 978-0822343271
    .
  10. S2CID 144641620
    .

External links
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