Barry K. Gills

This chapter outlines the shared purpose of the edited collection, The Prospects of a Pluriversal Transition to explore the dynamisms and dilemmas of fostering systemic and synergic transformations through the lens of pluriversal politics. It situates the collection within the context of escalating intertwined crises and introduces the central dilemma addressed by its contributions: the tension between preserving the richness of diversity on the one hand and working across differences and overcoming divisions necessary for transformative action on the other. The paper introduces the concept of ‘compartmentalization’ as a framework for examining the onto-epistemological and praxiological underpinnings of this grand dilemma. It provides an overview of the contributions, highlighting how they address the challenges of navigating fragmentation and interconnectedness while proposing relational, ethical, and governance strategies. The paper frames the collection’s contributions within a shared critical agenda, providing a foundation for pluriversal pathways to systemic change and future activist–scholar dialogue.

This book critically engages with a central dilemma facing counter-hegemonic movements as global crises intensify: how to foster systemic change while maintaining the plurality of their struggles. The Prospects of a Pluriversal Transition to a Post-Capitalist, Post-Carbon Future explores the tensions between fragmentation and convergence, autonomy and solidarity, and the risks of compartmentalization in pluriversal politics. Through rigorous analysis and compelling case studies, it interrogates the possibilities and limitations of building transformative synergies across decolonial, post-developmentalist, post-ecomodernist, and post-capitalist struggles. The volume examines movements resisting extractivism, food sovereignty initiatives, feminist and care-based ethics, commons-based governance, and radical pluriversalist networks that challenge dominant power structures. By blending theoretical inquiry with grounded research, this collection offers a vital resource for those reimagining and realizing alternative futures beyond capitalism, carbon modernity, and coloniality. It invites readers to critically reflect on the complexities of systemic transformation, highlighting pathways for co-creating relational, diverse, and interconnected forms of resistance and transformation. This book will be relevant to academic researchers and scholars in political ecology, critical theory, decolonial studies, environmental humanities, and social movement studies; graduate students in sociology, political science, geography, anthropology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies, and policy practitioners working on sustainable development alternatives and participatory governance. The chapters in this book were originally published in Globalizations.

Research on extractivism has rapidly proliferated, expanding into new empirical and conceptual spaces. We examine the origins, evolution, and conceptual expansion of the concept. Extractivism is useful to analyze resource extraction practices around the world. ‘Global Extractivism’ is a new conceptual tool for assessing global phenomena. We situate extractivism within an ensemble of concepts, and explore its relation to development, the state, and value. Extractivism as an organizing concept addresses many fields of research. Extractivism forms a complex of self-reinforcing practices, mentalities, and power differentials underwriting and rationalizing socio-ecologically destructive modes of organizing life-through subjugation, depletion, and non-reciprocity.

This article addresses contradictions in the 'pluriverse' of radical alternatives to maldevelopment, and proposes an integrative framework for fostering productive convergences among its forces. It argues that the 2020s and 2030s will be pivotal decades, in which the current global conjuncture, characterized by intensifying economic turmoil, climate change, and ecological crises, will translate into increased mass discontent, global polarization, political instabilities, and social unrest across the world. However, there is no reason to believe that this intensification of crises will automatically result in the end of unproductive divisions among the global left. Thus, we argue that a higher level of proactivism, at a meta-ideological standing, which we refer to here as the ‘Commonist Project’, is both necessary and possible. The article proposes a fourfold framework of how to promote sustainable convergences and solidarities, going beyond temporary pragmatic coalitions and alliances. This proposal draws on the idea of ‘commoning transformative knowledge’, realized through creating new transversal integrative assemblages of alternative-futures-making initiatives. In the end, the argument is empirically supported by drawing on the authors’ critical reflections on their own cross-organizational experiences of fostering dialogic and praxis-based methodologies across various groups and forces pursuing post-capitalist alternatives through the People’s Sovereignty Network.

In this editorial postscript, we return to a primary theme of this special issue on Economics and Climate Emergency. We elaborate on some aspects of, and reasons why we need, urgent and radical transformative change. We briefly update the trends affecting climate change and ecological breakdown, assess the need for an end to the ‘war on nature’, which resists a dichotomy between our species and nature and make some comments on the COP process and ways forward which resist ‘trasformismo’, while embracing the need for just transitions, degrowth and practices rooted in such concepts as ‘transversalism’.

The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies provides diverse and cutting-edge perspectives on this fast-changing field. For 30 years the world has been caught in a long ‘global interregnum,’ plunging from one crisis to the next and witnessing the emergence of new, vibrant, multiple, and sometimes contradictory forms of popular resistance and politics. This global ‘interregnum’ – or a period of uncertainty where the old hegemony is fading and the new ones have not yet been fully realized – necessitates critical self-reflection, brave intellectual speculation and (un)learning of perceived wisdoms, and greater transdisciplinary collaboration across theories, localities, and subjects. This Handbook takes up this challenge by developing fresh perspectives on globalization, development, neoliberalism, capitalism, and their progressive alternatives, addressing issues of democracy, power, inequality, insecurity, precarity, wellbeing, education, displacement, social movements, violence and war, and climate change. Throughout, it emphasizes the dynamics for system change, including bringing post-capitalist, feminist, (de)colonial, and other critical perspectives to support transformative global praxis. This volume brings together a mixture of fresh and established scholars from across disciplines and from a range of both Northern and Southern contexts. Researchers and students from around the world and across the fields of politics, sociology, international development, international relations, geography, economics, area studies, and philosophy will find this an invaluable and fresh guide to global studies in the 21st century.

(2020). Deep Restoration: from The Great Implosion to The Great Awakening. Globalizations. Ahead of Print.