Table of Contents

Introduction - Breno Bringel & José Mauricio Domingues
PART I: RETHINKING MODERNITY THROUGH SOCIAL CONTESTATION
Chapter 1: Modernity and Critique - Elements of a World-Sociology - Peter Wagner
Chapter 2: The Global Transition and the Challenge to Social Sciences - Sujata Patel
Chapter 3: Modernity and the Violence of Global Accumulation - The Ethnic Question in China - Chun Lin
Chapter 4: Demystifying Modernity - In Defence of a Singular and Normative Ideal - G. Aloysius
Chapter 5: Vicissitudes and Potentialities of Critical Theory - José Mauricio Domingues
PART II: RETHINKING SOCIAL CONTESTATION THROUGH MODERNITY
Chapter 6: The Global Age - A Social Movement Perspective - Geoffrey Pleyers
Chapter 7: Social Movements and Contemporary Modernity - Internationalism and Patterns of Global Contestation - Breno Bringel
Chapter 8: Global Modernity, Social Criticism and the Local Intelligibility of Contestation in Mozambique - Elisio Macamo
Chapter 9: Globalised Modernity, Contestations and Revolutions - The Cases of Egypt and Tunisia - Sarah ben Néfissa
Chapter 10: Modernity, Cultural Diversity and Social Contestation - Luis Tapia
PART III: BORDERS OF MODERNITY AND FRONTIERS OF EXCLUSION - RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP AND CONTESTATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 11: Half-Positions and Social Contestation - On the Dynamics of Exclusionary Integration - Craig Browne
Chapter 12: Abyssal Lines and Contestation in the Construction of Modern Europe - A De-colonial Perspective of the Spanish Case - Heriberto Cairo & Keina Espiñeira
Chapter 13: From International Legality to Local Struggle - How and Why Human Rights Matters to Social Movements in Argentine Democracy - Gabriela Delamata
Chapter 14: Social Contestation and Substantive Citizenship - Popular Mobilization in South Africa’s Modern State - Marcelle Dawson

About the Author

Breno Bringel holds a PhD at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain), where he has also taught. He was also previously a visiting scholar in several universities in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, France, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. He currently teaches at the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP-UERJ), Brazil. He is member of the Board of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC-47) and editor in chief of Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais. Bringel is author of several works in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English on social movements, internationalism and Latin American politics and society. His latest books are: Movimentos sociais na era global (edited with Maria da Gloria Gohn, Rio de Janeiro: Vozes, 2012) and O MST e o internacionalismo contemporâneo (Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj, 2014).

José Mauricio Domingues obtained a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was previously a visiting scholar in several universities, in Argentina, Britain, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Israel, Mexico and Spain. He currently teaches at the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP-UERJ), Brazil. Domingues is a member of the board of ISA RC16 (Sociological Theory) and ISA WG02 (Historical and Comparative Sociology). He is also author of several books on sociological theory and modernity, including: Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization: towards a Renewal of Critical Theory (New York/London: Routledge, 2012); Latin American and Contemporary Modernity: a Sociological Interpretation (New York/London: Routledge, 2008); Modernity Reconstructed (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006); Social Creativity, Collective Subjectivity and Contemporary Modernity (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press and New York: Saint Martin’s Press/Palgrave, 2000) and Sociological Theory and Collective Subjectivity (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press and New York: Saint Martin’s Press/Palgrave, 2000) .

Reviews

This is a truly global and politically challenging book, bringing together top level researchers and sharply tackling its themes. People from every corner of the planet and from all walks in the social sciences will surely profit from reading it.
*Carolina Mera*

A timely and central collection of essays, entangling the complexity of modernity´s eurocentrism and its unresolved ambiguity. Theoretically, this is a compelling book. Yet, it is illustrative of how the global South has become a crucial catalyst in rethinking the very premises of the paradox of modernity. Bringel and Domingues speak of a flexible alternative global modernity. Here, the Frankfurt School and critical theory are evoked as essential pillars to decipher the turning point of the planetary transformation instigated by the Arab revolutions, reflecting the "global conceptions of justice". From Tunis, to Cairo′s Tahrir, from Bahrain to Libya, Syria and Yemen, from Athens to Spain, then to the Occupy movement in the US, from Kiev′s Midan to Rio de Janeiro, then Hong Kong, since 2011 more than 1000 cities witnessed irreversible insurrections and protests. The chain of successive occupying specific Square movements, much inspired by the moving images of the Arab Spring, replicated similar tactics of squatting in public spaces. Who are the new social actors in specific countries of the South? How are social movements reshaped under the new bendable global age? How is contestation in specific spaces of the global South articulated? How important is the discourse of human rights for demoratisation? These themes are consistently interwoven throughout the book.
*Mona Abaza*

A new generation of truly global sociology, grappling with the contemporary world through the lenses of critique, contestation, and social movements. A significant contribution.
*Göran Therborn*