Globalization and the semi-peripheral condition.

Publication: Portuguese Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association

A Sociedade Portuguesa Perante o Desafio da Globalizacao or 'Portuguese Society Facing the Challenge of Globalization' is the title of a collection of eight volumes, edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, that constitutes the most up-to-date and sophisticated vision of Portuguese society produced in a long while. (1) The eight volumes are: 1. Globalizacao: Fatalidade ou Utopia?; 2. A economia em curso: Contextos e mobilidades; 3. Risco social e incerteza: Pode o estado social recuar mais?; 4. A teia global: Movimentos sociais e instituicoes; 5. Enteados de Galileu: A semi-periferia no sistema mundial da ciencia; 6. Transnacionalizacao da educacao: Da crise da educacao a educacao da crise; 7. Projecto e circunstancia: Culturas urbanas em Portugal; and 8. Entre Ser e Estar: Raizes, percursos e discursos da identidade.

The reader will see in each of these books the sophistication of a collective project, which is a departure from the critical perspectives on Portugal, and the recent process of globalization. The reader will also see that the aim of the work is to offer an analysis of Portuguese society unparalleled in sophistication in order to allow it critically to process its inclusion in a unified Europe and a globalized world. The result is a worthwhile adventure on which any reader interested in Portuguese society should embark.

It is not possible to do justice to all the research covered in the collection, because of the scope, the richness and the sophistication of the various contributions. I will therefore focus on only a few volumes, beginning with Portuguese identity in Volume 8, social movements and the state in Volumes 3 and 4, and concluding with globalization in Volume 1.

PORTUGUESE IDENTITY AND GLOBALIZATION: THE SEMI-PERIPHERAL CONDITION

North of the south and south of the north, an empire with a colonial economy, a country that was both the source of migrations and the destiny of immigrations, Portugal and Portuguese identity have always been very difficult to define. Being the origin of an empire whose evaluation is still polemic, the Portuguese have been seen in very different ways by their European contemporaries and their colonial subjects. Boaventura de Sousa Santos points to this tension in his introduction to Volume 8, to the contrast between Prospero and Caliban,...

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