Date: Monday, August 31, 2009, 6:30 - 8:00pm Venue: Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th Street, NW (14 and V Streets), Washington DC 20009

Details: Please join TransAfrica Forum and NASGACC* at Busboys and Poets for a book discussion with Arturo Escobar, author of Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Duke University Press, 2008).

Publisher’s description: “In Territories of Difference, Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book Encountering Development, analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. His analysis is based on his many years of engagement with a group of Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia’s Pacific rainforest region, the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN). Escobar offers a detailed ethnographic account of PCN’s visions, strategies, and practices, and he chronicles and analyzes the movement’s struggles for autonomy, territory, justice, and cultural recognition. Yet he also does much more. Consistently emphasizing the value of local activist knowledge for both understanding and social action and drawing on multiple strands of critical scholarship, Escobar proposes new ways for scholars and activists to examine and apprehend the momentous, complex processes engulfing regions such as the Colombian Pacific today.

“Arturo Escobar is the Kenan Distinguished Teaching Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, winner of the Best Book Award from the New England Council of Latin American Studies, and Más Allá del Tercer Mundo: Globalización y Diferencia.” Territories of Difference will be available for purchase at Busboys and Poets bookstore operated by Teaching for Change (contact 202.387.POET). For more information: call 202.223.1960 ext. 137 or email info@transafricaforum.org.

*The Network for Advocacy in Solidarity with Grassroots Afro-Colombian Communities (NASGACC) is a national network of human rights activists, scholars and non-governmental organizations dedicated to promoting international policies and programs toward Colombia that support and strengthen the territorial and human rights of Afro-Colombian communities. 

For more information: call 202.223.1960 ext. 137 or email info@transafricaforum.org. 

Summary of Event