World Social Forum: Challenging Empires

This comprehensive volume provides a glimpse into the wide-ranging discussions, debates and arguments which have gone into making the World Social Forum (WSF) one of the more prominent platforms of alternative ideas and practices in the present world. Building on the First Edition (published in India by the Viveka Foundation, New Delhi in 2004), this Second Edition has been revised and updated to include coverage of those Social Forums that took place as recent as the summer of 2007.

Contributors include: Jai Sen, Peter Waterman, Walden Bello, Michael Löwy, Johanna Brenner, Andrej Grubacic, Jeremy Brecher, Chico Whitaker, Teivo Teivanen, Nawal El Saadawi, Linden Farrer, Michal Osterweil, Sonia E. Alvarez, Nalu Faria, Miriam Nobre, Gina Vargas, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, P.J. James, Emma Dowling, Achin Vanaik, Dorval Brunelle, Jean Nanga, Sally Burch, Irene Leon, Judy Rebick, Rebecca Shah, Michael Leon Guerrero, Tammy Bang Luu, Cindy Wiesner, Pierre Beaudet, Michael Albert and David Graeber.

If you want to know how the World Social Forum was formed and what the opinion of some of the main actors in it is on issues such as globalization, transnational feminism, justice and peace among others, this is the book to read. - VirtualActivism.org

A useful array of writings on the entire WSF process--the global context in which it emerged, the manner in which different movements and ideologies have interacted and shaped this process and the manner in which it has itself grown in the past years. - Aniket Alam, The Hindu

An excellent effort at combining both information and critical reflection on the World Social Forum phenomenon. - Massimo De Angelis

World Social Forum: Challenging Empires is a stupendous collection of essays, documents and statements, a critical self-consideration of the WSF process by a variety of people. - Milan Rai, The New Standard

A stellar collection of essays. Indispensable reading. - Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel Center