Resistance, territory, and the dilemmas of contemporary democracy

Abstract

This Presentation introduces volume 50, number 265 of the journal Cadernos do CEAS, focusing its core analysis on the binomial "Resistance - Institutionalization" in the face of democratic regressions and contemporary asymmetries. Gathering ten articles from spontaneous demand across Political Science, Education, Law, and Health, this issue maps the latent tensions between sustainable life projects and dominant power structures. The critical framework is structured around three integrated thematic lines: Epistemologies of the South and Territorial Struggles, which examines quilombola and indigenous original rights and the agroecological transition as cultural resistance; Public Management, Social Movements, and the "Style of Activism", centered on the self-management practices of collectives and the precarious impacts of corporate logic on public health ; and Liberal Democracy and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism, which investigates global and local threats stemming from disinformation, moral panics, and political resentment mobilized by the far-right. Ultimately, the volume highlights a landscape of social and discursive disputes, pointing to pathways anchored in the intersectionality of struggles and the validation of traditional knowledges against the exhaustion of current capitalist models.