Towards a sociology of absences and a sociology of emergence

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

10 February 2003

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

This paper makes a critique of the model
of western rationality the model of an
indolent reason and proposes the prolegomena
of another model, that of cosmopolitan
reason. The author seeks to base
three sociological procedures on this cosmopolitan
reason: the sociology of absences, the
sociology of emergence, and the work of
translation.