Ana Cecilia Dinerstein

Professor, Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (BA Hons, MA, PhD, FHEA)

Chair of Political Sociology and Critical Theory

Department of Social and Policy Sciences 

I teach political sociology, classical sociological theory, and critical, decolonial, Marxist, and feminist theory. My previous work at Waarwick University focused on the processes of formation of the labour subjectivity amidst changes in the forms of accumulation of capital, crises and the political form of the state and government, with focus on Argentina and Latin America. I have written profusely on labour, subjectivity, labour utopia, the movement of the unemployed in Argentina, social movements in Latin America, hope and Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope, critical theory, open Marxism, decolonial and decolonising approaches. At the centre of my research is the quest to understand and explain how people outside institutionalised politics can affect social and political change. I have pursued this through a focus on social movements. My research focuses on how collective actors learn and organise social change despite normalised perceptions that such change is difficult or impossible. I investigate the socio-economic, political and policy implications of autonomous organising towards progressive change. My empirical site was initially  Argentina and Latin America; however, I have expanded my work to the global south and Europe. As the only female contributor to a school of thought called open Marxism, I provide new ways of grasping the emergence of collective actions. I pioneered the notion of the subjectivity of labour, radically re-reading one of the discipline's most important class paradigms to create an alternative 'open' perspective within Marxism, including Eurocentrism in social theory. My theoretical approach is empirically informed and attuned to the current development in the social movements' activity in the world.

Over the past ten years, I have produced a 'conceptual turn' in social movement research which has pushed beyond traditional approaches to studying social movements and their influence on society, politics, and policy to articulate an original methodological and theoretical framework that redefines social movements as mobilisers of 'hope'. In my monograph (2015, paperback 2017) titled The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope I integrated previously compartmentalised and poorly understood, ignored or highly abstract philosophical positions into an innovative theorisation capable of explaining academically the processes of social change led by movements and of becoming a tool to be used by social/political activists to act/create change. The 'art of organising hope' makes a distinctive contribution by articulating theory and practice. The idea of TAOH offers both a language and a set of practical tools for community organisers, social movement activists, and educators to turn situations that are experienced as hopeless into situations that can change. The idea of TAOH also re-signifies the relation between social movements and the state that authorises a broader view on social movements' action beyond opposition, demand, and advocacy towards a much more creative role in producing change. The connection between the theory and the reality of social movement activism has shaped the impact of my work on academic, artist, and activist communities. The art of organising hope (TAOH) has had a considerable impact in Europe, Latin America, India and the USA, inspiring significant events (e.g., Summer School for indigenous activists in Mexico and an Alternative Summit in Belgium).

I have consistently played the role of a public sociologist, shaping knowledge outside the academic environment, incorporating ideas from the research subjects in producing theories consistent with their self-understanding, and making my research outputs available to non-academic audiences and users. Thus, I have helped maintain a more organic relationship between the academy and the outside world, fulfilling what I believe to be the central goal of advanced research: the improvement of the common good. One of my research aims is to forge meaningful, collaborative relationships between academic and non-academic audiences, contributing to public understanding of social scientific inquiry and the common good. Central to my research strategy has been to generate connections, create networks, and weave knowledge that otherwise would belong to compartmentalised spheres.

I am creating  a new intersectoral and post-disciplinary field for research and social transformation: the global politics of hope, connecting Bloch’s materialist philosophy with social and grassroots communities and movements’ autonomous praxis. The global politics of hope (GPH) aims to recover the prefigurative role of social inquiry. One of the premises of the GPH is that the key to unlocking the critical global situation resides with those communities and social movements simultaneously resisting the multiple effects of the debacle and producing alternative concrete pedagogical, economic, cultural, political, and social practices.  Ernst Bloch’s process materialist philosophy of hope is central to my social research. I understand hope as a category of decolonial praxis. There is an apparent disconnect between social sciences and society and an inadequacy of the concepts and approaches used to address global capital's monumental failure to promise a credible future. The GPH focuses on understanding the changes 'societies in movement' are bringing about. This task requires a fundamental renewal of our critical tools, approaches, concepts, and theories, including a critique of Western male-dominated and Eurocentric critical theory, a critique of abstract universality, and a re-conceptualization of utopia. My work focuses on the contradictory processes of transformation led by social, labour, Indigenous, urban, and rural movements, by which they create concrete utopias. The latter are multiverse, challenging patriarchal colonial capitalist social relations and creating alternative practices.

•  Member of the facilitation team of the  Global Tapestry of Alternatives.
• Founder and convenor of Women on the Verge
• Standing Seminar in Critical theory
• Decolonizing Knowledge in Teaching, Research and Practice Research Hub/Centre.  
• My Publications include: The Labour debate (co-editor and author, 2002),  The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Social Sciences for An Other Politics: Women Theorising without Parachutes (Palgrave Macmillan, editor and author,  2016); Open Marxism 4; Against a Closing World (Pluto Press, editor and author, 2019) and World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, co-author, 2021). Her book is titled The Global Politics of Hope. The San Francisco Lectures (Kairos, PM) and A Decolonising Marxism (Pluto Press) are forthcoming in 2022.

https://www.anaceciliadinerstein.com

• Marxism and Critical Theory
• Marxist Feminism
• The politics of Latin America and Argentina
• Critique of Political Economy
• Philosophy of Hope
• postcolonial and decolonial theory
• Global South
• Political Sociology
• Sociology of Work: Class, work, labour and labour subjectivity
• Social movements - Urban, rural and indigenous movements
• Social and Solidarity Economy
• The Commons, collective action and pre-figurative politics
• Ernst Bloch
• Contemporary forms of Utopia