David Lehmann is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge where he was Director of the Centre for Latin American Studies (1990-2000, 2010-2011). He began his career as a Latin Americanist in Chile with agrarian reform and peasant movements, and in Ecuador with peasant economies; since 1986, he has devoted himself to the sciences of religion, multiculturalism and interculturalism, leading lately to After the Decolonial: Ethnicity, Gender and Social Justice in Latin America (2022), whose argument is summarized in this article. He is the author of Democracy and Development in Latin America: Economics, Politics and Religion in the Post-War Period (1990); Struggle for the Spirit: Religious Transformation and Popular Culture in Brazil and Latin America (1996); (with Batia Siebzehner) Remaking Israeli Judaism (2006); The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Latin America (2016) y The Prism of Race: The Politics and Ideology of Affirmative Action in Brazil (2018).

Coloquios interdisciplinarios

Beyond Decoloniality: Discussion of Some Key Concepts

  • David Lehmann

This essay’s objective is to review some key concepts for initiating a discussion between theoretical approaches of decoloniality and universalism. To do this, the author takes up some empirical cases to exemplify and sustain his thesis based on the idea that indigenous and Afrodescendant movements are as important as democratizing movements are inside and outside their fields of action.