The studies included in this issue have their origin in an international research project, 'Reinventing Social Emancipation', whose aim was to identify and study in detail experiences taking shape through resistance to hegemonic, neoliberal globalization and to its consequences in different areas of social life. The path taken by the project was to look at popular movements and citizen initiatives in a range of semiperipheral countries, that is, countries occupying an intermediate position within the world system in terms of levels of development as measured by conventional standards such as those used by the UN, and located in different regions of the world. The five selected countries were Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, India and Portugal. A peripheral country, Mozambique, was added as a 'control' case. The research team gathered more than 60 researchers in the six countries. Rather than following the conventional path of defining a common theoretical and methodological framework, the project was organized around a thematic core which captured a range of issues defining crucial areas of contestation and resistance to hegemonic globalization and of experimentation with alternative, solidaristic and democratic forms of action. The five thematic areas were the following:

Democracy and Participation (…)

Non-capitalist Production and Economic Organization (…)

Redistribution, Recognition, Justice and Multicultural Citizenship (…)

Biodiversity, Rival Farms of Knowledge and Cognitive Justice (…)

New Farms of Labour internationalism (…)

Each of the case studies is located at the intersection of several of the five themes enumerated above. They are exemplary in the way they bring to the fore the complex dynamics of struggles against different forms of oppression and the specific modes in which a variety of collective actors converge or cooperate, revealing their ambiguities and hesitations. They focus on the way processes at different scales - local, national, European, global - are articulated. Although they deal for the most part with grassroots initiatives and movements, they are attentive to the multiple ways in which their protagonists resort both to forms of contentious politics and radical democracy and to the means and channels provided by the institutions of representative democracy. Whereas citizen initiatives are highlighted, attention is given as well to the different ways in which their success is contingent on the responses of national and transnational political actors and institutions. The new collectives emerging from these processes are thus more than just an aggregation of previously existing actors and of their interests. They define new configurations of interests and identifications which may be more or less durable, depending on how the specific struggles they are engaged in develop, how heterogeneous interests and aims are translated into common purpose and action and on the responses of the state and of other actors to their claims and to their initiatives. (From the Introduction)