COIMBRA, Portugal - s4story -- Boaventura de Sousa Santos was born in Coimbra and comes from a working class family. He has forged a highly diverse career that extends from his early years of academic struggle in law school to his prominent role in the creation and development of the World Social Forum. His figure stands out as that of a pioneer and tireless activist, who has left a profound mark on the understanding of society and the relentless pursuit of social justice.

From his early days, Boaventura de Sousa Santos embarked on an academic journey that led him to defy the restrictions imposed by the Portuguese dictatorship. His experience at Yale University in the 1970s during the height of the civil rights movement in the United States and his subsequent immersion in the life of a favela in Rio de Janeiro gave him a first-hand view of social inequalities and conflicts.

His return to Portugal on the eve of the April 25 Revolution and his active participation in the founding of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra signaled the beginning of a new phase. As director of the faculty, Boaventura dedicated himself to studying Portuguese society and, together with a group of researchers, created the Center for Social Studies in 1978, of which he was director until 2018.

In the same vein, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/santos-boaventura-de-sousa/) explains in this interview the most significant milestones of his life and career, his transformative experiences and his vision of a more just world.

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Boaventura de Sousa Santos, were you always interested in working in the world of sociology? What inspired you?

I have always been concerned with the social and political problems of my time. Someone who comes from the working class, especially in the 1950s, lives intensely with social inequalities. I entered law school because during the dictatorship sociology studies were not allowed, and law was always a window to the social. Later I came to the conclusion that positivism and legal dogmatics weighed so heavily on the faculty that social problems were never addressed.

I went to West Berlin to study philosophy of law and the stay was my first big opening to contemporary issues. The city was divided by the Wall and I often crossed it to visit my girlfriend. They were two parallel worlds and that made me reflect a lot. I returned to Portugal but decided to study sociology preferably in combination with the law studies I had done. Then I went to Yale University to do a PhD in sociology of law (1969-1973).

We have noted that you have distinguished yourself as a sociologist, can you tell us a little more about your professional trajectory?

My work became better known after 2001 with my participation in the World Social Forum. It was an encounter of reciprocal interconnection with other social struggles, other narratives of liberation and emancipation. I became as involved as possible and speaking several languages facilitated the dissemination of my thinking. I also gave lectures in almost all regions of the world and my books were published in many languages, even though they were not easy to disseminate.

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Boaventura de Sousa Santos, could you briefly describe your most important contributions to sociology and other related disciplines?

I am part of a vast tradition of critical thinking and, therefore, of critical sociology that for a long time had Marxism as its main theoretical source. After the WSF of 2001, my thinking was enriched by other theoretical perspectives without ever losing the Marxist matrix. However, Marxism became one of the components, together with anti-colonial thought and feminist thought in its immense diversity. Moreover, I realized that science is a valid knowledge, but it is not the only valid knowledge. From this emerged the epistemologies of the South.

What are the main research topics you have worked on throughout your career?

Epistemology, sociology of law, political sociology, postcolonial theory, globalization, social movements, multicultural democracy and human rights, with sociological research conducted in Portugal, Cape Verde, Macao, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and India.

What do you consider to have been your biggest academic challenge so far and how have you overcome it?

The biggest challenge was to be able to transmit my knowledge to non-academic audiences and especially to social movement activists. How to talk about southern epistemologies without using the term, certainly far from their usual vocabulary. I overcame many hours of conversation about the content of ideas that are sometimes much simpler than the designations given to them by academia.

What advice would you give to students interested in pursuing a career in sociology?

Not to uncritically follow any one theory (for example: the southern epistemologies). Valuing science but knowing that there is other knowledge that answers questions that science cannot answer. Knowing that the understanding of the world is much broader than the Western understanding of the world.