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This paper focuses on the demands for autonomy of the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankwamo peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with regard to control over their territories, self-determination, indigenous legal jurisdiction, management of the environment, food sovereignty, and political control through their own authorities. The main argument is that the autonomy of indigenous peoples is being influenced by the current context of local, national and international conflicts and other specific circumstances in the region in such a way as to require viewing autonomy as a complex process that transcends national and supranational legal frameworks. Indigenous autonomy is articulated within local, national and international dynamics and within processes of recognition of, and disregard for, indigenous rights - obliging us to understand it as a relational indigenous autonomy. It is relational because it is expressed in different ways depending on the interactions among different social actors and the specificities of the historical contexts.

Mayas living in the western highlands of Chiapas, Mexico are defining a new relationship with the national government. Rejecting paternalistic forms of development and military repression with which the nation in which they live have tried to eradicate their culture, Mayas are now asserting the right to autonomy within regions where they constitute a majority. I argue that the movement for autonomy based on collective norms of Mayan culture is most acute in areas that were the least incorporated in the 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution and have become important because of mineral, water, and genetic biodiversity that are attracting global investors. The strategies for practicing autonomy developed by indigenous municipalities and campesino organizations in distinct regional settings provide them with patterns for organizing themselves as distinct entities and for participating in national and global settings. Gender differences in all these settings influence the interpretation of autonomy as it is practiced in the communities that have declared themselves as autonomous. I shall compare these practices in regionally distinct settings of Chiapas in an attempt to demonstrate how this enters in to the formulation of an alternative model for pluricultural coexistence in the global ecumene.

"Sophocles' Antigone contains the first recorded instance of the word α τ ό νομος, the source for our word "autonomous". I argue that reflection upon the human aspiration toward autonomy is central to that work. I begin by focusing on the difficulty readers of the play have determining whether Antigone's actions in the play should be considered autonomous and then suggest that recognizing this difficulty is crucial to a proper understanding of the play. The very aspects of Antigone's character that seem to militate against understanding her actions within the play as autonomous-her rejection of life, her intimacy with death and the way she seems defined by her incestuous heritage- serve to illustrate the inherently problematic character of a moral ideal that we can provisionally call Antigone's autonomy. I show how the movement of the play can be understood in terms of Antigone's progress from what Kant would characterize as a heteronomous representation of her irremissible duty to bury her dead brother, to a self-conception defined by a recognition and embrace of her autonomy understood as, in Kant's words, "a respect for something entirely different from life". Antigone's autonomy is exemplified by her choice to be dead, the choice to bear the burden of responsibility to her own. This choice, I argue, must be understood as the choice of herself as defined by her obligation to her own. Sophocles' Antigone suggests that the moral ideal Antigone represents is unliveable, but that this ideal is nonetheless essential to human moral aspiration."

This paper examines a convergence between Heidegger's reconceptualization of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and some recent work in feminist philosophy on relational autonomy. Both view the concept of autonomy to be misguided, given that our capacity to be self-directed is dependent upon our ability to enter into and sustain meaningful relationships. Both attempt to overturn the notion of a subject as an isolated, atomistic individual and to show that selfhood requires, and is based upon, one's relation to and dependence upon others. The paper argues that Heidegger's notion of authentic Mitsein (being-with) rejects traditional notions of autonomy and subjectivity in favor of a relational model of selfhood. Ultimately, it provides a new point of entry into contemporary debates within feminist philosophy on Heidegger's thinking and defends Heidegger from certain feminist critiques.

"Sustainable development needs to be tackled at all governmental levels. Moreover, policies need to be integrated, horizontally and vertically. This article studies the efforts of subnational governments and their strategies towards vertical policy integration. Four cases are compared: Quebec (Canada), Flanders (Belgium), North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) and North Holland (the Netherlands). The assumption is that their approaches are determined by their degree of autonomy, which involves their competences within their own borders (self-rule) and their influence on national decision making (shared rule). The findings, however, show that degree of autonomy does not shape the subnational governments' stance towards vertical policy integration for sustainable development. Rather, it is influenced by other factors, such as political dynamics. The analysis also puts forward that the degree of self-rule of subnational governments has a large influence on the content of sustainable development policies, not only at the subnational, but also at the national level."

"This article reviews the development of universal women's human rights since 1970. It begins by discussing how the international feminist movement influenced the development of women's legal human rights, and continues by reviewing three debates in the literature on women's rights. The first debate is whether human rights as originally formulated were actually men's rights; the second debate is about the relationship between culture and women's rights; and the third considers the effects of globalization on women's rights. The author defends a liberal approach to human rights via the principles of equality and autonomy for women, but also argues that the socialist approach is very important for women to achieve their economic human rights. Autonomy, moreover, is the means by which women can negotiate their own way between "Western" style personal liberation, and participation as they see fit in their own religions and cultures."

"For most indigenous communities, communal lands and natural resources have fundamental spiritual, social, cultural, economic and political significance that is integrally linked to both their identity and continued survival. Denial of the inherent and inalienable rights to their traditional land and natural resources is often at the root of human rights violations, giving rise to intra-state tensions and laying the foundation for emerging and ongoing conflicts. Full enjoyment of their land rights, including access to and control over the lands and their natural resources, would imbue indigenous peoples with the economic independence they need to preserve their distinct cultures and determine their futures. Immediate resolution of this issue is critical to ensuring that indigenous peoples are able to enjoy the rights to which they are entitled, and to enhance stability at the national level. It is suggested that one possible means is through the strategic reconceptualisation of self-determination. More specifically, the implementation of alternative manifestations of this right, particularly the effective realisation of the emerging right to autonomy, recognised in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would enable indigenous peoples to have effective, de facto control over all aspects of their political, social, cultural and economic survival."

Abstract The political theorist Michael Walzer has usually been taken as an opponent of global distributive justice, on the basis that it is incompatible with collective autonomy, would endanger cultural diversity, or simply on the basis that principles of global distributive justice cannot be coherently envisaged, given cross-cultural disagreement about the nature and value of the social goods that might be distributed. However in his recent work, Walzer demonstrates a surprising degree of sympathy for the claims of global distributive justice, even of the egalitarian variety. But the precise contours of his current position on global equality are not yet clearly developed. The paper, therefore, attempts to reconstruct what that position might be, paying particular attention to the conclusions we could draw firstly for our understanding of the opposition between global equality and national self-determination (which is more complex than has sometimes been thought), and secondly for the relationship between global equality and shared understandings.

"This article presents a blueprint of a feminist agenda for the twenty-first century that is oriented not by the telos of gender parity, but instead evolves as an 'immanent critique' of the key structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism - within a framework of analysis derived from the tenets of Critical Theory of Frankfurt School origin. This activates a form of critique whose double focus on (1) shared conceptions of justice; and (2) structural sources of injustice, allows criteria of social justice to emerge from the identification of a broad pattern of societal injustice surpassing the discrimination of particular groups. In this light, women's victimization is but a symptom of structural dynamics negatively affecting also the alleged winners in the classical feminist agenda of critique. The analysis ultimately produces a model of social justice in a formula of socially embedded autonomy that unites work, care, and leisure."

"This article explores why governments commit to human rights enforcement by joining the International Criminal Court (ICC). Compared with other international institutions, the ICC has substantial authority and autonomy. Since governments traditionally guard their sovereignty carefully, it is puzzling that the ICC was not only established, but established so rapidly. Looking beyond traditional explanations for joining international institutions, this study identifies a new causal factor: a country's dependence network, which consists of the set of other states that control resources the country values. This study captures different dimensions of what states value through trade relations, security alliances, and shared memberships in international organizations. Using event history analysis on monthly data from 1998 to 2004, we find that dependence networks strongly affect whether and when a state signs and ratifies the ICC. Some types of ratification costs also influence state commitment, but many conventional explanations of state commitment receive little empirical support."

This article aims to analyse the strategic choices made by left-wing telenovela writers during the military regime in Brazil, their complex relationships with their employer, Globo Network, and the regime's various forms of censorship. The arrival of many critical cultural producers in the television industry during the authoritarian period in Brazil (1964-85) and the alleged close links between Globo Network and the military regime stirred an intense debate among the Brazilian intelligentsia. The participation of these cultural producers in the small-screen arena during the authoritarian period has been almost invariably considered by their detractors in terms of cooption/domination, or as a form of resistance by their defenders. The recent opening of the Censor Division Archives and the deluge of biographies, autobiographies and testimonials of key television figures during the authoritarian regime, have opened up new perspectives for examining Brazilian television history. Instead of the seemingly almost perfect harmony between the military regime and the television industry, as represented by Brazilian communication giant Globo Network, the present analysis focuses on some of the tensions, subtle struggles and spaces of relative autonomy within the telenovela field during the period of authoritarian rule in Brazil.

"In their studies of online media, political economists of communication have examined how firms like Google enclose users in a web of commercial surveillance, thus facilitating the commodification of their online labor. However, this focus on enclosure tends to overlook the political possibilities highlighted by autonomist Marxist theory-namely, that users, under certain circumstances, can appropriate these applications to contest conditions of exploitation. This article offers an analysis of Blog Cabin 2008, a cable home improvement show, in order to explore this tension between autonomy and enclosure. Our findings suggest that producers indeed used the show's blog to exploit fans' free labor. However, fans also used the blog to form social bonds, to press demands on the show's producers, and to make connections between the show's class politics and the wider financial crisis. A concluding section explores the theoretical and political significance of such unanticipated uses of the show's blog."

this change at the top level arose from years of steady electoral growth (notably, in Brazil and Uruguay), while in other countries it was the fruit of social movements capable of overthrowing neoliberal parties and governments (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuel

What explains the appeal of sub-state nationalism in developed liberal democracies such as Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom and Canada? This article suggests six main reasons: the power of the notion of self-determination; the institutionalization of national identity and nationalist politics in decentralized arrangements featuring autonomous government; the presence of powerful nationalist narratives; institutional and constitutional questions that are either unresolved or have been addressed by a shaky compromise, which means they remain on the political agenda; the involvement of nationalist movements in debates of public policy; and processes of continental integration that help nationalist movements make the case for increased autonomy and, in certain circumstances, independence.

"The paper reflects on the tension that the process of sensing a nation brings to the formation of a post-colony in Southeast Asia. The "aesthetic" in this context creates forms of sensibility of the "national," rendering it present in the world and endowing it with certain identity-effects. On the other hand, it also posits an exceptional singularity, at once discriminating against subjectivities that resist to be contained within the national project and achieving the distinction of autonomy. This process foregrounds moments of finitude, improvisation, and intimacy, aspects of the aesthetic that are central to the crafting of the national and its art."

The paper considers the virtualization of sovereignty today in the context of the Arctic debates. These are debates in which various parties, including the Government of Canada, First Nations groups, Inuit, international organizations, scholars, policy-makers and others, use the term sovereignty in diverse and at times divisive ways. We investigate several of the epistemological and ontological stakes of these discussions. We draw attention to the ways in which sovereignty as an abstract concept is actualized in the course of social and political disputes in the North in the twenty-first century.

Can Kantian cosmopolitanism contribute to normative approaches to immigration? Kant developed the universal right to hospitality in the context of late eighteenth-century colonialism. He claimed that non-European countries had a sovereign right over their territory and the conditions of foreigners' visits. This sovereign prerogative that limited visitors' right to hospitality. The interconnected and complementary system of right he devised is influential today, but this article argues that maintaining the complementarity of the three realms involves reconsidering its application to contemporary immigration. It situates Kant's Perpetual Peace within the context of debates about conquest and colonialism and argues that Kant's strict conception of sovereignty is justified by his concern in maintaining a realm of sovereignty that is complementary with cosmopolitanism and his prioritization of mutual agreements in each of the realms, particularly in a context of international power asymmetry. In Kant's time, European powers appropriated cosmopolitan discourses to defend their right to visit other countries and it was necessary to strengthen non-Europeans' sovereign claims. The strength and hostility of the visitors made limited hospitality and strong sovereignty act in tandem to keep away conquerors, expanding cosmopolitanism. Today, individuals from poor countries migrate to wealthier ones where they are subject to a sovereign authority that excludes them. Sovereignty and cosmopolitanism no longer work complementarily, but rather strengthen powerful state actors vis-à-vis non-citizens subject to unilateral rule. Maintaining the pre-eminence of the right to freedom, the article suggests that only through the creation of 'cosmopolitan spaces' of politics can we reproduce today the complementarity that Kant envisioned.