Vernacular Worldmaking and the Pluriverse: Stories, Practices, and Identities Between Latin America and the Globe

The tension of how to relate the universal and the particular is an important topic in the humanities and social sciences. Scholars deploying a decolonial critique of the universal and the defense of particularisms have collided with others who defend the social and political significance of universal standards. Similar opposition can also be seen in engagements with the concept of worldmaking itself. The 13 chapters of this volume provide valuable insights into how these ideas or practices are reinterpreted and reconfigured in local contexts to make them acceptable and applicable: by relating them to what is known, familiar, or vernacular in a linguistic and cultural sense. By examining evolving everyday stories, practices, and languages, the chapters demonstrate how they help people to comprehend the structures that are producing intersectional inequalities or leading to the destruction of environments and Indigenous ways of life. From there, people may go on to question the logics of these cultural manifestations and contribute to the production of alternative imaginaries of potential future ways of being in the world.