Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the possibilities and limitations, or put differently, the opportunities and challenges of creating a just social order in a neoliberal capitalist world that is inherently inequitable and wreaks 'eliminable forms of human suffering' on the subaltern classes. It focuses on the subaltern classes in peripheral capitalist regions, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America in particular, as potential agents of resistance against neoliberal capitalism. The book provides analytical priority to the socio-historical context of uneven and combined capitalist development and the way in which it powerfully shapes the experience of the subalterns with capitalism in peripheral capitalist regions. It explores the sweeping claim that the subalterns across the world are resisting neoliberal capitalism across the world. Relative to Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America has been remarkable for its subalterns' acts of resistance to neoliberalism.