Arturo Escobar (anthropologist)

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Arturo Escobar (born November 20, 1951) is a Colombian-American anthropologist and professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. His academic research interests include political ecology, anthropology of development, social movements, anti-globalization movements, political ontology,^[2] and postdevelopment theory.^[3]

Escobar is a major figure in the post-development academic discourse and has been described as a "post-development thinker to be reckoned with".^[4] He has authored influential books criticizing development practices championed by western industrialized societies and exploring possibilities for alternative visions of development, including Encountering Development (1995) and Designs for the Pluriverse (2018).