Aurea Mota is Associate Researcher at the Center for the Study of Culture, Politics, and Society (CECUPS) at the University of Barcelona. Her first book was published by the Latin Americana Research Council of Social Science (CLACSO). Peter Wagner is Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. His publications include The Trouble with Democracy (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), African, American and European Trajectories of Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Modernity as Experience and Interpretation (Polity Press, 2008), A History and Theory of the Social Sciences (Sage, 2001), Theorising Modernity (Sage, 2001) and A Sociology of Modernity (Routledge, 1994).

What is the future of collective political action when democracies have been reduced to systems for aggregating individual opinions? Mota and Wagner answer this critical question of our age with a rich comparative analytics of globalisation. This is a timely and important book which makes a compelling argument for the retrieval of consent grounded in institutions which are sensitive to the specificity of conflict.

• ForewordCollective Action and Political Transformation: An Introduction1. Politics and Modernity under Contemporary ConditionsPart I: Trajectories of Modernity: How We Arrived At Where We Are2. Historical Interpretations of Modernity and Their Trajectories3. An Asymmetrically Consolidated Modernity4. Transformations of Modernity through Critique and ContestationPart II: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity5. Democracy and Capitalism6. Inclusion and Exclusion7. Political Equality and Social InequalityPart III: Enlarging the Scope of Political Action8. The Amazon, the Rhino and the Blue Sky over the Ruhr9. Violence, Autonomy and Everyday Life in DemocraciesPart IV: Rethinking the Possibilities of Political Agency10. Democracy in Transformation11. Entangled Histories, Possible Futures – South and NorthNotesReferences