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2 Globalization and Contestation

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3111 Globalization is undoubtedly the great overarching paradigm of our era.
4 However, there is still little agreement on what globalization actually ‘is’
5 and some do not accept that it ‘is’ anything at all.
6 This new book addresses the contestation of globalization by the anti-
7 globalization movement. To contest is to challenge, to call into question,
8 to doubt, to oppose and to litigate; this study shows how globalization is
9 ‘contestable’ in many different ways and how the counter-movements we
20111 have seen emerging over the last decade also ‘bear witness’ on behalf of an
1 alternative human future. Ronaldo Munck presents an overarching frame-
2 work that allows us to understand how globalization and its contestation
3 are inextricably bound up with one another. This volume insightfully
4 explores a number of case studies, including the Battle of Seattle in 1999;
5 the World Social Forum; peasant internationalism and environmental move-
6 ments and reactionary movements including the US Patriot movement,
7 Islamic fundamentalist movements and other nationalist movements.
8 This text will be of great interest to all students and scholars of inter-
9 national relations, politics and of globalization and global governance in
30111 particular.
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2 Ronaldo Munck is Theme Leader for Internationalisation, Interculturalism
3 and Social Development (IISD) at Dublin City University, Ireland.
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Rethinking globalizations
Edited by Barry Gills
University of Newcastle, UK

This series is designed to break new ground in the literature on globaliza-

tion and its academic and popular understanding. Rather than perpetuating
or simply reacting to the economic understanding of globalization, this series
seeks to capture the term and broaden its meaning to encompass a wide
range of issues and disciplines and convey a sense of alternative possibilities
for the future.

1 Whither Globalization?
The vortex of knowledge and globalization
James H. Mittelman

2 Globalization and Global History

Edited by Barry K. Gills and William R. Thompson

3 Rethinking Civilization
Communication and terror in the global village
Majid Tehranian

4 Globalization and Contestation

The new great counter-movement
Ronaldo Munck

5 Global Activism
Ruth Reitan
1111
2 Globalization and
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Contestation
6 The new great
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8 counter-movement
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First published 2007 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Ronaldo Munck
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Munck, Ronaldo.
Globalization and contestation: the new great counter-movement/
Ronaldo Munck.
p. cm. – (Rethinking globalizations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Anti-globalization movement – International cooperation.
2. Globalization – Social aspects. 3. Globalization – Political
aspects. 4. Social movements – International cooperation.
5. Protest movements – International cooperation. I. Title.
JZ1318.M8586 2007
303.48v2 – dc22 2006020731

ISBN 0-203-96237-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–37655–6 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–415–37656–4 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–96237–0 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–37655–6 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–37656–3 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–96237–4 (ebk)
1111
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4 students of the Cordobazo of 1969, who taught
5 me that another world was necessary.
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1111
2 Contents
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3111 Preface ix
4
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6 1 Globalization: a new social, political and cultural
7 matrix 1
8
9 Contested paradigms 1
20111 Changing worlds 6
1 Global governance 10
2 Polanyi’s problematic 14
3
4 2 Contestation: societal reactions to the free market 20
5
6 Social movement theories 20
7 New and old social movements 25
8 The good and the bad 29
9 Polanyian perspectives 34
30111
1 3 Transnational social movements: from the First
2 International to the World Social Forum 40
3
4 European internationalists 40
35 Communist internationalists 44
6 Colonialism and contestation 48
7 Contemporary cosmopolitanism 52
8
9 4 The anti-globalization movement: from Seattle (1999)
40111 to the future 57
1
2 Coming out 57
3 Zapatistas 62
4 After the party 66
45111 Anti-capitalism? 70
viii Contents
5 Transnational political fora: actors, issues and prospects 75
Universal human rights 75
Global sisterhood 79
World Social Forum 83
Ghosts in the machine 89

6 Local transnationalisms: workers, peasants and

environmentalists 94
Workers united 94
Peasants revolt 98
Reclaiming the Earth 102
Militant particularisms 106

7 Reaction and globalization: nationalists, patriots

and Jihadists 110
Nationalism resurgent 110
Patriots against globalization 114
Islamists and Jihad 118
Beyond good and evil 122

8 The great counter-movement: empire, multitude

and social transformation 127
Empire 127
Multitude 131
History 135
Strategy 139

Bibliography 144
Index 155
1111
2 Preface
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3111 Globalization is undoubtedly the great overarching paradigm of our era.
4 Globalization casts its glow over all human processes and endeavours. Yet,
5 there is still little agreement on what globalization actually ‘is’ and some
6 do not accept that it ‘is’ anything at all. While this book addresses the
7 complexity of globalization and its contestation by the anti- or counter-
8 globalization movement, it is well to bear in mind the etymological meaning
9 of the word ‘contest’. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines ‘contes-
20111 tation’ as ‘an assertion contended for’ (from the Latin contestatio). To contest
1 thus means to challenge, to call into question, to doubt, to oppose or even
2 to litigate. But it can also be derived from the Latin word contestari (testis
3 meaning witness), to signify ‘bearing witness’. Thus, globalization is
4 ‘contestable’ in many different ways and the counter-movements we have
5 seen emerging over the last decade also ‘bear witness’ on behalf of an alter-
6 native human future.
7 What I propose is a new paradigm or framework that will allow us to
8 understand how globalization and contestation (or anti-globalization, to put
9 it crudely) are inextricably bound up with one another. Writing just when
30111 the long post-war boom was looming on the horizon, Karl Polanyi foretold
1 a great expansion of the free market but also a great social counter-movement
2 that he saw as ‘the one comprehensive feature in the history of the age’
3 (Polanyi 2001: 80). For Polanyi, capitalism was moving towards ‘an attempt
4 to set up one big self-regulating market’ (Polanyi 2001: 70), nothing less
35 than a global economy where the market ruled supreme. However, there
6 was a counter-movement from within society to protect itself from the
7 anarchy of the market. Powerful social movements and institutions would
8 emerge in a veritable ‘double movement’ to check the actions of the market
9 and reinstate human interests over those of a utopian market economy.
40111 My basic thesis is that we are not now witnessing a ‘clash of civilizations’
1 (Huntington 2002) at a global level but, rather, a clash between the free
2 market and society.
3 Chapter 1 introduces the great globalization debate, a complex social,
4 political and cultural phenomenon as much as it is about economics. While
45111 opinions are still sharply polarized in terms of the benefits or downside for
x Preface
humanity, its importance as a new matrix for our era is undisputed. We
examine the paradigms in contention, the ways in which it is changing
the world around us and the critical problem of ‘governance’, that is, how
free market expansion can be managed and made sustainable. This chapter
also introduces the Polanyi problematic – the tension between free market
expansion and societal reaction – that frames the analysis of the great
counter-movement against globalization emerging in recent years. My
basic argument is that the Polanyi problematic – duly ‘scaled up’ for the
era of globalization – provides us with a powerful yet subtle optic for exam-
ining the intertwined processes of free market expansion and societal
reactions to it.
In Chapter 2 I introduce the various approaches to social movements
underlying the ‘contestation’ element of my title. This is also the second
element in Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ of free markets expanding and
society reacting defensively to protect itself from its effects. Thus, we exam-
ine the various theoretical paradigms, such as the resource mobilization
approach versus those theories stressing the role of large-scale structural and
cultural change as well as identity politics as a basis for mobilization. That
leads me into the distinction between the ‘old’ social movements, such as
those of labour and nationalism, versus the ‘new’ social movements such
as the environmental and women’s movements. The next section explores
the distinctions and relationships between ‘progressive’ movements for social
change and those that seemingly articulate a ‘reactionary’ response to global-
ization today. To simplify we need to understand the ‘bad’ as well as the
‘good’ social movements. To conclude I offer some Polanyian perspectives
on globalization and social movements to complement and answer the
Polanyi problematic raised in Chapter 1.
In Chapter 3 we turn from social movement theory to a brief historical
overview of transnational social movements that did not begin, of course,
in 1999 in Seattle when the global media detected an anti-globalization
movement. Modern capitalist society – and the expansion of the free market
as its driver in particular – has always generated counter-movements. We
explore the politics of scale and why some forms of contestation have taken
local, national or transnational form. The time frame adopted is that of the
First and Second Internationals (1870–1919) through to the rise of the
‘global civil society’ in the 1990s. We could parallel this time frame
with the first and the second wave of globalization. What were the limits
and the achievements of labour internationalism in Europe prior to the
inter-imperialist carnage of the First World War? Was the communist inter-
nationalism that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 merely a façade
for Russian state interests? Was the colonial revolution simply about nation-
alism or did it contain elements of transnational solidarity? Finally, what is
the significance and what are the prospects of global civil society today and
the new cosmopolitanism its proponents advance?
 Preface xi
1111 Chapter 4 takes up the story of the contemporary counter-globalization
2 movement, which many symbolically associate with the ‘Battle of Seattle’
3 in 1999, when protests prevented the World Trade Organization (WTO)
4 from reaching a conclusion. But Seattle did not spring out of a clear blue
5 sky and we trace the much longer lasting and generalized revolt against
6 neoliberalism, especially in the global South. The symbolic importance of
7 Seattle does, however, provide us with an opportunity to analyse the
8 ‘meaning’ of the counter-globalization movement. Some of its sequels were
9 carnivalesque at least in terms of the tactics used by those contesting global-
1011 ization as we know it. What had this got to do with the land struggles of
1 the indigenous people in the Lacandón Forest in a remote region of Mexico,
2 later to become known as the Zapatistas, that potent symbol of global
3111 economic solidarity? This chapter explores the various theoretical perspec-
4 tives developed since Seattle to account for the widest ranging set of
5 transnational protests since the global revolution of 1968. Are these move-
6 ments simply attempts to ‘civilize’ globalization and make it more socially
7 accountable or are we at the start of another great anti-capitalist revolt
8 comparable to that at the start of the twentieth century?
9 Chapter 5 moves from the street demonstrations of Seattle (1999), Genoa
20111 (2001) and Edinburgh (2005) to the transnational political arena, such as
1 the World Social Forum that first met in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001 to
2 proclaim that ‘another world is possible’. We also examine the way the
3 women’s movement has developed a formal transnational political presence,
4 symbolized by the Beijing UN Conference on Women in 1995. The other
5 main area to be considered is the transnational human rights movement that
6 has flourished greatly in the era of globalization. In spite of their distinc-
7 tive dynamics the human rights movement, the women’s movement and the
8 World Social Forum are all exemplars of the way transnational social move-
9 ments have created a space for themselves on the global political scene. What
30111 does this mean for the future of movements seeking to foment positive
1 social transformation? Has the transnational level of political activity tran-
2 scended the national scene as some globalists believe? In brief, we need to
3 cast a retrospective look on transnational political fora to consider what their
4 achievements and limitations are.
35 Chapter 6 turns towards what we might call ‘local transnationalism’ by
6 which I mean social movements that have an international orientation but
7 which seek to ‘embed’ themselves in local communities. The environmental
8 movement was the first to coin the phrase ‘think globally, act locally’ quite
9 early on in the development of globalization as we know it. This is also the
40111 movement that has probably been most successful in creating an impact on
1 the ‘mainstream’ agenda. Workers’ organizations have often subscribed to
2 internationalist ideologies – ‘Workers of the World Unite!’ – but in prac-
3 tice most workers’ struggles have been local in character. And peasants, as
4 workers on the land, have been most rooted of all in the locality and the
45111 community, yet today there is an active transnational peasants movement
xii Preface
known as Vía Campesina (The Peasant Path). What do these apparent contra-
dictions mean for a critical theory of globalization and contestation? Is the
‘new localism’ an adequate response to neoliberal globalization? How might
social movements combine action on various scales of human activity to best
advantage? I would essentially argue that local struggles for human eman-
cipation are as much a part of the contestation of globalization as are the
headline-grabbing events such as Seattle 1999.
Chapter 7 turns to a topic that is too often ignored by the optim-
istic globalizer and global civil society advocates, namely that of the
literally reactionary social movements. These react in different ways to
the complex patterns of internationalism created by globalization. They are
anti-globalization not from a counter-globalization perspective but more
often on behalf of a conservative mythical past. We examine the various
nationalist reactions to economic internationalization. Many ostensibly
progressive counter-globalization movements are also nationalist in essence.
Then we turn to the far-right Patriot movement of the US which is also
opposed to globalization but from a perspective totally different from
that of the Seattle 1999 protesters. But maybe working-class ‘common
sense’ in the US can go either way? Finally, we examine in terms of reac-
tions to globalization the militant Islamic ‘Jihadists’. Was the attack on the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon an attack on globalization? In conclusion,
we examine the fraught question of whether these reactionary movements
can be considered akin to ‘new’ social movements or whether they are simply
backward-looking retrograde formations.
And so to the concluding Chapter 8 which returns to the Polanyi prob-
lematic of Chapter 1, seeking answers on the basis of the analysis and
description of the great counter-movement of our era. To what extent
can social forces and social movements constrain the free market and strive
for democracy? What is the relationship between progressive and reactionary
social counter-movements? This chapter (re)examines our broad themes of
globalization and contestation under the rubrics made famous by Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri’s books: Empire and Multitude. Are these terms
adequate for the complex new realities unfolding? My own understanding
of the issues is explored in a reworking of Polanyi’s theme of the double
movement through which the market expands into the social sphere but
society reacts back in diverse ways. Finally, what are the prospects for the
counter-globalization movement that have been the subject of this text?
I try to summarize what we have learnt in our various explorations above
and project some of the possible scenarios emerging for the construction of
a more democratic world.
The overall argument of this book is that the Polanyi problematic
provides, potentially, a complex and dialectical framework for an under-
standing of globalization and contestation, but it does require concretization
in my view. In the first place, it points us towards the dilemmas of the
current world (dis)order and its prospects. Because, as Peter Evans puts it,
 Preface xiii
1111 ‘Elites, no less than the rest of us, need to resolve the Polanyi problem’
2 (Evans 2000: 239). But, can the dominant world power construct durable
3 and robust hegemonic institutions and ideologies? For Polanyi, there was a
4 point in the 1920s when the ‘double movement’ of economic liberalism
5 and social protection led to such institutional strain that, with the onset of
6 class conflict, ‘turned crisis into catastrophe’ and then ‘the time was ripe for
7 the fascist solution’ (Polanyi 2001: 140, 244). If narrow sectional interests
8 abuse the general political and economic functions of society, then this
9 will be the result. There are, for Polanyi, ‘critical phases of history, when a
1011 civilisation . . . is passing through a transformation’ when ‘no crudely class
1 interest can maintain itself in the lead’ if it does not become hegemonic
2 ‘unless the alternative to the social setup is a plunge into utter destruction’
3111 (Polanyi 2001: 163). So, in normal circumstances the disadvantaged will be
4 protected by enlightened rulers, meaning today that ‘global governance’
5 would build its democratic institutions, and those marginalized by neo-
6 liberal policies would be protected by the World Bank’s ‘safety nets’. World
7 events over the last decade, however, suggest, as Silver and Arrighi put it,
8 that such plunges into utter destruction ‘are a sufficiently widespread
9 phenomenon in the early twenty-first century that we might want to treat
20111 them as a more “normal” phenomenon, than Polanyi’s concept of the double-
1 movement seems to allow’ (Silver and Arrighi 2003: 327).
2 The second issue that requires concretization, in my view, is the precise
3 way in which ‘society’ might protect itself from the ravages of the self-
4 regulated market. In an era when neoliberals and postmodernists alike query
5 whether there is such a ‘thing’ as society, we cannot simply assume Polanyi’s
6 rather functional analysis of its response to the market mechanisms. Polanyi
7 does tell us that: ‘The “challenge” is to society as a whole; the “response”
8 comes through groups, sections and classes’ (Polanyi 2001: 160) but that is
9 still quite under-specified in terms of a political sociology for a globalized
30111 complex era. Which ‘groups’ or ‘sections’ of society are likely to respond to
1 the encroaching marketization and commodification of life? What is the
2 role of social movements in this process, a set of actors rather absent in
3 Polanyi’s narrative? The problem is a broader one, namely, the tension
4 between Polanyi’s account of the double movement, and his belief that while
35 such a counter-movement was vital for the protection of society, ‘in the last
6 analysis it was incompatible with the self-regulation of the market, and thus
7 with the market system itself’ (Polanyi 2001: 136). What thus emerges is
8 a self-balancing system, where the social counter-movement is not allowed
9 to go too far lest it undermine the system itself. The dual movement is thus
40111 more about embedding social relations within the market, rather than
1 contesting its logic. The interests of society as a whole also remain fairly
2 underspecified in Polanyi’s account. This is where, following Bob Jessop,
3 ‘the role of specific economic, political and social projects, of hegemonic
4 visions, and of associated capacities become crucial’ (Jessop 2003: 7). If the
45111 fight-back by ‘society’ is to go beyond dispersed and possibly contradictory
xiv Preface
struggles, the basis on which social cohesion and political projects are
forged needs to be examined in much more detail than that provided in the
original Polanyi problematic.
Finally, we would need to explore further the political dilemmas posed
by Polanyi’s diagnosis that the counter-movement might equally take reac-
tionary and progressive form. We simply cannot value equally all the
disparate counter-movements that respond to the depredations of neoliberal
globalization, through projects of social self-protection. On what basis do
we decide which are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ counter-movements? Most
claims based on the professed values of ‘good governance’ or ‘transparency
and accountability’ do little to conceal an openly Eurocentric agenda. We
can, maybe, move forward by ‘spatializing’ the Polanyi problematic and
bringing to bear the recent ‘politics of scale’ debates. For many sections of
the broad counter-globalization movement the ‘local’ is seen as a privileged
site of resistance to globalization and it is valorized above all other forms.
Yet, there are countless examples of local parochial backwardness where
a reactionary response to globalization leads to other forms of oppression,
such as that of minorities and all things lacking ‘authenticity’. We can only
conclude that, from an analytical perspective, there can be no good or
bad responses to globalization. Polanyi’s problematic allows us to revisit
creatively the local/global dichotomy or dialectic. For one, Polanyi was
acutely aware of the very ‘local’ origins of the ‘one big market’ that global-
ization represents. It is not the ‘hidden hand’ of the market that creates
actually existing globalization but concrete social and political forces and
groups. However, and this is its limitation today, this analysis of the counter-
movement focused almost exclusively on the scale of the nation-state. For
Polanyi protectionism had produced ‘the hard shell of the emerging unit of
social life. The new entity was cast in the national mold’ (Polanyi 2001:
211). Elsewhere, Polanyi refers to how: ‘within the nations we are witnessing
a development, under which the economic system ceases to lay down the
law to society’ (Polanyi 2001: emphasis added). Clearly, Polanyi worked
within the parameters of what we might call ‘methodological nationalism’
and that is not surprising of course. What we now need to do (see Adaman
et al. 2003) is to bring both the local and the global back into the Polanyi
problematic to explain how the counter-movement is generated and how
market-driven globalization might be deconstructed. In developing this task,
we are aided by Polanyi’s rich anthropological studies of non-capitalist
societies, and an understanding that capitalist commodification has never
been complete and never can be, without destroying society.
1111
2 1 Globalization
3
4 A new social, political and
5 cultural matrix
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3111 Globalization, defined variously or not at all, is the obligatory point of
4 reference for any discussion of contemporary social, political and cultural
5 transformation. Globalization is, in short, the new matrix for our era, the
6 framework for what is and what might be. The first section of this intro-
7 ductory chapter examines the contested and often contradictory meanings
8 that globalization takes on as dominant paradigm for our time. This is
9 followed by a summary of the socio-economic and cultural transformation
20111 it has generated in the world around us. How this new world order might
1 be governed is the subject of the third section on Global governance
2 which sets the parameters for many of the more radical contestations of
3 globalization. Finally, I advance an integrated, holistic vision of globaliza-
4 tion as a matrix for social and cultural transformation and the horizon of
5 possibilities opening up for political contestation in the current era. Taking
6 my cue from the classic work of Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
7 (Polanyi 2001), I seek to develop a problematic capable of understand-
8 ing the complexity of free market-driven globalization and the societal
9 contestation of its effects.
30111
1 Contested paradigms
2
3 Globalization is currently the dominant paradigm or ‘way of seeing’ the
4 world around us, both for supporters of this phenomenon and for its detrac-
35 tors (for an overview see Scholte 2005). It is a ‘grand narrative’ as powerful,
6 all-embracing and visionary as any that may have preceded it, including
7 those of classical capitalism, colonialism or socialism. It is seen as an epoch-
8 making moment in human history, a transition to a brave new world.
9 Whereas the anti-globalization movement seemed to hold the discursive
40111 high ground at the turn of the century, it is now the defenders of global-
1 ization who are on the offensive. Recently, substantive seriously researched
2 books have been published arguing for ‘the truth about globalization’
3 (Legrain 2003), or ‘in defence of globalization’ (Bhagwati 2004) and ‘why
4 globalization works’ (Wolf 2004). These works are as passionate and as
45111 important as those seeking to defend an earlier model of capitalism from
2 Globalization
the ideological challenge posed by the rise of the Soviet planned economy
in the 1920s. So, what is the case the neoliberal prophets make for a global
market economy?
For the liberal globalizers, the essence of the phenomenon in question is
the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour ‘so that, economi-
cally speaking, there are no foreigners’ (Wolf 2004: 14). They believe, quite
literally, in the ‘magic of the market’ which they see not only as the source
of material wealth but ‘also [as] the basis of freedom and democracy’ (Wolf
2004: 57). Liberal globalization is seen as something that encourages moral
virtues. While it indeed ‘makes people richer’ it also, according to Martin
Wolf, makes people ‘more concerned about environmental damage, pain and
injustice’ (Wolf 2004: 57). Be that as it may, it is clear that the liberal
globalizer world-view goes beyond simple economics and offers an alterna-
tive to all collectivist or social views of the world. Corporations are seen as
virtuous as well as dynamic agents of progressive change. Globalization will,
according to this view, lead to a decline of inequality and poverty world-
wide as the market works its magic. While it might have some downsides
– it is accepted that no market is perfect – overall there is simply no alter-
native. Freedom itself – defined variously or not at all – depends on the
continued expansion of the global free market.
The case against globalization is equally passionate and categorical.
Globalization, from this perspective, is seen as an economic process leading
to the commodification of life itself. There is nothing that is not for sale,
from health to education, from knowledge to our genes. Behind the rhetoric
of free trade lies a sinister move towards introducing barriers around priva-
tized technology, resources and knowledge to keep them safe for capitalist
exploitation. The result, as Naomi Klein puts it, is that ‘Globalization is
now on trial because on the other side of all these virtual fences are real
people, shut out of schools, workplaces, their own farms, homes and
communities’ (Klein 2002: xxi). The ‘silent takeover’ (Hertz 2001) by the
transnational corporations is seen by others to be an imminent threat to the
very possibility of Western democracy as we have known it. Corporations
are taking over social functions previously carried out by the state, pres-
suring governments to follow their neoliberal global agenda, and leaving
the political system devoid of any real choices.
It is probably impossible to adjudicate between the pro- and anti-
globalization cases when stated in such a polemical and absolutist manner.
It might anyway be more productive to avoid this type of binary opposi-
tion and start from the complexity of the globalization processes. As John
Urry puts it: ‘global ordering is so immensely complicated that it cannot
be “known” through a simple concept or set of processes’ (Urry 2003: 15).
The global era cannot be reduced to a simple logic of the market, or
of ‘network society’ or of empire. The complexity approach allows us to
move beyond counter-positions such as those between structural determinism
and pure chance or, put another way, between frozen stability and ever-
 Globalization 3
1111 changingness as dominant trends. Complexity refuses all static and reduc-
2 tionist readings of globalization that should, in preference, be seen as ‘neither
3 unified nor . . . act[ing] as a subject nor should it be conceived of in linear
4 fashion’ (Urry 2003: 40). It is understandable that first generation global-
5 ization studies should have conceived of this complex process as more
6 powerful and unified than it actually was, but from now on an approach
7 that foregrounds complexity will be more productive whatever political
8 choices we ultimately make.
9 Another common opposition in the vast literature on globalization now
1011 available is between those who stress the novelty of the situation and those
1 who stress continuity with earlier periods of capitalism’s international-
2 ization. Among the popularizers of the first position must be counted
3111 management consultant Kenichi Ohmae who, in a series of books with
4 titles such as The Borderless World (Ohmae 1990) and The End of the Nation
5 State (Ohmae 1995), articulated a vision of modernity’s nation-state era
6 coming to an end as the liberating forces of the global market became
7 dominant in the 1990s. The traditional order of national economies, indus-
8 trial production, welfare states and so on, would be swept away by the new
9 wind of free market dynamism. Ohmae stresses the revolutionary break
20111 with the past and the short time span, say 25 years, in which these world
1 revolutionary events took place.
2 Academic promoters of the globalist case are more nuanced but, never-
3 theless, emphasis is laid very much on the novelty of the phenomena
4 described. Thus, Anthony Giddens finds himself essentially agreeing with
5 those for whom ‘the new communications technologies, the role of know-
6 ledge as a factor of production, and the new discoveries in the life sciences,
7 signal a profound transition in human history’ (Giddens 2001: 4). The whole
8 mood or tone of this discourse is revolutionary in that it conceptualizes
9 globalization as a fundamental shift in the human trajectory that is now in
30111 full flow. There are, of course, optimistic and pessimistic renderings of the
1 globalizer scenario but the unifying strand is that the shifts involved in all
2 areas of human life are irreversible and of global significance, whether we
3 view them as benign or not.
4 Against the globalizers, who believe in globalization, and the anti-
35 globalizers, who also believe it is real even if they do not like its effects, we
6 can posit the sceptics for whom the death of the traditional order is at best
7 over-stated. None are clearer or more evidence-based than the arguments of
8 Hirst and Thompson in their aptly entitled Globalization in Question (Hirst
9 and Thompson 1999) which challenges what they call the necessary myth
40111 that globalization represents a qualitatively new stage of capitalist develop-
1 ment. For these authors the globalization of production has been exagger-
2 ated, as have the forecasts of the death of the nation-state. While accepting,
3 of course, that there is a growing international economy, they reject as fanciful
4 the idea that multi- or transnational corporations are footloose and fancy free.
45111 They even turn the tables on the ‘decline of the nation-state’ arguments by
4 Globalization
showing how in many ways the nation-state has gained in importance,
managing or governing the processes of internationalization. While arguably
marked by a tinge of nostalgia for a pre-globalization era when ‘normal’
national politics prevailed, this approach is a healthy sceptical antidote to
out-and-out globalizers.
Globalization follows or joins ‘modernization’ and ‘Americanization’ as
seemingly inevitable processes heading towards a pre-defined end. They are
thus, essentially, ‘teleological’ concepts, insofar as they share teleology’s belief
that there is design, directive principle and finality in all natural and mech-
anical processes. Teleology asserts a purpose to all activity and a direction
towards a pre-established end. The problem with all teleological concepts
as Taylor puts it is that: ‘by conflating becoming with being, alternative
future possibilities are discarded; the outcome is literally defined as inevit-
able’ (Taylor 2000: 50). Modernization was deployed in the 1950s and 1960s
to signal an end-state of development (equated essentially with the US) and
the process whereby all countries could achieve this happy state by following
a pre-established template. Likewise, globalization since the 1990s has come
to signify both a process of internationalization that is creating a more
globally integrated world order, and also an actually existing globalized
society that all should aspire to. Even in specialist academic circles there
appears to be a conflation between ‘global studies’ (studies of the world
from a global perspective?) and ‘globalization studies’ that would be a more
critical and reflexive take on the complex unfolding processes of inter-
nationalization in all their uneven and combined facets.
Globalization, today, certainly shows many new traits but one can
also discern continuities with previous expansionary phases of capitalism.
One way of putting it, albeit allegorically, is that ‘one-third of the global-
ization narrative is over-sold; one-third we do not understand; and one-third
is radically new’ (Drache 1999: 7). From a complexity theory standpoint we
might challenge this separation between being and becoming but the drift
of the argument is well taken. There is a big difference between globaliza-
tion as mutually reinforcing and causally related transformations following
a pre-established path, and a conception based on the notion of ‘contin-
gently related tendencies’ (Dicken et al. 1997: 161). There are also very
diverse economic, political, social and cultural tendencies that vary widely
across regions and time. There is simply no unified coherent and unilinear
globalization strategy waiting to be applied as ‘made in USA’ modernization
theory was in the 1950s. There is a complex restructuring and recomposi-
tion of the world order occurring around us all the time: the concept of
globalization might point towards it in different ways and, even, partially
explain it, but it cannot serve as a master framework to understand and
explain it totally.
Having briefly analysed what globalization is ‘not’, what can we say about
what it ‘is’ over and beyond the obvious complexity and uneven develop-
ment of the phenomenon? Clearly it is no one thing and has various
 Globalization 5
1111 inter-linked economic, political, ideological, social and cultural facets. But
2 if there is one overarching theme it is that of connectivity or interconnect-
3 edness. Following Ash Amin we could argue that ‘the most distinctive aspect
4 of contemporary globalization’ is the ‘interconnectedness, multiplexity and
5 hybridization of social life at every level’ (Amin 1997: 129). This means we
6 can no longer draw clear and firm boundaries between local and global
7 spheres or between national and international spheres of social life. We
8 cannot separate the ‘in here’ of the city, community or locality in which we
9 live from the ‘out there’ of global flows of money, capital, people, power
1011 and dominance. Thus, globalization is not an entity but a set of relation-
1 ships. Our daily activities are all influenced by this complex and inter-related
2 set of relationships that are ‘stretching’ social relations to an unprecedented
3111 degree.
4 Another useful image to understand globalization is that of time–space
5 compression. Spatial barriers – for example, in trade or communications –
6 have fallen away to a considerable degree. Space does not even matter
7 any more according to some pundits. Time has also changed from being a
8 reflection of natural processes to become instantaneous. The world has been
9 ‘shrinking’ for a long time but this process has taken a qualitative leap
20111 forward in the last quarter of the twentieth century. We may not yet have
1 achieved the ‘distanceless’ world that Heidegger once foretold but as David
2 Harvey puts it, we are now living through ‘processes that so revolutionize
3 the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter, some-
4 times in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves’ (Harvey
5 1989: 240). The elimination of spatial barriers and the compression of time
6 do not, however, spell a homogeneous spatial development. The changing
7 spatiality of global capitalism is, if anything, more heterogeneous, differen-
8 tiated and fragmented.
9 Above all else we must stress that globalization signifies interconnected-
30111 ness of social fates. As Held and McGrew put it: ‘Globalization weaves
1 together, in highly complex and abstract systems, the fates of households,
2 communities and peoples in distant regions of the globe’ (Held and McGrew
3 2003: 129). Our own daily lives are becoming increasingly globalized in
4 terms of their reference points, our consumption patterns and our mental
35 maps. We imagine the world in a different way than our ancestors did at
6 the turn of the nineteenth century. Globalization is, today, the ‘imagined
7 horizon’ (García Canclini 1999: 32) of individual and collective subjects,
8 be they governments, companies, intellectuals, artists or citizens. The reper-
9 cussions both positive and negative of the St Stephen’s Day 2004 East Asian
40111 tsunami demonstrated most clearly how real the weaving together of fates
1 across the world now is. Whichever view of globalization is taken it has
2 clearly transformed the world around us, and the way in which we under-
3 stand it and seek to change it.
4 In terms of competing paradigms it might be premature to choose one
45111 particular rendition of globalization theory to guide us. David Held and his
6 Globalization
colleagues usefully distinguish between the globalizers, the sceptics (who
doubt there is much new in it) and the ‘transformationalist’ approaches.
The latter stresses the changes that are taking place and how explaining this
arena in an open-ended way may help us in getting to know the one-third
of globalization that is as yet unknown. As against fixed ideal-type para-
digms of a new ‘global market’, ‘global democracy’, or ‘global civilization’
David Held and his colleagues prefer the ‘transformationalist accounts
[that] emphasize globalization as a long-term historical process which is
inscribed with contradictions and which is significantly shaped by con-
junctural factors’ (Held et al. 1999: 7). A good example of the latter are
the events of 11 September 2001 in the US and their sequel of unfolding
conflicts across the world that effectively put an end to prevailing optim-
istic views of globalization as a new peaceful era of harmonious global
development.

Changing worlds
A transformationalist approach to globalization starts from the premise
that the world is changing rapidly and in fundamental ways, even if the
direction of change is not (yet?) fully discernible. An underlying question
is whether a new sense of ‘globality’ means we should abandon ‘method-
ological nationalism’, that is to say, the nation-state as obvious and
self-sufficient frame of reference for understanding the changing worlds we
live in. A closely associated issue is the viability of ‘methodological terri-
torialism’, that is to say, forms of social enquiry that precede the rise of
supraterritoriality (e.g. the Internet and global financial markets). While
accepting that a new global optic is necessary to comprehend the changing
worlds around us, I would not argue, however, that the nation-state ‘does
not matter’ or that territorial forms of consciousness might not have a con-
tinuing (or even increasing) relevance. The point is, simply, that we live in
the era of globalization and that this has an impact on all levels of life
in our changing worlds.
It is not a belief in economic determinism that leads us to start with
the economic world but, rather, an understanding that how people produce
is crucial to social development. Early debates revolved around the ques-
tion of whether economic internationalization was, indeed, new at all and
whether it was, in fact, even global in the true sense of the word. Certainly,
there were earlier periods of capitalist development when trade and finances
were truly international. Nor is there any doubt that globalization is
primarily a phenomenon affecting the richer and more powerful nation-
states of the West/North, even though its effects are as significant as any
tsunami on what was once known as the developing world. The underlying
political question is whether economic internationalization and the opera-
tion of freer markets is spreading development or concentrating it in ever
 Globalization 7
1111 fewer hands. The supporters of globalization and the anti-globalization
2 movement are, predictably, at opposite ends of this debate. While economic
3 growth in China and India has accelerated along with increased integration
4 with the global economy, overall the global South as the ‘developing world’
5 is now called has suffered from neoliberal policies favouring the free market.
6 The traditional ‘modern’ world of production is now joined by the virtual
7 or ‘new’ economy characteristic of the ‘information age’, greatly enhanced
8 communications and transport. As Jan Aart Scholte puts it: ‘globaliza-
9 tion has played an important role in redistributing the relative weights of
1011 accumulation away from “merchandise” (commercial and industrial capital)
1 towards “intangibles” (finance, information and communications capital)’
2 (Scholte 2000: 123). This is not really a ‘post’-capitalist era in any real sense
3111 of the word, but simply the latest manifestation of a very dynamic and
4 plastic economic system. This ‘new’ economy is, however, less bound to
5 territory and is a harbinger of a more transnational order. Multinational
6 corporations become truly transnational corporations. The ‘death of space’
7 is not just a clever business logo. This major transformation in how
8 capitalism works has led to huge changes in the world of work and has also
9 generated considerable opposition from social movements concerned with
20111 commodification, consumerism, effects on the environment and, of course,
1 exploitation of workers.
2 In the political domain the early globalization debates focused around the
3 ‘decline’ (even ‘death’) of the nation-state. The nation–global relationship
4 was interpreted as a zero-sum game where the gain of one was seen as loss
5 for the other. By the mid-1990s, however, it was widely acknowledged
6 that ‘states have significantly more room to manoeuvre in the global
7 political economy than globalization theory allows’ (Weiss 2003: 26). This
8 was the case not least because globalization was beginning to be understood
9 by its critics (as much as its supporters) as a process that could be enabling
30111 or empowering to some. Clearly, globalization was not some form of nebula
1 hanging over the world as benign or malignant presence depending on one’s
2 point of view. What was called ‘globalization’ in the 1990s could be traced
3 back to specific economic policies developed by the rich and powerful nation-
4 states of the West going back most immediately to the neoliberal (anti-
35 statist, pro-privatization) policies so dominant in the 1980s.
6 It was a very powerful image that developed around the ‘decline of the
7 nation-state’ thesis. It seemed logical that increased economic internation-
8 alization would lead to a decrease of political sovereignty. The new global
9 market modality of capitalist development certainly weakened statist or
40111 nationalist development models. The levers of economic power were no
1 longer, straightforwardly, in the hands of national governments. Nor does
2 the government control the national territory in quite the same way as they
3 did in the era of the nation-state. However, even at the purely economic
4 policy side, states may still steer the economy through supply-side measures
45111 such as technological innovations and training/education. Nor does ‘pooled
8 Globalization
sovereignty’ such as that of the European Union (EU) or NATO or the WTO
prove any less powerful a means to pursue the objectives of the rich nation-
states. Finally, we must reject economistic visions of nation-state decline,
insofar as different states may clearly use their power in different ways
and the different ‘varieties’ of capitalism have markedly different political
effects.
The social facets of globalization are myriad, from transnational migra-
tion to the rise of the ‘global city’, from new forms of community to the
flourishing of global crime. Clearly the social has become more inter-
connected, less constrained by boundaries or limits. The social world is more
interlinked, social relations (for many) are less limited than they once
were. Social identities are no longer space-bound and geographical distance
sets few limits on social interaction. For Ash Amin we are witness to a
‘greater hybridization and perforation of social, economic and political life’
due to the increasing ‘interdependence and intermingling of global, distant
and local logics’ (Amin 1997: 133). There is no global without its myriad
locals, a principle as important as the constraining of local development by
globalization. But it is the mixity, the hybridity and the perforation of
all social domains that are crucial to an understanding of society in the era
of globalization.
Social relations, today, are constructed in space as much as in particular
places. The various discourses of globalization construct social subjectiv-
ities in a complex and contradictory fashion. We are no longer place-bound
and our social links can be transnational and they can be virtual. Global-
ization opens up to social groups diverse forms of social organization from
the local to the regional, the national to the transnational. There is an
increased differentiation and fragmentation of social subjectivity and social
consciousness formation. Globalization has brought to the fore ‘the issue of
subjectivity, the positions, agencies and forms of consciousness in and
through which identities, decisions, choices and interventions are produced
and enacted’ (Kayatekin and Ruccio 1998: 76). What globalization cannot
produce is a totalizing vision that explains all or even determines ‘in the
last instance’ social relations. It does, however, produce new horizons of
possibilities for all social groupings, be they the new global elite or the
subaltern classes.
As to the cultural domain it might well have been our starting point,
such is the importance of what is called ‘global culture’ in the making of
globalization. As David Held et al. put it:

Few expressions of globalization are so visible, widespread and perva-

sive as the worldwide proliferation of internationally traded consumer
brands, the global ascendancy of popular cultural icons and artefacts,
and the simultaneous communication of events by satellite broadcasts
to hundreds of millions of people at a time on all continents.
(Held et al. 1999: 327)
 Globalization 9
1111 The simultaneity and ubiquity of global cultural products and processes is,
2 indeed, a major feature of the era. The commodification of culture along
3 with every other facet of human life, including life itself, is a key driver of
4 the free market expansion lying at the core of globalization. If globalization
5 is made at the cultural level, it is also contested at the discursive level where
6 different understandings of, and meanings of, globalization clash.
7 Early debates in this area focused around whether a ‘global culture’ was
8 indeed emerging and, if it was, whether it would ‘flatten’ national or regional
9 cultures. It is now widely accepted that notwithstanding the rise of a global
1011 consumer culture and a ‘global youth culture’, cultural diversity and
1 hybridization will prevail over any ‘coca-cola-ization’ or ‘Americanization’
2 of the world’s cultures. For Mike Featherstone the era of postmodern global-
3111 ization has ‘pointed to the problem of cultural complexity and the increasing
4 salience of culture in social life through the greater production, mixing and
5 syncretism of cultures which were formerly held separate and firmly attached
6 to social relationships’ (Featherstone 1995: 12). Global differences have been
7 acculturated and ‘brought home’ through increased travel and migration.
8 New forms of cultural resistance are emerging and there is even a return to
9 the concept of ‘cultural imperialism’ that had prevailed during the anti-
20111 colonial revolution and the cultural revolt of the 1960s.
1 I would argue that the economic, political, social and cultural transfor-
2 mations of the world around us have one common feature: reflexivity. When
3 referring to ‘reflexive modernization’, Ulrich Beck sets it in terms of a
4 ‘subversive, unintended and unforeseen self-questioning of the bases of polit-
5 ical life’ (Beck 2001: 101) created by the perception of risk that now prevails
6 after the age of innocence. Rather than living through the ‘end of history’
7 as Fukuyama optimistically predicted at the end of the cold war, we are
8 moving into a new era of global civilization where we all have a common
9 destiny, albeit threatened by old and new forms of global risk (from famine
30111 to AIDS, from ‘global terrorism’ to the perils of genetic engineering). The
1 point is that the era of globalization is characterized by intense reflexivity as
2 individuals and institutions reflect on transformation, risks and how to
3 construct a better future. This does not spell an era of consensus necessarily
4 but all bets are off and the rationality of modernity does not imprison our
35 minds and lives as it once did.
6 There is no question of ‘globalization’ explaining everything, or
7 even anything, on its own. The emergent global risk society (to use Beck’s
8 terminology) is neither unified all-powerful or uncontested (even at the
9 level of meanings). John Urry quite correctly takes to task simplified and
40111 static conceptions neglected in statements that ‘“globalization” is x or alter-
1 natively that “globlization” does x’ (Urry 2003: 40). There is, in reality,
2 nothing linear about the development of globalization as if it were some
3 re-run of the teleological 1950s’ ‘modernization’ theories based on an un-
4 problematic expansion of a US-modelled and US-directed conception
45111 of modernity. While globalization cannot, thus, be treated as the subject of
10 Globalization
history, it can, I would argue, be conceived as a new matrix for global devel-
opment. Thus, ‘globalization’ can be taken as a shorthand label for the
complex economic, socio-political and cultural parameters that set the terms
of reference and establish a matrix for the development of human societies.
A recent text on Latin America understands the concept of ‘socio-political
matrix’ as ‘the relationships among the state, the political system of repre-
sentation, the socio-economic base of social actors, and cultural relations’
(Garretón et al. 2003: 93) that are thus placed in the context of a compre-
hensive analytical framework. In this sense a ‘globalization matrix’ would
refer not to globalization as this or that facet of the contemporary era but,
rather, the overall or overarching parameter within which contemporary
economic, socio-political and cultural relationships are forged. These rela-
tionships must be conceived as being mediated by nation-states, regions and
locality and globalization as matrix does not ‘determine’ anything. The
globalization matrix is not necessarily an agreed one and different parties
may well have a different understanding of it. The point is simply that we
now are faced with a world quite different from that where nation-states
provided the broadest horizon of possibilities throughout their lives, and
where internationalism still meant simply the interaction between nations.

Global governance
Of course, the changing worlds described above need to be governed. Until
quite recently, the main parameters of governance were set by the regimes
of national sovereignty. Today, global governance is required and it sets the
terms of regional, national and, even, city-level governance. Nation-states
had national governments ruling over the sovereign national territory
through executive, legislative and judicial branches. Political parties ex-
pressed or represented the views of the citizens. In the era of globalization,
government, in this traditional sense of the word, is being superseded by
what we call ‘governance’. This refers to the way in which states ‘steer’ rather
than command society, and where the market is allowed to play a full
role in allocating resources. Contemporary governance is seen to be less hier-
archical or bureaucratic than traditional governments. Governance is, rather,
achieved through coordination, consultation and community involvement,
with its favoured form of organization being the network. This paradigm
shift from government to governance had been completed in most countries
by the end of the twentieth century.
The underlying reason why the traditional state and government were
challenged as effective modalities for the new capitalism, was that as terri-
torial based bodies they were ill-equipped to deal with supraterritorial
phenomena such as the Internet or offshore banking, for example. The prolif-
eration of supraterritorial issues has led to connections being formed ‘above’
national government level (such as the WTO) but also ‘below’ national
government level as transnational connections flourish between cities and
 Globalization 11
1111 regions in pursuit of diverse interests that may or may not coincide with
2 those of national governments. As Scholte explains: ‘As a result of this multi-
3 plication of substate and suprastate arrangements alongside regulation
4 through states, contemporary governance has become considerably more
5 decentralized and fragmented’ (Scholte 2000: 143). As with other issues or
6 facets of globalization explored above, there is a growing hybridity of organ-
7 izational forms in keeping with the complexity of challenges faced by
8 contemporary capitalist development.
9 ‘The world is now more than ever enmeshed in a process of complex
1011 globalization’ as Cerny puts it, and ‘the most urgent research agenda . . . is
1 to identify the myriad dimensions of this complex process and evaluate the
2 structure of the intersections and interactions among them’ (Cerny 1999:
3111 209). There is no neat hierarchy of spatial levels from the local to the global,
4 through the national and regional. Rather, all issues are multilayered as are
5 the strategies and structures to deal with them. In social policy we have the
6 term ‘wicked issues’ to describe social problems such as youth crime that
7 cannot be assigned to any one government department because the issue is
8 multidimensional. Likewise, the issue of ‘global warming’ can be seen as a
9 ‘wicked issue’ that requires a multilayered response. Since at least the end
20111 of the cold war, economic, political and social issues and ideologies have
1 become more complex and less easily amenable to simple solutions. It is
2 this move to a world ‘beyond slogans’ that explains the recent paradigm
3 shift away from the once dominant Washington Consensus.
4 During the ‘first wave’ of neoliberal-led globalization in the 1980s and
5 1990s a quite fundamentalist economic doctrine and political philosophy
6 prevailed. This was codified around 1990 in the so-called Washington
7 Consensus centred upon the key tenets of trade liberalization, deregulation,
8 privatization and financial liberalization. It was applied with particular
9 rigour and fervour in Latin America where it became known widely as neolib-
30111 eralism. This was a form of free market economics pledged to the removal
1 of the state from any areas where it might interfere with the free workings
2 of the market. Against all forms of national protectionism – which had been
3 essential for the industrialization in the ‘developing’ world – it called for
4 removal of all tariff and other barriers so that international trade could be
35 ‘free’. It was seen as a way of overcoming the ‘debt crisis’ of the 1980s in
6 Latin America and the Washington Consensus policies were imposed on
7 debtor nations as forms of macro-economic conditionality for further loans.
8 The free market ‘silent revolution’ as its supporters called it was, however,
9 to meet internal contradictions and external limits. The Asian financial crisis
40111 of the late 1990s began in Thailand in 1997 but rapidly spread to the
1 Philippines and Indonesia, and later Russia and Brazil among others.
2 Financial deregulation created the volatile ‘hot money’ markets where a
3 collapse of confidence could spread like wildfire. Henceforth, even fervent
4 supporters of free market economics such as Jagdish Bhagwati (Bhagwati
45111 2004) would also call for renewed financial controls and regulation. Then,
12 Globalization
in Latin America there was another financial crisis in Mexico in 1994–95
and most dramatically of all, the economy of Argentina virtually collapsed
at the end of 2001: and Argentina had been the country where the
Washington Consensus was so faithfully implemented that the peso was
even tied to the US dollar. Finally, around the same time, a number of
corporate scandals in the US – the most notably newsworthy being Enron
– showed that free market neoliberalism had to be ‘saved from itself’.
Towards the turn of the century the contradictions of the Washington
Consensus as the political economy paradigm of the era became apparent.
According to Robin Broad, ‘while some tenets of the old Consensus have
been transformed more than others, we are unquestionably in the midst of
a paradigm shift and a period of continued debate’ (Broad 2004: 148). The
rejection of full capital-market liberalization opened the door for further
questioning of key tenets of the Washington Consensus. Far from rejecting
the role of the state in economic affairs the new economic wisdom sought
to restructure the state and created the ‘new public management’ approach.
The global governance agenda as a whole can be seen as a response to
the failings of free market liberalism as well as a response to the counter-
globalization movements of the late 1990s and beyond. Over and beyond
the economic debates, there seemed to be a recognition that the moral accep-
tance of capitalism mattered. The new Consensus was a pragmatic adaptation
to new conditions but it had a distinct moral undertone.
We could say, following Richard Higgott, that ‘the global market place
of the 1980s and the first 6–7 years of the 1990s was an “ethics free zone”’
(Higgott 2000: 138). Poverty was an unfortunate side-effect of globaliza-
tion but these ‘adjustment’ pains did not cause any moral dilemmas. But
by the late 1990s there was ‘in some quarters a genuine recognition of the
importance of tackling ethical questions of justice, fairness and inequality’
(Higgott 2000: 139). A small, but probably not insignificant, sign of this
mood swing was the conversion of George Soros from financial speculator
par excellence to caring far-sighted articulator of ‘Third Way’ politics to
save global capitalism from itself (see Soros 1998). More broadly this was
an era when the corporate social responsibility agenda took off. Perhaps it
was only due to Nike shares plummeting when conditions in their overseas
plants were exposed, or because Starbucks was targeted by protestors in
Seattle 1999, but even so the swing towards a more ‘socially responsible’
capitalism had begun.
None of the above means to imply that ‘global governance’ is simply
benign compared to the Washington Consensus. Indeed, following Ian
Douglas, perhaps we should be ‘rethinking globalization as governance’
(Douglas 1999: 151). The contemporary transformations in the modal-
ities of political rule ‘beyond’ traditional government models can be seen as
simply more effective ways to control global society. While the state may
well have been ‘hollowed out’ as an effect of economic internationalization,
and traditional models of political sovereignty have been rendered void, the
 Globalization 13
1111 replacement is by no means ‘progressive’. Rather than be taken in by the
2 concerned, humanitarian message of the Commission on Global Governance
3 (1995), Douglas asks to first confront the question: ‘to what problem is
4 global governance the solution?’ (Douglas 1999: 154). The move towards
5 networks of governance that are largely self-reliant and the emergence of
6 the self-organizing individual may be positive in a general sense but they
7 may also reflect a Foucaldian drive for order and may well create new
8 inequalities and hierarchies.
9 Global governance as reform and repression at the same time simply poses
1011 a more general dilemma. It goes back to early 1900s’ debates on ‘reform
1 versus revolution’ and the 1960s’ notion of ‘repressive tolerance’. For
2 Foucault, for example, governance can be seen as a more effective, because
3111 it is a more totalizing, form of control in terms of bio-power. However,
4 while it is easy to see how a non-governmental organization (NGO) or
5 social movement might be ‘co-opted’ through engagement with the global
6 economic agencies, their interaction is, nonetheless, real. Foucault might
7 respond that this engagement, and even protest, against globalization is
8 beneficial to the established order because it creates reform (the better to
9 govern) but inaction is totally a more progressive option. Many critical
20111 thinkers now accept that globalization might open some doors (for pro-
1 gressive social transformation) as well as close others. Global governance
2 may well be a reform of ‘repressive tolerance’ type and a simple modern-
3 ization or rationalization of control mechanisms, but it is still different from
4 government as previously understood.
5 A fundamental point about the global governance paradigm or prob-
6 lematic from the point of view of this text is that it allows the social
7 movements back in. The NGOs, the global social movements and assorted
8 advocacy or protest networks all play a role in the governance of the global
9 economy. These ‘non-state’ or ‘non-traditional’ sectors have at least since the
30111 1999 Seattle WTO debacle been at the forefront of debate on how global
1 governance can be ensured. At its most ‘official’ level this shift can be seen
2 in the attempt by the United Nations (UN) to develop a ‘Global Compact’
3 bringing together the corporate sector and issues such as human rights as
4 well as labour and environmental standards. For Richard Higgott, ‘while it
35 sits firmly within a neoliberal discourse for developing an interaction between
6 the international institutions and the corporate world, it is an important
7 recognition of the need to globalize some important common values’
8 (Higgott 2000: 140). Effectively this initiative is seeking to ‘globalize’ the
9 socially embedded liberalism of the post-war era that served to create
40111 capitalist growth and social cohesion at the same time.
1 As the protests against globalization grew in the late 1990s so did the
2 role of the NGOs or what others call ‘civil society organizations’ (CSOs).
3 Yet, they faced the dilemma of either joining protestors in the streets or
4 taking their critique into the conference halls and boardrooms of ‘global
45111 governance’ and the corporate sector. Of course, in practice they could do
14 Globalization
both but many more ‘mainstream’ NGOs chose to seek to influence policy
from within, as it were. There are signs that they were often welcomed into
the capitalist tent even if their influence was not always significant. There
was also a strong move towards organizing parallel or ‘unofficial’ summits
alongside those of the WTO and so on. While evidence is scanty (because
it is hard to assess influence) one well-researched study concludes that while
in the early 1990s only 20 per cent of unofficial summits had an impact on
the official event, by the year 2000 this proportion had risen to 40 per cent
(Pianta 2001: 186–7). Civil society was at least having some impact on the
leading bodies of global capitalism.
The move towards global governance also allowed for more space to be
created where social movements could intervene. To differing degrees the
likes of the World Bank and other economic institutions became more
‘porous’ to the demands of some social movements. The international
women’s movement and the environmental movement had some significant
successes but the labour movement, in a less public way, was also able to
at least place its perspective on the negotiating table of the global corporate
sector. One of the more systematic studies that have been carried out
concludes that: ‘there is a transformation in the nature of global economic
governance as a result of the MEI [multilateral economic institutions]–GSM
[global social movements] encounter’ (O’Brien et al. 2000: 3). Whatever
the particular verdict on each case of engagement (and there is always a
sceptical view to match any optimism) there is undoubtedly a transforma-
tion in terms of the range of economic and political institutions engaged
with social movements and their demands.

Polanyi’s problematic
As Louis Althusser once put it: ‘A word or concept cannot be considered
in isolation; it only exists in the theoretical or ideological framework in
which it is used: its problematic’ (Althusser 1969: 253). At its most basic
the Polanyi problematic was based on the notion of a ‘great transforma-
tion’ at the start of the nineteenth century leading to the dominance of
free market principles. But this social transformation led to a counter-
movement through which society protected itself from the effects of untram-
melled free market expansion. History thus advances in a series of ‘double
movements’ according to Polanyi whereby market expansions create societal
reactions. We can posit that the emergence of ‘globalization’ in the last
quarter of the twentieth century represents the belated fulfilment of the
nineteenth-century phase of human history characterized by ‘an attempt to
set up one big self-regulating market’ (Polanyi 2001: 70).
According to Polanyi, who was writing during the cataclysm of the Second
World War, ‘the fount and matrix of the [capitalist] system was the self-
regulating market’ (Polanyi 2001: 3). Polanyi traces the birth of market
society as we know it to Britain’s Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth
 Globalization 15
1111 century. Previous societies had been organized on principles of reciprocity
2 or redistribution or householding: now, exchange would be the sole basis
3 of social and economic integration. Markets were previously an accessory
4 feature in a system controlled and regulated by social authority. Hence-
5 forth, the market ruled unchallenged and changed society in its image:
6 ‘A market economy can exist only in a market society’ (Polanyi 2001: 74).
7 Economic liberalism was the organizing principle of the new market society
8 where economics and politics were, for the first time, split up. What is
9 remarkable about this economic discourse is that: ‘The road to the free
1011 market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous
1 centrally organised and controlled interventionism’ (Polanyi 2001: 146).
2 As with neoliberalism in the 1980s ‘laissez-faire’ economics was nothing if
3111 not planned.
4 Polanyi’s self-regulating market was to be based on the ‘fictitious
5 commodities’ of land, labour and money. That labour should become a
6 commodity that could be bought and sold was essential to the logic of the
7 market economy. But, as Polanyi argues:
8
9 labor, land, and money are obviously not commodities . . . Labor is only
20111 another name for a human activity which goes with life itself . . . land
1 is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actually
2
money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power . . .
3
(2001: 75)
4
5
Polanyi goes further than Marx to argue that ‘labour power’ is but an ‘alleged
6
commodity’ precisely because it ‘cannot be shoved about, used indiscrimin-
7
8 ately, or even left unused without affecting also the human individual who
9 happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity’ (Polanyi 2001: 76).
30111 This is more than a moral critique of capitalism, however, because Polanyi
1 goes on to argue that trade unions, for example, should be quite clear
2 that their purpose is precisely ‘that of interfering with the laws of supply
3 and demand in respect of human labour, and removing it from the orbit of
4 the market’ (Polanyi 2001: 186). Any move from within society to remove
35 any element from the market (‘decommodification’) thus challenges the
6 market economy in its fundamentals.
7 When Polanyi distinguishes between real and fictitious commodities he
8 is going beyond the moral principle that people or nature should not be
9 treated as though they could be bought and sold. The project of creating
40111 a fully self-regulating market economy required this fiction but, if fully
1 implemented, then society and the environment would both be destroyed.
2 In practice, against the basic tenets of liberalism (and in our era’s neo-
3 liberalism), the state plays a continuous, intensive role in regulating the
4 flow of labour across frontiers; educating and training workers, dealing with
45111 unemployment and so on. The use of land in rural and urban areas is tightly
16 Globalization
controlled by the state. In actually existing market societies the state plays
a guiding economic role and is never ‘outside’ of the market in any real
sense. As Polanyi puts it:

Undoubtedly, labor, land and money are essential to a market economy.

But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fiction
for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance
as well as its business organisation was protected against the ravages of
this satanic mill.
(Polanyi 2001: 76–7)

The self-regulating or self-adjusting market was, for Polanyi, a ‘stark-

utopia’ in the sense that it could not be achieved: ‘Such an institution could
not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural
substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed
his surroundings into a wilderness’ (Polanyi 2001: 3). In modern termin-
ology the self-regulating market was neither socially nor environmentally
sustainable. Neoliberals, today, have developed a similarly fundamentalist
discourse based on the ‘magic of the market’. Central to this identity is the
notion that government interference in economic affairs must be reversed
and that the individual market agent or ‘entrepreneur’ should be given a
free hand. In this grand schema society does not exist and nature is seen
simply as a factor of production. This market system and the associated
laissez-faire ideology, ‘created the delusion of economic determinism’
(Polanyi 1957: 70) against which Polanyi calls for ‘the reabsorption of the
economic system in society, for the creative adaptation of our ways of life
to an industrial environment’ (Polanyi 1957: 143).
For Polanyi, in his day, but probably even more so today: ‘The true impli-
cations of economic liberalism can now be taken in at a glance. Nothing
less than a self-regulating market on a world scale could ensure the func-
tioning of this stupendous mechanism’ (Polanyi 2001: 145). Globalization,
in the broadest sense of the word, can thus be seen as inherent in the free-
market project. The world, naturally enough from this perspective, becomes
just one giant marketplace where everything and everybody can be bought
and sold. Social relations are reduced to market relations. The ‘opening up’
of the world market becomes the raison d’être of development, with only
some token gestures paid to social and human development. What Polanyi
analysed for the national level – in terms of a separation of the economy
from the social and political domains of human life – is now becoming real-
ized and empowered on the global terrain. Even the proponents of
‘globalization with a human face’ in the UN and elsewhere simply take this
free market project and ideology for granted.
Central to Polanyi’s non-economistic understanding of the contemporary
economy was the notion of ‘embeddedness’ that has since led to a copious
literature in economic sociology. For Polanyi the economy is normally
 Globalization 17
1111 embedded in social relations; it is not autonomous. Prior to the emergence
2 of the modern market society, ‘The economic system was submerged in
3 general social relations. Markets were merely an accessory feature of an insti-
4 tutional setting controlled and regulated more than ever by social authority’
5 (Polanyi 2001: 70). The self-sufficient, pre-capitalist peasant household was
6 not regulated by the market but, rather, by a moral order. Even when
7 mercantilism began to free trade from localism, it was very much regulated.
8 In fact, according to Polanyi, ‘regulation and markets, in effect, grew up
9 together’ (Polanyi 2001: 71). Economic relations had always been sub-
1011 ordinated or submerged within social relations that were at the core of human
1 existence. Even today, at the height of globalization as dominant develop-
2 ment matrix, we find many spheres of social life, such as the household, not
3111 subordinated to the logic of the market.
4 Much of Polanyi’s analysis of ‘embeddedness’ depends on an analysis of
5 pre-capitalist societies (see Dalton (1971) for Polanyi’s ‘anthropological’
6 work). While it serves as a useful paradigm comparison with contem-
7 porary society, it is certainly dubious to assume that pre-market societies
8 are necessarily more socially cohesive than market ones. Occasionally we
9 might see Polanyi romanticizing ‘primitive’ and ‘archaic’ societies, perhaps
20111 reflecting his early commitments to Guild Socialism with its own particular
1
version of a pre-market utopia. This nostalgia for a long-lost cohesive and
2
secure past is common to most utopian discourses. On the other hand,
3
contemporary analysis of ‘embeddedness’ shows there is no clear-cut and
4
decisive break between embedded pre-market and disembedded market
5
6 societies. Indeed, there is now a flourishing pro-capitalist literature, such as
7 that by Fukuyama, on ‘trust’ (Fukuyama 1996) that builds precisely on the
8 social and moral ties that bind the ostensibly purely rational agents of the
9 market today.
30111 The rise of the liberal order does require, however, the systematic ‘dis-
1 embedding’ of the economy from society. This is an order in which ‘instead
2 of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded
3 in the economic system’ (Polanyi 2001: 135). There are long-term tend-
4 encies under capitalism towards marketization, commodification and what
35 we could call ‘economization’. They all entail a ‘disembedding’ of the econ-
6 omy and economic relations from social, community, cultural or religious
7 forms of regulation. What Polanyi analysed in terms of the ‘great trans-
8 formation’ wrought by the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century
9 we can see, in magnified and more intense form, for the Globalization
40111 Revolution of the late twentieth century. As Altvater and Mahnkopf put it:
1 ‘The intensity of the process of disembedding is . . . increased due to
2 . . . the money form taking on a life of its own vis-à-vis the “disembedded
3 market” and . . . the economy becoming globalised’ (Altvater and Mahnkopf
4 1997: 451). The dynamic of disembedding has now taken on a global
45111 character for the first time, with momentous consequences.
18 Globalization
A final, and politically highly relevant, conundrum is whether it is
possible to achieve ‘disembedding’. In Polanyi’s writings there is a contra-
diction between the arguments for disembedding and the recognition that
this would be impossible to sustain. Polanyi is most often read as argu-
ing that the liberals had successfully ‘disembedded’ the economy and that
we now need to ‘re-embed’ it. But Polanyi also appeared to be saying
that the market liberals wanted to embed society in the economy, a project
that was ‘utopian’ in the sense of unrealizable, not least because of the
counter-movement from society that it engenders as society seeks to protect
itself from the market. This protective counter-movement, however, weakens
the ability of the self-regulatory market to function effectively. Fred
Block gets round this ambiguity by arguing that ‘Polanyi discovers the idea
of the always embedded market economy, but he is not able to name
his discovery’ (Block 2001: xviii). This argument would imply that today’s
neoliberal globalizers will inevitably fail in their bid to create a global
marketplace where society is embedded in the economy and thus, effectively,
ceases to exist.
In his Foreword to the first edition of The Great Transformation, R.M.
McIver wrote in 1944 that ‘of primary importance today is the lesson it
carries for the makers of the coming international organisation’ (McIver
1957: iii). The post-war boom was dominated by multilateral economic
organizations that only incompletely understood Polanyi’s message. In the
2001 edition of The Great Transformation the Foreword, Joseph Stiglitz argues
that ‘Polanyi exposes the myth of the free market: there never was a truly
free self-regulating market system’ (Stiglitz 2001: xiii). As Stiglitz himself
understands, as a critical insider in the making of globalization, the market
is part of an economy and the economy is part of society. Neither the old
laissez-faire nor the new Washington Consensus, which Stiglitz criticizes
fiercely, recognize or understand that behind the ‘freedom’ of the market
lies the very real lack of freedom from hunger, insecurity and risk for the
majority of the world’s population. Polanyi can thus become an inspiration
for those seeking to reform globalization from within on behalf of the broader
interests of society.
Polanyi’s problematic in the era of globalization needs to be ‘scaled up’
to meet the challenges posed by the new matrix of social development. In
the period following the Second World War, as Evans observes, ‘the Polanyi
problem of reconciling free markets with stable social and political life
was taken up again through the construction of international norms and
institutions’ (Evans 2000: 238). For the core capitalist countries this led
to a degree of social stability to the extent that liberalism was ‘embedded’
in a social compromise. For the majority or ‘developing’ world this was not
the case as rule by the market was joined by political and military imposi-
tion of Western interests. As the long post-war boom waned from the 1970s
onwards, social dissent broke out both in the core countries and through
 Globalization 19
1111 the anti-colonial revolution. Economic internationalization from the 1980s
2 onwards was also undermining the nation-state. As Evans puts it: ‘The “re-
3 scaling” of the global economy brought the Polanyi problem back to life’
4 (Evans 2000: 238) as the managers of the newly globalized capitalism sought
5 to create a degree of sustainability for the machine they had created.
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
45111
2 Contestation
Societal reactions to the
free market

According to Karl Polanyi ‘the one comprehensive feature in the history of

the age’ was the way in which ‘society protected itself against the perils
inherent in a self-regulating market system’ (Polanyi 2001: 80). If that is,
indeed, the case, then there is nothing unexpected in globalization gener-
ating what has been called, accurately or not, an anti-globalization
movement. As a preliminary step this chapter reviews the various theoret-
ical perspectives developed to account for the emergence of social move-
ments, especially the so-called ‘new’ social movements that have emerged
since the 1960s. What is it that is ‘new’ about the new social move-
ments? Are these movements now finally flourishing and uniting as in
an ‘anti-globalization’ movement? We also consider the complex relation-
ship between these ‘progressive’ forms of contestation and those movements
many observers would deem to be reactionary. Finally, I continue the task
set in Chapter 1 of developing what I call the Polanyi problematic on social
movements and the broader phenomenon of contestation in the era
of globalization.

Social movement theories

Prior to the 1960s, the dominant approach to social movements stressed
their anomalous, practically irrational character. In what was seen as a well-
integrated and affluent society (at least in the West), only a ‘demagogue’ or
‘charismatic leader’ could possibly wish to disturb the peace by whipping
up irrational fears or petty jealousies. The ‘crowd’ that formed would then
become a ‘mob’ and, finally, chaos would ensue. The rise of the Nazis was
the archetypal nightmare of this particular world-view. The revolt in the
colonial world, the building of nationalist movements and the armed
struggle against imperialism were given a different explanation. Here, the
stress was placed on the ‘civilized’ nature of the imperial power and its
promise of modernization and democracy. It was only an irrational or ‘fanat-
ical’ terrorist who could revolt against this order. Ordinary people would
be, or could be, hoodwinked into supporting the terrorist cause. The ‘cultural
revolution’ in the West after May 1968 and the successful conclusion to the
 Contestation 21
1111 anti-colonial revolution were to bury these conservative delusions (for a
2 while).
3 These attitudes were to change in the 1960s, particularly in North
4 America, ‘when for the first time in history large numbers of privileged
5 people . . . had considerable sympathy for the efforts of those at the bottom
6 of society to demand freedoms and material improvements’ (Goodwin
7 and Jasper 2003: 5). It was the Black civil rights movement in the US
8 in particular that put to test the conception of social movements as a sign
9 of immaturity or irrationality. Starting with Mancur Olson’s 1965 text
1011 The Logic of Collective Action (Olson 1965), emphasis shifted to the ration-
1 ality of collective action in which the individual basically conducts a
2 cost-benefit analysis of whether it is advisable or not for them. Extending
3111 this analysis from the individual to the social movement organization (SMO)
4 John McCarthy and Mayer Zald later developed an economistic vision of
5 these SMOs in an analogy with the capitalist firm, selling their brand,
6 recruiting staff and competing with others in the ‘social movement industry’
7 (see McCarthy and Zald 1973). This led to the emergence of the ‘resource
8 mobilization’ approach focused on how social movements mobilized time
9 and money in pursuit of their objectives.
20111 The critique of the resource mobilization approach to social movements
1 was quite excoriating. For one thing, as Alberto Melucci pointed out, ‘collec-
2 tive action is never based solely on cost-benefit analysis’ (Melucci 1988:
3 343). Its focus on the individual – the rational actor – made it quite diffi-
4 cult for this approach to fully grasp social and collective processes. A focus
5 on the instrumental rationality of the individual simply precludes an under-
6 standing of the collective identity at the heart of all social movements. If
7 individuals were solely motivated by self-interest we would never see exam-
8 ples of solidarity. Nor can we explain the emergence of social movements
9 that never get to the stage where they might actually deliver benefits to
30111 their members. In a reaction to previous approaches to social movements as
1 irrational they stress the rational and organized nature of contestation too
2 much. Resource mobilization theorists stress the social integration effects of
3 social mobilization. As Piven and Cloward put it, these analysts ‘in recasting
4 collective protest as politics have . . . normalized the organizational forms
35 typically associated with protest’ (Piven and Cloward 1978: 153). In fact,
6 contestation, in practice, usually seeks precisely to disrupt, and not normalize
7 conditions.
8 The shortcomings of the resource mobilization approach were addressed
9 in part by the political opportunity structure theorists on both sides of
40111 the Atlantic. In the US, Sydney Tarrow began an ambitious research pro-
1 gramme seeking to establish the connections between collective action and
2 the political process (see, for example, Tarrow 1988). The ‘normality’ of
3 placing demands on the state – as earlier social movements had done – was
4 stressed, notwithstanding the extra-institutional modes of action deployed.
45111 In Western Europe a parallel focus saw the development of political exchange
22 Contestation
theories (for example, see Pizzorno 1978) focused on how collective actors
sought inclusion into the political market. Social mobilization and conflict
was thus reduced to a drive to be incorporated into the political system.
But no more than ‘economic rationality’ can this serve as an adequate frame-
work for the understanding of contemporary social movements insofar as,
in general, ‘they also seek goods which are not measurable and cannot
be calculated’ (Melucci 1989: 23). Neither economics nor politics alone,
could thus serve as adequate theoretical frameworks for the analysis of social
movements.
In Western Europe, the post-1968 interpretations of the ‘new’ social
movements were developed more in relation to traditional Marxist accounts
rather than conservative views. A range of social theorists such as Alain
Touraine (France), Alberto Melucci (Italy) and Claus Offe (Germany) artic-
ulated different versions of a post-Marxist theory of society and social
movements. The ‘cultural’ revolts across the West in 1968 but particularly
in France, Italy and Germany, showed for them the exhaustion of the
old capitalism and the emergence of a new ‘post-industrial’, ‘programmed’
or simply ‘complex’ society. This marked a qualitative shift in the nature
of capitalist society and its crisis of governability (see Chapter 1 above). The
affluent society was seen as a shallow society where consumerism took the
place of community. People no longer wanted more material goods
but were seeking self-realization, and other forms of post-material values
became more central. From this ferment emerged the students’ movement,
the women’s movement, the environmental movement, but also the anti-
imperialist movement in the West.
At this stage, following Melucci, ‘the era of industrial conflict is over’
and social conflicts can no longer be reduced to political protest. Rather,
‘contemporary social movements . . . have shifted towards a non-political
terrain: the need for self-realization in everyday life’ (Melucci 1998: 13). In
brief, the new social movements of the 1970s were seen as challenging the
logic of complex systems on mainly cultural grounds. The ‘European’
approach to social movements began to focus thus on the formation of new
identities. Touraine referred to the need for ‘bringing the social actor back
in’ (Touraine 1985) against what he saw as the actor-less structuralism of
traditional Marxist accounts of capitalism and contestation. The processes
of identity formation are crucial to an understanding of the new social move-
ments. For many of the individuals who formed their own identity in
building these movements, they were reclaiming this identity and rejecting
the growing intrusion of the state and the market in social life. These move-
ments were reaffirming the ‘lifeworld’ (Habermas 1987) against the dead
hand of the market.
In recent years, social movement theory has sought to integrate the North
American and European traditions. Jean Cohen, in particular, has argued
that the two logics of collective action implicit in the two approaches actually
represent a ‘dual logic’ of contemporary collective action (see Cohen 1987).
 Contestation 23
1111 Thus, social movements can, at one and the same time, be involved in
2 personal and collective identity formation, while also articulating instru-
3 mental strategic activities. The women’s movement could thus be seeking
4 economic and political transformation and the subversion of patriarchy in
5 daily life. In general terms we can conclude that social movements are
6 at once culturally and politically concerned with identity and strategy.
7 The contemporary social movements are occupying the terrain both of
8 civil society and of political society. It is, in fact, impossible to separate
9 analytically the process of identity formation and political mobilization
1011 through what the contemporary social movements came to be.
1 In a general way we can now envisage how social identity theory shows
2 us why social movements emerge, and resource mobilization theory
3111 shows us how they organize for their objectives. The problem is that these
4 theories both emerged from and reflected the rather narrow world of the
5 North Atlantic. Even the ‘Polanyi problematic’ we introduced in Chapter 1
6 mainly reflects the experience of the North Atlantic countries and not the
7 rest of the world. Polanyi’s prediction of a social counter-reaction to the
8 spread of the self-regulating market required a national society to actually
9 exist. In the post-war colonial world, nations remained to be constructed
20111 and modern society was yet to be achieved. The notion of a welfare state
1 that could temper the social effects of the market was, and remained for
2 many decades, a particularly Western social and political form. In terms of
3 developing a global social movement theory we need to reconceptualize
4 global society in a less homogeneous way than mainstream and radical
5 approaches alike seem to do. Colonialism now takes the form of post-
6 colonialism but it remains an overarching political condition affecting the
7 uneven development of social movements worldwide.
8 The post-1968 identity-focused approach to social movements was also
9 shaped by its particular historical and geographical setting. As Joe Foweraker
30111 puts it: ‘both European and North American [social movement] theories
1 tend to assume the presence of a dense, articulate and communicative civil
2 society . . . just as they tend to assume liberal democratic regimes’ (Foweraker
3 1995: 6). Yet many of the social movements that emerged across the global
4 South during the 1970s and 1980s did so largely under authoritarian
35 regimes. As to civil society, that was, itself, something that had to be
6 constructed, a project of the pro-democracy movements and not a pre-
7 existing social reality. The state was strong, it was ‘everything’, and social
8 movements needed to struggle against it and create a space for civil associ-
9 ation. The most basic forms of citizenship, as taken for granted in Western
40111 democracies, had to be established through struggle, as did also the concept
1 of inalienable universal rights. Identities were also forged in the process of
2 political struggle as people became aware of citizens’ rights, workers’ rights,
3 women’s rights and human rights.
4 Not only civil society but the very way in which social identities were
45111 constructed was different for those not living on the shores of the North
24 Contestation
Atlantic. What a trade union means is different in an affluent Western
democracy compared to a struggling, possibly authoritarian ‘developing’
country. There are no ‘universal’ social categories that can be used globally
in an a-historical fashion. Social boundaries, political institutions and forms
of consciousness are varied across the world and we should not take Western
modalities as the norm. Thus, for example, in relation to the gendered
construction of roles and the so-called ‘cult of domesticity’, French and James
suggest that:

one can rightly ask whether a concept designed to capture certain themes
in the ideology of middle-class Victorian life can be meaningfully
applied to working-class life, much less to the popular classes in other
national and cultural contexts in other time periods.
(French and James 1997: 16)

As against all forms of essentialism – ‘a belief in the real, true essence of

things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the “whatness”
of a given entity’ (Fuss 1989: xi) – we need to start from the inherently
shifting, complex and constructed nature of all social life.
Clearly then, an international approach to social movements cannot be
derived solely from the experience in advanced capitalist countries of the
West. This applies equally to the task set in this text, namely to examine
the complex interaction between globalization and contestation today. In
this regard Sydney Tarrow correctly argues that ‘terms like globalization
and resistance open up topics for investigation . . . but they do not help us
to grasp the mechanisms and processes involved in contentious interaction
and how one episode of transnational contention may differ from another’
(Tarrow 2002: 23). Thus, globalization and contestation may provide the
broad overarching parameters within which diverse global social movements
organize and mobilize but they do not provide an explanation. It is quite
common for radical analysts to assume a direct correspondence between
globalization and a given act or process of resistance. Globalization, also, far
too often acts as a ‘homogenizer’ of quite distinct struggles and movements
that may be responding to diverse issues and at different social scales, and
may be only indirectly related to ‘globalization’.
For our purposes in this text we may accept as a general definition that:
‘Social movements may be said to be transnational when they involve
conscious efforts to build transnational co-operation around shared goals that
include social change’ (Smith et al. 1997: 59). We are at the very begin-
ning of a new field of study and of social action. Increasingly the processes
of internationalization described in Chapter 1 will create the conditions in
which global or transnational social movements will arise. Some of the lessons
derived from the post-1968 ‘new’ social movements (see next section) will,
of course, be relevant to a study of the women’s, environmental and peace
movements that operate transnationally. Yet other forms of reaction to
 Contestation 25
1111 globalization will require a different lens. For instance, international Islam
2 as a social movement, the struggle for land, or various ‘reactionary’ social
3 movements (see the section after next) call for a less ‘Western’ view of the
4 world moving always forwards to modernity and democracy.
5
6
7
New and old social movements
8 The ‘European’ identity-focused theoretical approach to social movements is
9 inseparable from the ‘new’ social movements of the 1970s. In the cultural
1011 and political ferment following the ‘events of May’ in 1968 the whole of
1 past history was reassessed. It was as if it was Year Zero of a new revolu-
2 tionary movement. One of the main targets of the new generation was the
3111 ‘old’ trade union movement and its Communist Party political articulation.
4 It was seen as bureaucratic, integrated into bourgeois society and basic-
5 ally senile. What revolutionary potential it might once have had was long
6 since lost to the discrete charm of the bourgeois order. Workers in the West
7 were seen as a ‘labour aristocracy’ living off the exploitation of the Third
8 World, where a vigorous anti-colonial revolution was under way. These
9 workers had been seduced and ‘bought off’ by Western consumerism, whereas
20111 the new generation rejected consumerism and conformity alike. The new
1 social movements would start anew and create a new society that rejected
2 both consumer capitalism and bureaucratic socialism.
3 The new social movements were seen as an expression of the new
4 capitalism that became consolidated in the long post-war boom in the West.
5 Advanced capitalist societies had been subject to a process of ‘commodifi-
6 cation’ as social life became dominated by the market, and by ‘bureau-
7 cratization’ as the state intervened more and more at all levels of society.
8 The ‘new’ mass media had also led to a cultural ‘massification’ creating
9 conformity and repression of creativity. The new social movements thus
30111 reflected the new social antagonisms: the youth rebellion, the ecological
1 movement and the rising of women against patriarchy. These movements
2 were anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical and reaffirmations of individuality
3 against collectivism. They are all based on social antagonisms other than
4 those of social class, and the conflict between the worker and the capitalist
35 in the factory, in particular. All forms of subordination were rejected,
6 the imagination was in power and the future would be nothing like the
7 past.
8 The new social movements rejected the ‘totalizing’ vision of the old
9 movements such as the labour and nationalist movements. There was no
40111 single conflict to be resolved to reach the Promised Land insofar as there
1 was a multiplicity of conflicts. The main thrust of these movements
2 was the quest for autonomous identity against the ‘totalizing’ or tutelary
3 aspirations of the traditional social movements. Tilman Evers offers four
4 main theses that account for what was specific about these new social
45111 movements:
26 Contestation
1 the transformatory potential within new social movements is not
political, but socio-cultural;
2 the direction of this counter-cultural remodelling of social patterns
is open;
3 central to this counter-cultural distinction is the dichotomy of alien-
ation versus identity;
4 in creating an alternative cultural project the new social movements
also create the germs of a new subject.
(Evers 1985: 49–59)

This framework seems a utopian project in the true sense of the word, based
on the classic Marxist libertarian and egalitarian call for ‘an association in
which the free development of each one is the condition for the free devel-
opment for all’ as The Communist Manifesto declared boldly.
It is relatively easy to show, in hindsight, that there was, in fact, no hard
and fast dividing line between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ social movements.
The labour movement in its origins was very much like the ‘new’ social
movements today and only gradually and unevenly became institution-
alized. It has also had to re-invent itself periodically and today it is redis-
covering its vocation as a social movement to deal with the decline of
traditional trade unionism. Labour movements were also a key component
in the democratic challenge to authoritarian regimes in the ‘developing’
world in the 1970s and 1980s. It would be quite premature to accept the
verdict of Manuel Castells (1998), for example, that the workers’ movement
is no longer an agent of progressive social change. Movements, by defin-
ition, can change and adapt to new circumstances through renewal and
regeneration. Ultimately, as Dan Clawson argues from a perspective that is
extremely open to the new social movements, ‘no force in our society has
more democratic potential (or radical possibility) than the labor movement’
(Clawson 2005: 196). This would be especially true insofar as it adopts a
social movement unionism.
Nationalist movements are also somewhat indiscriminately seen as the
opposite of the ‘new internationalism’ of the 1970s and beyond. Yet the
history of anti-colonialism since the Second World War shows it to be an
integral element of global democracy. Resistance to Western colonialism
and imperialism has taken many forms, some of which have been reac-
tionary and many of which have later led to the curtailment of democratic
liberties. As Robert Young writes from a post-colonialism theoretical
approach, this resistance has also included ‘anti-colonial internationalism
(e.g. pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, the Khalifat movement,
the négritude movement, African Socialism) . . . [and] Marxist internation-
alism and the armed national liberation movements (e.g. China, Vietnam,
Cuba, Angola, Mozambique)’ (Young 2001: 166). National oppression is
also a form of social oppression and resistance to it is part of the global
 Contestation 27
1111 democratic revolution, today as much as historically. It is hard, perhaps,
2 from a Western perspective to grasp that nationalist movements can also be
3 internationalist but that has been one of their underlying features, the
4 Balkans wars notwithstanding.
5 Religion is another of the old, even ‘pre-modern’ social movements that
6 has also come to the fore in the era of globalization. Most anti-globalization
7 activists would resist any notion that any of these religious ‘fundamentalisms’
8 have anything in common with their movements. Yet religion is a key
9 component of the cultural construction of identity and not for nothing
1011 did The Communist Manifesto refer to religion as ‘the sigh of the oppressed,
1 the heart of a heartless world, the soul of a soulless condition’. To posit
2 al-Qaeda (or the IRA for that matter) as a new social movement seems absurd
3111 only from a Western rationalist perspective that is ultimately colonialist in
4 its logic and world-view. As a micro-narrative we can note the life history
5 of Mohammed Atta born in Egypt in 1968, who went on to study urban
6 planning in Germany. In the mid-1990s he carried out fieldwork for his
7 doctoral dissertation in both Syria and Egypt. In Cairo he was incensed over
8 the ‘restoration’ of the old Islamic city, ‘blaming Westernization and the
9 Egyptian government’s closeness to America for the plan to create an “Islamic
20111 Disneyland” in the heart of one of the Muslim world’s most celebrated cities’
1
(Burke 2004: 241). Atta’s religion was offended but also his culture and
2
society. He went on to organize the attack on the symbols of American
3
power on 11 September 2001. Was Atta’s motivation that different from
4
that of the activists who came into political life in 1968?
5
6 While the problematic of the ‘new social movements’ may be limited if
7 focused on the question of novelty, it might, however, direct our attention
8 to an alternative vision of social movements. Alberto Melucci, while stren-
9 uously rejecting the ‘new social movements’ label, nevertheless starts from
30111 the premise that ‘in complex societies fundamental aspects of human experi-
1 ence are presently undergoing profound changes, and that new needs,
2 together with new powers and new risks, are being born’ (Melucci 1998:
3 13). Whether we call the new order ‘post-industrial’, ‘post-modern’, a ‘know-
4 ledge society’ or ‘network society’ it is clear that some fairly fundamental
35 social transformations are afoot. So we can expect social reactions to this
6 order to become more network-based, more pluralist, less focused on insti-
7 tutions, more daring and innovative. In the era of ‘disorganized capitalism’
8 as a new dominant order is forged, social movements might well be more
9 focused on identity questions, less confident in their meta-narrative and more
40111 sensitive to the contingency of structures and events.
1 The collapse of communism as alternative social order and of the national
2 development state as agent of modernization does not ensure the sustain-
3 ability of the dominant order. Indeed, global capitalism can be seen to carry
4 many ‘new’ contradictions as well as those inherent in any exploitative and
45111 divisive social order. The new global capitalism has successfully co-opted
28 Contestation
much of the spirit of 1968. Mass consumption is out and individual choice
is in, bureaucratic organizations and methods are out with flexibility the
new watchword. Above all, democracy is sacrosanct across the world; no one
today defends authoritarian regimes openly as was the case in the 1970s.
This means that the democratic discourse that runs throughout most social
movements today is not necessarily a challenge to legitimate authority as
was the case in 1968. Grassroots democracy, bottom-up development,
popular empowerment, gender-proofing, anti-racism – all these are largely
accepted (although arguably co-opted) terms and concepts in the dominant
order. It was the ‘new’ social movements that put them there maybe, but
that is another story.
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the new social movement analytical
and political tradition is its emphasis on cultural politics. As Alvarez,
Dagnino and Escobar note in relation to Latin America, the cultural politics
enacted by these new social movements ‘in challenging and re-signifying
what counts as political . . . can be crucial . . . to fostering alternative polit-
ical cultures and, potentially, to extending and deepening democracy’
(Alvarez et al. 1998: 12). The rules of the political game and even what
now counts as politics are openly in question. Social movements have
subverted the traditional nostrums of the dominant political order. The legit-
imacy of what was once considered normal and natural is now in question.
The women’s movement has probably been the most successful in turning
traditional politics inside out. Also the human rights movements of Latin
America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s played a fundamental role in
exposing the shallowness of established liberal human rights discourses and
placed on the agenda current concerns with a substantive global human
rights order.
In the era of the global social movement the lessons of ‘new’ versus ‘old’
social movements may also be apposite. The ‘old’ labour movement was, in
its origins and in its very essence, global. Its slogan was ‘Workers of all
countries unite’. The early women’s movement addressed women everywhere
and not just in particular countries: ‘sisterhood is global’ as the slogan goes.
Even the much maligned nationalist movements most often saw themselves
as part of the ‘fraternity of nations’: their values were global even though
their territorial expression was bounded. The universal claims of religions
such as Catholicism or Islam have always transcended national boundaries
and have, indeed, pre-dated the modern nation-state. Faiths recognize only
their universal transcendental gods and not the man-made paraphernalia of
politics and narrow self-interest. Thus religious, social and national move-
ments all have a universal or global significance, as does, of course, the
human rights movement with its origins in the European Enlightenment
period.
The post-1968 social movements are also global and transnational but,
perhaps, in a more direct manner. For instance, as Melucci puts it, ‘the peace
 Contestation 29
1111 mobilizations have fundamental transnational effects: for the first time action,
2 which is also located in a specific national context, has effects on the plan-
3 etary level’ (Melucci 1989: 88). Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the
4 ever-present threat of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD) the issue of
5 peace has been a global one. As to the environment and the environmental
6 movement, as least since the Rio Summit, they have become the paradig-
7 matic example of a global issue calling forth a global solution. Modernization
8 of human society is also, of course, a global issue insofar as development
9 and underdevelopment are but two sides of the same coin. The biggest
1011 feature of the post-war boom was its uneven development and its failure in
1 terms of what the modernization theories had promised the ‘underdevel-
2 oped’ world. Today, the promises of globalization in terms of over-
3111 coming poverty and inequality across the world have again put this issue
4 on the table, causing expectations and creating the key challenge to the
5 development of global democracy.
6 The ‘new’ social movements were already a quarter of a century old when
7 the anti-globalization movement began to germinate in the mid-1990s. Was
8 this the newest of the ‘new’ social movements, was it in other words the
9 spirit of 1968 ‘gone global’? The language and discourse of social move-
20111 ments often needs to ‘catch up’ with changing social realities. Thus, the
1
post-1968 movements borrowed much of their language and organizational
2
forms from the traditional socialist and Marxist movements even as they
3
were criticizing them. It is only much more recently that they found new
4
terminology to express the new identities, led by the sexual liberation move-
5
6 ments. Capitalism also needed the ‘neoliberal revolution’ of the 1980s to
7 find its true vocation in what we now call globalization. So when the Seattle
8 1999 events occurred, we had two players ‘coming out’: capitalism with its
9 WTO hegemonic vanguard party, and the new social movements now ‘gone
30111 global’ in a complex process that will be the subject of subsequent chap-
1 ters. But the ‘spirit of 1968’ was not too far beneath the surface of events.
2
3 The good and the bad
4
35 Most definitions of social movements assume some kind of progressive or
6 transformational impetus or motivation. This is not surprising given the
7 close association between new social movement theories and the spirit of
8 1968. However, we need to consider whether the implicit distinction
9 between good and bad social movements is actually tenable. Is it really just
40111 a question of reserving the label ‘social movements’ for those political asso-
1 ciations the analyst feels comfortable with? When does a terrorist become
2 a freedom fighter? When does a worthy social movement become a crim-
3 inal gang? Can we really distinguish between social movements on the basis
4 of the type of goal they aspire to? To answer these dilemmas we can start
45111 with Manuel Castells for whom:
30 Contestation
Social movements must be understood in their own terms: namely they are
what they say they are . . . social movements may be socially conserva-
tive, socially revolutionary or both, or none . . . from an analytical
perspective, there are no ‘bad’ and ‘good’ social movements.
(Castells 2004: 73)

There was a time when ‘grand narratives’ prevailed and dominated human
history and the thinking about it. This would include the discourses and
narratives of democracy, modernization, nationalism and socialism. History
was moving towards a pre-defined end, it was ‘progressive’ in every sense.
Then with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the socialist project in 1989
we were told that ‘the end of history’ had been achieved and liberal capitalism
was the ‘only game in town’. The spectacular attack by Islamic militants
on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 changed all that.
It now seemed that Huntingdon’s ‘war between civilizations’ was becoming
reality. Be that as it may, we certainly cannot foresee history in the first
quarter of the twenty-first century. Globalization and anti-globalization
forces of various types seem to operate as the major socio-political forces in
contention. But regardless of whether the latter are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending
on our particular political perspective, they are all, equally, symptoms of
the era we live in and deserving of the most careful analysis.
On the whole, as Amory Starr puts it: ‘Religious nationalist movements
are portrayed as authoritarian movements unallied with democratic
humanism that reassert traditional social formations, including patriarchy’
(Starr 2002: 137). For most analysts religious ‘fundamentalist’ movements
are the very antithesis of a progressive social movement. They are seen as
obscurantist deniers of enlightenment, violent and irrational believers
in their own essential social or cultural identity. There can, supposedly,
be no reasonable democratic dialogue with those who have turned their
backs on universal values of reason and rationality. The Western or, more
precisely, the US backlash against the attacks of September 2001 very rapidly
took on this mantle and sought to portray those responsible (a very broad
and flexible category) as part of a new ‘axis of evil’. The spirit of the medieval
Crusades when Christianity took on the world of Islam was alive and well
in the very late twentieth century. Even Hardt and Negri in their mood-
setting book Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000) had little to say about Islamism
and how its political manifestations are also part of the counter-movement
generated by globalization.
The reality is that ‘Political Islamism, and Islamic fundamentalist iden-
tity . . . always related to the dynamics of social exclusion and/or the crisis
of the nation-state’ (Castells 2004: 21). There is no essentially different logic
of formation or dynamic operating in relation to these particular social move-
ments. They are anti-systemic movements of a specific kind that have
displaced the previously dominant, more nationalist and traditionally leftist
movements such as Nasserism, for example. This shift from a more secular
 Contestation 31
1111 to a more religious discourse can be related to neoliberal globalization. The
2 nation-state in the developing world was weakened in this era and thus the
3 benefits of taking over the state waned. The most often authoritarian govern-
4 ments that implemented the neoliberal agenda locally usually repressed
5 political Islamism, thus further radicalizing these movements. Finally,
6 growing levels of social exclusion, characteristic of the era of globaliza-
7 tion, both within and between nations (see Munck 2005) provided a steady
8 stream of recruits to Islamic political movements and generated causes to
9 rally around.
1011 Religious and ethno-nationalisms, of various types in different regions of
1 the world, are all concerned with the ‘search for fundamentals’ (fundamen-
2 talism) in particular ways. They are as much about identity as any of the
3111 ‘new social movements’ focused explicitly around ‘identity politics’. Politico-
4 religious fundamentalism is about a quest for social identity in an era of
5 ‘cultural imperialism’ and the apparent decline of secular nationalism.
6 In Iraq, of course, these secular forms of nationalism can be reinforced
7 and expressed by the new political Islam. The search for fundamentals, that
8 is how we construct our identity, is central to Roland Robertson’s analysis
9 of globalization and religion (Robertson 1992). This analysis begins with
20111 ‘an emphasis on time-space compression leading to the felt necessity for
1 societies . . . to declare their identities for both internal and external
2 purposes’, but then goes on to lay more definite stress on the idea that the
3 ‘expectation of identity formation is built into the general process of global-
4 ization’ (Robertson 1992: 175). That is to say, fundamentalism is not only
5 a reaction to globalization but also an integral element of how it is
6 constructed in relation to identities.
7 For the American ‘Patriot’ movement:
8
9 the New World Order is a utopian system in which the US economy
30111 . . . will be ‘globalized’; the wage levels of US and European workers
1 will be brought down to those of workers in the Third World; national
2 boundaries will for all practical purposes cease to exist; an increased
3 flow of Third World immigrants into the United States and Europe will
4 have produced a non-white majority in the formerly White areas of the
35 world . . .
6 (William Pierce, cited in Castells 2004: 87)
7
8 Except for the White supremacist element of this statement it contains much
9 that would be shared territory with the anti-globalization movement. The
40111 US Patriots (or false patriots as their mainstream detractors call them) believe
1 fervently that the New World Order is destroying American sovereignty
2 and that it represents a conspiracy of global financial interests. The enemies
3 are the same as those of the left such as the International Monetary Fund
4 (IMF) and the WTO although the Patriots also include the UN that the
45111 left internationalists would view as ineffective but basically moving in the
32 Contestation
same direction as themselves. Where the Patriots differ from the left is that
they find the answer to the threats posed in the Bible and the US
Constitution (see Chapter 7).
What is particularly relevant to our purposes is the extent to which the
US far-right or fundamentalist forces are actually part of the new ‘common
sense’ for American workers in the era of globalization. During negotiations
for the formation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
in the early 1990s, we found the labour unions (for a while) following the
right wing populist leader Ross Perot for whom NAFTA was a form of
capitalist internationalism that US patriots should oppose. There is a populist
counter-ideology to globalization that can take right wing and left wing
forms but both share a nationalist framework. The left nationalist position
would be more cosmopolitan and democratic and it is not incompatible with
internationalism. And, as Mark Rupert puts it:

The antiglobalist position of the far-right, on the other hand, envisions

a world in which Americans are uniquely privileged inheritors of a
divinely inspired socio-political order which must at all costs be
defended against internal intrusions and internal subversion.
(Rupert 2000: 184)

The US Patriots espouse a racist anti-democratic and anti-state ideology

of the extreme right. Their opposition to globalization as manifestation of
some bizarre ‘Jewish-Communist’ conspiracy has nothing in common with
the anti-globalization movement in terms of the social project they articu-
late. However, the socialist tradition is also having to re-negotiate the
relationship with the national domain in the era of globalization. For Donald
Sassoon, concluding his long-view retrospective of the European socialist
movement, states that ‘The pressures on all parties, especially those of the
left, to remain enclosed in national shells are compelling’ (Sassoon 1996:
776). The rapidly globalizing world we are living in creates profound
dilemmas for all political traditions. Both right wing and left wing vari-
ants of nationalism (and European socialism since the First World War has
been mainly a patriotic left) have to grapple with the effects of globaliza-
tion. There is a sense in which, while capitalism has made the paradigm
shift to thinking globally, the left, in its party political incarnation at any
rate, is reaffirming its commitment to the nation-state as main parameter
of its action.
From within the ranks of those social movements generally seen as benign
by academic observers there is also a particular rendering of the ‘good’ versus
‘bad’ dichotomy. Essentially what we see is an instinctive, if not always
explicit, equation of local = good and global = bad. This is part of a ‘bottom-
up’ or ‘people-centred’ critique of globalization, though possibly not a
necessary element. One collection of essays subtitled ‘People Challenging
Globalization’ claims to tell ‘an untold story – what ordinary people are
 Contestation 33
1111 doing in life-affirming response to the juggernaut of globalization. Small
2 farmers in Honduras, migrant workers in the Andes, urban poor in Bosnia,
3 Cambodian wood cutters, Mexican textile workers, Korean community
4 activists’ (Feffer 2002: cover). The editor of this collection, John Feffer,
5 argues in his introduction that:
6
7 Rather than be at the mercy of economic decisions made in faraway
8 places, producers and consumers take greater control over their lives. If
9 civil society requires active civic participation, then this empowerment
1011 at the local level is a precondition for true democracy.
1 (Feffer 2002: 19)
2
3111 At one level there is little to quarrel with this as a philosophy of praxis.
4 The problem lies in the distance and separation between the local and the
5 global that this world-view is based on.
6 Globalization is seen to be run by anonymous forces ‘in faraway places’,
7 the local level is inhabited by real people going about their daily business.
8 It is as though globalization is some sort of nebula ‘out there’ doing things
9 or casting its shadow ‘down here’ in the real world. There is a double problem
20111 here. On the one hand, this view demonizes globalization in the sense that
1 its concrete origins and contradictory dynamic (as seen in Chapter 1) is
2 somewhat elided. On the other hand, the local level is falsely seen as some-
3 where calm and virtuous where the evil storms of neoliberalism can be kept
4 at bay. But, in essence, the global and the local depend on each other to
5 exist, there is no global other than in its local manifestations. Furthermore,
6 localism is far from being an unambiguously progressive space. The local
7 level and the sense of ‘community’ it so assiduously fosters is also a place
8 of exploitation and class/gender/race divisions and conflicts.
9 We can start by applying Doreen Massey’s logic when she argues that:
30111 ‘setting up the question as local versus global is to accede to spatial fetishism’.
1 That is: ‘imagining that “space” or “spatial scale” has a political meaning,
2 to assume for instance, that the local is always better simply because it is
3 local’ (Massey 2000: 2). The geography of power is far too complex to accom-
4 modate or be amenable to this type of conceit. Power is embedded socially
35 and spatially in ways that can never result in one level of human activity,
6 such as the local, being seen as more virtuous than others. The left has
7 grown up historically as a national left and, for this reason among others,
8 it is suspicious of the global or transnational level. The right has always
9 been more comfortable with the philosophy of ‘blood and belonging’ and
40111 thus the sanctity of local parish or community. It is ironic that the right
1 and left, or certain sections of them, have come together in a defence of the
2 local as against the ‘impersonal’ global world of finance capitalism.
3 This section has opened up our analysis beyond those movements usually
4 covered in the social movement or anti-globalization literature. It is not
45111 meant to be seen as a Nietzschean call to go ‘beyond good and evil’. The
34 Contestation
argument is simply that market-led globalization will inevitably be chal-
lenged by a wide range of social and political forces: not all, or even most,
progressive in the normal European Enlightenment sense of the word.
Certainly, writers such as David Held are perfectly entitled to argue that
the reconstruction of the world order should take us towards ‘global social
democracy’ (Held and McGrew 2003, Chapter 9). Likewise, Mary Kaldor
may choose to define ‘global civil society’ (Kaldor 2003) in such a way that
it excludes social forces she deems to be uncivil. But these are normative
positions and should not be confused or conflated with the complexity of
the world around us and the choices we face today. What the next section
of this chapter considers is whether Karl Polanyi’s theory of a ‘double move-
ment’, whereby society reacts against rule by the market, might provide
some purchase in understanding it better.

Polanyian perspectives
Polanyi’s problematic poses the possibility that history advances through a
series of ‘double movements’. So market expansion, on the one hand, leads
to the ‘one big market’ we call globalization today. Yet, as Polanyi argued
in his day and we could argue today, ‘simultaneously a countermovement
was afoot’ (Polanyi 2001: 136) that reacted against the dislocation of society
and the attack on the very fabric of society that the self-regulating market
led to. The ‘double movement’ consisted of economic liberalism driving the
extension of the self-regulating market on the one hand and the principle
of ‘social protection’ on the other defending social interests from the dele-
terious action of the market. For Polanyi, this can be through protective
legislation or various collective associations such as trade unions. As a new
way of life spread over the planet – ‘with a claim to universality unparal-
leled since the age when Christianity started out on its career’ (Polanyi 2001:
136) – so a diverse counter-movement began to check its expansion. This
involved specific social classes – directly involved in the process – but was
also a generalized societal reaction. It was largely a defensive movement; it
was, for Polanyi, ‘spontaneous’ and there was no agreed societal or political
alternative involved.
Taken in its broadest sense, Polanyi’s notion of a social counter-movement
could be seen as an incipient theory of counter-hegemony. That is certainly
the argument of Michael Burawoy (2003) for whom Polanyi provides a neces-
sary counterpart to Antonio Gramsci’s influential theory of capitalist
hegemony. For Gramsci, modern ‘Western’ class orders are able to impose
‘hegemony’ over society as a whole, with consent being as important as
direct control or repression. It is through the organs of civil society – such
as the churches, schools, trade unions and the media – that capitalist hege-
mony is constructed and maintained. Gramsci, in practice an orthodox
communist, saw the proletarian party as the agent of counter-hegemony.
For Polanyi, on the other hand, who had broken with communism and was
 Contestation 35
1111 more influenced by the socialist Guild and Christian socialist traditions, it
2 was a social reaction to the market that would spur a counter-hegemonic
3 movement. Not only the subaltern classes but also powerful capitalist inter-
4 ests would be threatened by the anarchy of the market and would thus react.
5 For Polanyi:
6
7 This was more than the usual defensive behaviour of a society faced with
8 change; it was a reaction against a dislocation which attacked the fabric
9 of society, and which would have destroyed the very organisation of
1011 production that the market had called into being.
1 (Polanyi 2001: 136)
2
3111 Today, as Stephen Gill puts it:
4
5 we can relate the metaphor of the ‘double movement’ to those socio-
6 political forces which wish to assert more democratic control over
7 political life, and to harness the productive aspects of world society to
8 achieve broad social purposes on an inclusionary basis, across and within
9 different types of civilisation.
20111 (Gill 2003: 8)
1
2 Movements struggling for national or regional sovereignty, those seeking to
3 protect the environment and the plethora of movements advancing claims
4 for social justice or recognition, are all part of this broad counter-movement.
5 In different, but inter-related ways they are bids to re-embed the economy
6 in social relations. Challenging the movement towards commodification they
7 seek to ‘decommodify’ society and reassert moral and cultural values. Against
8 materialism and market-determined values, the social counter-movement
9 generated by neoliberal globalization brings to the fore the democracy of
30111 civil society and the social value of all we do. As Polanyi put it for his era:
1 ‘The great variety of forms in which the “collectivist” counter-movement
2 appeared [was due to] the broad range of the vital social interests affected
3 by the expanding market mechanism’ (Polanyi 2001: 151).
4 There are many ways in which the self-protection of society can operate.
35 For example, the Western welfare states that emerged following the Great
6 Depression of the 1930s and the social dislocation it produced was one such
7 self-defence mechanism. Likewise in the post-colonial or ‘developing’ world,
8 the post-Second World War years saw the emergence of the development
9 state, also a mechanism of defence against the self-regulating market. The
40111 development state of the 1950s and 1960s was a conscious bid to temper
1 the free market to create national development based on state-led industri-
2 alization behind protectionist barriers. While not to the same extent as the
3 ‘developed’ Western states with their strong social protection mechanisms,
4 the development state also introduced a degree of social security, the concept
45111 of a minimum wage and respect for trade union rights. Since the neoliberal
36 Contestation
offensive (or counter-counter-movement in Polanyi’s terms) of the 1980s and
1990s both the above elements have been severely curtailed or reversed. The
development state has been forced to ‘open up’ the developing economy to
powerful transnational capitalist interests. And even the advanced industrial
societies that can, of course, afford it, see their welfare states and welfare
rights cut back on the basis that the marketized individual should provide
for their own future.
In a little-known article written immediately after the Second World
War, Polanyi raised the possibility of ‘regional planning’ as a counter-
movement to the ‘universal capitalism’ as he called it (see Polanyi 1945).
This debate prefigures the development of the EU and current discussions
on regionalism as a counter to or expression of globalization. While recog-
nizing explicitly that ‘regionalism is not a panacea’ (Polanyi 1945: 89),
Polanyi did see the potential of new forms of capitalism and socialism
after the cataclysm, and the collapse of totalitarian ideologies would
inevitably take on a regional form. Eastern Europe, for Polanyi, would over-
come ‘intolerant nationalism’ and ‘petty sovereignties’, those ‘inevitable
by-products of a market-economy in a region of racially mixed settlements’
(1945: 88). Britain, in the post-war period, was ‘breaking the taboo on non-
interference with industry’ as the country ‘left the atmosphere of liberal
capitalism, free competition, the Gold Standard, and all of the other names
under which a market society are hallowed’ (Polanyi 1945: 90). Only the
US, in post-war hegemonic mode, remained committed to the Utopian
strategy of ‘universal capitalism’. These thoughts resonate today as a
European alternative to the US model of free market capitalism is debated
and different forms of regionalism are articulated in the West, the East and
across the South.
After drafting The Great Transformation in 1939–40, as the cold war began
and his ideas fell on deaf ears, Polanyi turned to the study of pre-capitalist
societies. He articulates a three-fold model of economic integration which,
over and above its merits as anthropology, serves to show there is more to
human life than the market. In non-market economics the two main forms
of economic integration are, for Polanyi, reciprocity and redistribution,
usually in combination. Reciprocity mainly operates within family and
kinship networks and is crucial to family production and subsistence.
Redistribution ‘obtains within a group to the extent to which the allocation
of goods . . . takes place by virtue of custom, law, or active central decision’
(Polanyi 1957: 153). Land and labour are integrated into the economy
through the norms of reciprocity and redistribution. Sometimes one or other
model may prevail and exchange through barter may also play a role. It is
only at a specific point in history though that ‘exchange becomes the eco-
nomic relationship, with the market as the economic institution’ (Polanyi
1957: 169). Market and exchange become co-extensive, with the market the
sole locus of exchange and, in Polanyi’s words, where ‘economic life is
reducible to acts of exchange all embodied in markets’ (Polanyi 1957: 169).
 Contestation 37
1111 However, that it was not always so means, in terms of contestation, that
2 ‘another world is possible’. It is only Western ethnocentrism that could
3 imagine other human worlds were not possible. Other world-views and
4 cosmologies exist that are opposed or quite independent of what Polanyi
5 called ‘our obsolete market mentality’ (Polanyi 1957). Market sovereignty
6 is daily contested by social action based on reciprocity. Even ‘actually existing
7 capitalism’ recognizes that the market could not exist without trust and
8 shared norms of reciprocity. Those expelled from the market society through
9 the various forms of social exclusion characteristic of global capitalism (see
1011 Munck 2002) also revert to reciprocity and redistribution in order to survive.
1 These norms are imbued with moral-ethical principles at odds with those
2 of the ‘market mentality’. Sustainable economic cultures are being built
3111 today seeking ecological sustainability and based on social solidarity. The
4 pre-capitalist and today’s non-capitalist worlds show to what extent the
5 society as market is a recent and quite limited human innovation.
6 Against all forms of economic determinism and the ‘class reductionism’
7 of classical socialism, Polanyi stresses that social class is not always deter-
8 minant. This critique resonates with the contemporary transition towards
9 ‘new’ social movements mobilized around non-class issues. For Polanyi, ‘class
20111 interests offer only a limited explanation of long-run movements in society.
1 The fate of classes is more frequently determined by the needs of society
2 than the fate of society is determined by the needs of classes’ (Polanyi
3 2001: 159). Certainly, Polanyi recognized the essential role played by class
4 interests in social change but he refuses a narrow class logic: ‘There is no
5 magic in class interest which would secure to members of one class the
6 support of members of other classes’ (Polanyi 2001: 160). This is particu-
7 larly the case in times of social crisis – ‘those critical phases of history, when
8 a civilisation has broken down or is passing through a transformation’
9 (Polanyi 2001: 163) – when new options for society are being debated, some-
30111 times in extremely short periods of time. In this dramatic situation no narrow
1 class interest can well defend one’s own class interest: ‘Unless the alterna-
2 tive to the social setup is a plunge into utter destruction, no crudely selfish
3 class interest can maintain itself in the lead’ (Polanyi 2001: 163). These are
4 precisely the types of consideration lying behind current concerns with
35 ‘global governance’ from above and they should inform any articulation of
6 ‘good globalization’ from below.
7 The critique of economism implicit in Polanyi’s work also has a contem-
8 porary ring, as when he stresses the ‘cultural’ element in social dislocation
9 and resistance. A cataclysmic event such as the Industrial Revolution in the
40111 nineteenth century and the ‘Globalization Revolution’ today are, in Polanyi’s
1 words, ‘economic earthquakes’ that transform the lives of vast multitudes
2 of peoples. But, ‘Actually, of course [argues Polanyi], a social calamity is
3 primarily a cultural phenomenon that can be measured by income figures
4 of population statistics’ (Polanyi 2001: 164). When peoples are dispossessed
45111 of their traditional means of livelihood, when customs and ways of life are
38 Contestation
disrupted and ‘alien’ cultural values are imposed, this affects the very way
in which people ascribe meaning to their condition. So, argues Polanyi, ‘not
economic exploitations, as often assumed, but the disintegration of the
cultural environment of the victim is then the cause of the degradation’
(Polanyi 2001: 164, emphasis added). While fully cognizant of the role of
social classes in ‘the great transformation’ and with an acute interest in the
working class and its forms of organization, Polanyi articulated a quasi-
Gramscian notion of the need to provide societal leadership, or what Gramsci
called ‘hegemony’.
Does, then, a classical Marxist understanding of how the working class
develops and struggles for socialism have no relevance under the ‘new
capitalism’ and globalization? A response could start from the distinction
drawn by Beverley Silver (2003) between ‘Marx-type’ and ‘Polanyi-type’
forms of labour unrest. The ‘new international division of labour’ in the
1960s and 1970s had led to the forging of an industrial working class in
many parts of the ‘developing’ world. They were much like Marx’s prole-
tariat created by the Industrial Revolution. Today, new working classes are
being created by the ‘new capitalism’ and they will form trade unions or
similar associations and probably develop class interests. But, there are also
Polanyi-type forms of unrest emerging across the globalized world, these
being defined by Silver as:

backlash resistances to the spread of a global self-regulating market,

particularly by working classes that are being unmade by global
economic transformations as well as by those workers who had bene-
fited from established social compacts that are being abandoned from
above.
(Silver 2003: 20)

So, for example, the blue-collar workers in the West displaced by the shift
of investment to cheaper labour locations, or those affected by the collapse
of manufacturing and other sectors typical of the ‘old’ capitalism would
engage in defensive and even reactionary labour struggles.
More broadly, this distinction between different types of reactions to
globalization confirms the point made by Gill, that ‘some of today’s counter-
movements involve attempts to reassert democratisation, whereas others are
highly reactionary: the neoliberal globalization tendency is being challenged
in complex ways’ (Gill 2003: 10). It is precisely the Polanyi problematic
that allows us to grasp the complexity and tensions between the different
reactions to globalization. An example would be the various forms taken by
the ‘new localisms’ that can be extremely reactionary (backward-looking) or
progressive, sometimes at the same time. Whether it is anti-immigrant
ideologies in post-colonial France, or the so-called Patriot movement in the
US, the struggle against the impact of the self-regulating market and the
onward march of globalization can easily take a reactionary form that seeks
 Contestation 39
1111 a reversion to exclusionary social patterns identified as the source of stability
2 and social cohesion. Whether reactionary or progressive, it is important to
3 recognize the growing contemporary importance of struggles against dispos-
4 session by the expansion of the ‘free market’. David Harvey argues coherently,
5 that ‘struggles against accumulation by dispossession were considered irrel-
6 evant’ (Harvey 2003: 171) by most Marxists, and that the anti-globalization
7 movement today ‘must acknowledge accumulation by dispossession as the
8 primary contradiction to be confronted’ (Harvey 2003: 177). A modernist
9 Eurocentric Marxism finds it difficult to acknowledge the effectiveness, or
1011 even legitimacy, of struggles against globalization that are not recognizably
1 socialist. The Polanyi problematic, on the other hand, is well equipped to
2 understand the way in which the counter-movement against economic liber-
3111 alism is ‘a spontaneous reaction’ against ‘a threat to the human and natural
4 components of the social fabric’, expressing ‘an urge on the part of a great
5 variety of people, to press for some sort of protection’ (Polanyi 2001: 186).
6
7
8
9
20111
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3
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9
30111
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45111
3 Transnational social
movements
From the First International to
the World Social Forum

The concept of transnationalism, according to Michael Clarke, ‘is difficult

to place with any precision in international theory. In itself, it certainly does
not constitute a theory; it is rather a term which recognizes a phenomenon
or perhaps a trend in world politics’ (Clarke 1985: 146). This imprecision
I take to be an advantage for the purpose of this chapter so we do not read
backwards into history from the perspective of globalism as a social theory,
nor do we take the internationalism of the First International as our guiding
light. Instead, we simply examine transnational social movements which, in
their own organization and aims, transcended national boundaries. The first
section of this chapter deals with the origins of internationalism in the
European labour movement. Why did this emerge? What were its limita-
tions? And, above all, why did the spirit of internationalism die so abruptly
as the European powers lined up for the Great War? The second section
takes up the story of the communist internationalists who came to the fore
after 1917. What did this ‘proletarian internationalism’ actually represent
in practice? Was there a less Eurocentric orientation towards the colonial
revolution? The third section takes up the colonial and post-colonial situa-
tions from the perspective of transnationalism. Could nationalist movements
also be internationalist? How did anti-imperialism influence the new
social movements of the late 1960s? Finally, we turn to what I call the
‘contemporary cosmopolitans’. What exactly is this ‘global civil society’ they
take as a foundation for cosmopolitan transnationalism? In terms of global
contestation is this movement not essentially Eurocentric?

European internationalists
While the nineteenth century is generally read as the century of nation-
alism, there is another tendency, namely internationalism, making its
presence felt from 1875 onwards. From that date until the close of the
century, 130 international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) were
formed, with the numbers formed between 1900 and the outbreak of the
First World War in 1914 rising to a staggering 304 (Lyons 1963: 14). So
while this period may end with the outbreak of national chauvinism and an
 Transnational social movements 41
1111 inter-imperialist war, there was also a developing sense of international coop-
2 eration, not least in labour and socialist circles. As Eric Hobsbawm puts it:
3 ‘Internationalism is an integral part of bourgeois liberalism and progress in
4 the nineteenth century’ (Hobsbawm 1988: 3). The question then arises as
5 to whether internationalism is a discourse linked to a general theory of social
6 evolution as part of international development, or whether there is a specific-
7 ally labour or working-class variant of it.
8 The creation of the working class and of the early labour movement was,
9 in essence, internationalist for the simple reason that the era of the nation-
1011 state had not yet dawned. The mid-nineteenth century was a period of
1 extensive and intensive labour movements (some 40 million workers
2 migrated from Europe alone) both overseas and between neighbouring
3111 European countries. The trade union form of organization was quite expli-
4 citly internationalist not only because many of its leaders were formed
5 through internationalism, but also because any form of nationalism would
6 be as divisive as gender, religious or racial divides. Michael Forman puts it
7 most simply: ‘As a class, the proletariat had to be internationalist to achieve
8 its political and social goals, because the basis of its very existence as a class
9 was an international system’ (Forman 1998: 47). Even labour support for
20111 the democratic republic was based on an internationalist rather than a narrow
1 nationalist logic.
2 The first wave of labour internationalism in the mid-nineteenth century
3 had various facets. At one level this early trade union internationalism was
4 a simple response to the use by employers of overseas workers to undermine
5 strikes and thwart trade union organization. To this defensive motivation
6 we can add the socialist ideal of the emancipation of global labour and the
7
democratic ideal of national self-determination. Pragmatism and idealism
8
could often go hand in hand in the development of labour organization
9
and ideologies. But another contradiction lay in the fact that this early inter-
30111
nationalism required, if it was to be successful, the formation of strong
1
2 national trade union movements. To some extent, then, the very success of
3 the early internationalism would lead to alternative national poles of attrac-
4 tion for the incipient working-class movements and its members.
35 An underlying trend in the 1875–1914 period we have been concerned
6 with is precisely the ‘nationalization’ or national integration of the working
7 class across Western Europe. Capitalist development of a national infrastruc-
8 ture and national-state formation led to a progressive, if uneven, incorp-
9 oration of the working class. As Linden puts it: ‘in the transitional phase
40111 between 1870 and 1900 we thus see a decline of the possibilities for an
1 effective old style working class internationalism’ (Linden 2003: 19). Thus,
2 the very success in creating strong and viable national labour movements
3 removed some of the urgency from the internationalism of the previous era.
4 Working-class integration in the key European nation-states such as France,
45111 Germany and Britain may have strengthened the respective labour and
42 Transnational social movements
socialist movements but at the same time it undermined the internation-
alism that had played such a crucial role in the making of the European
labour movements.
To refer to this first wave of internationalism as European is at one level
a truism given Europe was a geographic reality, but it also leads us to the
question of Eurocentrism, which has a very direct and contemporary rele-
vance. First of all we should recognize with Samir Amin that Eurocentrism
is not ‘simply the sum of the prejudices, errors and blunders of Westerners
with respect to other peoples. If that were the case, it would only be one
of the banal forms of ethnocentrism shared by all peoples of all times’ (Amin
1989: 104). Rather, we need to conceive of Eurocentrism as the totalizing
and enduring dominant paradigm of Western social science. It is a world-
view that dominates through the creation of its Others (such as the ‘Orient’)
and even when it is challenged, as in most national liberation movements
that took a ‘Western’ model for granted. It is inextricably bound up with
imperialism, colonialism and racism which it has often helped underpin
with pseudo-scientific notions of modernization and progress.
The recent post-colonial theory bid to ‘provincialize Europe’ (Chakrabarty
2000) is much more than a narrow form of intellectual nationalism and nor
is it a simple cultural relativism. It certainly does not seek to substitute
Enlightenment rationalism with some form of irrationalism or mysticism.
It involves a properly decentred historical contextualizing of Europe in its
full and contradictory history of modernity and imperialism, unravelling
the narratives and highlighting contestation. As Kenyan novelist Ngugiwa
Thiong’o puts it by ‘moving the centre’ we can move towards an effective
and liberating ‘decolonization of the mind’ (Thiong’o 1981). The critique
of Eurocentrism thus plays a key role in building any global movement for
contestation and liberation. The displacement of Western knowledge claims
and creates the conditions for new forms of knowledge and action that are
not subsumed by the myth of the West.
Where Eurocentrism is most apparent, in the socialist and labour move-
ment, is in relation to the colonial question. This is the field where
internationalism is weakest and whatever the contradictions of Marx’s period
of influence, under the Second International a frankly colonialist policy was
pursued. As Fritjof Tichelman, historian of the colonial policies of European
social democracy, concludes, ‘The general idea was that after the socialist
revolution in Europe, the backward peoples would be liberated from
capitalist exploitation’ (Tichelman 1988: 91). Behind the pacifist and
humanitarian banners lay an openly racist attitude towards the colonialized
peoples. While Europe’s social democrats sought to prevent war at home
over international disputes in relation to colonial expansion, their concern
with the peoples of the colonies was mainly to ‘civilize’ them. The language
of ‘backwardness’ and ‘barbarism’ tripped easily off the tongue of the
European socialist of the era who saw it as their mission to ‘educate and
civilize’.
 Transnational social movements 43
1111 Already in 1896 Eduard Bernstein, the leading intellectual of German
2 social democracy, had declared in relation to an anti-colonial revolt in Turkey
3 that ‘we will oppose certain methods through which the savages are subdued,
4 we will not question their being subdued and the rights of civilization
5 upheld’ (Bernstein 1978: 49). Bernstein quite consistently argued that the
6 Marx and Engels slogan of workers having no fatherland would have to be
7 modified. As the European workers became fully enfranchised citizens and
8 began to participate in the civil life of ‘their’ nations, so they could share
9 in the nation’s destiny. Henceforth, declared Bernstein, ‘internationalism
1011 [would] not prevent the safeguarding of national interests’ (Bernstein 1978:
1 21). Where this would be done most assiduously would be in relation to
2 colonial expansion where the ‘social-imperialist’ policy adopted even envis-
3111 aged the possession of colonies by European countries after the achievement
4 of socialism.
5 In organizational terms Europe’s internationalists came together in the
6 First International formed in 1864 and then the Second International that
7 was formed in 1889. The International Working Men’s Association or First
8 International was conceptualized in a London pub between English trade
9 unionists and French visiting delegates to the Great Exhibition, with the
20111 rationale being more ‘economic’ than political. It was essentially an instru-
1
ment to build strike solidarity across national frontiers and in this task it
2
soon established its effectiveness. It was also successful in overcoming
3
national or cultural differences such as those between the Walloons and
4
Flemish in the Belgian section. In 1866 the International launched a coordin-
5
6 ated campaign in Europe and in North America in pursuit of the eight-hour
7 day, which demonstrated transnationalism in practice. Stevis argues that the
8 First International was quite like today’s ecological organizations: ‘within
9 limited means it engaged in cross-border activism, promoted the formation
30111 of labor organizations, had significant ideological prestige and impact, and
1 put the idea of labor internationalism on labor’s agenda’ (Stevis 1998: 56).
2 A new chapter in labour transnationalism opens with the formation of
3 mass-based socialist parties in Western Europe in the 1880s. The Second
4 International was formed in 1889 with internationalism as a key theme,
35 demonstrated not least in the International May Day and International
6 Women’s Day demonstrations. Trade unionism began to grow rapidly in
7 the 1900s and by 1910 there were 28 different international trade union
8 secretariats organizing specific trades (e.g. builders, engineers, miners, trans-
9 port workers, etc.) across national boundaries (Lyons 1963: 157). While the
40111 Second International had a much more solid social base than the First, its
1 objectives were, in some ways, more limited, at least in terms of its com-
2 mitment to internationalism. It organized national socialist political parties
3 and not the more ecumenical support the First sought. Its international-
4 ism was geared specifically to achieving some political harmonization
45111 across national frontiers around socialist principles. It sought the reform of
44 Transnational social movements
capitalism within national boundaries and not the world revolution that the
First International preached and practised.
In his broad history of the West European left in the twentieth century,
Donald Sassoon concludes that for the leaders of the Second International
in 1914:

Internationalism was just a word, not a key component of a coherent

strategic line . . . Their understanding of international affairs was
minimal. Their internationalism was a façade, not in the sense that they
were opportunists as the Leninists believed, but in the sense that they
did not imbue it with any strategic content.
(Sassoon 1996: 29)

Nevertheless, the first wave of internationalism in Western Europe did have

a lasting effect and created an historic memory of considerable importance.
The machinery of international cooperation would be rebuilt and the
European labour movement eventually came out of the world wars more
unified and coherent in its outlook than ever.
Internationalism arose in the mid-nineteenth century at least partly in
response to the broad socio-economic and political transformations of the
era. Capitalism was spreading across the globe and the nation-states of the
centre were consolidating. The ‘universal interdependence of nations’ this
process generated needed to be matched by what The Communist Manifesto
of 1848 called the ‘universal interdependence of peoples’. The theory and
practice of internationalism had real roots and universal political goals
such as place, equality and democracy were widely shared across national
boundaries. As Alejandro Colás puts it: ‘internationalism becomes both
cause and consequence of the expansion of civil society’ (Colás 2002: 57)
during this era. International solidarity between peoples had material
roots but the principles of internationalism also had real material effects, such
as in undermining employers’ efforts to divide the working class along
national lines.

Communist internationalists
In the wake of European social democracy’s succumbing to nationalism in
the ‘Great’ or inter-imperialist war, a new radical, combative internation-
alist communist movement was born. From its inception the beleaguered
Soviet state understood that it had to extend its revolution or perish. As
Fred Halliday puts it: ‘At the moment of coming to power in October 1917
the Bolshevik leadership was convinced that it was both possible and oblig-
atory for the revolutionary regime to do all it could to promote revolution
on a world scale’ (Halliday 1999: 103). In 1919 the Bolsheviks established
the Third (or Communist) International which saw itself as the general
headquarters of a global revolution. From 1919 to 1921 this policy was
 Transnational social movements 45
1111 pursued aggressively but afterwards a period of ‘capitalist co-existence’ with
2 the capitalist countries began to prevail. Until its dramatic dissolution in
3 1943 the Communist International was to dominate the ebbs and flows of
4 global revolution.
5 The First Congress of the Comintern (as it became known) held in 1919
6 was quite classically Eurocentric in terms of how it viewed world revolu-
7 tion. In terms reminiscent of the Second International with its frankly
8 pro-colonialist views, the First Congress declared that:
9
1011 The emancipation of the colonies is possible only in conjunction with
1 the emancipation of the metropolitan working class. The workers and
2 peasants [of the colonial world] will gain the opportunity of independent
3111 existence only when the workers of England and France have overthrown
4 Lloyd-George and Clemenceau and take state power into their own
5 hands.
6 (cited in Claudin 1975: 246)
7
8 This may well have been a strategic calculation rather than a reflection of
9 Eurocentric bias but it nonetheless postponed the spread of revolution in
20111 the East. This strongly European orientation would only be partly redressed
1 by the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920.
2 As the revolutionary wave in the West subsided, Lenin and the other
3
Bolshevik leaders realized that they must tap into the anti-imperialist poten-
4
tial of the East. The First Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku
5
in 1920 signalled the start of a more global Bolshevik orientation. However,
6
the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1921 was decidedly ‘European’ in
7
8 its flavour. While the Fourth Congress in 1922 declared that ‘the Communist
9 International supports every national revolutionary movement against imper-
30111 ialism’, at the Fifth Congress of 1924 delegate Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known
1 as Ho Chi Minh) could declare that ‘Comrades have not thoroughly grasped
2 the idea that the destiny of the world proletariat . . . is closely bound up
3 with the destiny of the oppressed classes in the colonies’ (cited Munck 1986:
4 93). The tension between a lingering Eurocentrism and a more radical under-
35 standing of internationalism was always present in the Third International.
6 The 1930s saw the biggest test for internationalism since the First World
7 War break out as Spain’s Civil War became internationalized as part of the
8 build-up to the Second World War. In 1936 General Franco led a section
9 of the Spanish army in a coup d’état against the Republican government. An
40111 international democratic and anti-fascist movement began to mobilize to
1 defend the Republic, backed politically and materially by the Soviet Union.
2 This was to be a small encounter building up to the next ‘great war’, this
3 time between imperialist powers but also between democracy and fascism.
4 It also showed the limits as well as the very real significance and impact
45111 of official and unofficial forms of ‘proletarian internationalism’. Inspired by
46 Transnational social movements
the discourse of communist internationalism, but drawing also on earlier
democratic and even religious modalities of solidarity, internationalist con-
sciousness penetrated deeply into the working classes of Western Europe
and further afield.
One such group of workers who participated actively in defence of
democracy and in pursuit of communism in Spain were the miners of Wales.
As Hywell Francis writes, ‘There is a long and enduring, if sometimes
tenuous and disjointed, internationalist tradition in Wales, closely associ-
ated with religious and political dissent, with its roots reaching back to
the Enlightenment of eighteenth century Europe’ (Francis 1984: 28). There
were pacifist, idealist and religious dissenter incarnations but after 1917
the proletarian pro-Soviet variant became dominant. In the early part of
the century racism and jingoism were as prevalent in Wales as elsewhere
in the British Empire and pro-war sentiment in 1914–18 was high. However,
communism and a certain type of cosmopolitanism (through Cardiff being
an international port) gained ground and became a hegemonic force in parts
of the labour movement, especially among the South Wales miners. Prole-
tarian internationalism was sometimes more than a ritual incantation at
party congresses.
In Ireland a more complex and contradictory form of internationalism
was mobilizing in relation to the conflict in Spain. On the one hand social-
ists, communists and republicans (IRA) were quick to gather their forces to
play a part in the International Brigades fighting to defend the Spanish
Republic. But, on the other hand, conservatives and the Catholic Church
organized equally fervently to create the Irish Brigade under General O’Duffy
to come to the aid of General Franco and the forces of Catholicism which
they saw to be under threat by atheistic communism. This case is particu-
larly interesting, not only because internationalism is not seen as the sole
preserve of the left, but also because of the complexities it revealed within
Irish nationalism. Some Catholic Republicans went to fight for Franco,
others joined Frank Ryan in the International Brigades, but yet others stayed
at home on the basis that true internationalism meant fighting against
British imperialism in the traditional manner.
Russia’s Stalin at the time described Spain as ‘the common cause of
all advanced and progressive humankind’ but many progressive individuals
and organizations around the world believed that the Soviet Union betrayed
the Spanish Revolution. Most researchers agree that Soviet aid to the Spanish
Republic was measured rather than unconditional and was ultimately
dictated by the state interests of the Soviet Union. However, it is also recog-
nized that without the military aid supplied by the Soviet Union no amount
of International Brigades would have been able to defend democracy in Spain.
Whatever ambiguities the international solidarity of the first ‘worker’s state’
displayed, the events in Spain from 1936 to 1939 were to prove a trial run
for a great global conflagration between the forces of democracy and the
growing fascist tide.
 Transnational social movements 47
1111 With the Chinese Revolution achieving victory in 1949, the ‘turn to the
2 East’ announced in Lenin’s era came to fruition. Part of the great wave
3 created by communist internationalism, the Chinese revolution also led,
4 however, to a resurgence of nationalism within communist discourse. For
5 the Chinese communists, the true internationalists were necessarily
6 nationalist in the developing world. For Fernando Claudin, coming from an
7 orthodox pro-Soviet communist tradition:
8
9 The Chinese revolution was the second great act of the world revolu-
1011 tionary process which began in 1917. It was the first major defeat of
1 imperialism – and, importantly, of American imperialism – after the
2 Second World War. It gave the struggle of the colonial and semi-colonial
3111 peoples for national and social liberation their present impetus.
4 (Claudin 1975: 574)
5
6 The Eurocentric conception of internationalism had been replaced by a
7 conception of ‘world revolution’ in which the ‘world of the Country’ (the
8 developing world) would encircle the ‘city’ (the West).
9 During the 1950s the Chinese regime’s vision of internationalism was
20111 muted by its subordination to the Soviet Union as the senior communist
1 power. However, by the early 1960s China was articulating a new form of
2 ‘internationalism’ based on independence from the Soviet Union on a basic-
3 ally nationalist platform. While a handful of states and parties around the
4 world took up a ‘Chinese’ line, the Chinese communists rejected classic
5 notions of the ‘export’ of revolution. The virtual annihilation of its main
6 ally in Asia, the Communist Party of Indonesia (see Törnquist 1984), in
7 the mid-1960s effectively tempered its hegemonic ambitions. Halliday
8 refers to China’s subsequent ‘rhetorical and often self-defeating militancy
9 abroad’ (Halliday 1999: 115) that led to a real crisis of internationalism and
30111 a conservative turn both at home and abroad.
1 For independent communist states such as Yugoslavia, ‘internationalism’
2 was simply a mask for Soviet domination. The Comintern’s successor, the
3 weak Cominform set up in 1947, was to epitomize the new internation-
4 alism as code word for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. This perverse
35 form of internationalism was used to justify the Soviet military interven-
6 tions in Hungary (1956) and in Czechoslovakia (1968). It was not until the
7 late 1970s, with the emergence of ‘Eurocommunism’, that major Western
8 communist parties broke with ‘proletarian internationalism’. What had
9 begun with Marx and Engels as a symbol of global workers’ solidarity
40111 had become a shabby and authoritarian remnant of the Stalinist era that
1 effectively buried the dream of democratic socialism.
2 The 1980s were to see the final decline of a by now impoverished and
3 traditional Soviet-style internationalism. Already the war between Vietnam
4 and Cambodia, which began in 1979, had caused a serious credibility gap
45111 for the official doctrine of proletarian internationalism. The subsequent
48 Transnational social movements
Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan undermined even further any
notion that ‘internationalism’ was a progressive foreign policy. By 1987
Mikhail Gorbachev was effectively burying official Soviet doctrine on the
matter and replacing it with a bland argument around the common inter-
ests of humanity. When communism fell across Eastern Europe in 1989
following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, according to Fred Halliday:

one of the concepts most openly rejected and reviled, along with central
planning, the emancipation of women and the abolition of religion, was
‘internationalism’: it had become a term associated both with the legit-
imation of Soviet domination and with the expenditure of large sums
of money on politically motivated solidarity with other, mainly Third
World, communist states.
(Halliday 2000: 87)

Communist internationalism from the perspective of today’s ‘global

justice movement’ may seem a quaint, if rather authoritarian, relic of a
bygone era. But the October Revolution of 1917 did transform the world
and inaugurated an era of global transformation only closed or reversed in
the 1990s. From an anti-communist perspective – and that can take a left
wing as well as a right wing connotation – proletarian internationalism
meant simply a servile adherence to the twists and turns of Soviet foreign
policy. Yet, in the 1920s and 1930s in every corner of the world a new
internationalist consciousness arose, that took its highest expression in the
solidarity movement in support of the Spanish Republic. The Chinese
Revolution for its part – notwithstanding all its terrible costs and later
evolution – did overcome the Eurocentrism of an earlier social-democratic
version of internationalism. It was the anti-colonial revolution and post-
colonialism that would generate the next active phase of internationalism
in the 1960s.

Colonialism and contestation

When the Western capitalist countries subjected wide swathes of Africa,
Asia and Latin America to colonial rule (of various types) one could have
expected some internationalist reaction in solidarity and protest. As we have
seen that was often muted in the socialist (or social democratic) tradition
and fairly instrumental in the communist movement, being tied as it was
to the state interests of the Soviet Union. There was an older liberal tradi-
tion that motivated the anti-slavery movement and which did express
solidarity with the democratic advances of the colonized peoples. What I
want to address here is what Wallerstein refers to as ‘those rarer but very
important moments when nationalism mobilizes significant anti-systemic
sentiment, and thereby affects the politics of the entire world economy’
 Transnational social movements 49
1111 (Wallerstein 1984: 130). To what extent is this nationalist anti-colonial
2 revolt then part of internationalism and a precursor of the ‘global justice’
3 movement?
4 The success of the Chinese revolutionary nationalist/communist revolt in
5 1949 had an impact in the majority world every bit as powerful as the effect
6 Russia’s October 1917 revolution had in Europe. As already mentioned
7 above, China did not seek to build an international communist movement
8 to compete with the Soviet aligned bloc, but its impact was nonetheless
9 considerable. The Chinese Revolution, and its image overseas in particular,
1011 centred the rural over the urban dimension, an approach later codified in a
1 conception of the world revolution in which the ‘countryside’ (the Third
2 World) encircled the ‘city’ (the advanced capitalist countries). After the
3111 Chinese split with Russia in 1956 Robert Young notes that, ‘much of
4 the Third World allied itself ideologically with China’ (Young 2001: 188).
5 The watchwords were ‘struggle from below’ as against bureaucratism,
6 agrarian revolution instead of corrupted trade unions and, above all, an
7 emphasis on the armed struggle against imperialism and against all forms
8 of compromise and ‘sell outs’.
9 The Bandung Conference of 1955 brought together many of the leaders
20111 of the national liberation struggles of the post-war era: Nehru from India,
1 Sukarno from Indonesia, Nkrumah from Ghana, Nasser from Egypt and Tito
2 from Yugoslavia. Abdel-Malek called it ‘the first blueprint for solidarity
3 between the colonized countries’ (Abdel-Malek 1981: 108). Bandung was
4 the first post-colonial international(ist) gathering and it marked a move
5 towards self-determination on a global scale through greater economic and
6 cultural ties between, principally, the countries of Africa and Asia. As Robert
7 Young notes, Bandung thus represented a first move towards ‘an independent
8 transcontinental political consciousness in Africa and Asia’ (Young 2001:
9 191). Some one hundred years after the first stirrings of internationalism in
30111 the narrow confines of Western Europe, a new internationalism was being
1 felt across vast continental reaches of the majority world.
2 Internationalism had long marked the national liberation movements of
3 Africa. The concept of Pan-Africanism traced its roots back to the 1920s
4 and 1930s, linked to the négritude movement, but by the 1940s it was
35 espousing a broad socialist modernization project for an independent
6 Africa. As a transnational ideology Pan-Africanism had some roots in the
7 international communist tradition, but it was also heavily influenced by
8 the North American, and especially Caribbean, early Black consciousness
9 movements. While nowadays this movement is often criticized for its ‘essen-
40111 tialism’ (négritude) and its acceptance of a basically European idea of ‘Africa’,
1 it was undoubtedly a grand transnationalist liberatory project in its era.
2 Leaders of the first wave of national liberation movements such as Nkrumah
3 were well aware of the limitations of nationalism and held to this trans-
4 national project as a means to create an ‘African socialism’ which was neither
45111 ‘communist’ nor ‘tribalist’.
50 Transnational social movements
In the contemporary post-colonial theoretical tradition Frantz Fanon, the
Martinique-born voice of the Algerian Revolution is still, and perhaps
increasingly, influential. Influenced by both the communist and négritude
movements, Fanon articulated a powerful and original analysis of the anti-
colonial revolt. While probably best known for his seemingly positive
attitude towards revolutionary violence, Fanon also took a very sceptical view
towards nationalism, much as Guevara (another non-native revolutionary
leader) did. For Fanon, ‘if nationalism is not made explicit, if it is not
enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation . . . it leads up a blind
alley’ (Fanon 1969: 165). The victory of the national liberation movements
was a necessary step in the global struggle against oppression but Fanon
was conscious of, and warned about, how: ‘From nationalism we have passed
to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism’ (Fanon 1969:
125). Algeria’s subsequent tragic history certainly does not belie Fanon.
Vietnam’s success against US imperialism in 1975 was to have a marked
regional impact. The war in Vietnam had radicalized a whole layer of youth
in the West, but it also created strong guerrilla movements in neighbour-
ing Laos and Cambodia. But when in late 1978 the socialist Republic of
Vietnam invaded neighbouring Democratic Kampuchea and then the People’s
Republic of China invaded Vietnam, the whole concept of ‘proletarian
internationalism’ was brought into question. Of course, this was on top of
the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1967, also
conducted in the name of ‘proletarian internationalism’. The influential
German newspaper Der Spiegel (26 February 1979) declared with some satis-
faction that: ‘Karl Marx wanted to make his supporters into cosmopolitans.
“The workers have no fatherland”. But when they get into power, the Reds
very soon become flaming patriots, mostly at the expense of neighbouring
countries’ (cited in Munck 1986: 140).
Undoubtedly these events sounded the death knell of ‘proletarian inter-
nationalism’ but also of the ideology of Thirdworldism as a progressive
option. It was a largely futile exercise that some Western Marxists engaged
in during 1979 seeking a progressive side in the fraternal Indo-China wars.
In fact, Vietnam had quite astutely managed to combine its drive to ‘inter-
nationalize’ the Indo-Chinese revolution it espoused, while at the same time
seeking to defend the national frontiers of the Vietnamese nation-state.
Kampucheans, not surprisingly, saw ‘proletarian internationalism’ as a cover
for Vietnamese imperialist claims over their revolution. In their perversion
of internationalism this series of events showed the very real limits of anti-
colonial contestation, even when this was dressed in the language of classic
communism.
The undoubted voice of the post-colonial revolt on behalf of the exploited
peoples of the world (as against the ‘working class’) was Ernesto ‘Che’
Guevara who was killed in Bolivia in 1967. The previous year, in 1966,
Havana had hosted the Tricontinental Conference of Solidarity of the People
of Africa, Asia and Latin America that brought the spirit of Bandung up
 Transnational social movements 51
1111 to date and generalized it. Post-colonialism had come of age and inter-
2 nationalism was at the heart of the new movement and its whole discourse.
3 Guevara’s message to the Tricontinental famously called for the creation of
4 ‘Two, Three, Many Vietnams’ with that ongoing struggle playing a pivotal
5 role. This, according to Young:
6
7 constitutes the first moment where a general internationalist counter-
8 hegemonic position was elaborated by a dispossessed subject of imperial-
9 ism, powerfully and persuasively invoking others throughout the three
1011 continents to open up new fronts of resistance, in a global strategy of
1 guerrilla warfare conceived from an internationalist perspective.
2 (Young 2001: 213)
3111
4 The Tricontinental and OSPAAL (Afro-Asian Latin American People’s
5 Solidarity Organization), the organization it spawned, did not last long but
6 organizations represented there were to take power in the ex-Portuguese
7 colonies in Africa and Indo-China in the mid-1970s, and, later, in Nicaragua
8 (1979) and Zimbabwe (1980). In Cuba, itself a lever for revolutionary strug-
9 gles abroad, it marked a phase of practical internationalism not seen since
20111 the early days of the Russian Revolution. Guevara’s own early expeditions
1 to the Congo and later Bolivia were followed by more organic interventions
2 organized by the Cuban state directly. Support for the Nicaraguan upsurge
3 against the dictator Somoza was crucial. The prolonged intervention in
4 Angola on behalf of the MPLA government against Chinese/US-backed rebel
5 Jonas Savimbi was important in its own right but also because of the effect
6 it had on South Africa’s apartheid regime within whose sphere of influence
7 it fell. When democratic majority rule was established in South Africa in
8 1991, Cuba had played a key role.
9 The struggle against colonialism and for national emancipation played
30111 a critical role in the Western revolt of 1968 and the emergence of the
1 ‘new’ social movements. The Paris May worker/student revolt, the Prague
2 Spring against bureaucratic socialism and the Vietnamese Tet offensive
3 against US imperialism all occurred in 1968. This conjunction made it a
4 truly world revolution – albeit a failed one – and internationalism was at
35 its very core. Marcel van der Linden refers to the wave of protest that swept
6 across the world from 1966 to 1976 as a set of interconnected movements
7 that represented ‘one great transnational cycle of contention’ (Linden 2003:
8 117). Much coverage of ‘1968’ has been Eurocentric, focusing on Western
9 students and workers, but the true significance of these events in world
40111 historical terms can only be grasped in relation to a very active phase of the
1 anti-colonial revolution and its internationalist repercussions.
2 Five years after the Tet offensive of 1968 the most powerful military
3 machine ever invented was forced to withdraw from a small, peripheral
4 and poor nation of the South. North–South relations would never be the
45111 same again. This despite the fact that the end of the cycle in the mid-1970s
52 Transnational social movements
was marked by the demise of the Cultural Revolution in China, the inter-
socialist wars in Indo-China, and the failure of guerrilla opposition
movements in Latin America and elsewhere. While the anti-colonial revolt
was very much part of an ‘old’ nation-building social movement, it took on
a world-historic significance in this phase and imparted many key charac-
teristics to the ‘new’ social movements in the West. Contemporary concerns
with the South, with the depredations of globalism and with cultural
autonomy, all have their roots in the mid- to late 1960s with ‘1968’ very
much a dress rehearsal for events such as Seattle 1999 and the whole anti-
globalization wave.
In the era of the global justice movement from 1999 onwards the rele-
vance of anti-colonialist contestation seems less important. Iraqi resistance
following the US-led invasion of that country in 2003 is less obviously
attractive to the young anti-globalization protestors than the image of Che
was in 1968 to their student counterparts of that year. For Hardt and Negri
in their influential and passionate Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000) ‘subal-
tern nationalism’ may have once been progressive, serving as a defence against
an aggressive world order and an instrument for revolution, but that is no
longer the case today. For Hardt and Negri, post-colonial theorists fail to
recognize adequately the real enemy today, and ‘national liberation and
national sovereignty are not just powerless against this [new] global capitalist
hierarchy but themselves contribute to its organization and functioning’
(Hardt and Negri 2000: 133). We shall return to this key issue but for now
we take this position as a given.

Contemporary cosmopolitanism
Contemporary cosmopolitanism has something in common, I would argue,
with that upsurge of European internationalism in the period leading up
to the First World War (see section on European internationalists, above).
While the number of INGOs grew steadily in the post-Second World War
era, there was a remarkable acceleration in the 1990s coinciding with the
end of the cold war and the rise of globalization. It is estimated that around
one quarter of the INGOs in existence at the turn of the century had been
formed in the 1990s, and over one third of the members of these associa-
tions had joined during the 1990s (Anheier et al. 2001: 4). These inter-
national organizations were to provide much of the structural backbone to
what became known in the 1990s as ‘global civil society’, a concept we shall
now seek to define.
The authoritative Global Civil Society Yearbook sought to define its key
concept thus in the first issue: ‘global civil society is the sphere of ideas,
values, institutions, organizations, networks, and individuals located between
the family, the state and the market and operating beyond the confines of
national societies, politics and economics’ (Anheier et al. 2001: 17). While
 Transnational social movements 53
1111 recognizing that ‘global civil society’ (GCS) is an essentially normative concept
2 its politics are seen as too contested to allow for an agreed more specified
3 definition. Thus, GCS came into being in a rather fuzzy or open definition,
4 eminently contestable and contested. At the very least we must distinguish
5 between a liberal rendering of GCS that sees it as part of the drive to push
6 back the state, and a more radical (in a traditional sense) version where GCS
7 operates as a vehicle for popular empowerment and for the reform of political
8 institutions.
9 During the 1990s a range of academic observers and then international
1011 institutions began to develop the discourse of ‘global civil society’ as a com-
1 mon human good (see, for example, Commission of Global Governance
2 1995). As Jan Aart Scholte describes the process of civil society, it can be
3111 ‘global’ in at least four different ways. It may be on the basis of:
4
5 1 addressing transworld issues such as ‘global climate change’;
6 2 civic networks created through supraterritorial electronic means of
7 communication;
8 3 civic activity based on transnational organization (the NGOs);
9 4 Supraterritorial solidarity between social groups such as workers or
20111 women.
1 (Scholte 2000: 217–18)
2
3
In practice many of these ‘modalities’ of GCS may overlap but that is not
4
necessarily the case and not all ‘criteria’ need to be met conjointly for us to
5
witness GCS at work.
6
Then, of course, there are more or less radical inflections of the GCS
7
8 discourse. For radical observers such as Peter Waterman, global civil society
9 ‘means a non-capitalist/non-state, or anti-competitive/anti-hierarchical,
30111 sphere for democratic efforts, within and without the multiple existing
1 global terrains’ (Waterman 1998: 227). As an aspiration or as a project this
2 may well be laudable but it is not a practical policy perspective, nor is it
3 designed to be. So GCS as something to strive for, as Ghandi once referred
4 to democracy, is one thing but as an actually existing policy, it is another
35 thing. From a quite different perspective we have the 1995 report of the
6 Commission on Global Governance by the ‘good and the great’ of global-
7 ization with a human face for whom: ‘To be an effective instrument of
8 global governance in the modern world, the United Nations must . . . take
9 greater account of the emergence of global civil society’ (Commission on
40111 Global Governance 1995: 253). Here we see a quite openly instrumental
1 attitude towards GCS as something to be ‘taken account of’ by the global-
2 izers of the new capitalist order.
3 One particular way in which the GCS discourse has impacted the
4 anti-globalization movement has been as an underpinning for the notion
45111 of ‘globalization from below’. For Ronnie Lipschitz, one of the promoters
54 Transnational social movements
of GCS, ‘the growth of global civil society represents an on-going project
of civil society to reconstruct, re-imagine or re-map world politics’ (Lipschitz
1992: 391). The nation-state is being challenged ‘from below’ from this
perspective. GCS is seen, more or less, as a unified, coherent and purposeful
project with an unambiguously positive content. In challenging the ‘global-
ization from above’ project that currently prevails, GCS will bring, according
to this view, more and better democracy. Of course, in practice, it is clear
that the divisions of gender, ethnicity, culture and religion, among others,
not to mention differences of political orientation, make the notion of a
unified GCS look distinctly utopian and unrealistic.
However, the fact that the concept of GCS has acquired such prominence
in both academic and policy circles in so short a time would indicate that
it must have some theoretical and/or political purchase in our rapidly
changing times. It has undoubtedly brought to the fore the question of the
‘democratic deficit’ in actually existing globalization. It has also acted as a
favourable terrain, albeit conflictual, for the development of non-state organ-
ization and social movement organizations in particular. In spite of its
undoubted conceptual slipperiness and ‘conceptual inflation’ by some, GCS
has captured some novel social and political transformations currently under
way. It is part of an internationalist grand vision to build a new global order
based on democracy, participation and the struggle for equality. As such
GCS is largely an enabling discourse.
From the prevailing liberal perspective GCS is ‘seen as a domain of consul-
tation and co-operative participation’ according to Alejandro Colás (Colás
2002: 155). Social and political transformation, from this optic, is neces-
sarily constrained by existing international social and political structures and
power relations. The political limitations of this perspective, from the stand-
point of radical social transformation, are thus clear. GCS works within
clearly delineated parameters, and it can be seen as the social or ‘unofficial’
wing of the ‘official’ capitalist globalization structures. It could thus be seen
as equally ‘top-down’ in spite of all the ‘bottom-up’ rhetoric within the
more radical reaches of GCS. To continue to promote GCS and urge social
movements to see themselves as part of GCS might appear as a co-optive
manoeuvre to tame rebellious movements of contestation.
For André Drainville global civil society is like a ‘cosmopolitan ghost’
created ‘by simultaneously pulverizing humanity into functional bits and
reassembling it into an abstract bearer of rights, responsibilities and moral-
ities’ (Drainville 2004: 22). The people, the multitude, the toiling masses,
all become reassembled and reconstructed as heat boxes in the construction
of ‘global civil society’. This GCS becomes an abstract – as in not grounded
or concrete – bearer of classic democratic rights and the ethics of liberal
internationalism. It may, of course, be ‘progressive’ in a generic or academic
sense, but what if GCS is simply a creation of neoliberal governance strategy:
‘a strategic site of decontextualization, occupied by a politically neutered
humanity’ (Drainville 2004: 22)?
 Transnational social movements 55
1111 A more specific problem with GCS as a concept is its ‘presentism’, that
2 is, an assumption that present-day observable phenomena are essentially
3 novel. Fred Halliday, for example, has challenged the notion that the ‘non-
4 state actors’ that create GCS are that new insofar as ‘the erosion of the
5 Westphalian system rests upon a contemporary optic and illusion’ (Halliday
6 2000: 27). In reality the new GCS actors can trace their heritage to long
7 before the Westphalian nation-state became dominant. Furthermore, the
8 history of internationalism, as we have seen, goes back far beyond the 1990s
9 when GCS came to operate as a seemingly novel paradigm of transnational
1011 social links. This presentism is, of course, not particular to the GCS liter-
1 ature and we saw towards the end of the twentieth century a whole range
2 of theoretical/political perspectives declaring in millenarian fashion the ‘end’
3111 of democracy, the nation-state and even history.
4 A further problem that needs to be addressed is the irredeemably
5 Eurocentric bias of much of the GCS literature. Thus, for John Keane, a
6 central writer in this tradition, ‘global civil society’ names ‘an old tendency
7 of local and regional civil societies to link up and to penetrate regions of
8 the Earth that had previously not known the ethics of civil society in the
9 modern European sense’ (Keane 2001: 28). It is an explicitly European
20111 Enlightenment version of democracy, civility, ethics and rationality that
1 underpins the notion of GCS. This cultural universalism is at odds with the
2 contemporary understanding of ‘cultural hybridity’ and the post-colonial
3 approach. It simply does not allow for diversity nor can it grasp the distinc-
4 tive paths to modernity across the globe. Eurocentrism is presented as
5 universalism and ‘Enlightenment man’ is the essential central actor in the
6 GCS project to ‘civilize’ globalization.
7 David Held and Anthony McGrew subtitle the concluding chapter of
8 their Globalization/Anti-Globalization ‘Towards Cosmopolitan Social Democ-
9 racy’ (2002). I think that more or less captures the ambition and the
30111 limitations of the ‘global civil society’ project. It is clearly, as I have argued
1 above, Eurocentric (or North Atlanticist) not only in its geographical remit
2 but also in its overall political orientation. It simply assumes a political
3 world where ‘rationality’ prevails or should prevail, and where cosmopoli-
4 tanism is a more virtuous political philosophy than nationalism. Of course,
35 there are many far worse political futures on the horizon than a globalized
6 European-style social democracy. Yet, if the ‘global civil society’ project is
7 to become truly global it will need to broaden out its scope to a horizon of
8 possibilities beyond the confines of social democracy, which remains essen-
9 tially a European political project.
40111 The parallel with the historical period leading up to the First World War
1 goes beyond a parallel upsurge in the numbers and influence of INGOs.
2 Nineteenth-century internationalism (1815–1914) was also based on a liberal
3 cosmopolitanism and a remarkable communications revolution (post and
4 telegraph). F.S. Lyons, though, in his remarkable history of this first wave
45111 internationalism, concludes that:
56 Transnational social movements
The internationalism of the few was no match for the nationalism of
the multitude, and the essential sanity and tolerance of the tiny minority
consciously working towards the creation of a civilized world community
was inevitably drowned by the passionate hatreds which each succeeding
crisis called forth in greater measure as Europe reeled towards the
precipice.
(Lyons 1963: 309)

Today’s cosmopolitans sound very like these early enlightened and civilized
minorities fighting against the passions of the barbaric multitudes.
1111
2 4 The anti-globalization
3
4 movement
5
6 From Seattle (1999) to
7 the future
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 While many participants reject the label ‘anti-globalization’ movement, I
4 will retain it simply for presentational purposes insofar as that was how it
5 emerged in Seattle in 1999. Certainly, most of its supporters would prob-
6 ably now feel that they were presenting an alternative globalization project
7 and that they were not opposed to globalization per se. I will also use the
8 term restrictively to cover only the major street protests since Seattle aimed
9 against symbolic agents of globalization such as the WTO and older organ-
20111 izations such as the IMF and the World Bank. It thus excludes more formal
1 events such as the World Social Forum (see Chapter 5) and the myriad forms
2 of local social contestation (see Chapter 6).
3 This chapter begins with the protest events known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’
4 in late 1999 that effectively prevented the WTO from concluding its busi-
5 ness on that particular occasion. For many observers, analysts or participants
6 this was the ‘coming out’ party of the anti-globalization movement. But
7 what happened after the party? Did the unifying momentum of Seattle build
8 up or did divisions within and between the various interest groups prevail?
9 We follow the events at Genoa, Prague and Quebec City to explore the
30111 prospects and meaning of this post-Seattle movement. We then turn to a
1 quite different movement, the Zapatistas, part indigenous peasant revolt in
2 a remote part of Mexico, part star and inspiration of the Western anti-
3 globalization movement. Who are the Zapatistas? What is the significance
4 of this movement in terms of the broader anti-globalization movement?
35 Finally, I turn to the main interpretations of the Seattle/Zapatista trans-
6 national contestation movements. Are they simply a resurgence of traditional
7 anti-capitalism as one tendency argues? Or is there something new and
8 complex in the way in which the anti-globalization movement has captured
9 the discursive terrain and generated a social counter-movement against
40111 neoliberal globalization?
1
2 Coming out
3
4 Clearly the contestation of neoliberal globalization did not begin in the
45111 US city of Seattle in 1999: only a narrow North Atlanticism (today’s
58 The anti-globalization movement
Eurocentrism) could lead us to that conclusion. The first wave of global
protest began in the mid-1970s and focused on the austerity measures
adopted as part of the ‘structural adjustment’ programme of the IMF. This
was the ‘pre-globalization’ global re-structuring of international capitalism.
The so-called ‘debt crisis’ in the developing countries was its most visible
symptom. Reacting against it in, often spontaneous, strikes and protest
demonstrations, a social counter-movement began to take shape across the
Third and Second (socialist) worlds. Walton and Seddon in their history of
this phase of transnational popular protest recall that ‘between 1976 and
late 1992, some 146 incidents of protest occurred, reaching a peak from
1983 to 1985 and continuing to the present [1994] without alleviation’
(Walton and Seddon 1994: 42). While these protests were not, on the whole,
coordinated across national frontiers and nor was the opposition entirely
clear and consistent, they were clearly part of the direct pre-history to the
anti-globalization struggles of the 1990s.
The second wave of global popular protest that began in the 1990s was
increasingly more coordinated and organized, with much clearer political
targets now emerging. This was also a period of democratization across the
majority world and the post-authoritarian governments then emerging
allowed for greater space for the social counter-movements to organize. The
development of a transnational militant Islamic movement was one particular
facet of this period’s mobilization. In other developments the human rights,
environmental and women’s movements began to develop a much more
transnational agenda. The annual World Bank and IMF meetings began to
act as a focus for an emerging anti-globalization movement. In 1995, the
50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods agreement, which set up the World
Bank/IMF system, was marked by an active ‘Fifty Years Is Enough’
campaign. As Jackie Smith recounts: ‘Many of the older activists in Seattle
. . . traced their opposition back to the 1980s mobilization around Third
World debt and its relationship to conflict and economic justice in Central
America and other developing regions’ (Smith 2002: 210). The background
to Seattle was thus a global one and a rather ‘traditional’ anti-imperialism
was certainly a powerful motivating factor.
So there is a broad historical context that needs to be provided to make
sense of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 but there is also a very local labour
history that plays a key context-setting role. Contrary to the media images
of the incongruity of anarchists smashing windows in the genteel home
city of Boeing, Amazon.com and Starbucks: ‘Seattle is a city with a long
past of militant labor and anarchist actions’ (Levi and Olson 2000: 309).
This stretches back to the militant Seattle General Strike of 1919 and the
1934 West Coast dockers’ strikes. This region was a strong organizing base
for the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World), the anarcho-syndicalist
and internationalist ‘one big union’ of the early twentieth century. When
the US labour federation, the American Federation of Labor-Congress
of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), organized a big unionization drive
 The anti-globalization movement 59
1111 in the mid-1990s Seattle was to become one of the first ‘union cities’.
2 There have been major strikes at Seattle’s Boeing plants and the unions
3 have managed to break in to unionize at Microsoft and other software
4 companies.
5 One of the apparent ironies of the Battle of Seattle, write Levi and Olson,
6 ‘was the presence of the longshore workers who thrive on international trade,
7 at the forefront of actions directed at regulating international trade’ (Levi
8 and Olson 2000: 316). Yet if we take a long view of Seattle’s labour history
9 it is not odd at all to see a group of workers struggling in a militantly
1011 particularistic manner over their own conditions, while also seeking to
1 forward a broad social and environmental progressive agenda. Dockers have
2 often been seen as a traditional male/manual/militant occupational group
3111 but they have often, even naturally, taken up internationalism. There is no
4 need to romanticize the labour struggles of the longshore to understand that
5 they were well able to move from local to national to transnational forms
6 of labour solidarity. The threats they faced in the mid-1990s could lead to
7 a protectionist response but also to an internationalist strategy. That they
8 became part of the mass labour contingent which formed the backbone of
9 the mass events of Seattle shows that political agency still counts and can
20111 alter the course of political events.
1 The Battle of Seattle did not, of course, simply happen, it was organized
2 by clearly identifiable social and political organizations. One of the key
3 organizations was the People for Fair Trade (PFT) network of labour, trade
4 and environmental groups that had previously mobilized around NAFTA.
5 Symptomatic of the fluid globalization politics emerging, the PFT mobi-
6 lized in tandem with the ‘Network Opposed to the WTO’ (NO! WTO)
7 even though the latter aimed to ‘shut down’ the WTO, while the PFT was
8 seeking, rather, the incorporation of labour and environmental standards
9 into the WTO agreements. As Gillian Murphy puts it:
30111
1 By framing the issue as a critique of neoliberal trade policies rather than
2 an opposition to globalization per se, and by celebrating the diversity
3 of participants rather than pressing for conformity, the group advocated
4 creating an environment in Seattle that would enable it to attract the
35 maximum number of participants.
6 (Murphy 2004: 32)
7
8 Organized labour was also to the fore in the mainstream political arena and
9 as Ron Judd, one of the organizers, recounts: ‘What happened in Seattle
40111 was not an accident. For months labor led an effort to educate and inform
1 the community about the devastating impact of the WTO and its policies’
2 (cited Murphy 2004: 33).
3 Alongside the big battalions of labour and the mainstream environmental
4 groups such as the Sierra Club, a very different alternative mobilizing model
45111 was being implemented by fringe groups such as Direct Action Network
60 The anti-globalization movement
(DAN). This was a young movement, influenced by anarchism (of which
more later) and committed to direct action. Their aim was not to find ‘a
seat at the WTO table’ as the labour federation AFL-CIO wished to achieve,
but, rather, to mount a festival of resistance to the forces of global capitalism.
DAN invested in massive non-violent resistance training and the creation
of self-reliant ‘affinity groups’ of around a dozen members, not unlike the
old Communist traditional cells but without the secrecy. From this milieu
came the ‘shock troops’ who were committed to ‘Shut Down Seattle’. Though
shunned by the majority of trade unionists and mainstream environmental-
ists it was the innovative and energetic direct action tactics of these sectors
that in the streets of Seattle made the difference between symbolic protest
and actually influencing the management of globalization.
Finally, Seattle 1999, like all key episodes of contestation, was also a
‘happening’ to use a 1968 term. One of the most famous retrospective images
was the alliance between labour and environmentalists around the symbolic
issue or image of the sea turtle. The latter was the subject of a WTO ruling
that a US endangered species regulation that shrimps should be caught with
a device that excludes sea turtles was, in fact, an unfair trade barrier. Jeffrey
St Clair recalls how at Seattle he:

walked next to Brad Spann, a burly longshoreman from Tacoma, who

held up one of my favourite signs of the entire week: Teamsters and
Turtles – Together at Last! Brad winked at me and said ‘What the hell
do you think old Hoffa thinks of that?’
(St Clair 2000: 84)

But perhaps even more significant, the marchers dressed as sea turtles and
the union members took up an old Chilean Popular Unity era chant: ‘The
people united will never be defeated’. There was much at Seattle that was
part of the new battle against globalization with ‘new’ social movements
involved, but much that was part of a much older struggle for social justice.
In a sense the Battle of Seattle can be read as a conglomeration of images
and symbols. From the teamster/turtle allegory we can turn to French rural
leader José Bové handing out rounds of Roquefort cheese outside McDonald’s
to protest against US protectionist laws. But after a rousing speech against
Monsanto and GM foods, the crowds stormed McDonald’s and the battle
was on. As the police reacted and used vastly disproportionate force and
armour, some small groups of ‘direct action’ activists attacked symbolic
targets such as Starbucks. Another symbolic moment was when they were
met outside Nike and the Gap by members of Global Exchange, one of the
more mainstream counter-globalization groups, keen to protect the corpor-
ations and anxious for the police to arrive. But neither this nor the massed
ranks of ‘robocops’ and the National Guard could dampen the spirits of an
event that saw longshoremen and radical environmentalists engaging the
state to the sound of the Civil Rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome!’
 The anti-globalization movement 61
1111 When the dust had settled in Seattle after the great refusal of ‘global-
2 ization as we knew it’ what had changed? For one observer the achievements
3 included:
4
5 shutting down the opening ceremony, preventing President Clinton
6 from addressing the WTO delegates, turning the corporate press around
7 to focus on police brutality, and forcing the WTO to cancel its closing
8 ceremonies and adjourn without an agenda for the next international
9 meetings.
1011 (St Clair 2000: 91)
1
2 This was not, of course, the end of the WTO but its hegemonic role was
3111 seriously and very publicly contested. According to Nederveen Pieterse:
4
5 Seattle showed the lack of coherence among OECD governments and
6 the steep differences between them and governments in the South. It
7 showed the lack of preparation in the WTO organization and the govern-
8 ments backing it in the face of governmental and non-governmental
9 dissent. Perhaps most of all Seattle signalled the lack of democratic
20111 process in issues of worldwide importance.
1 (Pieterse 2000: 465)
2
3 In brief, the events of Seattle had brought the issue of ‘global governance’
4 to the fore; there would henceforth be ‘No Globalization without Repre-
5 sentation!’ as demanded at Seattle.
6 All moments of contestation also have an impact on their partici-
7 pants and in this sense the Battle of Seattle was truly a watershed. The anti-
8 globalization movement had made its mark, brought together disparate
9 social movements and created a myth-making event in Seattle. At the level
30111 of social relationships and networks its impact was enduring. While main-
1 stream US labour returned to its protectionist ways (on China’s entry to the
2 WTO, for example) many activists and local unions had been impacted.
3 Boundaries had been broken and new modalities of struggle shaped up and
4 tested. Above all, the events of Seattle culminated in a long process – going
35 back to the anti-IMF protests of the 1980s – through which ‘globalization’
6 emerged as the unifying focus for a whole series of struggles around the
7 environment, indigenous people’s rights, jobs and people’s livelihoods, and
8 a general feeling of cultural alienation.
9 While Seattle 1999 was, indeed, a turning point in the struggle between
40111 the architects of globalization and the great counter-movement against it,
1 we should also be clear about its limitations. The first one surrounds the
2 popular image of Seattle 1999 in terms of the ‘Teamsters and Turtles unite’
3 slogan signifying a new labour-environmentalist alliance. The reality was
4 more prosaic, as Gould et al. recount, insofar as: ‘At no time in Seattle did
45111 a unified rhetoric connecting labor and environment emerge from either
62 The anti-globalization movement
camp. That unifying rhetoric was provided by the organizations focused
specifically on corporate globalization such as Public Interest Trade Watch
and Global Exchange’ (Gould et al. 2004: 94). The social movements repre-
senting labour and the environment did not naturally coalesce and, in fact,
the ideological or discursive bonding element was provided by third
parties that were seeking to build a common platform against neoliberal
globalization. The ‘blue-green’ alliance has, in brief, still to be built.
The other main structural issue arising out of Seattle 1999 was the gap
it exposed between the anti-globalization and the anti-racist movements in
the US. As Betita Martínez asks:

In the vast acreage of published analysis about the splendid victory over
the WTO last November 29–December 3, it is almost impossible to
find anyone wondering why the forty to fifty thousand demonstrators
were overwhelmingly Anglo. How can that be, when the WTO’s main
victims around the world are people of color?
(Martínez 2000: 141)

The Colors of Resistance Network gathered together much of the critical

discourse around ‘race’/ethnicity within what was billed a ‘movement of
movements’. Anti-racist activists in North America were keen to take
globalization up as a key issue but also to ‘bring it back home’ and show
there were always the included and the excluded also within the imperialist
heartlands. A broader-based critique but not unrelated to this one is that
the anti-globalization movement ‘as we know it’ reflected mainly Northern
or affluent country concerns and not those of the majority world in terms
of the issues they took up and where they focused their energies.

Zapatistas
While the street festival and subsequent ‘carnival of repression’ at Seattle
in 1999 captured the imagination of the Western media, another revolt
against globalization was well under way in the México profundo (hidden
Mexico). On the first day of 1994 as NAFTA came into effect consolidating
globalizing regionalism, an obscure group called Ejército Zapatista de
Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army) took over some
small towns on the edge of the Lacandón rainforest in the southern Mexican
state of Chiapas. Was this a belated manifestation of the 1970s’ wave of
guerrilla movements in Latin America? Was it the start of a new wave
of indigenous revolts that would spread to other countries? Many on the
international left were encouraged to see the global retreat since the collapse
of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had at least halted in one particular corner of
the world. But at first, generally speaking, no one put too great an import-
ance on this revolt which seemed more a gasp from the past than a harbinger
of a new storm of popular revolt.
 The anti-globalization movement 63
1111 The Zapatistas (as they became known) were, at least in part, derived
2 from a small Marxist group that ‘went to the hills’ in the 1980s and coalesced
3 in the one hundred strong EZLN in 1983. In the early 1990s, however, it
4 began to take serious roots among the indigenous peoples – Tzeltal, Tzotzil
5 and Chil communities of Chiapas. As Subcomandante Marcos himself
6 recounts, from 1990 onwards the Zapatista rebel army ‘made itself bigger,
7 made itself more Indian, and definitively contaminated itself with commu-
8 nitarian forms, including indigenous cultural forms’ (cited in Gilly 1998:
9 300). Government repression, electoral fraud and failure to deal with a
1011 pressing land question created the conditions for rebellion. Despite the
1 unfavourable international conditions the will to revolt spread and the
2 Zapatistas initiated a wide-ranging consulta (consultation) that resulted in
3111 legitimacy across the population when the revolt was eventually launched
4 as the year 1994 began.
5 In the mid-1990s – as neoliberal globalization was getting into its stride
6 – the Zapatista revolt achieved a certain ‘re-enchanting of the world’ (Lowy
7 1998). Another world seemed possible, history had not come to an end.
8 What this led to was a remarkable flourishing of a transnational Zapatista
9 solidarity network that is our main interest in this chapter. What was
20111 most remarkable – and most interesting to the theme of globalization and
1 contestation – was the speed at which this solidarity movement spread
2 and consolidated its activities. Harry Cleaver, a radical US economist at the
3 heart of this movement, described how ‘it took six years to build the anti-
4 war in the 60s, it took 6 months to build the anti-war movement in the
5 Gulf War, and it took six days to build an anti-Mexican government move-
6 ment in 1994’ (cited Olesen 2005: 184). The transnational Zapatista support
7 network went through various phases.
8 During 1994 the transnational Zapatista solidarity network began to take
9 shape around the activity of international activists who arrived in Mexico
30111 to protest against the state repression of the Zapatista revolt. In 1995,
1 according to Thomas Olesen’s meticulous history:
2
3 the transnational Zapatista solidarity network starts to develop an infra-
4 structure of its own. The very intense activities in this phase are mainly
35 aimed at monitoring the human rights situation in Chiapas following
6 the Mexican army’s invasion of EZLN territory in February 1995.
7 (Olesen 2005: 3)
8
9 In subsequent years the network becomes intensely politicized as Zapatismo
40111 becomes, to some extent, a transnational (albeit mainly virtual) social move-
1 ment. There were also intense phases of more traditional ‘solidarity’ work
2 as, for example, subsequent to the Acteal massacre in December 1997. There
3 have also been fairly quiescent periods and, more recently, a move by the
4 Zapatistas to regain some control over their rather disparate international
45111 support networks.
64 The anti-globalization movement
Taking a broad overview of the Zapatista transnational solidarity network
Olesen is undoubtedly correct to conclude that ‘the interest and attraction
generated by the EZLN beyond its national borders is matched by no other
movement in the post-Cold War period’ (Olesen 2005: 2). It certainly
appears to vindicate, in many ways, the more positive reading of globaliza-
tion as a process that has made the world more interconnected physically,
socially, politically and culturally. The very ‘local’ indigenous world of
Chiapas became a ‘global’ issue and had an impact, directly and through
its ‘demonstration effect’ across many other places. There was no ‘centre’ to
this transnational solidarity network as there was with the ‘old’ inter-
nationalism and the network mode of capitalist development was truly
reflected in the mode its contestation took. Its impact in creating and
providing a beacon of hope for the anti-globalization movement has been
considerable.
This remarkable Internet movement or network of transnational solidarity
was not without its critics on the left. Judith Hellman advanced a coherent
critique in the Socialist Register 2000 where she argued that: ‘virtual Chiapas
holds a seductive attraction for disenchanted and discouraged people on the
left that is fundamentally different than the appeal of the struggles underway
in the real Chiapas’ (Hellman 1999: 175). There, on the ground, not everyone
is a ‘Zapatista’, there are divisions and weaknesses, and realpolitik does not
always reflect the seductive political rhetoric of Subcomandante Marcos
online. Nor is ‘civil society’ such a homogeneous and progressive milieu as
the international supporters of Zapatismo might believe. There are roman-
ticized, essentialized views of indigenous peoples permeating the virtual
Zapatismo, and vicarious participation through transnational solidarity may
well act as a roadblock to grassroots activism according to this critical
perspective.
In the Socialist Register of 2001 Justin Paulson, an active member of the
Zapatista solidarity movement, responded to Hellman. While accepting that
the second-hand and third-hand transmission of events on the ground on
the Internet can lead to a certain ‘flattening’ and loss of complexity, overall:
‘It may well be that the ability of Zapatismo to stir up support around the
world has less to do with oversimplification of the message, and much more
to do with the vitality and resonance of the message itself’ (Paulson 2000:
286). To take up Zapatismo outside of Chiapas is not to avoid struggle but
to internationalize it. The struggle for dignidad (much more than ‘dignity’)
by the Zapatistas is a universal one and its generalizing across the world is
thus positive. While some may well be seeking to ‘revolt vicariously’ by
taking up Zapatismo many more visit Chiapas or learn about it in detail
and become informed participants in World War IV (a Zapatista term)
between neoliberalism and a dignified existence.
This exchange was extremely interesting – over and beyond the specifics
raised – because it problematized the new global solidarity modalities.
 The anti-globalization movement 65
1111 My own view is that ‘international Zapatismo’ is no more homogeneous than
2 civil society ‘on the ground’ in Chiapas. There are undoubtedly tendencies
3 imbued with Eurocentrism who see the revolt in Chiapas in terms of the
4 ‘noble savage’ (Rousseau) who will redeem comfortable corrupt Westerners.
5 There is more than a whiff in this milieu of Jean Paul Sartre’s Foreword
6 to Frantz Fanon’s classic The Wretched of the Earth where he argued that ‘to
7 shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an
8 oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remains a dead
9 man and a free man’ (Sartre 1969: 19). Nevertheless, the Zapatista revolt
1011 has had an overwhelmingly positive resonance across the world, teaching and
1 energizing a whole generation of young activists that another world is,
2 indeed, possible. The dangers of ‘armchair activism’ seemed more than out-
3111 weighed by the exemplary courage and originality of the Zapatistas.
4 This is not the place to analyse the full political significance of the
5 Zapatista movement as case study of contestation in the era of globalization
6 but we can draw some general conclusions to strengthen the arguments of
7 this chapter. A dominant interpretation of Zapatismo is that it is ‘the first
8 informational guerrilla movement’ (Castells 2004: 82) or as the security appa-
9 ratus would put it, a precursor of ‘social netwar . . . likely to involve battles
20111 for public opinion and for media access and coverage, at local through global
1
levels’ (Ronfeldt and Arquilla 1998: 22). There is a popular image lying
2
behind these interpretations – from a left and a conservative position alike
3
– that Subcomandante Marcos sat with a laptop in the middle of a jungle
4
consciously reaching out through the Internet to construct international soli-
5
6 darity. In practice, the Zapatista Internet presence was mediated through
7 support structures as we saw above.
8 In reality very little of what became the international phenomenon of
9 Zapatismo, especially after Seattle, was part and parcel of how the revolt
30111 occurred in practice. Marcos and his colleagues went into the revolt expecting
1 either that the masses would hear their call to war or ignore them. In the
2 event, civil society, across Mexico and then further afield, did not support
3 armed revolt but did support the Zapatistas’ aims and sought to shelter
4 them from repression. The new way of ‘making revolution’ without seizing
35 power was forced on them and was not a far-sighted aim there from the
6 very start. Nor was the motivation of the indigenous campesinos that new
7 and, rather, resounded with the fervour of ‘primitive rebels’ (Hobsbawm
8 1959) across time. Thus, Comandante David when asked in 1996 about the
9 motives for the uprising said that:
40111
1 Indians have never lived like human beings . . . but the moment came
2 when those very same indigenous pueblos started to make themselves
3 aware of their reality by means of reflection and analysis, and also by
4 studying the Word of God, thus they began to wake up.
45111 (cited in Gilly 1998: 306)
66 The anti-globalization movement
The Zapatistas have been variously called the ‘first post-communist rebel-
lion’ (Fuentes 1994), the ‘first informational guerrilla movement’ (Castells
2004: 82) or, more prosaically, ‘armed democrats’ (Touraine 2001). They
are, in a sense, all of these and none of these. The Zapatista rebellion is, for
a start, simply incomprehensible outside of the context of the history of the
Mexican Revolution. When an indigenous army marched in to take over
San Cristóbal a las Casas in 1994 it immediately and automatically trig-
gered an historical folk memory of Villa and Zapata’s peasant armies
marching into Mexico City in 1914. This points to the crucial role of dis-
course in constructing and understanding Zapatismo. As Adolfo Gilly puts
it: ‘The EZLN has inaugurated a debate about discourse, within discourse
and through discourse’ (Gilly 1998: 312). The mobilization of the Zapatistas
and their construction as an international pole of attraction is, fundamen-
tally, a discursive construction. Gilly refers to the Zapatistas as a ‘singular
combination of ancient myths, mobilized communities, clandestine army,
golpes de escena, literary resources, and political initiatives’ (Gilly 1998: 312).
It is a unique and complex concatenation of social forces, ideas and polit-
ical circumstances that produced Zapatismo. It is not a new transnational
model for revolution in the era of globalization. The international com-
munication of the Zapatista revolt is, however, the most significant single
episode of global solidarity since the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
For that to have occurred Zapatismo must have touched certain chords, in
particular creating a general ‘democratic equivalent’ that served to create
common ground for various diverse struggles against globalization. In this
sense, Zapatismo is seeking neither to reconstruct a mythical past nor pursue
a totally utopian future. Rather, Zapatismo has clearly articulated Ya Basta!
(enough) to neoliberal globalization and its failure to create a modernization
process characterized by social inclusion and basic human dignity.

After the party

If Seattle 1999 was the culmination of the first wave of anti-globalization
protest what happened after the ‘coming out party’ as it has been called?
In its immediate aftermath many observers spoke of the ‘Seattle effect’
whether hoping or fearing that the example set by the protestors at Seattle
would spread far and wide. The Financial Times of London, not usually given
to hyperbole, declared that:

Protests now threaten to halt the global momentum of open markets

and free capital, stopping the World Trade Organization’s effort to
launch a new trade round for a second time in Doha, Qatar, in November
[2001]. The world’s most powerful politicians are in retreat, with-
drawing to remote spots such as Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies
for the next Group of Eight meeting.
(Harding 2001: 2)
 The anti-globalization movement 67
1111 For the two years after the Battle of Seattle similar coalitions and similar
2 protests were built and mounted in several Western countries. The first big
3 ‘anti-capitalist’ event to follow Seattle was the April 2000 anti-IMF/World
4 Bank meeting in Washington DC. While it was smaller than Seattle it
5 was some ten times bigger than the 1998 demonstration against the same
6 international economic institutions. In Millau (France) a gathering in June
7 focused on the trial of local farmers for destroying a McDonald’s outlet but
8 it also served to generalize the anti-globalization Seattle wave across Western
9 Europe. Another event in Prague in September 2000 targeting the IMF and
1011 World Bank in joint session brought the once-communist Eastern Europe
1 into the sphere of influence of the ‘Seattle effect’. After Seattle, as Jeffrey
2 Ayres puts it: ‘the contest over what “globalization meant” – between the
3111 struggle to convince a wider set of domestic and international audiences of
4 the supposed benefits or downsides of neoliberalism – grew intense’ (Ayres
5 2004: 22).
6 The protests in Québec City in April 2001 were not directed against the
7 WTO or IMF/World Bank but, rather, the proposed Free Trade Area of the
8 Americas (FTAA). Some 60,000 activists, including many trade unionists,
9 were involved in what turned out to be the most significant protests
20111 since Seattle. The summit of heads of states was called to promote what was
1 billed as the world’s biggest free trade area running from Anchorage,
2 Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It was a lynchpin in the project to ‘regionalize’
3 global neoliberalism across the Americas and neutralize nationalist or region-
4 alist tendencies in Latin America. Organized by the Réseau Québecois
5 d’Intégration Contintentale and by Common Frontiers (Canada), a People’s
6 Summit of the Americas was to provide a blend of teach-ins, festivities and
7 serious protest action. The state responded with a hitherto unprecedented
8 security operation to insulate the heads of states from the people’s carnival.
9 Inevitably there were confrontations between security forces and protestors
30111 committed to ‘direct action’ which, as happened in Seattle, could actually
1 halt proceedings. What is probably most significant about Québec 2001 was
2 the extent to which it was ‘made’ internationally by the anti-globalization
3 network. As André Drainville notes: ‘For three days in April, Québec
4 City was part of what Saskia Sassen calls the “world-wide grid of strategic
35 places”. Like other places in that grid, it was a contested terrain’ (Drainville
6 2001: 33).
7 The next link in the anti-globalization chain of events occurred in Genoa
8 in July 2001 against the rich nations’ G8 summit meeting. Genoa repre-
9 sented a quantitative and qualitative shift in the pattern of anti-globalization
40111 protests. For one thing, over 300,000 people took part in the main protest
1 events marking a high-point in terms of mass participation. Also, the types
2 of participants and motives were broader than hitherto. Essentially Genoa
3 was as much a protest about the right wing Berlusconi government as it
4 was about global issues. The bridging between international and national
45111 dimensions was also demonstrated by the opening salvo of the protest that
68 The anti-globalization movement
was led by Genoa’s immigrant communities in pursuit of freedom of move-
ment. The Genoa Social Forum represented a critical bridge between the
global and the local. It brought together representatives of ATTAC (Associ-
ation pour le Tex Tobin pour l’Aide aux Citoyen (Association for the Taxation
of Financial Transactions for the Benefit of Citizens)) with a ‘reformist’
project to control international financial markets and those such as the
Network for Global Rights committed to more ‘local’ issues such as employ-
ment, immigration and the environment. While before the Genoa events
mobilizations in Italy had occurred through fairly ad hoc coordination, the
Genoa G8 protests initiated a pattern of local social forums forming to create
stable and locally ‘grounded’ formal political structures.
After the Siege of Genoa there was a period of introspection within the
anti-globalization movement. The death of a protestor at Genoa and the
wider repressive reaction of the Italian state brought the question of violence
and non-violence to the fore. Some such as the Black Bloc (which traced its
discourse back to the Italian Autonomía Operaia of the 1970s) asked why
protestors should limit their responses to a violent state. Others argued that:

The very notion of ‘militancy’ is problematic. To pretend that it is more

militant to mask up and throw cobblestones at police than it is to main-
tain a peaceful blockade despite beatings, horse charges, and persistent
attacks with pepper spray is deluded.
(Notes from Nowhere 2003: 323)

The anti-globalization movement became less visible, the biggest rebellion

since 1968 seemed to be running out of steam. A not unsympathetic news-
paper report asked ‘was its brief stretch in the spotlight – two years after
surfacing in Seattle and to its apotheosis at Genoa – simply a passing fad,
and its youthful mainly middle-class army of protestors yesterday’s children?’
(Bygrave 2002: 1).
In the US a number of organizations, such as the Anti-Capitalist
Convergence (ACC), Mobilization for Social Justice and others, were plan-
ning and organizing since the start of 2001 for a Seattle II in September in
Washington DC. As one report put it: ‘A perfect storm of dissent was
brewing that involved organized labor, the anti-globalization movement,
anarchists, NGOs, anti-capitalists and the Latin America solidarity move-
ment’ (Munson 2004: 3). Then the attacks on the Twin Towers of New
York and on the Pentagon occurred on 11 September and these plans were
derailed. Subsequent US wars of aggression against Afghanistan (2002) and
Iraq (2003) led to a resurgence of a broad peace movement. And no one,
particularly in the imperialist heartland itself, was keen to mobilize in ways
that could be identified as ‘pro-terrorist’. Some fevered imaginations even
conflated ‘9/11’ and the anti-globalization movement.
As the ‘easy’ phase of globalization gave way to a new era of imperialist
wars, the anti-globalization movement began to disintegrate for a while but
 The anti-globalization movement 69
1111 then it also was reconfigured. Not least, this period saw the emergence of
2 the largest pro-peace (and partly anti-imperialist) mobilizations ever. In early
3 2003 massive and coordinated street demonstrations across Europe protested
4 against the war being prepared by the US and Britain. Millions of concerned
5 citizens came together across the world against war and for a better society.
6 Other tendencies were also at work forcing a reorganization of the anti-
7 globalization movement. In the North a certain exhaustion and wariness
8 had set in but in the South a new wave of anti-globalization protest was
9 beginning. This, in part, led to the mobilization of large developing
1011 countries to block the Cancún WTO negotiations in 2003. And, from above
1 as it were, the international economic organizations began to co-opt the
2 anti-globalization protestors.
3111 What happened in the US, according to Chuck Munson (an analyst
4 activist), is that: ‘The 9/11 attacks and the rise in patriotism and jingoism
5 afterwards scared some activists into withdrawing from visible activism.
6 Many core movement organizers were burned out from two and three years
7 of organizing summit protests’ (Munson 2004: 5). The ‘internal’ reasons
8 pointing towards a certain exhaustion of this phase were several. Like
9 most social movements, once the first successful mobilizing phase was over,
20111 divisions came to the fore. The issue of violence was divisive as was the
1 target of the movement (capitalism?, globalization?, imperialism?, some-
2 thing else?). Above all, the travelling activist model involving young people
3 going from one big summit demonstration to another had natural limits.
4 For many early activists the time was coming to ‘ground’ the movement
5 more in local communities and actually build an alternative future.
6 The other side of the coin was a decisive move by the international
7 economic organizations themselves to co-opt the anti-globalization protests,
8 or at least divert their energies. The World Bank had, since the mid-1990s,
9 involved feminist and environmentalist activists and intellectuals in its work.
30111 After Seattle the other international economic organizations saw the benefit
1 of co-opting the NGOs in particular. As the World Economic Forum maga-
2 zine put it in 2003: ‘At present one wing of the movement – mainstream
3 NGOs – seeks to change the shape of globalization through open dialogue
4 with governments, multi-lateral organizations and companies’ (Hay 2003:
35 2). Communication was seen as more effective than confrontation. Again,
6 this is an inherent tendency in social movements – the problem of success,
7 as it were – that when it is effective in pursuing its aims some of these, or
8 sections of the movement, will be ‘mainstreamed’.
9 Clearly, if we take a global rather than a Northern perspective a post-
40111 ‘9/11’ picture of exhaustion/co-option is not valid at all. Even the Battle of
1 Seattle was set in the context of highly significant protests in many parts
2 of the majority world. In Latin America in particular the year 2000 was
3 marked by a series of diverse but convergent social struggles all focusing
4 ultimately on neoliberal globalization. These were qualitatively different
45111 from the wave of anti-IMF protests in the 1980s in that clear and viable
70 The anti-globalization movement
alternatives were being posed. This wave of contestation culminated in the
World Social Forum held in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre
in January 2001 (see Chapter Five). The Forum was only partly a culmina-
tion of the ‘Seattle effect’ and its internationalization, because it was also
a result of social and political struggles across Latin America, often nation-
alist in character and with a strong, more traditional anti-imperialist
motivation.
When the WTO held its ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico, in
September 2003 it was the large countries of the South that would block
progress on a trade deal rather than the protestors outside. A deal had seemed
possible with the rich countries reducing agricultural protectionism and the
South agreeing more lax foreign investment and competition regulation as
well as trade ‘facilitation’. In the event, led by Brazil (where President Lula
of the Worker’s Party was in power), the so-called Group of 22 including
Argentina, India and South Africa came together to reject US pressure to
sign up to a deal. While the collapse of talks in Cancún did not translate
into immediate failure for the Doha round of trade negotiations the original
1 January 2005 deadline for completion was no longer possible.

Anti-capitalism?
Critical theorizing of the anti-globalization movement from Seattle 1999 to
Genoa 2001 was inevitably going to be a contested terrain. One decisive
and influential move in the discursive terrain came from those who believed
it was (or should be) an ‘anti-capitalist’ movement. Globalize Resistance in
particular began to redefine the rather inchoate anti-globalization movement
emerging out of Seattle 1999 as an anti-capitalist one. It was as if the fall
of the Berlin Wall a decade earlier and the collapse of ‘actually existing
socialism’ were now behind us. After a decade-long hiatus the old working-
class struggle against capitalism was back on course. Looking at the agenda
of the anti-globalization movement Chris Harman declares that: ‘There is
no other choice if you really want to understand these things than to return
to Marx’ (Harman 2000: 25). The movement needed to forge an alliance
with the organized working class, the only social force capable of challenging
capitalism and providing an alternative.
Certainly in Britain the anti-capitalist perspective has taken root not least
through the efforts of the party-building politics of the Socialist Workers
Party (SWP) reflected in Globalize Resistance. Many young anti-globalization
activists do also look towards the organized Marxist currents in the move-
ment for analysis. The Marxist critique of capitalism is at least coherent and
can explain how the corporations, the environment and world debt are inter-
related for example. However, in seeking to impose the anti-capitalist frame
through definitional fiat as it were, this interpretation suffers from various
drawbacks. It is rather economistic in its ‘classical’ focus on production and
it is a form of ‘class essentialism’ to privilege the working class as sole global
 The anti-globalization movement 71
1111 agent for social transformation. Politically it is also rather disabling insofar
2 as it has a patronizing attitude towards the ‘infantile leftism’ of the more
3 anarchist currents and it is opportunistic towards the liberal currents that
4 it uses as cover but does not grant any long-term viability to.
5 Within the broad reaches of the anti-globalization movement itself
6 there was also a diffuse, but nonetheless real, feeling that anarchism was
7 in the air once again as a political philosophy and guide to action. For
8 Barbara Epstein it is more of an anarchist ‘sensibility’ than a fully fledged
9 anarchist programme we are talking about. For the young activists of the
1011 anti-globalization movement anarchism is about a decentralized organiza-
1 tional structure (the famous ‘affinity groups’) and ‘it also means egali-
2 tarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority, especially that
3111 of the state; and commitment to living according to one’s values’ (Epstein
4 2001: 1). Taken in this broad libertarian anti-authoritarian sense, today’s
5 anarchism is closely related to the ‘spirit of 1968’. The new social move-
6 ments, the discovery of ‘identity’ and the rejection of authority of that period
7 is being revived and reinvented by today’s activists who, to some extent,
8 see themselves as anarchists. For Epstein, ‘anarchism is the dominant perspec-
9 tive within the [anti-globalization] movement’ (Epstein 2001: 1). But it is
20111 a particular neo-anarchism which, for example, could describe the practical
1 politics of those such as Naomi Klein among others with their emphasis on
2 the movement as a ‘swarm of mosquitoes’. It is an anarchism that takes
3 on board much of the Marxist analysis of the nature of global capitalism
4
and the anti-corporate movement’s emphasis on consumerism. These are not
5
Bakuninists or Proudhonists with clear ideological and programmatic
6
commitments. There is not, for example, an absolute commitment to a
7
leaderless movement whatever the rhetoric. What the anarchist current
8
9 contributes is a great spirit of activism and a moral critique of globaliza-
30111 tion. The limits of anarchism today would lie mainly in the limitations of
1 a strategy based on telling the truth to power.
2 Among the ‘organic intellectuals’ of the ‘network of networks’ such as
3 Naomi Klein, for example, the anti-corporatist dimension of the movement
4 was perhaps stressed most, to the extent that she refers to the ‘anti-corporate
35 movement’ on the whole. The emphasis here is not on capitalism as a
6 mode of production or imperialism as worldwide capitalist domination but,
7 rather, on the multinational corporations themselves. Klein fully accepts
8 ‘the limits of brand-based politics’ but argues that:
9
40111 eliminating the inequalities at the heart of free-market globalization
1 seems a daunting task for most of us mortals. On the other hand,
2 focusing on a Nike or a Shell and possibly changing the behaviour of
3 one multinational can open an important door into this complicated
4 and challenging political arena.
45111 (Klein 2002: 421)
72 The anti-globalization movement
Certainly, in the lead up to Seattle 1999 a major section of the organizers
were part of the anti-corporate movement in the US.
Anti-corporate discourses have a long tradition in the US going back to
Vance Packard’s 1950s’ classic The Hidden Persuaders (Packard 1957) through
to David Korten’s best-selling When Corporations Rule the World (Korten
1995). While this represents a certain home-grown US radicalism and
provides a set of popular themes for the anti-globalization movement it is
by no means a dominant strand. Noreen Hertz, for example, writes of how
‘across the world corporations manipulate and pressure governments . . . and
how corporations in many parts of the world are taking over from the state
responsibility for everything’ (Hertz 2001: back cover). This is very much
along the lines of Polanyi’s critique of commodification as the free market
encroaches on the social domain. However, few anti-globalization movement
activists would agree with Hertz’s political conclusion that: ‘My argument
is not intended to be anti-capitalist. Capitalism is clearly the best system
for generating wealth, and free trade and open capital markets have brought
unprecedented economic growth to most if not all of the world’ (Hertz 2001:
13). Even if this is a quite extreme contradiction between anti-globalization
and not being anti-capitalist it does signal the ambiguity at the heart of
the broad range of counter-globalization movements.
One could also make a case that the anti-globalization movement was
the ‘second coming’ or the real internationalization of the ‘cultural’ revolt
of 1968. First of all we need to recognize with Buttel and Gould that ‘the
anti-corporate globalization movement has not been formed de novo, but has
drawn many of its adherents from the groups and networks associated with
previous social movements’ (Buttel and Gould 2004: 39). What happened
after 1968 was an unprecedented (since 1848) transnational wave of con-
testation. The traditional labour unions were revitalized and took up the
new politics of demanding something more than just a pay cheque. The
women’s movement flourished across the West as a second feminist wave
that has had a massive impact on gender relations still being felt today. The
revolt of students, and youth more generally, was also a direct product of
1968. The ecology and peace movements would also see a ‘take-off’ period
subsequent to 1968.
It is interesting that one of the first books to deal with the phenomenon
of Global Social Movements (Cohen and Rai 2000) chose to focus on the labour,
women’s, environmental and human rights/peace movements, all ‘children
of 1968’ in a manner of speaking. Like the rapid spread of revolutionary
ideas after 1968 today’s anti-globalization movement is clearly transnational,
if not global, in reach. While most of the activists were not, of course, even
born in 1968 many of the ‘organic intellectuals’ of the movement (for
example in the World Social Forum) are clearly from the ’68 generation.
The confluence of an old and a new ‘new left’ is helping to create consid-
erable advances in political creativity and relevance. As Hilary Wainwright
 The anti-globalization movement 73
1111 puts it: ‘Many of us ’68-ers of various hues for too long took for granted
2 what we considered to be a new left politics’ (Wainwright 2002: 1). While
3 many of the ‘1968’ themes have been co-opted by the ideologies of the
4 ‘Third Way’ and those who sing the joys of the ‘network/knowledge society’,
5 many of the subversive themes of 1968 are being reborn and revitalized in
6 the street protests of the new century.
7 I take on board elements of all four above interpretations but prefer to
8 situate the overarching interpretation in terms of Polanyi’s ‘double move-
9 ment’ (see Chapter 2). The steady encroachment of free-market mechanisms
1011 into social relations – which lies at the core of neoliberal globalization –
1 is matched by a social counter-movement that may be defensive, reactive or
2 even alternativist. Global transformation since the 1990s has created the
3111 conditions for a great counter-movement of which the post-Seattle ‘anti-
4 globalization’ movement is a key component. Neoliberal globalization has
5 taken the market deep into society to undercut any obstacles to free trade,
6 be they environmental protection measures, state subsidies of any kind or
7 labour codes. What brought together the various components of the Seattle
8 protest – environmentalists, trade unionists, anti-corporate activists and
9 others – was precisely a confluence of interests around opposition to the free
20111 market globalization.
1
While the double movement thesis may be effective at the structural level
2
of analysis, we need to understand at a discursive political level why the
3
anti-globalization movement made the impact it has. As Jeffrey Ayres puts
4
it: ‘Activists by the late 1990s successfully developed a contentious, increas-
5
6 ingly transnationally accepted master collective action frame to challenge
7 the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy’ (Ayres 2004: 14). Previously there had
8 been campaigns around discrete elements or effects of neoliberal organiza-
9 tion, be it trade, debt, labour, environmental or human rights. However,
30111 what happened towards the end of the 1990s was a crystallization of these
1 various movements and campaigns around a shared diagnosis that neoliberal
2 globalization (as promoted by the WTO/IMF/World Bank) was the common
3 source of the particular issue they dealt with. That Seattle 1999 occurred
4 in the US made it particularly visible and promoted the elevation of global-
35 ization to the position of master frame for many forms of contestation.
6 I have retained the ‘anti-globalization’ label in this chapter for a number
7 of reasons. For one, it seems a more accurate label for the post-Seattle move-
8 ment in the streets than anti-capitalist, anti-corporate or anarchist. Of course,
9 many of the protestors would argue that they do not oppose globalization
40111 per se, they just want a better globalization. So we can think in terms of a
1 counter- or alter-globalization movement. However, for many activists there
2 is a strong direct action element that is simply anti-system without too
3 many nuances. Most activists do probably want to see the end of the
4 WTO/IMF/World Bank rather than to work within to reform them. But
45111 there is another reason to use this label for this particular section of the
74 The anti-globalization movement
movement of movements we have been dealing with, namely to characterize
the mainly young, urban, educated, Western activists who became travelling
protestors from Seattle to Washington, Prague to Genoa, etc.
In conclusion we might agree with Jackie Smith that:

The Battle of Seattle is one of the most significant recent episodes of

collective action, and it points to a future of social movements that
is increasingly global in both target and form and that finds itself in
more direct confrontation with global institutions than its historical
predecessors.
(Smith 2002: 223)

The global had emerged as a real terrain for contestation, it was no longer
virtual or confined to the carefully orchestrated realm of inter-state relations.
Whether this movement has peaked or not is a matter for time to tell. Given
the extraordinary difficulties faced by any incipient transnational social
movements, its achievements have been considerable. Very few analysts or
people in power still talk about globalization without referring to the anti-
globalization movement as the other side of the coin. These two are probably
mutually constitutive of each other from now on.
1111
2 5 Transnational political
3
4 fora
5
6 Actors, issues and prospects
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 Transnational political organization in pursuit of a progressive human goal
4 is not particularly new even if the era of globalization has, arguably,
5 witnessed a flourishing of such political fora. The notion of universal human
6 rights was an integral element of the European Enlightenment tradition and
7 it was, by definition, transnational. Women’s rights and the contemporary
8 international women’s movement are inherently transnational too and, for
9 many observers, a very successful example of a global social movement.
20111 Finally, we consider in this chapter the World Social Forum experience as
1 the defining transnational political forum of the counter-globalization move-
2 ment. But, in considering these three transnational political processes we
3 need to reflect back on the notion of ‘global civil society’ (see Chapter 4).
4 To what extent are we witnessing ‘ghosts in the machine’ of globalization
5 that distract attention from more grounded and challenging movements of
6 resistance from below?
7 The case studies in this chapter go to the core of the issue of global
8 governance (see Chapter 1). INGOs and social movements have effectively
9 engaged with the multilateral economic organizations that lead and co-
30111 ordinate the globalization project. Human rights in general, and women’s
1 rights in particular, are now an integral element of that project, at least
2 rhetorically. So are they still elements of contestation of the dominant order?
3 The World Social Forum is not yet in that position but it is also now
4 becoming ‘mainstreamed’ and is no longer a merely ‘alternative’ presence.
35 An underlying issue to also consider in this chapter is whether the humanist
6 universalism implicit in all three movements is adequate to deal with diver-
7 sity, multiculturalism and the rise of non-Western civilizational projects.
8
9 Universal human rights
40111
1 The concept of ‘human rights’, whether based on religious or ethical prin-
2 ciples, appeals to a transcendent principle that can, ultimately, only apply
3 universally. Human beings are deemed to have universal rights regardless
4 of where they live, their ethnicity, gender or any other particularizing factor.
45111 Universal human rights are also deemed to be inalienable, that is to say
76 Transnational political fora
they cannot be granted or withdrawn, and they are non-derogable. Thus,
we all have a right to life, to be free from slavery, to be free from torture
and so on. While it has, traditionally, been part of the Western political
tradition, ‘universal human rights’ has become much more internationalized
since the rise of contemporary globalization towards the end of the twentieth
century. Global social movements have, not surprisingly, emerged, promot-
ing the concept of universal human rights in relation to women, workers
and the politically persecuted, for example.
Historically, human rights were not only part of a Western political tradi-
tion but they were also based squarely on the nation-state for their protection
and enforcement. Universal claims to human dignity needed an agency to
ensure they were respected and that was the national government. These are
‘positive’ human rights in the European legal tradition such as the right to
education and to equality before the law. The Anglo-American legal tradi-
tion, in contrast, dictated what the state should not do. The ‘negative’ human
rights of the British and US Bill of Rights included, for example, freedom
of speech and of assembly. In the post-war period a more globalizing
approach emerged with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
approved by the UN (with 56 member states at the time), describing in 30
articles an extremely broad and comprehensive set of human rights deemed
universal. With the collapse of the state socialist alternative in 1989 it
appeared this Western tradition had become universal.
However, the UN, at the end of the twentieth century, had 191 member
states, while the original 30 white Western states still numbered only 30.
At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights a number of Asian
member states argued that human rights were not universal but rather a
product of Western industrial cultures. The West has often been accused of
using human rights as a rhetoric that allows them to impose their particular
world-view and material interests over the majority, or so-called developing
world. In the decade and a half since these views were articulated there has
been ample evidence that human rights can serve as an ideological spear-
head of a Western or US imperialist crusade against political systems in the
East and the South which it would remove as competitors or subjugate. The
violation of human rights in Iraq by the invasion forces of the US and UK
is but the most visible example.
The question we need to ask then is why the concept of human rights
has been such an integral element of the new global social movements when
they appear to be part of a Western imperialist tradition. In spite of the
post-modern critique of human rights as metanarrative and the inherent
forms of essentialism that lie at its core, certain defining political moments
do seem to capture the original Enlightenment idea of universality. It might
be the campaign to free Nelson Mandela from his apartheid jail, stop the
execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria or highlight the plight of Aung
San So Kyi in Burma. For Baxi, a fierce critic of human rights essentialism
and the false universality of its discourse, nevertheless the latter:
 Transnational political fora 77
1111 embodies human rights essentialism; so do the Afghan women under dire
2 straits who protest the Taliban regime. So also do UNICEF and the
3 Save the Children movements, which (thanks to the globalized media)
4 seek at times to achieve the impossible.
5 (Baxi 2003: 86)
6
7 Human rights activism – mainly organized through NGOs – has success-
8 fully put together transnational coalitions of considerable effectiveness. There
9 are, of course, a plethora of human rights oriented NGOs and there are
1011 many internal conflicts in the human rights field. Nevertheless, many of
1 these campaigns have practically created new human rights such as those
2 around sexual orientation. The communications revolution has been instru-
3111 mental in facilitating transnational dialogue on human rights, and it has
4 helped create the conditions for effective campaigns through the mass media.
5 The ‘connectedness’ that is an integral element of globalization has allowed
6 NGOs, in particular, to access and impact on the international human rights
7 regime. While blatant flouting of basic human rights occurs constantly –
8 with Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo just providing highlights – there is now
9 a generalized transnational discourse transgressors must confront.
20111 While globalization has, indeed, presented opportunities for social
1 movements campaigning around human rights, it has also presented new
2 challenges. As Alyson Brysk puts it, beyond the emergence of an inter-
3 national regime for human rights and its positive aspects, ‘new human rights
4 problems may result from the integration of markets, the shrinking of states,
5 increased transnational flows such as migration, the spread of cultures of
6 intolerance, and the decision-making processes of new or growing global
7 institutions’ (Brysk 2000: 2). So, while a weaker nation-state may seem an
8 advantage in the short term to a contestatory movement it does, at the same
9 time, remove the sovereign power that could be made accountable for human
30111 rights. The new transnational managers of globalization – such as the WTO
1 – are, for their part, notoriously unaccountable for decisions they take that
2 may impact fundamentally on human rights.
3 During the cold war the state socialist countries and those in what was
4 then called the ‘Third World’ actively challenged the Western concep-
35 tion of human rights. Against the liberal view of individual rights and the
6 ‘freedoms’ bestowed by private property, they articulated the rights to devel-
7 opment and self-determination. The right to control a country’s natural
8 resources versus the rights of a multinational corporation to exploit them
9 were very different ways of viewing rights, for example. Since the end of
40111 the cold war and the rise of contemporary globalization in the 1990s the
1 Western idea of human rights has ruled supreme, except in relation to
2 cultural relativism. Thus, the radical universalism of hegemonic liberal
3 human rights theory can be countered by a radical relativism that conceives
4 of human rights as determined by their particular cultural setting. Even
45111 milder versions of relativism that simply take into account the cultural
78 Transnational political fora
context may serve to undermine the cultural imperialism underlying the
doctrine of universal human rights as presently articulated in the West.
So, as is true with the overall relationship between globalization and
democracy, so also with human rights: while some doors are opened through
the creation of a new global order, other doors are closed. Overall, we must
note that human rights are no longer tied exclusively to national sover-
eignty. These rights can cross national borders and Chilean ex-dictator
General Pinochet can be arrested and charged in London for human rights
violations in Chile. We thus witness growing levels of transnational account-
ability on the terrain of human rights. This has given a considerable boost
to transnational human rights activism which can gain real results when
‘swimming with the current’ of the dominant world order and, even, some-
times when they go against the tide.
Global social movements based on the concept of universal human rights
– such as Amnesty International – tend not to problematize the notion.
Thus Amnesty International argues that:

One answer to growing ‘anti-globalization’ sentiment is to make respect

of human rights, of the rule of law, of good governance and transparency,
of freedom for the people, as essential an element of the new architec-
ture of globalization, as the free movement of capital, currencies and
commodities; to convince citizens . . . that the agents of globalization can
also be the agents of the globalization of human rights.
(Amnesty International 2004: 1, emphasis added)

For Amnesty International, the commitment to the realization of ‘all human

rights for all’ must include ‘reaffirming the universality and indivisibility
of human rights’ (ibid.). We could argue that Amnesty is taking liberal
democratic rhetoric at its word and demanding that human rights are, in
practice, applied to all peoples. Yet, is this move to make rhetoric into
reality sufficient reason to accept the universality of human rights as a valid
principle for democratization of a global order based on unregulated market
expansion?
It may be useful to start answering this question in terms of Upendra
Baxi’s distinction between a politics for human rights and a politics of human
rights (see Baxi 2003). The contemporary politics for human rights of organ-
izations such as Amnesty and countless local, national and transnational
movements seeks to make power accountable to the people and for govern-
ance to be just. By contrast, for Baxi:

The politics of human rights deploys the symbolic or cultural capital

of human rights to the ends of management of distribution of power
in national and global arenas. ‘Human rights’ become the pursuit of
politics, and even war by other means.
(Baxi 2003: 41)
 Transnational political fora 79
1111 We could perhaps argue that if politics is the pursuit of war by other means
2 as classically put by Clausewitz, so then, today, human rights form the
3 terrain on which the battle for democracy in the era of globalization will
4 be played out. From this perspective the rhetoric of liberal cosmopolitanism
5 and the doctrine of ‘humanitarian war’ would not be seen as part of the
6 democratic path of human development.
7 Human rights can thus be seen as a ‘floating signifier’ capable of very
8 different, even opposed articulations in political practice. That does not mean
9 at all that human rights are somehow neutral, standing above politics as
1011 some practitioners argue. Rather, it is a question of human rights being
1 seen as a contested discursive terrain. On the one hand, the silent oppres-
2 sion and abuses committed against landless peasants, poor women or political
3111 activists across the world can be exposed through transnational advocacy
4 groups. However, on the other hand, and just as frequently, an imperialist
5 discourse of human rights can be deployed to de-legitimize governments of
6 the South and even engage in ‘regime change’ when that suits the imper-
7 ialist agenda.
8 Another fundamental problem in articulating a progressive politics of
9 human rights in the era of globalization is the issue of prioritization. Contrary
20111 to the rhetoric of universal and indivisible human rights, in practice, between
1
and within campaigns there is often a fierce struggle over the prioritization
2
of rights to the extent that many perceive there to be a hierarchy of human
3
rights. What is a ‘fundamental’ right and what is not? What happens if
4
different human rights are at odds with each other, for example the ‘rights’
5
6 of private property versus the ‘right’ of life? We must recognize that human
7 rights campaigns are socially, politically and discursively constructed and
8 are not pre-given. The visibility of various human rights abuses does not,
9 as Clifford Bob puts it, ‘result from a rough meritocracy of suffering in
30111 which the worst abuses attract the greatest attention’ (Bob 2002: 133) but,
1 rather, from political processes and struggles.
2
3 Global sisterhood
4
35 In 1984 the radical US feminist Robin Morgan published Sisterhood is Global:
6 The International Women’s Movement Anthology (1984) which represented an
7 early manifestation of the belief that women shared a common identity and
8 had the same interests wherever they lived. However, Morgan’s book came
9 in for fierce criticism from Third World women and US ‘women of color’
40111 alike. Essentially the argument centred around the Euro-US centricity of
1 the collection and the homogenizing vision of women’s oppression that it
2 created. Even the notion of a unified category of ‘Third World women’ was
3 seen as problematic (see Mohanty 1991) insofar as it assumed a unity of
4 condition and consciousness that simply did not exist. The underlying issue
45111 today, the same as it was 20 years ago, is whether the diversity of women’s
80 Transnational political fora
lives across the world allows for the creation of a transnational movement
for ‘global sisterhood’.
The issue is whether globalization – in the sense of greater socio-economic
integration and communication across nations – is recreating more fertile
conditions for transnational feminist activism. For Angela Miles this process
of convergence has, indeed, led to a new consensus:

Global feminisms hold the seeds of the world they want to create. Their
response to alienated and exploitative globalization is not simple with-
drawal, refusal, or reaction but the creation of autonomous, democratic
and empowering global relations in the struggle for alternative visions.
(Miles 1996: 133)

A new transformative global understanding of the complex forms of gender

oppression and resistance is emerging. To the equality agenda was added an
understanding of diversity. Above all, the new wave of international femi-
nisms in the 1990s began to articulate an alternative vision of society
enriched by an understanding of women’s diverse patterns of oppression and
resistance across the world.
Western liberal feminists in the 1970s and 1980s had, as a major focus
of their intervention, gaining influence on mainstream political decision-
making bodies. The women’s agenda would be advanced through assertion
of women’s equal rights in the formal political arena. While many gains
were made in various Western parliamentary arenas, a drive towards influ-
encing the UN was soon to become a major focus. The pressure of Western
second-wave feminism had already made an impact when the UN declared
1975 to be the International Year of Women, followed by the UN Decade
for Women from 1975–85. While national governments would still have
an onus to address women’s issues, the UN would provide an overarching
international framework supported by an active network of women’s NGOs.
As globalization became the dominant development discourse in the 1990s,
so inevitably the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 became
a major site for debate, and a landmark event.
The long preparatory work for the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women
finally came to fruition and an NGO forum was also held in Huairou
on the margins of the official event. For Sonia Alvarez, women of the
forum:

appeared to revel in an effusive celebration of post-Robin Morgan ‘global

sisterhood’. A festive climate of mutual recognition, exchange and soli-
darity . . . prevailed . . . among many forum participants, who not only
had encountered a planetary venue in which to call attention to the
needs of women in their own countries but also had discovered their
commonalities and differences with women’s struggles around the world.
(Alvarez 1998: 293)
 Transnational political fora 81
1111 Meanwhile in the ‘official’ UN event another group of women academics,
2 activists and legislators engaged in an ambitious and privileged agenda-
3 setting exercise for the global women’s movement in the twenty-first century.
4 Feminism had ‘gone global’ with a vengeance.
5 With the UN now officially committed to a progressive agenda on
6 women’s rights, did this mean the feminist agenda could be developed ‘from
7 above’ as it were? What the feminist international lobby has achieved is the
8 legitimacy of an international women’s regime, understood as a set of prin-
9 ciples, rules and decision-making procedures agreed to by states in a given
1011 area of international relations (Evans 2000: 126). This regime, like the global
1 human rights regime, is centred around the ‘United Nations family’, itself
2 based on the principle of national sovereignty. National NGOs and social
3111 movements can thus appeal to the international gender norms to advocate
4 for local policy reform in relation to gender. As one Chilean feminist activist
5 put it: ‘globalization requires that the State demonstrate sensitivity to gender
6 . . . resources come tied to that’ (cited Alvarez 2000: 14). While effective
7 in its own terms this approach is not without its critics.
8 Can the NGOs who operate in terms of the international gender regime
9 not be accused of becoming a gender technocracy or, even, as some auton-
20111 omist feminists put it: ‘handmaidens of neoliberalism’? Even without going
1 that far, there are many feminist activists who believe that: ‘the movement
2 cannot think beyond the UN and its institutions’ (Toro 2004: 2). It is not
3 at all uncommon for feminist activists to ask whether the UN conferences
4 since Beijing have actually benefited women at all. These UN fora are, after
5 all, set up on the basis of national sovereignty, and right wing national
6 governments, including, in the front line, the Vatican, can attend and roll
7 back the gains made for the gender agenda at previous meetings. Yet, rather
8 than become confrontational many women in the NGO/social movement
9 (and the dividing line between the two is often hard to draw) milieu do not
30111 wish to lose the positions they have gained within the UN constellation.
1 Perhaps an underlying question in this tension between a new international
2 regime and realpolitik is, in fact, the national question. Many feminists in the
3 global arena would probably subscribe to the statement by the novelist
4 Virginia Woolf in 1936 that: ‘As a woman I have no country. As a woman
35 I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world’ (Woolf 1936,
6 cited in Kaplan 1994). This cosmopolitan world vision is certainly worthy
7 but it may also elide certain obvious and overarching power differentials.
8 Lacking a clear politics of location this type of essentialism will elide the
9 differences that stand in the way of a unitary world of women. As Caren
40111 Kaplan puts it: ‘In a trans-national world where cultural asymmetrics and
1 linkages continue to be mystified by economic and political interests at mul-
2 tiple levels, feminists need detailed, historicized maps of the circuits of power’
3 (Kaplan 1994: 148). Without that understanding of the complex power
4 geometry of gender relations in the era of globalization, a cosmopolitan fem-
45111 inism will, necessarily, not be able to meet the needs of women worldwide.
82 Transnational political fora
But if the United Nations could at best deliver a ‘false universalism’ on
the question of women’s rights, would the rapidly developing NGO move-
ment be better placed to develop that agenda? As the voice of ‘global
civil society’ would they be able to articulate globalization from below in
relation to women’s empowerment? We need to consider what Alvarez called
the ‘NGO-ization’ of Latin Americanism in the 1990s to be able to answer
these questions. For Alvarez, ‘the growing “developmentalization” of women
as new “client groups” of states and international regimes . . . contributed
to NGO-ization by infusing the more professionalized sectors of the femi-
nist movement filled with significant material resources’ (Alvarez 1998: 306).
So, while the more acceptable aspects of the feminist agenda were absorbed
by powerful international political organizations, many of the more ‘pro-
fessionalized’ sections of the women’s movement were also, themselves,
absorbed if not co-opted.
For the autonomous feminist currents the above process of co-option is
a simple one-way street. They accuse the ‘institutional current’ (as they call
the NGO sector that engages with the international gender regime) of
becoming simply ‘decorative and functional complements of patriarchal poli-
cies’ (Mujeres Creando, cited by Alvarez 2000: 28). There is a clear divide
posed between all ‘autonomous’ feminist social movements and the NGO-
dominated, more institutionalized ‘technocratic’ sector. In practice, the
dividing lines are not so clear cut and many activists intervene in the insti-
tutional arena without being compromised in some essentialist political
sense. There is no ‘iron law of oligarchy’ as was posited for the early trade
union and socialist movement implying an automatic conservatism and
corrupting influence from participating in mainstream society.
In fact, the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender policies in the 1990s into organ-
izations such as the World Bank can be viewed in a much more positive,
even empowering sense for the advancement of women’s rights. DAWN
(Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era), a global South
oriented women’s network focused on gender equity and sustainable devel-
opment, notes that ‘Post Beijing [they] have been active in inter-linking
with social movements and male-led NGOs in what we refer to as negoti-
ating gender in the male-stream’ (cited in Mayo 2004: 144). This process
of negotiation might at times be very fraught and it may not always produce
results. But, in practice, the autonomous space is extremely limited and
most women’s movements do engage with the main/male-stream in a contin-
uous process of confrontation, compromise and concessions.
While much of the above analysis has a rather sceptical tone to it, we
should not neglect the very real advances made in relation to global women’s
rights over the last decade. Manuel Castells, perhaps, overstates the gains
with his thesis of ‘the end of patriarchy’ but he does at least draw attention
to ‘the inseparably related processes of the transformation of women’s work
and the transformation of women’s consciousness’ (Castells 2004: 193) in
the era of globalization. The economic internationalization that is at the
 Transnational political fora 83
1111 heart of globalization has led to a dramatic increase in the number of women
2 entering the paid labour force to such an extent that the concept of the
3 ‘male breadwinner’ is but a dim and distant memory. On the other hand,
4 all the varieties of feminism from liberal to lesbian, from essentialist to
5 ‘practical’ feminist, all agree that patriarchy must go, a politics reflected in
6 widespread popular acceptance of women’s equality in most countries.
7 Finally though, we might stress with Angela Miles that: ‘Only a very
8 small proportion of feminists are active globally. Increasingly widespread
9 local feminist practice sustains the global feminist presence, however, and
1011 is enriched by it’ (Miles 1996: 116). It is not thus a question of prioritizing
1 the global or local level of intervention but of understanding the complex
2 interaction between the two. Beijing 1995 represented a ‘global’ manifes-
3111 tation of many thousands of local, national and regional women’s movements
4 and NGOs. This is a grounded universal and not a spectral presence with
5 no body behind it. Conversely, the international feminist networks have had
6 a greatly empowering effect on local level organization, mobilization and
7 ‘conscientization’. Transnational feminist practices have thus involved a quite
8 self-conscious politics of location.
9
20111
World Social Forum
1
2 The World Economic Forum had become, in the 1990s, the leading ‘think
3 tank’ for the leaders of the globalization process. However, in January 1999
4 its Davos meeting met a counter-demonstration involving, among others, a
5 French organization ATTAC and the MST (Movimiento Sêm Terra), the land-
6 less people’s movement in Brazil. This was the start of the movement to
7 create a ‘parallel summit’ to the hidden, elitist and technocratic managers
8 of globalization symbolized by Davos where they got together with their
9 own ‘organic intellectuals’. The Seattle events of 1999 showed that the power
30111 of the supranational decision-making bodies was not omnipotent. Parallel
1 summits could confront directly and in a very visible manner the architects
2 of the new globalization and articulate the programme or project of the
3 emerging ‘global civil society’.
4 The French political monthly Le Monde Diplomatique was the seemingly
35 unlikely progenitor of ATTAC. Its driving force, Bernard Cassen, describes
6 how the Diplo (as it was known) had published an editorial in 1997 entitled
7 ‘Disarming the Markets’ that ended with a call for action to control the
8 tyranny of the financial markets: ‘The appeal was launched like a bottle into
9 the sea, without any idea of what the reaction might be’ (Cassen 2003: 41).
40111 In the event, ATTAC was formed and grew to 30,000 members as well as
1 semi-autonomous branches in Scandinavia, Germany, Italy and elsewhere
2 who all saw themselves as loosely part of a ‘no-globo’ movement. ATTAC
3 is probably known best for its meticulously researched analysis of global-
4 ization and neoliberalism, shifting public opinion firmly away from ‘la pensée
45111 unique’ (one way of thinking) on economic policy. In France it effectively
84 Transnational political fora
‘mainstreamed’ the critique of neoliberal globalization and in international
terms it played an important role in generating the World Social Forum
(WSF).
The other proximate cause of the WSF experience lay in Brazil as part
of and following the re-democratization of that country in the second half
of the 1980s. The social revolt against state authoritarianism was led by the
workers’ movement, but it also created the conditions for a flourishing of
the NGOs, many influenced by the radical sections of the Catholic Church.
In organizational terms this movement coalesced in the formation of the
Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) in 1980 which soon began
to make significant gains in elections, not least in the southern city of Porto
Alegre. The Porto Alegre ‘participative budget’, developed under a PT gover-
norship, became known worldwide (see Bruce 2004) and thus made the city
a logical choice for hosting the WSF when the Brazilian NGOs – along
with the MST, the landless peasants movement – met with Bernard Cassen
and ATTAC and agreed to organize a counter-summit to that in Davos.
The First World Social Forum took place in Porto Alegre in 2001 as an
explicit counter to the World Economic Forum taking place at the same
time in Davos. While this event had vague precursors in Bandung 1955
and the 1968 counter-movement, it was new in many ways. The Workers’
Party in Porto Alegre was understandably nervous that it might be
outflanked on the left by this gathering. Many of the more traditional labour
organizations were also reticent to support a movement with such a strong
counter-cultural flavour. But the event was a huge success and symbolically
put an end to the international retreat of the left already slowed down in
Seattle in 1999. As Bernard Cassen described WSF 1, ‘in purely geograph-
ical terms its range was limited. But in media terms, its impact was
enormous, because it coincided with the meeting of global elites in Davos’
(Cassen 2003: 49). In the new globalized media-dominated times of the new
century, this media visibility of the counter-movement was crucial.
Following the largely unexpected success of the first World Social Forum,
the Brazilian Organizing Committee sought to draw out the lessons
and articulate a Charter of Principles. This foundational document was sub-
sequently debated at some length across the world and is worth quoting
in full:

1 The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective

thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free
exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by
groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-
liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form
of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society
directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and
between it and the Earth.
2 The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in
 Transnational political fora 85
1111 time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto
2 Alegre that ‘another world is possible’, it becomes a permanent
3 process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be
4 reduced to the events supporting it.
5 3 The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that
6 are held as part of this process have an international dimension.
7 4 The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in oppo-
8 sition to a process of globalization commanded by the large
9 multinational corporations and by the governments and inter-
1011 national institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests,
1 with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to
2 ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in
3111 world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those
4 of all citizens – men and women – of all nations and the environ-
5 ment and will rest on democratic international systems and
6 institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sover-
7 eignty of peoples.
8 5 The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organ-
9 izations and movements of civil society from all the countries in
20111 the world, but intends neither to be a body representing civil society.
1 6 The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf
2 of the World Social Forum as a body. No-one, therefore, will be
3 authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express
4 positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The partici-
5 pants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a
6 body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals
7 for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that
8 propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body.
9 It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the
30111 participants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the
1 only option for interrelation and action by the organizations and
2 movements that participate in it.
3 7 Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that partici-
4 pate in the Forum’s meetings must be assured the right, during
35 such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or actions they may
6 decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other partici-
7 pants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such
8 decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing,
9 hierarchizing, censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of
40111 the organizations or groups of organizations that made the deci-
1 sions.
2 8 The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional,
3 non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized
4 fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in
45111 concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build
another world.
86 Transnational political fora
9 The World Social Forum will always be a forum open to pluralism
and to the diversity of activities and ways of engaging of the organ-
izations and movements that decide to participate in it, as well as
the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and phys-
ical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles.
Neither party representations nor military organizations shall
participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legis-
latures who accept the commitments of this Charter may be invited
to participate in a personal capacity.
10 The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reduc-
tionist views of economy, development and history and to the use
of violence as a means of social control by the State. It upholds
respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, partic-
ipatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity,
among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples and condemns all
forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.
11 As a forum for debate, the World Social Forum is a movement of
ideas that prompts reflection, and the transparent circulation of the
results of that reflection, on the mechanisms and instruments of
domination by capital, on means and actions to resist and overcome
that domination, and on the alternatives proposed to solve the prob-
lems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist
globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive
dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.
12 As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social
Forum encourages understanding and mutual recognition among its
participant organizations and movements, and places special value
on the exchange among them, particularly on all that society is
building to centre economic activity and political action on meeting
the needs of people and respecting nature, in the present and for
future generations.
13 As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to
strengthen and create new national and international links among
organizations and movements of society, that – in both public and
private life – will increase the capacity for non-violent social resis-
tance to the process of dehumanization the world is undergoing and
to the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanizing
measures being taken by the action of these movements and organ-
izations.
14 The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its partici-
pant organizations and movements to situate their actions, from the
local level to the national level and seeking active participation in
international contexts, as issues of planetary citizenship, and to
introduce onto the global agenda the change-inducing practices that
they are experimenting in building a new world in solidarity.
 Transnational political fora 87
1111 Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on 9 April 2001, by the organizations
2 that make up the World Social Forum Organizing Committee, approved with
3 modifications by the World Social Forum International Council on 10 June
4 2001.
5
6 The Second World Social Forum was held in 2002, again in Porto Alegre
7 but now focused on giving meaning to the emergent slogan of ‘Another
8 World is Possible’. The WSF concept was beginning to ‘internationalize’,
9 at least in part due to the initiatives of the large Italian contingent who
1011 attended WSF 1. The Genoa counter-summit to the G8 in 2001 was thus
1 dubbed a ‘social forum’. In Durban, in protest against the limits of the
2 World Conference Against Racism also in 2001 another ‘social forum’ was
3111 created. In Latin America there were a series of regional ‘social forums’, most
4 noticeably in Argentina, then in the midst of a cataclysmic crisis due to a
5 mechanical application of neoliberal economics for over a decade. Some
6 60,000 people attended WSF 2 conference compared with the 20,000 who
7 were attracted to the first event. But the social forum concept, principles
8 and particular mode of organization began to spread to most parts of the
9 world, with the exception of Asia.
20111 The Third World Social Forum in 2003 took up the theme of how the
1 WSF might itself actually embody the principles of ‘another world’. The
2 100,000 or more participants who attended the forum this time included
3 many ‘mainstream’ political and social leaders attracted by the WSF ‘brand’.
4 The US anti-globalization movement, quite insignificant at the previous
5 events, was also now making its presence felt. Some of the more radical
6 anti-globalization participants began to feel somewhat isolated. Was the
7 WSF moving from the ‘alternative’ end of the political spectrum towards
8 becoming the ‘mainstream’? Certainly there was a noticeable re-emergence
9 of the ‘old’ new left of 1968 in leadership positions and in the WSF general
30111 discourse. Peter Waterman, at the event from a critical pro-labour stance,
1 argued that ‘there is a danger that the Forum will be overwhelmed by the
2 past of social movements and internationalism’ (Waterman 2003: 7).
3 Nationalist reactions to globalization were certainly much in evidence and
4 many components of WSF were quite state-oriented. A new model of inter-
35 nationalism was certainly not going to be born fully formed overnight.
6 Addressing the relative lack of the WSF phenomena in Africa (except for
7 South Africa) and in the vast expanse of Asia, the fourth WSF was held in
8 Mumbai (India) in 2004. According to one observer: ‘Beyond the success
9 of the Indian organizational process, Mumbai demonstrated the flexibility
40111 of the WSF’s identity, which enables it to adapt to local social and polit-
1 ical contexts without losing its energy’ (Caruso 2005: 205). This might be
2 a slightly self-congratulatory view insofar as Mumbai was often dominated
3 by the large organizations whether of civil society or politics of an older,
4 more traditional left. One of the organizers of the Mumbai event, Jai Sen,
45111 had already warned of the dangers of ‘giganticism’ or what might be called
88 Transnational political fora
the problems of success (Sen 2004: 3). The WSF as ‘big event’ was begin-
ning to make it look like a 1960s’ Woodstock Festival with most of the
audience being fairly passive ‘hearers’ or ‘observers’ of the ‘big names’ who
now felt compelled to attend the WSF.
Following the Mumbai WSF a decision was made to return to Porto
Alegre in 2005 but then to make the 2006 WSF a decentralized affair with
events in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The issue of ‘giganticism’ and the
dominance of ‘big names’ had already been tackled by reducing the number
of plenaries at Mumbai. After that event, as Hilary Wainwright explains,
‘the International Committee of the WSF took the risky decision to elimi-
nate the official programme altogether’ (Wainwright 2005: 3). Henceforth,
a ‘consulta’ (consultation) with past WSF attendees would lead to a choice
of themes which would constitute the clusters or ‘terrains’ for debates. This
radical experiment was at least partially successful at the 2005 WSF event
in Porto Alegre, articulating a more purposeful and self-conscious move-
ment for social transformation. The problems of growing size were still,
however, present and it was significant that Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez proved
the biggest draw for audiences.
As befits a social movement organization committed to radical transfor-
mation of the existing order, the WSF has been extremely reflexive in regards
to its own experience. Thus, Michael Albert, an active US promoter of the
WSF, would write in the run-up to Mumbai that: ‘The worldwide Social
Forum phenomenon is thriving. In contrast, the WSF once-a-year inter-
national event has run up against internal limits and needs renovation’
(Albert 2004: 323). That process of renewal could only come, according to
Albert, by rejecting the notion that WSF could become a ‘movement of
movements’ and, rather, become a venue or facilitator for more local events.
Then, founding WSF member, Chico Whitaker, from one of Brazil’s main
NGOs put forward the stark choice of ‘Forum-as-space and a Forum-as-
movements’ (Whitaker 2004: 111), coming down firmly on the side of a
horizontal space with no leaders. Only by becoming an open space could
the WSF ensure respect for diversity, something he did not see as possible
in a movement. Others posed the choice as one between WSF as ‘arena’ or
as ‘actor’ that is perhaps simply a different way of posing that dilemma. In
practice, of course, the WSF could be an arena and actor at the same time.
The myriad attempts to discern what the WSF is or is not, have been
unable to come to a clear-cut conclusion, something that may well be
inevitable given that the movement is still developing. More or less at
random we can examine differing views or definitions of the World Social
Forum:

the WSF is not the embryonic framework of a new political force but
rather the catalyst for the variety of assembled collectivities building
the links between themselves.
(Wainwright 2005: 4)
 Transnational political fora 89
1111 the WSF is not an entity, but a process – a snowballing momentum
2 that is bringing together forces which, through developing in the same
3 direction, were without mutual contact and often completely unaware
4 of each other.
5 (Cassen 2003: 59)
6
7 the WSF will increasingly become less and less an event or set of events,
8 and increasingly a process based on the work of articulation, reflection
9 and combined planning of collective actions . . .
1011 (Santos 2004a: 30)
1
2 So, the WSF is not likely to become the Fifth International, following
3111 in the footsteps of the social democratic Second, communist Third and
4 Trotskyist Fourth Internationals. It may, however, reflect some of the char-
5 acteristics of the First International as envisaged by Marx as a transnational
6 network. It is more of a social process than a social organization and, at
7 most, a catalyst for mobilizations against globalization. While it may preach
8 that ‘another world is possible’ it is unlikely to gather the forces to make
9 that happen, something that had been the aspiration of the Third Inter-
20111 national in the heyday of international communism. But, however cautious
1 we must be in assessing the WSF as an agent of global counter-hegemony
2 we might consider the verdict of Glasius and Timms that: ‘The national
3 and local social forums can be seen as one of the most significant develop-
4 ments to have come out of the idea of the WSF’ (Glasius and Timms 2005:
5 207) as a suitable conclusion to this section.
6
7
Ghosts in the machine
8
9 Human rights and women’s rights would probably appear to most readers
30111 as obvious human goods and their pursuit a generally progressive endeavour,
1 all things considered. We have already seen what achievements NGOs and
2 social movements promoting these rights have been able to accomplish. The
3 World Social Forum, in articulating the simple yet effective slogan that
4 Another World is Possible, is also seen by (nearly) all as a progressive antidote
35 to neoliberal globalization and its project for the world we live in. However,
6 we need to reflect critically on the possibility that these reform movements
7 are operating in the terrain of, and replicating the terms of, the neoliberal
8 governance agenda. This is saying much more than the obvious danger of
9 contestatory movements being co-opted by the powers that be. Nor is it a
40111 simplistic repeat of the reform versus revolution argument that bedevilled
1 the early socialist/communist movement in nineteenth-century Europe.
2 In an interesting analysis, André Drainville refers to the ‘cosmopolitan
3 ghosts’ that are emerging in the field of global civil society, ‘created by
4 simultaneously pulverizing humanity into functional bits and reassembling
45111 it into an abstract bearer of rights, responsibilities and moralities’ (Drainville
90 Transnational political fora
2004: 22). From this perspective, ‘global civil society’ is a political construc-
tion that serves to decontextualize real social struggles on the ground. This
is a ‘politically neutered humanity’ (Drainville 2004: 22) taken out of its
real, concrete social and cultural context and reconstructed in the language
of the UN and the NGOs. Third World women, indigenous peoples,
informal sector workers, are all real but take on a spectral character in the
international corridors of power as this or that NGO or social movement
seeks to (re)present them to the rulers of the world on a social stabilization
mission.
To what extent is the new ‘civic cosmopolitanism’ put forward as an
ethical global politics by David Held and others as part of the ‘global civil
society’ project, simply the social wing, as it were, of the dominant neo-
liberal economic project? Or, to express it differently, if global civil society
did not exist, would the World Bank/IMF/WTO not have to create it to
have a valid civil society interlocutor? Capitalism, as it expands worldwide
at an accelerated pace, needs a social interlocutor. It cannot enforce its rule
by force alone; it requires dialogue if not consent to achieve a modicum of
social legitimacy. This is not an argument for non-engagement with offi-
cial structures to maintain the solidarity or purity of contestation, but it is
a call to recognize its limits. In this regard Drainville rightly notes that
when the multilateral economic organizations met with NGOs at ‘pre-
conference gatherings they worked to establish relevance and set the limits
of possibilities. Problems were selected, circumscribed and classified, policy
priorities established and interlocutors gathered together on the basis of their
problem-solving relevance’ (Drainville 2004: 112). This interaction clearly
goes beyond joint agenda setting to establish the parameters of what is and
what is not a problem for global governance.
The social interlocutors of the dominant economic agent must be seen as
valid and legitimate by the latter if they are to be effective. After the debacle
of Seattle 1999 when no agreement was reached and the mob was seen to
be baying at the window, even the WTO sought to bring the ‘reasonable’
and ‘respectable’ NGOs into the big tent. By the time the WTO met in
Cancún in 2004 many of the mainstream NGOs were contributing to the
proceedings with their critique of its current policies. But these were, on
the whole, the big INGOs of the North, well established and well financed,
who were in a position to contribute. Since the 1990s, the voice of the
INGO has steadily increased in the UN and other international political
fora. Yet, to what extent does this exclude more contestatory voices (espe-
cially from the South) who do not share the dominant liberal understanding
of global civil society and the virtues of consultation/cooperation?
If the interactions between the economic policy makers and the ‘repre-
sentatives’ of global civil society are examined in detail, we see that ‘the
form, content and eventual outcomes of such gatherings are so heavily
circumscribed by the interests of states’ (Colás 2002: 153) that it is hard to
perceive the voice of an autonomous ‘global citizen’. The shared perception
 Transnational political fora 91
1111 of pro-globalizers from the right and the left that the days of the sovereign
2 state are numbered blinds them to this material reality. Furthermore,
3 contrary to the benign yet vague progressive rhetoric of most INGOs they
4 mainly are, as Colás puts it, ‘fundamentally pressure groups which do not
5 contest the overall legitimacy of a specific regime but mostly seek to alter
6 a particular policy – on human rights, environmental law, women’s rights,
7 and so forth’ (Colás 2002: 62). It is the very professionalization of the INGOs
8 and their focused attention to ‘their’ causes that removes them from a broader
9 contestatory role.
1011 There is another major problem in promoting global civil society and the
1 transnational political fora that are the subject of this chapter. That is, their
2 ability to reflect, let alone deal with, the social conflicts and problems of
3111 today’s complex, globalized world. We need to reflect on the implications
4 of what Jai Sen wrote on the eve of the Mumbai WSF event, from the inside,
5 as an organizer:
6
7 we in India are so overwhelmed by all that is going on in the country
8 in these turbulent times – communal violence, state-sponsored pogroms,
9 nationalistic war hysteria, a sustained rise of the right, continuing
20111 caste discrimination, massive impacts of economic liberalization includ-
1 ing suicides by farmers and workers, flagrant corruption, and environ-
2 mental and social devastation caused by huge ‘development’ projects, to
3 speak of only some of the scarred landscape – that we have developed
4 a highly insular and parochial view of the world, and whatever little
5 information is available to us on the Forum and on world events gets
6 overwhelmed by the demands of more ‘local’ and ‘national’ develop-
7 ments.
8 (Sen 2004: xxvi)
9
30111 But is this ‘insular and parochial’ view of the world that unusual among
1 the losers in the great social transformation wrought by globalization? Is
2 the World Social Forum, for all its professed global outlook and undoubted
3 good intentions, not a little bit too Western, too ‘white’ to understand the
4 majority world where social, religious and ethnic conflict is quite raw,
35 immediate and overwhelming?
6 The limits of global civil society are similar to those Marx discerned in
7 the formation of the modern state that sought to abolish non-political
8 distinctions but was, at the same time, based on private property and social
9 rank: ‘far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the
40111 presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and
1 asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being’ (Marx
2 1844). The false or unreal ‘universality’ of human rights as dealt with above
3 is central to a continuation of this critique in the contemporary era. Kenneth
4 Anderson and David Rieff have argued that the INGO/social movement
45111 engaging with global civil society:
92 Transnational political fora
appeals to universal, transcendental, but ultimately mystical values –
the values of the human rights movement and the ‘innate’ dignity of
the person – rather than to the values of democracy and the multiple
conceptions of the good that, as a value, it spawns.
(Anderson and Rieff 2005: 32)

It is probably not an exaggeration to draw a parallel between today’s NGOs

and the missionaries that Ireland sent to ‘Christianize’ Africa (think of ‘Saint’
Bob Geldof) or those priests and monks who accompanied the Spanish
Conquest of America. Missionary zeal is, ultimately, no substitute for demo-
cratic development and cannot short-circuit the fundamental reforms of
global political economy that are needed.
If we retreat from a quasi-religious messianic faith in ‘universal’ human
rights and the onward march of global civil society we can still focus on
the democratic potential of social engagement with economic power.
Following an exhaustive study of how various social movements have engaged
with the World Bank/IMF/WTO, O’Brien et al. conclude that: ‘Although
GSM [global social movement] activists are usually disappointed by their
lack of influence upon MEIs [multilateral economic institutions], the shift
of the MEI agenda is a significant accomplishment’ (O’Brien et al. 2000:
228). In the course of the 1990s, especially towards the end of the decade,
the international managers of globalization were beginning to acknowledge
the social impact of their free market economic doctrines. While internal
contradictions of the dominant order undoubtedly played a role, the contes-
tation from below was also a prime mover in this shift.
While most certainly challenges to the dominant order will be subject
to capture and co-option by the dominant order, this is not the only dynamic
at play. Thus, for example, the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender policies at the
World Bank in the 1990s, may be viewed as co-option by radical feminists
but it is much more besides. Sanjeev Khagram and co-authors note appo-
sitely that ‘once international norms are in place they empower and
legitimate the transnational networks and coalitions that promote them’
(Khagram et al. 2002: 16). The ‘long march through the institutions’ that
many feminists engaged in from the late 1980s onwards paid off with
‘gender-sensitive’ policies in the 1990s. This allowed women’s groups on
the ground to exploit the legitimacy of these international norms and make
real social gains at the national and local levels.
Another very significant progressive effect of the transnational political
fora phenomenon is how it has actually been able to generate and legitimize
new forms of social opposition. Thus, referring to the rise of a transnational
indigenous people’s movement, Passy notes that: ‘Their grievances, which
are local or at best national at the outset, globalize when they enter the
UN. They leave the specific community, region or national boundary within
which they took origin to reach the whole planet’ (Passy 1999: 160). The
UN does, thus, offer excellent opportunities for oppressed groups to organize
 Transnational political fora 93
1111 towards and express their identity at a discursive level. If the UN might
2 take a more inclusive approach towards social movements than the ‘iron
3 triangle’ of the World Bank/IMF/WTO, this can only be to the advantage
4 of those social groups seeking to articulate a public voice.
5 So, while transnational political fora such as those around human rights
6 can be co-opted even as they contest the dominant order, a process of social
7 transformation is under way. Liberal governance strategies may well include
8 a co-option of NGO and social movement opposition discourses. But, as
9 Drainville puts it: ‘until global governance has in fact succeeded in fixing
1011 hegemonical terms of presence in the world economy . . . global capitalism
1 is taking a risk by dangling global civility under people’s noses’ (Drainville
2 2004: 155). If we are, indeed, at a transitional point in world history as a
3111 new world order consolidates itself (or not) then there is considerable fluidity,
4 as well as risk, in the global hegemonic order, and we should not simply
5 take a necessitarian view of the situation that sees even concessions to democ-
6 racy as part of a grand master plan. Maybe history is more open than that,
7 as we shall explore in Chapter 8.
8 While the outcome of the struggle for global hegemony is most uncer-
9 tain we need to acknowledge, finally, the extent to which transnational
20111 political fora have made their presence felt in recent years. The rise of the
1 ‘parallel summits’, as Mario Pianta calls them, was an incipient phenom-
2 enon in the late 1970s as East–West détente set in, decolonization was
3 completed, and supranational decision-making processes came to the fore.
4 In the 2001 Global Civil Society Yearbook, Pianta stressed how, after 1995
5 (year of the Copenhagen Conference on Social Development and the Beijing
6 Conference of Women) parallel summits really began to make their mark
7 and how they proliferated after 2000 post-Seattle 1999 (Pianta 2001). But
8 when Pianta returned to update this data in 2003 he found that what was
9 once a ‘parallel’ process was now the main event in 2002 (and the first three
30111 months of 2003) when fully one third of the total global civil society gath-
1 erings since 1988 took place representing a 50 per cent increase on 2001
2 (Pianta 2003: 388). The transnational political fora were here to stay.
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
45111
6 Local transnationalisms
Workers, peasants and
environmentalists

Whereas Chapter 5 dealt with the explicitly transnational political fora that
sought to democratize globalization, this chapter treats the very local
transnationalisms of workers, peasants and environmentalists. The overall
theme is the very ‘1960s’ slogan of ‘Think globally, act locally’ that animates
many environmentalists and localized social movements. I consider, in
turn, the workers’ movement, the peasant and farmer movements and the
Green movement as case studies of local transnationalism. These case
studies help us reconsider the common preconception that the contestation
of globalization must necessarily occur at a global level. Indeed, we need to
go further and deconstruct the traditional notions of spatial levels of social
activity in the complex and hybrid nature of actually existing social contes-
tation movements.
While the previous chapter took up the general subject of ‘cosmopolitan
ghosts’ this one addresses the equally general issue of ‘militant particu-
larism’. Against the a-spatial imagination of the first, the latter pits the
particularity of place. Yet the politics of place in the era of globalization
are neither obvious nor simple. For some analysts and activists there is a
simple schema in which global is bad and local is good. Of course, the
cosmopolitan may well look down on the place-bound political imagination
of the local activist. Clearly, we need to move beyond the binary opposi-
tion between the local and the global. The case studies in this chapter and
the concluding theoretical section seek to accomplish this task in taking up
the ‘local’ interventions of social movements that are, of course, often as
transnational as those considered in Chapter 5.

Workers united
Labour internationalism has always taken different forms and these have
rarely followed the mythical injunction to ‘workers of all countries unite,
you have nothing to lose but your chains’. In fact, from the period of the
First International until 1968 it was, according to Marcel van der Linden,
a ‘national internationalism’ (Linden 2003) that prevailed. That is to say,
it was based on a narrow and Eurocentric conception of the ‘international
 Local transnationalisms 95
1111 working class’ and it was a form of solidarity between national trade union
2 movements rather than a genuine transnationalism. In the period since 1968
3 we have seen the rise of the new social movements, the collapse of com-
4 munism, and the emergence of globalization as a dominant societal para-
5 digm. What this means in terms of internationalism is that we have probably
6 entered a transitional phase akin to that associated with the formation of the
7 First International, with new political and organizational forms emerging.
8 Traditional models of internationalism ignore the complex contingencies
9 at play and the very real contradictions underlying its practice. For example,
1011 we might have to recognize that there are often narrow sectional interests
1 lying behind ‘internationalism’, as when US trade unions promote unionism
2 in the South to dampen competition over wage levels with their own
3111 members. Also, we might find that the best way to combat globalization is
4 through a form of national alternativist trade union strategy. So, one of the
5 new global unions ICEM, in a document arguing for ‘global unionism’
6 concludes that ‘priority must be given to supporting organizing at local
7 union level’ (ICEM 1999: 25) to build union strength on the ground. There
8 is, in reality, no ‘one right way’ to practise internationalism and we need
9 to recognize that it is a complex, shifting and transitional phase we are
20111 currently experiencing.
1 The particular form of workers’ joint action and solidarity we explore
2 here is that of ‘local transnationalism’. Our basic hypothesis is that articu-
3 lated by Andrew Herod, namely that:
4
5 the global should not be privileged a priori as the scale at which activ-
6 ities to confront global capital must be carried out. Whereas in many
7 cases it may be necessary for workers to organize, globally, in others it
8 is workers’ local activities that may give them purchase upon global
9 political and economic interests.
30111 (Herod 2001: 52)
1
2 This is not an argument in favour of the new localism or for labour to enter
3 local ‘growth coalitions’ with capital and the state. It is simply a recogni-
4 tion that globalization impacts on a range of different social scales and so,
35 likewise, social contestation and transnationalism may also benefit from
6 moving beyond a stark local/global imaginary.
7 The auto industry led worldwide in the introduction of ‘lean production’
8 in the 1980s as neoliberal globalization took shape as dominant manage-
9 ment strategy. Originating in Japan it eventually dominated the global
40111 auto industry with an emphasis on labour flexibility, extensive outsourcing
1 and the ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) approach to the assembly line. In the Flint
2 Michigan General Motors (GM) plants there had been bitter strikes in 1994
3 and 1996 against the consequent ‘downsizing’ of the workforce. Labour in
4 the capitalist heartlands was beginning to fight back after a long lull imposed
45111 by a managerial offensive. Then in 1998 the United Auto Workers (UAW)
96 Local transnationalisms
again launched a strike at GM in Flint over the company’s attempt to change
local work rules. As Herod recounts, ‘GM’s reliance upon JIT production
and inventory control meant that the Flint strikes had a snowballing effect’
(Herod 2001: 111) as component provider plants began to close down.
GM had developed a finely tuned and well-integrated production machine
that depended on the whole network functioning and the cooperation of the
workforce. Network capitalism was productive and it was flexible but it was
also vulnerable. A strike by barely 9,000 UAW members in a small US
community in a matter of days had impacted on 27 of the 29 GM assembly
plants in North America and 117 component supplier plants in North
America, Mexico and Singapore (Herod 2001: 262). The company lost nearly
US$2.5 billion and half a million vehicles as a result of this dispute. By
successfully mapping the production and supplier chains of the multinational
corporations, workers were able to locate the pressure points that they all
inevitably possess. A feeling of demoralization and disempowerment at local
level was successfully halted in Flint, Michigan, and reinstated the local
community as a player in the globalization game.
The power of the local to impact on the new global capitalism is clear
from the GM strike. While the spread of capitalism is its strength it is also
a potential weakness if there are key nodal points in its network structure.
Maybe the GM strike will be difficult to replicate and counter-measures will
already be in place, but it does indicate that the local still matters even
while globalization tends to obliterate space.
Around the same time as the GM strike in the US, dock workers in
Liverpool (UK) were being locked out by an employer keen to enforce the
(re)casualization of dock labour. What began as a seemingly traditional
defensive and local labour dispute soon burst onto the international stage
with the first coordinated global work stoppage by dock workers in 1997.
For sympathetic observers such as Kim Moody: ‘The Merseyside dockers
had given world labor a lesson in how to counter the power, not only of
dock, shipping and other transportation firms, but all the TNCs whose vast
investments rest on this fragile transportation system’ (Moody 1997: 251).
As with GM a specific, very local group of workers was impacting on a
global industry. The mid-1990s’ Liverpool docks strike has been variously
seen as the last gasp of traditional male manual labour and the harbinger
of a new internationalism. The reality was more prosaic, with many of its
features following a pattern set in Liverpool labour history, including a tradi-
tion of ‘militant particularism’. The workers’ own union – the TGWU
(Transport and General Workers’ Union) – did not support the strike but,
whether reluctantly or not, the ITF (International Transport Workers’
Federation) did throw its considerable ‘official’ weight behind the inter-
national solidarity campaign in the docks and waterfronts.
In the course of the two year long dockers’ campaign various strategies
came to the fore, from building support in the local community, pressurizing
their national union to support them, to building on existing international
 Local transnationalisms 97
1111 links between dockers. The international turn was largely pragmatic and
2 defensive; as one dockers’ leader put it: ‘The move onto the international
3 scene was taken in some respects out of sheer frustration against unfair
4 and one-side [national] labour laws’ (Terry Teague, cited in Kennedy and
5 Lavalette 2004: 216). While this campaign was spectacularly effective in its
6 own terms it did not help the dockers ‘win’ their struggle. In 1998 Australian
7 dockers were more successful in repelling a similar employer offensive mainly
8 on the basis of much stronger local support. So rank-and-file internation-
9 alism may be part of labour’s armoury but is not necessarily effective always
1011 and everywhere. Liverpool’s long drawn-out dispute does, however, well
1 illustrate the complex dynamic of local/global forms of struggle and the
2 basis for local transnationalism.
3111 Our third vignette is not strictly ‘local’ but also points towards more
4 complex forms of internationalism than those articulated by the global justice
5 movement. In the mid-1990s trade unions in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay
6 and Uruguay (that formed MERCOSUR – the Common Market of the
7 Southern Cone) recognized that: ‘With the globalization of the economy,
8 we will not be able to face problems like unemployment through defensive
9 and corporative actions confined to a national ambit’ (cited Munck 2001:
20111 18). While the MERCOSUR governments rejected out of hand the notion
1 of a regional Social Charter they did agree to set up a working sub-group
2 for Labour Relations, Employment and Social Security. The labour voice was
3 further extended in MERCOSUR through the 1994 Ouro Preto Protocol
4 that established, among other structures, a Socio-Economic Consultative
5 Forum. There the regional trade unions, led by the powerful Brazilian CUT
6 (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores) made a considerable impression.
7 The regional trade union umbrella group has taken a strong stance in
8 favour of further regional integration through MERCOSUR and other
9 networks. However, this is posed as a counter-hegemonic form of region-
30111 alism against that of the unregulated market integration under the auspices
1 of the US and the multinational corporations. Thus, the unions call for ‘the
2 construction of a development model centred on the construction of a society
3 based on a more equal income distribution and the consolidation of social
4 justice’ (cited Munck 2001: 19). Rather than seeing regionalism as simply
35 a form of globalization’s expansion, the MERCOSUR trade unions have,
6 rather, appreciated its contradictory aspects, in providing some counter-
7 balance and increased regional sovereignty in relation to US imperial designs.
8 It is also a decisive voice in favour of democracy in the region severely threat-
9 ened by the social impact of neoliberalism.
40111 Labour movements have, on the whole, been slow to appreciate the signifi-
1 cance of the regional dimension in contesting globalization. The regional
2 moment is in a liminal situation, lying in a fluctuating position somewhere
3 betwixt and between the national and the global. Yet if the analysis above
4 is generalizable at all then we might expect a resurgence of regional-level
45111 labour organizing, agitating and action against neoliberal globalization.
98 Local transnationalisms
On the basis of these three brief case studies, albeit limited to the
Americas and Western Europe, we can now maybe move beyond what some
observers call the ‘local-global paradox’. This refers to the fact that ‘while
economic relationships have become ever more global in scope and nature,
political responses to economic globalization are becoming more localized’
(Jonas 1998: 325). While this might be the case, it is not, I would argue,
incompatible with the emergence of a new labour internationalism. Workers
are clearly divided by national, regional, gender, ethnic and other fault-lines.
The growing internationalization of capitalist rule may increase competi-
tion along national, regional and even city lines, but globalization has
also created a more numerous global working class and, arguably, a com-
mon focus for workers worldwide (Munck 2002). Some workers and their
organizations have responded with a ‘new realism’ that simply accepts an
irreversible change in the balance of forces against workers. In other cases
national and regional alternatives have developed along traditional political
mobilization lines. What we have explored here is the potential for a local
transnationalism based on the notion that workers’ internationalism need
not mirror the international structures of capitalism of either the multi-
national corporations or the WTO.

Peasants revolt
Peasant internationalism did not begin with Jean Bové distributing Roque-
fort at Seattle 1999 in protest against US protectionism and the nefarious
role of the WTO in regards to the small farmer in the era of globaliza-
tion. In 1923 the Communist International had founded the Red Peasant
International (better known by its Russian acronym Krestintern) with
responsibility for worldwide organization of the peasantry in pursuit of
communism. Its organization seemed impressive with a bi-annual Inter-
national Peasant Congress, a Peasant Information Bureau, an International
Agrarian Institute and its own publication. However, in practice, it failed
to make significant advances in Eastern Europe where it might have been
expected to succeed and in the Third World it served more as a vehicle for
opportunist Comintern alliances with right wing peasant parties rather than
as organizer of those who toiled the land.
Trotsky carried out an admittedly self-interested critique of the
Krestintern in 1928 in the context of the Chinese revolution which has a
contemporary ring to it. He argued that from the beginning the Krestintern
was ‘merely an experiment’ given that ‘the peasantry, by virtue of its entire
history and the conditions of its existence, is the least international of
classes’ (Trotsky 1928: 33). The peasantry could only become internation-
alist if torn away from bourgeois influence and by recognition of the
proletariat as its leader. Only the peasant poor are likely to choose this path
and they will follow their national proletarian leaders. Interestingly, Trotsky
argued against international organization of the peasantry ‘without regard
 Local transnationalisms 99
1111 to the national Communist parties’ (Trotsky 1928: 33) as this could harm
2 national workers/poor peasant alliances. To be specific, ‘it is hopeless to
3 attempt to forge a direct link between the peasant of Hupei and the peasant
4 of Galicia or Dobruja, the Egyptian fellah and the American farmer’ (Trotsky
5 1928: 34).
6 Contemporary peasant internationalism seems to have disproved this view
7 and shown that the abject failure of the Krestintern was not due to innate
8 political characteristics of the peasantry. Against traditional Marxist class
9 analysis of the peasantry there is now a focus on what unites all who work
1011 the land. Thus, a past president of the National Farmers Union of Canada
1 remarks in an interview:
2
3111 If you actually look at what ‘peasant’ means, it means ‘people of the
4 land’. Are we Canadian farmers ‘people of the land’? Well, yes, of course.
5 We too are peasants and it’s the land and our relationship to the land
6 and food production that distinguishes us . . . We’re not part of the
7 industrial machine. We’re much more closely linked to the places where
8 we grow food, and what the weather is there.
9 (Nattie Weibe, cited Edelman 2003: 187)
20111
1 Building on this broad peasant category helps us relativize the distinction
2 between the industrialized farmer and the subsistence farmer, the First and
3 Third Worlds as it were. As Edelman explains, ‘the upsurge in transnational
4 agriculturalists’ movements during the past two decades is a direct result
5 of a worldwide farm crisis’ (Edelman 2003: 188). The steady development
6 of capitalism in agriculture (‘agribusiness’) led to a process of capitalization
7 and concentration to the detriment of the small producer. This was accen-
8 tuated by the WTO’s agriculture policies in the 1990s. Even mainstream
9 and quite conservative organizations such as the International Federation of
30111 Agricultural Producers (IFAP) began to articulate a critique of the now
1 dominant neoliberal policies in agriculture. Of course, it was just as likely
2 that this would take the form of hostility against other national producers
3 (e.g. ‘French farmers’) as take an internationalist form. But nationalist and
4 protectionist tendencies in the early and mid-1990s gradually gave way to
35 a new form of peasant internationalism.
6 Vía Campesina (Peasant Road) was formed as an agriculturalists’ network
7 in 1993 through the efforts of a small Dutch NGO but it came to inter-
8 national prominence at the 1995 Global Assembly on Food Security in
9 Québec where it made a significant intervention. By the late 1990s Vía
40111 Campesina had some 55 peasant and farmer affiliated organizations from 36
1 countries. As Edelman remarks, this ‘represented an unprecedented unity
2 on a considerable range of political positions and between producers in devel-
3 oped and poor countries’ (Edelman 2003: 205). Its main unifying discourse
4 was centred upon the concept of ‘food sovereignty’ that posed food as a
45111 human right rather than as a commodity. Vía Campesina articulated the
100 Local transnationalisms
view – contra the WTO dominant philosophy – that farmers and peasants
in the North and the South do not need greater access to global markets
but, rather, protection of their role in local markets.
For many, José Bové, the French farmer jailed for tearing down a
MacDonald’s outlet near Millau, symbolizes the new peasant internation-
alism as an integral element of the anti-globalization movement. Bové was
and is very much a product of the French May 1968 events, and, in particular,
the Larzac mobilization of the 1970s against the French Army occupation
of that plateau. Bové himself refers to being influenced by Spanish anar-
chists, Martin Luther King, Ghandi and Mexican farm workers organizer
César Chávez (Bové and Dufour 2001: 90). The 1980s saw an extension of
farmers’ networks across Western Europe that then ‘went global’ in the
1990s, culminating in the formation of Vía Campesina. For José Bové this
is ‘a fantastic network for training and debate . . . a real farmers’ Inter-
national, a living example of a new relationship between North and South’
(Bové and Dufour 2001: 96).
Vía Campesina supporters made their presence visible at Seattle 1999 in
a striking way through high-profile protests as well as lobbying. Since the
mid-1980s GATT (General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs) and then the
WTO had sought to regulate agricultural production and trade along neo-
liberal lines. At the anti-WTO protests at Seattle the answer was clear: ‘Food
out of the WTO’, a key demand of Vía Campesina. The struggle against
biotechnology and GM (genetically modified) food was a related area of
intervention that brought the farmers and peasants into alliance with
environmentalists. In its campaign for comprehensive land reform, and in
dialogue with the World Bank, Vía Campesina declared that ‘land is much
more than a commodity’ (cited Edelman 2003: 207). This echo of Polanyi
and the struggle against commodification by social forces is key to under-
standing the new peasant internationalism.
One of the first rural social movements to target the WTO was the
Kainaka State Farmers’ Association (KRRS) in India. Opposed to so-called
‘Green Revolution’ in agriculture it has focused on chemical and capital-
intensive agriculture and, more recently, on biotechnology. In India it has
mounted very public campaigns against multinationals such as Monsanto
and Cargill and, inevitably, the ubiquitous Kentucky Fried Chicken
outlets. It has also quite effectively built alliances with other mass move-
ments concerned with the impact of neoliberalism in India such as the
anti-dam movement as well as women’s, tribal and fisherfolk movements.
In the summer of 1999 KRRS organized what was called an ‘intercontinental
caravan’ over to Western Europe to highlight their campaign against agri-
business and to build a real transnational movement over and beyond
Internet-based solidarity campaigns.
The Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance, to give it
its full title, brought some 450 representatives from grassroots movements
in the Indian sub-continent to Western Europe marking an explicitly trans-
 Local transnationalisms 101
1111 national orientation. It was based on a genuine North–South solidarity model
2 as against the paternalism often lying behind Northern solidarity move-
3 ments. The Caravan was effectively ‘jumping scales’ to use a spatial metaphor,
4 from a local/national scale to the regional/international level. Not sur-
5 prisingly this event was not devoid of exclusionary nationalism as when the
6 mainly Indian participants objected to the profiting of Nepalese speakers
7 at one event. Overall, though, the Caravan experience is illustrative of what
8 Featherstone refers to as a ‘strategy [that] represented a significant shift in
9 the way that the movement constructed maps of grievances, from targeting
1011 rural-urban division in India to contesting transnational power relations’
1 (Featherstone 2003: 5).
2 In Latin America the most visible peasant movement is the Zapatistas
3111 but, in fact, they do not play a strong role in the new peasant internation-
4 alism. The lead there is taken by Brazil’s MST (Movimento Sêm Terra –
5 Landless Movement) committed to agrarian reform and an end to free market
6 policies. The hallmark of the MST has been massive land occupations and
7 an astute policy of national and international political alliances. Contem-
8 porary peasant movements in Latin America – whether in Brazil, Colombia,
9 Ecuador or El Salvador – tend to share a common anti-imperialist identity
20111 that may merge with anti-globalization but is not necessarily the same thing.
1 They are, arguably, more ‘classical’ social movements than the new ones,
2 committed to modernity (albeit not a free market one) most often within
3 the clear parameters of the nation-state.
4 The MST strategy has been called ‘modernization from below with
5 equity’ and it has been effective in national and transnational fora precisely
6 due to such a clear orientation. While they, indeed, believe that ‘another
7 world is possible’ this is not conceived in utopian or futuristic terms.
8 Rather, as Petras and Veltmeyer explain, this movement and others across
9 Latin America have adopted modern goals, and organizational forms are
30111 combined with ‘traditional forms of cohesion based on kinship, community
1 and, in many cases, class and ethnic identity’ (Petras and Veltmeyer 2003:
2 103). Thus, we can understand that there may often be a tension between
3 local, national and transnational strategies. Indeed, a number of the Central
4 American peasant organizations who pioneered the new peasant inter-
35 nationalism have since withdrawn and ‘retreated’ to the national political
6 arena as a priority.
7 The new peasant internationalism could be seen as completing the mission
8 of the Krestintern under very different conditions to the 1920s. It has effec-
9 tively unified very distinct rural populations against the effects of neoliberal
40111 globalization on agriculture. Outside of an agribusiness that becomes a
1 capitalist enterprise like any other, all agriculturalists are affected by WTO
2 policies negatively. Vía Campesina articulates well the rejection of ‘neo-
3 liberal policies that push countries into cash crop production at the expense
4 of domestic food production’ (Vía Campesina 2005: 1). This movement
45111 also articulates clearly what they see as an alternative, namely the sustainable
102 Local transnationalisms
use of local resources, the production of food for local consumption to over-
come the problems arising when local production systems are destroyed.
Thus, we have here a very clear-cut case of the new local transnationalism.

Reclaiming the Earth

The slogan ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ originated in the environmental
movement and it is thus an apposite case study of local transnationalism.
The environment transcends national boundaries, and issues such as ‘global
warming’ are, by definition, transnational. Yet, as David Held and co-authors
put it: ‘Despite the global proclivities of the movement, much of the activity
has been local and national in its focus’ (Held et al. 1999: 387). While
environmental INGOs such as Greenpeace have been highly visible, their
national counterparts are usually much better resourced. Also, despite the
early global governance focus on the environment at the Rio environmental
conference of 1992, the INGOs have not been particularly successful in
terms of inserting themselves in the transnational environmental negotia-
tions and institutions. Nevertheless, environmentalists with the bold mission
to reclaim the Earth and transform humankind’s relationship to nature have
been an effective component of the broad anti-globalization movement.
The environmental movement is widely seen as an exemplar of the new
internationalism. The ‘global environmental crisis’ is addressed through
transnational political campaigns addressed to the UN and other global
governance institutions. By challenging the dominant industrial mode of
production and unbridled corporate interests, the environmentalists bring
themselves to the centre of the anti-globalization movement. This is very
much at the core of the ‘globalization from below’ strand that accepts
fully the desirability of internationalization but seeks to turn it to people’s
advantage. There is a strong focus on the desirability of local level, small-
scale production and local community politics. As the Irish Green’s
Comhaontas Glas puts it: ‘All political, social and economic decisions should
be taken at the lowest effective level’ (cited Starr 2002: 85). This philos-
ophy has been mainstreamed now with, for example, the EU’s abiding
principle of ‘subsidiarity’ which means precisely the same thing.
Grassroots environmental movements are often seen as exemplars of the
new politics of trans-localism. Thus, Friends of the Earth (FOE), according
to Neil Washbourne’s study, shows ‘the importance of translocal and trans-
localist action . . . that is decentred, connects to other places without having
to go to centres, whether of power or geography’ (Washbourne 2001: 132).
This empowered and empowering form of action helps us break from a single
local/global opposition. FOE can thus be well networked globally while
also facilitating a decentralized mode of organizing and campaigning at the
local level. Information technology has, of course, been a key facilitator
for this new mode of organization, helping to bridge the gap between the
different locals. Interestingly within FOE there was a strong debate on the
 Local transnationalisms 103
1111 rise of information technology which concluded it was, indeed, congruent
2 with environmental globalist views of the world.
3 Another example of the local–global dialectic was the anti-dam move-
4 ment in Southern Brazil during the 1980s, focused around local peasant
5 mobilizations against the flooding of valleys by large hydroelectric dams.
6 This movement had both local links (with the agrarian reform movement,
7 the radical sections of the Catholic Church, etc.) and global ones with the
8 international environmental movement. A study by Rothman and Oliver of
9 this particular movement highlighted the continuous interplay between the
1011 ‘internal’ and ‘external’ actors, with resistance beginning locally and ‘inter-
1 change among activists and international organizations and movement was
2 always two-way’ (Rothman and Oliver 2002: 128). The local activists and
3111 the needs of the poor peasants affected by the dams took up the framing
4 ideologies of liberation theology first and then international political ecology,
5 but always in terms of their own very particular situation, traditions and
6 political perspectives.
7 The dialectics of globalization and local resistance are also played out in
8 the dramatic struggle of the Ogoni against Shell in Nigeria. This was a
9 classic case of a multinational corporation exploiting the ecosystem to the
20111 detriment of the indigenous population. Environmental expropriation and
1
degradation in pursuit of oil created fierce local resistance from the Ogoni
2
people of the area. The local resistance movement against Shell, going back
3
several decades, became internationalized in the 1990s with widespread calls
4
to make Shell accountable. In the aftermath of Ken Saro Wiwa’s execution
5
6 in 1995 the issue gained widespread international attention but the local
7 movement of resistance was crushed. The main lesson of this bitter local–
8 global environmental struggle, according to Cyril Obi, is ‘the overestimation
9 of the pressure that the global civil society could bring to bear on Shell and
30111 the state in Nigeria’ (Obi 2000: 291). Perhaps more solid local and national
1 alliances might have prevented the debacle that followed but that is only
2 the benefit of hindsight.
3 The way Greenpeace operates also demonstrates the keen awareness among
4 environmentalists of local–global interactions. As Amory Starr notes, ‘while
35 participating in national and local campaigns, Greenpeace has also built an
6 international presence and constituency, and appears as an international voice
7 for ecological concerns’ (Starr 2002: 86). Direct action at a local level,
8 national lobbying activity and a range of international campaigning tactics
9 all provide a subtle range of scalar activity. Interestingly Greenpeace also
40111 began to move from a generalized environmental remit to take on specific
1 corporations in the very effective (if controversial) campaign against the
2 Brent Spar oil rig sinking in the North Sea, focused on Shell. This trend
3 continued with the likes of the mainstream Sierra Club environmentalists
4 in the US becoming firmly anti-corporate in the lead up to the large cross-
45111 sector mobilizations in Seattle in 1999 (see Chapter 2).
104 Local transnationalisms
Although the local/global environmental movement has advanced new
models of organization and brought many activists into the anti-globalization
movement it does suffer from severe limitations. For one, its ecological
absolutism might constrain the project of global transformation. As Harvey
puts it:

the right to be free of ecological destruction is posed so strongly as a

negative right that it appears to preclude the positive right to trans-
form the earth in ways conducive to the well-being of the poor, the
marginalized and the oppressed.
(Harvey 1996: 400)

Whatever the merits of ‘deep’ ecologism in terms of sustainable develop-

ment, its tenets often contradict popular development in practice. This may
well be part of a broader problem which is the clearly Northern-centred
perspective lurking behind the supposedly ‘global’ programme of environ-
mentalism. Clearly, we are not ‘all in one boat’ and all the planetary images
and globe talk will not dissolve the dilemma of underdevelopment in the
majority world.
At another scale of human activity we can point to the continued rele-
vance of the national level in regards to environmental issues. A good starting
point, derived from a study of European environmentalism, is that: ‘when
would-be global movement actors do attempt to think globally, they tend
to do so in terms heavily freighted with the assumptions of the culture from
which they originate’ (Rootes 2002: 423). French farmers, German Greens,
Italian anti-globalization activists and Basque nationalists may all share a
given European environmental platform but they will do so from very
different perspectives. The export of live animals might be an issue coming
to the fore among British environmentalists but may have very little impact
among their ‘continental’ counterparts. The cultures of protest are also
nationally specific as, of course, are the particular political systems within
and against which they operate. If there is no clear European environ-
mentalism, so there is less likely to be a real global environmentalism.
The national question comes to the fore even more when dealing with
the Southern reaction to what appear to be Northern environmental concerns.
Even beyond this global divide we see the clear effectiveness of nationalism
such as in the Australian reaction to the French secret service sinking Green-
peace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1986. Damian Grenfell
comments that: ‘given the possible global consequences of the French nuclear
tests, it is ironic that the protest movement in Australia turned inward to
a sense of nation, rather than outwards towards greater acts of international
solidarity against the nuclear industry’ (Grenfell 2002: 117). Certainly
Chinese nuclear tests around the same period did not awaken the same
popular or political reaction. But rather than seeing nationalism as a barrier
to transnational solidarity perhaps we should understand it as another
 Local transnationalisms 105
1111 reaction towards the spread of neoliberal globalization (see Chapter 7) that
2 is effective in its own right.
3 We really need to foreground the political dimension in unpacking the
4 rhetoric and the social reality of environmentalism. So, for example, to take
5 the case of international toxic waste trade, Greenpeace made a conscious
6 political choice to foreground the global dimension of this problem. As Jackie
7 Smith points out:
8
9 from the perspective of national and local groups, efforts to combat local
1011 effects of toxics trade may have been more immediately effective if they
1 were focused on national governments accepting waste shipments or at
2 the corporations engaging in the trade.
3111 (Smith 1999: 177)
4
5 It was thus a political calculation that a global campaign would, in the long
6 term, be more effective than local campaigns perhaps based on a NIMBY
7 (not in my back yard) type of philosophy or logic. To influence the global
8 governance of toxic waste management is clearly a more ambitious target
9 than stopping a particular shipment to a particular destination. Success at
20111 a global level can then empower future local and global struggles on the
1 issue, of course.
2 Likewise the environmental justice strand of the global Green movement
3 also brings politics to the fore in its discourse and debates. Whether it is
4 the toxification of communities of colour in the US, or indigenous strug-
5 gles over water rights in Andean America, it is the border or interaction
6 between the environmental and justice elements that prevails and sets the
7 tone of the conflict. It is the imbalance of global power that creates damaging
8 environmental consequences for those who are marginal to, or ejected from,
9 the capitalist development process in the era of globalization. This border-
30111 land also includes the very real tensions, but also possibilities, opened up
1 when the environmental movement enters into dialogue with the workers’
2 movement, often perceived to be on the wrong side of the industrial
3 society/sustainable ecology divide. The basic conclusion is that any appeals
4 to ‘Mother Earth’ as a mystic entity in its own right will fail to address the
35 basic social divisions between its human inhabitants.
6 The contradictions of environmentalism’s local transnationalism are
7 inevitable. But, as David Harvey puts it: ‘as a movement embedded in
8 multiple “militant particularisms”, it has to find a way to cross that prob-
9 lematic divide between action that is deeply embedded in place . . . to a
40111 much more general movement’ (Harvey 1996: 399). The issue is whether
1 the solidarity based on place can extend and be generalized across space.
2 The basis on which local experience and social interactions in one place build
3 and sustain a particular local campaign may not be the same elsewhere.
4 Whether it is always possible, or even desirable, to move to a higher level
45111 of abstraction is, of course, debatable. Harvey still clings to traditional
106 Local transnationalisms
socialist notions of universalism that may not translate readily into viable
radical politics today. It might be better to accept the contradiction at the
core of local transnationalism rather than to seek to ‘resolve’ it in favour of
a universalist, abstract and transcendental politics.

Militant particularisms
Against the perceived abstract cosmopolitanism of the transnational polit-
ical fora (see Chapter 5) there has been a concerted move towards ‘Reasserting
the Power of the Local’ (subtitle of Cox 1997). This research/political strand
emphasizes the localizing aspects of globalization as a necessary counter to
its ‘deterritorializing’ tendencies. Thus the transnational corporations need
roots in particular places and societies and are not simply ‘footloose and
fancy free’. Likewise, the local political context is an essential element in
any movement seeking to contest the globalization project. This is particu-
larly the case if one adopts the perspective of the ‘new’ social movements
(see Chapter 3) that address the particular grievances of identity-based social
groups rather than the grand abstractions of class and nation. A general
perspective of ‘localized resistance’ would take up the post-structuralist vision
of Michel Foucault for whom repressive power/knowledge is always resisted
in the particular rather than through grand narratives.
David Harvey has, however, recently sought to critique ‘militant partic-
ularism’ as an adequate antidote to the abstract universalism of the
‘cosmopolitan’ social movements. Workers, peasants and environmentalists
are often very ‘grounded’ in particular places and imbued with communal
or cultural identities. The solidarities of place can often be extremely mili-
tant, hence the term ‘militant particularism’, first deployed by the cultural
theorist Raymond Williams. While understanding both its appeal and its
effectiveness, David Harvey takes issue with the politics of negation he sees
at its core. Thus, for Harvey the political philosophy of a Foucault ‘urges
us to revel in the fragmentation and cacophony of voices through which the
dilemmas of the modern world are understood’ and can often end up ‘actu-
ally celebrating the fetishisms of locality, space, or social pressure group’
(Harvey 1996: 399) that underlie localized resistance. Harvey warns against
identifying simply with the local and the particular and bids us to struggle
always ‘to achieve sufficient critical distance and detachment to formulate
global ambitions’ (Harvey 1996: 44).
To seek to reconstruct the ‘global ambitions’ of traditional socialist and
other modernist movements today may not, however, be possible or even
desirable. As M.P. Smith puts it in a sympathetic engagement with Harvey’s
ambitious project, much of it depends on ‘inscribing capital accumulation
as the central driving force of human existence and class politics as the only
universal, and hence the only legitimate form of political struggle’ (Smith
2001: 37). It is not a demonic postmodernism that has decentred capital
accumulation and social contestation alike but the evolution of capitalism
 Local transnationalisms 107
1111 itself beyond its national/modernist classical incarnation. Localized forms of
2 resistance to this new capitalism do not ignore systemic class domination
3 but express the multiple forms of oppression characteristic of capitalist
4 society today. There is not much to be gained, in terms of meeting the con-
5 temporary challenges of social transformation, through blaming the localism
6 of identity politics for the political fragmentation that seems to prevail.
7 Paradoxically or not, the rise of globalization as dominant discourse
8 and contested social reality has also led to what Arif Dirlik refers to as
9 ‘the irruption of place consciousness into social and political analysis’
1011 (Dirlik 1999: 151). A sense of place has always been with us and it certainly
1 has a connotation of rootedness and groundedness, but places are not pre-
2 ordained, natural locations where humans simply inhabit. Rather, we need
3111 to understand place as a product of complex interacting social relations. It
4 is the relations between classes, genders, ethnicities and age groups that
5 shape the seemingly timeless nature and homogeneity of a place-bound
6 ‘community’. In the era of neoliberal globalization, an ever-increasing
7 commodification and ever-greater ‘freedom’ for the self-regulating market,
8 places and communities are on the defensive. They only come to the fore
9 when they are threatened by deindustrialization in the North or ‘develop-
20111 ment’ in the South.
1 Many globalization theorists seem to practically revel in the disappear-
2 ance of place. Thus Manuel Castells starts from the premise that: ‘At its
3 core, capital is global. As a rule, labor is local’ (Castells 1996: 475) to derive
4 a very negative prognosis for the latter. Capital is seen to expand endlessly
5 in the smooth space of global financial flows while labour is seen as mired
6 in the particular and the world of culture. Castells refers to how ‘the end
7 of history, enacted in the circularity of computerized financial flows . . .
8 overpowers . . . the mechanical time of industrial work’ (Castells 1996: 476).
9 In this brave new world the local clearly does not stand a chance. The onto-
30111 logical picture is completed by Castells when he argues that: ‘capital and
1 labor increasingly tend to exist in different spaces and times: the space of
2 flows and the space of places’ (Castells 1996: 475). This new global apartheid
3 is undoubtedly a tendency but can we really dismiss the role of workers and
4 places with a glib ‘end of history’ thesis?
35 There is also now a growing tendency, especially within some sections of
6 the anti-globalization movement, to reaffirm the positive aspect of local
7 places. Thus, Dirlik argues that ‘the defence or advocacy of a place-based
8 imagination here is not a product of a utopian project, but a response to a
9 very real systemic crisis’ (Dirlik 1999: 175). It is that very crisis of global-
40111 ization that simply has not delivered on its promise of prospects for all that
1 prompts people to build on the local, a sense of community and shared
2 cultural values. Certainly these may have a backward-looking and reactionary
3 aspect but that does not necessarily prevent a positive impact on ‘human-
4 izing’ globalization. It goes further than this though because while the local
45111 is certainly globalized, the global is also localized (Dirlik 1999: 177) in the
108 Local transnationalisms
sense that it does not exist as some kind of nebula and must, itself, always
be grounded to be effective as a capital accumulation strategy and as hege-
monic social and cultural project.
While it is necessary to recognize the continued and even accentuated
importance of place in the era of globalization it is also important to under-
stand the limitations of the ontological binary opposition often seen dividing
the local from the global. Whether it is space versus place or global univer-
salism versus local particularism, we are dealing with debilitating binary
oppositions based on an unsustainable ontological dualism. Smith refers in
this regard to how ‘locality is still often assumed to be a space of nature
springing from human sociability’ (Smith 2001: 121). If we move beyond
naturalistic conceptions of the local we can understand how it is also a
socially constructed category as much as class, race or gender. By treating
the ‘global’ as an a priori category the local reacts to, these binary constructs
also ignore the complex ways in which the global is always already local in
its genesis, development and day-to-day maintenance as hegemonic project.
To move beyond the global/local optic we need to foreground the com-
plex interplay of social scales in the construction of globalization. We cannot
operate with the tacit rather simple divide between the global as smooth
and the local as the place where difference is generated. Nor is it simply
the case that the economy is always global and culture is situated at the
local level. The cultural political economy of globalization needs to con-
stantly bear in mind both inextricably linked elements. We also need to
foreground all the scales including the regional, the still extremely relevant
and the supranational that is not yet global. In terms of political practice,
the same way that global managers may ‘download’ problems to the national
level, so the agents of contestation may take local issues ‘upwards’ in an
imaginative ‘jumping of scales’ as it were.
In superseding the local/global divide we also bring back into the polit-
ical equation the question of human agency. In its dominant form this divide
between the local and the global carries a very strong image of the global
as dynamic, thrusting and modernizing in contrast to a local seen as stag-
nant, passive and backward-looking. It also has a clearly defined gendered
image of a male/female divide associated with it. But, to be clear, by fore-
grounding the local we are not idealizing it. As Probyn puts it: ‘the local
is only a fragmented set of possibilities that can be articulated into a momen-
tary politics of time and place’ (Probyn 1990: 18). To be more specific, ‘in
thinking of how locale is inscribed on our bodies, in our homes, and on the
street, we can begin to loosen its ideological effects’ (Probyn 1990: 187).
In this way a focus on the local as nodal point of the work of globalization
can be seen as a starting point for its deconstruction and not as the ready-
made alternative which localist critics of globalization see it to be.
In terms of the politics of the local as a constitutive element of the anti-
globalization movement, we can now be clearer why local/good and global/
bad (or for that matter, vice versa) are poor guides to progressive political
 Local transnationalisms 109
1111 praxis. As Doreen Massey puts it: ‘Setting up the question as local versus
2 global is to accede to spatial fetishism. That is: imagining that “space” or
3 “spatial scale” has a political meaning, to assume that the local is always
4 better simply because it is local’ (Massey 2000: 2). Not only is that not the
5 case but this perspective ignores the real geography of power developing
6 across the world today. Some ‘locals’ are empowered while others are disem-
7 powered or marginalized, or some locals are more equal than others. These
8 ‘locals’ are, furthermore, not simply geographical locations but the site of
9 complex, historically derived social interaction and contestation. We cannot
1011 simply counterpose a vaguely progressive ‘local’ to the onward march of
1 globalization that supposedly obliterates space and place.
2 Finally with Boa Santos we might usefully distinguish between a ‘local
3111 that has been integrated in hegemonic globalization’ and ‘what in the
4 local is not the result of hegemonic globalization’ (Santos 2004b: 21). Much
5 of what has been referred to under the rubric of ‘glocalization’ can be seen
6 to reflect that first tendency whereby the processes of globalization absorb
7 the consuming power and creativity of local places. There is a logic here of
8 assimilation that subsumes the local within a new hegemonic global scale
9 of human oppression and emancipation. Yet the movement of contestation
20111 does not always, or even often, start at that global level. As Boa Santos
1 recalls:
2
3 most movements involved in the World Social Forum started as local
4 struggles fighting against the social exclusion brought about or inten-
5 sified by neoliberal globalization. Only later, often via the WSF, have
6 they developed local/global linkages through which they reglobalize
7 themselves in a counter-hegemonic way.
8 (Santos 2004: 22)
9
30111 In conclusion then, the local is not a ‘pure’ place and militant particu-
1 larism is not the answer to abstract universalism. The local is itself
2 multiscalar, penetrated by transnational economic social and cultural rela-
3 tions in a complex manner. The local provides a space for a new politics
4 that transcends modernist or nation-statist conceptions of the local/global
35 based on a simple inside/outside the nation-state parameter divide. The local
6 is a site for struggle and the agents of neoliberal globalization continuously
7 seek to colonize it, not least through the glocalization strategies of a Sony
8 Corporation or a McDonald’s. Those who lack power, or even a voice, may
9 also, in the local spaces of sociability and political interaction, find a plat-
40111 form to contest the ‘localized globalization’ that is currently the hegemonic
1 modality of local/global interaction. The politics of the local will continue
2 to play a major role in the complex contestation of globalization’s current
3 trajectory, dynamic and politics.
4
45111
7 Reaction and
globalization
Nationalists, patriots
and Jihadists

Perhaps the overriding characteristic of academic and non-academic coverage

of the anti-globalization movement is its focus on movements and protests
seen generally as sympathetic, with the odd critical reference to the street
violence practised by a minority. Major political phenomena of contestation
such as ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ are simply categorized elsewhere, filed
under ‘global terrorism’ or some other self-contained category. In North
America we have the so-called Patriot movement which has millions of
followers who all see the ‘new global order’ as the main enemy. Yet these
currents are not seen as in any way part of the anti-globalization movement
for reasons that amount, it seems, to political taste. The question that comes
to mind is whether we can, or should, seek to distinguish between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ social movements. It might be more consistent to simply take
social movements for what they claim to be rather than us trying to find
their ‘true’ meaning.
The third political strand we examine in this chapter is that of contem-
porary nationalism which has, paradoxically, increased in importance
while the nation-state has been diminished by economic internationaliza-
tion. Is nationalism a defensive reaction against globalization, a reassertion
of cultural identity in an era of uncertainty? Are nationalist movements
also reactionary in a political sense always and everywhere? After consid-
ering the role of nationalists, patriots and Jihadists in terms of social counter-
movements in the era of globalization we can move towards an answer
to the question of whether they are simply the ‘dark’ side of globalization
or society’s reaction against the expansion of the unregulated market.

Nationalism resurgent
As Manuel Castells puts it: ‘The age of globalization is also the age of nation-
alist resurgence’ (Castells 2004: 30). This seemed counter-intuitive since for
over a decade the ‘death’ of the nation-state had been announced and the
birth of a new universal liberal democratic culture celebrated. Nations were
now universally deemed to be mere ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson
1983) and nationalism itself an atavistic throwback to an earlier era. In the
 Reaction and globalization 111
1111 aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the unravelling
2 of the state socialist alternative in the early 1990s, the ‘end of history’
3 (Fukuyama 1992) was proclaimed by the optimistic liberal gurus. In these
4 circumstances it was hardly surprising that the national development path
5 would be deemed as obsolete as the state socialist one. However, within a
6 few years it was clear that a new era of cosmopolitan reasonableness under
7 the aegis of the free market had not descended over the world.
8 In an introduction to a broad survey of the geography of national iden-
9 tity David Hooson would write about ‘a new age of rampant and proliferating
1011 nationalisms’ developing around issues of identity ‘in the shrunken, appar-
1 ently homogenizing, high-tech world of the end of the twentieth century’
2 (Hooson 1994: 2–3). Keynote events were the break-up of Yugoslavia
3111 after 1990, the massacre in Rwanda in 1995, and the unexpected national
4 resistance in Iraq to the US–UK invasion in 2003. Were these unfortunate
5 aberrations in an otherwise dominant trend towards a smoother world where
6 the market would override prickly national sensitivities? Were these out-
7 bursts merely a reflection of the collapse of communism and the relatively
8 stable bipolar era of the cold war?
9 To answer these questions we need to delve briefly into the theory and
20111 politics of nationalism itself. The modern concept of ‘nation’ emerged as part
1 of the democratic revolutions that overthrew absolutism. To construct a
2 politics based on the ‘will of the people’ was as much a national as a demo-
3 cratic mission. Nationalism and internationalism were not incompatible, in
4 fact they most often went hand in hand. However, the inter-imperialist
5 carnage of the First World War severed the link between nationalism and
6 internationalism. National democracies were more than capable of going to
7 war with each other and internationalism became the privileged arena of the
8 fledgling socialist movement. Today, there is a widespread belief that nations
9 that participate fully in the globalization project are not likely to go to war
30111 with each other. At a popular level this translates into the belief that no two
1 countries that have a McDonald’s outlet have gone to war with each other.
2 From this globalist perspective, nationalism is seen as basically ‘back-
3 ward’, a reflection of the localisms that McDonald’s and the juggernaut
4 of globalization will sweep aside. To get around the continued existence of
35 nationalism across the world, and not only in ‘backward’ regions, some theor-
6 ists have sought to distinguish between a ‘good’ nationalism and a ‘bad’
7 nationalism as practised by reactionary, backward or simply violent people
8 (see Doob 1964). Of course, at one level this is simply a reflection of a
9 general tendency towards dualism in the dominant view of the world, but
40111 in relation to nationalism the illusion is particularly widely held. The liberal
1 view of nationalism, as Calhoun points out, ‘took for granted the historical
2 processes that produced relatively consensual national identities, and also
3 typically exaggerated the extent of consensus’ (Calhoun 1997: 87). Western
4 liberalism also took a totally Eurocentric view of the world and thus found
45111 it hard to understand nationalisms other than its own.
112 Reaction and globalization
With the coming of the age of globalization many analysts predicted,
understandably enough, the end of the era of nationalism. From the right
of the political spectrum Kenichi Ohmae wrote ecstatically about the new
‘borderless world’ (Ohmae 1990) and ‘the end of the nation state’ (Ohmae
1995). In the new global order nation-states had become for him ‘little more
than bit actors’ or more specifically ‘the nation state is increasingly a nostalgic
fiction’ (Ohmae 1995: 12). From the opposite end of the political spectrum
Arjun Appadurai weighs in with a text on the cultural dimensions of global-
ization where one chapter deals with ‘Patriotism and its Futures’ from a
firmly ‘post-nationalist’ perspective, arguing that: ‘we need to think ourselves
beyond the nation’ (Appadurai 1996: 158). For Appadurai, ‘we are entering
a postnational world’ that will hopefully allow us ‘to free ourselves from the
trope of the tribe, as the primordial source of those nationalisms that we
find less civil than our own’ (Appadurai 1996: 158–64). Whether from the
right or the left there seems a basic incomprehension of the basic functions
of nationalism and a tendency to miss nuances and contradictions.
Post-nationalism now joined the other ‘posts’ such as post-colonialism,
post-modernism and post-feminism as desirable states of being for a post-
ideology era. It was seen as a novel and desirable development of this last
turn of century. Post-nationalism was endorsed normatively in the post-cold
war period by many Western liberal intellectuals, who saw it as the harbinger
of a new civilized cosmopolitanism. It was seen as the democratic antidote
to the ‘ethno-nationalisms’ that supposedly plague the more ‘backward’
regions of the world. It is often deployed in situations where there is a
nationalist resistance to colonialism and imperialism. Thus, Richard Kearney
writes on ‘postnational Ireland’ and takes as his main target what he
sees as the narrow and parochial nationalism of Irish Republicanism to
which he counterposes ‘an abandonment of the obsession with national self-
sufficiency and conflict in favour of . . . a transinsular [Ireland and Britain]
network of association’ (Kearney 1997: 179). What is perhaps naive in this
viewpoint is the assumption that to oppose nationalism on behalf of a
‘transinsular’ pact with the imperial power is somehow not political and
more in keeping with the global era of tolerance and cosmopolitanism.
Underlying the post-nationalist interpretation and ideology of the national,
lies a particular negative interpretation of nationalism. Ernest Gellner
referred to the ‘Dark Gods’ theory of nationalism that misinterpreted it as
pertaining to the past rather than a path to modernity (Gellner 1983). Tom
Nairn, borrowing from W.B. Yeats, has coined the title of ‘Rough Beast’
theory which is seen as something or someone ‘out there slouching towards
us in the post-2000 darkness, he is mean, he is backward, and it is time he
was chained up again’ (Nairn 2000: 2). This image was conjured up when
Yugoslavia broke apart, civil strife broke out in Rwanda or in relation to
resistance against the occupation of Iraq by Western powers. In the case of
Yugoslavia and the ex-Soviet Union it was hardly surprising that national
politics would reassert themselves after the break-up of multinational states.
 Reaction and globalization 113
1111 In Rwanda the massacre was hardly inseparable from the tribal politics of
2 the imperial power and, more recently, the wild swings in commodity prices
3 such as those of coffee.
4 When catastrophic conflicts emerge they are rarely attributable solely to
5 the emergence of nationalism as a dark atavistic force emerging out of the
6 mists of a mythical past. Most often these conflicts can be related to inter-
7 national politics and, above all, the failure of democracy. Nationalism cannot
8 be reduced to false consciousness as many Marxists and liberals alike are
9 prone to do. Rather, we need to understand the real cultural and community
1011 roots of nationalist movements and the ‘sense of belonging’ that they create.
1 Nationalism is a way of constructing collective identities in a thoroughly
2 modern way. As Calhoun, no apologist for nationalism, puts it, it ‘is a posi-
3111 tive source of meaning – and even sometimes inspiration – and mutual
4 commitment among very large groups of people’ (Calhoun 1997: 126).
5 Across wide swathes of the majority world, people owe their ability to live
6 under democracy to the existence of nationalist liberation movements, and
7 they now live in nation-states that provide some bearings in a complex
8 global world that is changing very rapidly.
9 Crucial to an understanding of contemporary nationalism is the dictum
20111 that it ‘is more reactive than proactive, it tends to be more cultural than
1
political’ (Castells 2004: 33). That is to say, it is not the classical modern
2
era construction of a sovereign nation-state that is most often at stake.
3
Globalization has threatened – to a very varied degree of course – the onto-
4
logical security people might feel through belonging to society in some
5
6 way and participating in a political order. Paul James describes this process
7 eloquently as a ‘violent fracturing of felt security’ (James 2001: 18). When
8 this happens all forms of destructive conflicts can ensue with unforeseen
9 consequences. The new nationalisms – part and parcel of globalization – are
30111 but one form that this reaction can take along with the new localism, region-
1 alism or ethnic identification.
2 So globalization has not transcended nationalism as the globalizers had
3 hoped and cultural nationalists had feared. Its resurgence cannot be seen as
4 some primordial return to ‘blood and belonging’ as commentators such
35 as Ignatieff have claimed (Ignatieff 1993). Nor does the notion of a ‘clash
6 of civilizations’ (Huntington 2002) understood as nationalist or religious
7 wars capture the complexity and integral nature of the nationalism–
8 globalism relationship. The rise of the new nationalism needs to be seen as
9 both response to, and product of, globalization. The insecurities generated
40111 by globalism, and the perceived failure of alternative development paths,
1 have generated new nationalisms. But their reaction to cultural loss and
2 disorientation has taken full advantage of the benefits of globalization in
3 terms of increasingly accessible international travel and the communications
4 revolutions. In this way the new nationalisms are, perhaps, well described
45111 as post-modern.
114 Reaction and globalization
Returning finally to the Polanyi problematic that frames our analysis of
globalization and the great counter-movement, we can conclude with Nairn
and James that ‘the spreading general constraints of a global economy have
not dissipated but magnified the importance of the non-economic’ (Nairn and
James 2005: 12). Economic logic and the new market fundamentalism has,
indeed, transformed the world but it has also generated social counter-
movements among which nationalism, broadly understood, stands out as a
major element. Against the social and existential insecurity created by the
‘one big market’ that is globalization, nationalism reaffirms the importance
of culture, identity and roots. Nationalism can thus be seen not as some unfor-
tunate hangover from an era before the ‘end of history’ was proclaimed but,
rather, as an integral element of the ongoing march of globalization.
Globalism and nationalism are, perhaps, best seen as two sides of the
same coin and inextricably linked. They are both equally positive and nega-
tive social forces to varying degrees. What is called ‘fundamentalism’ in the
West is more often than not related to the nationalist resurgence we have
discussed in this section. While of course religious revivals (as we shall
see below) feed into the phenomenon known as fundamentalism, it needs
to be related to the broader underlying tendency for nationalist impulses
to emerge as counter to the dominant globalizing movement. In terms of
political analysis this tendency may well be seen as ‘reactive’ in relation to
globalization but it is not always or simply ‘reactionary’ in the sense of right
wing or conservative political viewpoints. Most certainly this analysis would
make us question an understanding of global civil society consisting only
of progressive, democratic and non-violent political forces.

Patriots against globalization

If we were to casually surf anti-globalization websites in the US we would
come across many describing globalization as ‘treason’ and railing at the
‘new world order’ but from a distinctly non-liberal left position. They deploy
their movement in a networked, decentralized way and are assiduous users
of the Internet. They challenge the legitimacy of the US state and defend
the right of the citizen to bear arms against oppression. There are counter-
hegemonic moves to create an alternative popular currency and court systems.
Yet these political voices, resembling the social movements countering
globalization from the perspective that ‘another world is possible’, are most
often religious fundamentalists, fervent supporters of a patriarchal order
and unashamed supporters of the ‘white man’ against the hybridity of multi-
culturalism they associate with globalization.
The Patriot movement in the US came to prominence in the 1990s with
a range of different activities, from the armed militias to reasonably main-
stream radio stations. The movement gained maximum notoriety when
Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal government building in Oklahoma
City in 1995 killing 170 people. Associated with the Michigan Militia,
 Reaction and globalization 115
1111 McVeigh and his co-conspirators had as their inspiration one William Pierce,
2 white supremacist author of the best-selling Turner Diaries and The Patriots
3 which prefigured the Oklahoma incident. For Pierce:
4
5 In brief, the New World Order is a utopian system in which the US
6 economy (along with the economy of every other nation) will be ‘global-
7 ized’; the wage levels of all US and European workers will be brought
8 down to those of workers in the Third World; national boundaries will
9 for all practical purposes cease to exist; an increased flow of Third World
1011 immigrants into the United States and Europe will have produced a
1 non-White majority everywhere in the formerly White areas of the
2 world; an elite consisting of international financiers, the masters of mass
3111 media, and managers of multinational corporations will call the shots;
4 and the United Nations peacekeeping forces will be used to keep anyone
5 from opting out of the system.
6 (William Pierce in National Vanguard, cited in
7 Klanwatch/Militia Task Force 1996: 37).
8
9 In the years following the Oklahoma City bombing the Patriot move-
20111 ment declined in terms of numbers as its more ‘mainstream’ supporters
1 drifted off. However, as a ‘hatewatch’ intelligence report noted, ‘a leaner,
2 harder “Patriot” movement emerged, produced terrorist conspiracies and
3 crimes on a level not seen for decades’ (Southern Poverty Law Center 1998:
4 1). This reactionary wave was driven by far-right militants who were inspired
5 by the Christian Identity religion, and espoused an openly racist theology.
6 However, there was another strand encapsulated by the dramatic perform-
7 ance of Patrick Buchanan in the 1996 US presidential elections. Buchanan’s
8 reactionary populism touched a chord in wide layers of the US electorate,
9 with his echoing of the Patriot critique of the New World Order in which
30111 the big banks and multinationals would swamp the ‘way of life’ of the US
1 middle class (that included workers). Buchanan’s economic nationalism can
2 also be seen as a reactive anti-globalization impulse.
3 Now, in analysing the US Patriots it is very easy to focus on its more
4 outlandish elements, and even to take the view that it is a ‘paranoid politics’
35 we are dealing with. Thus, a recent review of Patriot periodicals carried
6 out by a ‘hatewatch’ intelligence report found among others the following
7 positions:
8
9 The Present Truth (Oklahoma) featuring ‘proof’ that concentration camps
40111 were being built and that black helicopters roamed the skies spying on
1 patriotic citizens; books on how to form a militia and the coming biolog-
2 ical war; and ads on ‘the ultimate preparedness, having a like minded
3 mate to survive the uncertainty of the future’.
4 The Spotlight (Washington, DC) published by the anti-Semitic Liberty
45111 Lobby as the ‘Voice of the American Majority’ featuring articles on the
116 Reaction and globalization
supposed roles of Mossad in the assassination of J.F. Kennedy; feature
stories on Mexican immigrants ‘stealing’ US jobs and ads for a ‘White
Pride’ rally.
(Southern Poverty Law Center 1999: 1)

While this unsteady amalgam of old and new right wing themes might
seem bizarre to the outside observer it forms part of everyday ‘common sense’
for very many ordinary people in the US. Just because a movement chooses
to focus on the ‘demonic’ roots of globalism rather than historical materi-
alist explanations of its causation that does not mean it is irrelevant in terms
of the politics of anti-globalization.
The far-right opponents of globalization do have a view of the world that
makes sense in terms of their own position in society. As Mark Rupert
explains:

Far-right anti-globalists tap deeply entrenched strains of American

common sense, articulating in varying degrees liberal individualism
with masculinist, religious, and racial identities in order to construct
an image of American exceptionalism as a bastion of white, male,
Christian privilege.
(Rupert 2000: 17)

Globalization is seen as the agent undoing this privileged situation, not least
through the ‘export of jobs’ to low-wage locations which has created a sense
– and a reality – of downward mobility across wide swathes of the US
working class that once would have considered itself to be firmly ‘middle
class’ in terms of lifestyle, differentials vis-à-vis African Americans, and social
prospects.
Workers in the US – once secure in a class compromise state that provided
reasonable social benefits in return for political stability – need to make
sense of their rapidly changing world like anyone else. This discourse draws
on long-standing populist traditions and the ‘radical’ critique of corporations
in the US. The articles of Ralph Nader, for example, on the evils of the
corporations, appear in the same journals that carry far-right attacks on
globalization as the work of Lucifer. Both agree that in the new world order
profits prevail over people and power over rights. They have a similar diffuse
idea of who ‘the people’ are. Of course, left and right populists differ in
their relationship to democracy (see the section ‘Beyond good and evil’
below). Chuck Harder of For the People refers to US workers as ‘the dispos-
able victims of global corporations chasing larger profits and lower labor
costs’ (cited Rupert 2000: 182), words that could easily find echo in many
speeches by progressive US trade unionists.
We can now move beyond a diagnosis in terms of ‘paranoid politics’ and
unstable/intellectually challenged misfits such as Timothy McVeigh. The
Patriots do have a recognizable social base, and their support is widespread.
 Reaction and globalization 117
1111 A significant component of the Patriot movement, according to Castells, is
2 ‘made up of disaffected farmers in the Midwest and in the West, supported
3 by a miscellaneous cast of small town societies, from coffee-shop owners to
4 traditional pastors’ (Castells 2004: 98). These would be classical social sectors
5 displaced by the operation of the unregulated market and ripe for a Polanyi-
6 type social backlash movement. The ‘hatewatch’ Intelligence Report also
7 refers to Patriot support being based on: ‘a world peopled, in part, by the
8 downwardly mobile, those who are struggling to remain in the lower middle
9 class . . . and [amid] fears that the modern economy would leave them
1011 behind’ (Southern Poverty Law Center 2001: 1). Again, this is a classic
1 Polanyian reactive societal movement against the depredations of the free
2 market.
3111 The Patriots cannot, however, be reduced to a particular social base nor
4 can they be ascribed a particular ‘class belonging’ as orthodox Marxist
5 theories once did in relation to the rise of fascism in terms of a displaced
6 petty bourgeoisie. Rather, we should conceive of US Patriots as a broad-
7 based cultural response to globalization with a diverse set of political answers
8 to the perceived crisis. They are, as Castells puts it, reacting against ‘the
9 feeling of loss of control’ (Castells 2004: 100) due to a series of factors such
20111 as increased internationalization and immigration and the declining effec-
1 tiveness of sexism and racism. The end of the cold war and the collapse of
2 communism had removed the common enemy: ‘The age of information
3 becomes the age of confusion, and thus the age of fundamental affirmation
4 of traditional values and uncompromising rights’ (Castells 2004: 100).
5 Like other contemporary movements organizing against the impact of
6 neoliberal globalization, the US Patriot right has also become internation-
7 alized. Racists, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic networks on both sides of
8 the Atlantic now agree on the common enemy. The US, along with the EU
9 and the UN, are seen as harbingers of the new multiracial and multicultural
30111 threats to the ‘white race’. The nation is now increasingly defined in terms
1 of race. As one anti-fascist report puts it: ‘Across the Western hemisphere,
2 the radical right has become increasingly international in scope, tactics
3 and goals – mirroring the increasingly interdependent global order and its
4 institutions’ (Potok 2001: 2). In taking on an anti-globalization rhetoric,
35 and even a critique of US cultural imperialism in relation to national
6 cultures, many of those social layers displaced by neoliberal policies will
7 find attractive a political message that proclaims itself to be ‘beyond left
8 and right’.
9 In case there are any lingering doubts that we are dealing with a
40111 movement that appeals to working-class ‘common sense’ we can briefly
1 recapitulate the history of opposition to NAFTA in the US. When the
2 NAFTA debate in the US began in earnest around 1992, Patrick Buchanan
3 and Ross Perot achieved widespread support for their campaign against it
4 on clearly nationalist, not to say xenophobic and racist, grounds. Perot
45111 promoted a famous image of a great ‘sucking sound to the South’ as jobs
118 Reaction and globalization
left the US for Mexico. Of course, from a Mexican perspective NAFTA was
seen in much more classically imperialist terms. But for many US trade
unionists the debate was simply about their own jobs and possible job losses
so they readily ‘bought in’ to the nationalist message of ‘Buy American’ as
a counter to the incipient North American free trade zone.
There was no hermetic barrier between the left and right positions in the
US as regards to NAFTA insofar as both focused on job losses. Thus, Mark
Rupert recalls how he ‘encountered those currents of racist anti-globalism
when, at an anti-NAFTA rally primarily organized by and for Syracuse-area
unionists local neo-Nazis circulated through the crowd distributing audio
cassettes’ (Rupert 2000: 107) including one produced by William Pierce
(cited above). For Pierce and his co-religionists, NAFTA spelled inter-
nationalization and de-industrialization and was solely to the benefit of the
‘power-elite’ (a term first used by progressive US sociologist C. Wright
Mills). NAFTA was seen as the thin end of the wedge behind which lay
the unification of the globe under the aegis of financial interests and leading
to one world government. Far more was at stake here than the loss of jobs,
with sovereignty itself being seen as at risk.
Commentators on the left see a big leap forward in terms of attitudes
between these early to mid-1990s economic nationalisms and the mood post-
Seattle 1999. Thus, Dan Clawson writes of how:

Instead of ‘Buy American’, labor’s message was resolutely internation-

alist. For the early 1990s NAFTA debates the language focused on
nation and race . . . By Seattle in 1999 labor as well as others framed
the debate in terms of class and rights.
(Clawson 2005: 151)

Of course, there was a seismic shift in attitudes and one cannot neglect the
importance of veteran AFL-CIO trade unionist Lane Kirkland stating that
‘You cannot be a real trade unionist unless you are an internationalist’ (cited
in French et al. 1994: 1). The sobering reality is that following the conflu-
ence of labour and the new social movements at Seattle in 1999, the AFL-CIO
took up as its major campaign keeping China out of the WTO in a pro-
tectionist move that bordered on conjuring up the ‘Yellow Peril’ in its
determination to ‘protect American jobs’.

Islamists and Jihad

There are not many Western observers – or for that matter members of the
anti-globalization movement – at present thinking of al-Qaeda as part of
the broad counter-globalization movement. Such is the hold of the ‘war
against terror’ discourse that no alternative interpretation is allowed space.
However, it seems quite clear that al-Qaeda – as an element in the broader
global Islamic network – is a particular type of social movement. As Castells
 Reaction and globalization 119
1111 puts it, al-Qaeda is most certainly characterized by ‘purposive collective
2 action aimed at changing the dominant values and institutions of society
3 on behalf of the values and interests that are meaningful for the actors of
4 the movement’ (Castells 2004: 109). We are witnessing the effects of a
5 multi-ethnic, multinational global network motivated by clear political
6 objectives and organizing its supporters. Al-Qaeda is both a product of
7 globalization (as we shall argue) and part of the Polanyian counter-movement
8 against the unregulated free market on a global scale.
9 This interpretation is not, however, shared by the proponents of global
1011 civil society, which is not usually seen to include social or political forces
1 such as al-Qaeda. Thus, for example, Mary Kaldor and Diego Muro in an
2 article on religious militant groups for the Global Civil Society Yearbook state
3111 that: ‘By “fundamentalist” we mean groups that are inflexible about their
4 doctrines and try to impose these doctrines on others’ (Kaldor and Muro
5 2005: 152). The definition of what is ‘extreme’, ‘violent’ or ‘terrorist’ is
6 equally normative. Most global civil society advocates would clearly rule out
7 al-Qaeda from membership because it is not pro-democracy in a recogniz-
8 able Western mode. Kaldor and Muro are troubled by such a clear normative
9 ruling against what is called the ‘dark’ side of global civil society but still
20111 ask themselves the question ‘Should we tolerate the intolerant?’ (Kaldor and
1 Muro 2005: 151). Presumably, the answer is no.
2 Rather than approach the issue from a political philosophy standpoint I
3 prefer to first contextualize al-Qaeda, as emblematic of this so-called ‘dark’
4 side, in terms of globalization and its discontents. The rise of what is
5 commonly called ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ in the 1990s is a complex story,
6 not reducible to resistance to globalization’s cultural homogenization tenden-
7 cies. During the long historical period of Western colonialism most Muslim
8 countries oriented towards a Western development model through ‘modern-
9 ization’. The influence of the state socialist development model was also
30111 quite strong given its links with the anti-colonial movement. This national
1 development model along Western lines began to lose its effectiveness after
2 1968. Egypt’s unsuccessful war against Israel in 1973 showed the bargaining
3 power that Arab-controlled oil represented and then the collapse of the
4 Shah’s regime in Iran in 1978 saw the Western model wane in attractive-
35 ness. The Gulf War of 1991, finally, damaged the credibility of Arab
6 nationalism and thus, according to Williams, ‘Islamic solidarity then appears
7 as the correct alternative’ (Williams 1995: 203).
8 Neoliberal globalization in the 1990s began its hegemonic drive at the
9 same time that political Islamism was making its advances internally. As
40111 Kamal Pasha puts it, the Islamic movements are not thus simple responses
1 to Western conquest and control ‘but a movement against western-centred
2 globalization, promoted by fractions within Muslim society, and a move-
3 ment for realizing an alternative to secular nationalism’ (Pasha 2000: 241).
4 Thus, for a movement such as al-Qaeda there are Muslim opponents, such
45111 as the Saudi regime, that have ‘sold out’ to the West, and secular regimes
120 Reaction and globalization
in Islamic countries that have not embraced true Islam. But the underlying
enemy is seen as the state of Israel because of its occupation of Jerusalem
and the oppression of Palestinians, and the Western Crusader powers – led
by the US – that are seen to exploit, demean and kill Muslims everywhere.
To label this movement as ‘fundamentalist’ is tempting but ultimately
misleading. Mainstream Islamic movements in the 1990s moved away from
the aspiration of a transnational Muslim community towards consolidation
of national political regimes. Yesterday’s fundamentalists are busy creating
domestic political legitimacy and becoming reliable actors in the inter-
national state system. Even the likes of Hamas in Palestine have become
‘nationalized’. The neo-fundamentalists such as the broad coalition led by
Osama Bin Laden have moved with a quite conservative version of Islam
into a hyper-modern transnational enterprise. They embody the crisis of
the nation-state and cannot be reduced to backward-looking traditionalists.
In fact, as Olivier Roy explains, ‘this new brand of supranational neo-
fundamentalism is more a product of contemporary globalization than of
the Islamic past’ (Roy 2001: 4). Taking full advantage of the commun-
ication benefits of globalization, these movements – as with nationalists
– are Janus-faced, looking backwards and forwards at the same time.
In the migrant Muslim populations of Western Europe we find strong
congregations of so-called ‘fundamentalists’. However, what is happening
here is considerably more complex than a simple return to ‘tradition’.
Research on Muslim immigrants in Western Europe shows how they ‘are
often required to translate their discursive traditions into the dominant
language of the nation of immigration in order to educate the generations
born in their new societies’ (Veer 2001: 10). What to the casual observer
in France or Britain is obscurantism, or more politely ‘cultural tradition’, is
in fact a product of considerable ideological work adapting one culture to
deal with another cultural environment. Islamic writers point, in this vein,
to the ‘need of a new set of terms to describe the Islamic system in rhetoric
familiar to a Western audience for it is characterised by a distinct set of
political ideas and political relationships unfamiliar to Western political
theory’ (Ashgar 2005: 17).
Al-Qaeda responds to a widespread feeling of injustice and humiliation
in many Islamic cultural areas. The legacy of colonialism is still very fresh
and the failure of Western development models now seems obvious. Islamic
philosophy and politics thus emerge as a plausible alternative development
model. In terms of the crisis of the development model we should recall
Polanyi’s argument that ‘a social calamity is primarily a cultural not an
economic phenomenon . . . not the economic exploitation as often assumed,
but the disintegration of the cultural environment of the victim is then the
cause of the degradation’ (Polanyi 2001: 164). Certainly, it is the cultural
onslaught against ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ as in Huntingdon’s ‘clash of
civilizations’ thesis for example, that can be seen as a prime driver of Islamic
resistance.
 Reaction and globalization 121
1111 Kamal Pasha, in a phrase reminiscent of Marx’s more positive readings
2 of religion, argues that ‘appealing, to those with neither power or privilege,
3 Islamic resistance is primarily a cry of the disinherited’ (Pasha 2000: 250).
4 While it is certainly true that the leaders and key operatives of al-Qaeda
5 come from relatively privileged backgrounds their appeal lies in the periph-
6 eral sectors of Muslim societies, the shanty-towns (including those in the
7 West) and the growing army of unemployed or socially excluded as a result
8 of the ever-increasing expansion of the self-regulated market. While based
9 on a shared religious identity it is important to consider Pasha’s conclusion
1011 that ‘Islamic resistance is not about religion per se’ (Pasha 2000: 251). It is thus
1 entirely plausible to consider these movements as an integral part of the
2 great counter-movement and not as something alien and incomprehensible.
3111 Of course, al-Qaeda is at war and it is not a benign democratic political
4 force. This group’s attack on symbolic US targets such as the Pentagon and
5 the World Trade Center in 2001 (read ‘9/11’) was widely read as something
6 quite unprecedented and an attack on ‘the West’ and civilization itself. Seyla
7 Benhabib, in a piece entitled ‘Unlikely Politics’, writes of how ‘These attacks,
8 perpetrated against a civilian population in its own land, and in a country
9 in no state of declared hostility with the attackers, not only defy all cate-
20111 gories of international law but reduces politics to apocalyptic symbols’
1 (Benhabib 2001: 2). It seemed incomprehensible in that there were no
2 ‘demands’ being made. But was this really a holy war of vengeance, a Jihad
3 against the great Satan, and thus quite beyond rational/secular comprehen-
4 sion? In terms of a de-territorialized transnational response to globalization
5 these attacks in 2001 can be seen as part of a broader ‘asymmetric war’
6 between the major powers and various social and political groups that oppose
7 their hegemonic projects.
8 Since the early 1990s counter-insurgency experts at the US Rand
9 Corporation had been predicting a new form of insurgent warfare. The
30111 Zapatistas had been seen as epitomizing the new ‘transnational social netwar’
1 but even earlier these US strategists argued that:
2
3 The revolutionary forces of the future may consist increasingly of wide-
4 spread multi-organizational networks that have no particular national
35 identity, claim to arise from civil society, and . . . are keenly adept at
6 using advanced technology for communications, as well as munitions.
7 (Arquilla and Rondfeldt 1993, cited Castells 2004: 84)
8
9 Most of the various accounts of al-Qaeda agree that it is a new network-
40111 based organization that gains much of its strength precisely because it can
1 bring together Muslims on a transnational post-state (or perhaps pre-state)
2 basis in pursuit of collective goals.
3 Western incomprehension of Islamic resistance and collapse into a
4 Crusade-like ‘war on terror’ owes a lot, one could argue, to the lingering
45111 influence of Orientalism. As Sardar argues, ‘the achievements of Muslim
122 Reaction and globalization
civilization made Islam an intellectual, social and cultural problem’ (Sardar
1999: 18) and Orientalism emerged as Europe’s response. Orientalism was
the intellectual justification for colonialism and a way of controlling and
subordinating a recalcitrant Other. In Edward Said’s classic formulation,
Orientalism was/is: a ‘western style for dominating, restructuring and
having authority over the Orient’ (Said 1978: 41). In this imperialist logic,
the Orient was characterized on the whole as ‘backward’ and ‘traditionalist’.
To conquer such a region on behalf of a superior civilization, to bring
progress and eradicate backwardness seemed, indeed, a noble enterprise.
Orientalism resurfaced with a vengeance following the al-Qaeda attacks
in the US in 2001. Islamic fundamentalism was the new ‘global security
threat’ and world peace depended on its defeat. As Zahid puts it: ‘the orien-
talists consider the Islamic culture to be fundamentally responsible for the
political, economic and social failures of the Middle East and in the contem-
porary era’ (Zahid 2005: 75). Instead of facing up to its own inherent
weaknesses and failures it is seen as an ideology of victimology wallowing
in self-pity over colonialism and development failures. Democracy would
have to be brought to these troubled lands by the enlightened West through
the barrel of a gun, a tradition going back to 1798 when Napoleon invaded
Egypt on behalf of the European Enlightenment. In an era of imperial
‘regime change’ in the non-Western world, clearly ‘fundamentalist’ counter-
movements will continue to be generated.

Beyond good and evil

For Michael Wieviorka ‘we can speak of an anti-movement when each of
the elements by which a movement may be defined is deformed, inverted
and perverted’ (Wieviorka 2005: 13). These are ‘sectarian’ movements that
define an ‘implacable enemy’ that may ‘be racialized or made to appear
diabolical’ (ibid.). This last description fits the American Patriots and the
Islamic Jihadists but what makes these ‘anti-movements’ and what does
that actually mean? Just because a social movement conceives of the world
in terms of a total war that has no limits, why would that make them an
‘anti’ movement? Wieviorka acknowledges that this type of movement is
generated by globalization but then categorizes them in opposition to social
movements because they do not have ‘the slightest connection with the
“global” approaches of classical social movements’ (Wieviorka 2005: 13).
Yet both racist/fascist movements and, above all, Islamic movements, are
increasingly ‘global’ in their aspirations.
Manuel Castells starts his analysis with a very different methodological
principle: ‘First, social movements must be understood in their own terms:
namely, they are what they say they are’ (Castells 2004: 73). Of course, some
will be revolutionary and others conservative, while some may consider
themselves to be a-political. All social movements respond to some kind
of societal or political issue and many today are symptoms of globalization
 Reaction and globalization 123
1111 in one way or another. The movements we have examined in this chapter
2 all have clear identities reflected in a discursive practice, they define their
3 adversaries clearly and they posit goals they aim for. It is not for us to
4 decide their ‘true’ purpose and Castells is surely right to argue that ‘from
5 an analytical perspective, there are no “bad” and “good” social movements’
6 (Castells 2004: 73). The complexity of the world of social movements is
7 not really a good enough reason to fall into a simplistic moral yardstick for
8 evaluating them.
9 Rejecting the label of ‘anti-movement’ for social movements that we
1011 do not consider progressive does not mean that we should be indifferent to
1 their politics. We can certainly evaluate some social movements as more
2 or less democratic than others, both in the way they operate and their objec-
3111 tives. But what blanket categorizations prevent us from achieving is an
4 understanding of the complexity and contradictory nature of most contem-
5 porary social movements. For example, many influential NGOs and cam-
6 paigning social movements may be viewed in a far less positive way in the
7 global South than they are in the affluent countries of the North where their
8 mission is simply assumed to be progressive. Likewise, many social move-
9 ments in the South might be viewed as somewhat nationalist or even
20111 authoritarian, by their more cosmopolitan counterparts in the North. If social
1 consciousness is invariably contradictory, so too, inevitably, will be the social
2 movements that it generates.
3 Moving on now, to my mind the key issue that this chapter drives us to
4 is the question: ‘Why has globalization engendered nationalism, instead of
5 transcending it?’ (Nairn 1997: 63). This is a crucial question for social theory
6 as much as one for political practice. As the cold war was replaced by the
7 second great transformation brought on by the expansion of the global
8 market in the 1990s, there was a liberal consensus emerging, from left to
9 right, that nationalism would now fade in importance. For the right, the
30111 market would now rule supreme, while for the left, cosmopolitanism would
1 now emerge in strength. Both shared a notion that human history was
2 marked by ‘Progress’ and were theoretically blind to the role played by
3 nationalism in history (except to denigrate it). A strong counter-view is that
4 of Nairn for whom ‘nationalism is not now and never was in the past a
35 deviant or accidental departure from what “should have happened”. It is no
6 counter-current or side eddy, interfering with the majestic mainstream of
7 progress: nationalism is the mainstream’ (Nairn 1997: 48).
8 This is not at all an argument for nationalism as a universally progres-
9 sive social and political force. It is simply that nationalism, whether good
40111 or bad, provides an ‘empty signifier’ for a vast range of social hopes, dreams
1 and demands. The nation and nationality remain crucial forms of human
2 social and cultural organization that cannot be reduced to primeval or even
3 ‘socially constructed’ myths. In the context of this chapter we should stress
4 as Balibar does that nationalism and racism are in a mutually conditioning
45111 relation. To be specific: ‘nationalism is the determining condition of the
124 Reaction and globalization
production of racism, and although racism is not always equally manifest
in all nationalisms, it is nonetheless a necessary element in their consti-
tutions’ (Balibar 1991: 48, from Torfing 1999: 202). Racism shapes
nationalism through the construction of the fictional ‘people’ (or ethnos) that
creates a nation out of individuals. In the era of globalization such boundary
drawing is likely to increase, rather than decrease in importance.
If these thoughts help us understand theoretically who the US Patriots
are, the relationship between nationalism and religion is equally problem-
atic in the case of political Islam. While the ‘clash of civilizations’ and
Orientalist perspectives may prioritize religious interpellations, nationalism
has often been a key factor in many conflicts involving Muslims, from
Bosnia to the Lebanon, from Sudan to Palestine. For Brian Beeley, in most
cases of conflict involving Muslim groups ‘it appears that it is nationalism
– as the expression of group identity with territory within the state system
– which is stronger than religion as a demarcator of allegiance’ (Beeley 1995:
189). This is not to deny at all the importance of ummah as a perception of
togetherness across billions of Muslims or the role that religion plays as a
defensive counter to the uncertainties and distress caused by neoliberal
globalization and imperialist aggression.
To better understand the nationalist, Patriot and Islamist movements we
have briefly considered in this chapter, it may be opportune to introduce
the concept of ‘populism’. While populism has long been present as a
political concept it has usually been seen as an inferior brand of politics
compared to ‘proper’ democratic politics. Indeed, to call a politician or
political movement ‘populist’ is most often seen as derogatory. For Ernesto
Laclau populism has been ‘confined . . . to the realm of the non-thinkable,
to being the simple opposite of political forms dignified with the status
of full nationality’ (Laclau 2005: 19). Populism has been demoted and
denigrated, seen as a form of anti-politics appealing to irrational forms of
mass psychology and inimical to any progressive project of social transform-
ation. Yet if we look at the appeal and discourse of anti-globalization leaders
such as José Bové – not to mention political leaders such as Ignacío ‘Lula’
de Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela – there is a distinctive
populist air to their appeal.
Students of Latin American populism, in particular, have tended to pursue
a more positive interpretation of populism. Thus, Ernesto Laclau has argued,
admittedly polemically, that ‘a “socialist populism” is not the most back-
ward form of working class ideology but the most advanced’ (Laclau 1979:
174). Populism reflects a plethora of basic anti status quo sentiments that
only attain political meaning when articulated with particular political dis-
courses. Thus the case studies examined in this chapter – nationalism, right
wing US ‘Patriots’ and militant Islamic movements – might all be populist
in different ways. Most successful social movements – Cuba, China,
Yugoslavia, etc. – were able to articulate precisely populist feelings within
a democratic socialist ideology of change and transformation.
 Reaction and globalization 125
1111 Populism is present in the way the US Patriots have attracted a mass
2 following. Their negative view of globalization chimes with some themes
3 in the anti-globalization repertoire but it is articulated within a xenophobic,
4 anti-Semitic and racist political project. José Bové picks up many populist
5 themes in his appeal to French farmers but he articulates these with a world-
6 view that is firmly anti-capitalist in determining who the ‘main enemy’ is.
7 Populism is, in Laclau’s terminology, an ‘empty signifier’ that only takes a
8 political direction when articulated with a project of social change. But it
9 is important to retain the notion that ‘populism’ is not some ‘lowest common
1011 denominator’ and best avoided where possible. In fact, populism can be seen
1 as synonymous with politics insofar as ‘the construction of the “people” is
2 the political act par excellence – as opposed to pure administration within a
3111 stable institutional framework’ (Laclau 2005: 154).
4 Nationalist populism represents in many ways the basic ‘common sense’
5 ideology for the majority of the population. Against heroic ‘onward march’
6 accounts of the Western labour movement Arrighi notes in a sombre account
7 that:
8
9 Whenever faced with the predisposition of capital to treat labour as
20111 an undifferentiated mass with no individuality other than a differential
1 capability to augment the value of capital, proletarians have rebelled.
2 Almost invariably they have seized upon or created anew whatever
3 combination of distinctive traits (age, sex, colour, assorted geo-historical
4 specificities) they could use to impose upon capital some kind of
5 special treatment. As a consequence, patriarchalism, racism and national-
6 chauvinism have been integral to the making of the world labour
7 movement.
8 (Arrighi 1990: 63)
9
30111 A Polanyian perspective allows us to make sense of this disturbing analysis,
1 because alongside Marx-type struggles based on proletarian class organizing
2 there are many more defensive Polanyian struggles seeking to protect workers
3 from the onslaught of capitalist modernization. Workers, peasants and arti-
4 sans will naturally (we might argue) draw non-class boundaries around
35 themselves to shelter themselves from the anonymizing and commodifying
6 onward march of capitalist globalization.
7 It is not only capitalists that compete with one another in the market-
8 place but so also do workers, and in that process they may shelter behind
9 nationalist, patriarchal and other banners. Non-class forms of identity and
40111 consciousness have always been, and will probably continue to be, important
1 in the shaping of workers and their social movements. And it is particu-
2 larly in ‘backlash’ resistance struggles – for example, those of US blue collar
3 workers who see their jobs disappearing due to economic internationaliza-
4 tion – that these exclusionary dynamics come to the fore. As Beverley Silver
45111 writes, ‘by Polanyi-type labor unrest, we mean the backlash resistances to
126 Reaction and globalization
the spread of the global self-regulating market, particularly by working
classes that are being unmade by global economic transformations’ (Silver
2003: 20).
To sum up then, we might recall Antonio Gramsci’s dictum in his Prison
Notebooks that: ‘common sense is an ambiguous, contradictory and multi-
form concept . . . a chaotic aggregate of disparate concepts’ (Gramsci 1971:
423). Certainly the task of progressive political forms is to build a new
common sense that will transform society in a democratic direction. But
Gramsci recognizes the enduring power of the ‘national-popular’ dimension
of politics, ideology and day-to-day living. We have seen in the pages above
how nationalism, far from having been superseded by globalization has seen
a resurgence over the last decade. We also advanced a theory of populism
as a non-class ideological form that goes some way to contextualizing the
progressive and reactive responses to globalization. Finally, we have shown
that even in the heart of the ‘socialist’ labour movement there lie deep reser-
voirs of exclusionary ideologies that need to be understood as defensive
reactions to the homogenizing impact of capitalist development.
1111
2 8 The great counter-movement
3
4 Empire, multitude and social
5 transformation
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 This book has sought to unravel some of the complexity of the great counter-
4 movement that free market globalization has engendered. We have seen that
5 the counter-movement cannot be reduced to the post-Seattle wave of street
6 protests or the inspiring meetings of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre
7 and beyond. What we need to do at this stage, is to provide a broad-brush
8 synthesis of the context in which the counter-movements to globalization
9 operate and their prospects for the future. Rather than travel through all
20111 the various academic frameworks generated from within particular disci-
1 plines over recent years (valuable as these may be in transforming academic
2 discourse) we take as our starting point the emblematic work Empire by
3 Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, widely seen as an inspirational text for
4 the anti-globalization movement.
5 Put at its simplest, are we entering a new age of Empire in which US
6 hegemony rules supreme and a diffuse ‘desire’ of the oppressed arises every-
7 where quite spontaneously? Or is this not a vision as a-historical as
8 Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis in 1989? And who is to contest the new
9 hegemony: the new figure of the ‘multitude’, nation-states or social classes?
30111 The challenges to orthodox categories and ways of thinking by the concepts
1 of ‘empire’ and ‘multitude’ are serious but also welcome. My own narrative
2 then resumes, taking up the Polanyian theme of the broad historical move-
3 ments of market liberalization and the varied social reactions in response.
4 My conclusion is that while ‘another world is possible’ it may not neces-
35 sarily be that dreamt of by the anti-capitalist movement. Finally, I turn to
6 the issue of strategy, namely the diverse paths that the counter-globalization
7 movement may follow, including democratic governance, the human rights
8 path and the new (or not so new) internationalism.
9
40111
1 Empire
2 No word resonates more strongly today than ‘Empire’, the title of a literary
3 sensation that has given a name to an enigmatic totality of money, power and
4 culture.
45111 (Balakrishnan 2003: vii)
128 The great counter-movement
The impact of Hardt and Negri’s Empire was, indeed, huge and crossed the
entire political spectrum. For the right there was a recognition of the pre-
eminent role of the US in world affairs and even a transcendental role for
the ‘American’ Constitution in the new world order. For the left, Empire
represented hope reborn after the decade of despair following 1989 and the
collapse of actually existing socialism. Empire appeared at the crucial histor-
ical juncture (for the counter-globalization movement) between Seattle 1999
and the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001. Empire delivered
a theoretical framework for a new form of sovereignty in the era of global-
ization based on disciplinary bio-power and a new form of resistance based
on the immanence of molecular energy.
Empire reinterprets, in an original way, the world revolution of 1968 in
an overarching paradigm of empowerment and co-option. For Hardt and
Negri 1968 stood for a rejection by the ‘multitude’ (see next section) of the
disciplinary forms of production in the West (Fordism) and the remnants
of colonialism (Vietnam). As Sherman and Trichur express this shift: ‘it thus
creates the context for a peaceless, global, imperial (not imperialist) power
(Empire) based on US constituent power (but not reducible to the US)’
(Sherman and Trichur 2004: 825). Empire as the new hegemonic regime
would thus reabsorb all the energy, productivity and subjectivity of the
1968 counter-cultural movement. Colonialism and disciplinary forms of
production would be replaced by a more consensual form of subjection to
the world market and by workers to the capitalist production regime. Post-
colonialism and post-Fordism were the order of the day in the age of Empire.
A post-modernist reading of the rise of neoliberal globalization or
Polanyi’s world scale self-regulating market would be interesting, but what
made Empire riveting on the left was, of course, its optimism with regard
to the prospects for social transformation. Empire is diffuse and everywhere
but so also is resistance. Struggles in the new era are ‘uncommunicable’
(unlike those of the era of working-class internationalism) but because they
cannot travel horizontally they must travel upwards according to Hardt
and Negri. What this leads to is that: ‘the construction of Empire and the
globalization of economic and cultural relationships, means that the virtual
centre of Empire can be attacked at any point’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 59).
Counter-powers emerge at local level that can leap immediately to the global
level, becoming immediately subversive of the world order through a bio-
political challenge to the construction of Empire in its generality.
What Empire provides is thus clearly an ambitious overarching framework
for the understanding of globalization and counter-globalization movements
alike. Empire’s passion, vision and breadth made it noteworthy to a whole
range of political forces on both sides that were grappling to understand
the new developing world order and how to challenge it. Globalization was
discerned as a totally new phase in world history unifying the globe in a
homogeneous or ‘smooth’ new order. Unlike many on the left, Hardt and
Negri seemed to welcome this and showed no nostalgia whatsoever for
 The great counter-movement 129
1111 nation-state capitalism. From the other shore of politics, however, this was
2 also an uplifting grand narrative as many of the themes of post-structuralism
3 (the importance of bio-power, the local and culture, for example) were
4 worked into a new challenge to the powers that be, albeit within a still
5 recognizably Marxist account of capitalist production and development.
6 While Empire was hugely beneficial in breaking through the mood of
7 despondency and the general acceptance that ‘there is no alternative’, it is
8 also profoundly flawed in its diagnosis of the present state of world affairs.
9 It is a profoundly Eurocentric work quite oblivious to the non-Western
1011 world except for the odd trite reference to Islamic ‘fundamentalism’. Islam
1 does not figure as a major ideological force since the fifteenth century and
2 the current renaissance of capitalism in the East (primarily China) receives
3111 hardly a mention. The European Enlightenment – and its subsequent migra-
4 tion to North America and substantiation in the American Constitution –
5 rules supreme in Empire. In terms of the world being made by globalization
6 through the dialectical processes of social inclusion/exclusion, Empire simply
7 reflects the globalizer’s ideology that we are entering a ‘smooth’ world. As
8 one commentator puts it succinctly, ‘If Hardt and Negri had taken African
9 historical examples seriously, for example, they would have avoided the
20111 numerous presentist and universalizing flaws that plague – and ultimately
1 undermine – their work’ (Dunn 2004: 159).
2 Empire is also an inherently androcentric text having seemingly missed
3 out entirely on the theoretical and practical revolution carried out by the
4 world’s feminisms since 1968. Its millennial tone, prophetic vision and glori-
5 fying of the militant is male politics incarnate, something that cannot be
6 said about the post-Seattle 1999 anti-globalization movement as a whole.
7 Lee Quinby writes that: ‘Hardt and Negri’s gender-blindness renders their
8 concept of resistance to authority rhetorically engorged yet methodologically
9 flaccid’ (Quinby 2004: 240). The global political economy has gender rela-
30111 tions at its core, from the feminization of poverty through to World Bank
1 development policies. The concrete worlds of work, community and family
2 are only amenable to critical analysis through a gender lens. Both power
3 and resistance in the contemporary world order – be it the invasion of Iraq
4 or the revolt against environmental degradation – require a precise under-
35 standing of gender relations and how they are changing.
6 Nevertheless, Empire represents a fundamental challenge to classic theories
7 of imperialism that were no less Eurocentric and androcentric in their day.
8 Since Empire appeared in 2000 its analysis has taken a severe practical setback
9 with the emergence of full-blown ‘red in tooth and claw’ US imperialism
40111 in Afghanistan and Iraq. The power-holders and their ideological backers
1 in the US have no problem at all in articulating an openly imperialist project.
2 Extending the neoliberal revolution at home in the US and the UK a range
3 of ‘revisionist’ writers have sanitized the imperialisms of the past to artic-
4 ulate a civilizing mission for a renewed US imperialism today. A popular
45111 example is Niall Ferguson with his Empire: How Britain Made the World
130 The great counter-movement
(Ferguson 2004) and its sequel, Collosus: The Rise and Fall of the American
Empire (Ferguson 2005). Imperialism is here rehabilitated as a key element
in the expansion of the West and the development of capitalism.
It is a fact that today’s division between rich and poor countries roughly
mirrors the nineteenth-century division between colonizer and colonized.
Uneven development on a global scale remains the most enduring inequality
at a global level despite the changing patterns of industrialization and class
development, notwithstanding the century that has elapsed since the era of
classical imperialism. So are we now witnessing a revival of colonialism, a
neo-imperialism as it were? To answer that question we need first to high-
light the distinction between the territorial and the capitalist or economic
logics of power. These may, of course, intertwine (as many accounts of current
US expansionism show) but as David Harvey notes: ‘the literature on imper-
ialism and empire too often assumes an easy accord between them: that
political-economic processes are guided by the strategies of state and empire
and that states and empire always operate out of capitalist motivations’
(Harvey 2003: 291).
This distinction allows us to avoid simplistic accounts from the left
announcing an era of new imperialism because US strategic interests and
oil drive it to conquer and subjugate. For a global power to become truly
hegemonic it must be in a position to hegemonize and lead through consent
as well as pure coercion. Britain, in the heyday of its empire, did achieve
sporadically and unevenly, precisely such a hegemonic role. The US, as the
successor as world power, did seek from the start of the twentieth century
‘to mask the explicitness of territorial gains and occupations under the
mask of a spaceless universalization of its own values’ (Harvey 2003: 47).
This culminated towards the end of that century with the discourse of
globalization as economic and cultural driver of progress and ‘democracy’
(as made in the US) as the legitimizing political form of organizing develop-
ment.
Imperialism is the result of the territorial and economic logics of capital-
ist power coming into conjunction. It is not at all clear that the hegemonic
social forces in the US today are actually interested in recreating imperialism
in the classic sense, notwithstanding cheerleaders such as Robert Cooper (one
time Tony Blair adviser) who would recreate the nineteenth-century distinc-
tion between pre-modern (for which read barbarian) and post-modern states
who would be the guarantors of civilized behaviour (Cooper 2002). To go
beyond the notion of Empire as metaphor for aggression and imperialistic
designs is problematic for a number of reasons: not least because contem-
porary globalization is quite different from global capitalism in the era of
imperialism. While imperialism was a state-centred project of territorial
expansion, globalization as per Pieterse, ‘is intrinsically multidimensional,
involves multiple actors, and is in significant respects decentred and deterri-
torial, involving multiple and diverse jurisdictions’ (Pieterse 2004: 38).
 The great counter-movement 131
1111 To distinguish globalization from imperialism is not meant to make the
2 first a more benign enterprise. It is simply to recognize the complexity and
3 fluidity of the current world situation where there are multiple and, often,
4 contradictory globalization and counter-globalization projects at play.
5 Taking a long-term historical view we can see empires and imperialism as
6 phases of internationalization that culminate with neoliberal globalization.
7 This is not to say that there are elements in power in the US today that
8 have an imperial project, as articulated by Ralph Peters, a planner for ‘future
9 war’ for whom:
1011
1 We are entering a new American century in which we will become still
2 wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful . . . The de
3111 facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our
4 economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends we will do a
5 fair amount of killing.
6 (cited Pieterse 2004: 57)
7
8 No one can doubt that the overwhelming concentration of military,
9 economic and cultural power in the US today creates something akin to
20111 Empire and that its designs are imperialistic. However, there is no reason
1 to believe that this neo-conservative offensive could lead to a situation
2 described by Harvey as one where ‘the logic of capital will look to regime
3 change in Washington as necessary to its own survival’ (Harvey 2003: 207).
4 We cannot draw a simple equation mark between globalization and imper-
5 ialism, let alone Empire. The desire of Hardt and Negri to articulate a
6 ‘strong’ version of Empire over and beyond its use as metaphor, ultimately
7 obscures more than it clarifies the present world order, particularly in its
8 dubious promotion of a new theory of right. Thus, I would agree with
9 Balakrishnan’s not unsympathetic conclusion that ‘Empire is ultimately a
30111 Sorelian myth of empowerment, offering consolation to oppositional desire,
1 in place of sober political realism’ (Balakrishnan 2003: ix).
2
3
Multitude
4
35 For Hardt and Negri, ‘the multitude . . . [is] . . . the living alternative that
6 grows within Empire’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: xiii). Whereas globalization
7 is a network of hierarchies, the multitude springs from the expansive
8 networks of cooperation, communication and communality. The multitude
9 is not the same as the ‘people’ (conceived as a more unitary category), the
40111 ‘masses’ (where differences are submerged in the main) and finally the tradi-
1 tional ‘working class’ because it is not as open and inclusive as the multitude
2 as a concept. Initially for Hardt and Negri the multitude is conceived as
3 ‘all those who work under the rule of capital and thus potentially as the
4 class of those who refuse the rule of capital’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: 106).
45111 But they go much further than broadening the concept of working classes
132 The great counter-movement
because from their perspective the main issue is not so much the ‘empirical
existence’ of multitude but, rather, ‘its conditions of possibility’, or more
simply: ‘The question to ask . . . is not “What is multitude?” but rather
“What can the multitude become?”’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: 105).
While multitude goes beyond traditional Marxist concepts of working
class it is not unrelated to the understanding of working people elaborated
under the influence of the new social movements from 1968 onwards where
gender, race and other ‘non-class’ determinations came into play. Even the
question of what might the multitude become is not so different from
Marxist conceptions of class ‘in itself’ and class ‘for itself’ as it becomes
conscious and strives for social transformation. However, it can be read as
an expression of the contemporary irreducible plurality of social existence
as a necessary precondition for effective political action. The multiplicity of
experience of oppression and exploitation is well captured by the term ‘multi-
tude’ which Paolo Virno defines as the ‘form of social existence of the many
as many’ (Virno 2004: 1). Certainly this conception has been very influen-
tial in the anti-globalization movement in the West.
Multitude as a concept both reflects and influences the theory and prac-
tice of the young street protestors of the post-Seattle 1999 anti-globalization
movement. It renews the critique that new social movement theory carried
out in the 1970s of all economistic and reductionist conceptions of social
and political change. It rejects all narrow and restricted views of political
antagonisms as based on pre-established social structures and institutional-
ized forms of political representation. Where one sees structure the other
sees fluctuation as the norm. If market fundamentalism called for deregu-
lation of the economy, the multitude approach calls for a deregulation of
all forms of representation. But the danger, as Barchiesi puts it, is that
‘multitude’ becomes so ‘all-encompassing and self-explanatory’ that it could
‘lose much of its explanatory power when it comes to define how the singu-
larities that comprise the multitude come to articulate their desires and
demands in oppositional terms’ (Barchiesi 2004: 3).
In ‘deregulating’ our understanding of social antagonisms and political
representation, we are perhaps left with no coherent explanation of their
contemporary dynamic. In Multitude we are presented with an image of
radical immanentism as spontaneous response to Empire, insofar as to revolt
is natural to the human condition. The unity of the oppressed in revolt is
also unexplained and simply assumed as an innate tendency towards conver-
gence. As Ernesto Laclau puts it:

The features of this formless but self-defined totality are transmitted to

the multitude as Empire’s grave-digger – in a way reminiscent of Marx’s
description of the universalization brought about by capitalism as a
prelude to the emergence of the proletariat as the universal class.
(Laclau 2005: 240)
 The great counter-movement 133
1111 There is no coherent explanation of the sources of social antagonism in
2 contemporary society and no understanding of the complex political medi-
3 ations lying behind the counter-globalization movements, for example.
4 Multitude is significant in what it leaves out from this complex picture
5 (peasants and nationalism, for example) and what it foregrounds (migrants,
6 for example) in the making of the new revolutionary subject. Hardt and
7 Negri take a quite stereotypically modernist approach towards the peasantry.
8 For them ‘the figure of the peasant has . . . throughout the world faded into
9 the background’ and they conclude categorically on ‘this disappearance of
1011 the figure of the peasant’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: 120–1). While there is
1 a plausible argument that the peasant is, as an economic category, becoming
2 less central to the world system, its political importance is still consider-
3111 able, not least in terms of the broad counter-globalization movement. It is
4 thus inexplicable that in Multitude the peasant is seen as a ‘nonpolitical
5 figure, disqualified from politics’ and, to be more specific, where ‘the
6 peasantry is fundamentally conservative, isolated, and capable only of reac-
7 tion, not of any autonomous political action of its own’ (Hardt and Negri
8 2004: 122).
9 This unduly negative view of the economic, cultural and political role of
20111 the peasantry is reminiscent of the most clichéd phrases of Marx about the
1 French peasantry as ‘sacks of potatoes’. While the effects of capitalist expan-
2 sion across the globe on the peasants are mixed and open to considerable
3 debate, its ‘disappearance’ is not likely. Nor can we assume as Hardt and
4 Negri do that peasants can only enter the realm of progressive politics when
5 they leave the land, forsake rural traditions and enter into ‘communication’
6 with the urban ‘multitude’. In the struggles around the remaking of the
7 peasantry by neoliberal globalization we find a whole range of crucial sites
8 of contestation such as the environment, gender and indigenous knowledge.
9 The very Eurocentric and modernist dismissal of the world’s peasantry from
30111 the scene weakens considerably the understanding Hardt and Negri might
1 develop on the nature of globalization and its contestation today and in the
2 period to come.
3 Another area of contestation that Hardt and Negri seek to devalue is
4 the whole terrain of the nation-state and nationalist revolts. For them the
35 nation is a concept that sums up the hegemonic bourgeois solution to the
6 problem of sovereignty. They understand the progressive nature of subal-
7 tern nationalism for the pre-Empire era when they could serve as a defence
8 against powerful external forces and as a potential source of commun-
9 ity. Even then they see a strong element of totalitarianism in nationalist
40111 revolts insofar as ‘the community is not a dynamic collective creation but
1 a primordial founding myth’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 113). We have already
2 dealt with the weakness of the primordialist approach to nationalism
3 (Chapter 7) but the issue is crucial to Hardt and Negri insofar as they see
4 it as the cause ‘blocking the constructive interactions of differences with
45111 the multitude’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 113). As with peasants it is only
134 The great counter-movement
when nationalists forgo the primordial that they can ‘communicate’ with
the multitude.
In the present era of imperial sovereignty Hardt and Negri take an even
more categorically negative view of all things national. They argue that ‘it
is a grave mistake to harbour any nostalgia for the powers of the nation-
state or to resurrect any politics that celebrates the nation’ (Hardt and Negri
2000: 336). This might read at first as a sensible warning against any belief
that the nation-state and nationalist politics are an adequate and progres-
sive answer to the speed of free-market globalization. However, the authors
of Empire base this assertion on the belief that ‘the decline of the nation-
state . . . is a structural and irreversible process’ (Hardt and Negri 2000:
336) that smacks of the ‘death of the nation-state’ thesis that we have already
placed in context (Chapter 2). Whether it is the Group of 20 challenging
the WTO from the South or Palestinians taking on the US–Israel power
structures, the national question is an enduring element in the making and
unmaking of globalization.
While the many millions who work on the land and engage in national
struggles of one sort or another are dismissed from the multitude, Hardt and
Negri argue in The Communist Manifesto messianic mode that ‘A specter
haunts the world and it is the specter of migration’ (Hardt and Negri 2000:
213). Following Nietzsche and his quest for the barbarians who would invade
the Empire, Hardt and Negri raise migration to ‘a spontaneous level of
struggle’ and laud ‘the power of desertion and exodus, the power of the
nomad horde’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 213–14). Migrants are seen to embody
the desire for something more as well as a resolute refusal to accept the
present state of affairs. Migrants are seen to embody the geographical hier-
archies of the new global order, but in Multitude they are granted a privileged
position in the construction of ‘the general commonality of the multitude
by crossing and thus partially undermining every geographical barrier’
(Hardt and Negri 2004: 134).
It is certainly the case that the complex waves and flows of migrants,
whether legal, irregular or somewhere in between, are a living testimony to
the mobilities generated by globalization. Migrants are, indeed, part of the
global working class in the making and they have generated a whole range
of ‘transnational communities’ that are part of the social effects of global-
ization. However, Malcolm Bull is probably correct to refer to an element
of self-delusion in the way in which ‘migrants have become a potent symbol
of the social dislocation caused by globalization and have been invested with
some of the left’s more romantic aspirations’ (Bull 2004: 218). The flight
of skilled workers from developing countries to the affluent North is viewed
there in anything but romantic terms. Migrants are no more the privileged
agents of social transformation than industrial workers, peasants or students
were in past futile searches for the golden key to revolution.
In conclusion to this section I would like to take up Laclau’s verdict that
in Multitude Hardt and Negri ‘tend to oversimplify the tendencies towards
 The great counter-movement 135
1111 unity operating within the multitude’ (Laclau 2005: 243). Even a cursory
2 examination of the different currents, eddies and flows within the broad
3 social counter-movement against the self-regulating market shows the
4 complexity and contradictions that are at play here. Thus, for example, there
5 is a whole history of conflict, confluence and compromise lying behind the
6 Seattle 1999 slogan ‘Teamsters and Turtles Unite’ that many took to be a
7 signal of labour-environmental alliance. However, as Gould et al. note in a
8 review of ‘Blue-Green coalitions’, ‘in many ways forming a coalition at Seattle
9 was easy: this was a short-term marriage of convenience on an issue both
1011 groups strongly opposed’ (Gould et al. 2004: 92). Within a year more usual
1 antagonisms between organized labour (blue) and the environmentalists
2 (green) had resurfaced and were dominant.
3111 Soon after Seattle 1999 the labour–race divide came to the fore in the
4 US as the anti-globalization movement came under fire from anti-racists for
5 its ‘whiteness’. The Colours of Resistance Network was formed in 2002 to
6 articulate this critique. Among its criticisms of the anti-globalization move-
7 ment were the points that it was exclusionary with regards to ‘people of
8 color’ and that white activists fetishized tactics as against the need to build
9 up a long-term grassroots movement (Starr 2004: 127). There are also serious
20111 tensions between, for example, the anti-globalization movement and the
1 diverse indigenous people’s movements. For all that the Zapatistas had as a
2 slogan, ‘todos somos indios del mundo’ (‘we are all Indians of the world’) when
3 they marched on Mexico City in 2001, the reality is that indigenous move-
4 ments for social change (for example, in Andean America) may prioritize
5 recognition issues or agrarian issues that are not those central to the labour
6 movement. Unity must be constructed politically and cannot be assumed.
7
8
History
9
30111 At this stage it is necessary to go beyond the breathless ‘presentism’ of Hardt
1 and Negri’s theorizing of Empire and of Multitude. They do, of course, open
2 up many new avenues for research and their bold iconoclasm can only be
3 welcomed when contrasted with state academic and political debates.
4 However, if we renew the historical comparative problematic of Karl Polanyi
35 (see Chapters 1 and 2) we can add a much-needed long-term strategic pers-
6 pective on globalization and contestation. Polanyi’s basic theorem is that
7 global history is ruled by a ‘double movement’ in which two organizing
8 principles of society are dominant, namely the principle of economic liber-
9 alism and that of social protection. The first aims at the establishment of a
40111 self-regulating market on a global scale (globalization for short) and the
1 second aims at protecting society and nature as well as production, from the
2 deleterious effects of the market (contestation for short).
3 The counter-movement is dynamic and can be plotted onto the long
4 waves of global history. In Europe, prior to the industrial revolution in
45111 the nineteenth century, exchange relations were regulated by principles of
136 The great counter-movement
reciprocity and the economy was ‘embedded’ in society. Industrial expan-
sion was characterized by the spread of the free market and the laissez-faire
state, leading to the ‘disembedding’ of the economy from society and polit-
ical control. In the mid-twentieth century, after economic depression and
world wars, a compromise system of ‘embedded liberalism’ began to prevail.
Now going beyond the period above analysed by Polanyi, we can apply this
same optic to the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s which can be seen as a
wave of economic ‘disembedding’ and deregulating of the market. Our ques-
tion now then is whether we are witnessing a counter-movement whereby
society protects itself from the unregulated market and political forces
emerge seeking to regulate, if not control, the free market.
For Silver and Arrighi the last two decades show no lack of outstanding
cases of mobilization by ‘groups, sections and classes’ in response to the
dislocations caused by the resurgence of the ‘liberal creed’ and politics
designed to promote a ‘self-regulating global market’ (Silver and Arrighi
2003). The elements of a great social counter-movement range from the
anti-IMF ‘food riots’ in the South in the 1980s to the anti-globalization
street protests in the North after Seattle 1999. But they also include the
Group of 20 large developing nations that have challenged the impositions
of the WTO and the establishment’s moves to create a post-Washington
Consensus to succeed the now discredited naked neoliberal model. The
counter-movement thus has a facet of revolt ‘from below’ but also a reform
move ‘from above’ seeking to pre-emptively deal with revolt and potential
instability of the global system.
The Polanyi problem – to balance the urge to liberalize with the basic
need for some social stability – affects the rulers of the new world order as
much as it does the subaltern classes. As yet the social counter-movement
is at an early stage of development, and we cannot pretend that the anti-
globalization movement, at present, is a serious challenge to the established
order. The main challenge to the unregulated market is for now located in
the developing countries and nationalist movements of various types across
the world. The contradictions from within the system are not yet as severe
as they were during the great depression of the 1930s. Inter-imperialist
rivalries are also less likely to emerge strongly in the present context and,
as Silver and Arrighi argue: ‘a more likely source of destabilization of the
US-centred process of world market formation is the persistent protectionism
of the United States itself’ (Silver and Arrighi 2003: 348).
Inconsistencies in the US position are thus a major source of instability,
crusading on behalf of a free market and yet retaining strong protectionist
elements itself. Nor is the use of overwhelming force to secure US predom-
inance the best way to ensure hegemony over the system as a whole. It is
in this context that Joseph Stiglitz, one time chief economist at the World
Bank, can take up the Polanyi problematic and read the lessons for today’s
managers of contemporary capitalism. Stiglitz is keen to contest the common
wisdom that ‘the end of communism marked the triumph of the market
 The great counter-movement 137
1111 economy, and its belief in the self-regulated market’ (Stiglitz 2001: xv).
2 What was occurring was the imposition by force of ‘risky doctrines’ once
3 the countervailing weight of the state socialist order had collapsed. ‘But this
4 perspective is not only uncaring’, argues Stiglitz, ‘it is also unenlightened:
5 for there are myriad unsavoury forms that the rejection of a market economy
6 that did not work at least for the majority, or a large minority can take’
7 (Stiglitz 2001: xv).
8 So, precisely in the apparently unconstrained victory for the unregulated
9 market came the unforeseen consequences. This came, for example, in the
1011 shape of a dramatic and catastrophic transition to capitalism in Russia in
1 the early 1990s which, in its speed and lack of planning, destroyed social
2 capital and empowered the Mafia. As Stiglitz puts it: ‘rapid transformation
3111 destroys old coping mechanisms, old safety nets, while it creates a new set
4 of demands, before new coping mechanisms are developed ’ (Stiglitz 2001: xi). Then,
5 towards the end of the 1990s, from 1997 onwards, came a series of eco-
6 nomic collapses that represented, individually and collectively, a serious blow
7 to the credibility of the unregulated market model. In his own book on
8 ‘globalization and its discontents’ Joseph Stiglitz subtitles his chapter on the
9 East Asian Crisis of 1997 ‘how IMF policies brought the world to the verge
20111 of a global meltdown’ (Stiglitz 2001: 89). Whether the IMF or the broader
1 economic model was at fault the implications were clear: the winners of the
2 cold war had problems on their hands.
3 If the winners had problems, the losers in the great free market offensive
4 suffered the most, of course. It is important to bear in mind in this regard
5 that capitalist accumulation has always progressed through exploitation of
6 labour but also through naked dispossession. Today, the ever-expanding,
7 self-regulating market is dispossessing people in diverse forms. David Harvey
8 writes of how ‘destruction of habitat here, privatization of services there,
9 expulsion from the land somewhere else, bio-piracy in yet another realm –
30111 each creates its own dynamics’ (Harvey 2003: 174). This diffuse and often
1 inchoate form of dispossession is yet another manifestation of Polanyi’s liber-
2 alizing dynamic. The response to this tendency is, itself, most often
3 fragmentary and localized. Sometimes it links up with the more ‘traditional’
4 anti-exploitation movements of labour or national liberation but, more often,
35 it remains at the margins, taking on the effects of globalization but not
6 necessarily offering a coherent or noble alternative.
7 Hardt and Negri, in a not unrelated way, refer to how ‘simplifying a
8 great deal, one could argue that postmodernist discourses appeal primarily
9 to the winners in the process of globalization and fundamentalist discourses
40111 to the losers’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 160). Mobility, fluidity and indeter-
1 minacy might be welcomed by those who benefit from globalization, but
2 they might also translate into uncertainty, constant flux and insecurity for
3 those who are subject to dispossession by the machine of the self-regulating
4 market. Thus different forms of fundamentalism – from the Christian right
45111 to Islamic militants, from the French anti-immigrant right to, arguably,
138 The great counter-movement
ecological fundamentalists – respond to the threat of uncertainty and
insecurity of the present era with their own particular versions of certainty
and the truth. Hardt and Negri may well be prophetic when they tell us
that ‘the losers in the process of globalization might indeed be the ones who
give us the stronger indication of the transformation in progress’ (Hardt and
Negri 2000: 150).
The question that now arises is whether a Polanyian counter-movement
can protect humanity from a self-inflicted demise. At one level Polanyi can
be read simply as a humanist appeal to resist the commodification of the
human and natural ecologies now under way. But it is a perspective that also
offers an alternative vision of globalization in terms of its inextricable links
with the local and its communities. Whether it is a mining site, a financial
market or a sweatshop, the globalization project necessitates local ground-
ing. And as a result, as Adaman and colleagues write: ‘the local becomes
the site of encounter, contestation and possibly resistance’ (Adaman et al.
2003: 7). As local identities proliferate so do diverse projects of contestation
and even accommodation that represent different faces of a social counter-
movement that is an integral element of the globalization project.
While we need to appreciate the breadth and diversity of the great
counter-movement now emerging to contest globalization and its envisaged
smooth world, it does not mean we value them all equally. Harvey quite
rightly draws our attention to how many movements are struggling against
the dispossession that globalization brings in its wake:

The danger lurks that a politics of nostalgia for that which has been
lost will supersede the search for ways to better meet the material needs
of the impoverished and repressed populations; that the exclusionary
politics of the local will dominate the need to build an alternative
globalization . . .; that reversion to older patterns of social relations and
systems of production will be posited as a solution in a world that has
moved on.
(Harvey 2003: 177)

The next section deals with political strategies more explicitly, for now we
just note how the combined but uneven nature of capitalist development
will inevitably produce such effects.
The great counter-movement, then, is essentially about a return of the
‘political’ which the de-regulationist offensive had sought to evacuate from
economics. This politics, as we have seen, does not necessarily take what
used to be called a ‘progressive’ form. Indeed, it is always good to recall
that for Polanyi, the cataclysm-triggered transformations of the 1930s
saw societies taking control of the economy in very different ways, including
the New Deal in the US, Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany. If classical
fascism can be seen as a perverse, reactionary social and political response
 The great counter-movement 139
1111 to the chaos of the crisis-ridden capitalist system, so today, we can imagine
2 very many less than attractive responses to the social crises unleashed by
3 globalization. However, as Polanyi advised in relation to the period he
4 observed, it is necessary for us ‘to detach the poignant national histories
5 of the period from the social transformation that was in progress’ (Polanyi
6 2001: 80).
7 What we are witnessing today – if we abstract from the particular situ-
8 ations of chaos and conflict – is the ‘inability to regulate markets at the
9 international level [that has] created social dislocations beyond the ability
1011 of “normal” domestic politics to resolve’ (Evans 2000: 238). If Polanyi’s
1 concerns and verdicts on the problem of reconciling free markets with social
2 and political stability were correct in the 1930s and 1940s they are doubly
3111 so in the 1990s and 2000s as the global casts its particular glow across the
4 regional, national and local domains of life. It is inevitable that politics will
5 now come to the fore to seek social control, or at least influence, over this
6 process. This response of the ‘lifeworld’, as Habermas famously calls it, will
7 be diverse and not necessarily effective. It will also be countered by serious
8 moves ‘from above’ seeking to co-opt or even to create a ‘global civil society’
9 to match global capitalism.
20111
1
2
Strategy
3 In the age of Empire, following Balakrishnan, ‘revolutionaries no longer need
4 to distinguish tactics and strategy, position and manoeuvre, weak links and
5 vulnerable ones; they can now rely on a pervasive, if diffuse popular desire
6 for liberation and an episodic intuition of friend and enemy’ (Balakrishnan
7 2003: xv). As an ethos of liberation this approach captures well a dominant
8 strand in the Western anti-globalization movement, but since its bursting
9 onto the world scene in 1999 many of these classical political categories
30111 have come back into play. The strategy of a given movement is clearly dis-
1 tinguished from the specific tactics it might follow in the streets or in
2 negotiations with the powers that be. The distinction between what Gramsci
3 called a ‘war of manoeuvre’ (classical early twentieth-century revolutionary
4 strategy) and a ‘war of position’, typically of the entrenched positions of
35 those who now struggle for hegemony, is well understood. And all parties
6 are aware of where the weak links of the system may be, where there are
7 contradictions, and where pressure might most readily lead to reform.
8 Whether it is the ‘global governance’ or ‘global civil society’ discourses
9 there is a strong tendency within ‘globe-talk’ to adopt a ‘neutral’ political
40111 stance. Now, while not everything in society is political, as Laclau puts it:
1 ‘all struggles are, by definition, political’ (Laclau 2005: 154). Society, the
2 way we view it and the ‘people’ are being constantly reinvented in the polit-
3 ical domain. There is no a-political stance towards a neutral globalization
4 process that we should just seek to administer better to the benefit of all.
45111 Developing this theme, Laclau argues that:
140 The great counter-movement
since the construction of the ‘people’ is the political act par excellence –
as opposed to pure administration within a stable institutional frame-
work – the sine qua non requirements of the political are the construction
of antagonistic frontiers within the social and the appeal to new subjects
of social change.
(Laclau 2005: 154)

The various political projects that seek to offer an alternative to the unreg-
ulated free market of globalized capitalism are all constructing their subjects
through discursive operations that urgently require deconstruction.
With politics back ‘in command’ in terms of determining the future
direction of the broad counter-globalization movement(s), we can consider
the various broad options in the struggle. One of the most ambitious polit-
ical projects in the era of globalization is that of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’
based on the notion that for global issues, such as protection of the environ-
ment or the regulation of migration, to be subject to democratic control:
‘democracy must transcend the border of single states and assert itself at
a global level’ (Archibugi 2003: 7). This project seeks to give a voice at the
global level to people who may be disempowered at a national level. It is
a perspective that does not shy away from the question of force, arguing
unambiguously for ‘humanitarian intervention’ where necessary. For British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, NATO’s air raids on Yugoslavia at the close of
the twentieth century were justified because: ‘It’s right for the international
community to use military force to prevent genocide and protect human
rights, even if it entails a violation of national sovereignty’ (cited Archibugi
2003: 10).
The new ‘cosmopolitan’ is unapologetically West-centred. For Martin
Shaw, still professing a left politics:

This perspective can only be centred on a new sense of purpose among

Western peoples and governments, since only the West has the
economic, political and military resources and the democratic and multi-
national institutions and culture necessary to undertake it. The West
has a historic responsibility to take on this global leadership.
(Shaw 1994: 180–1)

There is a direct lineage here with the justification of colonialism as the

‘white man’s burden’ and the European social democratic support for ‘social
imperialism’ to bring lesser peoples to the light. National sovereignty is
seen as a quaint anachronism in the era of globalization as the movement
for ‘global justice’ must take precedence. The new liberal cosmopolitanism
has its own ‘right’ and ‘left’ exponents but, overall, it seems to offer little
to the majority world or those seeking social transformation.
There is no reason why we should accept that the alternative to liberal
cosmopolitanism is illiberal nationalism or various dark forms of funda-
 The great counter-movement 141
1111 mentalism. At best cosmopolitan democracy is a cosy complacent ideology
2 for those privileged to be born in the ‘safe zones’ of the new world order.
3 At worst this call to go ‘beyond’ the confines of the nation-state is simply
4 an apologia for the most powerful nation-state on earth as it goes about the
5 business of world domination. In all versions the leftist language of univer-
6 salism masks a denial of genuine attempts at popular sovereignty. The
7 answer, from a social transformation perspective, should not merely be one
8 of critique. As Timothy Brennan puts it:
9
1011 We should be encouraging popular efforts in Southern Mexico, Colombia,
1 Indonesia or Palestine – and so many other parts of the world – to estab-
2 lish a modicum of real sovereignty, rather than constructing intricate
3111 theoretical edifices liable to weaken the very ability to imagine it.
4 (Brennan 2003: 49)
5
6 The Polanyian counter-movement is based precisely on initiatives such as
7 these that build up aspects of the social counter-power to the unregulated
8 free market.
9 The human rights movement might, one could suppose, provide a more
20111 universal construction of the ‘people’ than the new liberal cosmopolitanism,
1 and its supporters include many (if not most) INGOs. The idea of human
2 rights and their global institutionalization are integral elements of the global-
3 ization discourses in most of its political variants. As Roland Robertson, one
4 of the pioneers of globalization theory puts it: ‘although the principle of
5 human rights is in one sense applied to individuals, its general significance
6 has to do with the consolidation of humanity’ (Robertson 1992: 184). The
7 human rights of the individual are seen to be ‘above’ the sovereignty of
8 nation-states and are thus important markers of the extra-territoriality that
9 globalization ushers in. From Bosnia to Rwanda it was precisely this theme
30111 of human rights that prevailed in Western debates on the conflicts. It is
1 also the justification for the ‘international community’ to bring the likes of
2 Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic in front of international law
3 tribunals.
4 Now, we should not neglect the importance that the international arena
35 has gained as a strategic alternative for opposition activists seeking to bring
6 national state atrocities to light. The Pinochet arrest in 1998 sent shock
7 waves throughout the human rights community in Chile and transnation-
8 ally. It did seem that ‘global civil society’ was able to make dictators
9 accountable for their crimes against humanity. Yet a closer look at the
40111 Pinochet case shows that it was domestic pressure and Chilean judicial
1 processes that carried more weight in the end than the international action.
2 As Cath Collins argues: ‘one might conclude that external enthusiasts of
3 accountability would do better to seek to support and resource domestic
4 prosecutions than to attempt to replicate the increasingly precarious Pinochet
45111 precedent in third-country courts’ (Collins 2005: 21). This is an argument
142 The great counter-movement
that takes full cognizance of the politics of scale in the making and unmaking
of globalization, and alerts us to the dangers of automatically prioritizing
the global in contesting power today.
The third discourse to consider here is that of ‘internationalism’, long
the main weapon of the left in constructing a global response to capitalism.
In much the same way that human rights have become a major instrument
of hegemonic power so also has internationalism come to mean something
quite different from its Enlightenment origins. The worker’s cause, from its
origins until at least the Second World War, was always internationalist in
rhetoric if not in practice. Even the nationalist revolts in the colonial world
after that war were bathed in the glow of internationalism. Yet, since the
rise of globalization, internationalism has acquired a quite different conno-
tation, precisely in the US, the hegemonic power, where internationalism
once meant simply the opposite of isolationism. Today, as Perry Anderson
puts it: ‘internationalism . . . is no longer coordination of the major capitalist
powers under American dominance against a common enemy, the negative
task of the Cold War, but an affirmative ideal – the reconstruction of the
globe in “the American image”, sans phrases’ (Anderson 2002: 24).
Where does this leave internationalism and transnationalism as discourses
of contestation? The broad transnational movement in solidarity with the
Zapatistas shows that another meaning of internationalism is still in exist-
ence. Internationalism should, maybe, be seen as an ‘empty signifier’ that
constructs the ‘people’ in very different ways. We need to return to the
history of internationalism as a process rather than a state concept, as
Micheline Ishay argues, and distinguish it from the realist paradigm in inter-
national relations. For Ishay, ‘unlike the realist paradigm, which focuses on
economic, military, or any other instrumental links between nations, inter-
nationalism includes both an instrumental and a normative view of social
and global unity’ (Ishay 1995: xxi). Internationalism is not the simple oppo-
site of nationalism but, rather, the register of progressive actions in pursuit
of global objectives.
Finally, while this is not the place to articulate the new politics of social
transformation that has been emerging in recent years across the globe we
must point out that another world is, indeed, possible. It is as true today
as it was in the 1980s. Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein, in examining the
‘dilemmas of anti-systemic movements’, concluded that:

We are massively, seriously in urgent need of reconstructing the strategy,

perhaps the ideology, perhaps the organizational structure of the family
of world anti-systemic movements; if we are to cope effectively with
the real dilemmas before which we are placed.
(Arrighi et al. 1989: 51)

Since then we have witnessed the end of the cold war, the rise of global-
ization and the emergence of the counter-globalization movement. There is
 The great counter-movement 143
1111 nothing automatic about the advance of progressive social movements today,
2 any more than in the mid-1980s when these cataclysmic changes in world
3 history were hardly foreseen.
4 What we are witnessing in today’s ‘family’ of global anti-systemic move-
5 ments is an ongoing and profound debate on the ‘new politics’ that are
6 required. This is focused not least on the nature of the ‘democratic counter-
7 power’ that is necessary to counter and offer an alternative to free market
8 globalism. Hilary Wainwright uses the word ‘counterpower’ to ‘describe
9 the many sources and levels of power through which it is possible to bring
1011 about social transformation’ (Wainwright 2005). As with the post-1968
1 ‘new’ social movements this counter-movement is challenging the positivist
2 paradigm of knowledge and the sanctity of what are deemed to be scien-
3111 tific laws. We should not forget, however, in looking forward that accumu-
4 lation by dispossession is, as Harvey puts it, ‘the primary contradiction at
5 the core of globalization to be confronted’ (Harvey 2003: 177). While there
6 is no easy way to reconcile those looking backwards and those looking
7 forwards it is a necessary precondition for social transformation.
8 Taking a broad view we can say that the governance agenda that the
9 agents of globalization are constructing in the post-Washington Consensus
20111 era depends on questions of politics and power being removed from the
1 equation. Against this project the social counter-movements will bring back
2 in political contestation and resistance to domination in all its forms. I would
3 argue, finally, in agreement with Sousa Santos, that ‘in the womb of this
4 alternative counter-hegemonic globalization, another governance matrix is
5 being generated, an insurgent counter-hegemonic governance’ (Santos 2005:
6 16). In this battle of the governances, the outcome of the Polanyi prob-
7 lematic we now face will be decided. At the very least the counter-movement
8 and its alternative globalization project have placed back on the broad
9 political agenda questions of equity and justice within the context of a
30111 sustainable global development model.
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
45111
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1111
2 Index
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 Abdel-Malek, A. 49 Asia 5, 11, 49, 76, 87
4 Adaman, F. xiv, 138 Association pour le Tex Tobin pour l’Aide
5 Africa 49, 87 aux Citoyen (ATTAC) 68, 83–4
6 agribusiness 99–101 Atta, Mohammed 27
Albert, Michael 88 Australia 104
7 Algerian Revolution 50 auto industry 95
8 Althusser, Louis 14 Ayres, Jeffrey 67, 73
9 Altvater, A. 17
20111 Alvarez, Sonía 28, 80, 82 Balakrishnan, G. 127, 131, 139
1 American Federation of Labor-Congress of Bandung Conference 49
2 Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Barchiesi, F. 132
58, 60, 118 Battle of Seattle see Seattle
3 Amin, Ash 5, 8 Baxi, Upendra 76–8
4 Amin, Samir 42 Beck, Ulrich 9
5 Amnesty International 78 Beeley, Brian 124
6 anarchism 58, 60, 71 Beijing UN Conference on Women xi,
7 Anderson, B. 110 80, 83
8 Anderson, Kenneth 91–2 Benhabib, Seyla 121
Anderson, Perry 142 Bernstein, Eduard 43
9 Anheier, H. 52 Bhagwati, Jagdish 1, 11
30111 anti-capitalism 70–4 Bin Laden, Osama 120
1 anti-colonialism 26, 48–52 Black civil rights movement 21
2 anti-corporate movement 71–2 Blair, Tony 140
3 anti-dam movement 103 Block, Fred 18
4 anti-globalization movements 1–3, 20, Bob, Clifford 79
35 29, 32, 39; anti-capitalism 70–4; and Boeing 58–9
global civil society 53; post-Seattle Bolsheviks 44–5
6 66–70; Patriots 114–16; and religion Bosnia 141
7 27; Seattle 57–62; Zapatistas 62–6; see Bové, José 100, 124–5
8 also contestation Brazil 84, 97, 101, 103
9 anti-movements 122–3 Britain 36, 41, 69–70, 129–30; see also
40111 anti-racist movement 62 United Kingdom
1 Appadurai, Arjun 112 Brennan, Timothy 141
Archibugi, D. 140 Broad, Robin 12
2 Argentina 12, 97 Brysk, Alyson 77
3 Arquilla, J. 65 Buchanan, Patrick 115, 117
4 Arrighi, G. xiii, 125, 136, 142 Bull, Malcolm 134
45111 Ashgar, A. 120 Burawoy, Michael 34
156 Index
Burke, J. 27 contestation ix, 21, 135; and colonialism
Buttel, F. 72 48–52; discourses of 142; see also anti-
Bygrave, M. 68 globalization movement; social
movements
Calhoun, C. 111, 113 Cooper, Robert 130
Cancún 70 corporate scandals 12
capitalism ix–x, 7, 12, 17 cosmopolitan democracy 140–1
capitalism, global 5, 19, 27–8, 93, 96; cosmopolitanism, contemporary 52–6
anarchism 71; civil society 14, 139; counter-hegemony 34–5, 114, 143
Direct Action Network 60; morality counter-movements ix–x, xii–xiv, 34–5,
12, 37 73, 135
capitalist hegemony, theory of 34 counterpower 143
Caruso, G. 87 Cuba 51
Cassen, Bernard 83–4, 89 cultural aspects of globalization 8–9
Castells, Manuel: global sisterhood 82; cultural politics 28
labour movements 26; nationalism
110, 113; Patriot movement 117; Dalton, G. 17
al-Qaeda 118–19; place 107; social Davos 83–4
movements 29–30, 122–3; Zapatistas democracy 2, 28, 45–6, 53–5;
65–6 cosmopolitan 140–1; global 6, 26, 29;
Catholicism 46, 84 social 34, 42–3, 55
Cerny, P. 11 developing world 6, 11, 18, 47, 128;
Chakrabarty, D. 42 development state 35; human rights
Chávez, Hugo 88 76; Islamic movements 31; labour
Chiapas 62–6 movements 26; working class 38; see
Chile 141 also global South
China 7, 47–50, 118 development state 27, 35–6
Chinese Revolution 47–9, 98 Dicken, P. 4
civil rights movement, Black 21 Direct Action Network (DAN) 59–60
civil society see global civil society Dirlik, Arif 107
civil society organizations (CSOs) 13; disembedding 17–18, 136
see also non-governmental dock workers 96–7
organizations Doob, L. 111
Clarke, Michael 40 double movement ix–x, xii–xiii, 14,
class 37–8; see also working class 34–5, 73, 135
Claudin, Fernando 47 Douglas, Ian 12–13
Clawson, Dan 26, 118 Drache, D. 4
Cleaver, Harry 63 Drainville, André 54, 67, 89–90, 93
Cloward, R. 21 Dufour, F. 100
Cohen, Jean 22 Dunn, K. 129
Cohen, R. 72
Colás, Alejandro 44, 54, 90–1 East Asia 5
Collins, Cath 141 economics of globalization 6–7
colonialism 23, 42–3, 48–52, 128, economy, market 15–16
130 Edelman, M. 99
Colours of Resistance Network 135 Egypt 119, 122
Commission on Global Governance Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
53 (EZLN) 62–6
Communist International 44–5, 98 embeddedness 16–18, 136
communist internationalists 44–8 Empire 127–31
Communist Manifesto, The 26–7, 44 environmental movements xi, 29, 60–2,
complexity theory 2–4 102–6
contemporary cosmopolitanism 52–6 Epstein, Barbara 71
 Index 157
1111 essentialism 24, 49, 76–7, 81 global civil society (GCS) 52–5, 89–91,
2 Eurocentrism xiv, 42, 55, 129 114, 119
European Enlightenment 28, 55, 75–6, global culture 8–9
3 122, 129, 142 global governance xiii, 10–14, 61, 143
4 European internationalists 40–4 globalization: defined 5; and double
5 Evans, Peter xii–xiii, 18–19, 81, 139 movement theory 135; first wave 11;
6 events of 1968 20, 22, 25, 27–9, 51–2, vs. imperialism 130; liberal 2; matrix
7 72–3, 128–9 10; neoliberal xii, 73, 84, 119, 131;
8 Evers, Tilman 25–6 see also anti-globalization movements
Globalize Resistance 70
9 Fanon, Frantz 50, 65 globalizers 2, 6
1011 Featherstone, Mike 9, 101 global sisterhood 79–83
1 Feffer, John 33 global South xi, 7, 23, 82, 123; see also
2 feminism 79–83, 92, 129 developing world
3111 Ferguson, Niall 129–30 Goodwin, J. 21
First Congress of the Comintern 45 Gorbachev, Mikhail 48
4 First International 43, 89, 94–5 Gould, K. 61–2, 72, 135
5 Fordism 128 governance, global xiii, 10–14, 61, 143
6 Forman, Michael 41 Gramsci, Antonio 34, 38, 126, 139
7 Foucault, Michel 13, 106 Greenpeace 103–5
8 Foweraker, Joe 23 Grenfell, Damian 104
9 France 67, 83, 100 Group of 22 70, 134, 136
Francis, Hywell 46 guerrilla movements 65–6
20111 Franco, Francisco 45–6 Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che’ 50–1
1 free market ix–x, 11–12, 14–18, 73, 136;
2 see also self-regulating market Habermas, J. 22, 139
3 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Halliday, Fred 44, 47–8, 54–5
4 67 Hamas 120
French, J. 24 Harder, Chuck 116
5 Friends of the Earth (FOE) 102 Harding, J. 66
6 Fuentes, C. 66 Hardt, Michael xii, 30, 52, 127–9,
7 Fukuyama, F. 17, 111, 127 131–5, 137–8
8 fundamentalism 31, 110, 114, 119–20, Harman, Chris 70
9 137–8; see also religion Harvey, David 5, 39, 104–6, 130–1,
30111 Fuss, D. 24 137–8, 143
Hay, A. 69
1 G8 67–8 Held, David 5–6, 8, 34, 55, 90, 102
2 García Candini, N. 5 Hellman, Judith 64
3 Garretón, M.A. 10 Herod, Andrew 95–6
4 Gellner, Ernest 112 Hertz, Noreen 2, 72
35 gender 82, 92, 129; see also feminism; Higgott, Richard 12–13
6 women’s movements Hirst, P. 3
General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs Hobsbawm, Eric 41, 65
7 (GATT) 100 Ho Chi Minh 45
8 General Motors (GM) 95–6 Hooson, David 111
9 Genoa 67–8 human rights movements xi, 28, 75–9,
40111 Giddens, Anthony 3 141
1 Gill, Stephen 35, 38 Huntington, S.P. ix, 113, 120
Gilly, Adolfo 66
2 Glas, Comhaontas 102 ICEM 95
3 Glasius, M. 89 identity formation 22–3, 31, 125
4 global capitalism see capitalism, Ignatieff, M. 113
45111 global imperialism 129–31
158 Index
India 7, 87, 91, 100–1 Latin America 11–12, 28, 62, 67, 69, 82,
indigenous people’s movement 92, 135 101, 124
Indo-China wars 50 Legrain, P. 1
information age 7 Lenin, Vladimir 45
interconnectedness 5 Levi, M. 58–9
Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity Linden, Marcel van der 41, 51, 94
and Resistance 100–1 Lipschitz, Ronnie 53
internationalism 95, 111, 142 Liverpool 96–7
internationalists: communist 44–8; local-global dichotomy xiv, 98,
European 40–4; see also transnational 108–9
social movements localism xii, xiv, 33, 95, 107
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 58, local transnationalisms xi; environmental
67, 137 movements 102–6; militant
Internet 64–5, 114 particularisms 106–9; peasants
Iran 119 98–102; workers 94–8
Iraq 76, 111–12 Lowy, M. 63
Ireland 46, 112 Lyons, F.S.L. 40, 43, 55–6
Ishay, Micheline 142
Islamic movements xii, 30–1, 58, 110, McCarthy, John 21
118–22, 124 McGrew, Anthony 5, 34, 55
Israel 119–20 McIver, R.M. 18
McVeigh, Timothy 114–15
James, D. 24 Mahnkopf, B. 17
James, Paul 113–14 market economy 15–16
Japan 95 market society 14–16, 37
Jasper, J. 21 Martínez, Betita 62
Jerusalem 120 Marx, Karl 91, 133
Jessop, Bob xiii Marxism 70–1, 132
Jihad 118–22 Massey, Doreen 33, 109
Jonas, A. 98 Melucci, Alberto 21–2, 27, 28–9
Judd, Ron 59 MERCOSUR (Common Market of the
Southern Cone) 97
Kainaka State Farmers’ Association methodological nationalism 6
(KRRS) 100 methodological territorialism 6
Kaldor, Mary 34, 119 Mexican Revolution 66
Kampuchea 50 Mexico xi, 12, 62–6, 118
Kaplan, Caren 81 migration 134
Kayatekin, S. 8 Miles, Angela 80, 83
Keane, John 55 militant particularisms 94, 96, 105,
Kearney, Richard 112 106–9
Khagram, Sanjeev 92 Mills, C. Wright 118
Kirkland, Lane 118 Milosevic, Slobodan 141
Klein, Naomi 2, 71 modernization theory 4, 9
Korten, David 72 Mohanty, C.T. 79
Krestintern 98–9 Monde Diplomatique, Le 83
Moody, Kim 96
labour 15 morality xiv, 2, 12, 17, 37, 75, 123
labour movements xi, 26, 28, 94–8, 125; Morgan, Robin 79–80
European internationalists 41, 43; Movimento Sem Tierra (MST) 101
Seattle 58–62; World Social Forum 84; multitude 128, 131–5
see also trade unions Mumbai 87
Laclau, Ernesto 124–5, 132, 134–5, Munck, Ronaldo 31, 37, 97–8
139–40 Munson, Chuck 68–9
 Index 159
1111 Muro, Diego 119 People for Fair Trade (PFT) 59
2 Murphy, Gillian 59 Perot, Ross 117
Peters, Ralph 131
3 Nader, Ralph 116 Petras, J. 101
4 Nairn, Tom 112, 114, 123 Pianta, Mario 14, 93
5 nationalism 32, 47, 104, 110–14, 123–4, Pierce, William 31, 115, 118
6 133; and colonialism 48–50; Islamists Pieterse, Nederveen 61, 130
7 119; methodological xiv, 6 Pinochet, Augusto 141
8 nationalist movements 26–8, 133 Piven, F. 21
nation-states 6–8, 10, 32, 110, 112, 120, Pizzorno, A. 22
9 133–4 place 94, 105–9
1011 Negri, Antonio xii, 30, 52, 127–9, Polanyi, Karl ix, xiii–xiv, 1, 73, 100,
1 131–5, 137–8 120, 138–9; self-regulating market 20;
2 neo-fundamentalism 120 social movements 34–9; see also Polanyi
3111 neoliberalism xi, 11–12, 33, 67, 84, problematic
89–90, 101 Polanyi problematic x, xiii–xiv, 14–19,
4 Network Opposed to the WTO (NO! 38–9, 114, 135–6, 141; applied to
5 WTO) 59 North Atlantic countries 23; and global
6 new social movements 25–9, 51, 132 governance 143; see also Polanyi, Karl
7 Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) 45 politics of globalization 7, 139–40; see
8 Nicaragua 51 also cultural politics; transnational
9 Nigeria 103 political fora
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) populism 124–5
20111 13–14, 69, 77, 80–2, 84, 90, 92 Porto Alegre 84, 88
1 North American Free Trade Agreement post-colonialism 23, 51
2 (NAFTA) 32, 59, 117–18 Potok, M. 117
3 Notes from Nowhere 68 pre-capitalist societies 17, 36
4 presentism 54–5, 135
Obi, Cyril 103 Probyn, E. 108
5 O’Brien, R. 14, 92 protectionism xiv, 11, 70, 98, 136
6 October Revolution of 1917 48–9
7 Offe, Claus 22 al-Qaeda 27, 118–22
8 Ogoni 103 Québec City 67
9 Ohmae, Kenichi 3, 112 Quinby, Lee 129
30111 Oklahoma City bombing 114–15
Olesen, Thomas 63–4 racism 62, 117, 123–4, 135
1 Oliver, P. 103 Rai, S. 72
2 Olson, D. 58–9 Rand Corporation 121
3 Olson, Mancur 21 reactionary social movements xii, 25–6,
4 Orientalism 121–2 38–9, 110–11
35 reciprocity and redistribution 37
6 Packard, Vance 72 Red Peasant International 98–9
Palestine 120, 134 reflexivity 9
7 Paraguay 97 regionalism 36, 97
8 parallel summits 83, 93 religion 27–8, 30–1, 121, 124; see also
9 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) 84 fundamentalism; Islamic movements
40111 Pasha, Kamal 119, 121 resource mobilization theory 21, 23
1 Passy, F. 92 revolt of 1968 51–2; see also 1968
Patriot movement xii, 31–2, 110, Rieff, David 91–2
2 114–18, 124–5 Robertson, Roland 31, 141
3 Paulson, Justin 64 Ronfeldt, D. 65
4 peace movement 28–9, 68–9 Rootes, C. 104
45111 peasants xi, 98–102, 133 Rothman, F. 103
160 Index
Roy, Oliver 120 Stevis, D. 43
Ruccio, D. 8 Stiglitz, Joseph 18, 136–7
Rupert, Mark 32, 116, 118
Russia 48–9, 137; see also Soviet Union Tarrow, Sydney 21, 24
Rwanda 111–13, 141 Taylor, P. 4
Teague, Terry 97
Said, Edward 122 teleological concepts 4
St Clair, Jeffrey 60–1 Thiong’o, Ngugiwa 42
Santos, Boa de Sousa 89, 109, 143 Third International 44–5, 89
Sardar, Z. 121–2 Third World 49–50
Sartre, Jean Paul 65 Thompson, G. 3
Sassoon, Donald 32, 44 Tichelman, Fritjof 42
sceptics of globalization 3–4, 6 time-space compression 5, 31
Scholte, Jan Aart 1, 7, 11, 53 Timms, J. 89
Seattle xi, 13, 52, 57–62, 90, 98, 118; Törnquist, O. 47
anti-capitalism 73–4; effect 66–7; Toro, M.S. 81
labour-environmental alliance 135; new Touraine, Alain 22, 66
social movements 29; Vía Campesina trade unions 94–7, 116; AFL-CIO 58,
100; World Social Forum 83 60, 118; and Communist party 25;
sea turtles 60 European internationalists 41, 43;
Second International 43–4 purpose of 15; see also labour
Seddon, M. 58 movements
self-regulating market ix, 14–16, 18, 20, transformationalist accounts 6
34–5, 135, 137; see also free market transnationalism 40, 43, 95, 142; see also
Sen, Jai 87–8, 91 local transnationalisms; transnational
September 11 xii, 6, 20, 27, 68–9, 121 political fora; transnational social
Shaw, Martin 140 movements
Shell 103 transnational political fora xi, 89–93;
Sherman, S. 128 global sisterhood 79–83; universal
Silver, Beverley xiii, 38, 125–6, 136 human rights 75–9; World Social
sisterhood, global 79–83 Forum 83–9
Smith, Jackie 24, 58, 74, 105 transnational social movements xi;
Smith, M.P. 106, 108 colonialism and contestation 48–52;
social class 37–8; see also working class communist internationalists 44–8;
social facets of globalization 8 contemporary cosmopolitanism 52–6;
social identity theory 23 European internationalists 40–4
socialist parties 43 Trichur, G. 128
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) 70 Tricontinental Conference of Solidarity of
social movement organizations (SMOs) 21 the People of Africa, Asia and Latin
social movements 122–3; good and bad America 50–1
29–34; new and old x, 25–9; Polanyian Trotsky, Leon 98–9
perspectives on 34–9; reactionary xii;
theories 20–5; see also transnational unions see labour movements; trade
social movements unions
social responsibility 12 United Auto Workers (UAW) 95–6
Soros, George 12 United Kingdom 76, 96, 111, 129; see
South Africa 51 also Britain
Southern Poverty Law Center 115–17 United Nations (UN) xi, 13, 76, 80–2,
Soviet Union 44–8, 50, 112 92–3
Spain 45–6 United States 32, 76, 136; and Empire
Spanish Civil War 45–6, 66 127–31; Patriot movement 31–2, 110,
Stalin, Josef 46 114–18, 124–5
Starr, Amory 30, 103, 135 universal human rights xi, 28, 75–9, 141
 Index 161
1111 Urry, John 2–3, 9 Wolf, Martin 1–2
2 Uruguay 97 women’s movements xi, 23, 28, 75,
79–83, 92
3 Veer, P. van der 120 Woolf, Virginia 81
4 Veltmeyer, H. 101 workers 94–8; see also labour
5 Vía Campesina xii, 99–101 movements; peasants; trade unions;
6 Vietnam 50–1, 128 working class
7 Virno, Paolo 132 Workers’ Party 84
8 working class 38, 41, 95, 131–2
Wainwright, Hilary 72–3, 88, 143 World Bank 14, 58, 67, 69, 92
9 Wales 46 World Economic Forum 83–4
1011 Wallerstein, I. 48–9 World Social Forum xi, 70, 75, 83–9,
1 Walton, J. 58 91, 109
2 Washbourne, Neil 102 World Trade Organization (WTO)
3111 Washington Consensus 11–12, 18 69–70, 90; and agribusiness 99–101;
Waterman, Peter 53, 87 and China 118; Seattle xi, 13, 29, 57,
4 Weibe, Nattie 99 59–61
5 Weiss, L. 7
6 Whitaker, Chico 88 Young, Robert 26, 49, 51
7 wicked issues 11 Yugoslavia 111–12, 140
8 Wieviorka, Michael 122
9 Williams, J. 119 Zahid, M. 122
Williams, Raymond 106 Zald, Mayer 21
20111 Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the Zapatistas xi, 57, 62–6, 101, 121, 135,
1 World) 58 142
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
45111