ENVS1300 discussion
Topic:
ENVS1300 discussion
Paper details:
Read those two articles and then create 4 discussion questions for each article.
Anti-Globalization
Movements
JANET M. CONWAY
Brock University, Canada
In response to the pervasive claim by global
elites that “there is no alternative” to neoliberal globalization, a widespread globally
dispersed popular revolt coalesced in the
late 1990s under the banner of the antiglobalization movement. Although marked
by a great diversity of struggles and a range
of understandings of globalization, the
movement was united in its opposition
to neoliberal strategies of privatization,
deregulation, free trade, and deep cuts to
government services. They contested growing
corporate power and control in all domains
of social and ecological life and its undermining the exercise of popular democratic
sovereignty through nation-states. “Antiglobalization” is a problematic moniker
in that these movements are opposed to
US-led, corporate-dominated neoliberal
globalization, not to increased global interconnectedness, and often see themselves
promoting alternative globalizations. Thus,
some activists prefer “global justice” or
“alter-globalization,” but “anti-globalization”
continues to be the most internationally recognized way of naming this globally extensive
and diverse phenomenon.
Since the origin of the term with reference
to the 1999 protests in Seattle that shut down
the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings, the anti-globalization movement has
been conceived in two major ways. The first
refers to a worldwide eruption of popular
resistance to neoliberal globalization – not
a single movement but a “movement of
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss250
movements” with diverse roots, North and
South, global in scope, and in formation since
the 1980s. It is constituted by both vibrant
transnational networks and myriad local- and
national-scale resistances. It is increasingly
densely networked through the Internet, the
World Social Forum process, and periodic
mobilizations at symbolic sites of global
governance – summits of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, WTO,
G8, and now G20.
The second usage refers more narrowly to
the predominantly white, anarchist-inspired
student and youth movements whose direct
action tactics successfully shut down the
WTO in Seattle. In a series of mass actions
around elite summits in the Global North
from the late 1990s to the present, their practices of direct democracy, horizontalism, and
diversity of tactics are the focus of one strand
of anti-globalization scholarship.
The anti-globalization movement has
produced a large and diverse scholarly literature across the social sciences, drawing
on multiple theoretical and analytical traditions, focusing on different empirical sites
and attending to a range of problematics.
Within this diverse field, the literature is
somewhat bifurcated according to the two
conceptualizations outlined above, and
relatedly in terms of geographic focus on
the Global North, Global South, or the
North–South axis, and between place-based
studies and those focused on transnational
networks and spaces. In recent years, there
have been significant attempts to analyze
the anti-globalization movement as a coherent phenomenon, to situate it in relation to
longer-term historical developments, such
as those in the world system, global capitalism, Western or global modernity, global
democratization or global network society
Movements
JANET M. CONWAY
Brock University, Canada
In response to the pervasive claim by global
elites that “there is no alternative” to neoliberal globalization, a widespread globally
dispersed popular revolt coalesced in the
late 1990s under the banner of the antiglobalization movement. Although marked
by a great diversity of struggles and a range
of understandings of globalization, the
movement was united in its opposition
to neoliberal strategies of privatization,
deregulation, free trade, and deep cuts to
government services. They contested growing
corporate power and control in all domains
of social and ecological life and its undermining the exercise of popular democratic
sovereignty through nation-states. “Antiglobalization” is a problematic moniker
in that these movements are opposed to
US-led, corporate-dominated neoliberal
globalization, not to increased global interconnectedness, and often see themselves
promoting alternative globalizations. Thus,
some activists prefer “global justice” or
“alter-globalization,” but “anti-globalization”
continues to be the most internationally recognized way of naming this globally extensive
and diverse phenomenon.
Since the origin of the term with reference
to the 1999 protests in Seattle that shut down
the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings, the anti-globalization movement has
been conceived in two major ways. The first
refers to a worldwide eruption of popular
resistance to neoliberal globalization – not
a single movement but a “movement of
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss250
movements” with diverse roots, North and
South, global in scope, and in formation since
the 1980s. It is constituted by both vibrant
transnational networks and myriad local- and
national-scale resistances. It is increasingly
densely networked through the Internet, the
World Social Forum process, and periodic
mobilizations at symbolic sites of global
governance – summits of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, WTO,
G8, and now G20.
The second usage refers more narrowly to
the predominantly white, anarchist-inspired
student and youth movements whose direct
action tactics successfully shut down the
WTO in Seattle. In a series of mass actions
around elite summits in the Global North
from the late 1990s to the present, their practices of direct democracy, horizontalism, and
diversity of tactics are the focus of one strand
of anti-globalization scholarship.
The anti-globalization movement has
produced a large and diverse scholarly literature across the social sciences, drawing
on multiple theoretical and analytical traditions, focusing on different empirical sites
and attending to a range of problematics.
Within this diverse field, the literature is
somewhat bifurcated according to the two
conceptualizations outlined above, and
relatedly in terms of geographic focus on
the Global North, Global South, or the
North–South axis, and between place-based
studies and those focused on transnational
networks and spaces. In recent years, there
have been significant attempts to analyze
the anti-globalization movement as a coherent phenomenon, to situate it in relation to
longer-term historical developments, such
as those in the world system, global capitalism, Western or global modernity, global
democratization or global network society
