Critical Theories, International Relations and 'the Anti-globalisation Movement'


Book Description

This book provides a definitive account of resistance movements across the globe. Combining theoretical perspectives with detailed empirical case studies, it explains the origins, activities and prospects of the 'anti-globalization' movement.




Global Movement


Book Description

Critical research and theorizing on the Anti- or Alter-Globalization Movement has exploded over the last two decades. This volume provides a platform for scholar-activists themselves to share insights from engaged research and to critically reflect on movement histories and internal dynamics. It also highlights ways in which activists are reaching beyond their geographical and issue boundaries to link with others in struggle, to construct a broader global movement of the left--and beyond. Case studies span the social movement spectrum from more traditional concerns with class, the primacy of the labor movement, economic redistribution and justice, through the so-called 'new' movements of identity and post-materialist issues of peace, the environment, gender, and indigenous struggles, to the newest currents in (post-)autonomy, (post-)anarchism, and de- or anti-coloniality. Together these studies show that what began in Chiapas with the Zapatista cry of basta ya! as an 'anti-globalization' movement morphed for a time into 'alter-globalization' and 'global peace and justice', and may now be emerging as a counter-hegemonic project of and for global democratization. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.




Global Activism


Book Description

This comprehensive study traces the transnationalization of activist networks, analyzing their changing compositions and characters and examining the roles played by the World Social Forum in this process. Comparing four of the largest global networks targeting the 'neoliberal triumvirate' of the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization: the Jubilee anti-debt campaigners Via Campesina peasant farmers Our World Is Not For Sale and the anarchistic Peoples’ Global Action. Written by a scholar-activist, the book highlights that despite their diversity, these collective actors follow a similar globalizing path and that networks in which solidarity is based on a shared identity perceived as threatened by neoliberal change are gaining strength. Social forums are depicted as a fertile ground to strengthen networks and a common ground for cooperative action among them, but also a battleground over the future of the forum process, the global anti-neoliberal struggle, and 'other possible worlds' in the making. Global Activism will appeal to students and scholars interested in globalization, international relations, IPE and social movements.




Global Civil Society and Transversal Hegemony


Book Description

There has been clear recognition of tendencies towards uncritically celebrating resistance and the need for critical appraisal within the literature on globalization and contestation. This book provides a conceptual history of global civil society and a critical examination of the politics of resistance in the global political economy. It uses a dialectical method of analysis to illustrate the conceptual stasis of mainstream approaches to questions of globalization and contestation, while demonstrating the potential of a Gramscian approach to reconstitute hegemony as a key analytical and explanatory tool. Buckley offers insight to the movements of transversal hegemony and existent and anticipated modes of social relation through the case studies of the World Social Forum and the World People's Conference on Climate Change. Offering a more comprehensive understanding of change in the global political economy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, globalization, global civil society, sociology, and the politics resistance.




Postpositivist International Relations Theory


Book Description

This book discusses postpositivist theories foregrounding postpositivism against the reigning realist and positivist-pluralist orthodoxies. The book explicates seven theories, not as disparate endeavours, but as developments linked by a common thread that seeks to enunciate globalist emancipatory goals for the theoretical field and the world that these theories seek to change. It focuses on the following themes: feminism, environmentalism or green theory, the English school, critical theory, constructivism, postmodernism and postcolonialism. Additionally, a separate chapter on globalization shows that while mainstream (neo)realist international relations theories respond hostilely to globalization and liberal-pluralist theories react benignly to it, postpositivist theories positively welcome it. The book offers a competent meta-theoretical gridwork, showing on which side of the opposing disciplinary positions in the fourth debate each of the seven theories are located. It is a comprehensive guide to the postpositivist restructuring of the discipline of international relations. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of political science, international relations, history, humanities and literature.




Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement


Book Description

Challenging the neglect of feminism in accounts of the global justice movement, this book explores the origins, ideas, and practices of what Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca term "feminist antiglobalization activism." Drawing on fieldwork undertaken at the World Social Forum, the authors argue that feminists constitute a distinct, if diverse, sector of the global justice movement. Taking feminism seriously, the authors conclude, points us toward a richer and more theoretically nuanced understanding of the global justice movement and its struggle to create other possible worlds. Their book thus offers vital insights not only for feminists but also for all those interested in contemporary social movements and in global governance and resistance.







Gramsci, Political Economy, and International Relations Theory


Book Description

This book seeks to provide the most comprehensive and sustained engagement and critique of neo-Gramscian analyses available in the literature. In examining neo-Gramscian analyses in IR/IPE, the book engages with two fundamental concerns in international relations: (i) The question of historicity and (ii) The analysis of radical transformation.




The SAGE Handbook of Identities


Book Description

Overall, its breaking of disciplinary isolation, enhancing of mutual understanding, and laying out of a transdisciplinary platform makes this Handbook a milestone in identity studies. - Sociology Increasingly, identities are the site for interdisciplinary initiatives and identity research is at the heart of many transdisciplinary research centres around the world. No single social science discipline ′owns′ identity research which makes it a difficult topic to categorize. The SAGE Handbook of Identities systematizes this complex field by incorporating its interdisciplinary character to provide a comprehensive overview of its themes in contemporary research while still acknowledging the historical and philosophical significance of the concept of identity. Drawing on a global scholarship the Handbook has four parts: Frameworks: presents the main theoretical and methodological perspectives in identities research. Formations: covers the major formative forces for identities such as culture, globalisation, migratory patterns, biology and so on. Categories: reviews research on the core social categories central to identity such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and intersections between these. Sites and Context: develops a series of case studies of crucial sites and contexts where identity is at stake such as social movements, relationships, work-places and citizenship.




Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium


Book Description

Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium argues that the power of gender works to help keep gender, race, class, sexual, and national divisions in place despite increasing attention to gender issues in the study and practice of world politics. Accessible and student-friendly for both undergraduate and graduate courses, authors Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson analyze gendered divisions of power and resources that contribute to the worldwide crises of representation, violence, and sustainability. They emphasize how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust forms of global governance, international security, and global political economy.In the new and updated fourth edition, Runyan and Peterson examine the challenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and practice through renewed politics for greater representation and redistribution. Yet they see promise in coalitional struggles to re-radicalize feminist world political demands to change the downward conditions of women, men, children, and the planet. Updated to include framing questions at the opening of each chapter, discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter, and updated data on gender statistics and policymaking. Chapters One and Two have also been revised to provide more support to readers with less of a background in gender politics. Case studies and web resources are now also provided.