Counter-Hegemonic Globalization:
Transnational Social Movements
in the
Contemporary Global Political Economy*
Peter Evans,
University of California, Berkeley
\
forthcoming ­ Spring 2005
Handbook of Political Sociology
edited by
Thomas Janoski, Alexander M. Hicks & Mildred Schwartz
Cambridge University Press
_____________________
* I would like to acknowledge the support and patience of the editors and the invaluable
comments of Michael Burawoy, Hwa-jen Liu, Simone Pulver, Sarah Staveteig, Millie Thayer,
Anna Wetterberg, Jodi York and two anonymous reviewers. The errors of omission, commission
and misconception that remain are entirely of my own making.
Evans- 10-10-03
-1When
people invoke Aglobalization,@ they usually mean the prevailing
system of transnational domination, which is more accurately called Aneo-liberal
globalization,@ Acorporate globalization,@ or perhaps Aneo-liberal, corporate
dominated globalization (cf. McMichael 2000, chapt.29). Sometimes they are
referring to a more generic process B the shrinking of space and increased
permeability of borders that result from falling costs of transportation and
revolutionary changes in technologies of communication. Often the two are
conflated.1
Implicit in much of current discourse on globalization is the idea that the
particular system of transnational domination that we experience today is the
Anatural@ (indeed inevitable) consequence of exogenously determined generic
changes in the means of transportation and communication. A growing body of
social science literature and activist argumentation challenges this assumption.
Arguing instead that the growth of transnational connections can potentially be
harnessed to the construction of more equitable distributions of wealth and power
and more socially and ecological sustainable communities, this literature and
argumentation raises the possibility of what I would like to call "counterhegemonic
globalization." Activists pursuing this perspective have created a
1 Stiglitz's (2002:9) definition is an interesting case in point: "Fundamentally, it is the closer intergration of the
countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enoromous reduction of costs of
transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services,
capital, knowledge, and (to a lesser extent) people across borders." By seeing new commercial rules as simply
removing "artificial barriers" he naturalizes globalization. Despite the fact that later in his analysis he goes on to
decry some of the new rules ­ e.g. capital account liberalization ­ as quite "unnatural" and indeed economically
dangerous.
Evans- 10-10-03
-2multifaceted
set of transnational networks and ideological frames that stand in
opposition to contemporary neo-liberal globalization. Collectively they are
referred to as the Aglobal justice movement.@ For activists and theorists alike,
these movements have become one of the most promising political antidotes to a
system of domination that is increasingly seen as effectual only in its ability to
maintain itself in power.
While the growth of membership and political clout of transnational social
movements is hard to measure, the burgeoning of their formal organizational
reflections--transnational NGO=s--is well documented. Their numbers have
doubled between 1973 and 1983 and doubled again between 1983 and 1993
(Sikkink and Smith, 2002: 31). Perhaps even more important than their
quantitative growth has been their ability to seize oppositional imaginations. From
the iconic images of Seattle to the universal diffusion of the World Social Forum=s
vision that Aanother world is possible,@ the cultural and ideological impact of
these movements has begun to rival that of their corporate adversaries.
As these movements have grown, an equally variegated body of social
science literature has begun to analyze, empirically and theoretically, the
possibilities of a global counter movement that would take advantage of the
technological capacities associated with generic globalization and turn neo-liberal
globalization's own ideological and organizational structures against itself,
subverting its exclusionary rules of governance and logic of allocating resources.
Yet, as is to be expected, the scholarly literature lags the growth of the movements
themselves.
Any adequate theorization of contemporary globalization must include an
Evans- 10-10-03
-3analysis
of anti-systemic oppositional movements. Yet, with a few exceptions (e.g.
Boswell & Chase-Dunn, 2000; Gill, 2002; McMichael, this volume), discussion of
oppositional movements "tacked on" to the end an analysis which is theorized
primarily in terms of the logic of neo-liberal globalization. From novel analyses of
contemporary globalization, such as Hardt and Negri (2000), to encyclopedic
treatments like Held et.al.(1999), structure and dynamics of counter-movements
are afforded only a fraction the theoretical attention given to dominant structures.
A careful analysis of counter-movements is essential to our understanding of
the dynamics of contemporary politics. Without an analysis of the organization
and strategies of transnational social movements, our understanding the politics of
global governance institutions like the WTO, the Bretton Woods twins and the UN
system is incomplete (see, for example, Fox and Brown, 1998; Evans, 2000;
O'Brien, 2000; Wade, 2001). Correspondingly, nation states much increasingly
take into account the reactions of transnational counter-movements when they
operate in global arenas.
The analysis of transnational movements has also become increasing
important to the understanding of what might have earlier been considered
"domestic" politics. Contentious politics at the national level is increasingly
contaminated by global issues and movements, whether in the North or in the
South. Theorization of social movements cannot proceed without full
consideration of the implications of transnational experiences (cf. McCarthy,
1997;Tarrow, 2001, 2002; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink, 2002; Smith and Johnson,
2002). Concepts like "frame alignment" and "resource mobilization" take on a
different meaning when the "society" involved consists of an interconnected
Evans- 10-10-03
-4congeries
of national political units varying dramatically in their material resources
and cultural foundations (cf. Snow, 1986; Benford, 1997; McAdam, Tarrow and
Tilly, 2001).
Analytical, practical and political motivations for focusing on oppositional
transnational social movements are all intensified by growing disillusionment with
the currently hegemonic version of globalization. Margaret Thatcher's admonition
"there is no alternative" becomes increasingly difficult to accept and the idea that
there might be something like "counter-hegemonic globalization" correspondingly
more attractive.
Hegemonic vs. Counter-Hegemonic Globalization:
Despite the visibility and fervor of its supporters (e.g., Tom Friedman), neoliberal
globalization has proved a disillusioning disappointment to ordinary
citizens, not just in the global South but in the rich industrial core as well. More
surprisingly, prominent development economists, who might be expected to be its
most fervent promoters (e.g. Rodrik, Sachs, Stiglitz), are sharp critics of neo-liberal
globalization and its governing institutions. McMichael=s discussion sets out
these disappointments at length in Chapter 29 and there is no need to reiterate them
in detail here, but a quick reminder is in order.
Neo-liberal globalization has delivered global financial volatility that
regularly destroys productive capacity (without stimulating the creativity that
Schumpeter considered definitive of capitalist progress). Instead of accelerating
the improvement of living standards for the majority of the world=s population it
has been associated with slowing growth rates (cf. Easterly, 2001). It has often
Evans- 10-10-03
-5jeopardized
the delivery of essential collective goods like public health, education,
and a sustainable environment and it has exacerbated inequality within and
between nations to a degree that is destructive of the basic social solidarity.
While generating a proliferation of electoral regimes and celebrating
Ademocracy@ in the abstract, neo-liberal globalization has undermined the
possibility of democratic control over state policies and insulated the most
fundamental policy decisions from even the fiction of democratic control. It has
had pervasively corrosive effects on any sense of self-worth that is based on local
culture, difference and identity. Finally, it is now associated with a return to
military adventurism whose potential future destructive effects are frightening to
contemplate.
Despite its failures, few would deny that neo-liberal globalization remains
"hegemonic" in the Gramscian sense of combining an ideological vision of "what
is in everyone's interests" that is largely accepted as "common sense" even by
subordinate and dis-privileged groups with the effective ability to apply coercion
when necessary to preserve the existing distribution of privilege and exclusion. To
call movements Acounter-hegemonic" therefore implies that they have the potential
to undermine the ideological power of existing hegemony and threaten the
established distribution of privilege (and exclusion).2
Likewise, "counterhegemonic
globalization" would entail building a global political economy that
2
This is not to say that my use of the term "counter-hegemonic" should be taken to imply a commitment to complete
dismantling of the current global market system. While one can imagine that successful pursuit of the changes these
movements espouse might ultimately lead to a "revolutionary" break, their immediate demands are for "reforms,"
including the recapture of earlier modes of capitalist market regulation. My use of "counter-hegemonic" is,
therefore, quite different from the way in which Gramsci might have used the term,which, of course, he did not (see
Gramsci, 1999).
Evans- 10-10-03
-6used
the shrinking of space and facility of cross-border communication to enhance
equity, justice and sustainability rather than to intensify existing forms of
domination.
For anyone who shares, even partially, disillusionment with neo-liberal
globalization the prospect of a "counter-hegemonic" globalization is alluring. It is
hardly surprising that analysis of transnational social movements and their
theoretical implications has growing appeal among both political sociologists and
activists. Unfortunately, preoccupation with discovering new agents of social
change also creates temptation to exaggerate the virtues and power of existing
groups and networks and their ideologies.
Avoiding inflated and unrealistic assessments of either the virtues or
efficacy of those who oppose neo-liberal globalization is the first step toward real
understanding of their potential power. It must be admitted that the Aantiglobalization
movement@ contains its share of irresponsible nihilists. It must also
be acknowledged that some alternative visions may be worse the currently
dominant one. It is entirely possible to oppose western-dominated global
capitalism with a vision that is more oppressive, authoritarian and intolerant than
neo-liberalism, as Al Qaeda illustrates. Likewise Aanti-globalization@ provides a
handy Amodern@ gloss for a multitude of old fashioned, reactionary nationalist
agendas.
Nor is "counter-hegemonic globalization" a label that applies to the whole of
the "global justice movement." Some groups with goals grounded in a vision of
equity, human dignity and a sustainable relation to the environment may reject the
possibility of a progressive version of globalization. Instead of counter-hegemonic
Evans- 10-10-03
-7globalization,
these groups would reverse the effects of generic globalization and
somehow retrieve a world in which power and values could be defined on a purely
local basis.
Yet, ironically, even the celebration of local power and culture cannot
escape the necessity of constructing some form of Acounter-hegemonic
globalization.@ Even those most committed to escaping the domination of modern
universalisms, end up using global networks and global ideologies. Universal
citizenship rights are invoked to protect head scarves (Soysal, 1994).
Transnational networks are mobilized to preserve local feast days (Levitt, 2001).
The internet played a key role in the Zapatista=s defense of their local autonomy
(Schulz, 1998).
The reverse is also true. Just as the defense of difference and quests for local
power require global strategies and connections, likewise transnational social
movements must have local social roots. Without the promise of redressing the
grievances of ordinary people where they live, transnational social movements
have no base and their capacity to challenge established power is limited. If global
corporate strategies depend on creating deracinated consumers incapable of
collective action, counter-hegemonic strategies depend on the reverse. It is,
therefore, hardly surprising that participants in transnational campaigns are often
what Tarrow (2003) calls Arooted cosmopolitans@ B people whose activism begins
with ties to local communities and is driven by the desire to improve the lot of
members of those communities. A constant dialectic between strategies that speak
to local roots and strategies that leverage global connections is fundamental to
counter-hegemonic globalization.
Evans- 10-10-03
-8The
most powerful and challenging form of the local-global dialectic are the
North-South divisions that have been inscribed in the structure of the global
political economy for 500 years and exacerbated by contemporary neo-liberal
globalization. This divide is built into global structures of power, both public and
private, economic and cultural. If transnational social movements cannot find a
way to transcend it, their political effectiveness will be fatally compromised.
There are then some minimal caveats for any useful analysis of the
transnational social movements that are involved in counter-hegemonic
globalization. It must be about local political motivations and social structural
foundations as much as it is about transnational strategies, structures and actions. It
must recognize that local conditions of life are fundamentally different depending
on where they are located in our abysmally divided world. Most important, the
desire to discover potent new agents for social change must be balanced with
dispassionate skepticism.
Exaggerating the transformative power of those groups whose efforts to
build anti-systemic global networks do appear grounded in a vision of equity and
dignity is as bad a mistake as pretending that the anti-globalization movement is
innocent of sinister and reactionary projects. It would be a disservice to the
transnational movements themselves, as well as to ordinary citizens looking for
relief from the disappointments of neo-liberal globalization, to exaggerate their
power. Sometimes Asoft power@ (Sikkink 2002) can indeed successfully confront
Ahard@ domination, but the current hegemony of corporate globalizers is supported
by a full array of cultural and ideological machinery, as well as a very solid set of
coercive instruments. It will not be easily dislodged by even the most creative and
Evans- 10-10-03
-9well-organized
transnational social movements. To have real effects, transnational
movements must first be able to generate powerful cascades of normative change
and then use this ideological advantage to transform the hard structures of
established political and economic (and ultimately military) power. It is a tall
order.
Even after we fully accept their flaws and limitations, the proliferation of
transnational social movements with an agenda of counter-hegemonic globalization
is still one of the substantively exciting and theoretically provocative topics in
contemporary political sociology. Whether or not the current global justice
movement is capable of making Aanother world@ possible, analyzing its nature and
implications, in both practical and theoretical terms, must be part of the core
agenda of contemporary political sociology.
The New Organizational Foundations of Counter-Hegemonic Globalization:
Here I will focus on three broad families of transnational social movements
aimed at counter-hegemonic globalization: labor movements, women=s
movements, and environmental movements. Each of these movements confronts
the dilemmas of using transnational networks to magnify the power of local
movements without redefining local interests, of transcending the North-South
divide, and of leveraging existing structures of global power without becoming
complicit in them. Looking at the three movements together is useful because it
highlights the ways in which surmounting these challenges might produce common
strategies and possibilities for alliances among them.
Before embarking on an analysis of these three families of movements,
Evans- 10-10-03
-10however,
I will briefly focus on two prominent organizations which are plausible
would-be agents of Acounter-hegemonic globalization@ B ATTAC and the World
Social Forum (WSF). If Seattle and the subsequent demonstrations that have
plagued the WTO, IMF, G-7 and World Economic Forum are the favorite media
images of Aanti-globalization,@ ATTAC and the WSF are paragons of
organizations explicitly designed to build omnibus transnational networks aimed at
transforming neo-liberal globalization into a social protection-oriented, marketsubordinating,
difference-respecting mirror image.
Looking at these groups underlines the organizationally novel forms whose
emergence has been stimulated by neo-liberal globalization. At the same time, it
highlights the degree to which counter-hegemonic globalization draws on longestablished
social movements and ideological Atropes@. In both respects it
provides the ideal backdrop for analyzing the way in which the labor movement,
transnational women=s movements and the global environmental movement
provide both an interwoven infrastructure for re-shaping globalization and a
challenge to the existing political sociology literature.
No examination of counter-hegemonic globalization can avoid examining
ATTAC. Perhaps more than any other single organization embodies the
proposition that agency in the face of the purported power of neo-liberal
globalization requires only ideological and organizational imagination. Yet,
ATTAC is a curious and, on the surface, very unlikely organization to fill this role.
Its name ­ "Association pour la Taxation des Transactions Financires pour
ľAide aux Citoyens" (The Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction
for the Aid of Citizens) ­ suggests an organization doomed to obscurity. Even
Evans- 10-10-03
-11worse,
the name does indeed reflect ATTAC's initial focus on support for the
Tobin Tax (itself a relatively arcane idea embedded in the mechanics of neo-liberal
globalization). Its homeland B France B an archetypically Aanti-globalization@
political milieu, characterized much more by chauvinism than global solidarity,
makes it even an even more unlikely candidate to be a paradigmatic promoter of
Acounter-hegemonic@ globalization. If ATTAC origins make it a very peculiar
candidate to typify organizations aimed at Acounter-hegemonic globalization,@ its
success at spawning a network of politically active sister organizations around the
world is undeniable (cf. http://attac.org/indexen/index.html). Hence a quick look at
ATTAC is one way of illuminating the ideology and strategies of counterhegemonic
globalization.
The best analysis of ATTAC is provided by Ancelovici (2002). In
Ancelovici=s view, ATTAC=s ideology is essentially one of Aassociational
statism@ which essentially entails two strategies of trying to reassert the primacy of
political/social decision making in the face of the growing dominance of global
markets. On the one hand it has a very traditional (French) affection for the
regulatory power of the nation- state. At the same time it rejects
bureaucratic/representational/party control of public/political decision-making in
favor of locally-based participatory structures.
In short, analysis of ATTAC suggests that the political foundations of
Acounter-hegemonic globalization@ involve a combination of Ruggie=s (1982)
Aembedded liberalism@ (with its emphasis on social protections rooted in the
structures of the nation state) and Anew left@ forms of participatory democracy.
The World Social Forum--one of the most important organizational forms of
Evans- 10-10-03
-12south-based
Acounter-hegemonic globalization@--confirms this perspective.
It is only a partial caricature to propose that the origins of the World Social
Forum, which now arguably represents the largest single agglomeration of southbased
organizations and activists, began as a sort of joint-venture between ATTAC
and the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT). Since the
founding vision of the PŤs organizers was of a classic Marxist socialist
mobilizational party, the party's involvement in the World Social Forum is further
confirmation of the extent to which Acounter-hegemonic globalization@ has its
roots in both quotidian struggles for dignity and economic security in the
workplace and classic agendas of social protection (a la Polanyi, [1944] 2001) in
which the machinery of the nation state is heavily implicated (see McMichael
2000, chapter 29).
Even unsystematic participant observation of the meetings of the World
Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil confirms this hypothesis. The fact that the
Workers Party controls the municipal administration of a major city and has (until
the 2002 elections) controlled the state government as well has been essential to
enabling the infrastructural investments that make a global meeting of thousands of
participants and hundreds of oppositional groups from around the globe possible.
At the same time, in part because of Worker=s Party sponsorship, both local and
transnational trade unions play a major role in the WSF.
All of this suggests that counter-hegemonic globalization is not as Apostmodern@
as its adherents (and detractors) sometimes argue. To the contrary,
rescuing traditional social democratic agendas of social protection, which are
otherwise in danger of disappearing below the tide of neo-liberal globalization, is a
Evans- 10-10-03
-13significant
part of the agenda of both ATTAC and the World Social Forum. At the
same time, it would be a mistake to dismiss counter-hegemonic globalization as
simply Aold wine in new bottles." The gamut of variegated transnational social
movements that must be dealt with in any account of counter-hegemonic
globalization include movements with organizational forms and ideological
propositions that are novel and refreshing in relation to the old agents of
Aembedded liberalism@ (indeed ATTAC and the World Social Forum are among
them).
This blend of novelty and persistence is one of the most interesting, features
of counter-hegemonic globalization, whether one is most concerned with a
substantive analysis of the movement or with its implications for existing
theoretical frameworks and conceptualizations. And, if one is interested in the
blend of novelty and persistence there is no better place to start in analyzing
Acounter-hegemonic globalization@ than with the transformation of the
international labor movement.
Labor as a Global Social Movement:3
Having been tagged by 19th
century socialists as the pre-eminent agent of
progressive social change, the labor movement was abandoned by most social
movement theorists of the mid-20th century as primarily concerned with defending
the privileges of a Northern aristocracy of labor in the face of challenges from the
South and hopelessly sclerotic in any case. Now the tide seems to be turning
again. Recent analysis of the U.S. labor movement has begun to argue for renewed
Evans- 10-10-03
-14appreciation
of the potential importance of labor as a progressive actor (e.g.
Clawson, 2003; Fantasia and Voss, forthcoming).
Curiously, the literature on transnational social movements still seems to
reflect earlier disenchantment. With few exceptions (e.g. Kidder in Khagram et al.
2002), the case of labor has not been well integrated into this literature. A typical
collection on transnational social movements focusing on European cases (della
Porta, Kriesi and Rucht, 1999) offered individual chapters on the campaign against
international trade in toxic wastes, farmers protest movements, abortion rights
movements, and indigenous peoples movements, but only two quick references to
labor: one noting that "the labor movement seems to be particularly disadvantaged
by the developing European institutions" (19) and the other asserting that
"European labour unions are not taking advantage of the possibilities for
contentious politics at the European level" (118).
Why has labor not been seen as a promising candidate for becoming a
transnational social movement? Conventional ways of framing of labor=s relation
to the global political economy are central to the answer. The current framing of
the transnational politics of labor is dominated by what I would call a "geography
of jobs" perspective. In this perspective, AWorkers of the World Compete!"
replaces admonitions for transnational solidarity in the neo-liberal mantra. Even
those hostile to neo-liberalism tend to assume that geographic competition for jobs
precludes possibilities for transnational solidarity (cf. Rodrik, 1997). In the
"geography of jobs" frame, preventing the movement of jobs to the Global South
becomes the prime aim of workers in the North, erasing possibilities for North-
3 This section draws heavily on Anner and Evans, forthcoming.
Evans- 10-10-03
-15South
solidarity.
The "geography of jobs" perspective does capture one important facet of
reality. The increasing ease with which capitalists move high productivity
technologies around the globe does intensify the potential for cross-border
competition among workers (cf. Shaiken, 1994). Nonetheless, as Miller (2003)
points out, the Ageography of jobs@ perspective is flawed even within an economic
framework. Once political and ideological dynamics are included, a creative reframing
of labor struggles at the global level, similar to the one that analysts like
Ganz (2000) and Voss and Sherman (2000) have described at the national level,
becomes an intriguing possibility.
I will analyze the possibilities for transnational labor solidarity by looking at
three ways of framing contestation: Abasic rights,@ Asocial contract @ and
Ademocratic governance." All three share one fundamental characteristic. They
employ what I have called elsewhere (Evans, 2000) "political jujitsu," exploiting
ideological propositions universally acknowledged as basic to the hegemonic
ideology of contemporary global neo-liberalism and utilizing transnational
organizational structures that neo-liberal globalization has helped create (cf. RisseKappen,
Ropp and Sikkink, 1999; Risse-Kappen, 2000; Smith and Johnson, 2002)
.
Global corporate networks built around labor-intensive, "sweatshop"
manufacturing in the South and brandname marketing in the North creates political
opportunities along with profits. Imbuing their brands with cultural value is vastly
more important to the profitability of the overall corporation than production costs
attributable to manufacturing labor. At the same time, the normative and
Evans- 10-10-03
-16ideological
hegemony of Abasic human rights@ makes it almost impossible for a
brand to retain its value once potential customers become convinced that basic
human rights are being violated in the production of the goods that bear its name.
The trick, of course, is building the mobilizational structures required to take
advantage of such political opportunity (see Fung et.al.,2001).
Looking at paradigmatic cases like the now famous Kukdong case (Anner
and Evans, forthcoming) illustrates the point. The original revolt of the Kukdong
workers was the product of the usual miserable local working conditions combined
with unusual local courage and combativeness. Sustaining the struggle depended
on an intricate transnational network which included local and U.S. NGO's as well
as U.S. unions. Each organization in the network brought different but
complementary capacities to bear creating a robust and powerful braid of alliances.
For example, USAS (United Students Against Sweatshops), which fits the Keck
and Sikkink model of an organization whose leadership and members are driven
primarily by `principled ideas or values', was able to provide campus mobilization
and publicity (see Featherstone, 2002). Worker=s Rights Consortium (WRC), a
"monitoring" NGO, also a product of the anti-sweatshop movement was able to
credibly invoke the technocratic standards of Aobjective@ investigation.
Most interesting in terms of undercutting the "geography of jobs"
perspective is the role of North American trade unions in the network. The AFLCIO's
Solidarity Center provided key expertise and international connections.
UNITE, which organizes textile and apparel workers in the U.S. was also deeply
involved. Why were North American trade unionists involved? Certainly not
because UNITE was hoping to bring the Kukdong jobs back to the United States.
Evans- 10-10-03
-17Many
of the individual trade union activists within these organizations were, of
course, driven by the same sort of "Aprincipled ideas or values" that motivated
NGO activists. More important, North American unions saw Kukdong workers as
key allies in their own domestic struggles to deligitimate corporate adversaries by
exposing them as violators of basic human rights, and generating the kind of
political advantage that is critical to the success of the kind of strategic campaigns
that are the focus of contemporary labor contestation in the North.
Despite their importance, the industries in which effective transnational
alliances built around basic rights framings are a limited set. For labor to become a
global social movement a broader range of industries and workers must be
involved. The idea of Asocial contract@ provides one basis for expanding
organizational range.
Emblematic of the post World War II Agolden age of capitalism@ was the
hegemony of the idea that relations between employers and employees were more
than a simple exchange of labor for wages. The employment relation came to be
seen as embodying a social contract, one in which competent, loyal employees
could expect to be rewarded from the firm over the long-term. Employees also
came to expect auxiliary benefits that were less tightly tied to job performance B
primarily retirement, disability and health benefits, provided in combination by
employers and the state.
Emblematic of the contemporary global neo-liberal regime is the effort to
reconstruct employment as something closer to a spot market in which labor is
bought and sold with only the most minimal expectations regarding a broader
employment relation. Around the globe B from Mumbai to Johannesburg,
Evans- 10-10-03
-18Shanghai
to the Silicon Valley B jobs are being informalized, outsourced and
generally divorced from anything that might be considered a social contract
between employer and employee.
Precisely because the attack on the idea of labor as a social contract is
generalized across all regions of the world, it creates a powerful basis for
generating global labor solidarity. I will illustrate the point with two examples: the
emerging relations of effective mutual support that join Metalworkers in Brazil and
Germany and the successful leveraging of transnational solidarity by the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) in the 1997 UPS strike. In addition
to demonstrating again that the Ageography of jobs@ perspective cannot explain
transnational relations among labor movements, these cases also further illustrate
how the corporate structures that form the carapace of the global economy contain
political opportunities as well as threats.
The long-term collaboration between IG Metal in Germany and the Brazilian
Metalworkers affiliated with CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores) provides a
good example. In 2001, when IG Metal was starting its spring offensive in
Germany, the members of the Brazilian Metalworkers union (CUT) working for
Daimler-Chrysler sent their German counterparts a note affirming that they would
not accept any increased work designed to replace lost production in Germany.
This action grows out of longterm alliance between the two unions that exploits
transnational corporate organizational structures for counter-hegemonic purposes
and has proved to be of practical value to the Brazilian autoworkers in their
struggle to maintain some semblance of a social contract in their employment
relations. For example in the previous year when workers at Volkswagen=s biggest
Evans- 10-10-03
-19factory
in Brazil went on strike trying to reverse job cuts, Luis Marinho, President
of CUT VW, was able to go to VW=s world headquarters and negotiate directly
with management there, by passing the management of the Brazilian subsidiary,
and producing an agreement that restored the jobs.
The successful 1997 UPS Strike offers a North-North example of how
transnational alliances can be built around the idea of social contract. One element
in the victory was a very effective global strategy, one that took advantage
previously under-exploited strengths in their own global organization B the
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) (Banks & Russo, 1999).
Through the ITF, a World Council of UPS unions was created B which decided to
mount a AWorld Action Day@ in 150 job actions or demonstrations around the
world. A number of European unions took action in support of the U.S. strikers.
(Banks & Russo 1999: 550)
Why were the Europeans so willing to take risks for the sake of solidarity
with the IBT in the US? The answer was summarized in one of the ITF's leaflets
"UPS: importing misery from America". UPS was seen a representing the
intrusion of the `American Modeľ of aggressive anti-union behavior, coupled with
the expansion of part-time and temporary jobs with low pay and benefits and the
use of sub-contracting (Banks & Russo, 1999:561). The Europeans also knew that
they had a much better chance of reining in UPS operating in concert with the
185,000 unionized UPS workers in the US than they would ever have by
themselves. Solidarity made sense and the logic of competition based on the
geography of jobs made no sense.
While the defending the idea of the employment relation as a social contract
Evans- 10-10-03
-20is
a project that will draw broad sympathy, the actual organizational efforts remain
largely internal to organized labor. Other global social movements may be
ideologically supportive, but not likely to be mobilized. Given the fact that those
who enjoy the privilege of a formal employment relationship with union
representation is a shrinking minority of the global population, the success of labor
as a global social depends on being able to complement Asocial contract@ and
Abasic rights@ campaigns with other strategies that have the potential of generating
broad alliances with a range of other social movements. Contestation framed in
terms of Ademocratic governance@ offers just such an opportunity.
The hegemony of Ademocracy@ as the only acceptable form of governance
is as pervasive a part of contemporary neo-liberal ideology as Abasic human
rights.@ However substantively undemocratic the operation of the global neoliberal
regime may be in practice, invocations of the principle of democratic
governance politically powerful. Global governance institutions, whether in the
form of organizations like the WTO or in the form of international agreements like
the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) are politically vulnerable targets
precisely because their procedures so often contradict neo-liberalism=s supposed
commitment to democratic governance.
The FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) is a good case in point
(Barenberg and Evans, forthcoming). It its fight to restructure the FTAA, the labor
movement has been able to move beyond a "geography of jobs" perspective to one
that focuses on range of social issues, democratic governance prominent among
Evans- 10-10-03
-21-
them.4
The organization reflection of this politics is the Alianza Social
Continental/Hemispheric Social Alliance ASC/HSA), a coalition of national
umbrella organizations each of which represents a coalition of NGO=s or labor
organizations. Heaquartered first in Mexico and then in Brazil, the ASC/HSA
brings women's groups and environmental groups together with ORIT
(Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores ­ the hemispheric trade
union organization to which the AFL-CIO and most other major national trade
union confederations belong.).
The ACS/HSA is only one of the possible mobilizational structures that
might be created to democratize the creation of the hemisphere=s new Aeconomic
constitution@ (which is what the FTAA is in reality), but it is an excellent
illustration of labor=s potential to become not just a global social movement, but a
leading element in the broadest possible coalition of social movements. To
understand the possibilities and challenges of connecting the labor movement with
other transnational movements, there is no better place to start than with global
feminism.
Building a Feminist Movement Without Borders: While the transnational
women's movement also has a long history, global neo-liberalism has brought
issues of gender to the forefront of transnational social movement organizations in
a dramatic way. Until there has been a revolutionary transformation of gender
roles the disadvantages of allocating resources purely on the basis of market logic
4 For an analysis of an earlier evolution away from the geography of jobs perspective in the case of NAFTA, see
Armruster, 1995, 1998; Kay, forthcoming.
Evans- 10-10-03
-22will
fall particularly harshly on women. The UNDP talks of a global "care
deficit," pointing out that women spend most of their working hours on unpaid
care work and adding that "the market gives almost no rewards for care"
(1999:80). Others have pointed out the extent to which `structural adjustmenť
and other neo-liberal strategies for global governance contain a built-in, systematic
gender bias (e.g. Cornia, Jolly and Stewart, 1987; Elson, 1991; Afshar and Dennis,
1992; Staudt, 1997). Consequently, it is almost impossible to imagine a movement
for counter-hegemonic globalization in which a transnational women=s movement
did not play a leading role.
At first glance, women's organizations have an advantage over transnational
labor movements in that they do not have to transcend a zero-sum logic equivalent
to that of the "geography of jobs" which would put the gendered interests of
women in one region in conflict with those in another region. Perhaps for that
reason, the transnational women's movement has been in the vanguard of
transnational social movements in the attention that it has devoted to struggles over
how to bridge the cultural and political aspects of the North-South divide and how
to avoid the potential dangers of difference-erasing universalist agendas.
Like the labor movement, the women=s movemenťs ideological foundations
are rooted in a discourse of "human rights" (cf. Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Meyer,
2001), but transnational feminism, much more than in the labor movement, has
wrestled with the contradictions of building politics around the universalistic
language of rights. While no one can ignore the ways in which demanding
recognition that "women's rights are human rights" has helped empower oppressed
and abused women across an incredible gamut of geographic, cultural and class
Evans- 10-10-03
-23location,
any earlier nave assumptions that there was a single "one size fits all"
global feminist agenda have been replaced by appreciation that the goal is more
complex (see Basu and MGrory, 1995; Alvarez, 1998, 1999; Barlow, 2000;
Bergeron, 2001; Naples and Desai, 2002; Vuola, 2002)
On the one hand, the adoption of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) by the UN might be considered
the normative equivalent of the environmental movemenťs victories in the
Montreal accord to limit CFC's and the Kyoto Accord on global warming. On the
other hand, critical feminists have examined UN activities like the 1995 Beijing
World Conference on Women and accused them of perpetuating colonialist power
relations under the guise of transnational unity (Spivak, 1996). Mohanty
(2003:226) summarizes the conundrum nicely: "The challenge is to see how
differences allow us to explain the connections and border crossings more better
and more accurately, how specifying difference allows us to theorize universal
concerns more fully."
One of the consequences of this debate is to force Northern-base women's
organizations to develop a much more sophisticated perspective on development of
"collective active frames" than the treatment normally found in the social
movements literature. They have been forced to reflect on the ways in which
supposedly universal agendas can become ideological impositions that erase the
specific interests of less privileged participants in the movement. This awareness
has, in turn, has the effect of strengthening the hand of local organizers in the
South in their bargaining for greater autonomy and fuller recognition of their
locally-defined interests and agendas.
Evans- 10-10-03
-24Millie
Thayer (2000, 2001, 2002) provides one of the most vivid and
nuanced analyses of the debate "on the ground" within the transnational women's
movement. In her study of the relations between transnational feminist NGO's and
local women's groups based in the backlands of rural Northeast Brazil, Thayer
(2001) shows, first of all, that "global scripts," in this case an article by Joan Scott
on the concept of gender, can in fact "make sense" to local women embedded in
families and involved in class as well as gender struggles. Because the concept of
gender made sense for these women, and because of their creative ability to
transform and reinterpret the concept to fit local circumstances, it helped them to
advance their local struggles.
Thayer's work also illustrates how the goals and ideologies of the
transnational women's movement (including their awareness of the possibilities of
`colonialist attitudes') limit the dominance of Northern NGOs, despite the
enormous differences in resources between the local Brazilian group and its
Northern allies. Access to the resources that are channeled through transnational
networks does depend on the ability of locals to conform to more standardized
administrative procedures that transnational support networks can understand and
evaluate (Thayer, 2002). At the same time, Thayer's analysis also makes it clear
that the ideology and goals of Northern-based transnational NGO's give local
social movement organizations important political advantages in internal
negotiations. Northern-based transnational NGO's not only know that their
legitimacy in the eyes of funders and Northern supporters rests on their ability to
transform the lives of local groups in the South for the better. They themselves see
service to these groups as their goal. Consequently, when a legitimate local group
Evans- 10-10-03
-25questions
whether their local interests and goals are being met, the question cannot
simply be dismissed or suppressed. The "soft power" of norms and values is even
more important within transnational movements than it is in their relations to
dominant global structures, and this works to the advantage of the South.
If its explicit and persistent confrontation of dangers posed by the NorthSouth
divide within the movement makes the women's movement an exemplar for
other transnational social movements, its potential influence in the transformation
of other movements is equally important. The potential impact of closer alliance
between the women's movement and the labor movement offers a good example.
Patriarchal organizational forms and leadership styles continue to divide the labor
movement from the women's movement (c.f., for example, Bandy and BickhamMendez,
2003), but the survival of the labor movement globally clearly depends
on its ability to become more feminist. Women are not just important to the labor
movement because both genders are now thoroughly incorporated into the labor
market, they are important because they occupy the positions in the global labor
force that are most crucial to labor's organizational expansion.
The numerically predominant situation of women in the global economy is
one of precarious participation in the "informal economy" B a vast arena in which
the traditional organizational tools of the transnational labor movement are least
likely to be effective. Women in the informal sector experience the insecurity and
lack of "social contract" that appear to be the neo-liberal destiny of all but a small
minority of the workforce, regardless of gender. If members of established
transnational unions like the Metalworkers are to succeed in building general
political support for defending the "social contract" aspects of their employment
Evans- 10-10-03
-26relation,
their struggles must be combined with an equally aggressive effort to
expand the idea of the social contract into the informal sector. In so far as the
women's movemenťs campaigns around livelihood issues have focused
particularly on the informal sector, it might be considered the vanguard of the labor
movement as well as a leading strand in the movement for counter-hegemonic
globalization more generally.
One response to the challenge of the informal sector, has been the diffusion
of the "Self-employed Women's Association" (SEWA) as an organizational form,
starting in India and spreading to South Africa, Turkey, and other countries in
Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, and eventually creating incipient
international networks such as "Homenet" and "Streetnet" (Mitter,1994). This is
not only a novel form of labor organization. Since the archetypal site of informal
sector employment is among the least privileged women of the global South it is
simultaneously an organizational form that should help build the kind of "feminism
without borders" that Mohanty (2003) argues is necessary to transcend the
contradictions that have divided the international women's movement in the past.
Global and Local Environmentalism: In the last decades of the twentieth
century, organizations that focused on environmental issues were the most rapidly
expanding form of transnational NGO (Sikkink and Smith, 2002:30). Starting as
an almost non-existent category in the 1950's, by the 1990 they had become the
most prevalent form of transnational NGO outside of human rights groups. A case
can be made that the global environmental movement has also been the most
effective of any set of transnational social movements at changing both the global
Evans- 10-10-03
-27discursive
and regulatory environment. In short, the global environmental
movement offers one of the best examples of "counter-hegemonic globalization"
available. By the same token, the arena of environmental politics becomes one of
the best sites for measuring the limits of counter-hegemonic globalization.
Environmental stewardship is almost by definition a collective issue and
therefore an issue that should lends itself to collective mobilization. Even neoclassical
economic theory recognizes that environmental degradation is an
externality that markets may not resolve, especially if the externalities are split
across national political jurisdictions. Thus, environmental movements have
advantages, both relative to mobilization around labor issues, which neo-liberal
ideology strongly claims must be resolved through market logic if welfare is to be
maximized, and relative to women's movements which are still bedeviled by
claims that these issues are "private" and therefore not a appropriate target for
collective political action (especially not collective political action which spills
across national boundaries).
The obstacles to trying to build a global environmental movement are
equally obvious. To begin with, there is the formidable gap that separates the
South's "environmentalism of the poor," in which sustainability means above all
else sustaining the ability of resource-dependent local communities to extract
livelihoods from their natural surroundings, and the "conservationist" agenda of
traditional Northern environmental groups, which favors the preservation of fauna
and flora without much regard for how this conservation impacts the livelihoods of
surrounding communities ( Friedmann and Rangan, 1993; Guha, R. & J. MartínezAlier,
1997; Martínez-Alier, 2002). The North-South divide in the global
Evans- 10-10-03
-28environmental
movement may be less susceptible to being portrayed as "zero-sum"
than in the "geography of jobs" perspective on the labor movement, the logic of
division appear more difficult to surmount than in the case of transnational
feminism.
Even aside from the difficulties of superseding North-South divisions,
integrating local and global concerns appears more daunting in the environmental
arena. Some issues ­ such as global warming and the ozone layer ­ seem
intrinsically global, while the politics of others, such as the health consequences of
toxic dumps, can be intensely local. The challenges of building a global
organization that effective integrates locally-focused activities with global
campaigns would seem particularly challenging in the case of the environmental
movement.
Despite the structural challenges it faces, the global environmental
movement is usually considered among the most successful of the transnational
social movements. How do we explain the relative success of transnational
movements with environmental agendas? The first point to be made is how
strikingly parallel the political assets of the global environmental movement are to
those of the labor and women's movements, despite the obvious differences among
them. This is true both of ideological resources and institutional ones. Once again,
we see a counter-hegemonic movement leveraging the ideas and organizational
structures implanted by hegemonic globalization.
As in the case of the labor and women's movements, political clout depends
on the global diffusion of a universalistic ideology affirming the value of the
movemenťs agenda. As the labor and women's movements are able to leverage
Evans- 10-10-03
-29the
ideological power of abstract concepts like "human rights" and "democracy",
environmentalists can claim an impeccable universal agenda of "saving the planet"
and invoke "scientific analysis" as validating their positions. As in the other two
cases, these ideological resources are worth little without organizational structures
that can exploit them and without complementary mobilization around quotidian
interests. Nonetheless, the point is that once again, hegemonic ideological
propositions are not simply instruments of domination; they are also a "toolkit"
that can be used in potentially powerful ways for "subversive" ends.
The possibility of using governance structures that are part of hegemonic
globalization also applies in the case of the environmental movement. Even more
than in the case of the women's movement, the UN system has proved an
extremely valuable institutional resource. As in the case of the Women's
movement, global conferences organized by the UN have played a crucial role both
in helping to solidify transnational networks and to promote and diffuse discursive
positions. Pulver's (2003) research on climate change negotiations provides one of
the most sophisticated analyses of how the institutional resources provided by the
UN system can be leveraged by transnational environmental movements (see also
Lipschutz and Mayer, 1996; Betsill and Corell, 2001; Caniglia, 2000).
In Pulver's view, the UN climate policy process, including the 1992
Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the annual Conferences of
the Parties (COPs) organized to review and assess the implementation of the
FCCC, provide an institutional arena that works to the advantage of transnational
environmental NGOs in three ways, even though the negotiations are formally
between national delegations. First, negotiations take place in an atmosphere of
Evans- 10-10-03
-30"public-ness"
­ not only in the sense that proceedings are for the most part open to
public scrutiny but also in the sense that positions must be justified in terms of the
"public good" rather than simply presented as reflecting particular interests which
must be taken into account because of their proponents power. This kind of
discursive context lends itself naturally to arguments about stewardship and the
promotion of sustainability while it is much more awkward to introduce corporate
concerns with managerial prerogatives and profitability.
Equally important, according to Pulver, the "public" actors who manage the
process on behalf of the UN system tend to be drawn from "epistemic
communities" (Haas, 1992) in which "science" and "stewardship" are valued.
(Indeed, even the national delegations that end up at the COPs are more likely to be
sympathetic to these values.) Finally, both prevailing ideology and the
preferences of meeting managers give environmental NGO representatives a
degree of influence on the negotiations between national delegations that rivals or
surpasses that of business and industry representatives. In this case at least, global
governance institutions have given transnational social movements an opportunity
to shape an emerging regulatory regime, which has the potential to substantially
modify the market logic of neo-liberal globalization.
One might argue that climate change is a special case, that because climate
change is an intrinsically global issue, it was possible to mount a global campaign
without strong local foundations that transcend the North-South divide. This may
be correct. Nonetheless, other examples suggest that transnational environmental
networks can still make effective use of global governance institutions, even when
local foundations and North-South solidarity are crucial.
Evans- 10-10-03
-31Chico
Mendes and his Amazonian Rubber Tappers, as chronicled by Keck
(1995, 1998) and Keck and Sikkink (1998), are the classic case. Transnational
environmental NGO's interested in preserving Amazonian forests and an organized
local peasantry desperate to preserve their extractive livelihoods in the face of the
depredations of local ranchers were able to jointly use the transnational
connections that linked the Brazilian government, the World Bank and parochial
but powerful U.S. politicians to generate leverage that neither the transnational
NGO's nor the Rubber Tappers could have dreamed of separately. Despite
Mendes' assassination, the fruits of his fight were institutionalized in important
ways in the subsequently environmentalist Workers' Party Government in Mendes'
home state of Acre (Evans, 2000).
Such successes depend on combinations of circumstance that are still
unusual (as Keck and Sikkink's [1998] comparison of Acre and Sawarak
illustrates). Nonetheless, they are also not aberrations. The worldwide movement
to limit the development of large dams also brings local communities with
immediate quotidian livelihood interests at stake (saving their homes from
inundation) together with transnational environmental NGO networks. As in the
Rubber Tapper case, the political vulnerability of the World Bank has made it
possible to use the machinery of global governance for counter-hegemonic
purposes and both ideology and practice at the global level have been shifted (see
Khagram, 1999).
Closer alliance with the women's movement could help bridge the globallocal
divide. The issues of urban "livability" that are becoming increasingly
central environmental issues in the South are gendered in their impact. As in the
Evans- 10-10-03
-32case
of the gendered impact of structural adjustment programs, the fact that
women shoulder a disproportionate share of the responsibilities for caring for
children and families forces them to bear the brunt of bad urban sanitation,
precarious water supplies, and pollution-related disease. To the extent that
prominent transnational environmental organizations like Greenpeace,
Environmental Defense or the WWF were willing to focus more attention on such
issues, it would help bridge both North-South and global-local divides.
Unless such opportunities are seized, the transnational environmental
movement could move in a direction that will undercut its potential contribution to
counter-hegemonic globalization. The intensive, wide-spread, decades-old debate
over how to make sure that the women's movement fully reflects the perspectives
and interests of its largest constituency (disprivileged women in the global south)
rather than its most powerful members (elite women in the global north), appears
to have a harder time getting traction in the transnational environmental movement.
The fact that the "scientific analysis" paradigm provides significant
advantage to environmentalists in battles against degradation by corporate (and
state) polluters may become a disadvantage when it comes to engaging in internal
debates over competing visions within the transnational environmental movement,
making it easier for northern activists to assume that the solutions to
environmental issues in the South can be "objectively" defined from afar rather
than having to emerge out of debate and discussion with those immediately
involved (cf. Li, T. M. 2000; York 2002). None of this is to suggest that the
environmental movement is doomed to go astray or end up fragmented. The point
is that just as there is no "natural logic" that dictates the inevitability of a corporate
Evans- 10-10-03
-33neo-liberal
trajectory for globalization, even the most successful counterhegemonic
movements have no functionalist guardian angels that will prevent
them from undercutting their own potential.
The Potential and Pitfalls of Counter-Hegemonic Globalization: I have
focused here on positive examples, first in the form of the general organizational
advances represented by ATTAC and the World Social Forum and then in the form
of successes drawn from the transnational labor, womens' and environmental
movments. Efforts at counter-hegemonic globalization do help shift the balance in
local struggles in favor of the disprivileged. >From apparel workers, to poor rural
women, to rubber tappers, there are numerous examples of how creating
transnational connections can put new power into the hands of groups that face
insurmountable odds at the local level. Counter-hegemonic globalization has also
made some headway with respect to global regulatory regimes. Nonetheless, any
progress at the level of the global regulatory regime in what are defined as "noneconomic"
areas has been more than counter-balanced by the deepening
institutionalization of neo-liberal rules with regard to trade, investment and
property.
If discounting the potential of counter-hegemonic globalization would be a
serious analytic error, exaggerating its potential or discount the pitfalls that lie in
wait for these movements as they develop would, as I underlined in the beginning
of this essay, be an equally serious error. Now, with a better sense of the
organizational and ideological structure of counter-hegemonic globalization, it is
time to revisit the issue of limitations and pitfalls.
Evans- 10-10-03
-34The
most basic limitation is that none of the successes discussed here offers
a direct prospect of shifting the basic trajectory of current struggles over the shape
of global trade and property rule. As the September, 2003 WTO ministerial in
Cancan indicated, putting sand in the gears of the neo-liberal global project
depends on new creating political alliances that involve states as well as social
movements. Future battles of this type over everything from the FTAA to the
completion of the Doha Round, will be crucial to any future possibility for building
counter-hegemonic globalization. Transnational social movements, even in
alliance with each other cannot reshape these negotiations without collective action
on the part of national delegations from the global South. Constructing a globally
inclusive version of "embedded liberalism" (Ruggie, 1982) ­ a reasonable minimal
measure for the success of counter-hegemonic globalization ­ is an even more
distant goal. Ruggie's (1994:525) assessment that "[c]onstructing a contemporary
analog to the embedded liberalism compromise will be a Herculean task" has not
been substantially changed by the more recent successes of transnational social
movements.
Current limitations should not, however, be discouraging in themselves. The
politics of counter-hegemonic globalization are a politics of institution-building
and alliance formation, ideological innovation and re-framing, of the accretive
accumulation of "soft power, leading, if successful, to "normative cascades" and
real shifts in the balance of power. If a long succession of small victories
(inevitably intermingled with defeats) leads eventually to major transformation, the
process will only make sense to skeptics well after the fact, much as the abolition
of slavery and women's suffrage seem plausible (perhaps even `inevitable') after
Evans- 10-10-03
-35the
fact (cf. Keck and Sikkink, 1998).
Pitfalls are a more immediate concern than apparent limitations. The kind of
creative re-framing that has allowed the labor movement to shift from preoccupation
with the geography of jobs to a focus on fighting for basic rights, the
social contract and democratic governance is always vulnerable to being
overwhelmed by immediate defensive concerns. Transnational environmental
organizations are always in danger of slipping back into a traditional
conservation/preservation perspective that leaves little space for building bridges to
the resource-dependent poor of the global south. Despite its continual efforts at
self-reflection, steering a course between false universalism and unreflective
particularism continues to challenge the transnational women's movement. In all
three cases, finding ways to embody unifying framings in concrete organizational
alliances is an even tougher challenge. Unless they can avoid the pitfalls that lie in
their own organizational paths, superseding their current macro-political
limitations is a utopian dream.
Realistic awareness of limitations and pitfalls must be balanced against the
basic point established in the initial rendition of optimistic examples. Global neoliberalism
is not just a structure of domination it is also a set of ideological and
organizational structures vulnerable to being leveraged by oppositional
movements.
Global neo-liberalism's aggressive efforts to spread the dominion of market logic
make it easier for diverse movement to mount a common program. As the gap
between the formal hegemony of global neo-liberalism's ideological program and
its substantive manifestations grows more stark ­ most obviously in the case of
Evans- 10-10-03
-36"democracy"
­ shared opportunities for leveraging these ideological
presuppositions increase.
Ideologically neo-liberal globalization generates a transnational ideological
toolkit that counter-hegemonic movements can draw on in parallel ways from a
variety of different social locations. Structurally, global neo-liberalism helps
promote possibilities for alliance by different groups situated in divergent national
contexts in similarly disadvantaged positions. Organizationally, contemporary
transnational opportunities reinforce the point, made by Tilly (e.g. 1991,1995) and
Tarrow (1998) among others at the national level, that just as oppositional
movements can turn dominant ideological repertoires to their advantage, they can
also take advantage of existing governance structures. In some cases, such as the
environmental and women's movements leveraging of the UN system to help build
transnational links and gain access to public space, the possibilities are obvious.
In other cases, such as the use of the World Bank by the rubber tappers or the
leveraging of corporate structures via brand names and basic rights, they are only
obvious after the fact.
Acknowledging the potential for use of dominant governance structures,
brings us back to the cases with which we begin ­ ATTAC and the World Social
Forum. Leveraging dominant structures will works only when there are
comparable oppositional organizations and networks available to do the leveraging.
Ultimately, the scope of these mobilizational structures must transcend issuespecific
and group-specific organizations. "Global civil society" (Lipschutz and
Mayer, 1996; Wapner, 1995) requires an organized agent of equivalent scope if it
is to dislodge the highly organized system of domination that sustains global neo-
Evans- 10-10-03
-37liberalism.
A new (post)modern prince in the form of a "World Party" as
advocated by Gill (2002) and Chase-Dunn and Boswell (2003), is probably too
much of a leap, but trying to develop some kind of omnibus transnational form
still makes sense.
The end result is likely to look more like a network than a bureaucratic tree
and, by definition, will require unexpected organizational innovations. ATTAC
and the World Social Forum are encouraging precisely because their unexpected
organizational forms have been so successful. They have created new possibilities
for concatenation among existing transnational networks as well as adding
organizational innovations of their own. Novel organizational forms like these are
reassurance that, whether or not the possibility of another world has been
demonstrated, the potential for a more robust and politically formidable movement
for counter-hegemonic globalization is a social fact.
Evans- 10-10-03
-38-
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