Anti-Globalization Movement Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

The anti-globalization movement is a broad-based popular struggle involving workers, environmentalists, youths, peasants, the urban poor, indigenous people, and other actors across the developing and industrialized worlds striving for social and economic justice and greater democratic control over their daily lives. Activists come from diverse spheres, including nongovernmental organizations, political parties, trade unions, mass movements, informal networks and collectives, and revolutionary fronts. Moreover, anti-globalization activists combine diverse forms of action, including nonviolent civil disobedience, marches and rallies, public education, and lobbying. With this movement perhaps more aptly known as the global justice movement, participants do not oppose globalization per se, but rather corporate globalization, or the extension of corporate power around the world, undermining local communities, democracy, and the environment. The movement addresses the root causes of various social problems linked to free-market capitalism, including poverty, inequality, social dislocation, hunger, poor health, and ecological destruction.

Anti-Globalization Movement Background

Over the past several decades national governments and multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO), have implemented free-market policies such as privatization, trade liberalization, deregulation, export-oriented production, and cuts in social spending and basic subsidies. These neoliberal measures have brought new regions into the global economy, while transforming social rights, such as health care and education, into commodities. Although some areas and groups have benefited, for many others the results have been disastrous, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. During the 1990s, for example, the number of people living in poverty around the globe increased by 100 million, even as world income grew 2.5 percent per year, while more than 80 countries had per capita incomes lower than the previous decade.

Over the past 10 years, corporate globalization has faced increasing opposition. Building on previous IMF food riots, grassroots mobilizations against the World Bank, anti-free trade campaigns, radical ecology and squatter movements, anti-sweatshop activism, the Zapatistas, and solidarity struggles, anti-globalization activists have built broad-based networks for social and economic justice. The movement burst onto the public radar screen in Seattle, where 50,000 protesters shut down the WTO Summit on November 30, 1999. Counter-summit actions soon spread around the world, including blockades against the World Bank/IMF meetings in Prague in September 2000 and the Free Trade Area of the Americas Summit in Quebec City in April 2001. Protests reached an explosive crescendo with violent clashes in Gothenburg, Barcelona, and Genoa in summer 2001. Since then, activist focus has shifted toward world and regional social forums, as tens of thousands have converged at mass gatherings in cities such as Porto Alegre, Mumbai, Quito, Florence, Paris, and London to discuss alternatives to corporate globalization.

New Information and Communication Technologies

The anti-globalization movement is characterized by the innovative use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to organize actions, share information and resources, and plan and coordinate activities. Although activists primarily employ e-mail and electronic listservs, during mobilizations they also create temporary Web sites that provide contact lists, information, and resources; post calls to action and other documents; and house discussion forums and real-time chat rooms. Particular networks also have their own Web pages, where activists can post reflections, analyses, updates, links, and logistical information. Interactive Web sites offering multiple tools for coordination are increasingly popular, including open publishing projects such as Indymedia, which allow users to freely post news and information without editorial selection and control.

Local/Global Networks

The anti-globalization movement is primarily organized around flexible, decentralized networks, such as the former Direct Action Network in North America or Peoples Global Action at the transnational scale. Anti-globalization networks are locally rooted, yet globally connected. Local/global activist networking is facilitated by new ICTs, which allow for coordination and communication across vast distances among small, decentralized units. In contrast to traditional parties and unions, networked movements are spaces of convergence involving a multiplicity of organizations, collectives, and networks, each retaining its own identity and autonomy. Such grassroots forms of political participation are widely seen as an alternative mode of democratic practice. Anti-globalization movements thus promote global democracy, even as they emphasize autonomy and local self-management.

Creative Direct Action

More radical anti-globalization activists have developed innovative forms of direct action protest. Found in different contexts, these activists use tactics to create theatrical images for mass media coverage, while the overall blockade strategy, where activists “swarm” their target from multiple directions, produces high-powered social drama. The performances staged by activists, including giant puppets and street theater, mobile carnivals (Reclaim the Streets), spectacular protest involving white outfits, protective shields, and padding (White Overalls), and militant attacks against the symbols of corporate capitalism (Black Bloc), are designed to capture mass media attention while expressing alternative political identities.

Lived Experience and Process

Finally, more grassroots sectors within the anti-globalization movement view social transformation as an ongoing collective process. Rather than focusing on messianic visions or an already established project, activists focus on day-to-day practices. The collaborative, interactive nature of the new ICTs is thus reflected in the rise of new political visions and forms of interaction. These combine elements of certain traditional ideologies, such as anarchism, an emphasis on internal democracy and autonomy (feminism and grassroots movements such as the Zapatistas have been particularly influential in this respect), and a commitment to openness, collaboration, and horizontal connections. Younger activists, in particular, emphasize direct democracy, grassroots participation, and personal interaction within daily social life. Meetings, protests, action camps, and other anti-globalization gatherings thus provide spaces for experiencing and experimenting with alternative ways of life.

Despite their numerous differences, anti-globalization activists from diverse political backgrounds are struggling to regain democratic control over their daily lives, wresting it back from transnational corporations and global financial elites. The anti-globalization movement points to a democratic deficit in the current global political and economic order as corporate globalization has disembedded the market from society.

What makes the anti-globalization movement unique is its capacity for coordinating across vast distances and high levels of diversity and difference, overcoming many of the political and geographic obstacles that have stymied past mass movements.

Bibliography:

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2004. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin.
Juris, Jeffrey S. 2004. “Networked Social Movements: Global Movements for Global Justice.” Pp. 341-62 in The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by M. Castells. London: Edward Elgar.
Sen, Jai, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman. 2004. The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi: Viveka Foundation.
Starr, Amory. 2005. Global Revolt: A Guide to the Movements against Globalization. London: Zed.

This example Anti-Globalization Movement Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.