 |
This paper considers three different conceptualizations – three civil society perspectives - on global-scale economics and geopolitics, from standpoints that can be termed ‘global justice movements’, ‘Third World nationalism’ and the ‘Post-Washington Consensus’. These three perspectives on the fusion of neoliberal economics and imperialist politics sometimes converge, but often are in conflict. From different analyses flow different political strategies, concrete campaigning tactics, and varying choices of allies. Much transnational social movement literature is bound up in the subjects’ norms, institutions, values, logistics and organizational development (as well as issues and advocacy - as in the case of Millennium Development Goal and anti-poverty campaigning), and very little takes ideology and analysis seriously. The advent of the World Social Forum (WSF) – and sharp debates about its merits and capacities – gave rise to new literatures that put transnational networking at the centre of the analysis. However, since so many transnational networks have grown and prospered not through programmatic integration such as the WSF would suggest, but rather through sectoral processes, ideological analysis is that much more complicated. (There is no grand WSF political programme to consider, nor is there likely ever to be one generated through consensus within the WSF.) However, because neoliberalism and imperialism are the two economic and political sides of the same coin, it is logical to analyse the nature of analysis (and then strategies, tactics and alliances) that emanate from various oppositional forces.
Read Publication 
|