A growing body of scholarship acknowledges the increasing influence of global forces on social institutions and societies on multiple scales. We focus here on the role of globalization processes in shaping collective action and social movements. Three areas of global change and movements are examined: first, long-term global trends and collective action; second, research on national and local challenges to economic globalization, including backlash movements and the types of economic liberalization measures most associated with inducing oppositional movements; and third, the emergence of contemporary transnational social movements. In each of these arenas we address debates on diffusion, intervening mechanisms, and the outcomes of collective mobilization in response to global pressures.
Environmental contamination with metals such as manganese (Mn) and nickel (Ni) often results in elevated concentrations of these metals in plant tissues. At high concentrations, these metals are known to have detrimental effects on certain insect herbivores. Using laboratory bioassays and artificial diet, we investigated the development and survival of a cosmopolitan insect detritivore, Megaselia scalaris (Diptera: Phoridae), exposed to concentrations of Mn and Ni reaching 2600 mg Mn/kg and 5200 mg Ni/kg dry mass (dm) in artificial diet. Surprisingly, Ni and Mn at the concentrations tested did not harm this fly. Treatment groups from diets with 260–2600 mg Mn/kg dm and 1300–5200 mg Ni/kg dm had significantly shorter larval development times, overall times to adult emergence, and both pupariation and pupal eclosion times compared to a control group. Wing length of females, a correlate of adult fitness, was also greater in metal treatment groups. Other measures including rate of egg hatch, percentage of emerging flies that were female, and wing length of male flies, were not significantly different in metal treatment groups. We conclude that Megaselia scalaris is tolerant of exceptionally high levels of Mn and Ni.
An understanding of the contemporary constellation of right-wing national and transnational social movements needs to compare the recent movements and the global context with what happened in the first half of the twentieth century to figure out the similarities and differences, and to gain insights about what could be the consequences of the reemergence of populist nationalism and fascist movements. This article uses the comparative evolutionary world-systems perspective to study the global right from 1900 to the present. The point is to develop a better understanding of twenty-first century fascism, populist nationalism, and authoritarian practices and to help construct a praxis for the New Global Left.1
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