Globalization and Social Movements

Abstract

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.

What was globalization?

“…Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn (2000) termed this 'the spiral of capitalism and socialism'. (See also Almeida & Chase-Dunn, 2018;Arrighi et al, 1989. ) When elaborated with a class analysis of power and a feminist perspective on masculinities and power, world-system analysis provides a solid basis for systemic theorization and cross-disciplinary, generalizable knowledge about 'the global', given the theory's roots in history, political economy, and sociology.…”

The Grand Challenge of Corporate Control: Opening strategy to the normative pressures of networked professionals

“…Computer scientists, engineers, health workers, academics, lawyers and similar professionals are highly mobile within international labour markets (Harrington & Seabrooke, 2020). They organize loosely in informal networks that stretch around the world, using the information technologies created by the same tech giants that they are often seeking to influence (Almeida & Chase-Dunn, 2018; Barnett et al, 2020). They appeal not to the self-interest of traditional trade unionism, but rather to universalistic values such as environmentalism, feminism and third world rights (Antonini, Beck, & Larrinaga, 2020; Knight & Greenberg, 2002).…”

“…Second, these professionals are skilled networkers, connecting across organizations and nations (Henriksen & Seabrooke, 2016). Advances in information technology have latterly given their networks still greater global connectivity (Almeida & Chase-Dunn, 2018; Barnett, Henriques, & Husted, 2020). The organizing capacity of networked professionals amplifies the voice of protest and provides the scaffolding for subpolitical mobilization worldwide.…”

Cyclical Evolution of the Global Right

“…While global civil society is still a small minority of the total world population, the falling costs of communication and transportation have enabled more and more nonelites to become transnational political actors and increased the extent to which local revolts are able to communicate and coordinate with one another (Almeida and Chase‐Dunn ). This said, local revolts in which actors were oriented toward local rather than global power structures have always played a role in world revolutions to the extent that colonial powers reacted to them.…”