Globalization, Crisis and Social Transformation: A View from the South

Abstract

The dominant narrative around the unfolding capitalist crisis is firmly focused on the dominant economies, and in particular the US. This is understandable given that the proximate causes of the crisis lie in the imperial heartlands and crisis resolution measures taken there will have a global impact. But a 'view from the South' is needed to redress the balance and prevent the decimation of global majority likelihoods being presented as mere collateral damage. The first section below tackles the crisis from a global (globalization) perspective emphasizing its impact in the South and what that it might mean in terms of political prospects. I then go on to develop a hybrid Karl Polanyi/Antonio Gramsci theoretical lens on counter-movements based on their writings responding to the last systemic capitalist crisis in the 1930s. Finally, I turn to the ways in which the international labour movement and the subaltern or post-colonial worlds are contesting the terrain vacated by unregulated market capitalism. As Gramsci would say the old is dying but the new has not yet been born.La narrativa dominante alrededor de la crisis capitalista revelada, está firmemente enfocada a las economías dominantes, y particularmente E.E.U.U. Esto es comprensible, dado que las próximas causas de la crisis yacen en la región central imperial y las medidas de resolución de la crisis que se tomaron allí tendrán un impacto global. Pero se necesita un 'punto de vista desde el sur' para compensar el equilibrio y prevenir la devastación de las posibilidades de las mayorías globales presentadas como simple daño colateral. La primera sección abajo trata la crisis desde una perspectiva global (globalización), enfatizando su impacto en el sur y lo que eso puede significar en términos de prospectos políticos. Luego procedo con el desarrollo de una lente teórica híbrida de Karl Polanyi/Antonio Gramsci sobre movimientos opuestos en base a sus escritos que responden a la última crisis capitalista sistémica en la década de 1930. Finalmente, vuelvo a las maneras en las cuales el movimiento laboral internacional y los mundos subalternos o postcoloniales están disputando el terreno vacío por

An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences

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Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Diversity

“…Since the 1970s, an increasingly crisis-ridden economic globalization has fuelled concerns in the global North that democracy is being hollowed out as governments lose capacity to pursue policies that stray from what has been called the corporate agenda, even as democratic forces and practices within a number of Southern states have recently strengthened due to pressure from below -as in Latin America's 'pink tide' and the Middle East's 'Arab Spring'. Indeed, as neoliberal globalization have reshaped the political-economic terrain, North and South, transnational movements have developed as advocates of a 'democratic globalization' that endeavours to enrich human relations across space by empowering communities and citizens to participate in the full range of decisions that govern their lives (Chase-Dunn 2002;Munck 2010;Smith 2008;Smith and Wiest 2012). Alongside and in symbiosis with these movements, TAPGs have emerged -'think tanks' that research and promote democratic alternatives to the corporate agenda of top-down globalization.…”

The political economy of orphanage tourism in Cambodia

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