Counterhegemonic
Globalization: Transnational
Social Movements in the
Contemporary Political Economy
Peter Evans, Ch. 54, pp. 444-450
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Defining terms
 When people invoke GL, they usually
mean the prevailing system of
transnational domination – or hegemony which is more accurately called "neoliberal
globalization“ or "corporate globalization"
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Implicit in current discourse is idea that
this kind of globalization is "natural,"
inevitable, determined by market logic
 Such discourse has become hegemonic
 hegemony: domination, influence, or
authority over another, especially one
political group over a society or by nation
over others
 when a discourse is hegemonic it conforms to
the dominant ideology, which justifies the
status quo
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Counterhegemonic globalization
 counterhegemonic globalization
challenges the prevailing system of
transnational domination – and the
ideologies that justify it
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Activists involved in this project are
collectively referred to as the
"global justice movement"
 part of global civil society, but more critical
wing
 the formally organized participants in the
movement work through transnational NGOs
 the anti-globalization protests at the 1999 WTO
meeting in Seattle and the ongoing World Social
Forum are key events in the movement
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World Economic Forum vs
World Social Forum
 World Social Forum, which brings
together transnational social activists,
especially from the global south, was
organized as a "counter-meeting" to the
World Economic Forum, which is an
annual gathering of leaders in business
and politics held in Davos, Switzerland
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New Organizational Foundations of
Counterhegemonic Globalization (CHG)
 3 broad families of transnational social
movements:
 Labor movement
 Women's movement
 Environmental movement
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Unique challenges of organizing
transnationally?
 dilemma of using transitional networks to
magnify the power of local movements
without redefining local interests
 transcending the North-South divide
 leveraging existing structures of global
power without becoming complicit in them
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WSF: quintessential example of CHG
 World Social Forum: probably largest network
of South-based organizations and activists
began as a joint venture between ATTAC
(Association for the Taxation of Financial
Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) and the
Brazilian Workers Party (PT)
 demonstrates how CHG has its roots in both
everyday struggles for dignity and economic security
in the workplace and classic agendas of social
protection
 CHG is NOT postmodern, but looks to rescue
traditional social democratic agendas of social
protection
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Labor as a Global Social
Movement
 Neoliberal GL has effectively
reconstructed employment as something
more like a "spot market" in which labor is
brought and sold like any other commodity
 Across the world, jobs are being
informalized, outsourced, and generally
divorced from a social contract between
employer and employee
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The attack on the labor contract,
since it's global, creates a powerful
basis for global labor solidarity
 Ex #1: mutual support between metalworkers in
Brazil and Germany
 the alliance exploits transnational corporate organizational
structures for counterhegemonic purposes
 Ex #2:1997 UPS strike
 North-North example of how transitional social alliances can
be built around idea of a social contract
 Formal employment relationship with union
representation is rare, so the success of labor as
a global social movement depends on being
able to complement "social contract" and “basic
rights" with other strategies that have the
potential for generating alliances
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Building a feminist movement
without borders
 Disadvantages of allocating resources purely on
basis of market logic will fall on women
 “Care deficit": women spend most working hrs on
unpaid care work…."market gives almost no rewards
for care"
 Structural adjustment and other neoliberal programs
have built-in systematic gender bias
 Feminist activists have advantage over labor in
that they don't have to transcend the "zero-sum"
logic equivalent to that of the "geography of
jobs" (in the case of the labor movement)
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How to bridge political and cultural aspects
of the North-South divide and how to avoid
the potential dangers of "difference-erasing
universalist agendas“?
 Like labor movement, feminism is rooted
in universalist discourse of human rights,
but transnational feminism has long
wrestled with contradictions of building
politics around the universalistic language
of rights
 a one-size fits all approach will not work
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Global and local environmentalism
 Advantage: The "environment" is inherently a
transnational issue, which gives the
transnational environmental movement
advantages over labor and women's movement
 Disadvantage: the gap separating South's
environmentalism of the poor, which focuses on
building sustainable livelihoods based on natural
surroundings, and the conservationist agenda of
the rich (protecting flora and fauna)
 this is not as obviously zero-sum as the labor
scenario, but this kind of division in interests appears
more difficult to surmount than in the case of
transnational feminism
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Conclusion
 Hegemonic ideological propositions are
not simply instruments of domination, but
also a toolkit that can be used for
subversive ends
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