Anti-globalism and ecologism in comparative perspective

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to compare principles of Green ideology with the standpoint represented by what is usually known as anti-globalization or anti-globalism. Whereas Green ideology has been present in the political arena since at least the 1960s, with its roots dating back to the nineteenth century (Dobson 1995: 33-4), and intensification of its global consciousness in the 1980s (Sachs 1993: 12), anti-globalism is a new trend and has not developed enough to be treated as a mature political ideology. Ideology should offer a vision of a desirable society based on core beliefs about the human condition (Dobson 1995: 2), whereas the message of anti-globalism is issue-oriented and predominantly negative, constructed vis-a-vis processes it rejects. Anti-globalism, not being a complete political ideology, is susceptible to other ideological trends, which colour it with their own features. It seems to be sufficiently non-specific to be merged with ecologism, and the latter is also particularly prone to alliances with anti-globalism. The relationship between them is reciprocal: Green ideology uses arguments taken from anti-globalist discourse, while anti-globalism borrows from the ideological matrix of ecologism. As a result, in both systems of beliefs common arguments and threads are to be found. These two currents form a peculiar ideological ‘field’, whose semantic content consists of both well known ‘classical’ themes of political ideologies, and of relatively new concepts deriving from ecologism on the one hand, and from the critique of globalization on the other.