Global Complexity and Global Civil Society

Abstract

This paper argues that recent struggles against neoliberal axioms such as free trade and open markets have led to a militant reframing of global civil society by grassroots social movements. It contests that this struggle to invest the concept of global civil society with transformative potential rests upon an identifiable praxis, a “strange attractor” that disturbs other civil society actors, through its re-articulation of a politics that privileges self-organization, direct action, and direct democracy. The paper further suggests that the emergence of this “antagonistic” orientation is best understood through the lens of complexity theory and offers some conceptual tools to begin the process of analyzing global civil society as an outcome and effect of global complexity.