Abstract

This paper examines the major structural characteristics of the anti-corporate globalization movement, its key bases and antecedents, its relationship with other global social movements (GSMs) and the key challenges it faces in the post-9/11 period. We suggest that despite the potential of the anti-corporate globalization movement to usher in major social changes, the movement faces a number of major crossroads in terms of ideology, discursive approach, and overall strategy. We argue that there has been coalescence of a good many GSMs, including the international environmental movement, under the banner of the anti-corporate globalization movement. We focus primarily on the interrelations of these two GSMs, noting that over the past decade there have been trends toward both the “environmentalization” and “de-environmentalization” of the anti-corporate globalization movement. While the defection of many mainstream environmental groups fromthe “Washington consensus” and the resulting environmentalization of the trade and globalization issue were critical to the “Seattle coalition,” there has been a signi?cant decline in the movement’s embrace of environmental claims and discourses, and a corresponding increase in its use of social justice discourses. One implication of our analysis is the hypothesis that while the current vitality of the anti-corporate globalization movement can be gauged by its having adopted an increasingly coherent ideological stance in which international inequality and global corporate dominance are targeted, to be successful the movement will need to coherently ideologically integrate social justice with environmental and sustainability agendas. The amenability of the environmental GSM to such ideological integration will have important rami?cations for the future trajectory of the anti-corporate globalization movement.

Highlights

  • One of the most distinctive aspects of late-twentieth century globalization is that many of its predominant features—especially the reinforcement of trade liberalization institutions and the growing ability of national-states and corporate capital to exercise off-shore veto of domestic social and environmental legislation—are challenged directly and aggressively by a global-scale social movement, the anti-corporate globalization movement

  • An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association (ASA) annual meeting, August 2001, Anaheim, CA, and at the Sociology of Economic Change and Development Seminar at the University of Wisconsin, October 2001

  • The Northern wing of the movement has changed very substantially over its first four years

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

One of the most distinctive aspects of late-twentieth century globalization is that many of its predominant features—especially the reinforcement of trade liberalization institutions and the growing ability of national-states and corporate capital to exercise off-shore veto of domestic social and environmental legislation—are challenged directly and aggressively by a global-scale social movement, the anti-corporate globalization movement. We will take up the matter of the possible effects that the anti-corporate globalization movement might have on various transnational actors and institutions of globalization, and on selected nation-states. In this regard we will suggest that despite the obvious potential of this movement to usher in major social changes, the movement faces a number of major crossroads in terms of ideology, discursive approach, and overall strategy. In this paper the expression “social justice” refers to considerations relating to distributional economic in/equality

BASES OF THE ANTI CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION M OV EMENT
RECENT ANTECEDENTS OF THE ANTI CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT
Findings
CONCLUSION
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