Globalization and the Mobilization of Gay and Lesbian Communities

Abstract

Any consideration of linkages between globalization processes and the development of gay and lesbian movements necessarily raises two questions: (i) a structural question concerning ways in which globalization shapes movements; and (ii) a question about how movements respond, thrive, and intervene in globalization processes, perhaps by developing global aspects themselves. These questions are complicated by the ambiguity of the idea of ‘globalization’ itself. Like many other scholarly ‘buzzwords’, globalization has proven to be a fruitful concept precisely because its lack of clarity invites creative speculation about the historical moment. Writing about globalization has tended to pursue two tracks of thought, one focused on cultural aspects of the changes occurring at the end of the twentieth century, the other on political economy, often with little connection between the two. A cultural-structural divide has been salient in new social movement theory as well. Since lesbian and gay movements tend often to be placed on the cultural side of the binary — by new social movement theory, by cultural studies, and by queer theory in particular — the question of how they might be articulated with the modern world-system has tended to be lost. What may be incontrovertible in all of this is that gay and lesbian movements have become increasingly global in the post-war period, especially in the last 25 years — at least in the sense that local organizations have been emerging in countries around the world. Just how and why gay and lesbian movements have become global raises many of the issues in current globalization debates.