Revisiting antisystemic movements in the Global South: struggles against exclusion and struggles against exploitation

Abstract

Antisystemic movements have been used as a key concept in world-­systems analysis to explain emancipatory struggles against the dominant structure of the capitalist world-economy. This study attempts to develop a more inclusive concept of antisystemic movements by focusing on the primary themes of emancipatory struggles – exploitation and exclusion – in the Global South. Struggles against exploitation are movements that mobilise people to demand an end to their absolute or relative poverty, austerities, economic grievances and dispossession. Struggles against exclusion are movements that contest processes of exclusion from local, domestic and international communities and polities. Nationalist mobilisations and ethnic conflicts have been the primary issues in these struggles. Struggles against exclusion could extend to mobilisations for democracy and the expansion of citizenship rights. Furthermore, an empirical analysis of popular protests conducted by compiling protest events in the Global South reported in The New York Times from 1870 to 2016 demonstrates that the most widely shared theme was the struggle against exclusion. Over time, the struggles against exclusion as emancipatory movements have remained a central issue in antisystemic activities in the Global South.