The Global Justice Movement: Resistance to Dominant Economic Models of Globalization

Abstract

Resistance to dominant economic models of globalization has a long history that reaches back to various movements, protests and campaigns, as for example the Tupac Amaru uprising (1780–1781) or the anti-slave trade movement (which peaked between 1787 and 1807). This chapter focusses on one of the most recent incarnations, the ‘global justice movement’ (GJM). The recent mobilizations by the Indignados and the Occupy movements do not form part of this movement. These current movements entered the scene in 2011 and became prominent for their large street protests and occupations of public spaces. They are mainly directed towards their respective national governments, claiming more democracy and protesting against austerity programmes. According to Dieter Rucht in this volume ‘a social movement can be defined as a network of individuals, groups and organizations that, based on a sense of collective identity, seek to bring about social change (or resist social change) primarily by means of collective public protest’. In order to speak about a movement as an entity, there has to exist a certain degree of consensus of what activists perceived as a grievance and how problems and solutions are defined. The actors within movements also need to be related to each other, at least in the sense that they consider their struggles as related. Similarities in action forms and internal practices also have to exist in a meaningful way in order for observers to be able to talk about movements. These criteria are also important when we decide whether to consider a movement as a new movement or as a continuity of an existing movement. Although some claims and practices are very similar to the GJM’s, the organizational structure of the current protests differs and the international ties of the GJM are hardly used by these new movements. As the current mobilizations have a lot in common with the global justice movement and as there already exists some comparative research on these movements that reveals the continuities between the GJM and the current mobilizations, this chapter will occasionally highlight connections and similarities as well as differences and discontinuities between these movements.

Further Reading

There are various good publications on the global justice movement: Jackie Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) analyses global activism taking into account its economic and political context. Robin Broad (ed.), Global Backlash. Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) provides an overview over the GJM including its historical roots. The collective volume edited by Donatella Della Porta, The Global Justice Movement. Cross-National and Transnational Perspectives (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2007), resulted from a comparative research project and provides a good introduction to the global justice movement in various European countries and in the United States. Another collective volume by Della Porta, Democracy in Social Movements (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), is dedicated to the question of how democracy is practiced within the GJM. Luc Reydams (ed.), Global Activism Reader (New York: Continuum, 2009) is an edited collection on global activism that covers various areas of the GJM: global labour, human rights, women’s rights, environment, peace, social justice and democracy. In this volume we find a part dedicated to global justice struggles providing overviews of the world social forum process and the historical roots of the global justice movement.

A very good introduction to social forums is the collective volume by Jackie Smith, Scott Byrd, Ellen Reese and Elizabeth Smythe (eds), Handbook on World Social Forum Activism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2011). It provides detailed information on the social forum process, participants, its idea of democracy and different issues of the social forums, including resistance to international trade agreements and labour solidarity. Furthermore, there is a part on the connections between the local and the global and a part on democratic innovations developed in the social forums. There is a large amount of literature on the issue of democracy and the social forums, including case studies on internal practices and surveys on the participants of the forums. A collection of case studies on practices in social forum meetings is provided by Donatella Della Porta, Meeting Democracy: Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Nicole Doerr, ‘Deliberative Discussion, Language, and Efficiency in the World Social Forum Process’, Mobilization 13 (2008), pp. 395–410 work on the role of language in the social forum meetings is relevant. An overview of the structure of participants in the social forums can be found in Chap. 4 of the collective volume by Jackie Smith, Scott Byrd, Ellen Reese and Elizabeth Smythe (eds), Handbook on World Social Forum Activism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2011) that I have already mentioned above.

Global Civil Society is a yearbook published by Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor and Helmut Anheier from 2001 to 2012. The yearbook can be consulted at the website of LSE, Department of International Development (e.g. Global Civil Society Yearbook 2001 is available at: www.lse.ac.uk/ internationalDevelopment/research/CSHS/civilSociety/yearBook/contentsPages/2001.aspx). There are various contributions about struggles of resistance against the current economic model in general, the global justice movement and the social forums in these yearbooks.

Elizabeth Smythe, Our World is Not for Sale! The WSF Process and Transnational Resistance to International Trade Agreements (in J. Smith et al. (eds), Handbook on World Social Forum Activism, Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2011) focusses on resistance against trade agreements in the world social forum process.

A wealth of publications covers the recent wave of protest against austerity. Tova Benski, Lauren Langman, Ignacia Perugorría and Benjamín Tejerina edited the special issue ‘From Indignation to Occupation: A New Wave of Global Mobilization’ (Current Sociology 4, 2013), including cases of social movements from various countries protesting against austerity and looking for alternative ways of democracy. The journal Social Movement Studies published a special issue ‘Occupy!’ (3–4, 2012) with case studies from various cities and contributions that try to connect cases of Occupy to other protests and social movements. For example, in ‘The Indignados of Spain. A Precedent to Occupy Wallstreet’, Ernesto Castañeda connects the Spanish case to Occupy Wall Street (Social Movement Studies 3–4, 2012).

Donatella Della Porta and Alice Mattoni edited the collective volume Spreading Protest. Social Movements in Times of Crisis (Essex: ECPR Press Studies, 2014) with a specific focus on the travel of ideas between the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy and the various movements against austerity in Europe.

The collective volume Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice edited by Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox (London: Routledge, 2013) attempts to show the role of European movements as precursors for the global justice movement and also includes some connections to the recent anti-austerity protests. Other authors have worked on the connections between recent protests and the global justice movement, like Ron Hayduk, Global Justice and OWS. Movement Connections (Socialism and Democracy 2, 2013).