The November GTN discussion will take up the overarching challenge of shaping a systemic global movement. To structure the exchange, I have drafted a short note that summarizes GTI’s approach to date, and poses broad discussion questions. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/ publication/How-do-we-get-there. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 9:41 PM Subject: How Do We Get There? The Problem of Action (GTN Discussion) To: [email protected]
From Ronaldo Munck <[email protected]>
------------------------------------------------------- Colleagues, This is a very important call, and I thank you for it. I would like to pose a friendly critique from someone who comes with a Southern view and one that is closely engaged with the trade union movement, not exactly a ‘new’ social movement. I am slightly uncomfortable with the notion posed of a ‘global citizens movement’ insofar as it seems to lean on the global civil society project which I see as very ‘Northern’. Global civil society is often seen as the royal road to democratization, market regulation, and “the good life”. The main international NGOs are almost exclusively Northern in terms of their social base, their cosmology, and their politics. Can these NGOs “represent” global civil society in any meaningful way? Even that most ostensibly universal of concepts that of “universal human rights” is cut across by the history of colonialism, imperialism, and cultural dominance. For me, globalization and its contestation will take more complex forms than a simple unfolding of global civil society as privileged terrain for progressive social change based on shared moral values. The future of this dialectic will be resolved through political struggle and cannot be short-circuited by definitional fiat that declares GSC or a putative global citizens movement as a ready-made royal road to global democracy. One possible alternative to build the systemic movement you seek might be Karl Polanyi's problematic which poses the possibility that history advances through a series of ‘double movements’. So market expansion, on the one hand, leads to the ‘one big market’ we call globalization today. Yet, as Polanyi argued in his day and we could argue today, ‘simultaneously a counter-movement was afoot’ that reacted against the dislocation of society and the attack on the very fabric of society that the self-regulating market led to. The ‘double movement’ consisted of economic liberalism driving the extension of the self-regulating market on the one hand and the principle of ‘social protection’ on the other hand defending social interests from the deleterious action of the market. Today, we can relate the metaphor of the ‘double movement’ to those socio-political forces which wish to assert more democratic control over political life. Movements struggling for national or regional sovereignty (Catalonia?), those seeking to protect the environment, and the plethora of movements advancing claims for social justice or recognition are all part of this broad counter-movement. In different, but inter-related ways they are bids to re-embed the economy in social relations. Challenging the movement towards commodification, they seek to ‘decommodify’ society and reassert moral and cultural values. Against materialism and market-determined values, the social counter-movement generated by neo-liberal globalization brings to the fore the democracy of civil society and the social value of all we do. I have always valued the Foresight perspective and have used it productively both as a university ‘manager’ and in a development context. But I think we need a bit more texture to our concepts and more engagement with theories and practice coming out of the Global South. Ronaldo ****************************************************** Thursday, November 2, 2017
From Paul Raskin <[email protected]>
----- Dear GTN, Forthcoming essays and discussions will spotlight questions of social agency and collective action: Who will change the world? What does the change look like? How must we act to make it happen? Specifically, we will consider the potential role of key social movements—indigenous, rights, labor, climate, ecofeminist, peace, and others—in driving a Great Transition. But before launching this new series, let’s first set the larger context. The November GTN discussion will take up the overarching challenge of shaping a systemic global movement. To structure the exchange, I have drafted a short note that summarizes GTI’s approach to date, and poses broad discussion questions. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/ publication/How-do-we-get-there. A revised version and selected commentary will be published as a GTI Roundtable in December. GTN veterans will be excused a sense of déjà vu. From the get-go, GTI has posited a “global citizens movement” (GCM) as a critical social actor in the GT scenario, and periodically discussed actions for mobilizing it, prompting a real-world experiment, The Widening Circle campaign of 2010-12 ( www.wideningcircle.org/). But that was then. The world changes, urgency grows, and many new voices are among us. It’s timely to search afresh for answers to the pressing question of transformative action. Because we’re getting a late start, the discussion will go through Tuesday, December 5. Especially welcome are comments on the shape of the global movement we need and possible initiatives to catalyze it. Comments that dwell on reasons for pessimism or inaction, or on existing projects (hundreds of important ones are represented in this network), not so much. Over to you, Paul ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/201- how-do-we-get-there-the-problem-of-action/2499 Need help? Email [email protected] -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens