Transnational Social Movements

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that what is fundamentally striking about transnational social movements (TSMs) is the extent to which they are able to reach beyond the restrictive confines of the nation state. The writer points out that, due to the ever-increasing opportunities that are afforded by international travel and communication, such as email and the Internet, TSMs have a way of reaching new audiences, organizing them in new collectives and voicing common grievances in new ways. The writer also notes that members of TNMs may not be working class, but they do share the common perception of themselves as small people who are being overlooked by an increasingly powerful group of leaders that are calling the shots from places and spaces in which individual national politics may not exert sufficient influence. The writer concludes that even though theories of social movements might be seen as outdated because of the global context in which movements now operate, this should not gloss over the common features that TNMs do have with social movements before them and with the insights that social movement theories can provide.

Outline:
Introduction
Objectives of Transnational Social Movements
Chief Characteristics of Transnational Social Movements
From Theories of Class to Post-Industrial Society
Conclusions

From the Paper:

"Such protests were organized quite deliberately to coincide with and confront the agenda that was being put forward by intergovernmental conferences. Objecting to the global spread of the neo-liberal economic model, protestors were keen to take to task not only the governments of the leading industrialized nations, but also to criticize international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as multinational corporations, which, in the protestors' views, were setting out policies that could not be countered if objections remained local and national-specific.
"Even though the nature of this movement is contested, it would still be possible to note the chief concerns of protestors as being objection to the globalization of a neo-liberal, monetarist economic philosophy. The strength of the protests against this doctrine are related to what its critics in the anti-capitalist movement see as the extreme negativity of its effects."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Cohen, Robin and Shirin M. Rai, Global Social Movements, London and New Brunswick: Athalone Press, 2000.
• Della Porta, Donatella della Porta, Massimillano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca, Herbert Reiter Reiter (eds), Globalization From Below: Transnational Activists And Protest Networks, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
• Guidry, John A., Michael D. Kennedy and Mayer N. Zald, 'Globalizations and Social Movements' in idem (eds), Globalization and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
• Hislop, Donald, 'Contextualizing Genoa: protest, violence, and democracy', Ephemera 1/3 (2001), pp.282-290.
• Lustiger-Thaler, Henri, Louis Maheu and Pierre Hamel, 'Towards a theory of global collective action and institutions', in Pierre Hammel, Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Sasha Roseneil, Jan Nederveen Pieterse (eds), Globalization and Social Movements, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.

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