Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization

Alternatives 23 (1998), 149-173 Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization Cecelia Lynch* There is a developing understanding among some “progressive” con- temporary social movement groups that economic globalization poses the primary obstacle to the fulﬁllment of their goals. This un- derstanding is well placed and overdue. Yet any effective response to globalization is predicated upon the ability of social movements to articulate a meaningful normative, or discursive, challenge. The par- ticular form of contemporary social movements’ inherited interna- tionalist focus, along with both activists’ and theorists’ past rejection of issues and politics deemed too class-based, has resulted in what we might call the discursive demobilization of movements on questions of economic praxis. This article thus seeks to open dialogue about the ability of what currently constitutes the normative challenge to globalization on the part of contemporary movements to reverse this discursive demobilization. “Globalization,” a phenomenon that succeeds the concepts of “modernization” and “interdependence,” now constitutes the touch- stone of any discussion of the contemporary world political economy. At the same time, there is heightened interest in the role of social movements in processes of change in world politics, and conse- quently in what is termed by some “transnational” or “global” civil so- ciety.1 As Stephen Gill points out, economic globalization affects so- ciety, on the group, national, and transnational levels: “[T]here are connections between the processes of economic globalization, and the way the outlook, expectations, and social choices of individuals and groups are being reshaped and reconﬁgured”? Although globalization is much discussed, disparaged, or touted, de- pending on the audience, disagreement remains concerning whether it is highly or marginally significant, new or old, and a phenomenon of *Dept. of Political Science, Northwestern University, Scott Hall, 601 University Place, Evanston, Ill., 60208-1006 149

There is a developing understanding among some "progressive" contemporary social movement groups that economic globalization poses the primary obstacle to the fulfillment of their goals. This understanding is well placed and overdue. Yet any effective response to globalization is predicated upon the ability of social movements to articulate a meaningful normative, or discursive, challenge. The particular form of contemporary social movements' inherited internationalist focus, along with both activists' and theorists' past rejection of issues and politics deemed too class-based, has resulted in what we might call the discursive demobilization of movements on questions of economic praxis. This article thus seeks to open dialogue about the ability of what currently constitutes the normative challenge to globalization on the part of contemporary movements to reverse this discursive demobilization.
"Globalization," a phenomenon that succeeds the concepts of "modernization" and "interdependence," now constitutes the touchstone of any discussion of the contemporary world political economy. At the same time, there is heightened interest in the role of social movements in processes of change in world politics, and consequently in what is termed by some "transnational" or "global" civil society.' As Stephen Gill points out, economic globalization affects society, on the group, national, and transnational levels: "[TI here are connections between the processes of economic globalization, and the way the outlook, expectations, and social choices of individuals and groups are being reshaped and reconfigured."2 Although globalization is much discussed, disparaged, or touted, depending on the audience, disagreement remains concerning whether it is highly or marginally significant, new or old, and a phenomenon of lasting or ephemeral import. Consensus exists, however, on the definitional core of globalization. This consensus is perhaps best expressed by a prominent US'journalist, who has defined globalization as "that loose combination of free-trade agreements, the Internet and the integration of financial markets that is erasing borders and uniting the world into a single, lucrative, but brutally competitive, marketplace."3 Globalization promotes "an agenda of economic liberalization" in trade, investment, and finance. Many believe, for better or worse, that globalization also results in making states increasingly powerless to control their own economies; others charge that states adopt a rhetoric of powerlessness to divest themselves of broader social responsibilities.4 In many ways, of course, the concept of globalization is not a new one. 5 The brutal competition for markets and profits has long divided international society into "winners" and "losers," or, in the current lexicon of some social movement activists, a system of "global apartheid."6 Yet it is arguable that the work of contemporary social movements is currently being affected by global market processes in new ways, and that this fact opens up the potential for movement groups to make decisions regarding their stance vis-5-vis globalization that are capable of having a significant normative impact.
In thinking about the relationship between social movements and processes of globalization, one can make a type of causal claim that "the capitalist social movement,'' which, as Warren Magnussen reminds us, is involved, has generated a widespread reaction to the economic well-being that it promises but fails to deliver.7 This causal claim is often heard regarding, for example, the genesis of right-wing party movements in Europe and militia movements in the United States, and the renaissance of nationalist movements everywhere. One can also claim that, ,regardless of the forces that generate particular social movements, globalization affects their goals, strategies, and meaning for international politics. Indeed, the control over decisionmaking wielded by market and financial power across the globe arguably constitutes the major challenge for the realization of the goals of contemporary social movements of all kinds-whether "progressive," right-wing, militarist, or xenophobic. I emphasize the second type of claim in this article: that contemporary globalization has significant implications for the work and meaning of the environmental, peace, and "rights-based" transnational movements; that is, the "universalistic" or "value-oricntedn movements much analyzed since the late 1970s.8 Focusing on the effects of globalization on these types of social movements limits the analysis largely to contemporary Western-based movements, but it also has unique features that in turn beg questions regarding the relationship between theories of social movements and civil society, and praxis. 1 Thus I first want to describe what social movements are in fact doing to address ,the "problem of globalization" (insofar as they perceive it to be a problem).g Next, I wish to assess the problem as well as potential of a normative challenge to globalization. In order to do this, I compare the constellation of contemporary movements against globalization with that of movement activism on the issue of "peace" and militarism at earlier points in the century. Finally, I wish to make several observations regarding the relationship between theorizing about social movements and civil.society, and the practices of social movements themselves in world, politics. In other words, analyzing the "problem of globalization" :for social -movements begs questions of what, in the,end, social movements are capable of, how we might theorize about it, and the relationship between the construction of theoretical claims itself and the actions and discourses of social movements. I do not pretend to answer the question of whether the challenge of social movements to.globalization can be successful, but do hope to highlight some of the major issues 'that social movements must confront in the process of making such a challenge, and that theorists must confront in the process of analyzing it.

The Problem of ,Globalization for Social Movements
The peace, environmental, and human-rights movements have each come up against processes of globalization in their efforts to achieve their goals. Peace movements (in the West) have been relatively quiescent since 1987, when the intermediate-range nuclear (INF) treaty, soon to be'followed by START 11, was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union. During the past two years or so, peace issues have received occasional bursts of renewed attention, first in 1995 when the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came up for'renewal. at the United Nations, and second when a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) was finally negotiated by that same body.
Debate on both of these treaties has focused on controls on existing stocks of nuclear weapons, especially given the highly charged issue of who-nuclear or nonnuclear power, First World or Third World, East or West, North or South-should bear the brunt of the effects of such restraints on sovereignty. The NPT, for example, has several essential components: controls on the spread of weaponsgrade fissile material and weapons themselves, commitments on the part of nuclear-weapons powers to disarm, and "progress on measures ,designed to halt the arms race and to advance the cause of nuclear and general disarmament."lO Yet the last component was barely given a hearing during the debate on the treaty's renewal. One major reason for this was that, given the political tension between the treaty's first two goals and the fact that many Third World states were willing, in the post-Cold War era, to make their agreement to sign an indefinite treaty contingent upon considerable concessions by nuclearweapons powers, the desire to secure renewal trumped considerations of insuring compliance with all of the treaty's provisions. 'But the fact that renewal hinged on this issue also begs the question of how easy it is to ignore or drop challenges to market prerogatives, even when these markets concern highly sophisticated weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
Any challenge to "market" logic of meeting weapons demand with supplies has been made more difficult by the Clinton administration's change in policy regarding arms sales. The new administration policy, which essentially commodifies weapons, eliminates many of the separate rules by which arms were sold and transferred during the Cold War. This policy, by making explicit a new norm to commodify and hence deregulate arms in the post-Cold. War era, has eroded further, and more seriously, the possibility of challenging the arms trade.11 Today, the major issue regarding constraints on weapons markets concerns the recent tre.aty to ban antipersonnel land mines. The debate surrounding this question is illustrative of the problem of the arms trade for peace movements: land mines are receiving considerable attention because their use has devastated the countryside in increasing numbers of states (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, Somalia, Bosnia-to name a selection) and because they are maiming increasing numbers of civilians, including children. The manifestations of land mines are thus visible (and a potential danger) to any foreign correspondent or CNN reporter. But land mines form only a small part of the arms equation for peace movements. The normative adherence to market forces-i.e., the belief that such forces should not or cannot be effectively challenged-means that social movements concerned with peace must parcel out the issue of the arms trade, addressing it bit by bit rather than head on.
The relationship between forces of globalization and humanrights movements is also problematic. Contemporary globalization has encouraged the creation of bonded labor markets throughout much of the world. But much of the focus of transnational humanrights movements has been on political and civil rights, torture, and genocide. With the decline of the International Labour Organization as an effective voice and the decimation of labor unions in most industrialized societies, strengthened norms of labor rights have fallen by the wayside. Moreover, UN rights conferences and conventions, including the convention on the Rights of the Child promoted by humanitarian NGOs and the series of international women's conferences promoted by women's groups, can both contribute to and distract attention from the ways in which globalization threatens basic labor rights internationally. Where challenges to indentured servitude, slave labor (especially in prostitution) and child labor (especially in the carpet and toy industries) do,exist, they illuminate particular injustices while forgoing the opportunity to challenge the "right" of firms to base investment decisions on the relative cost and malleability of labor rnarkets.12 The environmental movement's relationship and reaction to processes of globalization is both similar and different to those of the peace and human-rights movements. The environmental movement, since its experience in preparing for the Rio conference (UNCED, the UN Conference on the Environment and Development), has moved toward direct conflict with market logic of extraction and production. On the international level, processes of globalization were called into question at Rio. The very notion of "sustainable development," a major outcome of social movement participation in the conference, posed a challenge to market forces, in that it put forth a norm of "fettered development," or development constrained by attention to local needs and measures of environmental protection.13 Overt international recognition of a sustainable development norm represented the .hope for significant expansion of successful local efforts in many parts of the world to brake the growing market control of environmental resources. Yet subsequently, environmental groups have been severely disappointed by the implementation of Agenda 21, pointing out that most of the funds provided to encourage environmentally sound economic policies have been funneled to,multinational conglomerates that have profited from them at the expense of local communities. . Perhaps more seriously, the push for "free" trade and low-wage labor markets has directly affected the unity and work of the environmental movement, especially in North America. The debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) split the movement, resulting in bitter feelings and continued debate. At issue was whether the so-called "side agreements" negotiated as part of NAFTA could provide sufficient environmental and health safeguards to labor in all three countries and to communities, especially along the US-Mexican border where the experience of maquilladoras demonstrated the social and health costs of environmental degradation. Again, the implications of globalization for 'the environmental movement concern in part whether or not the movement acquiesces in parceling its goals. The NAFTA negotiations, including the process of bargaining between well-funded North American environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the US and Mexican governments, succeeded in creating a rift between movement groups on the question of whether or not claims regarding the health of the environment and the impact of environmental degradation on the health of workers could be separated.14 It is possible, of course, that the logic of capital accumulation and unequal distribution always formed the primary obstacle to the realization of movements' goals (of demilitarization, the preservation of ecosystems, and respect for rights regardless of gender, race, religion, income, or social position), but that it is only'with the end of the Cold War .that the negative effects of this logic have been able to take center stage.15 Where social movements have recognized the relationship between market practices and the fulfillment or lack thereof of their own objectives, this recognition has been partial at best. Yet suggestions that the market, capitalism, corporate power, structural adjustment policies of international financial institutions, and various other forms and nomenclatures of globalization hinder goals of peace, human rights, and environmental protection have begun to abound within social-movement and NGO literature, despite the fact that they often remain tangential to other concerns.
Examples of increasing references to globalization on the part of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are easy to find in reports from the NGO fora of the series of UN conferences held "to review international agreements in the run up to the millenium."16 For example, the "women's linkage caucus" formed in preparation for the September 1995 Beijing conference to increase communication among activists from all regions of the world, censured "the market driven global economic paradigm," and advocated "international labor and employment standards that will protect workers in free trade zones with adequate employment, health and safety standards" and "pricing mechanisms, trade policies, fiscal incentives and other policy instruments that positively affect . . . women small producers' decisions about efficient and sustainable use of natural resources."l7 The unofficial women's movement at Beijing also claimed primary responsibility for insuring that provisions citing the negative effects of globalization on the environment and economic well-being, and weaker language regarding its effects on peace, were included in the final document as barriers to improving the condition of women worldwide.18 Other UN 'conferences; including both the UN Social Summit in Copenhagen in March 1995, and Habitat II.(the second UN Conference on Human Settlements) in Istanbul in June 1996, were called explicitly to focus on global increases in poverty and consequent social dislocations.19 The "20/20 compact" proposed at Copenhagen ("a commitment on the part of interested developed and:developing country parkers to allocate, on average, 20 per cent of overseas development assistance and 20 per cent of the national budget, respectively, to basic social programmes")20 was in essence a move to extend the concept of the welfare state to the global level. The result of,the NGO debates on this proposal at Copenhagen, according to one participant, was that, "whether planned or not, one theme emerged almost everywhere, in different forms and language. Many NGOs described the baleful impact of the globalised economy on their communities; there were constant appeals for the reassertion of 'civil society,' by whatever terms."21 Thus there is sporadic evidence that the "problem of.globalization" has taken hold as a common integrating force and foe for contemporary social movements. The most significant move to challenge globalization, however, has emerged in the wake of the NAFTA and subsequent WTO (World Trade Organization) debates among movement groups. A constellation of groups and individuals formed in 1994, the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) , is attempting a frontal attack on globalization.22 According to its literature, its "initial goal . . . was simple: Introduce a new concept: economic globalization as the central factor affecting people's jobs, communities, and the environment."23 The IFG thus has articulated a stance that puts forth an analysis of the "problem" that addresses what is "new" about the contemporary era of globalization, forged links between causes, including overt attempts to organization with labor, and developed (or begun to develop) a normative stance that seeks to negate the power of market ideology and promote an alternative.
.The IFG's analysis of globalization is straightforward, represents considerable research, and is not particularly unusual, though it might be stated more baldly than most academic analyses.24 What is of interest is its explicit connection of global market processes to negative effects for the specific goals of the social movements it claims to represent (i.e., sustainability, rights, democracy, and implicitly, "peace"). In essence, the IFG argues that "the world's corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the industrial revolution. "25 What is "new" about contemporary globalization is the virtual, deregulation of financial flows along with a push for "freer" trade made more severe by the opening up of cheap labor markets in the formerly Communist societies of Eastern Europe, in the highly populated countries of East and South Asia, and in Latin American nations no longer devastated by civil war. Democracy, human rights, the "natural world," and peace, according to this logic, are threatened on a global scale.
The imperative of "structural adjustment" imposed on countries in the South (primarily by the Northern financial sector through the International Monetary Fund) parallels the ever-increasing threat of firms to move production facilities away from countries in the North due to their high labor costs. The result is self-proclaimed helplessness on the part of governments, the prevention of the development of social welfare policies that would guarantee economic and social rights in the South and the dismantling of the social welfare net in the North. An additional result is a continuing threat to environmental resources, as companies push to relocate in areas in which regulations are lax or nonexistent.2"For some,,these effects of contemporary globalization can be traced to the financial and monetary crises of the 1970s, which led to de facto agreement on the part of corporations (supported by governments) to drive down the costs of production by whatever means necessary. The "crises of the ~O S , " then, marked the debut of a normative reorientation of governments away from social welfare guarantees and toward supporting the interests of firms that increasingly operated transnationally.27 The IFG has attempted to transnationalize itself beyond the Northern and Western hemispheres, with partial success. Its membership represents approximately forty organizations: primarily in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but also in South and East Asia, South Africa, and Latin America. Moreover, NAFI'A and the WTO jolted mainstream environmental group members of the IFG such as the Friendscof the Earth and the Sierra Club into making overt attempts to organize with labor in the United Statcs, where the relationship between labor and "progressive'J social movements had been in decline since the early 1970s. Thus the IFG represents the most significant contemporary effort to put forth both a transnational and transclass challenge to economic globalization.
The relationship between environmental groups and organized labor is resulting in a broadening of the environmentalists' concept of "sustainability" to incorporate the notion that living wages and health rights are necessary for creating sustainable working conditions and political communities.28 The IFG's analysis of the problem of globalization' sees environmental protection, the promotion of democracy, and human rights as interconnected, and thus promotes linking the causes of "progressive" social movements with the cause of labor.29 It also continues the focus on "quality of life" issues and internal democratization that formed an essential component of the goals of the "new social movements" of the 19'70s and 1980s. For example, activists decry globalization for reorienting the purpose (and thus content) of education exclusively toward increasing market viability. They oppose "the consensus vision" of investment in education and training "as a means for achieving a high-tech future . . . to survive in competitive world markets," with an alternative conceptualization "not just for a,narrow vision of the economy, but as a tool for quality of life, a citizen's right, an investment in the community." 30 Given these understandings of globalization and the interconnection of progressive causes with labor, social-movement activists in the. IFG are attempting to create a normative stance that provides a discursive alternative to globalization and reverses the normative-power . that the faith in free trade and the fear of losing one's competitive position holds across social strata. This attempt at instituting a normative reversal and creating a new conceptual apparatus to compete with that provided by globalization focuses on terms that have demonstrated considerable discursive power for social movements in the recent past. First, the IFG attempts to delegitimize the current order by emphasizing the loss of control over economies and social welfare, on the part of governments (local, state, regional), peoples, and communities. It highlights the inequities resulting from globalization through frequent use of the term "global apartheid."sl Second, it continues the emphasis on the necessity for "sustainable development" first articulated at the Rio conference, which has become a staple of NGO demands at UN conferences. Although some argue that the term sustainable development has become an overused slogan and a trope for governments, the choice of terminology is important because of its power to suggest a particular normative stance that can go beyond mere sloganeering. The term gZo6aZ apartheid, for example, connotes an international economic system that is unjust by definition, one that is comprised of winners (few in number) and losers (the majority), and in which the rules and practices of the system favor the winners and keep, the losers in a position of subjugation. Sustainable development combines agreement with the modern faith that progress is possible (through "development"), while implying that current developmental practices are short-run and therefore shortsighted, benefit the few at the expense of the many, and must be reoriented.
The IFG is still in the process of debating and defining the contours of its normative alternative(s). Much of the IFG's normative program thus far, however, focuses on notions of "relocalization." Localizing economic control reasserts the centrality of the concept of "sustainable development" by continuing its insistence on smallscale, ' "democratic" decisionmaking regarding the production and distribution of goods, but particular articulations of relocalization also go beyond sustainable development on both the normative and material/policy levels.
One articulation, for example, is the concept of "the new protectionisrn."32 The "key issue," for its authors, "is to put governments at a local, national and regional level back in control of their economies, and to relocalise and rediversify them."33 The new protectionism is, in essence, an "international movement towards relocalised economies." The program thus involves controls on imports, exports, capital, and transnational corporations (including a "site here to sell here" policy), all with the purpose of keeping "trade and aid," as well.as reinvestment, as local as possible. It also promotes resource taxes to pay for costs associated with the transition to localized production. Despite the emphasis on "the aim of allowing [sic] localities to produce as much of their food, goods and services as they can themselves," the new protectionism's authors insist the program is "neither anti-trade nor autarkic": "Its goal is maximum local trade within diversified sustainable local economies, and minimum long-distance trade; local is used here to mean a part of a country, and regional, a geographic grouping of countrics."34 The new protectionism thus promotes the idea that "protectionism" can be a valuable tool when used in the interests of sustainable development on the local level. In part, it is an attempt to rearticulate the goals of Agenda 21 (from Rio) to provide a more direct challenge to the "free trade/free market" idealization of the contemporary global cconomy. But it goes beyond previous claims in favor of local control to emphasize local insularity in ways that can easily be labeled autarkic. In the new protectionist construct, not only should localities be allowed to produce locally, but "we have got to be as self-reliant as is possible locally. Trade should be local. If you can produce a good and service locally. . . , you should. If you can't get it from the country, go to the region. If you can't get it from the region, then and only then go for long-distance trade."35

MilitarizatiodGlobalization
The type of normative/discursive contestation of contemporary social, economic, and political practices advanced by the antiglobalization movement at base provides an example of what social'movements are able to do most effectively in world politics, that is, delegitimize par: ticular discourses and paths of action in order to legitimize alternatives. Yet the content of normative/discursive challenges to contemporary practices is critical both for the ability of a social movement to legitimize its alternatives and for the shaping of responses to the challenge. Comparing contemporary moves to challenge globalization with attempts earlier in the century to delegitimize militarization and put forth alternatives both highlights the importance of normative contestation and points to problematic aspects of social movements' current discourse on globalization.
The primary, and perhaps only, historical precedents for social movements of various kinds banding together transnationally are the peace movements of the turn of the century, the interwar period, the 1960s, and the 1980s. During each of these periods, coalitions made up of transnational feminist, pacifist, "internationalist," ecology (especially after the 1960s, although an ecological sensibility was present in other movements early in the century), and human-rights movements worked in common to place restraints on states' warmaking prerogatives and capacities. Throughout the twentieth century, "peace" activism against war and militarism thus incorporated most other "progressive," ,"value-oriented" social movements under its wings.
Peace activism points to the importance of normative challenges to entrenched political practices. Peace movements have long worked to delegitimize states' capacities for violence and worked to legitimize alternatives lodged in global international organization.36 More recently, peace movements' normative stance from the 1960s through its sharpening in the 1980s was capable both of delegitimizing strategies of defense based on nuclear weapons, as Mary Kaldor, E. P. Thompson, and others have argued eloquently, and of articulating discourses of Ualternative defense."37 The wide disjuncture between the notion of "defense" as uprotection" and nuclear strategies of annihilation virtually invited delegitimization and begged for alternatives, although,even with this inherent lack of credibility, state practices of weapons production and strategy formulation often appeared too entrenched to be overcome. Today, with the former US general in charge of nuclear forces and the former commander of NATO calling for the elimination of existing nuclear arsenals, the notion that war-fighting strategies based on their use could not be called into question seems almost absurd.38 Yet peace movements during the Cold War had to contend with extremely powerful logics in favor of defense-as-annihilation, making their task of normative contestation quite difficult, and their degree of success in carrying out this task notable.
The "anti-globalization movement," in contrast, is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, it is building a capacity to delegitimize the normative power that aspects of globalization hold in the popular and official consciousness (for example, the necessity of being able to compete in the world marketplace). Widespread malaise about nuclear defense existed during the 1970s and 1980s; widespread unease and uncertainty about economic welfare and the destruction of safety nets exists today, providing a foundation for movement efforts.39 Today, as movement groups attempt to put together a collective response, even the architects of globalization are worried about its negative effects, and may take steps to stymie a "losers' backlash." 40 It is, however, unclear if the movement challenging globalization will ever have the breadth of peace movements of the recent past. One major issue involved is the problem of articulating a positive nomenclature to provide an alternative to market capitalism. Earlier in the century, antiwar groups consciously took on the appellation of "peace movement"; but it is unclear what the antiglobalization movement has in common to provide a positive normative foundation. Possibilities are "sustainable development," "local control", and so forth, but local control has normative difficulties, while sustainable development connotes little, explicitly, in the way of connection with "human" rights.
More importantly, however, the normative content of relocalization programs such as the "new protectionism" is problematic. Peace movements, of course, were frequently charged with utopianism and oversimplification, through their advocacy of "solutions" to militarism ranging from unilateral disarmament to multilateral disarmament to regulation and oversight by global international organization. The antiglobalization movement faces normative difficulties that are at least as serious, if not more so. For example, it is one thing to point out the growth of corporate power in generating loss of governmental and individual control in decisions of basic welfare, but quite another to recommend a solution based on a concept of local control that can be criticized as bordering on autarky, despite the protestations of its adherents. Control over decisions of economic well-being are at the heart of the challenge to globalization, as con temporary antiglobalization activists explicitly acknowledge. Nevertheless, an overemphasis on relocalization can easily be dismissed as an antimodern throwback. Its authors recognize the problem, although not directly. Colin Hines, one author of !'the new protectionism," tellingly says the following: When I'm talking, . . . I love to start by saying "protectionism can be good, protectionism can be good, protectionism can be good." Now, there I watch to see who faints, who puts the sign of the cross.
. . . It is so deeply entrenched in . . . most people's psyche, that to protect. . . is somehow bad. But to lay yourself open to the "mod: ern go-go future" ,is somehow good. 41 Hines well understands the power of the normative adherence to the free-market ideal, as well as the widespread worry about losing one's "competitive edge." The notion of the new protectionism, like unilateral disarmament, can thus serve an important function, in that it presents a stark alternative to current practices. While the alternative may appear unrealizable or even utopian, its juxtaposition with contemporary practice reveals the latter to be illogical and destructive (for example, nuclear defense based on either MAD (mutual assured destruction) or war-fighting doctrines-or patently unjust-for example, firms "growing the economy" by relocating production and forcing down wages. But the new protectionism ulti.mately assumes intimate, causal connections between control of well-being, equity among individuals and peoples, and the production and distribution of goods and wealth (i.e., for control to be local, production, investment and trade must also be local) that raise problematic questions for the movement and thus are better disentangled. Supporters of relocalization need to question whether the preac,hing of across-theboard localization not merely oversimplifies the problems of inequality and poverty associated with globalization, but also glosses over them in itk efforts to promote a solution. They also need to revisit more thoroughly the role of state power in staunching and reversing these problems. The issue at stake is whether the contemporary antiglobalization movement will forgo the opportunity to develop the grounds for a sufficiently powerful challenge to globalization's normative headlock.

Social Movements/Civil Society: Problems from the Intersection of Theory and Praxis
* Constructing a normative challenge to globalization raises significant issues regarding the relationship between social movements' activities and theorizing about them. First, if the 1970s constituted a critical takeoff period for contemporary forms of global market and -financial processes, in that it was marked by economic and fiscal crises that led, in turn, to de facto agreement by firms and governments on the necessity of ongoing measures to drive down production costs, and if, in turn, these measures resulted in the beginning of the end for labor solidarity and the welfare state (where it existed), then there is an interesting parallel with the development of social-movement theory. For the late 1970s and early 1980s was precisely the time when social-movement theory (especially the European, "identity" school of theorizing) began a very influential new trend, based on a strong critique of the capacities of the welfare state. Imbued by the notion of "crisis" in and of the welfare state, theorists of "new social movements" focused on bureaucratic and administrative crises, rather than economic ones. State welfare, labor rights, and social safety nets were believed to be well established, institutionalized, and entrenched. The problem, in the eyes of social-movement theorists, was the ossification of bureaucratic modes of operation that led both to inefficiencies and the inability to address "value-oriented" problems of environmental degradation, self-realization and identity (as in the feminist movement), internal (local) democratization, and peace. 42 Social-movement theory accompanied its critique of the prototypical European welfare state with another influential move that distinguished "old," "particularistic" social movements, primarily identified with labor and "class," from "new" movements identified with "universalistic" values and goals-most often those of feminism, peace, and environmentalism. The emphasis on internal forms of decisionmaking and democratization in these movements further, distinguished them from modes of labor organizing, whose goals were seen to be instrumental and externally oriented rather than internally orientcd toward issues of lifestyle, values, and beliefs. The resulting demarcation of "higher-order," universalistic goals and meanings gave rise to the Habermasian notion that in the postwelfare state world, social forces could, somehow, "finish" the Enlightenment project. 43 Thus theorizing about social movements in the 1970s and 1980s mzide a double move-from a critique of capitalism to an interest in the "higher goals" of rights, peace, and democracy, and from a focus on "particularistic" movements (that led to the creation of labor syndicalism and policies of social welfare) to movements motivated by "universalistic" values and objectives.44 Given, the considerable overlap between the intellectual leadership of 'social movements and the intellectuals leading the discussion of social movements, it is a fair question whether the juxtaposition of these theoretical moves, along with the diminishing power of the "old" welfare movements, has abetted the discursive and normative demobilization of social movements over time vis-his the problem of globalization. Social movements' ,discursive demobilization-vis-his globalization is compounded by the lack of knowledge, or common articulation, of against whom or what any challenge to globalization is targeted. The second interesting problem raised by the intersection of theory and praxis concerns the centrality of challenges to sovereignty. Both international-relations theory and social-movement activists assert various forms of the "decline of sovereignty" thesis as increasingly apt in the post-Cold War world.45 It is no longer valid, if it ever was, to speak of state sovereignty in rigid terms, and the erosions of sovereign control occasioned by attention to individual human rights, on one hand, and the practices of multinational corporations, on the other, are very real. Yet the decline-of-sovereignty thesis encourages a stance vis-5-vis the state and the world polity that is problematic for any effective normative challenge to globalization.
Again, a comparison with peace movements is instructive. Transnational peace activism during the twentieth century has been clear in its criticisms of the state. State policies, especially those of great powers and superpowers, encouraged militarization and arms races. Given this militarization, and especially the acquisition of ever more destructive forms of weaponry, the state became increasingly unwilling, if not incapable, of protecting its populace adequately and, hence, of fulfilling one quite powerful interpretation of the "social contract." Social movements working for peace reached consensus on the goal of placing constraints on state power, and encouraging a skeptical attitude toward the state and its literally destructive means of providing "security." Constraints were to be provided on the international level-at a minimum .by arms limitation and verification agreements and at a maximum by alternative notions of defense and peace. For either a minimum or maximum program to take hold, social movements delegitimized rigid conceptualizations of state sovereignty, legitimized the demobilization of the state's coercive capacities, and encouraged guarantees of controls placed on Thus, for transnational social movements and "global civil society," such as it existed, a critique of state tendencies (toward illogical and dangerous arms races and security strategies) and capacities (as inadequate in and of themselves to reverse dangerous trends) became the norm. The much-talked-about decline of state sovereignty still most often marks the objectives of social movements concerned with the environment, peace, and human rights, in that states are asked to relinquish established practices of economic development, weapons testing, and treatment of subjects. The desire to slough off "the grungy skin of modern statist politics" remains strong.46 But where the problem of globalization is concerned, this stance vis-i-vis the state by international mechanisms of oversight.
the state, versus that toward the international polity, is thrown into question. Here again, theory meets praxis in an inadequate formulation of the problem and the means to respond to it. "Progressive" social movements (as well as xenophobic ones) are used to promoting solutions that criticize and transcend the state and its capacities, but a return to the state is in all probability necessary to meet the dislocations and poverty generated by the latest round of globalization. For it is not the United Nations, nor in most cases local communities, that can or will provide the social safety net and guarantees to fair remuneration necessary and adequate to social welfare at the turn of the millenium, especially in the likely event that the world falls short of the new protectionist program of localized trade and investment. Thus contemporary social movements must articulate how a return to the state can be possible in an era of sovereign decline.
As part of this reconceptualization of state power (or, in other words, figuring out what is to be the "moral capacity of the state") ,47 movements must address the growing belief in state powerlessness vis-2-vis global economic forces.
A final problem for any discursive/normative challenge to globalization on the part of contemporary social movements concerns the amalgam of ideologies that traditionally form part of "progressive" social movements.4* In each past instance during the century of transnational and transmovement agreement on the issue of "peace," cooperation was made possible by an ideological coalition between "liberal" and "radical/left" or "critical" movement groups. "Liberal" groups' agenda includes individual rights and humanitarian objectives, often paired with an understanding of equality of opportunity that allows many liberals to promote contentious economic ideals such as free trade. "Critical" groups often but do not necessarily identify themselves explicitly with an egalitarian, left-of-center orientation that is skeptical of the capacity of existing political and economic practices and institutions to provide equality, peace, sustainable economic development, and economic and social rights.
It is the existence of this "lib/lab" coalition, beginning in the nineteenth century, that has given rise 'to the term civil society on both the state and global levels. This ideological mix is reflected in attempts to theorize about civil society, from Hegel through Gramsci to the present. Although the specific contexts they were trying to address differed considerably, both Hegel and Gramsci grappled with the role of class and intelligentsia in constituting agents of action to promote the proper modes and ends of life in the public sphere. But Gramsci, and even Hegel despite his grand synthesis, ultimately "resolved" the issue of wherefore civil society by breaking it up into more or less clearly demarcated lines of purpose and function. For Gramsci, the essential components of civil society, whose function is to integrate the state with everyday life, either form part of the hegemonic bloc or demonstrate a counterhegemonic consciousness. Consciousness, not class, ultimately determines one's ability to free oneself of the dominant ideology, overturn the institutional forms of hegemony, create new associational forms, and thereby act in counterhegemonic terms.49 For Hegel, civil society also plays an integrative, mediating role within and for the state. But the functions of civil society, in Hegel's conceptualization, are best carried out by civil servants, recruited from the bourgeoisie. The working class, in his construct, bears the brunt of inequalities produced by the workings of civil society and the "system of needs," but the associational forms of civil society themselves are inaccessible to workers, and can only mitigate, the economic uncertainties suffered by them in the course of their exposure to the vagaries of economic life.50 Thus, for Gramsci, civil society either integrates liberal ideology or provides a space for critical. consciousness to develop, whereas for Hegel, civil society is based upon quasi-modern liberal associa-, tional forms whose function is to integrate into the state externally, without genuine participation or representation, those whose interests are most likely to be opposed to such integration. Both presuppose contradictions within society that in effect split liberal forms of consciousness from actual or potential critical ones.
Contemporary theorists of civil society, conversely, most often take for granted the permanence of the lib/lab coalition and attempt to theorize on the basis of it. In the West, twentieth-century experience, again most clearly seen in transnational peace activism, gives rise to an unquestioned acceptance of the coalition, and the issue then becomes how to resolve differences in the contextpf "plurality" and democratic institutional forms. The stakes involved have shown up more clearly in the East, and formed an inherent component of the problem for Eastern European dissident revivers of civil society as a political concept.51 Especially after the revolutions of 1989, the problem has become how to reconcile the desire for freedoms on various levels (of access to moneymaking and the market, individual speech, and assembly) with entrenched norms that insure the provision of social welfare. 52 The,attempts of theorists today to come to grips with what "civil society" is and might become represent, in a sense, attempts to understand the possibility of unity between liberal and critical paradigms of governance, notions of economic causality and its effects, and conceptions of moral good. Contemporary debates within and among social movements provide demonstrations of interconnections between paradigms (in rights-based notions of "progress," along with welfare state and labor guarantees) as well as contradictions, seen most vividly in the post-NAFI'A/WTO split among movement groups. Cohen and Arato's use of Habermas to put forth a resolution of the contradictions within civil society is perhaps the most serious contemporary theoretical example of such an attempt to reunify paradigms and overcome contradictions.53 But we might well ask whether such an attempt, theoretical or actual, remains possible given the developing consciousness (as well as material effects) of the "problem of globalization." The eras of peace activism, in which the common foe of social movement groups was raison d'efaf and the "logic" of power politics, masked the contradictions between paradigms. Today's normative contestation of globalization, however, rcveals fissures that are more difficult to bridge.
This criticism of attempts to reunify liberal/critical aspects of civil society differs partially in character from several other contemporary critiques. Richard Falk, for example, recasts the relevant categories of ethical motivation and transformative potential into Umodernn versus "postmodern" forms.54 In other work, he questions whether contemporary liberalism is too "ideologically compact" to accomplish the work of being sufficiently open to either non-Western influences or contemporary criticisms of global economic proccsses.55 R. B. J. Walker criticizes the statist nature of most contemporary conceptualizations of civil society, while simultaneously questioning the assumption that one can or should internationalize any essentially Western (or, in the case of Habermas, German) categories.56 These criticisms all have similarities in that they are dubious of the ability of liberal philosophy and/or economics to provide an adequate basis for meeting contemporary challenges on the global level. But they also point to the constant need for groups critical of the liberal paradigm to broaden their understanding of the bases of critique and alternative possibilities that are grounded in nondominant and/or non-Western social and economic practices.
In a sense, praxis is preceding theory in this domain, as the bourgeois salons of nineteenth-century civil society theorists have already been replaced and complicated by NGOs' unofficial fora at UN conferences, as well as by the increasingly numerous linkages between small, local NGOs working to reverse particular manifestations of "development" and larger, wealthier transnational groups. Activists themselves struggle to cope with the resulting confrontation of practices and beliefs. Instead of salon, some use the metaphor of bazaar to connote the "anarchic diversity" with which they must contend, indicating both the breadth of possibility and the sheer diversity of experience that any attempt to globalize civil society must represent.57 But this confrontation of beliefs and practices also raises the question of whether notions like "sustainable development" can provide a basis for critical reflection and dialogue among activists or whether they easily become tropes that promote the illusion of meaningful action across divides.
This analysis thus suggests the necessity for contemporary social movements to articulate a strategic/normative stance that is clear in its emphasis on the negative role played by market globalization as it seeks to articulate a set of alternatives that is neither romantic nor compromising, and that places questions of labor and livelihood squarely in the center of analysis. The fact that labor and social welfare gains have nowhere been consolidated in any permanent fashion, and that institutions (in the-West) guaranteeing social and economic rights that were once thought to be virtually immutable are now under attack where they have not already disintegrated, demonstrates that there is no progressive "order" of goals to be attained by social movements and that skepticism regarding any detachment (in theory or praxis) among objectives is warranted. Yet the discursive and normative content of such a stance is extremely important. The discourse of economic liberalism (and its contemporary globalization variant) is remarkable for its ability to appear both anachronistic, as Carr thought it had already become half a century ago, and irreversible, as contemporary journalists almost daily tell us it is.58 But its ability to hang on will in part be determined by the presence or lack of challenges that articulate meaningful alternatives that are able to chip away at its still considerable power.  6. On the term global aj,artlreid as used by contemporary activists, see John Cavanagh, 'The Crisis of Globalization," comments at the "Teach-In on Globalization," New York City, Nov. 1995. This usage currently appears to connote primarily economic segregation, both within and among societies and states. The term itself, however, is a much older one, referring originally to the relationship between global racial relations and economic advantage. See Gernot Kohler, "Global Apartheid," Alternatives 4, no. 2 (1978), and Kohler, "The Three Meanings of Global Apartheid: Empirical, Normative, and Existential," Alternatives 20, no. 3 (1995). 7. Magnusson argues that capitalism's power is rarely understood as the effect of a social movement, although the evidence easily supports such an understanding.

Notes
Capitalism has its ideology, its exponents, its true believers. It rouses millions of people in its support, generates hundreds of political parties, and inspires the most incredible personal sacrifices. It is a way of life that attracts fierce loyalty, and appears to offer people a means of solving all their problems. . . . In terms of sustained activity, it is hard to think of anything that rivals this effort. Here there is a problem, although an unavoidable one, of using the term movements to denote collective entities, each made up in reality of groups and individuals having many differences between them. Thus I am talking about each movement in somewhat oversimplified terms. Also, I wish to note that I am not attempting to provide an "objective" or single understanding of globalization, which has many facets and interpretations. Rather, my purpose in the following section is to give an outline of particular social mpvements' understanding and articulation of the "problem" and potential "responses" to it. There are, in fact, interesting debates within movement groups themselves regarding what constitutes an objective analysis of globalization. 14. Activists at recent NGO conferences have bee; quite frank about this split. Comments at plenary session of International Forum on Globalization's "Teach-In," New York City, Nov. 10, 1995; comments by Hilary French, Worldwatch Institute, "We the Peoples" Conference, San Francisco, June 1995. 15. If this is the case, then the major opponent of "progressive" social movements has always been capitalism pure and simple, whether conceptualized as "structure," process, or social movement. My own perspective is that capitalism and its variants in different historical periods have indeed constituted on a consistent basis "a" primary foe for the realization of goals of social justice, although these variants have combined with other "movements" or sets of practices such as militarism in ways that produced internal contradictions and prevent us from assigning them rigid labels or qualities of immutability.
16. T h e World Summit for Social Development," Oxfam, UK and Ireland, undated. These conferences include the World Summit for Children (1990), the Earth Summit (1992), the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the World Summit for Social Development (1995), the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), and Habitat I1 (1996). 17. Women's Linkage Caucus Advocacy Priorities for the Draft Platform for Action, March 20, 1995, p. 3. 18. The Platform for Action reaffirms the importance of implementing the environmental standards of Agenda 21 and admits that "the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating poverty and imbalances." Women's Environment and Development Organization, "A Brief Analysis of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action," New York, 1995. 19. "The Summit. . . is the centrepiece in a series of United Nations gatherings to address pervasive threats to humankind. It is aimed at mounting a global attack on poverty, unemployment and social disintegration." "Consensus Growing on Social Summit," press release, United Nations DPI/1577/Rev.3, September 13, 1994; "The grave deterioration of living conditions the world over has prompted governments [sic] to call upon the United Nations to hold the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II)," "The City Summit" Isfanbul, 3-14 June, 1996, Habitat New York Office, United Nations, conference brochure.

20.
T h e World Summit for Social Development," note 16. 21. Mike Salvaris, "United Nations Copenhagen Social Summit," Forum, the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, no. 3, August 1995. Oxfam (UK and Ireland) noted in its preparatory materials that "any new institutional framework needs to address the fact that the globalisation of the economy has shifted the burden of protecting people's rights away from national governments and towards private actors, such as transnational organisations." T h e World Summit for Social Development," note 16.

22.
The International Forum on Globalization is a new alliance created by sixty activists, scholars, economists, researchers, and writers to stimulate new chinking, joint activity, and public education in response to the rapidly emerging economic and political arrangement called the global economy. . . . The International Forum on Globalization advocates equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable economics. It is formed in response to the present worldwide drive toward a globalized economic system dominated by supranational corporate trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national governments.