ABSTRACT
Global civil society is a ‘syndrome’ of processes and activities which have multiple origins and multiple dynamics, some of them more conjunctural than deep-seated. Together, these forces ensure that global civil society is not a single, unified domain, and that it will not be turned into something that resembles a combined factory, warehouse and shopping mall retailing consumer products on a global scale – let’s say, a version of Disney’s Iťs a Small World After All or Naomi Klein’s (2000) ‘international rule of the brands’. Global civil society is not simply reducible to the logic of commodity production and exchange, which helps to explain both its semantic promiscuity and its normative appeal to an astonishing variety of conflicting social interests, ranging from groups clustered around the World Bank to broad-minded Muslims defending their faith and radical ecological groups pressing for sustainable development.
