ABSTRACT
In this book, I have argued for a re-conceptualization of global civil society which, through the dialectics of concept and reality, comes to terms with the deep-rooted challenges invoked by global transformation. The four principal strands of this argument rest on a sequence of chapters focusing on alterglobalization, contesting global governance, the World Social Forum (WSF) and the World People’s Conference on Climate Change (WPCCC), each of which demonstrates how contemporary conceptual challenges relate to global civil society and transversal hegemony. In the case of the World Social Forum, for example, I combined critical literature evaluation and observer participation at the Nairobi WSF in 2007 to point towards the conceptual neglect of global civil society as scholars, activists and its varied constituents move between rejecting its conceptual usefulness and celebrating its instrumental, transformative and emancipative potential. Most importantly, these studies draw attention to the making of global civil society by scholars, policy makers, officials and activists through their definitions, analogies, metaphors, images and conceptualizations. These studies also situate global civil society in concrete, substantive locations at the WSF and WPCCC which are visualized as terrains from which participants engage in various modes of social relations in and towards the global political economy. This disrupts the dual characterization of hegemony which automatically centres hegemony ‘on a logic of replication and passive revolution’ such as associated with the World Economic Forum, and counter-hegemony ‘on a logic of prefiguration and transformation’ such as associated with the World Social Forum (Carroll 2007: 36). I highlight the continual negotiation and renegotiation of the boundaries, interactions and interstices within ‘transversal’ hegemony at the World Social Forum so that contestation is not reified to predominant logics of prefiguration and transformation. The dialectical nexus between concept and reality, in turn, reconfigures contemporary conceptualizations of global civil society while drawing on critical Global Political Economy and more fully integrating insights from, amongst others, Gramsci (1971), Cox (1999, 2002), Thompson (1963, 1978) and Drainville (2004, 2012). The dialectical nexus potentially enables critical re-conceptualizations of civil society and hegemony and responds to the changing realities under contestation in the global political
economy. In this final chapter, I will briefly summarize and indicate the main contributions of this study on global civil society and transversal hegemony. Reluctance to conceptualize Gramscian civil society more fully and extend
its application in Global Political Economy can partly be attributed to the inconsistent and varying nature of references to civil society in the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971). An early and formative contribution by Germain and Kenny (1998) which disputed the possibility of ‘internationalizing’ civil society has left its imprint on the development of Gramscian GPE. A conceptual analysis of the history of civil society in Chapter 3 found that many applications downplay central insights on its position as a political and ideological realm. Gramsci’s civil society, for example, takes on a ‘prophetic quality’ as the antithesis to the despotic communist state. Reduced to a sphere of ‘unwilled action’ (Pearce 1997), this weak attribution of agency to Gramscian civil society continues to evade the realm of politics in favour of a ‘third sector’ position in contradistinction to the state and market. Further applications, drawing on Cox (1999) and Gill (2008), more specifically underline its dual role in stabilizing and reproducing existing social orders and as a potential agent of transformation. The dialectics of concept and reality (Cox 1999), in its application to the dialectical nexus proposed by Gramsci (1971) and to the conceptualization of global civil society in this book, seeks to draw on neo-Gramscian ‘sensitivity to the importance of morals, values and ideas … by elevating consciousness and the formation of subjectivity to the status of a major analytical concern’ (Kenny and Germain 2005: 7). However, it also seeks to extend our contemporary understanding of global civil society as it engages in creative modes of social relation in and towards the global political economy. There is, then, a lacuna in critical Gramscian approaches to resistance in
Global Political Economy-civil society and hegemony have thus far been poorly adjusted to the changing political realities of change and contestation in the global political economy-but this does not preclude the potential of further conceptual inquiry. The critical political economy of resistance in this book draws on the analytical potential of civil society and hegemony to narrow the gap between the ‘normative promise’ of studies on contestation and the ‘empirical realities’ experienced by civil society on the terrain of the global political economy (cf. Helleiner 2001). Drawing on wider developments in social science, the isolation of some key features of critical globalization studies (Mittelman 2005) and innovations in international studies (Gill and Mittelman 1997)—including reflexivity, rigorous historical thinking, decentring, crossovers and strategic transformations-is partly instructive. These enable a more effective analysis of the shortcomings and merits of conceptualizations of global civil society, and reflection on Gramscian usages of the term and avenues for its wider usefulness beyond the realm of prophecy or interregnum. Absolute historicism, additionally, returns to the Gramscian text and time to reconsider the dialectical nexus in an era of globalization and contestation within which global civil society is deeply embedded. This signals a shift from
an almost exclusive focus on elite-driven hegemony and counter-hegemony ‘from below’, to consideration of key processes involved in the negotiation and renegotiation of a transversal interpretation of hegemony. This leads me to take up the post-structural and wider critical theoretical concern with the language of binaries and dissatisfaction with exemplars such as globalization/ contestation and hegemony/counter-hegemony. My approach differs in consolidating the potential of the dialectical nexus to locate more sufficiently the substantive materiality of modes of social relation in the global political economy. Recognizing the evident global complexity of overlapping and coinciding connections and layered temporalities and levels of relations of force does not serve merely to add up to contrasting movements of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Rather, it points to real existing social forces engaging in modes of social relation in and towards the global political economy that are not understood apart from intervening stories, myths, analogies, transcripts, images and concepts. An accumulation of meanings is implicit in conceptualizations of global
civil society-discursive, literary, academic, policy oriented-which reflect the subjective interests of those engaged in its construction. The presentation of contrasting academic and, in some cases, scholar activist conceptualizations of global civil society in this book gives some insight into the resulting, conflict-ridden, conceptual terrain occupied by the concept as it is put to a range of instrumental and normative uses. Practices of definition and usage, which might be extended to include the above-mentioned stories, myths, analogies, transcripts and images, contribute to conceptualizations of global civil society and condition possibilities of thought, action and political imagination (cf. Baker 2002b). From a scholarly or academic viewpoint, that to which I am closest, this affirms that ‘we have no monopoly on “truth” creation’, but should, nonetheless, continue to ask ‘ourselves honest questions about our role as knowledge constructors’ (Amoore et al. 2000: 67). The ambiguities of knowledge construction and clear tensions between empirical reality and academic intent were most clear in Chapter 4 on global governance and constituting global civil society. Civic-consensual and unitary modes of relation, borrowing from Drainville (2004, 2012), give further definition and clarity to processes of knowledge construction in studies on contesting global governance and further underline how knowledge and interests are constitutive of global civil society. Comparable reflections on the socio-political formation and maintenance of ‘common sense’ as a political arena of struggle have been put forward to illustrate more clearly the boundaries of thought and action (cf. Rupert 2003; Smith 1996). The wider applicability of these concerns is reflected in transdisciplinary debates on the Anglo-American construction of knowledge in varied disciplines from Political Geography (e.g. Power 2010), Sociology (e.g. Connell 2007), to International Relations (e.g. Bilgin 2008). Just as civil society is delineated, categorized and circumscribed within
formal institutions of global governance, it is also drawn as a transformative and emancipative force through neo-Polanyian optimism. Attributing to
global civil society an inherently but also overtly normative role reflects an alternative avenue in the history of the concept that diverts somewhat from more functional ‘third sector’ formulations and emphasizes, instead, the beneficial contributions it can make towards constructing a new world order. However, particularly in the case of the World Social Forum, neo-Polanyian optimism gives insufficient attention to the challenges within modes of contestation such as co-option, hierarchy, inequality, power and strategy. It aligns too easily with representations of spontaneous, axiomatic and often simplified resistance forms and fails to respond to calls for further conceptual clarity, theoretical development and relation to more tangible or substantial aspects of contestation. It highlights collectivity and solidarity but excludes sufficient attention to issues of difference, inequality and fragmentation within global civil society or its constituents. This is not to dispute the many positive insights that Polanyi (1944) offers, but rather to suggest that resistance modes, structures and processes might be considered central rather than ancillary. Thus, the ‘analytical triangle’ of state, market and civil society is linked to ‘our ability to reconstruct, or create, social solidarity, trust and political legitimacy’ (Devetak and Higgott 1999: 490). From this point of view, focusing on global civil society facilitates a
broader analysis of hegemony and contestation in the global political economy than global social movements, critical social movements, or the post-modern prince alone. A key benefit of adopting the concept of global civil society is reflected in the broad nature of the term and its capacity to encompass a range of perspectives, actors and processes wherein the nexus between co-option and (re)negotiation might be more fully understood. This brought the focus, in this book, to the interaction between ‘global social movements’, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations and international organizations, and to the similarly broad constituents of global civil society at the World Social Forum and World People’s Conference on Climate Change. Adopting the concept of global civil society in these disparate contexts drew together a range of competing perspectives and ideas and in doing so facilitated a greater understanding of, for example, processes of trasformismo and cooption. Such processes are clarified where global civil society engages in a variety of modes of social relation, from unitary to civic-consensual, in and towards the global political economy. Emphasizing global social relations through examining modes of social
relations engages in a more critical conceptualization of global civil society which perturbs the certainty that counter-hegemony will spontaneously produce an alternative hegemonic model. Thus, representations of the World Social Forum as an articulation of resistance by global civil society does not assure the position of global civil society as an agent for change or assure its capacity to construct or constitute an alternative to neoliberal globalization (see also Worth 2013). Rather, the WSF plays an ambiguous role in contesting globalization. It has an uncertain relationship with both the state and economy, and remains stratified in terms of objectives and composition.
These challenges have manifested themselves through the WSF International Council debates, the unresolved issues of sponsorship and funding, and recent proposals for political programmes to guide the actions of the forum. As demonstrated throughout this book, ‘all good things put together do not necessarily add up to [hegemony because] there is no preordained outcome to the politics of hegemony’ (Nederveen Pieterse 2001: 78). Thus, the space/ movement debate gives expression to trasformismo or to the assimilation of counter-hegemony into dominant conservative or left-oriented objectives, which consequently impacts on emerging forms of contestation. Reference to modes of social relation underlines the need to unsettle assumptions on global civil society and hegemony so that the sum of the varied parts of the WSF cannot be considered to add up to a counter-hegemonic whole. The challenges that are associated with approaching contestation through
conceptualizing global civil society must be clearly acknowledged in a book such as this that argues for continued discussion and re-conceptualization in the context of the dialectical nexus. Some of these challenges relate to delimiting conceptualizations of global civil society which automatically confer it with democratic, transformative, non-state and non-commercial properties. The consequent ‘common sense’ attributes uncritical and unconscious perceptions and understandings to global civil society and lacks adequate conceptualization. In summary, three main avenues of existing analysis can be delineated: a broad convergence in supporting the transformative capacity of global civil society; other more functional and procedural analyses which emphasize the instrumental usages of global civil society; and lastly, analyses that largely dispute the analytical usefulness of global civil society. The task of a critical perspective on global civil society, in this book, has been to navigate between exaggerated voluntarist and overestimated mechanical accounts while avoiding the shortcomings of both (cf. Gramsci 1971: 178). I situate this account within calls for an historicist turn and new International
Political Economy (NIPE) (Amoore et al. 2000; Gills 2000, 2001; Murphy and Tooze 1991), but it is also located within a more prevalent and intensifying critique of the contemporary world order and recognition that while the vocabulary with which to understand continuity and change is proliferating, more needs to be done to capture the dialectical nexus between concept and reality. Partly, this can be achieved through more open consideration of the contributions of other perspectives including poststructuralism and disciplines across the social sciences, while retaining a critical disposition and effectively building on concepts like civil society and hegemony. Thus, a re-conceptualized global civil society is deeply embedded in the economy and society while it is mediated by vying configurations of power. Its ‘embeddedness’ denotes spatial attributes to global civil society as it moves within the politics of space which threatens to ‘grid’ its ambiguities. Placing or locating contestation in concrete spaces such as in global civil society and in the World Social Forum enables an examination of limitations and constraints implicit in processes of global restructuring. In addition,
evaluating the WSF through a critical conceptualization of global civil society underlines the tenacity of relations of power, inequality and competition. This does not indicate that the focus of analysis is on materiality at the expense of conceptualization. Rather, it is undertaken with a commitment to reflexivity that, broadly explained, combines three dimensions of ‘relational thinking’:
