ABSTRACT
Like the world-system itself, movements aiming at its transformation are deeply diverse. People come to movements from an array of life circumstances, persuaded by varied diagnoses of injustice, oppression, and suffering, and develop differing ensembles of practices to make things better. Movements challenge oppression on varied geographic scales from the local to the global. Some identify a specific axis of domination as the center of their concerns. Some identify domination in multiple, overlapping forms that all need to be overcome, but may differ in priorities. As Wallerstein (2014) suggests, they may differ over whether to embrace all struggles as equal in significance and urgency or to see some as more central, or more pressing, or more vulnerable to effective challenge right now, leaving other questions to be tackled later or by someone else. This book is especially concerned with movements that intend to challenge the
structures and processes of early 21st century globalized capitalism in a fundamental way, but one of the things these chapters make clear collectively is that movements that see themselves as antisystemic are in continual, complex dialogue with movements that have other definitions of injustices to be contested, that have their own priorities, that have a different sense of the geographic scale for effective action, or that have found that even border-crossing, antisystemic movements are inadequately attentive to certain forms of injustice, hierarchy, and diversity. This section’s three chapters all explore movements that span one major source
of difference and hierarchy by organizing across the boundaries of national states. The states, as Wallerstein has argued, have been a key institution supporting the entire trans-state structure. Differences in wealth and power among those states have been a centuries-old challenge to effective common action across state boundaries. To the extent that political struggles are contained within those states,
significant distributional or cultural issues can lead to political struggles over who holds power nationally that do not address the inequalities embedded within the whole, transnational system. Indeed, struggles about the rights of citizens in particular states that were opened up in a big way by the Age of Revolution that began at the end of the 18th century may exacerbate the differences between citizens of those separate states. Collective struggles organized on behalf of one national identity against those held to be different, very importantly including inter-state warfare, may mean that significant principles of domination escape the anger of the oppressed. Small wonder, as Wallerstein (2014) reminds us, that 19th century activists saw “social movements” as in serious competition with “national movements.” The late 20th century growth in transnational movements that address global
inequalities (Smith and Wiest 2012) was therefore a significant development in world politics, perhaps a landmark. Each of this section’s chapters shows us a part of the recent transnational movement scene in which activists from differing national geographies converge on common projects. Or try to. But each chapter also demonstrates that sites of transnational organizing have confronted their own issues of diversity. Manisha Desai’s chapter shows how sidelining the concerns of women’s
movements within sites of World Social Forum activism has been playing out in what she calls a gendered geography. Dominant players within global justice activism address the global system without incorporating feminist critiques into their own analyses of that system. It is left to women activists and their organizations to address those concerns by themselves. So women’s movements are both present and marginalized, resulting in a gendered division of activist intellectual labor. Strikingly, she suggests that the very conference from which this book emerged exemplified the same traits: papers addressing feminist concerns were the contributions of women, not of everyone. Desai’s analysis of how this has come about is especially challenging. To some
extent, she proposes, the limited clout of global feminism within global justice activism is a consequence of the great role of NGOs as funding sources for transnational organizing. These NGOs have their own approach to categorizing issues, something that tends to separate movement sectors from one another. Here, her chapter converges with that of Smith and Kutz-Flamenbaum on the role played by powerful institutions in sponsoring international conferences. So movement sectors with good NGO connections are in a stronger position than those without, a mechanism for the reproduction of global hierarchy within the world of challenging movements. But the really provocative part of Desai’s argument is her contention that these
external sources that structure movement action are joined by the apparent inability of activists to transcend the Wallersteinian dilemma. Welcoming women’s movements as subsidiary allies is nothing new. There is a very long history of gender trouble within very radical movements and a long history as
well of accepting women as participants in a joint struggle for social justice without incorporating feminist critiques into the overall program. Those critiques may be treated as a matter reserved for women. Here is a Spanish anarchist woman during that country’s Civil War:
Revolutionary women … must fight for their external freedom. In this struggle, men with the same ideals are their allies in an identical cause. But women also have to fight for their inner freedom, which men have enjoyed for centuries. And in this struggle, women are on their own.
