Globalisation: New Global Non-State Actors and New Social Movements

Question 1

Who is Civil Society most associated with?

Answer 1

Often associated with Immanuel Kant and Antonio Gramsci (and Hobbes and Locke discussed it more generally as what is meant by civilised society)

Question 2

What is Civil Society?

Answer 2

- The realm of civil engagement above
  the private and below the state
- Only possible in and one of the
  characteristisc of democracy
    - Non-democracies restrict or make
      impossible the existence of civil
      society (China)

Question 3

What forms can civil society take?

Answer 3

• Association
• Identity Formation
• Activism
• Lobbying
• Interest Groups
• Excluded groups
• Protests and Movements
• Community Development
• Voluntary Sector
• Political Violence?
• Proximity to government?

Question 4

What is meant by civil society in the global context?

Answer 4

NGO’s charities, aid and humanitarian groups and their links with self organising associational groups

Question 5

What is the history of global civil society organisations?

Answer 5

• Have emerged since the 1970s
• Made possible by the globalisation of
  communication and in response to what
  the globalisation of communication
  makes visible (poverty, exploitation,
  repression, suffering)
• They success led to accreditation and
  recognition by International Bodies
  from the 1990s
• A portion of unilateral and
  multilateral development funding is
  dispersed through these organisations

Question 6

What is globalisation?

Answer 6

The process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world increasingly have effects on people and societies far away

Question 7

What is the Standard Policy Approach to globalisation?

Answer 7

• Interdependence
• Connectedness
• “Global Village”
• Inherently Democratising
• A fact of modern life that need to be
  made to “work”
• Inevitable

Question 8

What is the academic debate concerning globalisation?

Answer 8

- Globalisation as a real material
  historical process
- Globlisations as a hegemonic project
- Different schools of thought
  (Globalist, Transformationalist,
  Critical, Sceptical )
- Key conceptual points in the debate:
  History (when do we start story),
  Democracy, Capital, Imperialism and
  Power (in relation to)
- Cuts across all disciplines in the
  social sciences

Question 9

What are the dimensions of the schools of thought regarding globalisation?

Answer 9

• Globalist vs Skeptic

- Communitarian vs Cosmopolitan

Question 10

What are the schools of though regarding globalisation?

Answer 10

• Transformationalists
• Critical Globalists
• Statists
• Glocalists

Question 11

Who are Transformationalists?

Answer 11

• Globalists and Cosmopolitan
• Liberal
• Enthusiastic about progressive political change and democratisation,
• Emphasis on Global Civil Societ

Question 12

Who are Critical Globalists?

Answer 12

• Globalists and Communitarian
• Anti/alter-globlisation activists
• Emphasis on exploitation & inequality
• Political economy and capitalism

Question 13

Who are Statists?

Answer 13

• Skeptic and Communitarian
• The state is still the only game in town
• Classical Marxists
• Realist IR

Question 14

Who are Glocalists?

Answer 14

• Skeptic and Cosmopolitan
• Liberal
• Emphasis on hybridity
• Assumption of inevitability
• “post modern” all boundaries blurred

Question 15

What is cosmopolitanism?

Answer 15

Orientation toward the universal, the plural and the democratic

Question 16

What is communitarian?

Answer 16

Orientation towards the communal, the specific

Question 17

What is globalisation the globalisation of?

Answer 17

• Material conditions
• Capital and the market
• Relations or “Flows”
• Forms of governance & institutions
• New types of political actors, and
  new transferred political
  configuration
• The Built Environment
  
  • Everything looks the same
• Culture, identity, worldview
  (Cosmopolitan or Communitarian?)

Question 18

What are the opposing views of globalisation?

Answer 18

• Progressive and liberating
  
  • Greater human connectedness,
    appreciation of difference,
    spread of human rights,
    democracy, health care,
    education, living standards
    globally
• Exploitative
  
  • Uneven spread of capitalist
    relations in which some people
    are winners and some losers,
    homogenisation of culture, a
    hegemony of capitalist class
    interests and cultural imperialism

Question 19

What is the difference between communication and mediation?

Answer 19

• Communication
  
  • Form
  • The material means, such as
    telegraph cable, clay or
    parchment, fibre optic
• Mediation
  
  • Content
  • All the different forms by which
    messages, meaning and the
    symbolic order are mediated to an
    audience

Question 20

What has the impact of the communications revolution been?

Answer 20

• Increase co-operation and capacity
• Unmediated knowledge leading to
  progressive political action, further
  democratisation
• New forms of democracy, new forms of
  citizenship that break down
  communitarian boundaries

Question 21

What do information telecommunications change?

Answer 21

• New modes of governance
  
  • Flexible, responsive, transparent
    (potentially)
• Political organisation
  
  • New types of mobilisation possible
• Warfare
  
  • A revolution in Military Affairs
    (RMA), asymmetric warfare,
    insurgencies
• Technologies of Surveillance
  
  • Big data, Identity cards, face
    recognition

Question 22

Describe the network as a non-state actor?

Answer 22

- The Network as a form of politics,
  different from the state
- Networks have particular
  organisational properties
    - Flexible
    - Sometimes self organising
    - Adaptive
    - Sometimes non-hierarchical or
      leaderless

Question 23

What non-state actors have risen out of the communication revolution?

Answer 23

• Network Society
• Global insitutions
• MNC’s
• Hyper-empowered individuals
• Global Civil Society
• Insurgent groups
• New Social Movements

Question 24

What is the argument concerning hyper-empowered individuals?

Answer 24

• Celebritization of politics
• Praise and criticism
  
  • Otherwise non politically engaged
    people know Julian Assange or
    Edward Snowden
  • Why should Bono get access?