The New Transnational Activism

In his latest book, The New Transnational Activism, Sidney Tarrow seeks to
understand the character of those forms of contentious politics which exceed the
boundaries of the contemporary nation state. In a rapidly globalizing world, how
is the nature of political activism changing? Does protest reflect the process of
globalization by itself becoming global? Political phenomena like the movement
for global justice – which has crystallised around events such as the Battle for
Seattle and those that have followed it – might lend support to this view. The
protest organisations and networks appear to be global in span, their targets are the
institutions of global neo-liberalism, including the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund and the G8, and their demands are for global justice. The implication
of this account is that, as the power of states has waned, political power has shifted
up to the global level. And, since power has shifted to this level, so has resistance; in
a globalized world, political protest is also globalized.

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