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A call for papers on corporate responsibility is presented.

This paper seeks an articulation between Marxist and anarchist approaches to representation in social movements. A generalised dismissal of representational politics leaves power with too many places to hide and sets unnecessary limits to political imagination. Prefigurative politics should not exclude political representation, as the exclusion can imply a class bias. The paper explores two different paths beyond strict assumptions of horizontality. Using mostly Latin American examples, a distinction is made between more classical state-centric paths and less theorised alternatives of non-state representation. Finally, the article approaches global democratisation from a non-state-centric perspective, tentatively called transnational libertarian socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the 'responsibility to protect' (RtoP) from a moral cosmopolitan perspective. It argues, first, that RtoP postulates a remedial responsibility on the part of those nations that have the means and capacity to effectively protect individuals against vulnerability and to provide for the means of human security. Second, the paper explains that human security implies access to human development, including access to social and economic rights. Finally, it argues that developed nations can discharge their remedial responsibilities towards those who lack social and economic rights by adopting just immigration regimes, part of which can be based on temporary foreign labour programs that allow individuals access to the economic opportunities, thus providing them with means to establish economic security. The paper thus argues for an expansion of the interpretation of RtoP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does income inequality increase political backlash against European and global integration? This paper reports research suggesting that it can. The article analyses party opposition to and support for trade openness, European Union integration and general internationalism of political party platforms in advanced industrial democracies between 1960 and 2008. It finds that inequality tends to increase anti-globalization positions of parties, net of pro-globalization positions, an effect that does not significantly differ across party families or levels of actual globalization. This effect, however, does depend on, and is diminished by, generous redistributive policies. These findings clarify socio-economic conditions underlying the backlash against political and economic globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article locates an understanding of the Shell to Sea social movement (mobilised in response to the building of an onshore pipeline dispute in County Mayo) within a wider narrative which incorporates understandings of civil society containing a diverse set of 'epic conflicts' such as the antiglobalisation movement and neo-liberalism or phantasmagoric mythic zones and magic realism. In so doing, it puts forward a deeper understanding of the narrative of `the civil society'; one which has its roots in the Aristotelian civics which are integral to the ars vitae or art of living the 'Good Life'. The article sets out a framework for understanding the Shell to Sea dispute as one where the civil society of a local rural community is targeted by the planners and shapers of a globalised type of risk-based post-modernity, causing a resistance which is embedded in the basis of civility which state, industry and society are meant to embrace and devise opportunities for, rather than having such communities targeted and undermined. The paper approaches these issues using a range of communications theories, including Habermas, narrative theory and interpretation and analysis, and identifies some of the societal strains surrounding the issue of community in (post) modern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I look at globalization in terms of the metaphysical event of being, arguing that in order to discuss the issue of globalization the ontological conditions of possibility for its historical appearance need to be prioritized. Using the philosophy of Martin Heidegger allows us to see how globalization belongs to the modern calculable understanding of space, and therefore to the particular metaphysical event of technological existence. Through an acknowledgment of the metaphysics of gigantic growth and totalitarian magnitude, globalization is seen as a planetary consummation of the kind of technological disclosure of being. This is a period in which the entire globe stands at the service of complete and manipulative calculability. In this paper I argue that in globalization the world is ontologically understood as a picture in which everything becomes gathered together as a reserve to be ordered and challenged by anthropocentric will and value-creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent emergence of global justice networks (GJNs) to counter neoliberal globalization has been an important political and geographical phenomenon. Much has been written about the emergence of a new global civil society, centred upon a new 'network' ontology. In engaging with these debates in this paper, our purpose is to develop a more critical spatial perspective. We argue that issues of space and place are critical in understanding the operation of GJNs and their potential to contribute to an alternative global politics. Spatially, the global linkages of GJNs can be seen as creating cultural and spatial configurations that connect places with each other in opposition to neoliberalism. However, the individual movements that comprise networks, while not necessarily place-restricted, remain heavily territorialized in their struggles. Additionally, networks evolve unevenly over space. Some groups and actors within them are able to develop extensive translocal connections and associations whereas others remain relatively more localized. Potential conflicts arise from such complex geographies, which only become evident through analysing the operation and evolution of different networks. This leads us to focus not solely on the transnational character of networks but also upon how the global is enacted through the localized practices of movements within them, in considering the potential for GJNs to form more sustainable political alternatives to neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reflexive ethnography of a set of queer autonomous spaces created in London over the last five years. It traces the political genealogies of a recent strand of radical queer activism that is broadly aligned with the anarchist and anticapitalist wings of the global justice movement. In line with the usage of the term 'queer' by these activists themselves, to refer to a variety of states of being that challenge both homonormativity and heteronormativity, this paper utilises a definition of 'queer' that moves beyond the ways in which it has been mobilised by many sexual geographers. The ethnography poses questions about the 'queer' in 'queer geography' and what it means to be an 'activist'. This work considers the importance (as well as the limits) of these autonomous queer spaces. It suggests that the process of collective experimentation to build autonomous queer spaces is ultimately more transformative and empowering than the resulting structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to reopen a discussion about the legacy of the English labor economists. In the past they have been essentially seen as utopian radicals who predated Marx in certain respects but were superseded by his mature analysis. The authors claim that it is important to re-examine the validity of this position and suggest that in many respects the English labor economists have been misrepresented. Contemporary conditions also make this an important issue because both social democrats and anti-state radicals are now examining the market-based and voluntarist associational strategies first put forward by Hodgskin, Thompson, and Bray. The article also examines their emphasis on issues of the role of intellectual labor and collective self-help and suggests that this might help us understand why worker associations have found it difficult to compete in the market economy. The article ends with a call for a much wider and sustained research interest into the contemporary global cooperative movement, which the paper claims is a modern heir to the English labor economists' ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies three defining features of globalisation that have been habitually misrepresented by the anti-globalisation movement. First, that globalisation entails a universal shift towards economic liberalisatlon, rather than a selective liberalisation with particular disadvantage to the Third World. The movement also bewails the erosion of traditional economic functions in Northern governments, thus diminishing their agency in globalisation and largely absolving them of responsibility for it. Instead, the focus of protest should shift from international financial institutions (IFIS) to the state-IFI interface. Finally, the movement fails to engage with the ever-changing nature of capitalism's structural search for expanding profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994 , 2016) and Held et al. (1999). Our particular focus is on the 'nation-state', notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a responder to or a promoter of global sporting culture. Data was collected from both documentary analysis and semi - structured interviews involving a total of twenty key stakeholders. Findings reveal that some of China's strategies prove that it is a responder to the Olympic Movement. Other strategies demonstrate that China, as the promoter of the GWM, has its own agenda to influence the international sporting realm. More specifically, the state is indeed affected by globalization which can also be managed by the state. This is because, to some extent, while China accepted the Olympic value, it has also transformed a part of its own traditional culture (wushu) and exported it via the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) as the façade. Conceptually, the duality of China's strategies in the case of GWM implies the emergence of reverse globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Commission for Africa has been presented as a moral crusade, and linked by its proponents to the ‘anti-globalisation’ activism of such campaigns as ‘Make Poverty History’. But detailed analysis of the genesis and content of its report reveals direct continuity with EBRD and World Bank programmes from the 1990s onwards. It continues and extends a series of supranational initiatives aimed at endowing transitional and developing states with the capacity to pursue and legitimise capitalist development. Its principal focus is shown to be on the need to enhance the capacity of the state to impose and maintain the social relations of capitalist production. The emphasis on restoring rather than replacing state agency is identified as a constant feature of such projects, related to the promotion of competitiveness in the global capitalist economy. Finally, this is shown to be a feature shared with New Labour's programme for the ‘modernisation’ of Britain, and the broader theoretical implications are briefly explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses an underexplored area of investigation within the global justice debate: To what extent does globalisation structurally undermine the freedom of states? And if it does, what type of injustice does this constitute? It is argued here that a republican theory of freedom as non-domination is better equipped than existing cosmopolitan and social liberal accounts to explain the systemic connections between domestic, international and global injustice. The forms of unchecked power that globalisation sets off create new opportunities for the domination of states -- by other states as well as by non-states actors. And when citizens live in dominated states, they are themselves exposed to domination. The upshot is a normative analysis of the global arena that attributes a central role to states, yet is deeply critical of the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at different conceptions of what political philosophy is as a vocation, with an eye on the question of what is the point of writing books specifically on global justice. The occasion for reflecting on this question is a particular line of criticism that has been advanced against my 2012 book On Global Justice. I introduce a Platonic conception of political philosophy and then turn to two contemporary conceptions: one due to Habermas and one due to Rawls. The Rawlsian approach strikes me as most plausible. I develop that approach some more by defending it against different versions of realism and bring it to bear on the title question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any adequate position on allocating rights over natural resources will recognise that as well as the general claims we have over them (simply as human beings), there are also often special claims, based on the ways in which we have improved them, perhaps, or become attached to specific resources. The question is how to integrate these general and special claims in a compelling account of resource justice - a challenge that some theories of global justice appear to neglect. Avery Kolers, in this journal, has recently presented a complex and in many ways persuasive account of resource justice which takes this challenge seriously. But this response suggests that his position actually places too much weight on special claims, in entirely removing questions about the distribution of some resources from the table once we have determined the existence of such claims. Using the example of fresh water, it shows how his position has unwelcome implications. Although a complex account of resource justice is desirable, Kolers' account does not yet quite deliver on that challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the proliferation of works on the 'global justice movement' (GJM) in recent years, surprisingly little has been written on the intersections between feminist and anarchist strands within this 'movement of movements'. In an effort to rectify this gap in the literature, this article seeks to explore in what ways and to what extent anarchist and feminist renditions of revolution, within the context of the GJM, are conceptually compatible and thereby potentially politically reinforcing. In order to ascertain the degree of convergence between these two radical projects, in the first part of the article I examine what each camp is fighting for and against and whether their struggles for social justice are ideologically consonant. In the second part, I turn my attention to the types of practices being enacted and defended by these two activist constituencies and ask how they see their respective revolutions being brought about. What notions of social change are at work here and are their political practices, and the different temporalities sustaining them, reconcilable? After arguing in the first two parts of this article that anarchism and feminism are more compatible than is often acknowledged and that the considerable synergies between feminist notions of social justice and social change and anarchist conceptions of revolution merit far more attention than they currently receive, I end the piece by reflecting on some of the points of tension that still militate against merging their respective political imaginaries. I do so in an attempt to identify what I see as the conditions of possibility for a more integrated, mutually collaborative feminist anarchist revolutionary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue for the importance of considering participant observation roles in relation to both insider/outsider and overt/covert roles. Through combining key academic debates on participant observation, which have separately considered insider/outsider and overt/covert participant observation, we develop a reflexive framework to assist researchers in (1) locating the type of participant observation research; (2) identifying implications of participant observation for both the research and the subjects under study; and (3) reflecting on how one’s role as participant observer shifts over the course of fieldwork and considering the implications of this. To illustrate these dynamics, we draw on two examples from our own ethnographic research experiences in direct action anticapitalist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement. It reference the conference on politics, art, and the visual at the University of California at Davis which focuses on the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, 2000, and early 2001 and had taken place at the sites of G8 summits and World Trade Organization meetings. It states that the movement reincorporates lower Manhattan into the American political map of citizenship, culture, and critique.

I outline a holistic normative approach to migration in which I identify the major considerations that should be taken into account in formulating just migration policies. I argue that migration is basically an issue of global justice and that the basic interests of all parties significantly affected by migration should be taken into account in an adequate normative approach to this issue. I also maintain that an open borders policy does not allow for the strategic use of labor migration as a tool to address global inequalities and that it neglects legitimate concerns that liberal egalitarians should have for the most vulnerable individuals in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luck egalitarianism provides one powerful way of defending global egalitarianism. The basic luck egalitarian idea that persons ought not to be disadvantaged compared to others on account of his or her bad luck seems to extend naturally to the global arena, where random factors such as persons’ place of birth and the natural distribution of the world’s resources do affect differentially their life chances. Yet luck egalitarianism as an ideal, as well as its global application, has come under severe criticisms in recent debate. My aim in this article is to restore plausibility to the luck egalitarian idea, and to suggest how it could then provide a plausible grounding for global egalitarianism. To do this, I will propose a more modest but also more defensible conception of luck egalitarianism that can also strengthen the case for global distributive justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this essay the ethical issues related to the ‘standard of care’ are discussed together with the implications for the treatment of the control group in transnational clinical trials. It is argued that the human right to health and the duty of justice formulate the moral basis on which this case should be debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores strategic conceptions within the alter-globalisation movement in Ireland. Based on action research carried out within the left-libertarian ('Grassroots') wing of the movement, it notes imbalances in participation in a very intensive form of political activity, and asks how activists understand winning. It finds substantial congruence between organisational practice and long-term goals, noting social justice and participatory democracy along with feminist, environmental and anti-war concerns as central. Using Wallerstein's proposed transition strategy for anti-systemic movements, it argues that Irish alter-globalisation activists are realistic about popular support and state power, and concerned to link short-term work around basic needs with the construction of alternative institutions and long-term struggles for a different social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions on globalization tend to focus on processes commanded by powerful agents in a top-down perspective. In this article, I explore alter-native political and economic grassroots processes and agents as forms of non-hegemonic globalization. I analyze other political globalizations by considering the anti-globalization movement, and the alter-globalization initiatives represented by the World Social Forums. My arguments on economic globalization from below are based on the activities of 'trader-tourists', street vendors and markets of global gadgets or 'pirated' goods. I rely mostly on Brazilian and Paraguayan examples, but there are evidences of the existence of a veritable non-hegemonic world system. I want to call attention to other political and economic dynamics of globalization, a universe where the normative and repressive roles of nation-states are heavily bypassed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses qualitative in-depth interviews to examine journalists' attitudes and decisions about social protest coverage in the wake of (a) journalists' own use of the internet and (b) the use of the internet by social movement organizations. Interviews were conducted with journalists who covered protests that formed part of the movement for democratic globalization in US cities and in Canada during 1999 and 2000. Although regarded as major success stories for the role of the internet in political communication, mobilization over the web seems to have had little impact on journalists. The in-depth interviews revealed skepticism, not early adoption, of web resources in the coverage of these protests. This study provides an exploratory model for the sustained study of journalists' internet use and their attitudes toward social movements and protest as the internet age evolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'varieties of capitalism' school argues that firm-specific skills are more common in coordinated than in liberal economies and that appropriate training is facilitated by employment protection legislation. We compare the level of firm-specific skills across 21 countries with different capacities for labour market coordination. The data provide very limited support for the thesis, showing large variation among the coordinated countries. The results indicate 'varieties of coordination', which have different implications for the incidence and consequences of firm-specific skill. Improved operationalization of the skill concept seems urgent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the visual construction of human suffering in war, with special reference to the signifying practices of the photographs published in Greek newspapers during the Second Iraq War. The author carries out a socio-semiotic analysis, arguing that the overall construction of the Second Iraq War in the Greek press—illustrated by two case studies which are examined in detail—combines contradictory elements and assumptions. Representations of the war are 'framed' by the 'overpoliticization' of the Greek public sphere and the dominant political culture synthesizing themes of 'anti-Americanism', 'anti-globalization' and 'pro-Third Worldism', but also a particular version of what Said called 'Orientalism'. More specifically, the insistence on spectacular images of suffering, and the combination of a humanitarian discourse of compassion for the innocent distant victims of war' with populist and Greek Christian Orthodox conceptualizations of the self are constitutive elements of the newspapers' signifying practices, which aid the Greek press to be critical of the hegemonic western discourse regarding the Second Iraq War without, however, slipping to the other side of 'Orientalist binary oppositions'. On the contrary, this persistence on the humanitarian discourse of compassion towards victims is pivotal in identifying with the western moral virtues of 'civilized' humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalist agriculture is highly exploitative of both producers and the environment. Fair trade is a movement attempting to mitigate this exploitation, partly by baiting corporate actors into the arena of "ethical production." In the coffee industry, major corporations are responding by discrediting fair trade and branding themselves as ethical. While falling well short of addressing the real demands of the movement, the proliferation of "ethical" labels resulting from this response threatens to destroy fair trade's own ethical brand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What should a political theorist say about the justice of the global distribution of natural resources? One issue is whether principles of distributive justice should be applied globally, and this has been debated between nationalists and cosmopolitans. A second, though, is how the category of ‘natural resources’ should be conceived in relation to other distributable goods. This has not adequately been addressed even by theorists of global justice who expressly focus on natural resources. In particular, neither Charles Beitz’s argument for a natural resources redistribution principle nor David Miller’s argument against works with a satisfactory account of how the physical distribution of resources relates to the distribution of their economic value. A more satisfactory account can be developed from the perspective of ecological economics as inspired by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. From this perspective, global inequalities in the command of natural resources can be viewed with the clarity that a normative theory of their justice requires. If natural resources are re-conceptualised in terms of ‘ecological space’, Beitz’s argument can be recast and vindicated. The re-conceptualisation is necessary to overcome the problems with the original version, as is shown by reference to the existing alternative formulations of Hillel Steiner and Thomas Pogge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardt and Negri's Empire has become hugely influential, not only in theorising contemporary societies, but as a guide to the politics of the Left and the anti-globalisation movement. The book's sweep and ambition is indeed huge, but is not matched by the clarity of its concepts or the credibility of the evidence presented. Neither the book's analysis of regimes of global governance and the hidden abode of production, nor its articulation of a potential agency of resistance --the multitude--are convincing. In this article, Thompson complements other critiques through the use of the tools of labour process theory to critique the political economy of Empire, and to note its unfortunate similarities to conventional theories of the knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early 1990s when the EZLN (the Zapatistas), led by Subcommandte Marcos, first made use of the Internet to the late 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Trade and Investment and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social protest movements were emergent. These new movements seemed diffuse and unstructured, yet at the same time, they forged unlikely coalitions of labor, environmentalists, feminists, peace, and global social justice activists collectively critical of the adversities of neoliberal globalization and its associated militarism. Moreover, the rapid emergence and worldwide proliferation of these movements, organized and coordinated through the Internet, raised a number of questions that require rethinking social movement theory. Specifically, the electronic networks that made contemporary globalization possible also led to the emergence of“virtual public spheres” and, in turn,“Internetworked Social Movements.” Social movement theory has typically focused on local structures, leadership, recruitment, political opportunities, and strategies from framing issues to orchestrating protests. While this tradition still offers valuable insights, we need to examine unique aspects of globalization that prompt such mobilizations, as well as their democratic methods of participatory organization and clever use of electronic media. Moreover, their emancipatory interests become obscured by the“objective” methods of social science whose“neutrality” belies a tacit assent to the status quo. It will be argued that the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory offers a multi-level, multi-disciplinary approach that considers the role of literacy and media in fostering modernist bourgeois movements as well as anti-modernist fascist movements. This theoretical tradition offers a contemporary framework in which legitimacy crises are discussed and participants arrive at consensual truth claims; in this process, new forms of empowered, activist identities are fostered and negotiated that impel cyberactivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to help redress the relative lack of discussion of the movement against neoliberal globalisation and the relative lack of empirical work about this movement. Firstly it argues that this movement is not opposed to globalisation per se but instead is developing a new internationalism in the course of challenging the neoliberal nature of contemporary globalisation. Secondly it argues that this challenge is producing a universalising dynamic which is moving the movement beyond being a series of isolated militant particularist struggles. The article uses interviews with leading participants within the movement to help clarify these arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair Trade coffee campaigns have improved the lives of small-scale coffee farmers and their families by raising wages, creating direct trade links to farming cooperatives, and providing access to affordable credit and technological assistance. Consumer demand for Fair Trade certified coffee is at an all-time high, yet cooperatives that produce it are only able to sell about half of their crops at the established fair trade price. This article explores the reasons behind this gap between supply and demand and suggests ways to close it. The authors also offer some perspective on the limits of ethical consumption campaigns such as Fair Trade coffee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Fridell, Hudson, and Hudson about the history of the Fair Trade Movement, sustainable agriculture, and the fair trade coffee industry, and another by Salevurakis and Abdel-Haleim about the economics and politics involved in bread subsidies in Egypt.