Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice (original) (raw)

This volume is addressed to concerned citizens, activists, students, intellectuals and practitioners interested in “changing the channel”. The tightly scripted programming of neoliberal capitalism positions us as consumers in a hypermarket where money talks. For those with funds or credit, the program offers a seductive formula for “amusing ourselves to death” (Postman 1985) – particularly as continued overconsumption portends global ecological disaster in what is now a clearly foreseeable future. For the majority world, those with little to bring to the global marketplace, neoliberal capitalism offers little more than precarity and immiseration. Either way, the need for fundamental change is visceral. But to change the channel is not only to break from the dominant ideological framework; it is to produce viable alternatives, in knowledge and in practice, which might catalyze political and social change in our troubled world. The eight chapters that follow offer insights gained from four years of intensive research into the production and mobilization of alternative knowledge. In year 1 (May 2011-April 2012), I identified key centres for such initiatives: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) active in global civil society today. I completed a case study of each group using available sources from the Internet and elsewhere, and a network analysis of how the groups link up with each other, and how they are embedded in a broader field of social relations within global civil society.

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