Modes of Cognitive Praxis in Transnational Alternative Policy Groups (original) (raw)
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Alternative policy groups and transnational counter-hegemonic struggle
Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Diversity, edited by Yildiz Atasoy, 2014
This chapter focuses on an emergent component of global civil society: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) that research and promote democratic alternatives to neoliberal globalization. Since the 1970s, an increasingly crisis-ridden economic globalization has fuelled concerns in the global North that democracy is being hollowed out as governments lose capacity to pursue policies that stray from what has been called the corporate agenda, even as democratic forces and practices within a number of Southern states have recently strengthened due to pressure from below – as in Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ and the Middle East’s ‘Arab Spring.’ Indeed, as neoliberal globalization have reshaped the political-economic terrain, North and South, transnational movements have developed as advocates of a ‘democratic globalization’ that endeavours to enrich human relations across space by empowering communities and citizens to participate in the full range of decisions that govern their lives (Chase-Dunn 2002; Munck 2010; Smith 2008; Smith and Wiest 2012). Alongside and in symbiosis with these movements, TAPGs have emerged – ‘think tanks’ that research and promote democratic alternatives to the corporate agenda of top-down globalization. As collective intellectuals of alter-globalization, these are think tanks of a different sort from the conventional ones that advise political and corporate elites. Groups such as the Third World Institute (ITeM, Montevideo), the Centre de recherche et d'information pour le développement (Paris), the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), and Focus on the Global South (Bangkok) create knowledge that challenges existing corporate priorities and state policies, and that advocates alternative ways of organizing economic, political and cultural life. They disseminate this knowledge not only via mainstream media venues but through activist networks and alternative media, and they often work collaboratively with social movements in implementing these alternative ideas. This chapter provides a preliminary analysis, and addresses some of the challenges they face as transnational counter-hegemonic actors on the contested terrain of global civil society.
Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice
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.
Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, 2020
Review of William K. Carroll's "Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice." The organic crisis of hegemonic neoliberal globalization, manifested in aggravated uneven development condensed with ecological unsustainability, requires systemic transformation towards justice globalism. William Carroll’s distinguished 4-year research project integrates network analysis with qualitative interviewing to depict a rich picture of the contribution of counter-hegemonic knowledge production and mobilisation by transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) to such an emancipatory alternative future. Grounded in thorough data analysis, dialogue between neo-Gramscian methodology and the empirical, makes this book an indispensable resource for proponents of global justice as it overcomes the disempowering voluntaristic localism and anti-statism that underlies much of both mainstream and critical approaches to “progressive” social transformation.
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a "globalization from below" that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here, we map the global network of TAPGs and kindred international groups in order to discern how TAPGs are embedded in a larger formation. In this era of capitalist globalization, do TAPGs, like their hegemonic counterparts, bridge across geographic spaces (e.g. North-South) and movement domains to foster the convergence across difference that is taken as a criterial attribute of a counter-hegemonic historical bloc? Our network analysis suggests that TAPGs are well placed to participate in the transformation of the democratic globalization network from a gelatinous and unselfconscious state, into an historical bloc capable of collective action toward an alternative global order. However, there are gaps in the bloc, having to do with the representation and integration of regions and movement domains, and with the salience of post-capitalism as a unifying social vision. Also, our architectonic network analysis does not reveal what the various relations and mediations in which TAPGs are active agents actually mean in concrete practice. There is a need both for closer analysis of the specific kinds of relations that link transnational alternative policy groups to other international actors, including intergovernmental organizations and funding foundations, and for field work that explores the actual practices of these groups, in situ.
Examining Alternative Knowledge Production
Potentia: Journal of International Affairs
Transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) are alternative think tanks that mobilize knowledge into social movements and community action. These social movement actors may hold vast potential in correcting inequalities that have, arguably, been prominent during the recent wave of neoliberalism. However, the study of TAPGs is new and thus they are only recently emerging within academic literature. Here, the author contributes to literature on TAPGs, by comparing two TAPGs, from the Global North and South respectively, in order to explore their potential as social movement actors situated within a neoliberal hegemonic global system.
Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2014
Are the growing oppositions to neoliberal market globalism (especially in the aftermath of global economic meltdown) able to develop meaningful alternative ideologies? Is there any substantial alternative to the world capitalist system on the horizon? How would the new ideologies and ideas address the dire dilemmas of economy vs. ecology, redistribution vs. recognition, global vs. local, reform vs. revolution etc.?
Embedding Post-Capitalist Alternatives: The Global Network of Alternative Knowledge Production
Journal of World-Systems Research, 2013
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a "globalization from below" that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here, we map the global network ofTAPGs and kindred international groups in order to discern how TAPGs are embedded in a larger formation. In this era of capitalist globalization, do TAPGs, like their hegemonic counterparts, bridge across geographic spaces (e.g. North-South) and movement domains to foster the convergence across difference that is taken as a criterial attribute of a counter-hegemonic historical bloc? Our network analysis suggests that TAPGs are well placed to participate in the transformation of the democratic globalization network from a gelatinous and unselfconscious state, into an historical bloc capable of collective action toward an alternative global order. However, there are gaps in the bloc, having to do with the represe...