Abstract
Globalization impacts societies around the world in positive and negative ways. Societies and social movements are adapting their structures and discourses for acting in a context where the global emerges as a permanent arena. Mexican social movements have their own challenges. This book provides a good opportunity for deepening our knowledge of how civil society in Mexico is adapting and changing for global politics of the twenty-first century.
Global processes have created beneficial transformations in societies. Contemporaneously, they have also generated unwanted and profoundly negative consequences for important sections of the world’s population. The book under review acknowledges some of these. Most of this book’s content does not theorize or debate the different ways of addressing globalization. However, in looking for connections between the local and the global, it offers a set of reflections on the impact of globalization in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular.
The case studies presented in the book offer evidence of the economic and social decomposition that has been occurring in Mexico, especially in the rural, peasant and indigenous environments. The text also presents some of the collective responses, codified as ‘resistance’, which have emerged in a context of structural transformations of the Mexican state. Since the 1990s this has been characterized by structural adjustment and by a political drive towards democracy. The book interprets sociopolitical issues as manifestations of a globalization era context, connections and interlinked narratives, all being part of a political project bearing the label ‘neoliberal’, which has prevailed in Latin America.
In this context the editors ask: ‘is it still possible for new social movements to emerge in Mexico? Which actors are questioning the hegemonic cultural model guiding the country’s modernization since 1982, as well as proposing alternative sustainable models? The political and social situation seems to offer little possibility for actors to go beyond mere protests, and become influential social actors in the political and cultural arenas, turning these into real social movements’ (p. 15).
The book’s organization seeks to answer these questions. It is divided into three sections. The first is geared towards a theoretical-conceptual review of the emergence of worldwide social movements within civil society. Sections 2 and 3 show how actors are given structures, strategies and discourses vis-a-vis the negative phenomena emerging from global processes in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular.
The first section contains texts by Michel Wieviorka and Mary Kaldor. Both authors raise issues regarding transformation and development of collective action. Both recognize different factors and contexts that frame social movements and civil society in the new environments created by processes of globalization. In this way, the book puts into context the transformative tendencies of those collective expressions that are adapted and reinterpreted in global dynamics. This does not mean that globalization develops in the same manner and intensity everywhere in the world. In fact, within the same space and territory, globalization impacts certain social or cultural groups in different ways. The benefits and losses generated by globalization share space and time simultaneously.
The book focuses on what it generically packages as ‘resistance’ to globalization. In the second and third sections, different examples of collective action vis-a-vis ‘global challenges’ and the ‘rural resistance’ are presented. The analysis here relies on case studies related to the different social movements in Mexico. The wealth of information presented in these sections shows how ‘the global’ is expressed and takes shape, from the Mexican perspective. Upon observing present-day social movements a recurring discussion ensues – the need for an anti-globalization movement, and the need to recognize that ‘the future of humanity depends on the resistance to globalization’ (p. 65).
The institutional and non-institutional forms of civil participation and social movements in the region are also analysed. This discussion asserts that ‘the real dilemma lies in the need to find balance and compatibility between citizens’ perception of democracy and their representatives’ forms of governance’ (p. 84). When considering the new challenges for studying collective action, the following is asserted: ‘globalization is not the cause of the social and cultural fragmentation of social movements, but rather it is a condition for the increase in transnational collective action’ (p. 107).
This book presents new perspectives regarding sociopolitical issues taking place in Mexico, in particular how to identify ideas and visions that force us to think about the country’s global and transnational complexity. Thus, when referring to global movements and the nation-state’s ailing framework, substantial changes are observed, since ‘affirmations of identity in the United States, of the Mexican-American type, are presently quite different from those of the Chicanos during the time when they were led by Cesar Chavez’ (p. 31). Alternatively, with regard to activism in Mexico, it must be assumed that ‘protests and cross-border mobilization are based on the awareness that there is no legal framework that can offer a joint solution to a conflict of a local-transnational nature’ (p. 121).
In fact, social movements in Mexico are faced with the need to understand a context in transformation, and as actors in construction, to adapt their mobilization structures and discourse strategies with the purpose of making an impact in the public space. For this reason it is important to recognize that ‘the identities and discourses from some years back are no longer valid. Social identities created under the yoke of the all-powerful Mexican state are in decomposition today’ (p. 117). For this reason, ‘globalization is now a central aspect in the study of collective action … because the observable mutations in collective action draw attention to something much more important, namely, the deep cultural transformations in present-day society’ (p. 106).
Finally, a couple of weaknesses in this book need to be pointed out. First, there is a need for an important analytical rapprochement with civil society in Latin America, especially when referring to the global civil society. More concretely, the theoretical articles do not examine in depth certain aspects of these global civil societies and how these are expressed in Latin America. This is evident in the vague and commonplace references to civil societies and their role in the democratic transitions of the region in the 1980s and 1990s. More specifically, although they address global and local connections theoretically, the two texts dealing with this issue are not linked to the rest of the articles. Second, Geoffrey Pleyers’ article (pp. 129–155) is so poorly translated into Spanish, that its analysis and relevant proposals for the study of the anti-globalization movement and its expressions in Latin America appears unnecessarily hazy and complicated.