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Abstract
This paper uses Freirean theory and field studies of counter-globalist campaigns to add greater lucidity and normative deliberateness to our understanding of resistance to neo-liberal globalism. A difficult tension exists between complete submersion in movement struggles, versus a mythical position of objective analytic detachment. We sketch out the basis for a productive dialogue between these two competing pulls of political engagement and analytic objectivity. To do this, we draw from the writings of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian thinker famous for his theories of popular education. Freire's writings have not seriously entered academic studies of globalization, even though activists in the ‘globalization-from-below’ camp frequently draw on his words for inspiration. We seek to remedy this omission, and construct a dialogue between Freire and social movement struggles on four dualisms centred on epistemology, normativity, methodology and strategy. In each dualism, we outline how Freirean concepts can help redefine these binaries as productive tensions to be developed, rather than conflicts to be suppressed. These insights are not intended as a theoretical injunctive delivered from upon high, but are used in dialogue with examples from global justice campaigns in order to clarify what is already taking place on the ground. Identifying Freirean priorities can also encourage openings for more emancipatory approaches to critical globalization scholarship. While academics cannot engineer resistance to neo-liberal globalism from the top down, they can contribute their research energy and resources, becoming more actively engaged in the process of envisaging alternatives.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the assistance provided by our respective universities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding the research on which this paper is based, and comments provided by Neil McLauglin, Mike Newman, Globalizations' anonymous reviewers, and Verity Burgmann for her extensive discussion of a draft version of this paper in her book Power Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation (2003). The paper had its inception as a contribution to debates within an international project, ‘Neo-liberal globalism and its challenges’ based at the University of Alberta funded by SSHRC.
Notes
1. Burawoy's four-part quadrant analytically separates critical and public sociologies in a neat, four-part matrix (2004). While the model is both elegant and parsimonious, we contest the critical/public separation, and argue that the best critical sociological traditions draw from a Marxist tradition which looks outside the academy to critique the exploitative properties of capitalist modes of production and consumption. Burawoy himself seems to imply this when he writes that critical sociology ‘has the urgent task of clarifying the possibilities and dangers of defending civil society as a bulwark against encroachments by state and economy’ (Burawoy, Citation2004, p. 1616).
2. Globalization from below, or counter-globalism, is most frequently referred to in the media as the ‘anti-globalization’ movement—even though certain globalization processes, such as the expansion of communications technology and the universalization of human rights, are embraced by these actors. Counter-globalism, or ‘Globalization from below’ perspectives tend to reject a US-led, corporate-dominated, neo-liberal version of globalization processes. We occasionally retain the ‘anti-globalization’ terminology for the sake of linguistic clarity, but use quotation marks to indicate its serious limitations.
3. Aware of this risk, Hardt and Negri's follow-up book to Empire focuses on possibilities for global democracy, what they call ‘the multitude, the living alternative that grows within empire’ (Hardt and Negri, Citation2004, p. xiii).
4. Not only has Marxism been criticized for losing a connection to practical struggles, but Seidman (Citation1991) argues that sociological theory has also lost its practical relevance, an issue that Burawoy attempted to address during his presidency of the American Sociological Association in Citation2004 (see Burawoy, Citation2004).
5. Interview with author, 12 January, San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.
6. Frustration with these accounts surface in Appadurai (2001).
7. Crude interpretations of Lenin generally stem from the political pamphlet, ‘What is to be Done’, and do not do justice to the complexity of Lenin's ideas on social change and the development of a revolutionary working class consciousness.
8. This can lead to the opposite problem, where centralized sources of power in the global capitalist system are minimized, the importance of the state in counter-globalism struggles is neglected, global civil society is fetishized, and local struggles are romanticized and left unconnected to other scales of struggle (Johnston and Laxer, Citation2003; Johnston and Baker, Citation2005). [See also in this issue the article by Owen Worth and Jason Abbott, pp. 49–63, and the reply by David Chandler, pp. 65–67.]
9. In the November 2000 conference—Building A Post-Corporate Society: A How-To Guide For Citizens—citizen forums were used at lunch breaks to allow for mediated, citizen-led discussions on various topics.
10. The Parkland case also makes clear an additional requisite for dialogical research and popular intellectualism: humility—a factor conspicuously absent in traditional academic settings, but critical for the materially privileged globalization researcher. Freire asks: ‘How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? … How can I dialogue if I am closed to—and even offended by—the contribution of others? … Self-sufficiency is incompatible with dialogue (Freire, Citation1970, p. 71).