Social Movements and Regeneration: Within, Without, Against?

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between social movements and regeneration in the context of globalisation by describing how the advent of a global civil society provides new modes of engagement and contestation with the political and economic forces that define and determine regeneration processes. The article argues that regeneration should be conceived as a dynamic field of relationships to which social movements can contribute new material, symbolic and intellectual resources, and it examines the evolution of participatory budgeting as an example of this potential.

Key Words:

• Social movements
• regeneration
• participatory budgeting
• global civil society

Notes

1 Excepting the 1918 election that came immediately after the chaos of the First World War.

2 Cited at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/CMUDLP/Resources/OperationalIssuestoIncreaseCitizensVoiceinRevenueandExpenditurePlanning.pdf.

3 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTEMPOWERMENT/0,,contentMDK:20266219∼menuPK:543261∼pagePK:148956∼piPK:216618∼theSitePK:486411,00.html.

4 Experiments in PB in China are currently being funded by DfID, the IDRC (Canada) and the Ford Foundation. See http://reseau.crdi.ca/en/ev-84263-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

5 See Mute magazine's ‘Regenicide Reader’ at http://www.metamute.org/en/node/7192.