Transnational Activism

Types of Transnational Activism

Transnational activism spans a broad range of social movements, including labor internationalism, youth group federations, international feminist networks, pan-indigenous movements, global environmental coalitions, religious social activism, and alter-globalization forums. Their ideological orientation crosses the entire political spectrum from fundamentalist conservative to radical revolutionary, with no inherent link to any particular one of the numerous strategies available. From politicized consumer activities such as boycotts to mass protest, direct action, and even armed struggle, the forms that such activism can assume seem to expand continually.

Just like other kinds of activist activity, however, transnational activism tends to fall into some general behavioral patterns. Determining its relationship with social movements as an organized expression of resistance are responses to local, national, regional, and global social forces and to unacceptable institutionalized practices. At the same time, the broader political economy substantially conditions the landscape of transnational social movements and tends to structure or delimit their fields of operation. For example, a global trend toward energy and natural resource shortages can result in a global tendency to relax environmental protection standards. This in turn can generate transnational activism by global alliances of environmental groups in protest of the ecological consequences.

The dynamic of opposition and resistance is both a product of existing social forces and an active shaper of future institutionalized practices. Given the uneven character of social mobilization, structural upturns and downturns of the global economy, and political swings in the social control strategies of state and supra-state authorities, transnational activist activities tend to ebb and flow at uneven rhythms. At any given moment, however, transactional activism possesses the potential for unity and effectively coordinated actions, making it an essential focus for studying social change.

For example, in the less-developed regions of the global South, the world superpowers implemented policies in the 1970s as a response to a global recession, seeking to restore previous rates of growth and profit through greater liberalization and penetration of transnational corporations into developing economies. Emphasis on free trade agreements, opening up new markets, and expanding investment from the North adversely affected the most vulnerable sectors of the developing South. This in turn yielded a dramatic increase in poverty, unemployment, and numerous social inequalities, resulting in an inevitable crescendo of protest by those so affected.

...