This book is set up as a primer that attempts to foreground the voices of social change that make up the current landscape of global politics of resistance, and that define the discursive spaces, processes, structures, and constructions of social change efforts across the globe. These current forms of social action spread throughout local sites in different parts of the globe offer us guiding frameworks for understanding the ways in which disenfranchised communities and the people residing in these communities are seeking to transform the political, economic, and social configurations that have excluded them. Although the issues that are taken...

As noted in chapter one of this book, at the heart of global inequities are neoliberal economic policies that continue to foster the increasing inequalities between the haves and have-nots by pushing forth policies of trade liberalization, privatization of resources, minimization of subsidies, and the minimization of state-based support for the poor across nation states. With globalization, the gaps between the rich and the poor have increased dramatically on a global scale, with the increasing concentration of economic resources in the hands of the rich (Dutta, 2008, 2011; Harvey, 2005). Simultaneously, the interpenetrating relationships between economically strong actors and political...

In this chapter, we will listen to the voices of resistance that are constituted under the broader area of agriculture and the rights of local communities across the globe to grow food and secure access to it. In the context of agriculture, the tension constituting efforts of social change lies between the liberalization principles of national governments that have sought to turn agricultural lands into the hands of industrial projects, projects of mining, or large-scale agribusiness, and the rights of local communities at the global margins to grow their own food in sustainable and locally meaningful ways. The questions around...

Environment is one of the key sites of global social change, with environmental activist groups seeking to draw attention to the effects of specific practices on the environment, and subsequently seeking to impact policy making and practices that shape the environment (Castells, 1996, 1997, 1998; della Porta & Diani, 2006; Rootes, 2004; Sklair, 1995). In our discussion of the politics of resistance in this chapter, we will specifically focus on global social change movements that emphasize local participation and processes of change, situated amidst the broader backdrop of claims making and presentation of arguments that seek to impact the realms...

The dominant narratives of political structures are resisted through the interrogation of the logics of these structures, seeking to displace the top-down power from the sites of decision making that minimize the opportunities for political participation among communities that have been placed at the margins. Social change movements that seek to rupture the inherent logics of political structures do so in order to challenge the inherent logics that justify the erasure of subaltern communities from the realms of policy making, representation, and participation. The marginalization of communities is tied to the systematic erasure of these communities from political processes and...

Development is the key site of global neoliberal governance, serving as the reason for neoliberal interventions. The existence of neoliberalism, therefore, is dependent on the concept of development. The traditional markers of economic growth and efficiency within the framework of development are utilized to push the agendas of neoliberalization of the globe through structural adjustment programs (SAPs). The underlying logic of development-based neoliberal adjustments is founded on the premise that privatization and trade liberalization would lead to economic development by opening up the markets. It is assumed that the global establishment of “free” markets would enable the rational logic of...

The final chapter summarizes the key points articulated throughout the book regarding alternative rationalities that challenge neoliberal forms of global governance. Through the re-presentations of voices of resistance from the global margins, I discuss the ways in which a global politics of resistance can contribute to social transformations and transformations in structures of oppression and exploitation. The alternative rationalities that are voiced by the various disenfranchised sectors of the globe who coconstruct their voices in dialogue offer a framework for organizing a global politics of resistance, which is at once local and is simultaneously global in nature. This global-local network...