MORE THAN NATIONAL, LESS THAN GLOBAL? SOCIAL MOVEMENTS UNDER GLOBALISING CONDITIONS
MORE THAN NATIONAL, LESS THAN GLOBAL? SOCIAL MOVEMENTS UNDER GLOBALISING CONDITIONS

Summary/Abstract: I look in this paper at the location of social movements in the wider theoretical discussions of the global transformations, and particularly at their approach from the perspective of transnationalism. In doing so, I look at the “hybridisation” of social movements as conceived of in theory, meaning by that the interplay of national and supranational features in the dynamics of social movements under globalising conditions. Secondly, I point – rather as an opening for further more systematic assessment - to a certain paradox that seems to lie within these new theories: in spite of the theoretical fragility of the concept of global civil society, the theorisation of social movements under globalising conditions seems to carry on and strengthen this very contested category. Social movements are treated as civic actors (and importantly, not the only ones) with international, transnational and even global reaching. Which creates further theoretical tensions that could be translated into questions like the following: accepting that social movements, as civic actors, get global, does not mean in fact to confirm the possibility of a global civil society? Or, is it rather that civil society as a whole does not (or cannot) get global, but solely parts of it are endowed with the ability to transgress territorially demarcated nations states?

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