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7. Civil Society
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7 civil society Human rights have leapfrogged not only to new bearers of human rights obligations but also to new advocates for human rights. Increasingly, global governance responds to globalization from below, as citizens participate in developing rules for the global market economy and recommending the constraints and obligations they believe ought to be placed upon it. Citizens in places now being reached by the second great transformation are not in the same social position as those affected by the first. They need not wait 150 or 200 years before attaining their human rights. Indeed, globalization speeds up their access to the very idea of rights, thus presenting them with a new language with which to articulate their concerns. civil society I use the term “civil society” to refer to organizations of citizens below the level of, and independent of, the state that peacefully pursue collective social objectives. These include social movements and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose objectives are to influence domestic governments, international organizations (IOs), and transnational corporations (TNCs). Global civil society consists of individuals, groups, 100 can globalization promote human rights? and organizations physically located in different countries and regions, yet able to communicate with one another and organize as international pressure groups. This definition of civil society assumes that citizens’ organizations are, indeed, civil—that is, that they are peaceful and do not engage in criminal activities (Brysk 2005, 125). Human rights NGOs (HRNGOs) are a particular subset of civil society. They are devoted to the promotion and protection of human rights, are “independent of both governmental and political groups that seek direct political power,” and do not themselves seek political power (Wiseberg 1991, 529). By 1998 there were at least 325 international HRNGOs (Smith, Pagnucco, and Lopez 1998, 383). Global social movements for human rights existed before globalization; for example, there was a global social movement against the slave trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since the transformation of the global communications network by electronic means, however, globalization has intensified and sped up civil society’s capacity to organize . Through e-mail and the Internet, civil society actors have immediate access to knowledge, immediate capacity to criticize policy decisions by governments, IOs, and TNCs, and immediate capacity to interact with one another. Citizens are no longer mere consumers of information; they are generators of knowledge and debaters about social issues. The civil society actors who now populate global public space possess an “ability to forge links with popular struggles at the most local level anywhere in the world” (Beetham 1998, 68). Citizens of oppressive regimes, such as in China, post information about human rights abuses on the Internet; as fast as their government shuts down one website and confiscates some computers, users of new computers create new websites. Human rights abuses are now subject to “cosmopolitan publicity ” in a transnational public sphere (Bohman 1999, 506). Thus, globalization provides new and expanded space for civil society, especially HRNGOs and citizens’ social movements. A social movement can be defined as “a collection of formal organizations , informal networks, and unaffiliated individuals engaged in a more or less coherent struggle for change” (Meyer and Whittier 1994, 277). Sometimes social movements are very loosely organized or coordinated; [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:20 GMT) civil society 101 at other times, they are very well organized and coordinated, particularly through networks of NGOs. NGOs are relatively formal, bureaucratized organizations with a specific mandate or purpose. Members of social movements may support NGOs whose goals coincide with their own, but they may also engage in more loosely defined or controlled activities, such as demonstrating at meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Trade Organization (WTO). Together, these NGOs and social movements constitute transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) pushing simultaneously on local, national, and international fronts and using both formal and informal means to obtain their goals. These networks benefit not only from electronic communications but also from the ease of travel of the last thirty years. People from all parts of the globe meet face to face at international conferences of particular NGOs or at various NGO networking events. The line between social movement and NGOs blurs as such large gatherings reinforce less organized social movements. the global human rights social movement The single most important concern of globalization’s critics (as well as many of its advocates) is poverty. It is very difficult, however, to organize social movements to eliminate...