International Civil Society E-Book

Alejandro Colás

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 448

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Since the end of the Cold War, activists and scholars alike have celebrated the phenomenal growth of transnational social movements across the globe. For some, this new eruption of grass-roots political activism on a world scale – from the Rio Earth Summit to the Seattle anti-globalization protests – represents the emergence of a global or transnational civil society.

This book provides a critical survey of recent approaches to the study of civil society and international relations, presenting an alternative historical and sociological account of the interaction between these two spheres. It makes a theoretical case for the importance of social movements in world politics arguing that modern social movements emerging out of civil society have been instrumental in shaping the contemporary international system.

In this wide-ranging engagement with past and present controversies in international relations, Colás shows how a renewed conception of international civil society can illuminate future possibilities for international social movement activity.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, political sociology and social history, as well as those who seek to play a part in global politics.

Leseprobe

To Barbara Kräuter and José Antonio Colás

INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETY

Social Movements in World Politics

Alejandro Colás

Polity

Copyright © Alejandro Colás 2002

The right of Alejandro Colás to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2002 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd

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Blackwell Publishers Ltd

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Published in the USA by

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Colás, Alejandro.

International civil society: social movements in world politics / Alejandro Colás.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–7456–2555-X (HB : acid-free paper)—ISBN 0–7456–2556–8 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

1. Civil society. 2. International relations. I. Title.

JC337 .C65 2002

327—dc21 2001001928

Typeset in 10.5pt on 12pt Times

by Kolam Information Services Pvt Ltd, Pondicherry, India

Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

Non-State Actors in International Relations

2 Civil Society

The Challenge of the International

3 Agencies and Structures in IR

Analysing International Social Movements

4 International Society from Below

The Role of Civil Society in International Relations

5 The Promises of International Civil Society

Global Governance, Cosmopolitan Democracy and the End of Sovereignty?

Conclusions

The Uses of International Civil Society

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgements

The contents of this book derive in large part from a doctoral thesis written in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science under the supervision of Fred Halliday. My first thanks must therefore go to my supervisor for his unfailing encouragement and support through the years, and to all those friends and comrades at the LSE who in various contexts – most notably the ‘Modernity and IR’ and subsequently ‘Historical Materialism and IR’ seminars – shaped many of the ideas contained in this study. In an academic climate where the individualist, utilitarian and commodified values of instrumental rationality are increasingly dominant, it is an especial pleasure to acknowledge how much of what follows is the product of genuinely collective and politically motivated intellectual labour. I am also grateful to the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council for financial support through a Research Studentship and to the LSE’s Department of International Relations for reception of a Montagu Burton Scholarship in 1997.

My colleagues in the International Relations and Politics subject group at the University of Sussex have in innumerable ways encouraged the further development of the arguments presented in this book. I take it as unnecessary to list specific names, and that the text itself (with its accompanying footnotes) will identify those whose ideas have influenced my own, be it through a sympathetic or a critical engagement. This said, and although it is always invidious to single out individuals, I am particularly indebted to Zdeněk Kavan and Benno Teschke for reading the entire draft manuscript and offering their characteristically sharp and probing comments – I have ignored some of these at my own peril. Sections of chapters 1 and 2 appeared previously in ‘The promises of international civil society’, Global Society: Interdisciplinary Journal of International Relations, 11, 3 (1997), pp. 261–77, and I am grateful to the publishers of that journal for permission to reproduce these extracts.

Finally, and most importantly, I wish to thank four people who, without ever demanding to know too much about its content, have made possible the writing of this book: Sofia, for being a good sister; Ishani Salpadoru, for ‘sharing the bread’; and my parents, Barbara Kräuter and José Antonio Colás – to whom this book is dedicated – for, among so many other things, instilling in me the values of internationalism.