INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKING GROUPS
Movements as Collective Challenges to Authority Structures
University of Notre Dame August 14-15, 2002
Meets: Wednesday, August 14th, 10:30 am - 12:15 pm
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Thursday, August 15th, 10:30 am - 12:15 pmPost a Message to this Workgroup Listserv
View this Workgroup's Listserv ArchivesWorking Group 6: New Frontiers in the Study of Cross-Border Contentious Action. Adam Flint, Hartwick College
The study of cross-border contentious action (CBCA) has become a growth industry, which is hardly surprising given the flurry of such activity in recent years. The focus of much of the research and writing on the subject has been on movements and networks that are challenging transnational authority structures and institutions such as the IMF, the WTO and World Bank. The objectives of this working group would include, but is not limited to, discussion on the issues raised by this literature. In addition, more needs to be done to explore the ways in which CBCA is articulated on the national and especially subnational level with local and regional movements that are often very different from their cross-border counterparts and allies. In addition, these movements are frequently engaged in simultaneous challenges to the authority of one or more nation states. Sometimes leverage obtained through cross-border alliances is used to mobilize transnational authorities to put pressure on a state through forms of conditionality based on human, labor or environmental rights. This is just one among the many scenarios in which any division between the national and transnational spheres is an artificial one. Thus, to paraphase the conference organizers, such phenomena must be included for the study of social movements because their locus of their challenges is frequently both inside and outside of the political arena as conventionally understood.
Certainly the study of meso and individual level organization and activity is important for understanding why, for example, solidarity activists participate to support movements in countries they may have only visited briefly on behalf of people they know only slightly. In as much as movements of the global north and south are frequent allies in CBCA, this also takes us into the territory of interrogating 'northern theory' in the light of 'southern protest'.
The comparative scope of this working group would be enhanced by the participation of scholars of CBCA whose research focus includes variety of sectors and global regions. Even if cross-border activity is not central to your subject of inquiry but rather is one factor among many, your contributions are welcomed. The hope is to make the cases under discussion as diverse as possible in terms of sectors, collective identities, geographic regions and objectives. I would also encourage the organizers to invite local scholar-activists from the greater Chicago area whose input would greatly enrich the conference. I would be eager to suggest some contacts to add to those you already have.