GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Globalisation has more than one face. Global cultural and economic forces, particularly through the dynamics of huge corporations, shape the picture from above, but a new global consciousness, through the activities of social movements, is emerging from below.

While nation-states remain important, the development of these global social movements demonstrates that we are entering a post-national phase, with political action becoming more unconventional, open, participatory, direct and focused.

Global Social Movements presents a very broad and systematic analysis of our globalising world, integrating a wide range of issues. Human rights, women’s, peace, labour, religious and green movements are all discussed.

Robin Cohen is Professor of Sociology and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization, University of Warwick. He has published widely on migration, globalization and social identity. His books include Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others (1994), Global Diasporas: An Introduction (1997, 1999) and (with Paul Kennedy) Global Sociology (2000). He is also editor of The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (1995). In association with the Economic and Social Research Council’s Transnational Communities Programme he is working on the themes of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Shirin M. Rai is Reader in Politics and Women Studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is the co-author of Chinese Politics and Society: An Introduction (1997), and co-editor of Women in the Face of Change: Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China (1992) and Women and the State: International Perspectives (1997). She has written extensively on the area of women and democratic politics in Third World, and is currently writing a book on the politics of gender and development.