Jackie Smith is an associate professor of sociology and peace studies at the Kroc Institute. Her research focuses on social movements, or the ways in which people organize and engage in politics in order to resolve injustice and promote human rights and democracy.
In her book Social Movements for Global Democracy, Smith contrasts two visions of globalization: one focused on financial markets, and one focused on people’s rights. She also provides case studies of groups working on issues ranging from poverty to climate change to reform of the United Nations.
Q: Who should read your book?
A: It’s primarily for scholars, but I also hope social activists will read it. Activist groups often focus so much on one specific issue that it’s hard to gain perspective on the complex global network of movements. The human rights framework in the book is a way to bring together many kinds of activists, who can then present a united front against the dominant idea that globalization is all about money.
Q: The groups you describe are often called “anti-globalization.” Are they?
A: No, not at all. These movements encourage international communication and ties to people around the world, so they very much promote global integration. But their vision of globalization is one of working across borders for reasons other than to expand global markets. Many social movements are demanding that global institutions make human rights their primary goal. Global market expansion and economic growth should not dominate global policy agendas as they have in recent decades.
Q: What prompted you to write about this?
A: My previous work has focused on transnational social movements. As I began encountering many of the groups, I realized that they really matter, and I wanted to tell their story. Also, the World Trade Organization had just been established, and I was seeing international treaties to protect human rights and the environment being trumped by trade agreements. Some citizens groups objected, but few academics were writing about it. The 9/11 attacks and the development of the World Social Forum brought into sharp contrast the different ways that people respond to economic globalization. So the book is a way to make sense of how popular movements today are articulating ideas for global governance.
Q. Global movements often involve hundreds of thousands of people, yet we don’t hear much about them. Why don’t they get more attention?
A. The mainstream media has virtually ignored these movements, or portrayed activists as uneducated or misinformed. The international media has done a somewhat better job, but the commercialization of our media is a real problem when it comes to getting information about the limitations of a market-driven economy. Academics also haven’t devoted serious attention to this movement, but this is changing. People in this country especially often have blinders on that come from our own upbringing, culture, and experiences. When you get involved in this work, you see that the scale of inequality and suffering in the world is huge. Until fairly recently, this has been mostly invisible to Americans.
Q: Your reviewers note that you balance scholarly and activist agendas in this book. Why take that approach?
A: I think this is the key goal of peace research — to bring the analytical tools we have in the social sciences to address the most pressing problems of our day. As Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As a U.S. citizen, and as a human being, it’s difficult to watch democracy being corrupted and not do something about it. We can’t enjoy rights in community unless everyone enjoys those rights, and unless our ecosystem is cared for.
As a scholar, I can argue, as I do in the book, that we need to set up our national and global institutions so that they maximize human rights. And we can’t do it alone. We need international cooperation and ways to organize to build a new global society. And we can learn a lot from paying close attention to the work and history of social movements.
