Gobalization, social movements and experience

Over the past 20 years, the broad theme of globalization has been viewed from many angles and perspectives. Social movement analysts continue to offer a unique purview. This is because of our concern with the cultural and social components of action. This approach draws our attention to the reflexive and shifting dimensions of subjectivity, as a collective response to the globalization of the planet. Anti and alter global movements comprise but a small percentage of this elastic and experience-based form of global change, with its political, cultural, economic and social import. The tense relations between rich and poor countries, actors with competing territorial claims, the unevenness of relations between local/urban and global actors and institutions, the cultural, religious and institutional lags of globalization, the effects of migration, as well as international security and militarization rationales have raised the relative stakes for all actors: whether they live in a global city in the dominant Global North or a village in the Global South. If the sociology of social movements broadly defined - has a fundamental kinship to large processes of social change - and the role of the actor/agent at the center of historical developments the radically differentiated experiences of globalization should be at the very core of a sociology of social movements for the 21st century. One can make the case, in this instance, that social movement analyses offer a fundamental and critical reading of global transformation.