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A fascinating ethnography of the democratic organization of shack settlements in South Africa.
How do individuals and organizations move beyond the boundaries of constitutional or legal constructs to challenge neoliberalism and capitalism? As major urban areas have become the principal sites of poor and working-class social upheaval in the early twenty-first century, the chapters in this book explore key cities in the Global South. Through detailed cases studies, Urban Revolt unravels the potential and limitations of urban social movements on an international level.
A Movement of Movements charts the strategic thinking behind the mosaic of movements currently challenging neoliberal globalization. Leading theorists and activists-the Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos, Chittaroopa Palit from the Indian Narmada Valley dam protests, Soweto anti-privatization campaigner Trevor Ngwane, Brazilian Sem Terra leader Joo Pedro Stedile, and many more-discuss their personal formation as radicals, the history of their movements, their analyses of globalization, and the nuts and bolts of mobilizing against a US-dominated world system. Explaining how the Global South and the experience of indigenous peoples have provided such a dynamic and practical inspiration, the contributors describe the roles anarchism and direct democracy have played, the contributions and limitations of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre as a coordinating focus, and the effects of and responses to the economic downturn, September 11, and Washington's war on terror. Their statements, at once personal and visionary, offer a dazzling new insight into the political imagination of the global resistance movements.
This indispensable book offers a panorama of social resistances to neoliberal globalization in the South. Writers and activists from forty different countries or regions offer snapshots of the latest mobilizations, from the anti-privatization groups in South Africa and the anti-WTO campaign of peasants in India, to the indigenous movement behind Evo Morales in Bolivia. The book focuses on a range of diverse popular struggles that impact on democratic and development process, yet receive little public attention or are caricatured by mainstream media. It reveals collective tensions throughout those societies whose material bases have been profoundly shaken by a series of adjustments dictated by the canons of the globalized economy. It is an essential guide to the latest developments in social movements. Edited by Francois Polet of the Centre Tricontinental, it includes contributions from key activists and scholars such as Vinod Raina, Michel Warschawski, Maristella Svampa and Mahaman Tidjani.
Metropolises often evoke images of flashy high-rise buildings, permanent background noise, backed-up cars and people moving quickly in all directions in their masses. New York, Tokyo, London, Sao Paulo. But what about Cairo?
The current resurgence of Marxism is based on new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that seek democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism. The Marxism of many of these movements is neither dogmatic nor prescriptive, but rather, open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project; the ecological limits of capitalism; the crisis of global capitalism; and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century challenges vanguardist Marxism featured in South Africa and beyond. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and serves as an excellent introduction to new ways of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field. Many anti-capitalist traditions and themes - including democracy, globalisation, feminism, critique and ecology inform and shape the contributions in this volume.
As a spokesman for a country, a continent and the developing world, Thabo Mbeki played a crucial role in world politics, but to many people he remained an enigma throughout his presidency. Is this simply because he was a secretive man, or were there complicated political factors at play? Who was the real Mbeki? In this book, multiple-award-winning journalist William Mervin Gumede chronicles Mbeki’s spectacular rise to dominate Africa’s oldest liberation movement. He explores the complex position that Mbeki occupied – following in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps, holding together an alliance with deep ideological differences, and ruling an intensely divided country. Revealing the political and personal tensions behind the scenes, Gumede explains how Mbeki sought to mould the ANC into his image through tight control, and exposes the intrigues behind the battle for succession. Covering Mbeki’s attempts to modernise the economy and kick-start an African Renaissance, and investigating his controversial stance on issues from AIDS to Zimbabwe, the book offers invaluable insights into the arcane machinations behind political decisions that touch the lives of millions every day.
The emergence of the 'Third World' is generally traced to onset of the Cold War and decolonization in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s the "three worlds of development" were central to the wider dynamics of the changing international order. By the 1980s, Third Worldism had peaked entering a period of dramatic decline that paralleled the end of the Cold War. Into the 21st century, the idea of a Third World and even the pursuit of some form of Third Worldism has continued to be advocated and debated. For some it has passed into history, and may never have had as much substance as it was credited with, while others seek to retain or recuperate the Third World and give Third Worldism ...
Water is both an essential resource and a source of disease and conflict in contemporary Africa. And we begin to learn that far distant processes of consumption and pollution can have their impact on the water systems of Africa: global warming produced by the material culture of the first world threatens the weather systems and very survival of developing countries. In this context, this volume – the product of an expert meeting at Cornell University’s Institute for African Development – traces and tracks the dynamics of the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa. The volume contains a variety of approaches to the study of the organisation of water within Africa ranging from technical essays on water borne diseases, through institutional analyses of the legal and political arrangements around the distribution of water to social policy analyses of the unmet demand for water amongst Africa’s poor. Taken as a whole, the volume provides the reader with a useful reference work on the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa whilst simultaneously providing a lively introduction to a critical and much neglected area of African development policy.
Offers new insights into the struggle against Apartheid, and the poverty and inequality that instigated political resistance.