Introduction: States and Social Movements in the Modern World-System

Abstract

The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century. (Wallerstein 1976: 233) Protest, struggle, and the urge for equality are as old as constricting structures such as caste hierarchy, inequality of power, wealth, and knowledge. Social movement theorists argue that movements, protests, and struggles are legitimate expressions of popular interests and attempt to explain why, when, and how people protest and make claims. Protests and challenges to inequalities have been visible in discourse and movement activities all over the world. Efforts to challenge structural inequities also reveal the complex locations of different groups, particularly in the context of the current trends in globalization. While some attempts have been made to expand the contemporary social movement scholarship in the United States to include international cases, the field remains fragmented. At the same time, an increasing number of U.S.-based scholars are now interested in movement dynamics across countries and contexts. A significant set of movements globally and across countries have and continue to challenge the consequences of globalization and specifically the neoliberal agenda. Neoliberalism generally refers to the ideology that advocates the dominance of a competition-driven market model and includes a set of policy prescriptions that have defined the world economy since the late 1970s. Within this doctrine, individuals in a society are viewed, if viewed at all, as autonomous, rational producers and consumers whose decisions are motivated primarily by economic or material concerns. But this ideology has little to say about the social and economic inequalities that distort real economies. The neoliberal order that is supported by powerful states and wealthy corporate interests has been expanding over time, but that order is also being vigorously challenged by movements acting both locally and transnationally. Scholars have begun to integrate tenets from the world-systems approach with perspectives in social movements to develop an understanding of the dynamics of movement action as occurring within a world-systemic context (cf. Smith and Wiest 2012; Kaup 2013). How have changes such as globalization trends and the adoption of neoliberal policy agendas affected the livelihood of people? How have people across rural and urban spaces and across