Weighting the Parameters, a Response to Bancel׳s “Searching for Global Consciousness: A Seventeen Year Exploration”

EXPLORE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-105
Author(s):  
Roger Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Global Consciousness

Imagining Global Nonviolence

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 193-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amentahru Wahlrab
Keyword(s):  
Global Consciousness ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Nonviolent Resistance ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Global Imaginary

This article interprets the globalization of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance through the lens of Manfred B. Steger’s concept of the “global imaginary.” It argues that the globalization of nonviolence and the global imaginary are mutually reinforcing processes. Nonviolent protests are driven by local issues and are, thus, context specific and local but, as in the case of the Arab uprisings, as they spread through themenaand beyond, the uprisings provided historically linked examples of a growing global consciousness, a “global” we.

Empire without Sovereignty

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-71
Author(s):  
David Todd
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
The Political ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Global Consciousness ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Perception ◽  
Informal Imperialism

This chapter investigates the political economy of French informal imperialism, revealing a little-known facet of the intellectual origins of globalization, and confirming that the pursuit of empire and the emergence of global consciousness were inextricably linked. It highlights lesser known thinkers, which helps recover what the prevailing attitudes of the informed liberal-leaning public towards empire actually were. After 1815, once the word “liberal” entered the political lexicon, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the Abbé Dominique de Pradt, and Michel Chevalier described themselves as liberals — with some justification, since they admired Britain's balanced constitution and were stalwart advocates of free trade. Recovering their views on empire therefore helps to suggest that French liberals did not become imperialistic in the mid-nineteenth century, but instead consistently harboured imperial ambitions, even if, for pragmatic reasons, they tended to shun territorial expansion after 1815. Focusing on these neglected but influential figures also helps correct the common perception of France as having withdrawn from the international stage after the fall of Napoleon.

Black Women’s Internationalism from the Age of Revolutions to World War I

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon R. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Black Internationalism ◽  
International Council ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
Global Consciousness

Black internationalism describes the political culture and intellectual practice forged in response to slavery, colonialism, and white imperialism. It is a historical and ongoing collective struggle against racial oppression rooted in global consciousness. While the expression of black internationalism has certainly changed across time and place, black liberation through collaboration has been and remains its ultimate goal. Since the emergence of black internationalism as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and during the Age of Revolutions, black women such as the poet Phyllis Wheatley and evangelist Rebecca Protten have been at its forefront. Their writings and activism espoused an Afro-diasporic, global consciousness and promoted the cause of universal emancipation. During the 19th century, black women internationalists included abolitionists, missionaries, and clubwomen. They built on the work of their predecessors while laying the foundations for succeeding black women internationalists in the early 20th century. By World War I, a new generation of black women activists and intellectuals remained crucial parts of the International Council of Women, an organization founded by white suffragists from the United States, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a global organization formally led by Jamaican pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. But they also formed an independent organization, the International Council of Women of the Darker Races (ICWDR). Within and outside of the ICWDR, black women from Africa and the African Diaspora faced and challenged discrimination on the basis of their sex and race. Their activism and intellectual work set a powerful precedent for a subsequent wave of black internationalism shaped by self-avowed black feminists.

scholarly journals Critical Perspectives on Clandestine Migration Facilitation: An Overview of Migrant Smuggling Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Global South ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Global Consciousness ◽  
Nation States ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Criminal Groups ◽  
In Transit

Current representations of large movements of migrants and asylum seekers have become part of the global consciousness. Media viewers are bombarded with images of people from the global south riding atop of trains, holding on to dinghies, arriving at refugee camps, crawling beneath wire fences or being rescued after being stranded in the ocean or the desert for days. Images of gruesome scenes of death in the Mediterranean or the Arizona or Sahara deserts reveal the inherent risks of irregular migration, as bodies are pulled out of the water or corpses are recovered, bagged, and disposed of, their identities remaining forever unknown. Together, these images communicate a powerful, unbearable feeling of despair and crisis. Around the world, many of these tragedies are attributed to the actions of migrant smugglers, who are almost monolithically depicted as men from the Global South organized in webs of organized criminals whose transnational reach allows them to prey on migrants and asylum seekers' vulnerabilities. Smugglers are described as callous, greedy, and violent. Reports on efforts to contain their influence and strength are also abundant in official narratives of border and migration control. The risks inherent to clandestine journeys and the violence people face during these transits must not be denied. Many smugglers do take advantage of the naivetέ and helplessness of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, stripping them of their valuables and abandoning them to their fate during their journeys. Yet, as those working directly with migrants and asylum seekers in transit can attest, the relationships that emerge between smugglers and those who rely on their services are much more complex, and quite often, significantly less heinous than what media and law enforcement suggest. The visibility of contemporary, large migration movements has driven much research on migrants' clandestine journeys and their human rights implications. However, the social contexts that shape said journeys and their facilitation have not been much explored by researchers (Achilli 2015). In other words, the efforts carried out by migrants, asylum seekers, and their families and friends to access safe passage have hardly been the target of scholarly analysis, and are often obscured by the more graphic narratives of victimization and crime. In short, knowledge on the ways migrants, asylum seekers, and their communities conceive, define, and mobilize mechanisms for irregular or clandestine migration is limited at best. The dichotomist script of smugglers as predators and migrants and asylum seekers as victims that dominates narratives of clandestine migration has often obscured the perspectives of those who rely on smugglers for their mobility. This has not only silenced migrants and asylum seekers' efforts to reach safety, but also the collective knowledge their communities use to secure their mobility amid increased border militarization and migration controls. This paper provides an overview of contemporary, empirical scholarship on clandestine migration facilitation. It then argues that the processes leading to clandestine or irregular migration are not merely the domain of criminal groups. Rather, they also involve a series of complex mechanisms of protection crafted within migrant and refugee communities as attempts to reduce the vulnerabilities known to be inherent to clandestine journeys. Both criminal and less nefarious efforts are shaped by and in response to enforcement measures worldwide on the part of nation-states to control migration flows. Devised within migrant and refugee communities, and mobilized formally and informally among their members, strategies to facilitate clandestine or irregular migration constitute a system of human security rooted in generations-long, historical notions of solidarity, tradition, reciprocity, and affect (Khosravi 2010). Yet amid concerns over national and border security, and the reemergence of nationalism, said strategies have become increasingly stigmatized, traveling clandestinely being perceived as an inherently — and uniquely — criminal activity. This contribution constitutes an attempt to critically rethink the framework present in everyday narratives of irregular migration facilitation. It is a call to incorporate into current protection dialogs the perceptions of those who rely on criminalized migration mechanisms to fulfill mobility goals, and in so doing, articulate and inform solutions towards promoting safe and dignifying journeys for all migrants and asylum seekers in transit.

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