Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement [Paperback]

Daniel Burton-Rose (Editor), Eddie Yuen (Editor), George Katsiaficas (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2004

This updated and expanded edition of The Battle of Seattle invites readers to join the intensive debates within the antiglobalization movement. The uprising against the World Trade Organization in 1999 was the most visible and dramatic protest in the United States since the Vietnam War. Subsequent protests in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Prague, Cancun, and other cities have shown that there is a growing movement opposing globalization. The book roots these events globally in an anticapitalist history that includes the resistance to the IMF, the mass organizing campaigns of the nuclear-freeze movement in the 1980s, and the innovative tactics of environmentalists in the United States. Confronting Capitalism tackles the questions raised by the antiglobalization movement: How can a movement that claims to be global root itself in local communities? What happens to nonviolent tactics in an environment of increasingly ruthless policing? Can NGOs be agents of social transformation? Photographs, illustrations, and contributions from Naomi Klein, Stanley Aronowitz, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, and others are featured.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Anti-globalization forces came of age in Seattle, sweeping like a tsunami through the city during the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings. This evolving "movement of movements" gets fresh treatment in this revised and updated collection of essays, which was first published as The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization (2002). Described by Yuen as a "series of snapshots and critiques from an unfinished history," the book mixes first-person accounts of defining moments in Seattle, Prague and Genoa with chronicles of lesser-known confrontations in the "global South" and potent analyses of current trends in the struggle between activism and capitalism. Aside from its star-studded roster—contributors include Hakim Bey, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Arundhati Roy and Jeffrey St. Clair—the book’s strongest feature is its incorporation of diverse voices and under-documented issues. Katsiaficas, Manuel Callahan, and David Kubrin upend Americans’ "historical amnesia" with appraisals of pre-Seattle protest; Kristine Wong indicts the movement’s marginalization of people of color; Sophie Style identifies a shift toward regional activism and away from mass protests (which can invite violent police reprisals and provoke targeted organizations to retreat to inaccessible locales). The volume concludes with cogent reflections on "theory and practice in the movement." Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti, in particular, decry the movement’s descent into inarticulate protest "carnivals" and appeal to the American activist left to replace antiquated worldviews with frameworks that supply greater ideological coherence. Readers who enjoy wide-ranging arguments, and who can bear with the volume’s loose organization, will find plenty to mull over here.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press; 2nd edition (April 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932360026
• ISBN-13: 978-1932360028
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,153,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)