Dying Planet, Deadly People: 'Race'-Sex Anxieties and Alternative Globalizations

Summary

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Gosine attempts to examine the work of "race"-racism in constitutions of one popularly touted alternative globalization, global environmentalism. Among other things, she examines how overpopulation discourses efficiently and effectively justified racism in arguments about social and, later, ecological well-being.

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Dying Planet, Deadly People: 'Race'-Sex Anxieties and Alternative Globalizations

WHAT WERE ONCE HERALDED AS "ANTl-GLOBALIZATION" MOVEMENTS ARE FAST becoming reconstituted as networks championing "alternative" globalizations. No longer presented as entirely opposed to the intensification of cross-border economic relationships (as was the case in the 1990s), activists now appear to place much more emphasis on negotiations about the form of these relationships. Some organizations, such as those engaged in the World Social Forum meetings, propose a "globalization in solidarity" that prioritizes "universal human rights" and the achievement of "democratic international systems" and institutions "at the service of social justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples" ("Revised World Social Forum Charter of Principles," in Sen et al., 2004:70). Others advocate "globalization from below," whereby "people at the grass roots around the world link up to impose their own needs and interests on the process of globalization" (Brecher, Costello, and Smith, 2000). A key reason for this shifting emphasis is found in Stephanie Guilloud's "Open letter to anti-globalization protestors":

I visited [Nicaragua] after the Seattle protests and engaged in a conversation with a good friend.... He struggles to keep good-paying work and hide his Sandinista identity in a time when Nicaragua is the second poorest country in this hemisphere. He said, "Global finance institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the WTO are killing us. But without them, we would die. What do you propose to replace them?" I felt a profound shift in my understanding, and I appreciate his challenge (http://colours. mahosl.org/ articles/guilloud.html).

The growing consensus is that critique is simply not enough: alternative institutions and relationships are needed.

Guilloud's position is noteworthy given her participation in "Colours of Resistance" (CoR). A Montreal-based transnational "think-tank/action-tank" of nonwhite, anti-globalization activists, CoR was formed as a response:

to [a] growing feeling of a gap between what has been labelled as the "anti-globalization" movement in the "West" and the day-to-day organizing efforts in communities of colour to resist the impacts of global capitalism (http://colours.mahos...

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