Volume 5, Issue 2

The last three decades have seen an expansion of international standardization in the context of globalization. Not only is the number of standards produced proliferating, but standardization as such is expanding into new fields. Moreover, the diversity of objects standardized and the variety of standards has increased. In this article I analyze the influence of globalization on the internal dynamic of a specific standardizing organization: the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest developer of international standards. The thesis developed in this paper is that we are facing a pivotal period of reorientation and reorganization within ISO that can be understood in terms of the influence of globalization on international standardization. I show that ISO faces a crucial period in which the organization could evolve toward more or less democratization in its standards development process. First, I suggest a theoretical framework to explain the internal dynamics of a regulatory organization such as ISO in the context of globalization. My theoretical approach will offer a new perspective to better understand the influence of globalization on the organization and orientation of ISO. Democracy is one of the key normative issues raised by the literature about globalization. Among other things, this paper analyzes the globalizing trend, as well as the current challenges and tensions inherent in the democratization of a fundamental regulatory mechanism of globalization.

This comparative longitudinal study of efforts to promote the environmental sustainability of the Brazilian and the Ecuadorian Amazon regions re-examines the theory of transnational advocacy networks (TANs). In particular, this study challenges the assumption that local advocacy groups participating in TANs are empowered by the experience. As we enter a second decade of accumulated knowledge about transnational advocacy networks, empirical evidence suggests a murkier portrait of the impact of TANs on local activism. Local groups may indeed gain political power and technical capacity as a result of their participation in a TAN. They may also experience a reversal of their initial empowerment gains. Finally, local activist groups may undergo complete demobilization in the aftermath of their participation in a TAN. This study underscores the possibility that participation in global advocacy efforts may entail a variety of consequences for local activist organizations and attempts to explain this variance.

The visualization of a radically different society and the search for another world have become recurrent in the discourse and practices of 21st century Latin American revolutionaries and alter-globalization activists. Utopia, often redefined, is embraced and conceptualized as the ultimate goal and final inspiration. This article analyzes the different ways in which such alternative worlds are envisaged, the utopian drives behind them, as well as the consequences for such concepts as politics and revolution. The article concludes with a reflection on the lasting power of imagination, hope, and heroic narratives of national and global liberation against the perceived evil of neoliberal globalization.

Transitions in technology are shaping, defining and establishing the future of the globalized social sphere with increasing pace and impact. As seen from a systemic viewpoint, the overall process seems to consist of a two-fold movement, in which an outer process of transition is joined by an inner transformational drive. While new social media like Facebook, Twitter, webcams, smartphones and iPads change the outer dimension of how we perceive, interpret and handle our social lives, thus transforming our habits of cultural consumption, contemporary brain and consciousness research are changing the inner dimension of the contemporary social by dramatically re-shaping the self-perception and interpretation of the individual through the findings, cultural distribution and practical applications of neuroscience and neurotechnology, thus questioning the conceptual cornerstones of sociality as conceived by Western modernity. This two-fold argument examines both processes from the inside out and the outside in. As such, the primary task as at now may not be trying to “explain” the meaning(s) of the new developments, but rather to identify an array of crucial questions at the inter- and trans-disciplinary crossroads between the different societal fields, culturo-political trends and scientific disciplines.