Volume 5, Issue 3

This article argues that as an inclusive social movement, the National Liberation Zapatista Army (EZLN), opens diverse critical challenges to unilateral interpretations of globalization—via the construction of communicative action undertaken by international alternative social networks. There is a subversive potentiality in the very concept of globalization as possibility: on the one hand, globalization should be appropriated as rejecting absolute truths of what it is supposed to mean to be globalized; on the other hand, it should provide spaces for the communicative action of subaltern counterpublics in which different human groups interact, discuss diverse topics and create social networks. Likewise, the article argues that the subject is the main agent of liberation, wherein no identity determinant dominates another—class, race, sex, ethnic group, gender—but the subject is the quintessential vanguard—as a plural collectivity—of social struggles forging a potential solidarity against diverse forms of domination. Therefore, if the Neozapatista experience has a lesson, it is precisely its initiative to transform the international indigenous subject—as well as other oppressed identities—into a catalyst for claims of unity in difference.

The paper discusses two writers who belong to distinct cultural spheres: Alice Walker (African American) and Bama Faustina (Dalit). The former is prodigious and versatile. The latter is emerging as a significant voice of protest. The idea of "planetarity" as expounded by Gayatri Spivak in "The Death of a Discipline" is deployed as a theoretical armature that allows for a comparison of two remarkable representatives of their respective cultures who have been articulating and animating the hideous aspects of racism and of caste discrimination. The comparison moreover is an intervention in the continuing conversation in Comparative Literature as to how, in the context of Globalization, borders need to be crossed and the values of the humanities revisited for the survival of the discipline.

Current IR theories are not necessarily international theories. IR theories are still basically based on historical experiences of the Western Christian world and serve Western interests. Therefore, they have difficulties in understanding globalization. They also have difficulties in accommodating the rise of BRICs and especially that of China and India. This article demonstrates that traditional peace research has much potential to contribute to constructing a true international approach in understanding international politics in the era of globalization.

This article argues that globalization did not weaken the State per se, rather that since globalization is a ubiquitous and fluid concept, it has accompanied the transformation of specific historical forms of State power. It demonstrates that globalization and the State are forming an autopoietic dyad in which each concept/actor has a specific role that presupposes the other. Thus the State, by undergoing institutional and structural changes, is assigned a renewed role as an economic planner. As such, the State is shifting towards what may be called a form of socialist post-statism or neo-multilateral socialism.

What bonds hold human society together? How have these bonds evolved over time, and where do they extend in an era of globalization? This article shows how certain types of social bonds continue to dominate human civilization, explores some of the strains they are under at the present time, and suggests a few ways they may adapt to the global future by acquiring a more precise connection to the concept of Humanity.

Where does al-Qaida stand today in light of the Arab Awakening throughout the Middle East and North Africa? Why has the former failed while the latter has, partially, succeeded? This is a brief tour d'horizon of the vast region, its recent past, and its likely future.