Introducing Transnational Public Spheres to International Relations

Abstract

Globalization is paradoxical: it enhances the prospects for both domination and emancipation. On the one hand, neoliberalism is concentrating material resources in a transnational elite, exemplified by the growing disparity in global wealth distribution. A geographically disparate band of individuals and transnational corporations (TNCs) form an identifiable nucleus of significant structural power in current world order. Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that this hegemony is partly sustained by the “manufacturing of consent” amongst citizens by a handful of global media conglomerates. Yet on the other hand, globalization has facilitated resistance by offering new opportunities for transnational dialogue, cross-cultural engagement, and grassroots political participation. It is often suggested that media and migration trends have weakened the role of the state in people’s political horizons in favor of a growing cosmopolitanism (e.g., Held, 2003). This is partly evidenced by increasing participation in international civil society initiatives, such as the anticorporate movement, or the Make Poverty History campaign. Globalization, then, may be conceived as a dualistic phenomenon, a process of dynamic tension between oppositional tendencies.

An alternative version of the thesis herein has been published in the journal Globalizations (Crack, 2007).