Culture and Activism across Borders

Abstract

Research into transnational activism and transnational social movements has gained importance with the rise of the Global Justice Movement (GJM). Moreover, the protests of the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, or Anonymous draw our attention to the transnational dimension of activism. But cooperation between activists at the transnational level is not a new phenomenon (Keck and Sikkink 2000). The women’s movement, for instance, had already built transnational networks in the 19th century (Dadej and Leszczawski-Schwerk 2012). The vast literature on social movements stresses the transnational level of movement activism. This has led to a neglect of processes that take place at the national level. I will fill this gap by taking a closer look at the role of national differences in social movement activism across borders — with a focus on cultural differences. A broad debate has taken place about the nation state as a concept and its loss of impact on various areas of people’s lives. The contribution of this text will be to argue why the national is still important for transnational activism and to outline some of the forces of the nation state that are responsible for cultural differences between movements based in different countries.