Social Movements and the Global City
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | 10.1177/030582989402300301 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| Author | Warren Magnusson |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
621
Social
Movements
and
the
Global
City
Warren
Magnusson
The
organising
assumption
of
international
rotations
theory
is
that
the
political
universe
is
to
be
conceived
primarily
in
terms
of
relations
within
and
hetween
states.
The
belief
seems
to
be
that
the
state
is
so
powerful
that.
in
the
end.
everything
of consequence
in
world
politics
is
forced
through
the
system
of
states
and
interstate
re(ations.
This
belief
is
an
old
one.
and
it
reftects
the
organising
assumptions
of
’political
science’-a
discipline
which
emerged
in
Germany
and
the
United
States
about
a
hundred
years
ago.
That
disciplines
was
originany
conceived
as
the
science
of
the
state.’
It
aspired
to
be
the
Aristotehan
master
science2-a
way
of
understanding
human
action
on
the
grand
scale.
Hcwvever,
from
the
beginning,
it
was
challenged
by
its
sister
disciplines
in
the
humanities
and
social
sciences,
all
of
which
pretended
to
have
discovered
n
more
fundamental
human
reality,
of
which
the
state
was
a
mere
reflection.
In
the
past
few
decades,
political
scientists
have
been
more
and
more
heleagucreci
hy
As
usual,
I
owe
much
to
Rob
Walker
for
stimulating
my
thinking
about
the
issues
raised
in
this
article.
The
Social
Sciences
and
Humanities
Research
Council
of
Canada
has
been
supporting
my
work
on
urban
politics
for
a
number
of
years, and 1
owe
Canadian
taxpayers
much
on
that
account.
I am
also
grateful
to
Sandra
Kahale
and
Michael
Lancaster
for
their
research
assistance,
and
more
generally
to
the
students
in
the
Interdisciplinary
Programme
in
Contemporary
Social
and
Political
Thought
at
the
University
of
Victoria
for
pushing
the
difficult
issues.
Steen
Hume.
Evan
Leeson,
and
Steven
Rimmington
engaged
me
in
some
particularly
useful
discussions
in
rotation
to the
global
city.
Clifford
Larabie
introduced
to
me
to
chaos
theory
and
Deidre
Duquette
helped
me
to
understand
the
global
organisation
of
indigenous
peoples.
1.
’Among
contemporary
social
scientists
it
is
a
virtually
unquestioned
assumption
that
the
state
forms
the
basic
concept
of
political
science.
A
typical
example
of
the
current
opinion
is
to
be
found
in
the
writings
of
Bluntschli.
who
defines
political
science
as
the
science
which
is
concerned
with
the
state,
which
endeavours
to
understand
and
comprehend
the
state
in
its
fundamental
conditions,
in
its
essential
nature,
its
various
forms
of
manifestation.
its
development"’.
Frederick
M.
Watkins.
The
State as
a
Concept
of
Political
Science
(New
York,
NY:
Harper
&
Brothers.
1934).
p.
1.
Woodrow
Wilson
was
one
of
the
founding
fathers
of
the
state-centric
discipline
of
political
science.
See
his
The
State:
Elements
of Historical
and
Practical
Polities
(Boston,
MA:
D.C.
Heath &
Co.,
1918),
first
published
in
1898,
hut
distributed
in
this
edition
(revised
by
Edward
Elliott)
to
American
troops
near
the
end
of
the
First
World
War.
Watkins,
writing
much
later,
anticipates
the
effort
after
World
War
II
to
redefine
the
discipline:
’...the
chains
by
which
mankind
is
bound
are
forged
not
only
by
the
state
but
by
an
infinity
of
lesser
associations
as
well.
This
leads
irresistibly
to
the
conclusion
that
the
proper
scope
of
political
science
is
not
the
study
of
the
state
or
of
any
other
specific
institutional
complex,
but
the
investigation
of
all
associations
insofar
as
they
can
be
shown
to
exemplify
the
problem
of
power’.
Watkins,
p.
83.
However,
see
David
Easton.
The
Political System
(Chicago.
IL:
University
of
Chicago
Press,
1953),
for
a
classic
illuctration
of
the
way
that
the
old
science
of
the
state
was
reintroduced
under
another
name.
2.
Aristotle,
Nichomachean
Ethics,
Book
I,
(various
editions), Chapter
2.
622
vociolctgis(s,
economists,
geographers,
anthropologists,
cultural
theorists,
and
historians
who
claim
to
have
better
ways
of
explaining
politics-oiies
that
point
beyond
the
state
to
something
else.
These
claims
have
naturally
heen
treated
with
some
scepticism
hy
political
scientists.
who
suspect
that
they
are
being
victimised
by
a
reverse
disciplinary
imperialism.
It
has
not
escaped
everyone’s
notice
that
analysts
from
the
sister
disciplines
tend
to
reintroduce
the
state
without
explaining
it.
or
to
substitute
terms
like
’the
nation’
or
’society’
for
what
we
might
otherwise
call
states.
Political
scientists
in
general
and
IR
theorists
in
particular
may
he
forgiven
for
supposing
that
their
own
approach
is
at
least
more
honest,
because
it
names
the
state
as
the
ultimate
regulator
of
social,
economic,
and
cultural
life.
and
focuses
attention
on
the
politics
of
state
policy-making
and
interstate
relations.
The
unfortunate
effect
of
this
defensive
response
is
that
’world
politics’
has
come
to
be
conceived
within
a
single
analytical
frame.
It
is
not
just
political
scientists
who
have
adopted
this
frame:
the
same
basic
assumptions
have
been
imported
into
the
work
of
sociologists,
economists,
anthropologists,
geographers
and
other
analysts
of
the
modern
world.’
Although
people
may
talk
about
civilisations,
world
economies,
and
other
transcendent
formations,
state-like
entities
keep
popping
up
as
the
governing
authorities
even
in
the
most
innovative
accounts
of
world
order.
Worse,
the
political
analyes
that
have
been
drawn
from
these
accounts
tend
to
follow
the
familiar
demarcations
between
domestic
government
and
international
relations.
It
seems
that
we
are
doomed
to
have
more
and
more
of
the
same
until
the
supposed
specialists
in
political
analysis
seize
the
initiative
and
show
others
how
the
old
categories
can
be
rethought.
Fortunately,
there
are
some
signs
of
rethinking,
even
within
the
theoretically
backward
discipline
of
(nternational
Relations .
Most
of
us
sense,
in
the
wake
of
the
collapse
of
the
bipolar
world
order
and
the
emergence
of
a
global
economy
and
culture,
that
the
old
ways
of
conceptualising
world
politics
are
not
really
adequate.
This
mirrors
a
general
unease
in
political
science
about
our
ability
to
account
for
changing
conditions.
The
neat
patterns
of
politics
in
the
poat-War
liberal
democracies
have been
disrupted,
and
the
textbook
accounts
no
longer
make
much
sense.
Our
analytical
tools
for
understanding
politics
outside
3.
Compare
Eric
R.
Wolf,
Europe
and
the
People
Without
History
(Berkeley,
CA:
University
of California
Press,
1982),
Chapter
1;
John
A.
Agnew,
’The
Devaluation
of
Place
in
Social
Science’,
in
Agnew
and
James
Duncan
(eds.),
The
Power
of
Place:
Bringing
Together
Geographical
and
Sociological Imaginations
(Boston,
MA:
Unwin
and
Hyman,
1989),
pp.
9-29;
and
Warren
Magnusson,
’The
Reification
of
Political
Community’,
in
R.B.J.
Walker
and
Saul
H.
Mendlovitz
(eds.),
Contending
Sovereignties:
Redefining
Political
Community (Boulder,
CO:
Lynne
Rienner,
1990),
pp.
45-60.
4.
See,
for
example,
R.B.J.
Walker,
Inside/Outside:
International
Relations
as
Political
Theory
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1993);
Justin
Rosenberg.
The
Empire
of
Civil
Society:
A
Critique
of the
Realist
Theory
of International
Relations
(London:
Verso,
1994);
and
Jim
George,
Discourses
of Global
Politics:
A
Critical
(Re)Introduction
to
International
Relations
(Boulder,
CO:
Lynne
Rienner,
1994).
Compare
John
A.
Agnew,
"Timeless
Space
and
State-Centrism:
The
Geographical
Assumptions
of
International
Relations
Theory’,
in
Stephen
J.
Rosow,
Naeem
Inayatullah
and
Mark
Rupert
(eds.),
The
Global
Economy
as
Political
Space
(Boulder,
CO:
Lynne
Rienner,
1994),
pp.
87-106.
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