Mass protests have raged since the global financial crisis of 2008.
Across the world students and workers and environmentalists are
taking to the streets. Discontent is seething even in the
wealthiest countries, as the world saw with Occupy Wall Street in
2011.
Protest Inc. tells a disturbingly different story of global
activism. As millions of grassroots activists rally against
capitalism, activism more broadly is increasingly mirroring
business management and echoing calls for market-based solutions.
The past decade has seen nongovernmental organizations partner with
oil companies like Exxon Mobil, discount retailers like Walmart,
fast-food chains like Mc Donald’s, and brand manufacturers
like Nike and Coca-Cola. NGOs are courting billionaire
philanthropists, branding causes, and turning to consumers as
wellsprings of reform.
Are ‘career’ activists selling out to pay staff and
fund programs? Partly. But far more is going on. Political and
socioeconomic changes are enhancing the power of business to
corporatize activism, including a worldwide crackdown on dissent, a
strengthening of consumerism, a privatization of daily life, and a
shifting of activism into business-style institutions. Grassroots
activists are fighting back. Yet, even as protestors march and
occupy cities, more and more activist organizations are
collaborating with business and advocating for corporate-friendly
‘solutions.’ This landmark book sounds the alarm about
the dangers of this corporatizing trend for the future of
transformative change in world politics.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments vii
1 Where are the Radicals? 1
2 Seeing Like a Corporation 29
3 Securitizing Dissent 55
4 Privatizing Social Life 82
5 Institutionalizing Activism 108
6 A Corporatized World Order 134
Notes 157
Index 193
About the author
Peter Dauvergne is professor of international relations at the University of British Columbia, and author of the bestselling The Shadows of Consumption (2008), which received the Gerald L. Young Book Award in Human Ecology.
Genevieve Le Baron is Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in politics at the University of Sheffield.
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