Bill Carroll
University of Victoria, Sociology, Faculty Member
- Sociology, Critical Theory, Political Sociology, Social Movements, Social Theory, Transnational Networks, and 11 moreCritical Pedagogy, Marxism, Hegemony, Gramsci, Socialism, Transnational Social Movements, Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony, Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony, Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Political Economyedit
- My research interests are in the areas of the political economy of corporate capitalism, social movements and social ... moreMy research interests are in the areas of the political economy of corporate capitalism, social movements and social change, and critical social theory and method. A member of the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria since 1981, I established the Interdisciplinary Program in Social Justice Studies at the University of Victoria in 2008 and served as its director from 2008 to 2012. I am also a founding faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cultural, Political and Social Thought, and served as its director for part of the 1990s. My books include The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class, Corporate Power in a Globalizing World, Remaking Media (with Bob Hackett), Critical Strategies for Social Research, Challenges and Perils: Social Democracy in Neoliberal Times (with R.S. Ratner) and Organizing Dissent. My current project, “Alternative policy groups and global civil society: Networks, discourses and practices of counter-hegemony,” is a community-engaged initiative in knowledge co-creation through participatory field research, among other research methods.edit
This chapter maps the transnational network of fossil capital as a formation of leading capitalists and their advisors, embedded within a global corporate elite. That elite forms one part of a wider imperialist order. I first bring a... more
This chapter maps the transnational network of fossil capital as a formation of leading capitalists and their advisors, embedded within a global corporate elite. That elite forms one part of a wider imperialist order. I first bring a political ecology of fossil capital into a brief reconstruction of the eras through which imperialism has moved since the late nineteenth century. This sets the stage for a network analysis that explores how capitalist interests based in different locales, North and South, participate in the transnational network of fossil capital, and what the pattern of participation implies for imperialism today.
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With the highest per capita carbon emissions among the G20, Canada presents the interesting case of a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state. In these circumstances, a regime of obstruction, with a distinctive... more
With the highest per capita carbon emissions among the G20, Canada presents the interesting case of a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state. In these circumstances, a regime of obstruction, with a distinctive political-economic architecture, has taken shape. This regime is constituted through modalities of power that protect revenue streams issuing from carbon extraction, processing and transport while bolstering popular support for an accumulation strategy in which fossil capital figures as a leading fraction. It incorporates a panoply of hegemonic practices at different scales, reaching into civil and political society, and into Indigenous communities whose land claims and worldviews challenge state mandated property rights. This article first highlights findings from a six-year collaborative investigation of the modalities through which fossil capital's economic and political-cultural power is exercised at different scales, then outlines how the passive-revolutionary project of 'climate capitalism' is taking shape in the Canadian context as a response to climate crisis, and finally considers how a project of energy democracy, might hold the potential to catalyze the formation of an alternative historical bloc, opening onto eco-socialism.
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Keep it in the Ground - an original piece from Bill Carroll - features footage from various places, worldwide – showing the extraction of carbon from the earth and the popular resistance to that, including student strikes, extinction... more
Keep it in the Ground - an original piece from Bill Carroll - features footage from various places, worldwide – showing the extraction of carbon from the earth and the popular resistance to that, including student strikes, extinction rebellion, Ende Gelände, COP protests, Indigenous protectors and divestment. Musically, it’s sped-up hip-hop with marimba/vibes accompaniment.
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This article reflects on recent scholarship that clarifies the trajectory and significance of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in the context of a global capitalism whose sharpening contradictions (if they are not creatively... more
This article reflects on recent scholarship that clarifies the trajectory and significance of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in the context of a global capitalism whose sharpening contradictions (if they are not creatively transmuted) portend the cumulative exhaustion of living labour and living systems. I attempt to clarify: 1) how key terms like global, transnational, regional and national apply within TCC formation; 2) how the distinction between a capitalist class in-itself and for-itself applies to the TCC; and 3) how insights from the Amsterdam School of transnational historical materialism, which embarked upon the first sustained research program on the TCC in the 1980s, can add nuance to our analysis. Although the world market has broadened and deepened and the circuitry of capital has become dramatically more transnational in the past half-century, as a class-for-itself, the TCC is a regional tendency that co-exists amid structures and practices of an era of capitalism fading but not extinguished – including massive north-south disparities (some of which have been intensifying through uneven development). A transnational capitalist and President at odds with the TCC script for global governance in a borderless world, Donald Trump personifies the liminal character of TCC formation in our time.
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400 ppm is an eco-political music video which encapsulates climate crisis and climate justice in three minutes flat. It is an intervention in popular political ecology/economy, aimed at those who are uneasy with the increasingly obvious... more
400 ppm is an eco-political music video which encapsulates climate crisis and climate justice in three minutes flat. It is an intervention in popular political ecology/economy, aimed at those who are uneasy with the increasingly obvious deterioration of the living systems of which we are an inextricable part.
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What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the international network of the corporate elite? Has the structure of corporate governance become more national or have transnational networks been robust? We investigate this issue by... more
What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the international network of the corporate elite? Has the structure of corporate governance become more national or have transnational networks been robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increases in relative importance and remains largely intact during the crisis period 2006-2013. But this network does not depend – as it used to do - on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite becomes more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to the transnational orientation.
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The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, is an enormous achievement, a superb example of critical political economy steeped in the detailed analysis of history. Still, this... more
The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, is an enormous achievement, a superb example of critical political economy steeped in the detailed analysis of history. Still, this book is not without its weaknesses, and like any rich analysis of a complex phenomenon it raises as many questions as it answers. In this review article I first take up what I take to be the weaknesses and then raise a few substantive and strategic questions.
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In an era which has seen musings about the end of history, the fragmentation of the left into the many shards of identity politics, and the rise of postmodern cynicism as a new cultural dominant, can we even speak of the radical? To... more
In an era which has seen musings about the end of history, the fragmentation of the left into the many shards of identity politics, and the rise of postmodern cynicism as a new cultural dominant, can we even speak of the radical? To recover an authentic sense of the radical, we need to recognize its distinctive modalities, emergent in history, which have been incorporated into diverse practices that challenge hegemony. Four radical modalities may be distinguished: the resistant, the analytical, the prefigurative, and the subversive. What is needed is a robust radicalism that knits together all four modalities. It is in their reflexive, practical combination that these modalities gain real effectivity, not only objectively but subjectively.
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Transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) are networks and centres within and around which counter-hegemonic knowledge is produced and mobilized among subaltern communities and critical social movements. Based on in-depth interviews... more
Transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) are networks and centres within and around which counter-hegemonic knowledge is produced and mobilized among subaltern communities and critical social movements. Based on in-depth interviews with practitioners at 16 TAPGs, this article presents eight modes of cognitive praxis and discusses how they appear in the work of alternative policy groups. The eight modes are not sealed off from each other, but overlap and interpenetrate. In combination, these modes of cognitive praxis strive to produce transformative knowledge concomitantly with knowledge-based transformation. The analysis evidences tracings of a double dialectic in the cognitive praxis of alternative policy groups: a dialectic of theory and practice, and one of dialogue. It is in a forward movement—fostering solidaristic dialogue among counterpublics in combination with the iterative integration of theory and practice—that alternative knowledge makes its indispensable contribution to counter-hegemony.
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This chapter focuses on an emergent component of global civil society: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) that research and promote democratic alternatives to neoliberal globalization. Since the 1970s, an increasingly... more
This chapter focuses on an emergent component of global civil society: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) that research and promote democratic alternatives to neoliberal globalization. Since the 1970s, an increasingly crisis-ridden economic globalization has fuelled concerns in the global North that democracy is being hollowed out as governments lose capacity to pursue policies that stray from what has been called the corporate agenda, even as democratic forces and practices within a number of Southern states have recently strengthened due to pressure from below – as in Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ and the Middle East’s ‘Arab Spring.’ Indeed, as neoliberal globalization have reshaped the political-economic terrain, North and South, transnational movements have developed as advocates of a ‘democratic globalization’ that endeavours to enrich human relations across space by empowering communities and citizens to participate in the full range of decisions that govern their lives (Chase-Dunn 2002; Munck 2010; Smith 2008; Smith and Wiest 2012). Alongside and in symbiosis with these movements, TAPGs have emerged – ‘think tanks’ that research and promote democratic alternatives to the corporate agenda of top-down globalization.
As collective intellectuals of alter-globalization, these are think tanks of a different sort from the conventional ones that advise political and corporate elites. Groups such as the Third World Institute (ITeM, Montevideo), the Centre de recherche et d'information pour le développement (Paris), the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), and Focus on the Global South (Bangkok) create knowledge that challenges existing corporate priorities and state policies, and that advocates alternative ways of organizing economic, political and cultural life. They disseminate this knowledge not only via mainstream media venues but through activist networks and alternative media, and they often work collaboratively with social movements in implementing these alternative ideas. This chapter provides a preliminary analysis, and addresses some of the challenges they face as transnational counter-hegemonic actors on the contested terrain of global civil society.
As collective intellectuals of alter-globalization, these are think tanks of a different sort from the conventional ones that advise political and corporate elites. Groups such as the Third World Institute (ITeM, Montevideo), the Centre de recherche et d'information pour le développement (Paris), the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), and Focus on the Global South (Bangkok) create knowledge that challenges existing corporate priorities and state policies, and that advocates alternative ways of organizing economic, political and cultural life. They disseminate this knowledge not only via mainstream media venues but through activist networks and alternative media, and they often work collaboratively with social movements in implementing these alternative ideas. This chapter provides a preliminary analysis, and addresses some of the challenges they face as transnational counter-hegemonic actors on the contested terrain of global civil society.
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This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present,... more
This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present, emphasizing the challenges it has faced in building capacity for alternative knowledge production and mobilization. We next locate the CCPA within its neighborhood of online communicative relations, which comprises a region of the broader political field in which neoliberalism has been hegemonic since the 1980s. Against this hegemony, the CCPA’s project has been to expose the problems of neoliberalism, on the basis of applied research, and to advance a project of social-democratization by engaging with the general public and cultivating counterpublics in civil society. The emancipatory project motivating the CCPA has set it on a trajectory distinct from that of conventional think tanks, whose practices and networks facilitate elite policy-planning in and around the state.
The rigidities of Leninist views on socialist politics may have consigned orthodox Marxism to the status of historical relic, but equally problematic is the radical pluralist disavowal of any materially-grounded, unifying basis for... more
The rigidities of Leninist views on socialist politics may have consigned orthodox Marxism to the status of historical relic, but equally problematic is the radical pluralist disavowal of any materially-grounded, unifying basis for counter-hegemony. The main features of these two perspectives are contrasted with a Gramscian viewpoint that arguably offers the best prospect for analyzing contemporary movement politics and strategizing about social change. This approach retains the insights of historical materialism, avoids the pitfalls of radical pluralism, and remains open to ongoing transformations in culture, politics, and capitalism.
This paper has a twofold focus. First, primarily, it explores what light existing traditions in social movement theory shed upon the contemporary emergence of democratic media activism (DMA) in Anglo-American liberal democracies. What... more
This paper has a twofold focus. First, primarily, it explores what light existing traditions in social movement theory shed upon the contemporary emergence of democratic media activism (DMA) in Anglo-American liberal democracies. What insights about DMA can be teased out from the various formulations? Second, and conversely, based upon our initial readings of movement documents and interviews with activists, we explore whether media activism points to blind spots and potential new directions
for social movement theory.
for social movement theory.
This paper explores the efforts of three social-movement organisations in Vancouver,Canada, to advance oppositional cultures in what Nancy Fraser has termed a ‘post-socialist’ age,marked both by neo-liberal hegemony and by the primacy of... more
This paper explores the efforts of three social-movement organisations in Vancouver,Canada, to advance oppositional cultures in what Nancy Fraser has termed a ‘post-socialist’ age,marked both by neo-liberal hegemony and by the primacy of cultural recognition over material redistribution in the framing of progressive politics. Based on in depth interviews with activists in The Centre (a lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual community centre), the BC Coalition of People with Disabilities, and End Legislated Poverty,we compare how these organisations frame and pursue three analytically distinct tasks, which we take to be integral to sustaining counter-hegemony: (1) community building,
in the sense of elaborating collective identities and ethical-political frameworks that are oppositional to dominant conceptions; (2) meeting needs of constituents in ways that empower them and prefigure alternative ways of life; and (3) mobilising and engaging in collective action to press for tangible changes in cultural discourses and social relations. The manner in which each group pursues these three tasks defines the horizons of its political project, including the extent to which the project involves ‘affirmative’ (reformist) or ‘transformative’ (radical) strategies of social change.Counter-hegemonic capacities thus depend in part on specific configurations of practice,which we compare across the three organisations.
in the sense of elaborating collective identities and ethical-political frameworks that are oppositional to dominant conceptions; (2) meeting needs of constituents in ways that empower them and prefigure alternative ways of life; and (3) mobilising and engaging in collective action to press for tangible changes in cultural discourses and social relations. The manner in which each group pursues these three tasks defines the horizons of its political project, including the extent to which the project involves ‘affirmative’ (reformist) or ‘transformative’ (radical) strategies of social change.Counter-hegemonic capacities thus depend in part on specific configurations of practice,which we compare across the three organisations.
This article maps the network of cross-movement activism in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, and explores the relationship between position in the network and cognitive use of different injustice frames. The study is informed by a... more
This article maps the network of cross-movement activism in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, and explores the relationship between position in the network and cognitive use
of different injustice frames. The study is informed by a neo-Gramscian analysis that views social movements as (potential) agencies of counterhegemony. Viewed as a political project of mobilizing broad, diverse opposition to entrenched economic, political, and cultural power, counterhegemony entails a tendential movement toward comprehensive critiques of domination and toward comprehensive networks of activism. We find that the use of a broadly resonant master frame-the political-economy account of injustice -is associated with the practice of cross-movement activism. Activists whose social movement
organization (SMO) memberships put them in touch with activists from other movements tend to frame injustice as materially grounded, structural, and susceptible to transformation through concerted collective action. Moreover, the movements in which political-economy framing especially predominates - labor, peace, feminism. and the urban antipoverty sector - tend not only to supply most of the cross-movement ties but to be tied to each other as well, suggesting that a political-economy framing of injustice provides a common language in which activists from different movements can communicate and perhaps find common
ground.
of different injustice frames. The study is informed by a neo-Gramscian analysis that views social movements as (potential) agencies of counterhegemony. Viewed as a political project of mobilizing broad, diverse opposition to entrenched economic, political, and cultural power, counterhegemony entails a tendential movement toward comprehensive critiques of domination and toward comprehensive networks of activism. We find that the use of a broadly resonant master frame-the political-economy account of injustice -is associated with the practice of cross-movement activism. Activists whose social movement
organization (SMO) memberships put them in touch with activists from other movements tend to frame injustice as materially grounded, structural, and susceptible to transformation through concerted collective action. Moreover, the movements in which political-economy framing especially predominates - labor, peace, feminism. and the urban antipoverty sector - tend not only to supply most of the cross-movement ties but to be tied to each other as well, suggesting that a political-economy framing of injustice provides a common language in which activists from different movements can communicate and perhaps find common
ground.
This study situates five top transnational policy-planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world’s largest companies. Each group makes a distinct... more
This study situates five top transnational policy-planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted
through interlocking directorates among the world’s largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution toward transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus
within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neoliberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate-policy interlocks reveals
that a few dozen cosmopolitans—primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management—knit the network together via participation
in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world’s major corporations
together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional differences in participation. These findings support the claim that a well-integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite confirms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partlyof substance.
through interlocking directorates among the world’s largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution toward transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus
within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neoliberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate-policy interlocks reveals
that a few dozen cosmopolitans—primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management—knit the network together via participation
in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world’s major corporations
together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional differences in participation. These findings support the claim that a well-integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite confirms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partlyof substance.
This paper charts the development of a neoliberal policy bloc in Canada by considering five sites of business activism: two organizations with roots in the 1950s, which more or less embraced neoliberal projects in the 1980s; two that... more
This paper charts the development of a neoliberal policy bloc in Canada by considering five sites of business activism: two organizations with roots in the 1950s, which more or less embraced neoliberal projects in the 1980s; two that emerged in the 1970s; and one that was formed in 1994. Our investigation focuses on how these groups contributed to the consolidation of neoliberal hegemony in Canadian public policy. To that end, we present comparative case studies of the five groups (their ideological trajectories and their contemporary niches within an organizational ecology of neoliberal policy formation) and a network analysis of the positions they have taken up in the web of interlocking corporate directorates. Some political implications
in the current era are discussed.
in the current era are discussed.
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a “globalization from below” that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here,... more
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a “globalization from below” that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here, we map the global network of TAPGs and kindred international groups in order to discern how TAPGs are embedded in a larger formation. In this era of capitalist globalization, do TAPGs, like their hegemonic counterparts, bridge across geographic spaces (e.g. North-South) and movement domains to foster the convergence across difference that is taken as a criterial attribute of a counter-hegemonic historical bloc? Our network analysis suggests that TAPGs are well placed to participate in the transformation of the democratic globalization network from a gelatinous and unselfconscious state, into an historical bloc capable of collective action toward an alternative global order. However, there are gaps in the bloc, having to do with the representation and integration of regions and movement domains, and with the salience of post-capitalism as a unifying social vision. Also, our architectonic network analysis does not reveal what the various relations and mediations in which TAPGs are active agents actually mean in concrete practice. There is a need both for closer analysis of the specific kinds of relations that link transnational alternative policy groups to other international actors, including intergovernmental organizations and funding foundations, and for field work that explores the actual practices of these groups, in situ.
Affirming Antonio Gramsci’s continuing influence, this adroitly cultivated Companion offers a comprehensive overview of Gramsci’s contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of critical social science, social and political thought,... more
Affirming Antonio Gramsci’s continuing influence, this adroitly cultivated Companion offers a comprehensive overview of Gramsci’s contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of critical social science, social and political thought, economics and emancipatory politics. Within the tradition of historical materialism, it explores the continuing impact of Gramscian perspectives in the present day.
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Rapidly rising carbon emissions from the intense development of Western Canada’s fossil fuels continue to aggravate the global climate emergency and destabilize democratic structures. The urgency of the situation demands not only... more
Rapidly rising carbon emissions from the intense development of Western Canada’s fossil fuels continue to aggravate the global climate emergency and destabilize democratic structures. The urgency of the situation demands not only scholarly understanding, but effective action.
Regime of Obstruction aims to make visible the complex connections between corporate power and the extraction and use of carbon energy. Edited by William Carroll, this rigorous collection presents research findings from the first three years of the seven-year, SSHRC-funded partnership, the Corporate Mapping Project. Anchored in sociological and political theory, this comprehensive volume provides hard data and empirical research that traces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry through economics, politics, media, and higher education. Contributors demonstrate how corporations secure popular consent, and coopt, disorganize, or marginalize dissenting perspectives to position the fossil fuel industry as a national public good. They also investigate the difficult position of Indigenous communities who, while suffering the worst environmental and health impacts from carbon extraction, must fight for their land or participate in fossil capitalism to secure income and jobs. The volume concludes with a look at emergent forms of activism and resistance, spurred by the fact that a just energy transition is still feasible. This book provides essential context to the climate crisis and will transform discussions of energy democracy.
Contributions by Laurie Adkin, Angele Alook, Clifford Atleo, Emilia Belliveau-Thompson, John Bermingham, Paul Bowles, Gwendolyn Blue, Shannon Daub, Jessica Dempsey, Emily Eaton, Chuka Ejeckam, Simon Enoch, Nick Graham, Shane Gunster, Mark Hudson, Jouke Huizer, Ian Hussey, Emma Jackson, Michael Lang, James Lawson, Marc Lee, Fiona MacPhail, Alicia Massie, Kevin McCartney, Bob Neubauer, Eric Pineault, Lise Margaux Rajewicz, James Rowe, JP Sapinsky, Karena Shaw, and Zoe Yunker.
Regime of Obstruction aims to make visible the complex connections between corporate power and the extraction and use of carbon energy. Edited by William Carroll, this rigorous collection presents research findings from the first three years of the seven-year, SSHRC-funded partnership, the Corporate Mapping Project. Anchored in sociological and political theory, this comprehensive volume provides hard data and empirical research that traces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry through economics, politics, media, and higher education. Contributors demonstrate how corporations secure popular consent, and coopt, disorganize, or marginalize dissenting perspectives to position the fossil fuel industry as a national public good. They also investigate the difficult position of Indigenous communities who, while suffering the worst environmental and health impacts from carbon extraction, must fight for their land or participate in fossil capitalism to secure income and jobs. The volume concludes with a look at emergent forms of activism and resistance, spurred by the fact that a just energy transition is still feasible. This book provides essential context to the climate crisis and will transform discussions of energy democracy.
Contributions by Laurie Adkin, Angele Alook, Clifford Atleo, Emilia Belliveau-Thompson, John Bermingham, Paul Bowles, Gwendolyn Blue, Shannon Daub, Jessica Dempsey, Emily Eaton, Chuka Ejeckam, Simon Enoch, Nick Graham, Shane Gunster, Mark Hudson, Jouke Huizer, Ian Hussey, Emma Jackson, Michael Lang, James Lawson, Marc Lee, Fiona MacPhail, Alicia Massie, Kevin McCartney, Bob Neubauer, Eric Pineault, Lise Margaux Rajewicz, James Rowe, JP Sapinsky, Karena Shaw, and Zoe Yunker.
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Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society... more
Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society and politics in many ways that greatly constrain democracy. In Organizing the 1%, William K. Carroll and J.P. Sapinski provide a unique, evidence-based perspective on corporate power in Canada and illustrate the various ways it directs and shapes economic, political and cultural life. A highly accessible introduction to Marxist political economy, Carroll and Sapinski delve into the capitalist economic system at the root of corporate wealth and power and analyze the ways the capitalist class dominates over contemporary Canadian society. The authors illustrate how corporate power perpetuates inequality and injustice. They follow the development of corporate power through Canadian history, from its roots in settler-colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land, to the concentration of capital into giant corporations in the late nineteenth century. More recently, capitalist globalization and the consolidation of a market-driven neoliberal regime have dramatically enhanced corporate power while exacerbating social and economic inequalities. The result is our current oligarchic order, where power is concentrated in a few corporations that are controlled by the super-wealthy and organized into a cohesive corporate elite. Finally, Carroll and Sapinski offer possibilities for placing corporate power where it actually belongs: in the dustbin of history. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/organizing-the-1
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Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society... more
Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society and politics in many ways that greatly constrain democracy.
In Organizing the 1%, William K. Carroll and J.P. Sapinski provide a unique, evidence-based perspective on corporate power in Canada and illustrate the various ways it directs and shapes economic, political and cultural life.
A highly accessible introduction to Marxist political economy, Carroll and Sapinski delve into the capitalist economic system at the root of corporate wealth and power and analyze the ways the capitalist class dominates over contemporary Canadian society. The authors illustrate how corporate power perpetuates inequality and injustice. They follow the development of corporate power through Canadian history, from its roots in settler-colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land, to the concentration of capital into giant corporations in the late nineteenth century. More recently, capitalist globalization and the consolidation of a market-driven neoliberal regime have dramatically enhanced corporate power while exacerbating social and economic inequalities. The result is our current oligarchic order, where power is concentrated in a few corporations that are controlled by the super-wealthy and organized into a cohesive corporate elite.
Finally, Carroll and Sapinski offer possibilities for placing corporate power where it actually belongs: in the dustbin of history.
In Organizing the 1%, William K. Carroll and J.P. Sapinski provide a unique, evidence-based perspective on corporate power in Canada and illustrate the various ways it directs and shapes economic, political and cultural life.
A highly accessible introduction to Marxist political economy, Carroll and Sapinski delve into the capitalist economic system at the root of corporate wealth and power and analyze the ways the capitalist class dominates over contemporary Canadian society. The authors illustrate how corporate power perpetuates inequality and injustice. They follow the development of corporate power through Canadian history, from its roots in settler-colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land, to the concentration of capital into giant corporations in the late nineteenth century. More recently, capitalist globalization and the consolidation of a market-driven neoliberal regime have dramatically enhanced corporate power while exacerbating social and economic inequalities. The result is our current oligarchic order, where power is concentrated in a few corporations that are controlled by the super-wealthy and organized into a cohesive corporate elite.
Finally, Carroll and Sapinski offer possibilities for placing corporate power where it actually belongs: in the dustbin of history.
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This book strives for a unity of theory and practice – that is, a praxis-oriented examination of social movements – of value to activists whose interventions can be sharpened through theoretical reflection, and to students/scholars who... more
This book strives for a unity of theory and practice – that is, a praxis-oriented examination of social movements – of value to activists whose interventions can be sharpened through theoretical reflection, and to students/scholars who may find in these chapters pathways into the world of activism. Our contributors draw upon yet reach beyond extant conceptual frameworks, to situate movements in an era of crisis and change – in Canada and the world. A defining feature of this book is its emphasis on the ways in which contemporary movements contest dominant political-economic and cultural-psychological formations, as agencies of counter-hegemony. We read movements as agents of history-in-the-making that face ongoing challenges from hegemonic institutions — capital, state, media etc. —and from the increasing resort to the repression of dissent. As collective responses to a deepening economic, ecological and indeed civilizational crisis, in which liberal-democratic values and institutions seem increasingly hollow, movements are potential agencies of deep democratization. They contest the sedimented practices of that sustain injustice, and they sometimes prefigure alternative futures.
Throughout, we strive to make good on Marx’s suggestion that the point in socio-political analysis is not simply to comprehend the world but to participate in its transformation. A World to Win offers a wide-ranging collection of reflections and resources for engaged students and scholars who seek not only to interpret the world, but to change it. As Kurt Lewin, a founder of action research, claimed, there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Greenwald, 2012:99). Theory is what enables us to move beyond the concrete particulars of one specific situation, to see things in a wider context, to “connect the dots” between events in a meaningful way, opening the prospect for effective practice. To keep things centred upon the issue of praxis, my presentation below of contemporary perspectives in social movement studies is selective and attuned to their main implications for political practice. In this, I follow Saul Alinsky (1971), whose Rules for Radicals attempted to distil practical lessons for those coming of age in the 1960s wave of activism. But unlike Alinski, I use social science as a critical cognitive resource. Our praxis-oriented approach asks how theoretical insights can inform strategies for resisting hegemony and building counter-hegemony.
Throughout, we strive to make good on Marx’s suggestion that the point in socio-political analysis is not simply to comprehend the world but to participate in its transformation. A World to Win offers a wide-ranging collection of reflections and resources for engaged students and scholars who seek not only to interpret the world, but to change it. As Kurt Lewin, a founder of action research, claimed, there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Greenwald, 2012:99). Theory is what enables us to move beyond the concrete particulars of one specific situation, to see things in a wider context, to “connect the dots” between events in a meaningful way, opening the prospect for effective practice. To keep things centred upon the issue of praxis, my presentation below of contemporary perspectives in social movement studies is selective and attuned to their main implications for political practice. In this, I follow Saul Alinsky (1971), whose Rules for Radicals attempted to distil practical lessons for those coming of age in the 1960s wave of activism. But unlike Alinski, I use social science as a critical cognitive resource. Our praxis-oriented approach asks how theoretical insights can inform strategies for resisting hegemony and building counter-hegemony.
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This volume is addressed to concerned citizens, activists, students, intellectuals and practitioners interested in “changing the channel”. The tightly scripted programming of neoliberal capitalism positions us as consumers in a... more
This volume is addressed to concerned citizens, activists, students, intellectuals and practitioners interested in “changing the channel”. The tightly scripted programming of neoliberal capitalism positions us as consumers in a hypermarket where money talks. For those with funds or credit, the program offers a seductive formula for “amusing ourselves to death” (Postman 1985) – particularly as continued overconsumption portends global ecological disaster in what is now a clearly foreseeable future. For the majority world, those with little to bring to the global marketplace, neoliberal capitalism offers little more than precarity and immiseration. Either way, the need for fundamental change is visceral. But to change the channel is not only to break from the dominant ideological framework; it is to produce viable alternatives, in knowledge and in practice, which might catalyze political and social change in our troubled world.
The eight chapters that follow offer insights gained from four years of intensive research into the production and mobilization of alternative knowledge. In year 1 (May 2011-April 2012), I identified key centres for such initiatives: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) active in global civil society today. I completed a case study of each group using available sources from the Internet and elsewhere, and a network analysis of how the groups link up with each other, and how they are embedded in a broader field of social relations within global civil society.
The eight chapters that follow offer insights gained from four years of intensive research into the production and mobilization of alternative knowledge. In year 1 (May 2011-April 2012), I identified key centres for such initiatives: transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) active in global civil society today. I completed a case study of each group using available sources from the Internet and elsewhere, and a network analysis of how the groups link up with each other, and how they are embedded in a broader field of social relations within global civil society.
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This book maps the changing field of power generated by elite relations among the world's largest corporations and related political organizations. It provides an in-depth analysis that spans the three decades of the late 20th and early... more
This book maps the changing field of power generated by elite relations among the world's largest corporations and related political organizations. It provides an in-depth analysis that spans the three decades of the late 20th and early 21st century, when capitalist globalization attained unprecedented momentum, propelled both by the transnationalization of accumulation and by the political paradigm of transnational neoliberalism. This has been an era in which national governments have deregulated capital, international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the World Economic Forum have gained prominence, and production and finance have become more fully transnational, increasing the structural power of capital over communities and workers.
Within this context of transformation, this book charts the making of a transnational capitalist class, reaching beyond national forms of capitalist class organization into a global field, but facing spirited opposition from below in an ongoing struggle that is also a struggle over alternative global futures.
Within this context of transformation, this book charts the making of a transnational capitalist class, reaching beyond national forms of capitalist class organization into a global field, but facing spirited opposition from below in an ongoing struggle that is also a struggle over alternative global futures.
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Dr. William K. Carroll responds to questions posed by the Editors regarding his reflections on the struggle against the FTA, three decades on.
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In an era which has seen musings about the end of history, the fragmentation of the left into the many shards of identity politics, and the rise of postmodern cynicism as a new cultural dominant, can we even speak of the radical? Official... more
In an era which has seen musings about the end of history, the fragmentation of the left into the many shards of identity politics, and the rise of postmodern cynicism as a new cultural dominant, can we even speak of the radical? Official discourse certainly has not given up on the term, but within its fearful purview “radical” denotes violent extremism, typically of the Islamic fundamentalist variety, and radicalization is the brainwashing that renders someone capable of committing unspeakable atrocities. To recover an authentic sense of the radical, we need to recognize its distinctive modalities, emergent in history, which have been incorporated into diverse practices that challenge hegemony.
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This paper provides a network analysis of federal lobbying in Canada by the fossil fuel industry over a seven-year period from January 4, 2011 to January 30, 2018, enabling a comparative examination of lobbying under the Harper... more
This paper provides a network analysis of federal lobbying in Canada by the fossil fuel industry over a seven-year period from January 4, 2011 to January 30, 2018, enabling a comparative examination of lobbying under the Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals. The network we uncover amounts to ‘small world’ of intense interaction among relatively few lobbyists/firms that control much of this economic sector and the designated public office holders in select centres of state power, who are their targets. In comparing lobbying across the Harper and Trudeau administrations, we find a pattern of continuity-in-change: under Trudeau, the bulk of lobbying has been carried out by the same large firms as under Harper, while the lobbying network has become more focused on fewer state agencies. We argue that the strategic, organized, and sustained lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel sector help to explain the close coupling of federal policy to the needs of carbon extractive corporations.
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With the highest per capita carbon emissions among the G20, Canada presents the interesting case of a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state. In these circumstances, a regime of obstruction, with a distinctive... more
With the highest per capita carbon emissions among the G20, Canada presents the interesting case of a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state. In these circumstances, a regime of obstruction, with a distinctive political-economic architecture, has taken shape. This regime is constituted through modalities of power that protect revenue streams issuing from carbon extraction, processing and transport while bolstering popular support for an accumulation strategy in which fossil capital figures as a leading fraction. It incorporates a panoply of hegemonic practices at different scales, reaching into civil and political society, and into Indigenous communities whose land claims and worldviews challenge state mandated property rights. This article first highlights findings from a seven-year collaborative investigation of the modalities through which fossil capital’s economic and political-cultural power is exercised at different scales; then outlines how the pas...
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Although a literature on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) began to form in the 1970s, along withthe first stirrings of neoliberal public policy, these intersecting phenomena have deeper lineages in elitecapitalist networks,... more
Although a literature on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) began to form in the 1970s, along withthe first stirrings of neoliberal public policy, these intersecting phenomena have deeper lineages in elitecapitalist networks, transnationalizing investment, and the interaction between the two. This chapterexplores those lineages and interactions.
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Social justice struggles are often framed around competing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. This article compares several organizations of global civil society that have helped shape or have emerged within the changing... more
Social justice struggles are often framed around competing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. This article compares several organizations of global civil society that have helped shape or have emerged within the changing political-economic landscape of neoliberal globalization, either as purveyors of ruling perspectives or as anti-systemic popular forums and activist groups. It interprets the dialectical relation between the two sides as a complex war of position to win new political space by assembling transnational historic blocs around divergent social visions – the one centered on a logic of replication and passive revolution, the other centred on a logic of prefiguration and transformation. It presents a sociological analysis of the organizational forms and practical challenges that their respective hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects entail.
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This study situates ?ve top transnational policy-planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world s largest companies. Each group makes a distinct... more
This study situates ?ve top transnational policy-planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world s largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution toward transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neoliberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate-policy interlocks reveals that a few dozen cosmopolitans primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management knit the network together via participation in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world s major corporations to...
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Research Interests: Business, Political Sociology, Political Economy, Social Networking, Social Network Analysis (SNA), and 9 moreMultinational Corporations, Interlocking Directorates, Power Structure Research, Corporations, Corporate power, Economic Elites, Transnational Corporations, Corporate elite, and Corporate networks
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This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present,... more
This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present, emphasizing the challenges it has faced in building capacity for alternative knowledge production and mobilization. We next locate the CCPA within its neighborhood of online communicative relations, which comprises a region of the broader political field in which neoliberalism has been hegemonic since the 1980s. Against this hegemony, the CCPA’s project has been to expose the problems of neoliberalism, on the basis of applied research, and to advance a project of social-democratization by engaging with the general public and cultivating counterpublics in civil society. The emancipatory project motivating the CCPA has set it on a trajectory distinct from that of conventional think tanks, whose practices and networks facilitate elite policy-planning in and around the state.
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Aim: Evidence suggests that folic acid intake affects birth weight and that these effects may be mediated via the fetal epigenome. Our previous array data indicate that methylation in human cord blood at gene-specific CpGs is associated... more
Aim: Evidence suggests that folic acid intake affects birth weight and that these effects may be mediated via the fetal epigenome. Our previous array data indicate that methylation in human cord blood at gene-specific CpGs is associated with birth weight percentile (BWP). Our aims were to investigate associations with BWP in specific CpGs identified by the array analysis in a significantly larger cohort and investigate the effects of other relevant factors on this association. Materials & methods: Methylation status was examined in candidate CpGs in 129 cord blood samples using Pyrosequencing™. The effects of other potentially important factors; maternal smoking, folate-related metabolite levels and genetic variation in the MTHFR gene, were examined. Linear and logistic regression analyses were used to identify relationships between BWP and methylation levels in the context of other key factors. Results: Increased cord methylation at CpGs in GSTM5 and MAP2K3 was associated with a re...
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ABSTRACT This paper explores the efforts of three social-movement organisations in Vancouver, Canada, to advance oppositional cultures in what Nancy Fraser has termed a `post-socialist' age, marked both by neo-liberal hegemony and... more
ABSTRACT This paper explores the efforts of three social-movement organisations in Vancouver, Canada, to advance oppositional cultures in what Nancy Fraser has termed a `post-socialist' age, marked both by neo-liberal hegemony and by the primacy of cultural recognition over material redistribution in the framing of progressive politics. Based on indepth interviews with activists in The Centre (a lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual community centre), the BC Coalition of People with Disabilities, and End Legislated Poverty, we compare how these organisations frame and pursue three analytically distinct tasks, which we take to be integral to sustaining counter-hegemony: (1) community-building, in the sense of elaborating collective identities and ethical-political frameworks that are oppositional to dominant conceptions; (2) meeting needs of constituents in ways that empower them and prefigure alternative ways of life; and (3) mobilising and engaging in collective action to press for tangible changes in cultural discourses and social relations. The manner in which each group pursues these three tasks defines the horizons of its political project, including the extent to which the project involves `affirmative' (reformist) or `transformative' (radical) strategies of social change. Counter-hegemonic capacities thus depend in part on specific configurations of practice, which we compare across the three organisations.
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This article considers how we are to understand democratic media activism, which has recently burgeoned in Canada, the UK and the USA. What is its political significance and potential? Is it a new social movement, a new style of politics... more
This article considers how we are to understand democratic media activism, which has recently burgeoned in Canada, the UK and the USA. What is its political significance and potential? Is it a new social movement, a new style of politics cutting across movements, or are new concepts needed? Drawing illustratively upon interviews with media activists, notably in Vancouver, we explore insights offered by social movement theory - including resource mobilization formulations and the new social movement theories of Melucci, Habermas, Cohen and Arato, and Fraser. While all these traditions offer valuable insights, media activism reveals limitations in existing conceptualizations. It has some of the characteristics of a movement, but lacks a distinct collective identity or niche within movement ecology. It may be destined to be a boundary-transgressing nodal point for other movements, articulating a coherent project for radical democracy, rather than a movement-for-itself.
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This article presents a network analysis of elite interlocks among the world’s 500 largest corporations and a purposive sample of transnational policy-planning boards. The analysis compares the situation in 1996 with 2006 and reveals a... more
This article presents a network analysis of elite interlocks among the world’s 500 largest corporations and a purposive sample of transnational policy-planning boards. The analysis compares the situation in 1996 with 2006 and reveals a process of transnational capitalist class formation that is regionally uneven. Network analysis points to a process of structural consolidation through which policy boards have become more integrative nodes, brokering elite relations between firms from different regions, especially Europe and North America. As national corporate networks have thinned, the global corporate-policy network’s centre of gravity has shifted towards Europe, both at the level of individuals and organizations. Although this study finds a modest increase in participation of corporate elites from the Global South, a North Atlantic ruling class remains at the centre of the process of transnational capitalist class formation.
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The rigidities of Leninist views on socialist politics may have consigned orthodox Marxism to the status of historical relic, but equally problematic is the radical pluralist disavowal of any materially-grounded, unifying basis for... more
The rigidities of Leninist views on socialist politics may have consigned orthodox Marxism to the status of historical relic, but equally problematic is the radical pluralist disavowal of any materially-grounded, unifying basis for counter-hegemony. The main features of these two perspectives are contrasted with a Gramscian viewpoint that arguably offers the best prospect for analyzing contemporary movement politics and strategizing about social change. This approach retains the insights of historical materialism, avoids the pitfalls of radical pluralism, and remains open to ongoing transformations in culture, politics, and capitalism.
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Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations... more
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and foundations, and may thus be subject to NGOization. This article examines two bodies of data relevant to this issue: (1) network data that highlight TAPGs’ links to major sources of funds as well as key IGOs; (2) reflections of TAPG protagonists gleaned from in-depth interviews conducted at these groups. While our network analysis is consistent with the NGOization narrative, and while our participants offered many narratives of their own in line with it, they also provided more nuanced accounts that begin to specify the contingencies mediating between, on the one hand, resort to formal organization and to working with IGOs and foundations, and on the other hand, descent into hegemonic incorporation. In a neoliberal political – economic env...
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This paper provides a network analysis of federal lobbying in Canada by the fossil fuel industry and compares lobbying across the Harper Conservative and Trudeau Liberal administrations. The network we uncover amounts to a small world of... more
This paper provides a network analysis of federal lobbying in Canada by the fossil fuel industry and compares lobbying across the Harper Conservative and Trudeau Liberal administrations. The network we uncover amounts to a small world of intense interaction among relatively few lobbyists/firms and public officials in select centres of state power. Under Trudeau we find that the majority of lobbying is carried out by the same large firms as under Harper, while lobbying has become trained on fewer state agencies. We consider lobbying to be an important channel through which the fossil fuel sector shapes government policy.
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Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a "globalization from below" that point toward post-capitalist... more
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a "globalization from below" that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here, we map the global network ofTAPGs and kindred international groups in order to discern how TAPGs are embedded in a larger formation. In this era of capitalist globalization, do TAPGs, like their hegemonic counterparts, bridge across geographic spaces (e.g. North-South) and movement domains to foster the convergence across difference that is taken as a criterial attribute of a counter-hegemonic historical bloc? Our network analysis suggests that TAPGs are well placed to participate in the transformation of the democratic globalization network from a gelatinous and unselfconscious state, into an historical bloc capable of collective action toward an alternative global order. However, there are gaps in the bloc, having to do with the represe...
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This chapter provides an introduction to the literature on interlocking directorates and corporate networks. It first traces the historical roots of the field back to the early 20th century, when researchers on both sides of the Atlantic... more
This chapter provides an introduction to the literature on interlocking directorates and corporate networks. It first traces the historical roots of the field back to the early 20th century, when researchers on both sides of the Atlantic started expressing concern about the threat to democratic process posed by the emergent corporate form, the potential for collusion allowed by the growing practice of interlocking directorate, and the general concentration of power in the hands of large firms and banks. It then outlines the major theoretical approaches employed, that focus on the corporate network as a set of both interorganizational and interindividual relationships. Third, it summarizes the main findings on the cohesiveness of the corporate community, the hegemonic position of banks, and historical changes and longitudinal dynamics of the network. Finally, it discusses most recent debates on the globalization, the emergence of a European corporate network, and the decline and reco...
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This article maps the organization of corporate power within Canada’s carbon-capital elite. It charts the elite’s accumulation base, its internal structure as a network of interlocking directorates and its ties to the financial sector and... more
This article maps the organization of corporate power within Canada’s carbon-capital elite. It charts the elite’s accumulation base, its internal structure as a network of interlocking directorates and its ties to the financial sector and other segments of corporate capital – national and transnational. The analysis identifies a tightly-knit, local network of mid-sized carbon-capital firms linked into the broader power structure largely through mediating relations that involve the largest carbon-capital corporations. The architecture of corporate power resembles an entrenched oligarchy; however, both policy sociology and public sociology can contribute toward checking its power through effective regulation while facilitating discussion of energy democracy as a transformative alternative.
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This study employs social network analysis to map the Canadian network of carbon-capital corporations whose boards interlock with key knowledge-producing civil society organizations, including think tanks, industry associations, business... more
This study employs social network analysis to map the Canadian network of carbon-capital corporations whose boards interlock with key knowledge-producing civil society organizations, including think tanks, industry associations, business advocacy organizations, universities, and research institutes. We find a pervasive pattern of carbon-sector reach into these domains of civil society, forming a single, connected network that is centered in Alberta yet linked to the central-Canadian corporate elite through hegemonic capitalist organizations, including major financial companies. This structure provides the architecture for a "soft" denial regime that acknowledges climate change while protecting the continued flow of profit to fossil fuel and related companies.
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William K. Carroll is one of Canada’s foremost sociologists. His research and teaching focus on the contemporary capitalist political economy and transformative social movements, as well as Marxist and post-Marxist theories, particularly... more
William K. Carroll is one of Canada’s foremost sociologists. His research and teaching focus on the contemporary capitalist political economy and transformative social movements, as well as Marxist and post-Marxist theories, particularly those informed by Gramsci. His empirical work investigates central actors within the Canadian and world political economy, including social democratic governments, right wing think-tanks and the for-profit and alternative media. He is the author of more than a hundred books, articles, chapters and reports, making important contributions on many subjects, including globalization, neoliberalism and critical research methods.
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Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations... more
Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and foundations, and may thus be subject to NGOization. This paper examines two bodies of data relevant to this issue: (1) network data that highlight TAPGs’ links to major sources of funds as well as key IGOs; (2) reflections of TAPG protagonists gleaned from in-depth interviews conducted at these groups. While our network analysis is consistent with the NGOization narrative, and while our participants offered many narratives of their own in line with it, they also provided more nuanced accounts that begin to specify the contingencies mediating between, on the one hand, resort to formal organization and to working with IGOs and foundations, and on the other hand, descent into hegemonic incorporation. In a neoliberal political-economic environment, the future of counter-hegemonic politics hinges partly on our identifying how ‘preventative measures’ can be brought to bear on processes of NGOization.
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This article presents a network analysis of elite interlocks among the world’s 500 largest corporations and a purposive sample of transnational policyplanning boards. The analysis compares the situation in 1996 with 2006 and reveals a... more
This article presents a network analysis of elite interlocks among the world’s 500 largest corporations and a purposive sample of transnational policyplanning boards. The analysis compares the situation in 1996 with 2006 and reveals a process of transnational capitalist class formation that is regionally uneven. Network analysis points to a process of structural consolidation through which policy boards have become more integrative nodes, brokering elite relations between firms from different regions, especially Europe and North America. As national corporate networks have thinned, the global corporate-policy network’s centre of gravity has shifted towards Europe, both at the level of individuals and organizations. Although this study finds a modest increase in participation of corporate elites from the Global South, a North Atlantic ruling class remains at the centre of the process of transnational capitalist class formation.