This paper examines the inter-relationships and dynamics among social activists, information and communication technologies (ICT), and anti-globalization protests, in the process towards and constituting global civil society.
Thanks largely to ICT in developed economies, productivity growth has accelerated almost everywhere since 1995, and free and timely flows of capitals and goods across borders are become an integral part of global economy. ICT become the functional necessity for socio-economic development. But the globalization processes are not a smooth, voluntary and benign one; more often than not, they are full of contradictions, confusions and chaos and power struggles... For these multifaceted and complex manifestations of tensions between local and global forces, this paper examines the two (economic and social) logics of communicative actions in (anti-) globalization processes.
More specifically, this paper critically examines the role of ICT and social agencies in the reproduction of civic culture, towards the formation of global citizenship and global civil society. For social agencies and NGOs at both local and international levels, there are two major issues (or more specific, the dynamics) of anti-globalizing processes. They challenge the unfair and unjust economic processing of, as well as the consequences of global poverty and environmental degradation resulted from, the globalization project; and the ideological struggles against the hegemony of the global power (of the US-led Western countries in the North).
This paper ends with critical remarks on the future of transnational advocacies networks and prospects of global civil society, new cultural aspects of global citizenship.
