Suchergebnisse

Draws on current studies to analyze the role of environmentalism in politicizing global trade policies, focusing on the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) & the social & ecological movements surrounding it in the US & Mexico. The US environmental movement's action against neoliberalism is traced back to the 1980s, describing its broad political scope, fragmentation, & eventual defeat in terms of NAFTA. Grassroots movements for environmental justice have continued to fight against the unregulated ecological degradation caused by NAFTA, & have joined forces with Mexico's leading social movement (the neo-Cardenistas) demanding democratization & an end to clientelistic government. The clash between neoliberal & environmental justice frameworks is centered on the US-Mexican border, where populist mobilizations have made socioecological claims on the market. D. Bajo

In this article we ask why some unions in Canada and the United States were more actively opposed to NAFTA than others, and why these "activist" unions differed in the strategies that they adopted for fighting NAFTA and in the alternatives that they offered to it. We ask the same questions about differences between the U.S. and Canadian labor movements as embodied in the rhetoric and behavior of their central federations. We distinguish four union "types" on two dimensions: the inclusiveness of union leaders' collective identity (i.e., the kinds of workers that the union actively seeks to organize), and the radicalness of union leaders' moral economy (i.e., how critical the union is of the status quo political economy). We hypothesize that differences in union type, so defined, explain a significant part of the variation in the levels of union activism against NAFTA in both countries, as well as differences in strategies of opposition. Differences in the relative strength of union types is also hypothesized to be an important factor explaining strategic differences between the two national labor federations. We use statistical analysis of survey data, as well as qualitative analysis of institutional variables, to operationalize and assess these hypotheses. We find considerable support for them.

In this article we ask why some unions in Canada and the United States were more actively opposed to NAFTA than others, and why these "activist" unions differed in the strategies that they adopted for fighting NAFTA and in the alternatives that they offered to it. We ask the same questions about differences between the U.S. and Canadian labor movements as embodied in the rhetoric and behavior of their central federations. We distinguish four union "types" on two dimensions: the inclusiveness of union leaders' collective identity (i.e., the kinds of workers that the union actively seeks to organize), and the radicalness of union leaders' moral economy (i.e., how critical the union is of the status quo political economy). We hypothesize that differences in union type, so defined, explain a significant part of the variation in the levels of union activism against NAFTA in both countries, as well as differences in strategies of opposition. Differences in the relative strength of union types is also hypothesized to be an important factor explaining strategic differences between the two national labor federations. We use statistical analysis of survey data, as well as qualitative analysis of institutional variables, to operationalize and assess these hypotheses. We find considerable support for them. (Mobilization / FUB)