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Confronting
Globalization:
Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico
By Timothy A. Wise, Hilda Salazar,
and Laura Carlsen (editors)
Kumarian Press, 2003; Spanish edition, Editorial Miguel
Angel Porrua, 2003
264 pages; $25.95 Paper; $65.00 Cloth; Order
from Kumarian Press
 "Many
observers have pointed to the challenges introduced
by the increased integration of U.S. and Mexican economies,
but few books have documented so thoroughly the impact
of these changes on Mexican civil society and the
growing diversity of community-based responses. While
such collections sometimes seem like disconnected
vignettes, a combination of excellent editing and
a shared intellectual framework lend this volume a
remarkable coherence in analysis and tone. This is
an important read for anyone interested in grassroots
responses to globalization and will be especially
useful to scholars, students, and others interested
in social justice struggles in contemporary Mexico."
- Manuel Pastor, Professor
of Latin American & Latino Studies and Director
of the Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community,
University of California, Santa Cruz
Is the current model for economic globalization
good for the poor or the environment? Are there alternatives?
Amid rising worldwide protests that corporate elites
wield too much influence over global economic governance,
this book on Mexico’s experience under the North
American Free Trade Agreement offers insights into
both questions.
With a focus on labor, agricultural,
and environmental issues, Confronting Globalization
tells globalization's untold stories: its social
and environmental costs and the grassroots search
for alternative paths. Indigenous coffee farmers fight
for a place in the global market. Sweatshop workers
demand safe working conditions and basic labor rights.
Corn farmers organize to prevent the flood of imported
grain from driving them off the land. The editors
carefully set the context and clearly draw the rich
lessons from these compelling stories, which together
offer a rare grounding in how trade policies affect
vulnerable communities and the environment and what
those communities are doing to defend themselves and
promote their own homegrown alternatives.
[See
Table of Contents]
Advance Praise
for Confronting Globalization
"Here is a book
that makes a unique contribution to enlightened thinking
about 'globalization.' These closely-observed experiences
in Mexico will be useful to people all over the world
who are determined to create societies that put human
needs before corporate profits."
- Howard Zinn,
Professor Emeritus, Boston University, and author
of A Peoples' History of the United States
"Finally a book that concludes
with a rich and detailed roadmap of paths toward just
and sustainable alternatives. These alternatives emerge
from powerful case studies of how integration managed
in the interests of the Fortune 500 undermines workers,
small farmers, and the environment."
- John Cavanagh,
Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and
co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization:
A Better World is Possible
"An inspirational book which
tells an untold story of the uprising against corporate
led globalization and debunks the myth that there
are no alternatives. It puts a human face to the struggle
and shows that communities -- everywhere, everyday--
are creating viable alternatives."
- Anuradha Mittal,
Co Director of Food First/Institute for Food and
Development Policy and editor of "The Future
in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance"
"These experiences attract
with their variety and seduce with the originality
of the conflicts and forms of resistance. The victims
of structural adjustment, liberalization, and deregulation
survive harshness and foolishness, they suffer and
they resist, but they also give life to new hopes:
social laboratories that foreshadow that another world
is possible. They demonstrate, in the end, modest
utopias in process."
- Armando Bartra,
Instituto Maya
Read more:
GDAE's
Globalization and Sustainable Development Program
GDAE's
Confronting Globalization Project
Order
from Kumarian Press
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