THIS COLLECTION OF thematic papers from the journal Development in Practice looks at the role of civil society in working to promote, through constructive engagement, the interests of the poor in the face of a global system that leaves them increasingly marginalized. (As one contributor points out, transnational corporations now control 70 per cent of all land in the Third World on which export crops are grown.) As the process of globalization leads to rising inequalities and deepening poverty, the challenge for social action is to find effective ways, at all levels, to confront and de-mystify the threats inherent in economic liberalization, and to hold international economic agents accountable for human rights. In his introduction, Miloon Kothari points to the crisis in the notion of “development”, as it has become increasingly identified with creating wealth rather than self-reliant communities. Kothari sees economic globalization as providing a platform for launching a global civil society and he describes an emerging movement of “counter-globalization” which uses human rights as a point of departure and which is represented by well-connected NGOs operating across state boundaries and capable of rapidly informing and mobilizing citizen groups around the world. A subsequent chapter describes six recent events (among them, the Zapatista rebellion and the Beijing World Conference on
Women) which demonstrate the capacity of civil society to take advantage of its political potential in situations in which groups of people have come together to contest the structures which support inequality. Some of the chapters in this book look closely at the changing role of NGOs in supporting civil society. Senillosa, for instance, discusses the four “generations” in the evolution of NGOs (as described by Korten) and the challenges and conflicts of interest that can confront them in the effort to support grassroots organizations. Nyamugasira looks at the division of labour between Northern and Southern NGOs, as those in the North increasingly relinquish direct operational work to their
Southern counterparts and focus their efforts on Northern governments, multinational corporations and global institutes; the author critiques this separation, calling for more joint action. NGOs, he argues further, should take their cue from the global economy and should be investing in making
people more dynamic, aggressive and competitive in championing their own interests. The book contains several case studies of effective social action. These are an Oxfam-supported effort to combat drought in Zambia which challenged conventional approaches to disaster relief by building on the energy of local people and allowing them to take charge; the use of theatre by a group of young Namibian farmers as a tool for community action; and the strengthening of rural workers’ unions in the dry north-east of Brazil. There are also larger-scale cases, including an
examination of the child abuse scandal in Belgium in 1996 which caused a crisis in governance and triggered new levels of citizen mobilization; and the work of the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) in building a coalition and providing strategic guidance in a global
campaign on multilateral debt. The book closes with an account of the People's Communication Charter, an initiative of the
Third World Network in Malaysia, which is described as a first step in creating a worldwide constituency to address the quality of the cultural environment and the empowerment potential of information and communication technologies.