文章基本信息

标题：Fighting FTAs, Education for Action: The Challenges of Building Resistance to Bilateral Free Trade Agreements
本地全文：下载
作者：Aziz Choudry
期刊名称：Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences
印刷版ISSN：1944-1088
电子版ISSN：1944-1096
出版年度：2010
卷号：2
期号：1
页码：281-308
出版社：Guild of Independent Scholars
摘要：Considerable scholarly research (e.g. Starr, 2000; Goodman, 2002; McNally, 2002; Polet and CETRI, 2004; Bandy and Smith, 2005; Day, 2005) has gone into examining the "anti-globalization", or "global justice" movement, including campaigns against the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WTO, NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Yet relatively little attention has been paid to newer movements against bilateral free trade and investment agreements (FTAs). Drawing from the author's extensive engagement in struggles against FTAs, this article critically discusses the spread of bilateral free trade and investment agreements in the wake of the breakdown of multilateral (WTO) and regional (e.g. FTAA) negotiations, and the rise in social movement activism against these agreements. Drawing on examples from the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, this article dispels the assumption that bilateral free trade and investment agreements are less of a threat than multilateral agreements. Moreover, it argues that in spite of a multitude of such movements and mobilizations against these agreements, particularly (though not exclusively) in the Third World, the transnational NGO/activist networks that have actively contested the WTO and FTAA have largely failed to connect such struggles with each other, and are largely inconsequential in relation to anti-FTA activism. It suggests that there is a disconnect between major mobilizations against FTAs and NGO networks on globalization which have generally been slow to react or seriously address the bilateral deals. This article highlights some challenges to educating for mobilization against these agreements, and shares some insights that arise from grounded struggles against FTAs, outlining growing connections and collaborations for education and action between movements opposing FTAs