M. Omar Faruque

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on neoliberal globalization and countermovement tends to focus on the global dimension of political struggles. The role of nationalist imaginaries in mobilizing grievances against neoliberal globalization receives little attention in this literature. This article probes these ideas using the case of NCBD, known for its political struggles against global extractive capital in Bangladesh. Drawing on critical globalization scholarship vis-à-vis the power of the state and the ability of countermovements to contest neoliberal globalization, the article analyzes how NCBD’s political imaginaries center on nature, nation, and the state to achieve its movement agenda. Based on qualitative data derived from a set of interviews and relevant organizational documents, it demonstrates the relevance of national scale as a movement site in mediating local and global questions for emancipatory political struggles. It explains how NCBD articulates nationalist imaginaries to mobilize a political vision of the “national” in an era of neoliberal globalism.

Keywords

globalization, neoliberalism, periphery, social movements, sociology

From: Critical Sociology 2020 46 (7-8)

Editor: Wang Yi