Over the past several years, while visible protests against the World Bank and the I.M.F. made front-page news, there has been a growing field of scholarship that looks at the role of globalization for national and international state identities. The first truism of globalization--that we live in an increasingly interconnected world, one in which it is impossible to separate the fate of one nation from that of the others--was dramatically illustrated on September 11, 2001, when the seemingly distant effects of a civil war in Afghanistan so murderously interrupted life in the United...

This study looks at the ongoing efforts of the Alternative Global Movement and World Social Forum to reconcile contests over political organization among three of the most prominent groups on the contemporary left - social and liberal democratic NGOs, anti-authoritarian (anarchist) social movements, and political parties.