The alter-globalism movement and its successors: The struggle for common human identity?

Abstract

The crisis state of society, expressed in the breakdown of traditional institutions, escalation of conflicts in the international arena, environmental problems, alienation and other issues need to be resolved. It is necessary to solve social problems by the whole society, but a problem arises here: while there is no unifying, universal platform and single identity, the society remains atomized and fragmented. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to create such a platform, with the formation of a common identity. The most striking example was the alter-globalization movement, which rebelled against the neoliberal version of globalization and all the problems it poses. In the opinion of the authors of this article, the alter-globalization movement fought for a truly general humanistic content of a process that would unite all mankind. It was this movement, despite the fact that it eventually collapsed, that set the vector of development for social movements for several decades to come. So, “Occupy Wall Street”, “square movements”, modern populist movements, etc. – all of them, despite many differences between them, one way or another, fought for another future, for an alternative, inalienable world. At the same time, in recent years, we can see that the tendency to unite people in the struggle for such a goal is only gaining momentum, which, apparently, will determine the socio-political agenda of our time for a long time to come. The novelty of this study is a view on socio-political movements as mechanisms for the development of a common human identity, where the “customer” is the whole modern crisis mankind.