Saturday, October 17, 2015

Week 5 Blog Entry

In “Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the globalization of Grassroots Politics,” Michael Peter Smith shows us how global grassroots movements are changing political imagery of global-local duality by using local actions with the intent to have global ramifications. Michael Peter Smith does this by referring to four examples: 1) the Guatemalan refugees led by Rigoberta Menchu; 2) the transnational grassroots movement against U.S. military intervention in Central America; 3) a group of Mixtec associations formed in Mexico, Oregon, and California; and 4) a group of different rights activists in San Francisco and other cities. By providing us with this insight, I believe that Michael Peter Smith hopes to show us that these newly emerging changes enacted by these different groups of people must be fought for in order for them to stay intact because otherwise, they will recede to their former state. This particular reading relates to our week’s theme of Politics because it discusses new political spaces that have been created through various grassroots movements. It relates to current events outside of class by showing the impact that different grassroots movements have globally.

Question: What impact does the mindset of “Think globally, act locally” have on how global politics are operated?

http://images.alternet.org/images/AFP/photo_1295017930581-1-0.jpg


Smith, Michael Peter. 1994. “Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics.” Social Text, No. 39 (Summer, 1994), pp. 15-33.

-Brittany Carlson

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