Elusive Paradise: The Promise and Peril of Global Civil Society

A human right to health?

“…Part of this progress is said to include the wide acceptance of human rights norms. However, the discussion here suggests that such statements are founded upon the formal global human rights regime, which focuses on ratifications of international law, overlooking the inconvenient facts of widespread torture, genocide, structural economic deprivation, disappearances, political prisoners, the suppression of trade union and democracy movements and the deaths of tens of thousands from preventable diseases daily (Pasha & Blaney, 1998). As political action, the success of the postwar project to place human rights at the centre of global politics has been very limited, most notably in the attempt to secure acceptance of socioeconomic rights.…”

Critical Perspectives on the Crisis of Global Governance

“…8 Indeed, theorists of cosmopolitanism such as Daniele Archibugi, David Held, Mary Kaldor and Jan Aart Scholte have also used the concept of 'global governance' to criticize both the ways in which the world market and the collective governance of the G8 or G20 are effectively undemocratic and have largely excluded the forces of 'global civil society' from effective participation. However in this literature there is a tendency to treat 'global civil society' as autonomous from the state and economy, and thus in abstraction from fundamental power relations associated with global capitalism (Pasha and Blaney 1998). Indeed one needs to avoid the tendency to romanticize the forces of global civil society and to bear in mind that it also includes business associations, corporations, media, political parties, criminal networks, terrorist organizations and other non-governmental organizations, and as such is a terrain of complex struggles and interactions.…”

The Role of Communication in Global Civil Society: Forces, Processes, Prospects

“…I begin this section by reiterating aspects of the argument made by Pasha and Blaney in their aptly titled evaluation of GCS, "Elusive Paradise" (Pasha and Blaney, 1998). In it, they argue that while both GCS developments and the discourse related to it are part and parcel of the globalization of economic and social relations, these relations are rarely conceptualized in the context of "the unequal and alienated relationships of capitalism" (Pasha and Blaney, 1998:419).…”