Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice

Neoliberal capitalism positions us all as consumers in a hypermarket where money talks. For the majority of people around the globe, this translates as precarity and immiseration. But how can we break from this dominant ideological framework? Expose, Oppose, Propose details how, since the mid 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have functioned as think tanks of a different sort, generating resources for a globalization from below in dialogue with the critical social movements that are protagonists for global justice. Based on two years of intensive research, William Carroll not only provides a detailed examination of a variety of TAPGs – showing how each group is distinctive and autonomous in its vision, practical priorities, and ways of producing and mobilizing alternative knowledge – but also reveals how TAPGs form a master frame that advocates and envisages global justice and ecological wellbeing.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Hegemony, Counter-hegemony and Organic Crisis 2. Alternative Knowledge Projects and Cognitive Praxis with Elaine Coburn 3. Networks of Cognitive Praxis: Embedding Postcapitalist Alternatives? with J.P. Sapinski 4. Challenges and Responses 5. The Challenge of NGOization with J.P. Sapinski 6. The Repertoire of alt KPM: Modes of Cognitive Praxis 7. The Repertoire of alt KPM: Key Practices 8. Convergent Visions: The Ends of Alternative Knowledge

About the Author :
William K. Carroll teaches at the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of social movements and social change, the political economy of corporate capitalism, and critical social theory and method. His books include The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class (Zed Books, 2010), Remaking Media (2006), and Organizing Dissent (1997). William K. Carroll teaches at the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of social movements and social change, the political economy of corporate capitalism, and critical social theory and method. His books include The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class (Zed Books, 2010), Remaking Media (2006), and Organizing Dissent (1997).

Review :
Carroll successfully shows that TAPGs (transnational alternative policy groups) and their responses to the ongoing crises, move us beyond the defensive politics of resistance and localism to a politics of antipassive revolution and counterhegemony at a global level. In analysing the dual crisis of contemporary capitalism, Carroll skillfully weighs up the strategic dilemmas faced by transnational resistance movements seeking global alternatives - and his sociological scholarship is second to none in its blend of political passion and exemplary empiricism. With this penetrating study of transnational alternative policy groups, Carroll and his colleagues demonstrate that while they are embedded within a network of hegemonic institutions they can also mediate between movements and media, between counterpublics and general publics, and go beyond resistance into the realm of counter-hegemonic politics and the struggle for global justice. Chock-full of insights, William K. Carroll’s latest book is an immensely useful account of how major alternative think-tanks engage in their struggles for global justice. A must-read for anyone interested in developing strategies for a more equitable world. Refusing to be mesmerized by neoliberalism, Carroll has spent years probing the structures and practices of justice globalism. Careful, concrete investigation of a globally dispersed set of transnational alternative policy groups enables him to offer a sophisticated, synthetic characterization of their shared vision. Expose, Oppose, Propose is an indispensable guide for anyone trying to create the basis for a just and viable future. Brilliant and original … He fully recognizes that the global dimensions of the crises will require solutions that are at least partially global and that many of these solutions will be practical utopias in the sense that they will challenge us to face the difficulties of bringing about a post-capitalist world and at the same time present practical strategies that may make this possible.