Past issues

In many countries all over the world, democratic institutions and processes face increased challenges and pressure. Authoritarian tendencies can be observed in young and old democracies alike: a top-down leadership gains prominence again, nationalism soars, and civil society is weakened through the restriction of political rights. Women’s and minorities’ rights are particularly under attack. In the interview opening this issue of Global Dialogue Nancy Fraser, one of today’s most renowned and thought-provoking feminist thinkers, takes up some of the aspects of this development when she debates the question of building a more inclusive feminist movement and discusses her idea of a feminism for the 99%. The articles of our first symposium on “Challenged Democracy” examine how democracy is under pressure in specific parts of the world, from the...

Market fundamentalism and neo-liberalism are affecting everyday life and experience in many parts of the world. Money, markets, and neoliberal thinking are at the core of contemporary politics in different supra-, inter-, trans-, and national contexts. This issue opens with two refl ections on these dominant tendencies of our time. In an interview, John Holloway, inspiring and keen-minded critic of capitalism, discusses the destructive forces of money, the dynamics of fi nance capitalism, and problematic developments in the European Union, but nevertheless emphasizes that another society is possible. The authors of our fi rst symposium on neoliberal think tanks remind us that neoliberalism refl ects the powerful tradition of the liberal idea of self-regulating markets. Neoliberal think tanks are infl uential protagonists of this idea although we might not be aware of that in our everyday...

“If the standpoint of economics is the market and its expansion, and the standpoint of political science is the state and the guarantee of political stability, then the standpoint of sociology is civil society and the defense of the social. In times of market tyranny and state despotism, sociology – and in particular its public face – defends the interests of humanity.” Michael Burawoy, 2004, ASA presidential address “There are […] three challenges for global sociology. If the first challenge is to compose a sociology of society, and the second is to build a sociology in society, the third challenge is to construct a sociology for society, defending the very object – civil society – that was sociology’s original foundation.” Michael Burawoy, 2014, ISA presidential address By starting...