LSE RELEASES LANDMARK STUDY ON GLOBAL CITIZEN GROUPS

Street protests in Genoa, humanitarian efforts in Kosovo, campaigns against dams in India, Brazil and Hungary, overseas volunteers and international charities … These are some of the phenomena that, as the twenty-first century begins, have come to be known as ‘Global Civil Society’, even though the term has no agreed meaning. It is a force inextricably linked with the process of globalisation. As Professor Anthony Giddens, Director of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), says in the foreword to Global Civil Society 2001, “There is a groundswell of globalisation from below.”

On Thursday, October 11, from 5 – 5:45 pm, the LSE and Oxford University Press (OUP) will give a press conference in the Senior Common Room to launch Global Civil Society 2001 at the Old Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street. This remarkable Yearbook, the first of an annual series of landmark publications, is the distillation of an on-going collaborative effort that involves hundreds of scholars, practitioners and activists. It is the first comprehensive examination of the concept of global civil society. Authors and editors of the Yearbook, including Professor Lord Meghnad Desai, Director of the Centre for the study of Global Governance, Dr. Helmut Anheier, Director of the Centre for Civil Society, and Professor Mary Kaldor, Programme Director of the Global Civil Society Programme, will introduce the book and answer questions.

The press conference will be followed by a public debate on global civil society in the Old Theatre, chaired by Anna Ford. Participants include Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development; Salil Shetty, Executive Director of ActionAid; John Clark, Former Head of the NGO/Civil Society Unit, World Bank; and Jessica Woodroffe, Head of Campaigns of the World Development Movement.

Written by well-known scholars including John Keane, Meghnad Desai, Helmut Anheier and Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society 2001 is the first of an annual series which will contribute to the debate about what global civil society is, map and measure it, and examine each year how it is doing. It opens with an accessible introduction to the history and present significance of global civil society. It contains in-depth case studies of key issues on which global civil society is active: global finance, biotechnology and humanitarian intervention. Further chapters investigate the funding of global civil society, the role of the Internet, and the parallel summits where global civil society congregates. The final part of the book provides a wealth of data on global civil society, and a chronology of global civil society events.

For further information, contact Lizzy Bacon, 020-7955 6628 or click on the heading to go to the Yearbook's webpage.