Global Climate Justice Activism: “The New Protagonists” and their Projects for a Just Transition

The contributors to this volume have provided ample evidence to support calls for fundamental, transformative change in the world-system. If there remained any doubts, their analyses show that the capitalist world-system threatens not only the well-being of a majority of the world’s people, but also the very survival of our planet. Indeed, the urgency of the ecological and economic conditions that many people now face and the immense inequalities that have become more entrenched require that scholars become more consciously engaged in the work of advancing social transformation. Revolutionary change is emergent in movement spaces where people have long been working to develop shared analyses and cultivate collective power and agency by building unity among a diverse array of activists, organizations, and movements. We discuss three examples of transformative projects that are gaining increased visibility and attention: food sovereignty, solidarity economies, and Human Rights Communities. If widely adopted, these projects would undermine the basic processes necessary for the capitalist world-system to function. With these projects, defenders of environmental and social justice not only work to prevent their own (further) dispossession by denying capital its ability to continue appropriating labor and resources from working people and communities, but they also help deepen the existing systemic crisis while sowing the seeds of a new social order

Working towards sincere encounters in volunteer tourism : an ethnographic examination of key management issues at a Nordic eco-village

This article explores host–guest dynamics at Sólheimar eco-village, Iceland tocontribute to the conceptualization of transformative learning in volunteertourism. At the eco-village, the host and volunteers come together to sharesimilar goals and meaningful experiences. This interaction gets complicated,however: the eco-village exists within the global capitalist system and mustoperate using market norms. The idealist and educational expectations ofthe volunteers often clash with the practical short-term goals of thecommunity: there are also cultural and experiential differences between theparties. This clash is used to discuss the importance of sincerity in volunteertourism at the eco-village. Data were collected through fieldwork, primarilyincluding participant observations and interviews, to help interpret thepatterns of behaviors and perceptions of both parties in relation to the aim.Ultimately, the experience that binds host and guests cannot solely beabout learning to do things alternatively and sustainably; it requiressincerity, using Taylor’s 2001 sincerity concept, to tackle the difficulties inworking alternatively and sustainably to attain this experience. It is arguedthat transformative learning during the volunteer experience in alternativespaces should be conceptualized to include the promotion of sincereencounters, and adjusted to concern both the host and its guests