From Critical Globalization Studies and Public Sociology to Global Crisis Studies and Global Justice Work: A Manifesto for Radical Social Change

This is a manifesto - a deliberately provocative and evocative text - designed to call on scholars of globalization to focus our work more directly on the study of the ongoing global crisis (which is seen far into the future) rather than on the specialized academic niches our work generally occupies. This is the move from (at best) a "critical globalization studies" to a "global crisis studies."Secondly, it urges global studies scholars, even those already engaged in public sociology or public intellectual work, to push further into making our work relevant and accessible to wider publics well beyond the university and journal publishing systems.And finally, it advocates moving beyond even a "public sociology" directly to "global justice work" in a call to arms to academics and intellectuals to engage ourselves in global social justice action in any way of which we are capable. The text offers a reading of the global crisis as an organic set of interlinked crises, uses literary-like short case study sketches to make its points, provides a succinct thesis about how radical social change is successfully made, and includes a set of resources for scholar-activists.