Environmental Movements, Civil Society and Globalization: An Introduction.

In recent years the issues of globalization, civil society and a heightened concern for environment have simultaneously made inroads in serious intellectual as well as public discussions. Although these movements had a global dimension, they started at local, at best, national movements. Civil society is defined as a social space beyond the realm of the state, it is neither government nor private market. Michael Walzer has defined civil society as the space of unconcerned human associations as well as the set of relational networks. The main function of civil society is to challenge and thus to prevent the establishment of monopoly of power and truth. Discourses of globalization have grown manifold over the last decade. Globalization has become a contested conceptual terrain. Organised groups and coalitions of groups engaged in a common struggle to prevent environmental destruction are confronting the corporations or the states representing the other facets of globalization. Globalization is the concept appeared in sociological literature towards the end of 1980s.