Project Director: Kurt Schock

Through symposia, lectures, and research projects, the Reforming Globalization and Promoting Rights initiative explores ways in which civil society and social movement organizations attempt to alter the trajectory of globalization by promoting human rights, democratization, and sustainable development.  This project includes an ongoing research initiative, headed by Kurt Schock (Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs), concerned specifically with the role of civil resistance in promoting beneficial social change.  Civil resistance, as manifested by “people power” movements, has successfully challenged the “authoritarian logic” and promoted democratization and human rights throughout the developing world. Increasingly civil resistance is being used to promote human rights more broadly defined; i.e., to challenge the “development logic” and promote land reform and sustainable development.  The goal of this initiative is to generate scholarly knowledge that is also useful to activists interested in promoting social change.