Shaping Globalization: 
Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding

From the Battle of Seattle to the UN Millennium
Summit and Beyond, Civil Society Challenges Elite Globalization, Emerges as a Third Global Power and Advances a New Vision of Life on Earth

"Nicanor Perlas is one of the profound thinkers of our time. In Shaping Globalization he brilliantly articulates the competing cultural and intellectual constructs driving the competition between elite globalization and global civil society and outlines a path forward by which we may resolve that conflict in the favor of life. A must read for all who work for a positive future." —David C. Korten, Ph.D, author, The Post Corporate World and board chair, the Positive Futures Network, publishers of YES! magazine.

Civil Society has become a major power in the world. This has been demonstrated recently in the stunning defeat of the controversial and secretive Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) of the OECD. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the club of the richest governments in the world.

Civil Society joins the State and the Market as the key institutions that are now shaping globalization and sustainable development. Globally, tens of millions of citizens and over a trillion dollars of resources are now involved in advancing the agenda of civil society. Some of the global institutions of civil society are larger than many U.N. institutions.

Civil society, however, cannot fully mobilize its resources and power because it has no clear understanding of its identity, its meaning, and its context in larger society.

This book shows that global civil society is a cultural institution wielding cultural power. The book also shows how, through the use of cultural power, civil society can advance its agenda in the political and economic realms of society  without losing its identity as a cultural institution. On the contrary, it actually makes its rejection of or engagement with the state and market more effective and profound.         next

From this new understanding, the book draws out the strategic implications for civil society in the local and global arenas. Among others, the book explains that the key task of civil society is to inaugurate threefolding substance and processes to ensure that globalization benefits the poor, societies and nature. Threefolding refers to the critical engagement between the key institutions of the three autonomous spheres of society — civil society in the realm of culture, the state (government) in the realm of polity, and the market (business) in the realm of the economy. Already, Philippine civil society and progressive individuals and agencies in government and business are demonstrating the effectiveness of this new understanding of civil society, cultural power and threefolding through the inauguration and beginning implementation of Philippine Agenda 21.

There have been discussions about the "end of history" and the triumph of neo-liberal capitalism. The powerful emergence of global civil society, however, marks the beginning of a new history in which the forces of globalization will be tamed and harnessed to truly advance a civilization based on the highest human aspirations. This is the task that awaits us all.

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