Globalizacja a konflikty lokalne

Local communities in Poland experience the effects of globalization on a daily basis, but they also try to resist this process. The conflicts that erupt do not take as violent a course as the events on the streets of Seattle, Prague, or Genoa; nevertheless, they are a direct result of globalization processes, including the emergence of new technologies, the concentration of capital, and its free movement. In their struggle for rights and interests, residents of municipalities come to realize that they are facing the powerlessness of ordinary people confronted with big capital and anonymous authority, whose regional structures serve merely as obedient tools in transforming local communities into consumerist and entertainment-oriented paradises on earth. The author of the study, Jarosław Urbański—a sociologist, participant in the Freedom and Peace movement, and co-founder of the Anarchist Federation and the “Objector” Association—analyzes the course of dozens of local social protests that have taken place in recent years in connection with the globalization of the economy.