Introduction

In an influential essay, Arjun Appadurai described the emergence of the present state of globalization as a shift from stability to motion. The globalized world, he argues, is a world in motion, a world with different speeds, a world of disjunctive flows. To a large extent, it is the heir to older historical developments such as empires, monotheistic religion, colonialism and capitalism, but in its present stage, it is energized by new forms of mobility. While global actors such as nation states and industrial corporations deploy the global infrastructures of information, traffic and commerce to extend their power and wealth in forms of ‘predatory mobility’, other movements have entered the global stage to counter globalization not only by protecting and reinforcing the local forms of subsistence, but also by organizing new forms of counter-globalization or alternative forms of globalization. In his essay, Appadurai focuses on the phenomenon of ‘grassroots globalization’. He uses this term to describe movements that propel globalization from below, endorsing an emancipatory politics of globalization that can back up the counter vision of an international civil society. This counter vision requires creative imagination. For this reason, Appadurai resurrects the discourse of the imagination, reclaiming it in the political struggle for the losers of globalization (Appadurai 2000, 1–19).