The Third World Quarterly (TWQ) Special Issue ‘Emancipatory movements of the Global South in a changing world order’ (Volume 44, Issue 10) encompasses a broad spectrum in terms of space, time and issues. It deals with all parts of the Global South and raises economic, political, environmental and cultural questions; it looks back into the past and investigates the present – but, in both cases, from the perspective of a greater future.
The first group of articles discusses general issues: the waves of anti-systemic movements since 1870; the comparative achievements of the socialism-oriented countries in terms of the population’s standard of living since 1960; and the question of economic management during a transition from capitalism to socialism in a periphery country, using the example of Cuba.
This next group of articles are about the emancipatory movements of Latin America, in general, and the Amazon region, in particular. While these articles deal mostly with the economic base, the last group of articles concentrates on the superstructure, discussing the relevance of culture, ideology and education, based on the experiences and challenges of consciousness formation in Rojava, China and Africa.
All of these articles in this Special Issue contribute to our understanding about what kind of counter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist movements, and with what results, have been influencing the ongoing change of our world.
Before our very eyes, the world is transforming into a multipolar order in which the interests of the hitherto most exploited countries of the world system carry greater weight. In order not only to benefit local elites, forces capable of expressing and asserting peoples’ interests must be activated. The monitoring and presentation of emancipatory movements in the Global South is therefore not only a theoretical issue, but also a first-rate practical one.
Habil. Annamaria Artner, Guest Special Issue Editor, Senior research fellow at the Institute of World Economics, and Professor at Milton Friedman University, Budapest
Special Issue Editor Biography
Annamária Artner is a political economist, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, and Professor at Milton Friedman University, Budapest, Hungary. Her main research fields are transformation of the world system, global capital accumulation, labour markets and crises and their socio-economic consequences.
Her recent publications are ‘A New World Is Born: Russia’s Anti-imperialist Fight in Ukraine’ (International Critical Thought, 2023), ‘Samir Amin and the Changing of the World’ (International Critical Thought, 2022), ‘Planning and Social Change’ (Critique, 2021), ‘Can China Lead the Change of the World?’ (Third World Quarterly, 2020) and Capital, Labour and Crisis in the Era of Globalisation (a monograph in Hungarian, 2014).
