Does Globalization or Its Crisis Intensify Political Activism?
It should be clear by now that the economic liberalization of Asian countries has depended on the state to modernize the economy and society. Globalization has strengthened the so-called authoritarian states in Southeast Asia, but the strength of the Asian tiger state lies in the fact that no single strategy of government characterizes the entire national space. Asian postdevelopmentalism is based on different modes for governing different parts of the population that can be linked or unlinked from market investments. For years, NGO activists fighting for environmental rights, social and economic rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples have been tightly controlled and muzzled; “quarantined” in university forums and hotel rooms, they could only create “turbulence in a glass” (NYT 1999).
