Paper short abstract:

Framed by critical globalisation theory and David Harvey’s ‘co-revolutionary moments’ as a theory of social change, this paper empirically analyses how socialism is being constructed in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean and beyond through the ALBA-TCP.

Paper long abstract:

This paper integrates critical globalisation theory with David Harvey's 'co-revolutionary' theory of social change to develop a framework through which to analyse the construction of socialism via the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples' Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP). I will introduce the concept of (counter-hegemonic) global 'pluri-scalar war of position', to which three elements are of particular relevance: firstly, Robert Cox's constructivist neo-Gramscian international relations theory which considers the structure/agency interplay in the transformation of historical structures; secondly, theories of place, space and scale, borrowed from human geography; and, thirdly, Harvey's internally dynamic and contradictory 'co-revolutionary' moments which are the crux of socialist/communist revolution as permanent process. Informed by inter-disciplinary case studies from diverse places within the emergent ALBA-TCP space, in countries such as Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the USA, Harvey's seven 'co-revolutionary moments' structure a systematic exploration of the multi-dimensional, pluri-scalar construction of socialism. This generates not only a holistic understanding of regional and global transformations, but also permits identifying social and structural forces at different scales to illuminate relationships between things, processes and systems and the conjunction of politics and practices at work.