I have looked at alternative societies across the world, but mostly at local or national ones. How do these alternatives relate to international or global society (see Adler, 2019; Murphy, 2019)? In this chapter, I want to discuss alternatives at a more global level, to regimes such as global neoliberalism and the regulation of people movement.

In the 1970s and 1980s, globalization was defined, in part, by neoliberalism. For many, globalization meant the spread of economic liberalism as much as the globalization of capitalism. A movement grew in the 2000s, initially called anti-globalization, geared often, but not always, around global justice concerns (see Gill, 2000; Graeber, 2002; Pleyers, 2010). For instance, it was also in nationalist anti-globalization on the Left and the far Right. It was visible in large confrontational protests at meetings of world economic and political leaders. It was bottom-up and outside mainstream politics, not an elite or political movement. The movement was wide, comprising strands from socialist and union and labour positions to radical green and anarchist ones, among many others, both formally organized and informal. It was not against globalization per se but neoliberal globalization specifically and the form it took in imperialist corporate projects, free trade deals, international organizations, and capital mobility. The anti-globalization movement criticized the depoliticization of decisions, created by neoliberalism being inscribed in treaties and so beyond the control of governments and electors. It drew attention to the rising exploitation of labour as corporations moved their operations to areas where workers have the worst pay and conditions and countries with the weakest environmental and labour regulations. Anti-globalization highlighted issues previously more marginal in politics – such as health concerns about food, water, and pharmaceuticals, environmental problems, the rights of Indigenous people, and the extension of western media and consumerism in a homogenizing fashion – with a strong emphasis on global inequality.

Being against neoliberal globalization specifically rather than all globalization meant it was possible to be for an alternative globalization, globalization still but of a non-neoliberal sort. So, ‘alter-globalization’ became a better term than ‘anti-globalization’.