The Human Chain Is Not About Holding Hands

As the celebratory mood of global interconnectedness wears thinner and thinner, the compression of space-time makes more apparent that we share across the planet an increasing exclusion from the official political and economic decision-making processes that have jurisdiction over our lives. At the same time, the temporal compression of the global and local is forging alternative collectivities that are often overlooked by those in the business of explaining and predicting political outcomes. Arjun Appadurai makes note of these relationships in his work on grassroots activism and the research imagination, reminding us that debates within the academy “still set the standard of value for the global professoriate” (2000, p. 2). Following this sentiment, recent events around the world should impress upon us that academic research influences policy debates over issues such as climate change, global trade relations, labor migration, and terrorism, which in turn shape the politics that inform the daily lives of both those who have access to these debates and those who do not...