An evaluation and analysis of the prospects of social movements based on changing the trajectory of neoliberal economic development

Abstract

Although scholars have largely recognized social movements as a ‘failure’ to resist the market neoliberal globalized capitalism, the case of ‘Hennes&Mauritz AB (H&M) Boycott Event’ in Mainland China context rather illuminate a dynamic power relation between ‘elite’ and ‘grassroot’ agency and thus an increasing bargaining power for collective action to challenge the presence of transnational corporations and wider neoliberal globalization. Through an analysis of the 2021 Chinese consumer activism to boycott H&M company, this paper describes and examines the alternative power model in social activism in China today, arguing that a combination of top-down guidance and bottom-up autonomy through the mechanism of social media platform and ideology discourse construction could work best to resist the neoliberal globalization and its derived transnational corporations. Therefore, this thesis seeks to suggest a nuanced understanding between the dichotomy of ‘political authority’ and ‘broad society’ in social movement studies, of which the blurring boundaries between these two agencies in particular context may further generate a growing capacity to build a counter-hegemonic project to capitalism and globalization.