The quest for Transnational Civic Mobilization

Civic mobilization is the outcome of complex social encounters and connections. With converging or diverging utterances, exchanges of meanings and ideas, people often balance their wish for material and moral gains. Initially such engagements remain intense and idealistic. Gradually, people moderate their priorities in respecting and even accepting existing opposing claims. But before reaching this point, such complex social actions and purposes generate the empowerment and the inclusion of certain groups. Motivated by the emergence of relative power asymmetry, as well as the resources mobilized by the first group, the presumably excluded group then responds by resisting existing or potentially emerging social platforms. People also engage civic mobilization because they support vulnerable constituents and their struggles for justice and inclusion in the society. Under such conditions, people collectively, not just deal with accessing material resources, but also promote ethical responsibilities and moral concerns. Such expression of horizontal solidarity then triggers other social agents and institutions to either support or alternatively oppose such demands of civic mobilization.