The Dualities of Transnational Contention: "Two Activist Solitudes" or A New World Altogether?

International protests against global capitalism have focused scholars' attention on the highly visible activities of transnational activists and advocates; but the tough, incremental, and deeply embedded work of grassroots social movements has too often been sublimated under the slogan: "Think globally; act locally!" Are transnational activists isolated from domestic social movements, extensions of domestic contention, or bridges between the local and the global? Three problems in particular will be examined: First, the difficulty of establishing durable transnational coalitions; Second, the problem of bridging the gap between movement protesters and NGO advocates; and, third, that of escaping movement structuration by national cleavages, alignments, and opportunities.