sovereignty and autonomy of the nation-state, so as to give rise to the prevalence of transnational rules over national ones, giving rise to a crisis of representative democracy, with the emergence of a supranational state-network. Under this new model one notes, among other things, the end of the social contract between capital and labor under the notion of “labor flexibility,” and the construction of transnational productive chains outside the control of nation-states and local actors through technological convergence and productive decentralization, as well as a process of homogenization that has led to the very fast erosion of cultural diversity.

The process of globalization has not been accepted passively by the governments and peoples of the region. The last decade has seen the formation of regional and subregional economic blocs for internal integration (economic, technological and political) and to counter external competition, as well as a struggle to establish a global civil society depen-

dent on participatory democracy networks and emergence and proliferation of social movements to vindicate and uphold the importance of the interdependence among human, social and ecological considerations. These trends towards participatory democracy through social movements include the struggle for sustainable development mediated by the creation of a global civil society to monitor the excesses of transnational corporate capitalism; the rise of initiatives and dynamics that accord priority to local development as the starting point for transformations committed to human, social and ecological needs; the struggle for indigenous rights; and the struggle to control (and, in general, contest) the products of science and even the process of doing science (anti-GMO groups, anti-human cloning groups and groups to stop animal suffering, among others).

Finally, the environmental changes, particularly the loss of biodiversity and global warming, have assumed a