<p>The dissertation examines the evolution of global activism and collective identities for three small non-governmental organizations: the Grand Council of the Crees, the Saami Council, and Medecins Sans Frontieres-Canada. The three organizations are considered over a period of fifteen years, from 1990 to 2005. Global activism is an aspect of globalization that can take many different forms, as the three cases show. The study looks at the objectives pursued through global activism and the arguments used by the organizations, the alliances they create and the publics they target to achieve their objectives. From well-organized campaigns to sporadic interventions in global forums, the diversity in the forms of global activism demonstrates the creativity of the organizations and the different issues for which global activism is considered useful. Small groups can participate in the debates surrounding globalization, and sometimes create the spaces in which these debates can take place.</p> <p>The identity at the core of each organization has changed over the period studied. By looking at the self-definition of the organization, its actual roles and power, its leadership, and its relationships with its membership or the people it represents, one can understand better this evolution and how it is related to the global activism carried out by each organization. There are connections between these changes in identities and activism, and the comparative analysis presented in the dissertation illustrates how taking part in globalization can change an organization and allow it to reach its objectives.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Recognizing that over the past decade transnational environmental activism focusing on climate change has radicalized in public tactics and discourse, this project employs a mechanism-process approach to analyze and explain processes of tactical and discursive radicalization within the global climate justice movement(s) over time. As global activists within this movement construct and pursue public, as well as covert, campaigns directed at states, international institutions, corporations, the media and society at large, it asks why, how and to what effect specific sectors of the broader movement have radicalized from the period 2006-2010. Utilizing longitudinal quantitative protest event and political claims analysis and ethnographic field work and participant action research, it aims to provide a descriptive and comparative account of tactical and discursive variations at international climate change protests situated within the context of a broader cycle of transnational global justice contention.