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./english/36.txt:21:7. The Organizing Committee gave more importance than in the past to the cultural aspect of the Forum. In fact the response of the artists was impressive. About 150 cultural events took place in the ESF venue. We believe that this convergence between art and politics not only helps artists (specially the young) to present their work to massive public, but also contributes to the emerging of new forms of activism and political communication.

./english/62.txt:10:• Moses A. Boudourides: On the Tension Between Social Movement Scholarship and Activism. University of Patras and Institute Nikos Poulantzas, Greece (English) (3 A4 pages long)

./english/62.txt:32:On the Tension Between Social Movement Scholarship and Activism

./english/62.txt:41:On the other side, activism refers to an actual engagement with social movement participation that it entails concrete contentious activities, organizing and leadership, claims, questions, discussion and reflection on goals, strategy, tactics, means and ends, ideological corroboration, enduring commitment to the struggles of the movement and conscious concern about the followed directions (Flacks). All these are practical activities and they involve a great deal of theory, which cannot be monopolized by social movements scholars. In fact, activists produce theory too – at various levels of abstraction and sophistication – in processes of practical activities, in which they are committed and engaged. This activist merger of practice and theory is what Eyerman & Jamison used to call ‘cognitive praxis.’ According to them, cognitive praxis develops in a threefold frame composed of a cosmological, a technological and an organizational dimension. However, not everybody finds convincing this analytical scheme of Eyerman & Jamison: for instance, Barker & Cox contend that it reifies existing distinctions as given. Rather than that, they posit that activist theory is dialogical and developmental in the sense that activists strive to answer the question of ‘what is to be done?’ in situations throughout their struggles that they do not fully control. For Barker & Cox, activist theorizing exhibits certain situational and pragmatic features stamping the distinctive character of forms of knowledge produced by activists in such a way that activist knowledge cannot be divorced from the struggles of the process of movement activity. In fact, it was Gramsci in his discussion of knowledge and the labor process who was distinguishing the official forms of knowledge – produced in and by an authoritative institutional context – from the unofficial forms of knowledge – generated inside the struggles of the disadvantageous classes when they aim to resolve their practical problems without really knowing what needs are driving them but only being determined to find out through their struggle and solidarity (cf., Wainwright).

./english/62.txt:43:However, the differences between movement scholarship and activism are not exhausted along the lines of different forms of knowledge produced by them. There are also significant differences in terms of who are the actors that compose the constituencies of each one of them and of how – through which processes – such a social aggregation and representation is enacted. From this point of view, in principle, it is academia or the scientific community (Kuhn) the social subject, which validates the work of science, in general, and social movement studies, in particular. But it is known that science as social institution operates according to a set of pertinent norms, criteria of validity, ways to measure academic productivity and systems of reward, accreditation, promotion and success (Merton). As for the question of whether science is social accountable, this is indeed tantamount to posing the claim of the democratization of scientific expertise. Furthermore, up to the degree that the very bulk of scientific community is integrated into the system of higher education – through research conducted in universities – modern science tends not only to serve big business and the market but in many cases it becomes big business and it is marketized and privatized – for instance, in the lucrative areas of technological and medical research but not only. Consequently, the study of social movements appears to by drastically underfunded and, therefore, rather marginalized, when compared to many other social science topics. Thus, given the dominant trend of corporatization in higher education and politicized government funding, social movement scholars in academia would face many difficulties if they wanted to direct their research on studying social change and conflict for the empowerment of the powerless and the exposition of inequities in the status quo and inequalities in the distribution of resources (Croteau, Cancian). Hence, the very majority of social scientists tend to be restricted in analyses of a smoothly functioning society, mild policy reforms and studies of how to achieve an efficient social control and to manage social problems.

./english/62.txt:47:The above were a few remarks on the existing tension between movement scholarship and activism. A thorough understanding of them is expected to facilitate both theory and action in many aspects with regards to the social complexities of our time.

./english/62.txt:71:- reflexivity, the challenge being building tools/processes that enables us to take distance from the forums/our activism, etc. This can aim at changing the forums themselves (while giving voices to the unheard, for example) or to be able to set ourselves outside of the forum when we deal with the forum. This reflexivity can be both individual and collectiv, and can lead to the emergence of common representations.

./english/161.txt:58:was their activism by press conference: ignoring the wider feeling of MPH’s

./english/176.txt:32: Influenced by new social movement theory, the ‘framing’ perspective is the most well-known culturalist approach in Northern American social movement studies (Williams 2004, 93). Using Goffman’s metaphor of ‘framing’ as a starting point, this approach focuses on ‘the deployment of symbols, claims, and even identities in the pursuit of activism’ (Ibid). In that respect, ‘frames’ are perceived as ‘clues for identifying and interpreting a problem, its dimension, causes, and probably potential remedies’ (van de Donk et al. 2004, 12).

./english/176.txt:134:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 942 The statistical significance of these relationships was measured using the Chi-Square and the strength of the relationship was assessed using the Phi Coefficient, a measure suitable for establishing associations between nominal (and particularly dichotomous) variables. If the value of the Phi Coefficient was below 0.3 then the variables were considered independent. Values between 0.3 and 0.7 were indicative of a weak association between the two variables, while if Phi was above 0.7 then the association was considered strong. All of the reported associations were statistically significant with p<0.05, while in many cases p was 0.000. 3 The significance of the association was measured using again the Chi-Square, while the strength of the relationship was assessed using the Gamma measure in the case of an association between a nominal and an ordinal variable. The association between nominal and dichotomous variables was measured using Cramer’s V and the Phi Coefficient. References Baym, N.K., Y.B. Zhang and M.Lin. (2004) ‘Social interactions across media: Interpersonal communication on the internet, telephone and face-to-face’, New Media & Society 6(3): 299-318. Bennett, W.L. (2004) ‘Communicating global activism: strengths and vulnerabilities of networked politics’, in W. van de Donk, B.D. Loader, P.G. Nixon and D. Rucht (eds.) Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 123-146. Bennett, W.L., T.E. Givens and L.Willnat. (2004) ‘Crossing Political Divides: Internet Use and Political Identifications in Transnational Anti-War and Social Justice Activists in Eight Nations’. Paper for the European Consortium for Political Research Workshop. Uppsala, Sweden, April 14-18, 2004. Breiger, R.L. (2004) ‘The Analysis of Social Networks’, in M. Hardy and A. Bryman (eds.) Handbook of Data Analysis, London: Sage Publications, pp. 505-526. Burnett, R. and P.D. Marshall. (2003) Web Theory: An introduction, London and New York: Routledge. Castells, M. (2001) The Internet galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business, and society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clemens, E.S. and D.C. Minkoff. (2004) ‘Beyond the Iron Law: Rethinking the Place of Organizations in Social Movement Research’, in D.A. Snow, S.A. Soule and H. Kriesi (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 155-169. Diani, M. (1992) ‘The concept of social movement’, The Sociological Review 40(1): 1-25. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 95___. (2004) ‘Networks and Participation’,

./english/201.txt:37:“I've been in plenty of meetings where at least a third of those present are SWP members, in various different guises”, he explained. “It's always the same people, and they consistently packed meetings and voted their own people in as chairs, speakers and organisers. Often we would have meetings in the UK which would be stitched up by the SWP. Then we would take it to a European level and European activists would overturn all the decisions and complain about the lack of democracy in British activism.”

./english/205.txt:38:It's unnecessary to remark how bad a precedent the use of the police by the organization of the ESF against participants is; but an evaluation that concentrated on that too much would end up forgetting the most important thing about these two days: that the autonomous spaces were above all extremely productive. Be it the discussions around how to develop an ‘activist research' and a ‘research activism', at the Radical Theory Forum and elsewhere; the excellent debates on precariousness and migration at Beyond the ESF; the exploration of the idea of ‘the commons' at Life Despite Capitalism; the creative and joyous search for new ways of protesting at the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination; the debates on media and knowledge and the No Vox night at Camden Centre – there was a tangible feeling of convergence and creation of subjectivities; it was a ‘less ideological' opposition not because it had no ideas or alternatives to propose, but because it shunned facile binaries – the simplistic ‘us and them', ‘inside and outside' – and favoured the least reactive, most productive aspects of the new European movements.

./english/221.txt:21:We will gather in Berlin in early 2005 to decide a common protest action against the sanctuaries of EU power, in order to launch euromaydays and the supporting structured network of labor radicalism and media activism tentatively called NEU, Networkers of Europe United.

./english/243.txt:7:This workshop on Neo-Marxisms was just one in a long day at the Radical Theory Forum , organised as an autonomous space during the European Social Forum in London . It was originated by young, politically active academics, who wanted to create a space where education and activism could be interlinked. The well-kept social centre 491 gallery , which served as the venue, helped this to be not only a successful but also an enjoyable event. The workshops covered ‘Anti-Consumerism', ‘Feminist Theory' and ‘Practice at the ESF/WSF', as well as the philosophical and explosive question who the ‘we' in the Social Movements is. The discussions were at the highest level, but not exclusionary.

./english/243.txt:27:That is why a true praxis is impossible when we are driven by a subject-object dichotomy: cut off from practice, theory becomes a simple verbalism. Separated from theory, practice is nothing but blind activism. In the same way, there is no theoretical context if it is not in a dialectical unity with the concrete context . In the concrete context, we are subjects and objects in a dialectical relationship with reality. This makes up the unity – not the separation – between practice and theory, action and reflection. Otherwise we would be stuck in a world that is the result of actions that are made mechanical or bureaucratic. When Freire says “There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis,” he explains that the action and the reflection both produce the word. At the same time, the word is work - is praxis.

./english/259.txt:24:The toll for Catalunya’s anarcho-syndicalists was disastrous. In recent years, people have been arrested in Barcelona for anarchist activism, and to judge from the anarchist symbols graffiti-ed around the city, an undercurrent of contemporary anarchisms bubbles away not so far from the city’s surface. This accompanies widespread concern that repression and censorship has been increasing under the dictate of Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, himself a member of the fascist party during General Franco’s leadership1. As elsewhere, these trends are targetting cross-cutting precarious ‘groups’ such as immigrants, anarchists, squatters, separatists, and activists.

./english/259.txt:32:Having been at the receiving end of such threats for published research during the neoliberal nineties in Namibia3, I personally am rather bored with a conventional dichotomising of positions: between academia and activism, theory and practice, objectivity and subjectivity, and the traditional and organic intellectual (cf. Gramsci). These are categories which themselves maintain a hegemonic status quo in intellectual and pragmatic arenas. Objectivity, for example, is a constructed (and experientially impossible) analytical position that arguably is not ethically desirable, even if it remains a cornerstone for many in the social sciences.

./english/259.txt:40:Independently of this an ‘anarchist:academics’ e-list emerged from a meeting at the Anarchist Bookfair in London, October 2003. Currently there is some cross-over of participants occurring between the two lists and the beginnings of discussion regarding shared interests and intent. The theoretical and pragmatic interests of these events and discussions, groups and individuals, are reflected in a process of ‘talkshops’ supported by CSGR due to take during 2004, under the title of academia, activism and postanarchism: theory and practice in (anti-)globalisation politics. All these initiatives build and magnify existing UK-based theory:practice initiatives such as Signs of the Times (www.signsofthetimes.org.uk) and Shifting Ground Collective (www.shiftingground.org). It is tempting to see in them some renewed vigour in the recursive relationship between theory and practice, as well as between the ivory tower of academia and the real world ‘out there’.

./english/260.txt:32:status and legitimation that research and activism hold respectively. While research is

./english/260.txt:33:commonly understood as a highly respected and valued practice, activism is considered

./english/260.txt:35:research critically to question activism should clearly be placed at the service of

./english/260.txt:36:activism and activism should be used to radicalize research.

./english/267.txt:39:We do not believe so. Political activism is also a practice with an object. As such, it has remained tied to a mode of instrumentality: one that connects itself to other experiences from a subjectivity always already constituted, with prior knowledge –the knowledges of strategy-, charged with universally valid, purely ideological statements. Its way of being in relation to others is utilitarianism: there is never affinity, always "agreement;" never encounter, always "tactics." Political activism –above all the party variety– can hardly constitute itself into an experience of authencity. From the very beginning it gets stuck in transitivity. What interests it of an experience is always "another thing" than the experience in itself. From this point of view, political militancy –and we are no excepting the militants of the Left– is as exterior, judgemental and objectifying as university research.

./english/269.txt:15:Precarias a la Deriva is an initiative between research and activism which arose from the feminist social center La Eskalera Karakola in Madrid, initially as a response to the general strike in Spain in June of 2002. Faced with a mobilization which did not represent the kind of fragmented, informal, invisible work that we do – our jobs were neither taken into consideration by the unions that called the strike nor effected by the legislation that provoked it – a group of women decided to spend the day of the strike wandering the city together, transforming the classic picket line into a picket survey: talking to women about their work and their days. Are you striking? Why? Under what conditions do you work? What kind of tools to you have to confront situations that seem unjust to you?…

./english/275.txt:9:In this paper, we retrace in concepts a path that we’ve followed in the experience and practice of our own lives: from activism to theory, and back again to activism, now understood in a new light. Like many people, we’ve found ourselves moving towards activism as we discovered the boundaries that our kind of societies place in the way of living fully human lives. Over time, we found ourselves asking broader questions of the world and ourselves than could be answered within the activist frameworks we had available to us at the time, and moved to draw on the theoretical resources of the past, specifically Marxism. We are now moving back towards activism, through our own participation and through social movements research. In this paper we want to see what we can bring back from our theorizing that will help us and other activists in our practice.

./english/275.txt:160:We attempt to do some of this in analyzing the crisis and restructuring of capital in the current phase of neo-liberal globalization as a social movement from above – and looking for ways of naming the system, its associated offensives of economic fundamentalism and ‘war on terror’ – in ways that help us to understand and counter it effectively. But this perspective also needs to be brought to bear on the movement of movements, understood as a response from below to this crisis – and in turn raising the question of the practical ‘way forward’ for the movement, and what theory can bring back to activism.

./english/276.txt:19:As has been asserted by Eyerman and Jamison (1991) and Barker and Cox (2002), social movement processes are fundamentally animated by the production of knowledge. In the present approach, the point of departure is the simple assumption that people turn to activism in and through social movements because they find that something is not right in the world, and more specifically that it cannot be fixed within the normal “channels”. To become an activist, then, is to learn that the system does not “work” as it claims, and to move towards the understanding that to achieve change people need to organize and create pressure. The turn to activism and the building of social movements, then, is essentially moored in experience. Experience is here understood as the practical and tacit knowledge that we as human beings generate about the material (social and non-human) world, through our encounters with and interaction with this material world. This practical-tacit knowledge is thus ‘an attribute of individuals by reason of their social character, their participation, active or passive, in relations with others within inherited structures’ (Wainwright 1994: 107).

./english/276.txt:29:So far, it has been argued that experience is the starting point of activism, that it is a form of practical and tacit knowledge about the world generated through our being and acting in the world, and that this knowledge is defined by being concrete, particular, and local in character. Theory, on the other hand, is the knowledge that emerges from attempts to go beyond experience in order to develop more adequate forms of activism, and this knowledge is defined by being abstract, universal, and global in character. This being said, experience and theory – and the respective traits by which they are defined – should not be viewed in a dualist perspective as binary oppositions, but in a dialectical way as opposites in unity. The experience-theory nexus is dialectical one where ‘two opposed perspectives and forces [are] united in one contradictory totality’ (Cleaver, 2000: 141), where totality refers to ‘the insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is composed are in fact related to each other’ (Rees, 1998: 5), which is in turn an insistence predicated upon the assumptions of ‘the philosophy of internal relations’ where it is assumed ‘that the relations that come together to make up the whole get expressed in what are taken to be its parts’ and where ‘[e]ach part is viewed as incorporating in what it is all its relations with other parts up to and including everything that comes into the whole’ (Ollman, 1993: 35).

./english/276.txt:95:The experiential knowledge that propels people to activism, then, should be conceived of as being a valid form of knowledge ‘not simply as a source of empirical instances, or falsifications of a general law; but as clues, signposts and stimuli to deeper understanding and theoretical innovation’ (Wainwright, 1994: 67). More specifically, if this practical, experiential knowledge is socialized, i.e. shared between actors, and combined with and interrogated through theoretical knowledge, the outcome of the process might be more adequate maps by which to chart out a course on the terrain of resistance:

./english/281.txt:25:2. What’s their ‘relevant community’?, and 3. Who plays the part? They believe that ‘traditional intellectuals’ tend to produce a system of knowledge, which is more static and explanatory so that it can be validated by academia. In contrast, ‘organic intellectuals’ develop a more situated and dynamic analysis related to the possibility of action, which then has to be debated and accepted by militants. I find this distinction interesting despite the authors’ romantic vision of activists9, and also despite their more expansive definition of activism (they include trade union stewards and leftist party apparatchiks as activists). Nevertheless, I believe this situation is not specific to Social Movement studies. It emerged from an ethical position within academia (Biglia, 2000). The problem occurs if we set out to explain and justify the SM point of view instead of using its theoretical tools to subvert mainstream knowledge. We, as activist-academics, have to ensure this by introducing the Radical Social Movement’s (RSM) ideas into academia. Some of us have already attempted to do that with feminism10, researching and producing knowledge in all areas (and not just women’s issues) using an ‘autonomous’ feminist perspective. We need to tread carefully otherwise activist theories become ‘rapidly recolonized’ and may even become ‘a source of new, sexy courses and research subjects whose purpose is to attract students, funding and status’ (Barker and Cox, 2001-02, 9). When the Radical Social Movement (RSM) was powerful and involved large sectors of society, the interaction between the two kinds of intellectuals was particularly strong. For example, the Italian anti-psychiatric movement of the 1970s, was firmly connected to street protests. It was characterised by an intense interaction between ‘professionals’ and ‘non professionals’. There was no separation between theorists and activists- theories were constructed collectively and shared practices played a big part in the process. In this context we could locate the Calate di Reggio Emilia11, characterised for the interaction between some psi-

./english/281.txt:50:in dialogue with others of a similar disposition and intellectual bent; if they have to watch their back (p 19). It is significant that even the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which Hakim Bey (1985) wishes to see transformed into Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZ) are generally characterised by two or three individuals in charge of hefty ideological decisions. So dialogues that Ussher wants to see develop become closed dialogues where it is advantageous to conform to the critical ‘party line’. The biggest problem is that, within supposedly horizontal groups, which are not explicitly authoritarian, it is difficult to recognise leadership and subject it to criticism. This is a strange process in which we are all ‘free to think’ as our unacknowledged leaders, otherwise we are out. Moreover, such groups tend to become endogamous in order to avoid contamination from other critical sources and frequently end up not co-operating with each other because they all believe they possess the deeper and more radical critique of the status quo. Theoretically there may not exist a separation between knowledge-theories and activism. We are critical academics so we must be on the same side as activists. We organize horizontally and we don’t want to manipulate the movement. But we celebrate our arrival to a meeting with half an hour of theoretical chat not understood by non-specialists. I want to mention two experiences in this regard, one from my activist space and the other from my academic milieu. The first experience comes from an assembly of activists I was involved with around ten years ago in Italy. In theory it was a closed group (just for militants with similar politics), organized horizontally as a response to an upcoming protest. The group consisted of about 30 people. Most of us, between 18 and 24 years old, learned about the meeting just a few days in advance. The meeting started with a 90-minute talk by two academic-activists who read from a written paper. After their talk they ask if there was any disagreement with their analysis. I felt as if they were mocking us. Obviously for me, as for most of my friends, it was impossible to understand let alone provide an impromptu critique of a highly complex analysis. Faced with this interrogation all we could do was to try to decide whether we should remain in the group or leave. Another example comes from a few years ago in Spain, during a meeting between critical teachers and students who wanted to change academia. All

./english/281.txt:53:the students sat at the back of the room and remained silent throughout. In contrast, the lecturers occupied the front row and monopolised the ‘discussion’. When I complained that if we want to change the authoritarian dynamics of academia we have to make an effort to create a space in which everyone feels free to talk, one of the lecturers retorted, ‘here everybody can talk freely and if student don’t feel free it is their problem’. At this stage one student did say that it was difficult to talk under such conditions, but he was ignored. What I am trying to say is that this ‘TAZ’ frequently becomes a closed ghetto that tends to produce a static critique- a critique that can be ‘easily’ reabsorbed by mainstream academic discourse. Our inability or unwillingness to be self-critical tends to normalise our contribution. At the same time not-so-critical academics see the autonomous zones created as an opportunity to acquire power. It seams that having acquired an academic position most criticals start to feel tired of fighting and prefer to maintain their little privileges and end up becoming auto-referential and a bit pathetic. Having analysed some of the limitations and negatives influences of academic discourse, I want to end by returning to the question posed by the editors of ARCP. It seems to me that in both academia and the ‘anti-globalization’ movement the ‘radicalising’ process mainly consists in emptying the content of criticism. Given this situation, is a cross-fertilisation between critical psychology and the anti-capitalist movement possible? I feel the only positive fertilisation possible is achieved through being a person- I mean the voluntary performing of ourselves and our bodies and not our professional ‘persona’. That doesn’t mean we cannot bring to the University ethics and practices developed by us as militants. Moreover, we can serve our activism through knowledge gained in academia and the privileges of our status. But we have to be careful not to instrumentalize Radical Social Movement practices and theories for the benefit of academics nor engage with the Radical Social Movement with a superior attitude. I believe if we want to be useful to the Radical Social Movement we should not aim to do something for RSM as academics, but instead work within them and act as activists. Perhaps the best thing Critical Psychology, as a ‘theoretical group’, could do is to let the anti-capitalist movement get on with its work without interference. As persons with a psychological background and a critical attitude we can use our knowledge within RSM

./english/282.txt:23:In the real world, of course, the types are sometimes combined together in individuals and groups. Many of those who are drawn to this field of academic study are themselves former or continuing activists and participants in actual movements and movement organizations. It's been suggested (e.g. Morris and Herring 1987; Mayer in Lyman 1995) that part of the impulse to the American shift away from 'collective behaviour' to 'resource mobilization' and 'political process' theories was a response to the movements of the 1960s.(2) Those with feet in both camps are often aware of contradictions and tensions in their different roles. Thus Nancy Naples notes a demand placed on the authors in her collection on Community Activism and Feminist Politics, to 'find a balance between the passion they felt for the community action or activists they were working with and the detachment needed to present their analyses' (1998b: 7).

./english/282.txt:61:Reflecting the influence of ... broad structural theories, most recent empirical work has tended to focus on the role of system-level factors in either facilitating or constraining movement activity. Consequently, we know comparatively little about the lived experience of activism and the everyday strategic concerns of movement groups. (1996: 339)

./english/282.txt:67:Thus, activists' theorizing is not necessarily dominated by the theorization of activism, and is not restricted to an alternative 'social movements theory'. Rather, their specific theorizations of movements proceed from a broader theoretical context with relation to the social world as a whole, and changes in one understanding are usually reflected in changes in the other. Taking the example of Irish working-class community activism, Geoghegan and Cox (2001) note that activist theorizing starts from specific structural relationships - of class and poverty, gender and violence, ethnicity and exclusion - and attempts to change these relationships through agency (which necessarily involves an implicit or explicit theorizing element). This theorizing attempts to explain both how the structures that activists grapple with work and how 'best practice' activism can change it. The famous 'structure / agency' problematic of sociology does not operate in the same way for agents who are challenging structures.

./english/282.txt:111:Gramsci (1997; 1999b: 118-264) can be read as presenting us with a model of common sense which is essentially historical: an 'archaeology of knowledge' which mixes both 'the most archaic forms of superstition' with 'the latest discoveries of scientific knowledge'. If so, then activism would simply be a case of the development of the individual - or the class - paralleling that of the species as a whole, and eventually winding up in possession of Marx's 'highpoint of philosophical development'.

./english/282.txt:119:It can also, however, find itself subject to a 'brain drain', in which people associated with movements 'migrate' to universities. This process is no doubt very different as between different movements and activists (class, for example, makes a major difference), and the nature of the migration varies: attempting to fit in to the new culture, making careers out of public critiques of ex-comrades, turning activist knowledge to academic uses, or (more positively) finding a 'day job' that enables particular kinds of activism to continue, or becoming a 'sympathetic expert'. We could then turn our initial question around and ask, 'What have activists brought to academia?'

./english/282.txt:129:Klein is herself a syndicated journalist working for the largest Canadian newspaper and reporting on the anti-corporate movement in the US. The core of the material, then, is generated by movement activism. The sections of her book dedicated to suggesting solutions, however, are by far the weakest - and stand out as particularly thin by comparison with the dramatic problems and movements she has documented.

./english/282.txt:189:'Common worldview assumptions' may not be stated explicitly, but any social science notion of 'rationality' (Weber 1984) implies that at some level we can usefully describe actors as holding implicit assumptions about the nature of the world that they operate within. Certainly it is a normal part of activist life to argue about how the world works: to point to assumptions about e.g. 'ordinary people', 'the media', 'the police', 'our members' or whatever as a foundation for claims about what we should do. Some level of cognitive praxis related to the 'cosmological', then, is certainly present in the experience of activism, even though it is often manifested in disagreements about the nature of the 'cosmos' activists operate in.

./english/282.txt:240:We have taken the Anarchist FAQ as a site which assembles in one place a range of issues which are very familiar to activists and which are also addressed differently in a host of literature produced by other styles of thinking and activism.

./english/283.txt:3:Academia « activism: what might they offer each other?

./english/283.txt:11:In other words, it was a place for people who desire engagement with theory/philosophy as both a practice that informs radical politics and as a locale for activism. Of course, this is not at all the same thing as saying that this is the only space for activism that ‘we’ might value or engage in. Further, a hope was for the initiative to provide an opening where it might be possible for people to communicate across - and unravel - both disciplinary divides and the activist/academic boundary.

./english/283.txt:15:In this contribution, we offer some notes taken from a long meeting exploring relationships between academia and activism. The notes are ordered from multiple flipcharts and include some direct quotes (in italics) from these charts to provide something of the dynamic flavour of the discussion. Our intention is multiplicitous – to use current jargon. It is to make a note of one ephemeral attempt at conversation between activists and academics, in a context of some anti-intellectualism in the UK political scene. And it is to highlight the conflict that can emerge in such discussion across boundaries, as insecurities morph into accusations and attack. It is to emphasise that opening up to each other requires safety and softness, although defensiveness and deepened identities frequently are what arise instead. And it is to nevertheless affirm a challenge to keep placing ‘ourselves’ in the presence of different views; to keep learning and unlearning, in our attempts to disperse boundaries and enclosures, conceptual and otherwise.

./english/283.txt:20:On academia and activism

./english/283.txt:28:In other words, for those of us attempting to utilise and practice academic/teaching/writing/theory spaces as spaces for radical and critical engagement, these in themselves constitute activist practice. But distance from this view was apparent from the comment, midway through this particular meeting, that ‘we’ve hardly talked about activism at all’! In return, several people articulated their problems with a sense of the moral burden and high ground assumed by ‘activists’. This generates insecurity about being ‘hardcore’ enough in relation to the ‘hierarchies’ of activist engagement. Some also felt that the moral high ground assumed by some activists can become a mask for other problematic behaviours (as someone said, ‘I know a fuck load of activists who are assholes’; obviously, the same is true for academics … ). Plus, as commented on in relation to Reclaim The Streets, people become involved with activist groups and networks for a whole host of reasons (social contact, desire for community, something to do, a space for the expressing of anger with multiple causes .. etc. ). Thus it might be problematic to privilege the moral as driving and explaining peoples’ (including our own) activist engagements over other reasons.

./english/283.txt:32:So, then, what is activism?! Is it participation in an event .. ‘an action’? Or is it a more diffuse orientation to the ways that we do things and engage with the world? Or both? And how do we find ways of bridging the assumed divide between folk who think, and folk who do. More accurately how do we get beyond presumptions that folk who think don’t do, and vice versa?

./english/283.txt:50:We need to talk with each other about the ideas we have for how social change can happen, and how we desire the world to be/become. In particular, how do we get beyond dead-end (and boring!) dichotomies such as reform versus revolution, capital versus resistance, academia versus activism, theory versus practice ...? And also, how do we find ways of coherently tracking and thinking through the (scale)relationships between micro and macro, personal and political, local and global, private and public, etc.?

./english/283.txt:63:To integrate socialising with activism and intellectualising to build relationships and trust.

./english/284.txt:49:Due to this history of reflexivity within the discipline I consider Anthropology as having the potential to go beyond the conventional Social Movement Literature -studying movements as ‘alter objects’-. Activism could deepen the level of reflexivity proposed by Anthropology in two realms: at the epistemological level, de-centering the production of knowledge and at the political level, politicizing the production of knowledge, where ethnographies are not anymore an instrument of power but a tool of empowerment.

./english/285.txt:38:But has ole Unc' Karl (Marx) said, explaining the world is not enough, we need to change it - and this is what activism is about, right? Now the question is how to match this lofty goal with research? The first pitfall that needs to be avoided is raising the futile question of which comes

./english/285.txt:39:first, activism or research - or worse still, which one takes precedence, and is subordinate to the other? Considerable harm has been done in the in the early days of 'action oriented research' or 'participative action research' by this futile and counterproductive concern, which has a

./english/295.txt:7:Joshua Frank: Prof. Graeber, can you talk a little bit about the circumstances leading up to Yale's decision not to renew your teaching contract? How much of their decision do you think was based on your political persuasion and activism?

./english/295.txt:17:DG: To be honest, I actually tried to avoid getting involved in campus activism for many years. I figured we all have to make our little compromises, mine would be: I'd be an activist in New York, and a scholar in New Haven, and that meant avoiding the whole unionization question as much as I could. In the long run, of course, it was impossible. Our department is extremely divided, certain elements in the senior faculty hate GESO with an infinite passion and campaign tirelessly against it, the students are all factionalized; it's a mess. I supported the principle of unionization of course; I was also very critical of what I saw as the top-down organization of the union (after all, I'm an anarchist - my idea of a good union is the IWW); I just tried to be fair to all sides. But in the end I got drawn in. It all came to a head a few months ago, actually, when certain elements in the senior faculty tried to kick out a very brilliant graduate student who also happened to be one of the department's major organizers. As it turned out, I was the only professor on her committee willing to openly stand up for her during the meeting where they tried to terrorize her into leaving the program. She refused to back down, and with the help of some of my colleagues, we managed to get her through her defense successfully, but after that, certain elements in the senior faculty seemed determined to take revenge.

./english/295.txt:21:JF: Do you think some of this extreme tension within your department, and the episode with the grad student you defended, played a role in your contract not being renewed? Or was this just an extension of an already contentious relationship? There seems to be a huge divide between some of the senior faculty and yourself. What else, if anything, have they done to show their dislike for your political persuasion - or is it more your activism that gets under their skin?

./english/298.txt:99:MB: I wish there was a similar interest in the US. It’s definitely a question within managerial discourse, but still far less so in the mass of ‘creative’ labour. There is of course the graduate employee union movement, but there’s almost nothing in the undergraduate population. The primary form of undergraduate labour activism remains the anti-sweatshop movement. It’s very encouraging, of course. But it has real limits. It’s not an activism that proceeds from the situation of the student as labour, but from the situation of the student as consumer. The problem of the undergraduate as labour – as you say, an element of production – is almost completely unexplored. I have had two students write dissertations that partially speak to the topic. But there’s really almost nothing on it. At least in the US, there’s very little law and policy on the question as well. That’s what I mean when I talk about the ‘informal economy’ of the informationalised university. The relations of production going on under the sign of ‘student’ or ‘study’ or ‘youth’ are desperately under-regulated. It’s a question of hyper-exploitation.

./english/300.txt:3:The Academy in Activism and Activism in the Academy:

./english/300.txt:10:It would be difficult for a political activist entering the ‘trade’ of geography to not be enthused or at least interested by the radical tradition in the discipline, more so in a time when political activism itself seems to be taking on more and more spatial thinking as a way to conceive of globalization. For different reasons though, one can often see that the development of radical geography did not necessarily develop alongside activism- often the two walk different paths. Yet at different moments and in different places, activism and the academy have ‘met’ and challenged each other in fruitful and paradigm-shifting ways.

./english/300.txt:12:With this in mind, this essay will attempt to follow (in an illustrative way) the history of collaborative research methodologies utilized in radical geography as a ‘contact zone’ (Merrifield 1995; p. 64) between the academy and activism. The idea of the ‘contact zone’ can basically be seen as a point of ‘contamination’ and hybridity. While many academics are and have been social activists and vice versa, they often participate in the academy and activism as spheres of life which are differentiated psychologically, socially, institutionally, etc. The ‘contact zone’ in this case helps to breakdown the mental ‘wall’ between the academy and activism, and helps deconstruct the notions of an isolated site of knowledge creation and diffusion (i.e. the autonomous Kantian university). In order to be clear it should be stated that not all participatory research is necessarily radical nor is all radical geography participatory but rather when these two tendencies meet they can create this unique space of interaction referred to here as a ‘contact zone’.

./english/300.txt:16:The history will follow more or less chronologically. First the emergence of radical geography in the late 60’s early 70’s will be presented, focusing on the tradition of the Geographical Expedition of William Bunge and concerns with radical methodology. The next part, called the ‘Long March’, will discuss the development of radical geography which disengaged from the tradition of the Geographical Expedition and the re-hardening of the ‘cognitive wall’ between the academy and activism. This part will also include the challenges that the women’s’ movement presented through feminist geography to the dominant methodologies of research. Finally the essay will conclude looking at more recent developments including new calls to break down the academy/activist divide, recent projects by geographers, as well as engagement with geographical thinking on the part of activists themselves. These recent developments will be situated in the context of a developing and expanding round of mobilization at the global level, specifically through the movements of global resistance.

./english/300.txt:25:As stated in the quote above, it was at this intense moment of protest that the tradition of the new Geographical Expedition came about under the initial guidance of William Bunge. The Expedition projects came to be an extremely interesting experiment at uniting both community concerns and mobilization with academic expertise and research. In fact, during the first several years of the development of radical geography, simultaneous to a period when high levels of social mobilization were maintained, the pages of Antipode often reported the experiences of the expeditions, the complexities around ‘advocacy geography’ and community involvement, and even an entire issue was dedicated to ‘radical methodologies’ with several of the articles addressing similar questions. During this initial period of the critical tradition, the idea of constructing those bridges between activism and the academy were in the forefront along with developing more general critiques of either society or the discipline itself. We will now proceed to a brief ‘exploration’ of these experiences, focusing on the ‘expedition’.

./english/300.txt:34:The methodology employed (or at least attempted) seemed to have been undertaken with the express goal of breaking down the wall between academy and activism mentioned earlier and creating a new political/educational beast in its wake. Different criteria were used to attempt to put these ideas into effect. For one, an Expedition had to set up a ‘base camp’/headquarters in the same neighborhood that was being ‘explored’ (Stephenson 1974; p. 98). The setting up of free classes with open access and no tuition for community members within a defined area was another important aspect. The class material was ideally to take into account the experience and knowledge of the community which made up the students, and also could count for college credit (Merrifield 1995; p. 55 and Horvath 1971).

./english/300.txt:50:As the seventies went on and critical geography grew, the emphasis became the development of theory and technique for doing radical/critical research within the discipline. Although activism continued, and there are some interesting efforts at uniting radical geographers such as through the Union for Socialist Geographers, the activism is no longer as focused on breaking down our proverbial ‘wall’. The movement to develop critical geography grew and with rather incredible energy but the focus changed. Numerous sessions at the American and Canadian Associations of Geographers took place under this rubric, Antipode established itself as the publishing outlet for critical geography although others such as Transition also came into existence and scholarly groupings including the USG mentioned above and SERGE (Socially and Ecologically Responsible Geographers) began to coalesce at this time (Blaut 1979; p.160-161).

./english/300.txt:53:It seems then, that while intellectual complexity developed, even to the point of having multiple specialties and foci within critical geography, the emphasis on ‘participation’ seems to have dissipated. At times, one can even find comments from the period in the mid and late seventies that could be construed if not as critiques of the participation model in research, then as calls for a change in emphasis (Peet and Harvey 1974; p. iv & Breitbart and Peet in Peet 1979; p. 15). In keeping with one of the themes of this paper dealing with the influence of social mobilization on the academy, it is important to note that it is during this time period that a general demobilization of society is beginning to take hold. While many thousands had been radicalized by the 60’s and early seventies, the same mass mobilizations around any multiplicity of issues that had occurred then were becoming more and more distant by the mid-late seventies. This was also the period when the ‘militaristic logic’ emerged in many small radical groups. Groups such as the Weathermen and the Black Liberation Army in the U.S. got involved in very short-lived armed conflicts with the state having misread the historical moment and chosen a strategy were these groups were a thousand times the weaker. In this ambiance it becomes easier to explain that while the development of radical geography pushed forward the ‘wall’ between the academy and more general activism re-hardened [1].

./english/300.txt:58:Feminist geography emerged with and developed a very powerful and profound critique of research methodology, the implicit assumptions in status quo methodology and the voices or ideas silenced by it. In fact many of the developments in feminist geography represent a recapturing of the same spirit of contact between the academy and activism. Feminist geography has emphasized “politically committed, critical and place-based research,” (Nast 1994; p. 57). Feminist geographers have pointed out many dynamics of the research process that can hinder or help relationships with other groups outside the academy. Some of these ideas (among many others) include researching ‘with’ instead of ‘about’(Klein in Farrow, Moss and Shaw 1995; p. 71); the importance of keeping before oneself the power relations between researcher and researched (especially when dealing with marginalized groups) and how to address them (Farrow, Moss and Shaw 1995); the concepts and treatment of positionality, situated knowledge (Merrifield 1995), and representation (Nast 1994); also the notion that the process of research (topic selection, field work, etc.) is just as important as the finished product in terms of the dynamics and political implications of actions during each phase (Nast 1994 & Farrow, Moss and Shaw 1995).

./english/300.txt:65:In recent years (at least since the mid 90’s) there have been an increasing number of critiques coming from within geography of the degrees of separation between critical sectors of the discipline and activism going on ‘outside’ (see Blomely 1994 & 1995, Tickell 1995, Castree 1999 and Wills 2002). Blomely, during some early volleys on the subject discusses the disconnect he feels between his own critical geography work and his community activism: “I have been struggling with the linkages between that academic world and my community activism. The two clearly feel like they should be linked-many of my interests in one sphere fold over into the other.” He goes on to state “there seems to be a notable lack of discussion about progressive activism and the academy. In geography we used to worry about it a lot more, as witnessed by early issues of Antipode, or the examination of ‘relevance’,” (Blomely 1994; p. 383). Castree, citing work by Chouinard, Katz, Smith and Routledge on the same issue states that these articles “indicate a more general awareness of, and concern to discuss, the apparent disjuncture between our learned discourses and our seemingly impoverished political practices,” (Castree 1999; p. 81). Both authors (Blomely and Castree) mention the idea of opening spaces for mutual learning, the same sorts of ‘contact zones’, between the academy and activism. Castree in particular cites some interesting work in this regard- specifically Routledge’s work on “…a ‘third space’ of engagement, which subverts the separation of activism and the academy,” (Castree 1999 & Routledge in Castree 1999; p. 82).

./english/300.txt:70:So taking into account these developments (i.e. people’s geography project and critical development work) and the discussions about how to increase collaborative projects between activism and the academy we may be seeing the beginnings of a move by a portion of critical geography into developing new ‘contact zones’. Yet as some other geographers have noted, engagement for the large part, particularly between movements of global resistance and geographers has yet to happen. “Geographers have, as yet, made only a fragmentary engagement with these movements and there has been little detailed empirical engagement with either their organizing or spatial practices,” (Featherstone 2003; p. 405).

./english/300.txt:74:Radical geography may be better placed now than during the sixties to engage with this apparently new round of social mobilization in a collaborative and participatory manner. While the tradition that began in the sixties had to ‘start off from scratch’ in some sense, critical geography has now had many years of development and has become a respected part of the general geographic inquiry. Feminist geographers have also elaborated complex critiques of methodology that could provide the necessary theoretical and practical considerations for the reconstruction of spaces to link the academy and activism. This could lead to a very productive engagement with the ‘here and now’ of current political praxis, that is if academic ‘path dependency’ (of the sort that authors above were complaining about).

./english/303.txt:67:Finally, the question remains as to the most appropriate context for practicing militant ethnography and how to distribute the results. One obvious place is the academy, which despite increasing corporate influence and institutional constraints, continues to offer a critical space for collective discussion, learning, and debate. Indeed, as Scheper-Hughes (1995) suggests, those of us within the academy can use academic writing and publishing as a form of resistance, working within the system to generate alternative politically engaged accounts. Moreover, as Routledge (1996: 400) points out, there are no “pure” or “authentic” sites, as academia and activism both “constitute fluid fields of social action that are interwoven with other activity spaces.” Routledge thus posits an alternative “third space,” “where neither site, role, or representation holds sway, where one continually subverts the other.” The more utopian alternative is suggested by the rise of multiple networks of autonomous research collectives and free university projects, including the “activist research” conference cited above. In my own case, by examining the cultural logics, networking activities, and utopian imaginaries within contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements, I hope to contribute to both academic and activist spheres through exploring, as the Argentine Colectivo Situaciones puts it, “the emerging clues of a new sociability within concrete practices (2001: 39).”

./english/303.txt:87:Juris, Jeffrey S. 2004. Digital Age Activism: Anti-Corporate Globalization and the Cultural Politics of Transnational Networking. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

./english/315.txt:74:Academia, Activism and Postanarchism CSGR project 2004

./english/323.txt:43:difficulties of combining theory and activism. This engagement with an old and vexed

./english/323.txt:133:3 Messer-Davidow, Ellen. (2002). Disciplining Feminism. From Social Activism to Academic Discourse.

./english/323.txt:216:all too easily theory and activism are kept separated, or all too often the mentioned multiple

./english/325.txt:87:-DiY-activism consists of networking and, because of that, of fluidity. John Jordan (2002) describes that what was emerging in the mid 90’s was a decentralized movement of movements held together by poetic stories and relationships, rather than programs and ideology, a complex web of inspirations rather than coordination. It is precisely the desire for self-organization and self-determination that is both means and ends of this movement of movements. The ideal is to be ungovernable.

./english/359.txt:78:Without attention, layering of participants’ material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./english/359.txt:80:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn’t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/360.txt:78:Without attention, layering of participants� material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./english/360.txt:80:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn�t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/361.txt:24:What about the good trajectory of contemporary anarchism, less visible in the media? This seems to me to be far more uplifting and inspiring. It is the widely awakening impetus to fight on the side of the oppressed in every domain of life, from family, to culture, to state, to economy, to the now very visible international arena of "globalization," and to do so in creative and courageous ways conceived to win improvements in people's lives now even while leading toward winning new institutions in the future. The good anarchism nowadays transcends a narrowness that has often in the past befallen the approach. Instead of being solely politically anti-authoritarian, as often in the old days, nowadays being an anarchist more and more implies having a gender, cultural, and an economic, as well as a politically-rooted orientation, with each aspect taken on a par with and also informing the rest. This is new, at least in my experience of anarchism, and it is useful to recall that many anarchists as little as a decade back, perhaps even more recently, would have said that anarchism addresses everything, yes, of course, but via an anti-authoritarian focus rather than by simultaneously elevating other concepts in their own right. Such past anarchists thought, whether implicitly or explicitly, that analysis from an overwhelmingly anti-authoritarian angle could explain the nuclear family better than an analysis rooted as well in kinship concepts, and could explain race or religion better than an analysis rooted as well in cultural concepts, and could explain production, consumption, and allocation better than an analysis rooted as well in economic concepts. They were wrong, and it is a great advance that many modern anarchists know this and are broadening their intellectual approach in accord so that anarchism now highlights not only the state, but also gender relations, and not only the economy but also cultural relations and ecology, sexuality, and freedom in every form it can be sought, and each not only through the sole prism of authority relations, but also informed by richer and more diverse concepts. And of course this desirable anarchism not only doesn't decry technology per se, but it becomes familiar with and employs diverse types of technology as appropriate. It not only doesn't decry institutions per se, or political forms per se, it tries to conceive new institutions and new political forms for activism and for a new society, including new ways of meeting, new ways of decision making, new ways of coordinating, and so on, most recently including revitalized affinity groups and original spokes structures. And it not only doesn’t decry reforms per se, but it struggles to define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people’s immediate needs and bettering people’s lives now as well as moving toward further gains, and eventually transformative gains, in the future.

./english/361.txt:32:Huge numbers of citizens of developed societies are not going to risk what they have, however little it may be in some cases, to pursue a goal about which they have no clarity. How often do they have to ask us what we are for before we give them some serious, sufficiently extensive, carefully thought through, and compelling answers? Offering a political vision that encompasses legislation, implementation, adjudication, and enforcement and that shows how each would be effectively accomplished in a non-authoritarian way promoting positive outcomes would not only provide our contemporary activism much-needed long-term hope, it would also inform our immediate responses to today's electoral, law-making, law enforcement, and court system, and thus many of our strategic choices. So shouldn't today's anarchist community be generating such political vision? I think it should, and I eagerly hope it will be forthcoming soon. Indeed, I suspect that until there is a widespread component of anarchism that puts forth something positive and worthy regarding political goals, the negative component decrying all political structures and even all institutions will remain highly visible and will greatly reduce potential allegiance to anarchism.

./english/363.txt:105:Whatever its weaknesses, this cultural definition was deeply necessary in shaking popular creativity free from an official Left which had bought deeply into popular culture as shaped from above during the period of organised capitalism, with its attendant patriarchy, racism and nationalism. Fragmentation, like the anti-authoritarian revolt itself, was a necessary step if anyone was ever to learn anything new. The "Seattle moment" starts from the slow interaction between this way of doing things (refracted through the cultures of non-violent direct action) and the kind of large-scale popular movements whose absence underlay the initial cultural dérive of the Anglo Sixties. In this sense the tendency to fragmentation has been a strength, in its centrifugal distribution of conflicts throughout a once relatively stable cultural setup and consequent enabling of multiple routes into activism - though it poses significant problems once "convergence" becomes possible again.

./english/365.txt:1:Communicating Global Activism:

./english/365.txt:7:Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns, the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties, transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks, and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.

./english/365.txt:8:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 2

./english/365.txt:9:Communicating Global Activism:

./english/365.txt:12:Networks of activists demanding greater voice in global economic, social, and environmental policies raise interesting questions about organizing political action across geographical, cultural, ideological, and issue boundaries. Protests against world development and trade policies are nothing new. For example, Rucht (1999) has documented such action in Germany dating from the 1980s. However, social justice activism in the recent period seems to me different in its global scale, networked complexity, openness to diverse political identities, and capacity to sacrifice ideological integration for pragmatic political gain (Bennett, 2003a). This vast web of global protest is also impressive in its capacity to continuously refigure itself around shifting issues, protest events, and political adversaries.

./english/365.txt:13:The “Battle in Seattle,” referring to the demonstrations against the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial meeting, has become recognized as a punctuating moment in the evolution of global activism (Levi and Olson, 2000). Seattle, like most subsequent demonstrations, primarily attracted local and regional activists. However, there is growing evidence that a movement of global scope is emerging through the proliferation of related protest activities (Lichbach and Almeida, 2001). Observers note, for example,

./english/365.txt:15:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 3 that activist networks are engaging politically with non-state, transnational targets such as corporations and trade regimes, and that there is growing coordination of communication and action across international activist networks (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 2001; Gerlach, 2001; Lichbach & Almeida, 2001; Rheingold, 2002).

./english/365.txt:17:Observations reported in this article indicate that digital communication practices appear to have a variety of political effects on the growth and forms of global activism. These effects range from organizational dynamics and patterns of change, to strategic political relations between activists, opponents and spectator publics. In addition, patterns of individual participation appear to be affected by hyperlinked communication networks that enable individuals to find multiple points of entry into varieties of political action.

./english/365.txt:18:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 4 Moreover, the redundancy of communication channels in many activist networks creates organizational durability as hub organizations come and go, and as the focus of action shifts across different events, campaigns, and targets. Finally, there appears to be a relationship between communication practices and the evolution of democracy itself. One of the important subtexts of this movement is media democracy, centered on the conversion of media consumers into producers, with the introduction of open publishing and collective editing software—all channeled through personal digital networks.

./english/365.txt:19:While there are many indicators that digital media have become important organizational resources in making this movement, there are also potential problems or vulnerabilities associated with these communication-based networks. For example, the ease of joining and leaving polycentric (multi-hubbed) issue networks means that it becomes difficult to control campaigns or to achieve coherent collective identity frames. In addition, organizations may face challenges to their own internal direction and goals when they employ open, collective communication processes to set agendas and organize action. Some organizations even experience internal transformation when they become important hubs in networks and must accommodate demands by other network members. These vulnerabilities are, of course, in constant creative tension with the strengths outlined above, making this movement an interesting case of large scale applications of networked communication as foundations for political organization and action. This analysis attempts to examine both strengths and vulnerabilities associated with various communication practices that make transnational activism possible.

./english/365.txt:21:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 5 amplify and economize communication in political organizations (Agre, 2001; Davis, 1999). For example, Agre (2001) argues that in most cases the Internet is subordinated to the existing routines and patterns of the institution using it, and that Internet applications merely amplify and economize areas that already define the institution. One observer has even gone so far as to assert that “the Internet is less applicable [to] the creation of new forms of democratic public spheres than [to] the support of already existing ones” (Buchstein, 1997:260; discussed by Agre, 2002). The problem with these and dozens of other “minimal effects” accounts of the Internet and politics is that they generally look at how established political institutions and organizations adapt the Internet to existing routines.

./english/365.txt:23:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 6 coalitions forged through leader-based partnerships among bureaucratic organizations (Gerlach, 2001).

./english/365.txt:25:The Social Contexts of Internet Activism

./english/365.txt:26:One idea upon which most observers agree is that applications of the Internet, like the uses of most communication media, depend heavily on social context. As Castells (2001, p. 50) put it: “The Internet is a particularly malleable technology, susceptible to being deeply modified by its social practice, and leading to a whole range of potential social outcomes.” Polycentric (socially distributed) networks that display the flat, non-hierarchical, flexible, and resilient characteristics of much global activism are well supported by various digital technologies (Gerlach, 2001), but the inclination to construct such networks in the first place reflects at least two defining qualities of their makers: the identity processes and the new politics that define many younger generation activists.

./english/365.txt:29:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 7 or late modern societies (Giddens, 1991; Bennett, 1998; Beck, 2000). In these visions of “late” and “post” modern society, identity becomes a personally reflective (and reflexive) project that is organized and expressed through often elaborately managed lifestyles. Through this process, personal identity narratives replace collective social scripts as the bases for social order. These narratives become interpersonal linkages as network organization begins to displace hierarchical institutions as primary membership and social recognition systems for individuals.

./english/365.txt:30:A defining quality of the network society is that individuals are likely to form political ties through affinity networks based on repertoires of these narratives. This quality of networks contrasts sharply to the “modernist” tendency to forge social and political order through mutual identifications with leaders, ideologies and memberships in conventional social and political groups. Castells (1997) has documented how these highly individualized identity processes find creative forms of empowerment through diverse organizational capacities of the Internet. In many ways, the organizational, personal, and cultural diversity of global activism reflect what Wellman calls “networked individualism:” the ease of establishing personal links that enable people to join more diverse and more numerous political communities than they would ordinarily join in the material world (Wellman, 2000, paragraph 1.6). I explore these social and identity processes in greater detail elsewhere (Bennett, 2003b). The present analysis is focused on the ways in which identity-driven communication practices characterize and organize the politics of these activists.

./english/365.txt:32:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 8 patterns of network organization. Indeed, one of the classic accounts of such movement network organization is the SPIN model developed by Gerlach and Hine (1970). SPIN stands for Segmented, Polycephalous, Integrated, Networks. However, when Gerlach (2001) applied the SPIN model to contemporary global protest networks, he made two interesting conceptual adjustments which he passed over without the fanfare that I believe they deserve. First, he replaced the idea of polycephalous organization with polycentric order, indicating that, like earlier SPIN movements, global activist networks have many centers or hubs, but unlike their predecessors, those hubs are less likely to be defined around prominent leaders. In addition, he noted that the primary basis of movement integration and growth has shifted from ideology to more personal and fluid forms of association. In my view, these changes in the SPIN model reflect the identity processes of fragmented social systems that make electronically managed affinity networks such essential forms of political organization.

./english/365.txt:34:Beyond identity processes, a second impetus for creating such broadly distributed communication networks is that the targets of global activism are both numerous, and they are slipping off the grid of conventional national politics. Many activists believe that labor, environment, rights and other policies of their governments have been weakened by pressures from global corporations and transnational economic regimes such as the World Trade Organization. The neo-liberal drift and re-branding of labor parties in Europe and the Democratic Party in the United States provide some evidence for these concerns. The resulting capacity of corporations to escape regulation and win concessions

./english/365.txt:35:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 9 from governments has created a political sphere beyond normal legislative, electoral, and regulatory processes – a sphere that Beck (2000) calls sub-politics. The sub-politics of corporations and transnational economic regimes have been countered by activist sub-politics that include global demonstrations, campaigns against companies and economic development regimes, and the creation of epistemic networks to gather and publicize information on global issues (Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

./english/365.txt:37:Tarrow touches on these subpolitics and their organizational effects in describing global activism “….as unlikely to sustain high levels of confidence in government and may trigger less trusting attitudes in the public by demonstrating the inadequacy of governmental performance; but on the other hand, neither do they create enduring negative subcultures. Their variform and shifting organizations, their tendency to produce

./english/365.txt:38:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 10 rapid and rapidly-liquidated coalitions, their focus on short- and medium-term issues rather than fully fledged ideologies do not produce standing activist commitments or deeply held loyalties…” (Tarrow, 1999: 30).

./english/365.txt:41:The features of global activism outlined above raise interesting challenges for thinking about movements and protest politics. One of the best known models of contentious politics refers to the diffusion of protest networks and the accompanying transformation of collective identities as “scale shift” (McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 2002a). According to this view, scale shift depends on the existence of several mechanisms of human agency: brokerage (creating social links among disconnected sites of protest), diffusion (transfer of information across those links), and attribution of similarity (mutual identification) (McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly, 2001, pp. 331-339). As I understand it, this process generally involves face-to-face agency (brokerage) in the recruitment of protesters and in the negotiation of new identity frames to accommodate the expanding coalitions of groups. A now classic formulation of the identity framing process at the core of this theory of scale shift is Snow and Bensford’s (1992) account of

./english/365.txt:42:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 11 the continuous redefining of “interpretive schemata” to provide common meaning as movement coalitions grow.

./english/365.txt:43:Most of the cases that illustrate this process are instances of national and cultural mobilization. In order for scale shift to occur trans-nationally and cross-culturally with the magnitude and diversity of contemporary global activism, the process seems to require mediation by digital communication networks. More importantly, the ease of linking to these digital networks (aided by activist preferences for an inclusive politics) also eases the demand to continually renegotiate collective identity frames as movements shift in scale. The idea here is not that communication networks replace social transactions or dispell the identity issues of collective action. Rather, the nature of social transactions, themselves, are changing due to the capacity of distributed communication networks to ease personal engagement with others. In thinking about “computer networks as social networks,” Wellman and his colleagues describe a variety of ways in which digital communication can initiate, enhance, and in some cases, even replace direct social relationships (Wellman, et. al., 1996). In addition, Castells (1996, 1997) argues that we must grasp the transformations of space, society, and identity that are associated with digital communication networks. Thus, an inseparable mix of virtual and face-to-face communication defines many activist networks, and contacts in these networks may range far from activists’ immediate social circles if they can be sustained in terms of the cost and scale offered by digital communication applications.

./english/365.txt:45:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 12 merely reflecting or amplifying political organization. The following analyses suggest how the same communication practices that serve strategic political purposes can also operate as social organizational resources.

./english/365.txt:47:This analysis is based on observations of various protest activities aimed at trade and development organizations and corporations. Materials developed by the research teams in these projects can be found at the Global Citizen Project (www.globalcitizenproject.org), and in the civic engagement, issue campaigns, culture jamming, and digital media sections of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, http://www.engagedcitizen.org). These studies support a number of generalizations about the Internet and activist politics, four of which are reported here. The intriguing feature of each generalization is that communication practices are hard to separate from organizational and political capabilities, suggesting personal digital communication is a foundation of this identity- driven subpolitics. The patterns of communication that both reflect and reproduce global activism are briefly summarized here and elaborated in the remainder of the article.

./english/365.txt:48:• Permanent campaigns. Global activism is characterized by long- running communication campaigns to organize protests and publicize issues. Campaigns in activist politics are not new, but the campaigns of the current generation are more protracted. They are less likely to be run by central command and coordinating organizations such as unions or

./english/365.txt:49:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 13 environmental NGOs, making them less centrally controlled, and more difficult to turn on and off. The networking and mobilizing capacities of these ongoing campaigns makes campaigns, themselves, political organizations that sustain activist networks in the absence of leadership by central organizations.

./english/365.txt:53:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 14 surprisingly positive coverage of activist messages in the mass media (Klein, 1999; Lasn, 1999; Bennett, 2003c).

./english/365.txt:57:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 15 Some of these campaigns resemble traditional boycotts in the sense that they are run by relatively centralized organizations or coalitions, and they can be turned off when specified goals are accomplished. However, an increasingly common pattern is for whole activist networks to latch onto particularly ripe targets such as Nike or Microsoft because their heavily advertised and ubiquitous logos stick easily to lifestyle meaning systems among consumer publics. This stickiness of logos helps activists get political messages into the mass media, reaching audiences whose attention is often limited in matters of politics. Thus, unlike boycotts, many contemporary issue campaigns do not require consumer action at all; instead, the goal is to hold a corporate logo hostage in the media until shareholders or corporate managers regard the bad publicity as an independent threat to a carefully cultivated brand image.

./english/365.txt:60:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 16 ) left the long-running campaign against Nike after generating enough negative publicity (see below) to induce company president Phil Knight to promise to take greater responsibility for poor labor conditions in its contract factories. However, other players (e.g., United Students Against Sweatshops, and Press for Change, Jeff Ballinger’s founding campaign organization) contended that a key unresolved issue was creating an effective labor standards monitoring system in the absence of reliable government regulation (see Bullert, 2000; and Bennett, 2003c). As a result, the network reconfigured after the loss of the Global Exchange hub, and student activist organizations became the central hubs. The campaign focus shifted to verifying Nike’s claims of greater corporate responsibility. communication noise, lack of clarity about goals, and weak idea-framing, also enable networks to refigure themselves after losses and disruptions. For example, the San Francisco based social justice organization Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org

./english/365.txt:62:Beyond their many applications in issue activism, continuous campaign networks also organize the steady stream of public demonstrations against transnational targets. For

./english/365.txt:63:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 17 example, Lichbach and Almeida (2001) note that on the dates of the Battle in Seattle, simultaneous protests were held in at least 82 other cities around the world, including 27 locations in the United States, 40 in other “northern” locations including Seoul, London, Paris, Prague, Brisbane, and Tel Aviv, and 15 in “southern” locations such as New Delhi, Manila, and Mexico City. Not only were these other protests not organized centrally by the Seattle campaign coalition, but information about timing and tactics was transmitted almost entirely through activist networks on the Internet. In addition to extending the global reach of single protest events, Internet campaigns also enable activists to create and update rich calendars of planned demonstrations. Lichbach and Almeida (2001) discovered wide Internet postings and network sites for no fewer than 39 scheduled protests between 1994 and 2001. This suggests that Seattle was just one of many events in a permanent protest campaign organized by different organizations in the global activist network.

./english/365.txt:64:The point here is that sustained issue and protest campaigns on a global scale cannot be explained by leadership commitments from centralized organizations with large resource bases or memberships. Coordination through polycentric (distributed) communication networks marks a second distinctive feature of global activism. In keeping with our “strengths and vulnerabilities” analysis, the next section suggests that, while networked communication may help sustain the campaigns that organize global activism, these leaderless networks may undermine the thematic coherence of the ideas that are communicated through them.

./english/365.txt:66:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 18 Both the strengths and weaknesses of loosely linked, ideologically thin networks are illustrated in the permanent campaign against Microsoft. This campaign began with labor activism in the early 1990s, and has since expanded to include trade, consumer protection, product innovation and many other issues, with campaign fronts in North America, Japan, and the European Union. During the years of the most rapid growth in the network (1997-2001), an important hub was Netaction (www.netaction.org), an organization created explicitly as an Internet campaign hub to archive information and mobilize activists (Manheim, 2001; Bennett, 2003c). The richness of Netaction reports and papers reflects the rise of epistemic communities promoting diverse causes of consumer protection, product innovation, electronic privacy, business ethics and practices, and open source software and Internet architecture, among others. Netaction later evolved to occupy similar hub positions in other digital democracy campaigns, and it has reappeared as a hub in the Microsoft network as the campaign entered different phases.

./english/365.txt:68:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 19 diverse campaign members can coordinate attacks or wait until the company becomes vulerable from one attack and open a new front, as happened when labor began a union organizing effort aimed at Microsoft’s many temporary workers in the midst of the company’s antitrust trial with the U. S. government.

./english/365.txt:71:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 20 For example, the Audubon Society provided a credible source for claiming that the failure of coffee companies like Starbucks to pay a fair price for their beans resulted in the disappearance of the small shaded coffee farms which provided habitat for the migrating songbirds that enlivened Northern back yards each summer. The songbird represented a more effective lifestyle symbol for communicating the fair trade message than trying to communicate more ideological discourses about world coffee markets and the plight of peasant farmers (Iozzi, 2002; Bennett, 2003a).

./english/365.txt:73:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 21 organization. As one ATTAC officer they interviewed put it, “the main problem for ATTAC today concerns the unification of the movement and the way to give it a more unified content.”

./english/365.txt:76:The uses of the Internet may be largely subordinated to existing organizational routines and structures when dedicated to the goals and practices of hierarchical organizations such as parties, interest associations, or election campaigns. However, as noted earlier, the fluid networks of global issue activism enable the Internet to become an organizational force shaping both the relations among organizations and in some cases, the organizations themselves. Some organizations are even transformed by Inter-networks as they take on new functions and partnerships. At least four distinct organizational dynamics have been identified in our case studies of organizational interaction with communication networks: 1) organizational transformation due to

./english/365.txt:77:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 22 demands of network partners; 2) organizations that “move on” to other networks to avoid transformation and to maintain their capacity as activist hubs in other campaigns; 3) network organizations created to perform specific tasks that produce successor networks; and 4) organizations that adopt open communication networks and then become transformed by the information exchanges among their members.

./english/365.txt:81:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 23 appear in demonstration organizing networks after Seattle, the organization has evolved into a confusing array of different organizations in different national contexts. To some extent, the entry of diverse players into the debt relief game (from rock stars such as Bono of U2, to nations themselves) put pressures on weak church networks to open their political and religious frames to larger networks of activists. One result is considerable instability in the Jubilee organizational system, with various name changes, new coalitions in different nations, and most recently, very different political frames in North America and Europe. For example, the United States coalition (www.jubileeusa.org) retains more of its original religious grass roots identity and network structure, while the United Kingdom hub (www.jubilee2000uk.org) has moved so far from its religious origins that they are barely evident in its far flung international think tank and policy NGO network. Even the name of the latest incarnation of the UK organization has changed to Jubilee Research, although the URL remains the same as in the last incarnation.

./english/365.txt:84:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 24 inspection of the web site revealed activities in the areas of broadband regulation, electronic privacy, the future of an open Internet, and others.

./english/365.txt:89:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 25 networks helped to create successor organizations to mobilize future events. For example, the A16-2000 umbrella organization that coordinated the demonstrations at the Washington, D. C. International Monetary Fund meeting in April of 2000 opened its web site to announce a constantly changing roster of participants. The site enabled newcomers to post their own rallying messages at the top of the site (A16-2000Network\A16The Network List.htm). The user interface emphasized the political diversity of participating groups, along with an amazing number of different political reasons for opposing the IMF. The list of endorsing and participating groups (692 and still growing at the time I captured the site) was indexed by geographical location so that organizations in different locales could be viewed on the same page. Another page of the site revealed an equally diverse core group of demonstration sponsors: 50 Years is Enough, Alliance for Global Justice, Campaign for Labor Rights, Global Exchange, Mexico Solidarity Network, National Lawyers Guild, Nicaragua Network , and Witness for Peace, among others.

./english/365.txt:91:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 26 coordinated action was maintained through much more restricted user features and cross communication opportunities than offered by the A16 site.

./english/365.txt:95:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 27 Till January 2001, no one represented local groups at the administrative council… The structure of the association gives them a total autonomy, which sometimes verges on isolation. Local leaders happen to be in touch with National Attac only through the Internet, while others hardly ever receive news from Paris. The electronic offer is sometimes the only link between local groups and other branches of the association, be it through discussion lists (Attac talk), work lists (Attac local), mailing lists (Grain de Sable or Lignes d’Attac), or electronic secretaries (site on the WTO or current campaigns).....Internet is so seminal to the association life that Local Electronic Correspondants (CEL) have been created, as connected members would “chaperon” non-connected members.

./english/365.txt:97:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 28 A promising approach is Van Aelst and Walgrave’s (forthcoming) analysis of organizations that received news coverage surrounding the 2001 protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Montreal. They found that the top 17 organizations mentioned in the news also maintained substantial cross communication channels on the Internet, and that most of them maintained on-line calendars for the FTAA and other protest activities. By these measures, there was a mutually engaged political action network that operated with a high degree of coordination through digital channels. What is interesting is that the underlying coherence in the digital channels linking these organizations was also reflected in mass media attention to the individual members of the networks. This suggests that digital networks have found paths to jump their communication from relatively personalized digital channels to the mass media. It is important to begin understanding these crossover communication effects of digital networks as well.

./english/365.txt:100:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 29 occupy important niches in the press food chain. Moreover, journalists may actively seek story ideas and information from Web sources, thus creating many pathways for information to flow from micro to mass media.

./english/365.txt:101:An interesting example of micro-to-mass media crossover in global activism began with an e-mail exchange between a culture jammer named Jonah Peretti and Nike (Peretti, 2003). Peretti visited a Nike website that promised greater consumer freedom by inviting customers to order shoes with a name or slogan of their choice on them. He submitted an order to inscribe the term “sweatshop” on his custom Nikes. Several rounds of amusing exchanges ensued in which Peretti chided the company for breaking its promise of consumer freedom. Successive rounds ended with Nike’s awkward and less automated refusals to put any of Peretti’s requests for political labels on its shoes. Peretti sent the exchange to a dozen friends, who forwarded it to their friends, and, so, the Nike-Sweatshop story spread in viral fashion, reaching an audience estimated from several hundred thousand to several million (Peretti, 2003).

./english/365.txt:103:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 30 news outlets. Whenever Peretti was interviewed about his media adventure, the connection between Nike and sweatshop was communicated again.

./english/365.txt:104:Another flow from micro to mass media has occurred in the vast global network of anti-Microsoft protest (Bennett, 2003c; Manheim, 2001). Numerous derogatory images have traveled through Internet chats, networked campaign sites, and webzines, and surfaced in mainstream news accounts indicating that the company was trying to “crush competition,” that it was known by opponents as “the Seattle Slasher,” or that Bill Gates was the latter day incarnation of Robber Baron icon, John D. Rockefeller. The difficulty of anticipating the rise of such images -- much less, using standard public relations techniques to combat them -- has given activists new levers of media power in global subpolitics. This media activism has forced many companies to weigh the advantages of highly profitable business models against the damage inflicted upon precious brand images. Canadian media consultant Doug Miller was quoted in The Financial Times as saying “I visit 75 boardrooms a year and I can tell you the members of the boards are living in fear of getting their corporate reputations blown away in two months on the Internet.” (Mackin, 2001)

./english/365.txt:106:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 31 valid concerns, and there was a strong presence of labor and church organizations which provided credible media sources. Since Seattle, it seems that a more familiar press pattern has emerged in both U.S. and European media coverage of demonstrations: protesters have generally been cast as violent and anarchistic, and even equated with soccer hooligans in some European accounts. (My preliminary impressions will surely be tested and refined by the great volume of research in progress by scholars around the world).

./english/365.txt:107:Beyond the characterizations of the activists, the predominant news framing of the overall protest movement is also negative, as in “anti-globalization.” This is clearly a news construction that is at odds with how many of the activists think of their common cause. If movement media framing could be put to a vote among activists, I suspect that “democratic globalization” would win over “anti-globalization” by a wide margin. For example, here is how American labor John Sweeney put it: “It's clear that globalization is here to stay. We have to accept that and work on having a seat at the table when the rules are written about how globalization works." (Greenhouse, 2002) In another account, Susan George (one of the founding members of the French global social justice organization ATTAC) rejects the “anti-globalization” framing as an insultingly poor account of global activism. In explaining the inadequacies of the “anti-globalization” frame, she also reveals why better accounts are unlikely to be written by news organizations bent on producing simple narratives: “The movement itself is, however, multi-focus and inclusive. It is concerned with the world: omnipresence of corporate rule, the rampages of financial markets, ecological destruction, maldistribution of wealth and power, international institutions constantly overstepping their mandates and lack of international democracy.” (George, 2001).

./english/365.txt:108:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 32 Mass media framing of movements clearly varies from case to case, depending on how activist communication strategies interact with media gatekeeping (Gamson, 2001). Gitlin (1980) identified the demand of news organizations for movements to produce leaders and simple messages as part of the explanation why the American new left of the 1960s received considerable media attention, and also fragmented into disunity and internal conflict. A global activist movement that is committed to inclusiveness and diversity over central leadership and issue simplicity should have low expectations of news coverage of demonstrations that display the movement’s leaderless diversity in chaotic settings.

./english/365.txt:109:Why has a movement that has learned to secure good publicity for particular issue campaigns and organizations not developed more effective media communication strategies for mass demonstrations? I think that the answer here returns us to the opening discussion of the social and personal context in which this activism takes place. Not only are many activists in these broadly distributed protest networks opposed to central leadership and simple collective identity frames, but they may accurately perceive that the interdependence of global politics defies the degree of simplification demanded by most mass media discourse. While issue campaign networks tend to focus on dramatic charges against familiar targets, most of the demonstration organizing networks celebrate the diversity of the movement and resist strategic communication based on core issues or identity frames. For example, Van Aelst and Walgrave (forthcoming) found at least 11 political themes that were shared by substantial portions of the network involved in the FTAA demonstrations in 2001. Thus, demonstrations may be staged mainly as reminders of the human scale, seriousness, and disruptive capacity of this movement, while issue

./english/365.txt:110:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 33 campaigns remain the stealth factor carrying radical messages through the gates of the mass media.

./english/365.txt:112:The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers found in other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and other digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the issue and demonstration campaign organizing that define a new global politics. In particular, we have seen how particular configurations of digital networks facilitate: permanent campaigns, the growth of broad networks despite (or because of) relatively weak social identity and ideology ties, the transformation of both individual member organizations and the growth patterns of whole networks, and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.

./english/365.txt:114:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 34 unprecedented parallel public records of events, while permitting unusual degrees of organization within chaotic real time situations (Rheingold, 2002).

./english/365.txt:117:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 35 campaigns, protests, and virtual communities with few ideological or partisan divisions. In this vision, the current organizational weaknesses of Internet mobilization may become a core resource for the growth of new global publics.

./english/365.txt:123:Bennett, W. L. (2003a) “New Media Power: The Internet and Global Activism”, in N. Couldry and J. Curran (eds.) Contesting Media Power, New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

./english/365.txt:126:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 36 D. Stolle (eds.) The Politics Behind Products: Using the Market as a Site for Ethics and Action. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.

./english/373.txt:28:HUB and Intergalactica have promoted an interesting model of an area organizing itself, a laboratory and experiment on social disobedience, organized in the spirit of complete horizontality and breaking of classical "conference" model of political debating. The reproaches directed to HUB, during ESF in Florence, related to the lack of organisation, the neglect of theory and thinking about vision. The new radical activism should not become a permanent global party. Life After Capitalism was envisaged as a forum within the forum that focuses on strategy and political and economic vision and on many dimensions of daily life. The whole occurrence included into the programme the very successful Peoples Global Action conference. The reproaches directed to LAC related to insisting on the classical form of discussion.The new radical activism should not become a permanent global conference.

./english/379.txt:124:Hence, to capital's globalization from above, cyberactivists have been attempting to carry out globalization from below, developing networks of solidarity and propagating oppositional ideas and movements throughout the planet. To the capitalist international of transnational corporate-led globalization, a Fifth International, to use Waterman's phrase (1992), of computer-mediated activism is emerging that is qualitatively different from the party-based socialist and communist Internationals. Such networking links labour, feminist, ecological, peace and other anticapitalist groups, providing the basis for a new politics of alliance and solidarity to overcome the limitations of postmodern identity politics (see Dyer-Witheford 1999 and Burbach 2001).

./english/379.txt:240:Hill, K. A. and J. E. Hughes (1998) Cyberpolitics. Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

./english/380.txt:205: To capital's globalization-from-above, cyberactivists have thus been attempting to carry out globalization-from-below, developing networks of solidarity and propagating oppositional ideas and movements throughout the planet. To the capitalist international of transnational corporate-led globalization, a Fifth International, to use Waterman's phrase (1992), of computer-mediated activism is emerging, that is qualitatively different from the party-based socialist and communist Internationals. Such networking links labor, feminist, ecological, peace, and other anticapitalist groups, providing the basis for a new politics of alliance and solidarity to overcome the limitations of postmodern identity politics (see Dyer-Witheford 1999 and Burbach 2001).

./english/400.txt:125:Danitz, T. & Strobel, W. (1999) The Internet’s Impact on Activism: The Case of Burma, Studies in Conflict in Terrorism 22(3) pp. 257-279

./english/401.txt:160:These international alliances between Sintrainagro and progressive European unions, and the labor activism of Sintrainagro beyond the regional borders of Urabá, seem to contrast with the local public agendas, focused on order and security. This is the context in which the union has to operate though it appears contradictory. Knowing the strategic capabilities of the Sintrainagro leadership and their allies, the possibility can not be dismissed that this international activism is being used to counteract the relative isolation of Sintrainagro on the national union scene, and to construct alliances and supports vis-a-vis eventual changes in the national political arena as a result of the peace process with the FARC. Likewise, these international links can give Sintrainagro autonomy in the face of dominant local powers supported by the paramilitary groups.

./english/403.txt:43:The practical implications of information overload for those seeking to challenge the powers-that-be have been clearly articulated by Anne Scott’s (2001: 417) reflections on feminist activism:

./english/403.txt:63:Any discussion of global activism and the Internet quickly raises questions about the distribution of resources between the North and South. Here again the volume of information is a pressing issue. As Walch (1997: 55) has indicated, ICT access can be expensive for many living in Asia and Africa, and all but inaccessible for others. Connections to groups elsewhere can bring not only new affinities, but also the risk of ‘information dump’, with local channels clogged by electronic messages originating from locales where bandwidth may not be an issue. Nevertheless Walch is optimistic about the possibilities of electronic connectivity between social movements, arguing that even as simple a step as linking web sites can enhance the ‘inter-organizational transfer of information’ (74). Har and Hutnyk (1999) point to the obverse of Walch’s problem: that connections to North-based social movements frequently forces ‘activists from South East Asia to continuously send information to (careerist?) activists in the west’, when that time might be better spent in other activities. While they do not call for the abandonment of electronic communication, Har and Hutnyk (1999) echo Stoecker’s (2000) concern that ICT be understood in a properly instrumental way, as a tool that is useful only so long as it facilitates the movement’s efforts at social change. They conclude with a call for more reflective moments within activist practice:

./english/403.txt:153:Hay, A. & Hutnyk, J. (1999) ‘Languid, tropical, monsoonal time?: net-activism and hype in the context of South East Asian politics’, Saksi 6, July, http://www.saksi.com/jul99/huynyk.htm, accessed 26 December 2001.

./english/403.txt:161:Lacey, A. (2001) Networks of Protest, Communities of Resistance: Autonomous Activism in Contemporary Britain. Ph.D thesis, Centre for European Studies, Monash University, currently submitted for examination.

./english/403.txt:165:Myers, D. (1998) ‘Social Activism through Computer Networks’, American Sociological Association's Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, Working Paper Series 1 (3), http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/cbsm/vol1/myers2.html, accessed 15 January 2002.

./english/403.txt:179:Scott, A. (2001) ‘(In)forming Politics: Processes of Feminist Activism in the Information Age’, Women’s Studies International Forum 24 (3/4).

./english/409.txt:70:There is a serious debate to be had over strategy and process, but its difficult to see how it will unfold without bogging down a movement whose greatest strength so far has been its agility. Anarchist groups, though fanatical about process, tend to resist efforts to structure or centralize the movement. The International Forum on Globalization--the brain trust of the North American side of the movement--lacks transparency in its decision-making and isnt accountable to a broad membership. Meanwhile, NGOs that might otherwise collaborate often compete with one another for publicity and funding. And traditional membership-based political structures like parties and unions have been reduced to bit players in these wide webs of activism.

./english/470.txt:67:Without attention, layering of participants’ material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./english/470.txt:69:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn’t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/472.txt:29:As they conceived it, the meeting would be a starting point for creating proposals that would go beyond the growing protest actions against the neoliberal model whose promoters met in Davos. They drew on two broad currents of activism: the direct action movement that has mounted massive demonstrations against international summit meetings (notably against the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle), and the emergent worldwide civil society, embodied mainly in the nongovernmental organizations that have mushroomed throughout the world since the 1980s. These forces have been dubbed the “antiglobalization movement” by much of the press, but they generally reject the label. They favor a unified world, but one unified around common human values and respect for diversity rather than trade.

./english/473.txt:4:The World Social Forum pioneered new forms of global activism and democracy. Now it is being pressed to take the shape of an older politics, reports Solana Larsen in Caracas.

./english/544.txt:24:Pakistan lacks the most important factors that facilitate the dissemination of social messages at the grassroots level, namely, literacy and education, increased mobility of groups, freedom of expression, a measure of economic independence and a close link between social activism and the political process.

./english/553.txt:139:In practice this means launching a new generation of trade deals with developing countries such as Brazil, China, India and Korea – precisely those markets that European business needs to conquer if it is to thrive. Mandelson’s code word here is “activism” - using bilateral negotiations to force open new markets - and the stated aim is to win EU companies the right to exploit these new opportunities and the natural resources of the developing world.

./english/565.txt:1:ROM FREE SOFTWARE TO STREET ACTIVISM & VICE VERSA: AN INTRODUCTION

./english/565.txt:143:.:. GRASS-ROOTS ACTIVISM: ANALOGICAL MOVEMENTS MEET THE BYTES .:.

./english/565.txt:259:communication has always been part of political activism, as has shown

./english/565.txt:447:Internet has brought a new dimension to social activism, allowing the

./english/565.txt:518:street activism, Indymedia attempts to counter official propaganda and

./english/565.txt:818:social activism": http://www.sindominio.net/metabolik/x-evian/

./english/611.txt:36:The WSF achieves that necessary and desirable communicative goal, its defenders say, so why risk ruining it? The venue is so wide in its participants that it is folly to think they could all work together as a united organization with a single shared program. Social democrats, Leninists, anarchists, feminists, and all kinds of local groups cant be welded into united activism just by decreeing the WSF to be a new International. Rather, with the WSF as a communicative venue, its defenders say, we have a local, regional, national, continental, and world vehicle to assist those who want to construct viable and worthy cross-border alliances and movements of movements. Let the participants get on with those tasks, but let them construct their new mechanisms beyond the WSF, by all means.

./english/611.txt:62:I suspect that many other problems of the forums - such as having the same speakers repeatedly, overemphasizing analyses of ills and underemphasizing reports and lessons of activism and ideas for vision and strategy, unbalanced gender and geographic representation, and financial difficulties for attendees made bitter by bonuses for the notables, might evaporate were this kind of dynamism and exemplary participation developed. I also suspect many new innovations and exciting elaborations would percolate upward from the people who daily engage in the activities that make the forum possible. This would all be hard to do, of course. But at some point, dont we have to move from talking about people having a real say to people in fact having a real say?

./english/626.txt:22:And an Indian newspaper called it an "anti-global event." With more than 120 countries participating, could an event be more global in nature? "Anti-globalisation" is another term often and erroneously used to describe the WSF. This is just another form of globalisation. A counter-globalisation. A globalisation that challenges the prevalent neo-imperial corporate globalisation agenda. A globalisation from below. A globalisation of struggles. A globalisation of resistance. A globalisation of movements, of activism, of defiance. A globalisation of hope.