./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:56:The understanding of knowledge emerging from recent social movements by contrast reinstates a connection between intention and outcome but on the basis of uncertainty and experimentation. So the connection is not complete or predictable. It is always approximate. Our recognition of the importance of experience-based knowledge and of the open, unbounded nature of the social world we live in, is linked to an understanding that no single actor, individual or collective can ever have complete knowledge of the context in which they act, of the conseuences of their action. So we can never predict with any certainty; we can never presume that social relationships which have been true in the past will continue into the future; we never rule out the possibility of qualitatively new and unpredictable forms of behaviour. But because of our recognition of the social and sharable nature of practical knowledge we believe – unlike the neo-liberals – that human actors can always approximate to knowledge of the consequences of their action and the action of others. There can be a connection – but not a complete or entirely predictable connection - between purpose and consequences. Purposeful, knowing action aimed at social transformation is possible but it can never be all knowing; there will always be uninetended, unpredicted consequences. This two sided charcater of social movements is reflected in their activity. Indeed their/our networking is all the time aiming to extend and deepen our knowledge in order that our action is more effective in achieving its goals. But because of the inherent incompleteness of our knowledge, all our activity has to have an experimental, self-reflexive dimension built into it. If it does n’t, it can fall back into either of the old approaches: a commandist approach or a completely haphazard one.
./english/176.txt:29:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 74In this line of inquiry, communication is perceived simply as a tool to mobilize resources. Resource mobilization theorists thus tend to disregard the influence of communication on mobilization techniques and on the constitution of relationships with allies and enemies. They also fail to acknowledge that by enabling certain types of decision-making and power distribution, communication has an effect on the internal structure and organization of a social movement (Ibid, 9). Collective actors are treated as ‘entities’ appearing in the public arena, while their internal communication, forms of organization and inner mechanisms remain relatively obscure. Therefore, the fact that social movement organizations are arenas of interaction and that different cultures of interaction shape different trajectories of mobilization seems to elude resource mobilization theory (Clemens and Minkoff 2004, 157). In the few cases where communication constitutes an object of study, the focus rests on external communication, especially the one taking place through the mass media, failing to account for the effects of more interpersonal communication. Identity: New Social Movements Theory Emerging in Europe as a response to identity and culture-driven social movements, new social movement theory focuses on ‘the content of movement ideology, the concerns motivating activists, and the arena in which collective action was focused – that is, cultural understandings, norms, and identities rather than material interests and economic distribution’ (Williams 2004, 92). According to new social movement theory, the strength of social movements rests on the production of alternative codes and frames of reference by ‘groups that are dispersed, fragmented, and submerged in everyday life’ (Melucci quoted in Diani 1992, 6). New social movement theorists perceive collective identity as a continuous, dynamic and self-reflexive process, preferring to use the term ‘identization’ which clearly captures its open-ended character (Melucci 1996, 77). According to Melucci, the concept can help us ‘reach the deep relational texture of the collective actor’ (Ibid, 80). This is because the process of ‘identization’ is defined by a multiplicity of interactions, negotiations and conflicts among movement participants, which render collective identity an essentially communicative construct. But even though the importance of communication is implicitly recognized, it is nonetheless not theorized or researched in detail. How do movement actors communicate in order to negotiate conflicts and reach agreements? How is this process influenced by the communication media, means and techniques that are being used? Such questions remain unanswered by new social movement theory, which thus falls short from Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 75aiding us elucidate the ‘black box’
./english/176.txt:133:1 Emerging as a direct reaction against the process of neoliberal globalization, this movement was initially dubbed as the ‘anti-globalization movement’. However, this label seemed to spur too much confusion and misunderstanding, as the movement was identified with its most extreme anti-capitalist part. Thus, evolving from its initial outburst in Seattle in 1999 the movement came to define and call itself the ‘altermondialiste movement’ (in French), translated in English as the ‘alter-globalization movement’ or the ‘movement for alternative globalization’. The name ‘global social justice movement’ is also used, particularly by its trade justice/development part. This ‘alter-globalization’ label indicates more clearly that anti-globalization protesters are not opposed to globalization per se, but to the way it is shaped by neoliberal concerns, disregarding human rights and environmental issues (Walgrave and van Aelst 2004, 99). The change of name also points to the constant negotiations and re-negotiations of the movement’s identity, in its effort to accommodate and unite disparate groups and organizations.
./english/192.txt:29:mainstream politicians are out of touch with both the spirit, content and the style of the inclusive non-party politics now emerging under the ESF umbrella. Any professional politician observing the audiences of 1,000 or more people raptly listening to debates on globalisation, the power of corporations, racism, food or the environment would do well to reflect on the narrowness of their own political agenda and the genuine transnationalism now clearly informing European youth…Out of the connections being made between radically different groups, it is possible to see in years to come the emergence of a genuine new politics of the European left.
./english/193.txt:37:This link to concrete situations of resistance in time and space on the ESF is sometimes difficult to achieve. In many seminars and workshops you just get flat, already known analyses, simple propaganda and wishful thinking. Again and again the common enemy (neoliberalism, transnational corporations, the US, the WTO etc.) is condemned – in this sense the perspective on the ESF seems too unified; the few times debates became concrete consensus was melting away – the different approaches and goals were too diverse: a necessary result emerging from the contradiction of the ESF (and WSF) process itself as open space for discussion and self-education, without a real attempt to develop some applicable and visible alternatives. Therefore the Forum is no movement in itself (in contrast to Thomas Ponniah’s view8), but maybe a space for a new political consciousness and sovereignty, the modern form of articulation and association of structurally fragmented groups, classes and movements. However, because there is no alternative social project formed, the actual representative crisis of neoliberalism does not lead to a weakening of its hegemonic position. Pierre Khalfa supposes that diversity paralyses. 9 But its not diversity as such – which might enrich the movements – but a lack of deep analysis, including the production of neoliberal hegemony from below, in combination with non-committal plurality. This undermines a generalization of experiences, views and understandings (without closed unification under one primary force) preventing us from achieving coherent approaches and strategies. On the one hand there are more or less successful local social movements, creating autonomous spaces and transforming subjectivities, sometimes re-appropriating the essential means of reproduction from below, but hardly touching the relations of power on national or even transnational level. On the other there are global events for the altermondialist, national and transnational NGOs, some national parties, getting some media presence, shaping the public discourse, but far away from the everyday experience of the people, acting in some kind of representative vacuum without really questioning the ruling political form (Brand 2004). There is a need for intermediate political forms. At the heart of the problem lies the relation between representation and participation. A permanent movement (in the strict sense of the word) is difficult to sustain, movements are fragile forms with periods of higher or lesser activity, they develop out of concrete situations of dissent with the ruling mode of production and living, with a perspective of (molecular) social transformation, while the struggle for this transformation has to be a very long-standing one. Out of this results a need for institutionalisation to bridge times of less activity, disintegration, defensive situations and to overcome defeats, save experience and knowledge for the next generation of activists etc. A renewed concept for left political parties could be one possibility to create intermediate institutionalised political forms.
./english/229.txt:21:A new link is emerging between plenary meetings, workshops and theme discussions, that are organized by networks, and there is also a more explicit relationship between the Forum seen as a great “space for learning” and a place of discussion and organization of networks and struggles. The social Forums, inlcuding the first held in Porto Alegre, were born as public spaces for the creation of alternatives: this is a process, of course, but this role must be strongly renewed as the necessary result from the link between the “space for learning” and the “organization of networks, campaigns, struggles”; between social movements and politics; between the experiences and capabilities of activists and intellectuals, who want a different world.
./english/236.txt:23:The Forum promoted as a learning or pedagogical space would expand the current focus on national and international links among movements and organisations in society and on connections and dialogue focusing on similarities. In outreach strategies to activist groups this view has the potential to help demystify the divide between theory (thinking) and practice (doing) and support the emergence of a culture of dialogue across differences. It could also justify the creation of outreach approaches for non-activists – as an invitation to a process of collective reflection and construction of an alternative world, increasing and expanding the Forum's political impact. We also claim that fostering the culture of self-reflexivity that is already emerging within the Forum could generate systematic considerations of the Forum's own contradictions, which could encourage Forum participants to re-negotiate their subject positions, bring in new actors and create new possibilities for the future of the space, reinforcing its potential as a catalyst of change in society.
./english/238.txt:33:The Emerging Praxis of Babels
./english/238.txt:35:The impressive and rapid expansion and development of Babels cannot be adequately understood through statistics alone. The Babels network must also be recognised as an emerging political actor in its own right with a growing sense of identity and purpose. A commonly-held belief within the network is that of ‘horizontality' – Babelitos eschew leaders and hierarchies and instead seek to work collectively as equals in a network organisation based upon creative thinking and consensus. In reality, horizontality remains a difficult principle to put into practice, not least because of the top-down and centralised way in which the ESF itself is organised.
./english/240.txt:23:According to an activist from No Vox, the decision to hold the ESF 2004 in London was a disaster for undocumented migrants and refugees in Europe. He said: “It has lead to their disenfranchisement in the emerging social movement. British migrants and refugees need to know about struggles going on in Europe and to learn from them. The excluded self-organised migrants organisations in Europe can have gained nothing from this year ESF, indeed it may be difficult for them to see why they should participate in the Forums again whereas we know that this is a serious movement about global justice. We know that their full involvement is key."
./english/241.txt:9:As an example of the emergence of this question, we can note that the first International meeting on activist research and social movements was held in Barcelona this year. It brought together “academic-investigators” coming from different experiences of social movement studies: from those where social movements are the subjects of the research, like the work emerging from community researchers or autonomous centres, to experiences where the social movements are the object of the research, such as the production of academic theses on social movements.
./english/241.txt:34:Exploring from where the Investigaction could/should be done, the Guide research project is programmatically situated within the action of transforming social movements; implied within the needs directly or indirectly expressed by the social movements; and developed by research groups and collectives internal to the emerging social movements process.
./english/243.txt:17:Popular education originally emerged and is emerging again and again in oppressed groups, but it is also closely related with the name of Paulo Freire. He conceptualised it, and while it stems from many different parts of the world and many different movements, Freire was the one who described it first. Besides, he wrote his best-known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) after staying in exile for seventeen years. During these years he had the chance to get to know many different realities, struggles and ways of doing popular education. This accumulation of experiences makes his contribution even more valuable.
./english/259.txt:39:It seems to me that this meeting was indicative of a current zeitgeist and effervescence of the theory:practice:praxis nexus. It is part of a number of new and emerging initiatives – some of which have bubbled up in isolation but which are overlapping, coalescing and re-constituting in novel ways. CSGR is linked in several ways to this activity in the UK context. For example, I was part of a group of six people who registered a Radical Theory Workshop at the November 2003 European Social Forum in Paris - a workshop which attracted an unexpectedly high number of participants. This effort is continuing via an e-list and plans to organise a one-day Radical Theory Forum to coincide with the next European Social Forum, as well as to register possibly more Workshops within the Forum process itself.
./english/283.txt:13:While something of this did happen, the first talkshop, involving 18 participants, was surprisingly fractious. ‘The academics’ felt accused of not being hardcore enough when it came to activist practice. ‘The activists’ felt alienated by the poststructuralist jargon and perceived pretensions of ‘the academics’. Tears were cried, corners were sulked in, jokes were interpreted as insulting attacks, and insecurities were heightened as egos were dented. But there also was a lot of laughter and late nights, and an emerging closeness through the year as those who stayed with the process began to know and respect each other as simply fallible friends.
./english/300.txt:67:What is interesting to note about this discussion is that it’s emerging and multiplying itself at a time when we are seeing increased social mobilization and conflictuality. Issues such as globalizing capitalism, trade agreements, failed development, neoliberalism, and the war on terrorism are met by opposed dynamics whether they be Chiapas and the multiplication of indigenous movements, global resistance counter-summits and social forums or the independent organizing of the unemployed in numerous countries. Different struggles in distant places are articulating themselves through a similar discourse and already the term ‘movement of movements’ is one in common usage amongst activists. While in no way trying to say that this is a repeat of the sixties dynamic, it is interesting to see how similar discussions in geography begin to re-emerge with the increase of social conflictuality.
./english/303.txt:56:Anthropologists have recently proposed specific strategies for making ethnography useful for activists, which can be incorporated into a broader praxis for militant ethnography. Working with U.S.-based direct action activist, for example, David Graeber (2004) similarly notes the embattled role of the traditional vanguard intellectual, positing ethnography as a potential alternative, which would involve “teasing out the tacit logic or principles underlying certain forms of radical practice, and then, not only offering the analysis back to those communities, but using them to formulate new visions (335).” In this register, ethnography becomes a tool for collective reflection about activist practice and emerging utopian imaginaries.
./english/303.txt:63:1) collective reflection and visioning about movement practices, logics, and emerging cultural and political models; 2) collective analysis of broader social processes and power relations that affect strategic and tactical decision-making; and 3) collective ethnographic reflection about diverse movement networks, how they interact, and how they might better relate to broader constituencies. Each of these levels involves engaged, practice-based, and politically committed research that is carried out in horizontal collaboration with social movements. Resulting accounts involve particular interpretations of events produced with the practical and theoretical tools at the ethnographer’s disposal, and offered back to activists, scholars, and others for further reflection and debate.
./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/307.txt:4:What is and isn’t PUSM? PUSM is not a school for training cadres or leaders of NGOs and social movements. Although PUSM is clearly oriented towards action for social transformation, its aim is not to offer the kinds of skills and training that are usually provided by such schools. Nor is PUSM a think tank of NGOs and Social Movements. Although it highly values strategic research and reflection, PUSM rejects the distance that one and the other usually keep vis-à-vis collective action. The major objective of PUSM is to help make knowledge of alternative globalization as global as globalization itself, and, at the same time, to render actions for social transformation better known and more efficient, and its protagonists more competent and reflective. To meet its goals PUSM will have to be more international and intercultural than similar existent initiatives. Rationale The movement for an alternative globalization is a new political fact focused on the idea that the current phase of global capitalism, known as neoliberal globalization, requires new forms of resistance and new directions for social emancipation. From within this movement, made up of a large number of social movements and NGOs, new social agents and practices are emerging. They operate in an equally new framework, networking local, national, and global struggles. Present theories of social change cannot adequately deal with this political and cultural novelty. This gap between theory and practice has negative consequences both for genuinely progressive social movements and NGOs, and the universities, where theories have traditionally been produced. Both leaders and activists of social movements and NGOs feel the lack of
./english/307.txt:6:theories enabling them to reflect analytically on their practice and clarify their methods and objectives. Furthermore, social scientists/scholars/artists, isolated from these new practices and agents, cannot contribute to this reflection and clarification. They can even make things more difficult by insisting on concepts and theories that are not adequate to these new realities. The proposal for a Popular University of Social Movements is meant to contribute to filling this gap and correcting the two deficiencies it produces. Ultimately, its objective is to overcome the distinction between theory and practice by bringing the two together through systematic encounters between those who mainly devote themselves to the practice of social change and those who mainly engage themselves in theoretical production. The kind of training envisioned by PUSM is therefore two-pronged. On the one hand, it aims to educate activists and community leaders of social movements and NGOs, by providing them with adequate analytical and theoretical frameworks. The latter will enable them to deepen their reflective understanding of their practice – their methods and objectives – enhancing their efficacy and consistency. On the other hand, it aims to educate social scientists/scholars/artists interested in studying the new processes of social transformation, by offering them the opportunity of a direct dialogue with their protagonists. This will make it possible to identify, and whenever possible to eliminate, the discrepancy between the analytical and theoretical frameworks in which they were trained and the concrete needs and aspirations emerging from new transformational practices. In this two-pronged educational approach lies the novelty of PUSM. To achieve this objective, PUSM must overcome the conventional distinction between teaching and learning – based on the distinction
./english/312.txt:16:- a critique of academic flexibility as a strategy of disciplinisation and fragmentation of public research: flexibility is used today by ruling powers within government and the academia in order to exert a firm control over emerging scientific subjectivities and to reduce them to a condition as mere research/teaching labour-force;
./english/312.txt:24:First, since the late 1980s demands for an internationalisation of research activities have been advanced in the form of an emerging academic capitalism which has profoundly transformed the way in which scholars undertake research activities: market-like behaviour, the principle of performativity and the power of management in the administration of research funds have become crucial in this regard. What has been considered by the dominant forces and elites as the challenge of the market-economy to the university system has led to greater resource concentrations and, as a result, to the development of a range of ‘centres of excellence’ and ‘corporate universities’ capable of attracting these resources to the detriment of ‘ordinary’ (public) universities. These developments have produced increasingly deeper inequalities at an international scale between the more prosperous countries and regions, where allegedly ‘high-quality’ universities are mostly concentrated, and those that are lagging behind.
./english/323.txt:76:theoretical activity emerging out of the feminist struggles in the 1970s. This multiplication
./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:103:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.
./english/360.txt:103:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.
./english/361.txt:28:Anarchism has historically focused on the political realm of life. But even there, even with the long history, the emerging anarchism of today's movements doesn't clarify for us what an anarchist polity could be. Assuming that societies need to fulfill adjudicative, legislative, and implementation functions in the political realm of life, and need to do this via institutions which citizens partake of and constitute, then what should these institutions be? If the bad trend is to say that we favor no political institutions but only spontaneous face to face interaction of free individuals each doing as they choose with no constraints on them, then what is the good trend’s better viewpoint? What kind of structures with what kinds of social roles and norms in an anarchist polity will accomplish political functions while also propelling values that we support?
./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:36:The place of government in the activists’ political calculus clearly varies from nation to nation and from organization to organization. However, newly emerging forms of political action are being aimed beyond government nearly everywhere in the post -industrial North. These politics include creative experiments with publicly monitored labor, environmental, food, and trade standards regimes designed to hold transnational targets directly accountable to activist networks and their publics (see examples at www.globalcitizenproject.org, under labor standards, fair trade, and corporate social responsibility). These nimble campaigns aimed at corporations and transnational trade and development targets lend themselves to the repertoires of digital communication: lists and action alerts, swarming responses (e.g., denial of service attacks on corporate websites), and the continuous refiguring of web networks as campaigns shift focus and change players.
./english/365.txt:115:What can we conclude from weighing these strengths and vulnerabilities, and from the balance between the virtual and the material in these networks? Perhaps most importantly, it seems that the ease of creating vast webs of politics enables global activist networks to finesse difficult problems of collective identity that often impede the growth of movements. To a remarkable degree, these networks appear to have undergone scale shifts while continuing to accommodate considerable diversity in individual level political identity. Moreover, the success of networked communication strategies in many issue and demonstration campaigns seems to have produced enough innovation and learning that keep new organizations emerging despite (and because of) the chaos and dynamic change in those organizations. In order to grasp these properties of communication-based politics, it is important to resist the temptation to view this scene from the perspective of particular organizations or issues. Instead, the dynamic network becomes the unit of analysis in which all other levels (organizational, individual, political) can be analyzed most coherently.
./english/367.txt:7:After three editions in Brazil, the World Social Forum in 2004 will be held in India. For the Indian left, it could have been a great opportunity for rethinking politics. Unfortunately, significant sections think otherwise. So there is the risk of the Forum coming and going, but nothing positive emerging.
./english/372.txt:25:One need only compare the historical schools of Marxism, and anarchism, then, to see we are dealing with a fundamentally different sort of thing. Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians... Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors. Pierre Bourdieu once noted that, if the academic field is a game in which scholars strive for dominance, then you know you have won when other scholars start wondering how to make an adjective out of your name. It is, presumably, to preserve the possibility of winning the game that intellectuals insist, in discussing each other, on continuing to employ just the sort of Great Man theories of history they would scoff at in discussing just about anything else: Foucault's ideas, like Trotsky's, are never treated as primarily the products of a certain intellectual milieu, as something that emerging from endless conversations and arguments in cafes, classrooms, bedrooms, barber shops involving thousands of people inside and outside the academy (or Party), but always, as if they emerged from a single man's genius. It's not quite either that Marxist politics organized itself like an academic discipline or become a model for how radical intellectuals, or increasingly, all intellectuals, treated one another; rather, the two developed somewhat in tandem.
./english/375.txt:156:I am a South Korean. I have just one question to the speakers. It seems to me that there is another factor that has to be taken into consideration. To it’s not just a question of hegemony, but for me one my major concerns is this new emerging form of organisation of the multitude in terms of transformations coming from different identities. We also have difficulty in sustaining these mobilisations on a minimum common agenda
./english/377.txt:26:One of the most vivid mass formations at the Forum was the contingents belonging to AIDWA. They were not only there in numbers, but also in various important sub-identities such as Muslim women marching together in their black burqas under the AIDWA banner, giving voice to their concerns. Similarly at the dalit gathering, the gathering on women, they were a conscious, well informed mass. Their presence and the nature of their leadership stimulated a thought – whether the rejuvenation of the formal left was now to come from the women’s formation. The other faces of the left have been seen as tired old men, no new faces of leadership emerging.
./english/379.txt:54:Obviously, much of the world does not even have telephone service, much less computers, and there are vast discrepancies in terms of who has access to computers and who participates in the technological revolution and cyberdemocracy today. As a result, there have been passionate debates over the extent and nature of the ådigital divideπ between the information haves and have-nots. Critics of new technologies and cyberspace repeat incessantly that it is by and large young, white, middle- or upper-class males who are the dominant players in the cyberspaces of the present. While this is true, statistics and surveys indicate that many more women, people of colour, seniors and individuals from marginalized groups are becoming increasingly active.[3] In addition, computers may become part of the standard household consumer package in the overdeveloped world, although studies are emerging that indicate that large numbers of individuals claim that they have no intention of purchasing computers and using the internet. Yet in the light of the importance of computers for work, social life, entertainment and education, no doubt growing amounts of people will continue to go on-line. Further, there are plans afoot to wire the entire world with satellites that would make the internet and new communication technologies accessible to people who do not now even have a telephone, TV or even electricity, and wireless, interactive technologies are touted as the next stage of networked communication.[4]
./english/379.txt:116:The movement against capitalist globalization used the internet to organize mass demonstrations and to disseminate information to the world concerning the policies of the institutions of capitalist globalization. The events made clear that the protestors were not against globalization per se, but were against neoliberal globalization, opposing specific policies and institutions that produce intensified exploitation of labour, environmental devastation, growing divisions among social classes and the undermining of democracy. The emerging anti-globalization from above movements are locating these problems in the context of opposition to a restructuring of a neoliberal market capitalism on a worldwide basis for maximum profit with zero accountability. The anti-capitalist movements, by contrast, have made clear the need for democratization, regulation, rules and globalization in the interests of people and not profit.
./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/380.txt:197: In particular, the movement against capitalist globalization used the Internet to organize mass demonstrations and to disseminate information to the world concerning the policies of the institutions of capitalist globalization. The events made clear that protestors were not against globalization per se, but were against neo-liberal and capitalist globalization, opposing specific policies and institutions that produce intensified exploitation of labor, environmental devastation, growing divisions among the social classes, and the undermining of democracy. The emerging anti-globalization-from-above movements are contextualizing these problems in the framework of a restructuring of capitalism on a worldwide basis for maximum profit with zero accountability and have made clear the need for democratization, regulation, rules, and globalization in the interests of people and not profit.
./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/386.txt:8:Tyranny of Economic Globalism Emerging Trends and Impact
./english/386.txt:13:In the emerging global situation the international position of the South has considerably weakened. While the North intensified its neo-liberal offensive to integrate the economies of the South, by profound changes in trade, finance and technology, the result of which is the so-called process of Globalisation process which has been buttressed and enhanced by the Structural Adjustment Programme undertaken at the instance of World Bank and International Monetary Fund, themselves handmaidens of global capital, international private banks and giant corporations.
./english/386.txt:101:There are serious political consequences inherent in the emerging nexus between new institutional arrangements, new values and new individual drives through which people are being `marketised'. Quite apart from the decline in the role of the State in preserving spaces for the underprivileged and protecting peoples and cultures from globalising trends, there is the danger of the whole normative framework of democracy being undermined.
./english/386.txt:135:The new politics of solidarity between Third World communities and northern consumers is part of an emerging citizen politics at the global level that is making visible the social and ecological costs of globalisation and creating new mechanisms for social control and regulation of commerce at the international level.
./english/387.txt:34:The upsurge of the new peasant movements faces important challenges that were raised in both the formal sessions and informal discussions. For example, one of the slogans of the conference was “agrarian reform, anti-imperialism, and socialism,” yet the representatives of the Guatemalan organization (CONIC) told me that it was impossible to raise any of those issues in Guatemala. “The mass terror and the continual operation of the paramilitary death squads still weigh heavily on the peasants.” The peace accords signed by the guerrilla commanders left the genocidal generals immune to any prosecution. The emerging electoral political system is still linked to the state institution of violence (army, judiciary, and secret police) which have been only given a facelift, renamed, their personnel reshuffled.
./english/392.txt:83:continental countries (’the Whales’) which have significant roles to play in the now rapidly−emerging
./english/392.txt:102:will help unite or will divide what I sense is a slowly emerging movement in the country
./english/392.txt:317:to realise its potential however, and especially in the new and emerging world
./english/394.txt:221:Forum as it is emerging shows that the architects of the Forum and at least some of its leadership
./english/395.txt:162:level of meaning: along with the struggle that is still emerging across the globe against neoliberal
./english/395.txt:498:But these are presently the declared and emerging rules of engagement, in and of the
./english/395.txt:629:still emerging in many ways mirrors and models itself on the net. Whether it does so consciously or
./english/400.txt:9:The concept of information warfare, along with related ideas such as information operations, netwar and cyberwar, has gained prominence in US strategic and military circles since the early 1990s. The term 'Information warfare' is used in two broad ways. Defined in technological terms, information warfare particularly emphasises vulnerabilities in digital infrastructures to disruption by physical or digital attack (e.g. Boulanger, 1998; Cobb, 1999) and the growing 'information intensity' of battlefield operation (e.g. Libicki, 1998). The term is also used more broadly to analyse emerging types of conflict in an information society through, for example, the use of information in the management of public and adversary perceptions, and the role of information in the organisational aspects of conflict particularly in the nature and organisation of threats from sub- and non-state actors (Rathmell, 1998; Arquila & Ronfeldt, 1998a, 1998b). Many of the concepts associated with information warfare are also now being used in the analysis of conflict in economic, social and personal, as well as military, spheres (Kovacich, 1997; Cronin & Crawford, 1999a;). In corporate settings, for example, use can be found in discussions of competitor intelligence (Cronin & Crawford, 1999b; McCrohan, 1998) and computer security (Boulanger, 1998; Jajodia et al 1999).
./english/400.txt:24:Many effective commercial, terrorist, criminal and social organisations to some extent now display network features, at least in part reliant on the ability to exploit current and emerging ICTs (Castells, 1996; Rathmell, 1998). Arquilla & Ronfeldt (1998a) argue further, that networks are the characteristic organisational form of information warfare and that civil society actors such as NGOs have been particularly adept at using networked organisation to enable more flexible and responsive behaviour. Decentralised networks, exploiting (both old and new) communications technologies, allow small and widely scattered actors to collaborate as required, mobilising their distinctive resources jointly to pursue shared objectives. Arquilla & Ronfeldt (1998a) particularly emphasise the importance of 'all-channel' networks, where all actors are connected to all others (a form of network particularly enabled by contemporary ICTs) and which, they assert, are particularly effective in conflict situations providing both speed and redundancy of communications.
./english/400.txt:28:While the emergence of these networks is not primarily a technological development, the growth of ICTs has played an important enabling role (MacShane, 1992; Dropkin, 1996; ICEM, 1996; Waterman, 1998; Lee, 1997). The growing use of ICTs in transnational labour networking is further evidenced by frequent passing references to email and the Internet in the literature of transnational labour organising (e.g. Carr, 1999; Frundt, 1996; Marshall, 1997). Transnational networked organisation is not, however, straightforward: the availability of a technological infrastructure and the skills to use it may be a necessary prerequisite of global network organisation (and establishing the prerequisites globally itself remains a formidable obstacle), but it is not sufficient. Networks are likely to need to adapt, for example to the particular culture and organisation of individual corporations (Spooner, 1998), while organisational, linguistic and cultural difficulties are likely further to continue to provide substantial obstacles to the development of online transnational networks, for example among trade union educators (Walker & Creanor, 2000; Walker, 2000). By the mid-1990s, effective transnational information networks remained largely theoretical (Ramsay, 1997). Neither can the development of networks always be seen as positive. In some cases emerging networks may pose threats to effective transnational organisation, for example where local labour and management form networks to compete for resources with other plants in a multinational company (Martinez Lucio & Weston, 1995). Going further, we may also speculate that decentralised networks, with a tendency to focus on the local may undermine the role of unions as aggregators of employee interests, making it harder to develop solidarity around more global issues.
./english/403.txt:27:The old media was important in publicising and drawing attention to the new, highlighting the fact that, although the Net is an important new tool, activists still largely rely on coverage in the traditional media and cannot rely solely upon the emerging communications networks (Gibson & Kelly 2000).
./english/409.txt:10:Many people said that they felt history being made in that room. What I felt was something more intangible: the end of The End of History. And fittingly, "Another World Is Possible" was the events official slogan. After a year and a half of protests against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the World Social Forum was billed as an opportunity for this emerging movement to stop screaming about what it is against and start articulating what it is for.
./english/409.txt:52:Perhaps by transforming the anticorporate, antiglobalization movement into a pro-democracy movement that defends the rights of local communities to plan and manage their schools, their water and their ecology. In Porto Alegre, the most convincing responses to the international failure of representative democracy seemed to be this radical form of local participatory democracy, in the cities and towns where the abstractions of global rule become day-to-day issues of homelessness, water contamination, exploding prisons and cash-starved schools. Of course, this has to take place within a context of national and international standards and resources. But what seemed to be emerging organically out of the World Social Forum (despite the best efforts of some of the organizers) was not a movement for a single global government but a vision for an increasingly connected international network of very local initiatives, each built on direct democracy.
./english/470.txt:91:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.
./english/475.txt:12:The step, of moving from single-centric Fora to polycentric ones, is as a step in the development of the World Social Forum - as important as the holding of the Forum outside Brazil and in Mumbai, India, in January 2004. But given this significance, and behind this the significance of the World Social Forum as an emerging world institution and as an institution of civil politics, it is important, and perhaps of no small interest, that there is hardly any debate about the polycentric Forum, either as individual meetings or as a collective. Even on the official WSF website, in its Library of Alternatives, there are only two articles and then too, the two are both in Spanish, despite the fact that the three Fora are being held in
./english/512.txt:37:That difficulty is also experienced by political parties, which until now have enjoyed a hegemony over political activity, the aim of their activities being to take government power. To their leaders there is no sense in acting outside of them or in intending to do anything without taking power. That difficulty grows to the extent that parties’ hegemony is threatened by civil society as a new, emerging political actor.
./english/513.txt:8:The Forum was born robust, heir of historical struggles while combing new, emerging and fertile ideas, critical thinking, proposals and actions for change. By being an original, heterogeneous world-wide open space, the Forum had the virtue of enabling a great confluence and of encouraging the re-emergence of a collective awareness that changes are possible and viable, so setting off a process of inexhaustible transforming potential. Its ebullient rhythm has been such that the abundant initiatives, ideas and proposals seen over these past five, short years have produced enough material for hundreds of debates.
./english/527.txt:72:Once again, this has stirred a huge debate. The movements that made the proposal are being blamed for trying to impose a single programme to the movement. Their answer is a denial. Everything seems to depend on the interpretation one gives to the ‘historical subject’ they see emerging from the collective conscience that the WSF is building. Most probably, the traditional Marxist terminology that is used in the text is what disturbs most people. Samir Amin pretends that a new era of socialism is now beginning. In the same way, in Caracas, Chavez gave a new interpretation to ‘Socialism or death’. According to the Venezuelan president, we have no choice but to introduce socialism if we want to avoid that the environmental degradation kills us all.
./english/529.txt:14:Objections have been voiced that many of those seeking a change in the world do not know what they are looking for. Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo who attended the first forum, wrote, "After a year and a half of protests against the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the World Social Forum was billed as an opportunity for this emerging movement to stop screaming about what it is against and start articulating what it is for." President Chavez of Venezuela where the WSF was held in January also expressed the same fear when he appealed for a serious political discussion and the need for direction. I didn’t hear a whole lot of visionary discussion at the Karachi Forum. There were countless NGO’s presenting their efforts, railing against the powers that be, but other than a sense of solidarity, no discussion arose by which the global activist community might grow their movement. I didn’t see any "Big Picture" emerging.
./english/535.txt:14:In addition to the tension surrounding the purpose of the WSF, there is also an emerging division between two different sectors of participants at the forum. Conference participants from Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) tend to view their role as “helping” the poor, while most grassroots activists who are a part of social movements see the need for structural economic change as being an essential part of the transformation process. The contradiction was most clearly illustrated in workshops and events about the situation in Haiti. Grassroots activists from Haiti, who support exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, were surprised and disillusioned to see Camille Chalmers from the Social Hemispheric Council on stage with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, during his principle speech to WSF participants. The presence of Chalmers at the table with Chavez was viewed as giving legitimacy to those who participated in the U.S. engineered coup that exiled Aristide. Grassroots activists wanted to know why they were not invited to have a representative at the table, but those that legitimize the coup did.
./english/553.txt:27:On 4 October 2006 the European Commission unveiled a new Communication entitled Global Europe: Competing in the world,[1] which outlines how Brussels will pursue bilateral free trade agreements with major emerging economies in order to secure new and profitable markets for EU companies. The EU will also push for stronger intellectual property rights and reduced non-tariff barriers in its trading partners – and for even more business-friendly ‘domestic reforms’ within Europe itself.
./english/553.txt:64: * Further strengthening the presence of EU companies in emerging markets through permanent establishment, meaning more investment liberalisation.
./english/553.txt:143:Access to the services, industrial and public procurement markets of emerging economies is the central element of the new vision, despite the acknowledged problems that this causes poorer countries’ own development efforts, and the consequential poverty when local businesses collapse under unfair competition. Perhaps the clearest throwback to colonial times is the demand for open access to natural resources. Mandelson has heeded the calls of the Brussels business lobby by making European access to the resources of developing countries a “high priority” and by promising to oppose any attempts by such countries to defend their resources for their own use.
./english/565.txt:66:To backup this emerging project, the Free Software Foundation [5] was
./english/579.txt:52:Overall, it would be fair to say that the mass fronts of the left parties, substantial sections within the parties including many major leaders, have moved closer to the social movements and progressive NGOs, and vice versa. This movement towards closer collaboration is still hesitant, wary and uneasy. There remains a lack of that kind of general perspective that could help systematize forms of collaboration going beyond occasional common actions. But the movement forward is real. Internationally, the Indian left has nowhere to turn except towards a global radical milieu that is naturally anti-Stalinist and much more developed in its attitudes on matters concerning sexual choice, female oppression and ecological sustainability. Domestically, greater coordination amongst radical forces is required to confront the neoliberal project as well. In this respect, public opposition in India is likely to grow. In South America what tipped the balance towards successful mass resistance was the antagonism of whole swathes of the middle class whose savings were destroyed by the combination of unstable currencies, recession and unemployment. This has not yet happened in India. The neoliberal reforms have a shorter history and a more cautious approach to capital convertibility has provided a measure of protection. But the problem of educated unemployment is rising to serious proportions. Youth belonging to the lower echelons of the ‘middle class’ are finding neither secure nor well-paid jobs. A growing crisis of expectations is emerging. In retrospect Mumbai 2004 might well be identified as the first major collective warning of the shape of things to come.
./english/580.txt:70:· The issue regarding attempting more coherence in the various events at the WSF was discussed at the systematisation workshop in Rio in April 2003 and subsequently at the IC meeting in Miami in June 2003. What started emerging, was a consensus, that attempts should be made to facilitate the process of groups working on similar themes and sectors to come together to organise their events. Thus, the programme was opened up for proposals in July 2003 and a deadline of September 2003 for final submissions was decided upon (later extended to October 2003). The early deadline for final submission, it was felt, would allow event organisers to come together where there were shared concerns and interests.
./english/580.txt:94:A third reason is the emerging de facto structure of the WSF — a tendency towards gigantism. We believed that spaces for large events must be large, but were not able to assess how large! 1500 people in a panel is a lot of people, but in a hall of 5000 people, they look few in number. Perhaps in the future, there can be a balancing out of large events and seminars and workshops in terms of the size of the venues.
./english/587.txt:8:The first impression was of cacophony. India itself is more than 1 billion people, a diverse world speaking many languages – more than 40, nearly half of them official – with its castes, the social exclusion of dalits (untouchables or casteless people) and around 300 million living in abject poverty. At the other extreme, around 200 million are integrated with the globalised market. The impact is culturally and politically staggering, especially to the heightened perceptions of activists of an emerging planetary movement. Inevitably, we are led to ask ourselves whether we do enough, whether we are outraged enough at the inhumanity that so many women and men - children, adults and elderly - are condemned to and whether we are truly radical in our proposals for change.
./english/594.txt:1:A new left emerging from the old?
./english/595.txt:30:Since this is the context in which we must situate ourselves, we must ask ourselves whether we are standing between the devil and deep blue sea ? On the one hand, there is an empire that dictates its rationale of “pax Americana” through war and the social and political organisation that it comprises and, on the other hand, there are groups that organise repeated terrorist attacks and organised Mafia type networks that operate clandestinely and determine the lives of millions of human beings who survive in conditions of slavery. Given this rationale (the term is debatable), the civil society now emerging and that we are seeking to develop must avoid becoming a hostage.
./english/605.txt:72:On the other hand, the great left traditions in the world are reacting to the reality established by the WSF process. Last year, a gathering of social-democrat streams in Belgium had defined that they should seek a more active role in the interior of the process. And in Mumbai, the communist parties had joined during the Forum, emerging the issue of the way to deal with their pasts – particularly the Soviet experience and Stalinism – with the present and the futures.
./english/626.txt:30:I can still hear the reverberating chants. I can still taste the dust. I can feel the passion and power of the 100,000 people who, like me, came to breathe in another space. I can picture new dreams being created. I can visualise the outline of the other world emerging on tomorrows sunlit morning sky.
./english/651.txt:8:Like it or not, the Porto Alegre Forum has become a global reference for an emerging conviction that "another world is possible". Is that a small matter? Certainly it is not enough, but enormous creative energies are awakened by our coming to believe collectively that we are not condemned to become one super-casino at the hands of large economic and financial groups that commodify life and speculate with human beings and whole peoples. What is more, at an admittedly difficult juncture, we have restored globalization itself to the centre of world debate, thus evading the trap of the logic of terror and war into which religious and trade fundamentalists were leading us after the fateful events of September 11, 2001. One telling response by the World Social Forum to the dominant globalization was to show that diverse and emotionally charged expressions of culture, song and dance also are constitutive of the globalization we want, grounded in the ethical principles of human solidarity with freedom and equality, in the diversity of cultures and situations we live in.