./english/147.txt:113:Indymedia has a major role in PGA projects in Europe. Its activists are among the most serious protagonists of PGA efforts. Among the most interesting campaigns this year is YoMango!—a social disobedience to provide everyday, enjoyable sabotage against capitalism, such as massive shoplifting against big corporations and their shopping malls. It focuses on exploring technical, legal, and logistical aspects of sabotaging capital while having fun.
./english/162.txt:73:So now we return to the language of art, and to an art whose very essence is language. Obviously I'm talking about conceptual art. But today this most revolutionary of all art forms is considered a failure. The "escape strategies" that Lucy Lippard talks about in her famous book on The Dematerialization of the Art Object were intended to free artists from dependency on the gallery-magazine-museum circuit. It was thought that artists could motivate people to use their imagination in completely new ways, by giving them linguistic suggestions, virtual proposals that they could actualize outside the specialized institutions. But exclusive signatures rapidly took precedence over the infinite permutation of the works in the lives of the viewers/users. The necessary corollary was that the concept should refer primarily to itself, as in a famous piece composed of a chair, a picture of a chair, and a dictionary definition of the word "chair" (Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965). Such a work, completing itself in a tautology that required no transformative activity from the public, could easily be presented within the existing system. Thus the conceptual escape attempt only led from market-oriented New York to the museums of Europe, then finally back to the market. In 1973, Seth Siegelaub said in an interview: "Conceptual art, more than all previous types of art, questions the fundamental nature of art. Unhappily, the question is strictly limited to the exclusive domain of the fine arts. There is still the potential of it authorizing an examination of all that surrounds art, but in reality, conceptual artists are dedicated only to exploring avant-garde aesthetic problems.... The economic pattern associated with conceptual art is remarkably similar to that of other artistic movements: to purchase a work cheap and resell it at a high price. In short, speculation." (19) Lucy Lippard, for her part, wrote in 1973 that the "ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world... with its reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, editors and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the 'real world's' power structures... make[s] it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts." (20)
./english/176.txt:2:Exploring the role of the internet in the ‘movement for alternative globalization’: The case of the Paris 2003 European Social Forum
./english/176.txt:11:Exploring the role of the internet in the ‘movement for alternative globalization’: The case of the Paris 2003 European Social Forum
./english/176.txt:23:Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 73This study is an attempt to examine the
./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:38:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 76which they interpret social reality), structural-connection (connecting potential activists with an opportunity to participate) and decision-shaping functions (helping individuals to assess the costs and benefits of their potential participation through contact with the actions of other participants) (Passy 2003, 24-25). Given its emphasis on relations, ties and interactions, one would expect that communication and media would be a central element of the networks approach to social movements. This is however not the case. For instance, while social networks are considered as key predictors of movement participation, little attention has been paid to the communicative aspects of an individual’s direct or indirect ties to a movement and to the communication media through which these relationships are constituted. In other words, the fact of whether participants in a movement communicate mainly over the telephone or over the internet may have an impact on the capacity of their social networks to act as agents of mobilization. In addition, the transmission of ideas and cognitive schemata taking place through networks also implies a process of communication whose characteristics and mechanisms remain under-researched. Yet, there are a few studies which ‘have focused on the flows of communication and the links between different territorial areas’ (Diani 2004, 351), showing that the levels of collective action in one place affect collective action in nearby geographical areas. However, these studies examined uprisings of the late 19th century which took place in a completely different communicative and media context, and as such cannot account for the role of current communication media in the diffusion of protest. Thus, the role of communication media, means and techniques remains an under-researched subject within social movement study. Even though all of the aforementioned strands of social movement theory recognize the crucial role of communication and interaction in processes of mobilization and participation, they have nonetheless failed to incorporate these considerations into their theoretical framework or research design. When the role of the media is taken into account, the focus rests on the mass media, disregarding the functions of more personal communication. This perpetuates a seemingly unintentional but nonetheless false perception of mediated communication as indirect or impersonal as opposed to ‘direct’ face-to-face communication. This preoccupation with the mass media tends to focus attention on the ‘external’ communication of a movement and not on its internal modes of communication and their impact on the movement’s identity, structure and ideology. It also maintains a perception of social movements as entities with specific and given characteristics and ways of communicating. This deprives us of Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 77all the valuable observations that a
./english/176.txt:44:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 78internet-based, electronic network. In this sense, the internet is thought to be affecting not only the way the movement communicates its goals or protests in support of its ideas, but also its scale, organizing structure and collective identity. These claims place communication in a much more central position than the one it has hitherto assumed in social movement theory, instigating a more systematic reflection on the role of the media in social movement activity. In this vein of inquiry, current research tends to consider the Internet not only as a new form of communication, but also as an organizational process in itself that is affecting the internal structure of the movement (Tarrow 2002, 15). This is because the internet seems “to constitute a social network (which is) remarkably similar to the reticular structure of social movements”, so that “it is only a short step to regarding the Internet itself as a form of organization” (Ibid). In that respect, the internet is thought to drive the ‘alter-globalization’ movement towards looser and less hierarchical modes of organization, which imitate its own loose and non-hierarchical structure. For instance, according to Klein “[w]hat emerged on the streets of Seattle and Washington was an activist model that mirrors the organic, decentralized, interlinked pathways of the Internet” (Klein 2002, 17). Contrary to the more conventional means of communication which are relatively expensive and tend ‘to foster just a few centres of communication (and often related to this, of power and decision making)’, the internet does not ‘demonstrate an inherent tendency to be concentrated and controlled in the hands of a few movement entrepreneurs’ (van de Donk et al. 2004, 9). Thus, by intensifying communication among all parts of the organization, the internet has the potential to contest the prevailing model of top-down communication (Ibid, 19). What is more, the internet seems to also affect the scale and scope of the ‘alter-globalization movement’ both in terms of organizing and in terms of the development and negotiation of a collective identity. Serving as a connecting mechanism between participants in different countries, the internet can facilitate an international division of labour both prior to and during protests (Walgrave and van Aelst 2004, 101). It can further act as ‘a channel for the geographical dispersion of the intimacy of interpersonal networks’ (Burnett and Marshall 2003, 37), expanding the geographical scale at which a collective identity, as well as interpersonal relationships of trust and solidarity can be developed. This poses a challenge to previous notions of intimacy and community as bounded within the confines of a specific locality or as associated with some kind of face-to-face communication. This scale shift in the personal connections among activists also contributes to the establishment of open and extended activist networks, whose unity does not necessarily depend upon a common ideology. Instead, the internet seems to Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 79encourage connections among
./english/176.txt:46: What the foregoing analysis aptly demonstrates is that the extensive use of the internet by current social movements and the ‘alter-globalization movement’ in particular has led to recognition of the integral role of communication in social movement activity. However, it is not only social movement theorizing which has been challenged and transformed by the advent of the internet; it is also our perceptions of media and communication themselves and of the distinctions that we make between private and public, personal and mass communication. Since this may affect our inquiries into the relationship between social movements and communication, it is worth exploring its implications in more detail.
./english/176.txt:48:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 80Apart from the boundaries between public and private, mass and personal, I would argue that further inquiries into the role of the internet in social movement activity should also question the clear-cut distinctions between the offline and the online, the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’. Such distinctions were a defining characteristic of early internet studies, which tended to conceive the internet as a space or a ‘new frontier’, as a virtual world which ‘actually removes heavy users from the exigencies of everyday life’ (Ibid, 15). This distinction is partly reflected in current theorizing concerning the role of the internet in social movement activity. For instance, in a recent article about social networks and movement participation, Diani proposes that further studies should examine ‘whether “virtual,” computer-mediated ties may replace “real” in the generation not only of practical opportunities, but of the shared understandings and – most important – the mutual trust, which have consistently been identified as important facilitators of collective action’ (2004, 352). This shows a concern over the substitution of ‘real’ ties with computer-mediated ones, echoing earlier criticisms of the internet as a virtual domain which has the power to replace the real one. However, this type of theorizing fails to acknowledge ‘the continuities between the offline and the online’, necessary in order to ‘understand and explain how the new potentials are actually used’ (Slater 2002, 542-543). In that respect, it is worth considering ‘virtuality’ or ‘reality’ not as the inherent properties of a specific medium but as the result of its social uses by people. As Slater notes, ‘[i]t is the making of the distinction that needs studying, rather than assuming that it exists and then studying its consequences’ (Ibid, 543). Furthermore, it is worth bearing in mind that the creation and maintenance of social relationships takes place through multiple communication media. For instance, a recent study of the social use of the internet by college students discovered that ‘the more people with whom students communicated using the internet, the more they communicated with face-to-face and on the telephone’ (Baym et al. 2004, 316). Therefore, the internet may reinforce rather than replace other forms of communication in the maintenance of social relationships. In the case of social movement ties and participation, these findings suggest that the distinction between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ ties may indeed be misleading, as ties are constituted through various media. This should divert the focus of current research from the distinction and comparison between these different media and orient it towards their interplay and complex articulation. The survey Against this backdrop and as part of my PhD fieldwork, I undertook a survey of participants in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum exploring the mechanisms Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 81of mobilization for the ESF, as well as the
./english/176.txt:53:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 82registered individually (and not as part of an organization) for the ESF was not made publicly available by the organizers after the event. It is thus very difficult to know whether the sample examined in this study is representative of the population who attended the 2003 Paris ESF. Survey Results The sample The sample consisted of 257 respondents, with women accounting for 46% and men 54% of the sample. Respondents were also predominantly young as 64.5% of the sample was 30 or less than 30 years old. Table 1 presents in more detail the valid percents for each age category. Table 1. Age less than 20 14.8% 21-30 49.6% 31-40 13.7% 41-50 9.0% 51-60 5.9% over 60 7.0% The majority of respondents were also fairly educated as 32.3% of the sample was university graduates. However, 17.1% was high school graduates, while 5.2% had not finished high school and 0.8% had not had a high school education. These figures can be explained by the young age of the sample (14.8% was less than 20 years old), which implies that some the respondents may not have had the opportunity to finish high school and attend university. Table 2. Education None 0.8% High school incomplete 5.2% High school graduate 17.1% Business, technical, school after high school 4.0% Some university, but no 3 or 4 year degree 17.1% University Graduate 32.3% Masters graduate 16.7% PhD degree 6.0% Don't know 0.8% Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 83In terms of profession, an
./english/176.txt:88:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 84Mobilization Contexts and Modes of Communication The survey further asked respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. ‘Mobilization’ was defined in terms of obtaining information about the ESF and organizing attendance. The questionnaire distinguished between four mobilization contexts, political or voluntary organizations, friends or relatives, the workplace or the university, and the news media. Distinguishing between different contexts was considered necessary for reasons of analytical clarity, even though it tends to disregard the possible overlaps between the various contexts. For instance, one can be friends with people who belong in the same organization, or be mobilized through a political organization with a university branch. The survey also included some questions about the means of communication that were used in each mobilization context. For instance, did the communication with the political or voluntary organization take place through the telephone, an email list, face-to-face, or the organization’s website? Did respondents talk to friends or relatives face-to-face, on the phone, or via email? The respondents could select one or more means of communication, helping us gain a first insight into the range of media used in each context. An initial breakdown of results showed that 74.2% of the respondents were mobilized by a political or voluntary organization, 65.2% through friends or relatives, 34.1% through the workplace or the university and 36.1% through the news media. Out of the 190 respondents who were mobilized through a political or voluntary organization, 61.6% communicated with the organization face-to-face, 51.1% through email lists and 34.2% through the organization’s website. Table 5 also shows that 18.9% were contacted through mailings, 20% through leaflets and 27.4% through posters. Table 5. Mobilized through political/voluntary organizations Face-to-face 61.6% Email list(s) 51.1% Website 34.2% Mailings 18.9% Leaflets 20.0% Posters 27.4% Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 85Face-to-face contact was also the main
./english/176.txt:110:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 86Associations between communication methods What becomes apparent from this initial breakdown of results is that in each mobilization context respondents used a wide range of communication methods sin order to mobilize for the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. This raises interesting questions about the relationships between these different communication methods. Is face-to-face communication in one context associated with face-to-face contact in another? Is the use of the email negatively associated with face-to-face communication or the use of other media? In order to examine this interplay, I checked for statistically significant associations between the different communication methods used both within and across the various mobilization contexts.2 The crosstabulations produced only weak associations between the different communication media; some of them were hardly surprising, whereas others were quite unexpected and, therefore, interpreted with caution. Within the political or voluntary organizations’ mobilization context, a weak association was discovered between respondents using email lists and respondents getting information from the website of the organization. In addition, a stronger relationship was recorded between respondents being informed through leaflets and through posters. As for respondents mobilized by friends or relatives, a weak association was found between the use of email and use of the telephone. In addition, respondents using email to communicate with friends or relatives also used email to communicate with the workplace/university in order to mobilize for the European Social Forum. Furthermore, within the workplace/university mobilization context weak associations were recorded among almost all of the means of communication. In that respect, face-to-face contact is related with the use of email, the telephone as well as leaflets/posters. Apart from face-to-face communication, the use of email is also related with the use of the telephone and the web. Finally, the use of the web is also associated with the use of the telephone, as well as with leaflets/posters. Therefore, the workplace/university seems to constitute a much denser communicative universe than the contexts of friends and relatives or political and voluntary organizations. A possible interpretation of these results points to the nature of the workplace/university as a site of mobilization. In that respect, the workplace/university constitutes a prime location of daily face-to-face contact as, contrary to other contexts, it is a setting where individuals spend a significant part of their day. This may explain why face-to-face contact is by far the main mode of communication used by the respondents mobilized through this context. What is more, the need to perform certain work-related tasks daily, as well as the availability of communication media and resources, may indicate that work Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 87or university colleagues are regularly in
./english/176.txt:118:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 88with an organization. These represent 26.5% of the overall number of respondents mobilized by an organization face-to-face. The French represent 21.4% and the Italian 12.8%. A weak association was also discovered between the respondents’ age and their use of a political or voluntary organization’s email list. In that respect, 41.2% of the respondents who were mobilized through an organization’s email list was between 21 and 30 years old. This is hardly a surprise as this age category represents nearly 50% of the total sample. Thus, even though this percent is high, it is nonetheless not as significant within this age category, as respondents mobilized through an organization’s email list account for only 31.5% of the people between 21 and 30. On the contrary, more than half of the respondents over 40 years old were mobilized through an organization’s email list. The figures for each age category are as follows: 65.2% for the 41-50 category, 73.3% for the 51-60 and 61.1% for the respondents older than 60. Age is also associated, albeit weakly, with mobilization through an organization’s website. The patterns are nearly the same as with mobilization through email lists described previously. Thus, 33.8% of the respondents mobilized through an organization’s website belong to the 21 - 30 age category, but represent only 17.3% of that category. However, figures are much higher for the older respondents as 43.5% of 41 - 50 years old and 46.7% of the 51 - 60 age categories were mobilized through an organization’s website. Again, we can compare these figures with face-to-face contact, as age has a weak association with mobilization through face-to-face communication with friends or relatives. In that respect, 59.1% of the respondents belonging to 21 - 30 category, as well as 40% of the 31 - 40 and 55% of the younger than 20 years old were mobilized through face-to-face communication with friends and relatives. Figures are much lower for the older respondents, as only 13% of the 41 - 50, 33.3% of the 51 – 60 and 22.2% of the over 60 were mobilized through face-to-face contact with friends and relatives. Users versus Non-Users of the Internet In order to compare users with non-users of the internet, a new variable was constructed by grouping together respondents who have used an internet application (email, web or email lists) in any mobilization context and controlling for differences from respondents who have not used the Internet at all. Overall, 88 respondents have not used the internet in their mobilization for the 2003 European Social Forum, representing 34.2% of the sample, while 169 have, accounting for 65.8% of the sample. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 89The crosstabulations with the
./english/176.txt:124:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 90Discussion of Results and Conclusions What the preceding analysis effectively demonstrated is that within every mobilization context a wide range of media and modes of communication have been used in order to bolster participation in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the different modes of communication, their interplay and articulation. Thus, instead of making simplistic distinctions and comparisons between these different modes, it is worth examining in greater detail their relationships and the ways in which one influences another. The existence of statistically significant associations between different types of communication both within and across different mobilization contexts constitutes a useful starting point. The inspection of possible associations revealed some expected and some counter-intuitive results. For instance, the fact that respondents mobilized through the email lists of political or voluntary organizations were also mobilized through the organization’s website is hardly surprising. The same can be said for the relationship between the use of email in the workplace/university and the use of email to communicate with friends and relatives. However, the finding that mobilization through news websites has a weak association only with newspapers is quite unexpected, as one would anticipate that this type of mobilization would relate to mobilization through at least one internet application (email, email lists, and especially websites) in any of the other three mobilization contexts (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university). This analysis further revealed that within the workplace/university mobilization context the use of one mode of communication is associated, albeit weakly, with nearly every other mode. Therefore, the workplace/university seems to be a very tight communicative realm, contrary to other contexts such as political or voluntary organizations and friends or relatives. As it was already mentioned, this can be attributed to the nature of the workplace/university as a mobilization context which constitutes a prime location of face-to-face contact as it is a site where individuals spend a significant part of their day. In addition, the use and availability of different communication media, necessary for the accomplishment of work- or study-related tasks, may also facilitate other activities, such as mobilizing for the European Social Forum. This effectively shows that the interplay between different means and modes of communication may be affected by the mobilization context where their use is located or with which they are associated. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 91The initial breakdown of results further
./english/176.txt:128:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 92In terms of social movement research, this also highlights the necessity to distinguish between the different internet applications and examine their effects separately, as they favor different modes of communication. Thus, email tends to foster interpersonal communication, while the web adheres more to a broadcast model of communication. Email lists fall somewhere in-between, facilitating the narrowcasting of messages and information. Therefore, bundling up all these applications under the category ‘Internet’ cannot adequately capture the role of new communication technologies in social movement activity. Another major inference provided by this study concerns the possible relationship between internet use and the respondents’ political experience or degree of involvement in politics. The basis for this assumption is supplied by the associations between internet use and the respondents’ age, as well as the context through which they were mobilized. In that respect, the survey results showed that older participants tend more than the younger ones to be mobilized through the email lists or websites of political or voluntary organizations. On the other hand, younger participants tend to be mobilized more through face-to-face contact with friends or relatives. To an extent, this seems as a counter-intuitive result. It can however be explained, if we consider that older activists may refrain from participating in the day-to-day meetings of the political or voluntary organizations they belong to, but still choose to stay in touch and follow the latest news through email lists and the organizations’ websites. For younger activists, on the contrary, participation in a social movement may constitute an opportunity for or be a result of face-to-face socialization with friends and relatives. The interpretation of these results would be aided significantly, if information about the respondents’ political experience and prior participation in the ‘alter-globalization’ or other movements was available. For instance, a study of participants in the anti-war demonstration of the 15th of February 2003 both in Europe and in the USA has revealed that more experienced activists tended to get their political information online, contrary to first-time demonstrators (Bennett, Givens and Willnat 2004, page numbers not available). In my study, even though the respondents’ age can be considered as an indication of their political experience, it is far from conclusive. To address this gap, more information about the political experience of the respondents is being sought through a follow-up study to the 2003 survey. As for the relationship between internet use and mobilization context, the results have revealed that respondents who have used at least one internet application in any mobilization context tend to be mobilized more through political or voluntary organizations than non-users of the internet. On the other hand, respondents who Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 93were mobilized by face-to-face contact in
./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/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/276.txt:3:EXPLORING THE RELEVANCE OF CRITICAL REALISM FOR SOCIAL MOVEMENT RESEARCH
./english/276.txt:43:2: Exploring the Relevance of Critical Realism for Social Movement Research
./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/284.txt:31:The series of critiques from outside and from within –that are not developed here- were followed by an intense moment of reflexivity, an attempt to make the ethnographer visible and positioned in the dialogical process of cultural encounters. The experimental excitement in writing -exploring new forms of authority, alternative narratives, and discursive procedures- received the name of “new poetics”. Kathleen Steward’s ethnography on the “other America” would be a perfect example of these new possibilities of representation. The title of her book -A Space on the Side of the Road –refers to the powerful concept of the gap between the signifier and the signified (1996: 5). The reclaiming of that space avoids the essentializing of local narratives –the every day life in W. Virginia- and allows a practical revision of the theory of culture, acknowledging culture as something difficult to grasp, as a “tense, contradictory, dialectical, dialogic, texted, textured, both practical and imaginary [process]” (1996:5).
./english/284.txt:63:Anthropology, in trying to overcome Said’s condemnation to failure in its endeavor of representation through the reflexive process, is offering us an important contribution for engaging with one aspect of the actualité. Concretely, Anthropology today provides both analytical and everyday-life tools to work with current global social movements. Exploring reflexivity in three anthropological texts I hope to show how some of their reflexive insights are building up the possibility of a deeper intellectual and political commitment with global resistance/counter power initiatives. This paper explores the reflexive contributions by “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak, 88), “Carne, Carnavales, and Carnivalesque” (Limón, 1994) and “Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference” (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997). The three of them are instantiating practices of representation that embrace listening to the subaltern, appreciate the resistance embedded in Mexican jokes, and realize the consequences of global interconnectedness for the ethnographer. I will try to briefly comment on the interesting affinity that could be traced among these developments in reflexivity and the current debates within some of the global justice movements [1].
./english/299.txt:157:This is precisely what we would like to continue exploring. In any case, we donπt know if this tendency towards the ≥dissolution≤ of the traces of asymmetry ≠ of sex, social origin, race, ethnicity, age, body standards and sexual identity ≠ is dominant. Evidently it coexists with others that value the fantasies of domination and submission or that are inspired in hierarchies of sex, race and origin.
./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/313.txt:57:Concerning the Social Forums process specifically the question start to be faced appearing new subjects. Concretely, there is active the Social Forums (SF) Memory working group depending on the World social forum International committee. A global space to coordinate and facilitate the Social Forums archive and systematize initiatives and to establish a protocol of memory coming from each forum. It had developed a rich process of “consulta”/survey to define the V WSF main themes of the program, exploring on the participant methodologist to the organization of the Forum. And its recent European partner, the European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the European Social Forum (ESF) process, that it is a working group depending on the European ESF assembly. There is also the work developed to systematize the contents of debates and seminars at the Paris ESF 2003 and the Florence one. Unfortunately the London ESF organizational system doesn’t allows to have many expectative on the documenting of the London ESF by the UK organisers committee and the ESF office.
./english/372.txt:49:At any rate the Saint Simonians at any rate actively sought to recruit artists for their various ventures, salons, and utopian communities; though they quickly ran into difficulties because so many within "avant garde" artistic circles preferred the more anarchistic Fourierists, and later, one or another branch of outright anarchists. Actually, the number of 19th century artists with anarchist sympathies is quite staggering, ranging from Pissaro to Tolstoy or Oscar Wilde, not to mention almost all early 20th century artists who later became Communists, from Malevich to Picasso. Rather than a political vanguard leading the way to a future society, radical artists almost invariably saw themselves as exploring new and less alienated modes of life. The really significant development in the 19th century was less to idea of a vanguard than that of Bohemia (a term first coined by Balzac in 1838): marginal communities living in more or less voluntary poverty, seeing themselves as dedicated to the pursuit of creative, unalienated forms of experience, united by a profound hatred of bourgeois life and everything it stood for. Ideologically, they were about equally likely to be proponents of "art for art's sake" or social revolutionaries. Contemporary theorists are actually quite divided over how to evaluate their larger significance. Pierre Bourdieu for example insisted that the promulgation of the idea of "art for art's sake", far from being depoliticizing, should be considered a significant accomplishment, as was any which managed to establish the autonomy of one particular field of human endeavor from the logic of the market. Colin Campbell on the other hand argues that insofar as bohemians actually were an avant garde, they were really the vanguard of the market itself, or more precisely, of consumerism: their actual social function, much though they would have loathed to admit it, was to explore new forms of pleasure or aesthetic territory which could be commoditized in the next generation. (One might call this the Tom Franks version of history.) Campbell also echoes common wisdom that bohemia was almost exclusively inhabited by the children of the bourgeoisie, who had--temporarily, at least--rejecting their families' money and privilege; and who, if they did not die young of dissipation, were likely to end up back on the board of father's company. This is a claim that has been repeated so often about activists and revolutionaries over the years that it makes me, at least, immediately wary: in fact, I strongly suspect that bohemian circles emerged from the same sort of social conjuncture as most current activist circles, and historically, most vanguardist revolutionary parties as well: a kind of meeting between certain elements of (intentionally) downwardly mobile professional classes, in broad rejection of bourgeois values, and upwardly mobile children of the working class. Though such suspicions can only be confirmed by historical investigation.
./english/372.txt:51:In the 19th century idea of the political vanguard was used very widely and very loosely for anyone seen as exploring the path to a future, free society. Radical newspapers for example often called themselves "the Avant Garde". It was Marx though who began to significantly change the idea by introducing the notion that the proletariat were the true revolutionary class--he didn't actually use the term "vanguard" in his own writing--because they were the one that was the most oppressed, or as he put it "negated" by capitalism, and therefore had the least to lose by its abolition. In doing so, he ruled out the possibilities that less alienated enclaves, whether of artists or the sort of artisans and independent producers who tended to form the backbone of anarchism, had anything significant to offer. The results we all know. The idea of a vanguard party to dedicated to both organizing and providing an intellectual project for that most-oppressed class chosen as the agent of history, but also, actually sparking the revolution through their willingness to employ violence, was first outlined by Lenin in 1902 in What Is to Be Done?; it has echoed endlessly, to the point where the SDS in the late '60s could end up locked in furious debates over whether the Black Panther Party should be considered the vanguard of The Movement as the leaders of its most oppressed element. All this in turn had a curious effect on the artistic avant garde who increasingly started to organize themselves like vanguard parties, beginning with the Dadaists, Futurists, publishing their own manifestos, communiquŽs, purging one another, and otherwise making themselves (sometimes quite intentional) parodies of revolutionary sects. (Note however that these groups always defined themselves, like anarchists, by a certain form of practice rather than after some heroic founder.) The ultimate fusion came with the Surrealists and then finally the Situationist International, which on the one hand was the most systematic in trying to develop a theory of revolutionary action according to the spirit of Bohemia, thinking about what it might actually mean to destroy the boundaries between art and life, but at the same time, in its own internal organization, displayed a kind of insane sectarianism full of so many splits, purges, and bitter denunciations that Guy Debord finally remarked that the only logical conclusion was for the International to be finally reduced to two members, one of whom would purge the other and then commit suicide. (Which is actually not too far from what actually ended up happening.)
./english/395.txt:311:Exploring Whitaker’s metaphor a little further, we also need to recognise that no space that
./english/491.txt:4:The author analyses the WSF, exploring three themes he considers being fundamental to the Forum process continuity: the choice between the Forum as a space or as a movement; the importance of the activities organization at the Forum’s meetings; and the role of the entourage that organizes the Forum’s events.
./english/553.txt:86:On this basis the Commission identifies ASEAN, South Korea and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela) as priority targets, along with India, Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The EU has already started free trade agreement (FTA) talks with the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises six Arabian Peninsula countries around Saudi Arabia. Its FTA negotiations with Mercosur, suspended since 2005 over disagreements on agriculture, industrial goods, investment and services, are set to resume. Brussels and New Delhi are also exploring the possibility of starting FTA talks. The EU has not called for an FTA with China, in spite of its large and growing market. China is seen at one and the same time as a threat, an opportunity and a prospective global partner, and the EU has further elaborated its trade and investment policy with China in a new communication published on 24 October 2006.[3]