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./english/36.txt:12:• After the London ESF the ESF process seemed to be ineffective, unreliable and antidemocratic.

./english/36.txt:20:6. The new form of the ESF program proved to be very productive. The abolition of plennaries facilitated the preparation of the ESF and at the same time prevented the creation of false impressions about the “representation” of the movement. Furthermore, in some cases we achieved very good mergers (p.e. the seminars of Euromarches, and the “Public services pool”) that included almost all the organizations that work on a specific issue. On the other hand, we couldn’t avoid repetitions and “one organization’s propaganda” seminars. We should all work harder to create more inclusive and better prepared seminars To achieve this goal it is vital to reduce the number of seminars (I think that 170 seminars are enough) and to use European Preparatory Assemblies as opportunities to work also on the content of ESF and not just on its structure. European networks should work in a collective way all the time and not just few weeks before the ESF. In addition to that, we really need a permanent European web site that could facilitate not only voluntary merger but also the centralized merger process elaborated by the European program group. After working for some months on the ESF program, I arrived to the conclusion that it will take many many years before central merger process stopped to be necessary.

./english/36.txt:23:9. The ESF would have never taken place without the active participation of all the volunteers who worked hard before and during the event. All these people worked more than they were supposed to do. It is also very important to underline the fact that it was the first time in recent years that people who are not members of any organization worked on the organization of a mobilization. If the process had not been continuously blocked the participation of such kind of people would have been even bigger.

./english/40.txt:22:The search comes out of practical needs, felt after taking decentralisation to its limits. For Yannis Almpanis, the human ‘hub’ at the centre of the process of merging the hundreds of seminar proposals into a manageable list, the need is for ‘more open collective decision making with clear rules to overcome the problem of informal power’. For example, techno-political tools, using the web as a means of interactive communication and collaborative work, are playing an increasing role in the development of the ESF. They are vital to extending decision-making beyond those who can afford the airfares and the time to attend organising meetings – a recurring source of informal power.

./english/40.txt:24:For the next ESF, the talk is of holding it somewhere like Brussels and organising it on a Europe-wide basis, rather than it being nationally hosted as in the past. As indicated by the Eurotopia survey discussed on the following pages, there are still many tensions and disagreements and very uneven growth. How the social forum process responds to these challenges will determine whether it can build something of lasting influence on the foundations laid in its first four years.

./english/41.txt:13:In the evening, I helped the process by consecutively interpreting from the German to the English (that was interpreted onwards by relay by Babels) for Hermann Hoffmann from the “Alliance for Social Justice”, Thuringia on the development of his initiative and then the terrible calamity for Germany of the reduction of unemployment benefits for those unemployed for more than a year (Hartz IV); on these questions of precariousness and in order to be included in the new network, contact Michel Rousseau (Euromarches)

./english/41.txt:41:5. As I saw it, left parties (from the EL, by way the Communist Parties to the SWP/Respect) have found their place as movements at the ESF yet more effectively than at previous occasions. This is good for the process of self-change of these parties, in order to make them more democratic, and also for the movements, because the parties tend to be highly motivated and active.

./english/41.txt:43:7. As I said, I would intensify the work on the merger process, so that really all organisations/activists working on similar issues get to make contact before and at the ESF; such meetings should take place at the EPA and also at as many other events as possible (for instance, the forthcoming Attac summer universities/academies); then I would keep the meetings smaller, so that not always only the same “big shots” get to speak, but also young/female activists (or from far-away countries) get their say, and can be placed on mailing lists.

./english/41.txt:44:8. WE must continue the networking, the meetings, the building of trust, if we do not want the process to fail and if we really want to resist neoliberalism and build another, more human, more social Europe.

./english/41.txt:59:Le soir, j’ai aidé à encourager le processus en interprétant de l’Allemand vers l’Anglais (ce qui était alors interprété plus loin par le relais de Babels) pour Hermann Hoffmann de l’ « Alliance pour la Justice sociale » de Thuringe sur le développement de son initiative et après sur la terrible calamité pour l’Allemagne de la réduction des bénéfices au chômage pour ceux sans emploi pour plus d’un an (Hartz IV) ; sur ces questions de précarité et pour être inclus dans le nouveau réseau européen contre la précarité qui va se former, prière de contacter Michel Rousseau (Euromarches)

./english/41.txt:87:5) Comme je l’ai vu, les parties de Gauche (tout le spectre du PGE passant par les partis communistes à la SWP/Respect) ont encore mieux trouvé leur place en tant que mouvements qu’aux FSE précédents. Ceci est bon pour le processus de changement autonome de ces partis, pour les rendre plus démocratiques, et aussi pour les mouvements, car les partis tendent à être très motivés et actives.

./english/41.txt:89:7) Comme je l’ai dit, j’intensifierais le travail sur le processus de la combinaison de séminaires, pour que vraiment tous les organisations et activistes travaillant sur des sujets semblables arrivent à se contacter avant et lors du FSE ; de telles rencontres devraient se faire lors des APE et aussi lors d’autant d’autres événements que possibles (par exemples, les universités/académies avenir d’été d’Attac) ; alors j’essayerais de tenir les rencontres plus petites, pour que pas toujours les mêmes « grands animaux » arrivent à parler, mais aussi des jeunes/des femmes activistes (et ceux venant de pays très lointains) puissent dire quelque chose et puissent se placer sur des listes de courrier électroniques.

./english/41.txt:90:8) NOUS devons continuer avec les réseaux, les événements, la construction de confiance mutuelle, si nous voulons pas que le processus échoue et si nous voulons vraiment résister le néo(ultra)libéralisme et bâtir une autre Europe – plus humaine et plus sociale.

./english/44.txt:33:Babels’ interpreters are activists and their participation is based on Babels’ principles and militancy. Babels is not a cheap service provider and its interpreters and translators are not a mere linguistic decoration. They are committed political actresses and actors who take part in the Social Forum process, and who seek to open the Social Forum to new thoughts and proposals originating from countries whose languages have rarely been represented in past Forums.

./english/44.txt:40:At the 4th European Social Forum in Athens, there were no official languages. The Organizing Committee of The European Social Forum (http:www.athens.fse-esf.org/) has tried to mobilize people from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Babels has also made an effort to mobilize interpreters from this region. This is why it was possible to listen to interpretation into Hungarian, Romanian, Serb-Croatian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Turkish and Arabic, for instance. Babels-el, the group of Babels members in Greece, has also called on immigrants living in Greece to participate in the process. Interpreters were chosen based on linguistic criteria, their experience, but also their geographical location: we have tried to bring some volunteers from all over the world, so that the social forum process can continue in other countries.

./english/44.txt:47:Abandoning it is the only way to avoid aggravating the demographic deficit: it is vital to enabling the development of a democratic process to build another Europe.

./english/44.txt:48:The network has decided to hold a meeting towards the end of 2006 in Paris to discuss an initial meeting concerning this Charter of Principles for another Europe, to continue and to build on this process in order to provide a common tool showing that alternatives to neo-liberalism do indeed exist.

./english/44.txt:81:- To look at common ways of organising initiatives against the catastrophic role of the multinationals that usurp the life of millions of people in Latin America. In particular, in one discussion about the privatisation of water, we drew attention to the fact that most of the companies involved are European, a fact that demands that European movements resist such processes;

./english/44.txt:82:- To find common processes of solidarity with the movements and the cities and towns of Colombia that are being repressed by the militarist government of Uribe which refuses to find a political solution to the social and armed conflict, and to support the processes of the Permanent Tribunal of the Towns so as to allow it to judge the policies of the multinationals and their degree of impunity in Colombia

./english/44.txt:85:- To denounce once again the embargo against Cuba and to express our solidarity with the cities and towns of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia and with all the processes of liberation that develop in the cities and towns of Latin America and the Caribbean;

./english/44.txt:208:FOR A FAIR PROCESS IN GREECE

./english/44.txt:209:An appeal process regarding the “17th November” opens on the 2nd December in Athens. The alleged members of this leftist Greek organisation are accused of having committed, since the end of the junta, a series of political crimes and attacks. At the time of the Olympic Games in Athens, the Greek authorities engaged in a dismantling this group, a process that resulted in arrests and subsequently legal proceedings conducted in a scandalous manner.

./english/44.txt:210:The initial process was a complete failure resulting in extremely heavy sentences for the accused who claimed their innocence. Indeed, up to 21 of the accused were given life sentences.

./english/44.txt:211:The rights of the defence and the presumption of innocence must be fully respected during the appeal process. This process, along with the other remaining cases, must be carried out fairly in front of regular judiciary.

./english/45.txt:58:Mental health is highly related to the social background of a person. Unequal social, sexual, economic power relations are very strong factors in causing psychological and psychiatric problems. For example violence, power abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, traumatising events, loss of job, loss of friends, drug abuse etc. are all social circumstances which can lead to an outburst of psychic problems. Coping with these problems is a very personal process.

./english/45.txt:210:It is a well known fact that the patients social background is highly determining the mental state of health. For example child abuse, sexual abuse, traumatising events, loss of job or loss of friends, drug abuse etc. are all social circumstances which can lead to an outburst of psychic problems. Coping with these problems is a very personal process.

./english/45.txt:231:Clientparticipation means there should always be time to communicate with patients, to give patients the opportunity to join the process of establishing recovery, and to be treated as equal human being who has something to say about his own life. Keywords are Empowerment, Equality and Participation to Recovery.

./english/46.txt:8:We are participating since the beginning in the construction process of all Social Forums and we are present at the ESF of Athens to build democratic, hence lay alternatives for a different Europe.

./english/46.txt:10:Considering the present challenges facing the Social Forums, the Women's Assembly wishes to stress once again that women should not serve as an alibi for any kind of manipulations. We reject political alliances that are concluded to the detriment of women and which establish priorities for our struggles, putting feminist demands behind anti-racist and anti-war demands. Such processes divide the anti-liberal forces and undermine the strength of the Social Forums. Because women's rights are universal, feminists are equally involved in the fight against racism and against war/

./english/47.txt:56:* Gender equality, a basic value for the process of construction of a different Europe

./english/54.txt:197:process it could be possible to break the logjam.

./english/54.txt:239:were new to ³the ESF process², but this made for some electrifying

./english/54.txt:375:process are too paralysed by the prospect of office to organise such a

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

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

./english/62.txt:58:There are many ways in which we are creating/prefiguring alternatives as we resist, in the ways we live, the ways we consume, the culture we produce, the relationships we create. These aspects of social movement activity is now widely recognised, discussed and systematised. I want to argue that there is a further, more methodological aspect to the ways we pre-figure another world, a new kind of society and economy. I want to argue that in the very ways in which we organise, the forms of co-ordination we are inventing as we try to expand,deepen, communicate and act on our knowledge, we are nurturing the seeds of a new means of social co-ordination. This is less recognised, reflected upon and discussed. Yet the history of recent social movements can be understood as the development or emergence - or at least an important contribution to such a development - of new networked, horizontal, `de-centred’ forms of co-ordination. They are forms of co-ordination which on the one hand start from a recognition of mutual interdependance, of no centre of superior authority, knowledge or power. But which on the other are based on a desire to be effective actors bringing about change in a purposeful way. I’m thinking here of a history which spans the radical, direct democracy of the movements of 1968 through the networking, consciousness raising processes of the womens liberation movement, to the alter-globalisation movement with its networks of global coordination and flows of knowledge as well as its self-conscious use and develoment of the tools of information technology. Though these movements are distinct in many different ways, on thing they have in common is that they developed their ways of organising partly in order to create means of expressing and sharing new knowledge as a necessary condition for being effective transformative subjects. Throughout these nearly 40 years several generations have been We have been searching and experimenting with non-heirarchical, democratic ways of arriving at a comon purpose and a common understanding as a basis of effective action.

./english/62.txt:60:I conclude these notes – and they are just notes in need of further elaboration - by suggesting that one of the purposes of activist researchers must be to strengthen the self-consciousnes of the movements about the importance of what they are inventing in terms of means of organisation and co-ordination and to stimulate and create spaces, resources and tools of relefection on this creative but messy process.

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

./english/62.txt:99:1) Le posizioni sociologiche che hanno caratterizzato il primo incontro a cui ho partecipato (in cui Donatella della Porta ha introdotto ed esposto il suo lavoro e la struttura del movimento altermondialista), hanno ruotato attorno all’idea centrale di movimento democratico. Il movimento sociale oggetto di studio, il cosiddetto movimento altermondialista, è stato caratterizzato da tutti gli studiosi li presenti (che sposavano prospettive anche fortemente differenti) come movimento portatore di democrazia e riflessivamente democratico (ovvero coerente nei mezzi e nei fini). Attorno a questa idea centrale ho sviluppato il mio breve intervento, che ha preso la forma di un consiglio o di un avvertimento. Ho sottolineato la necessità di cambiare la prospettiva dalla quale guardare il processo sociale mondiale, per evitare un “illusione democratica” nefasta che si può rivelare poco fertile e paradossalmente ideologica, espressa sostanzialmente da un approccio analitico che rivendica la propria neutralità scientifica di fronte all’oggetto di studio. Ecco in estrema sintesi il ragionamento.

./english/62.txt:101:E’ chiaro che per sposare un approccio che si focalizzi sulle realtà e i processi non democratici interni ed esterni al movimento c’è bisogno necessariamente di un avanzamento nella delucidazione di ciò che si chiama Democrazia e sul suo aggettivo, che, da grande contenitore omnicomprensivo in cui hanno cittadinanza anche proposte democratiche opposte tra loro (le richieste di una democrazia popolare e diretta e quelle di una riforma dei grandi istituti sopranazionali come la Banca mondiale, la democrazia partecipata e la struttura democratica legata al meccanismo elitista d’autocooptazione dei partiti politici o il semplice voto politico a carattere nazionale), deve diventare una realtà dai confini più ristretti e chiari. Uno strumento concettuale critico e d’analisi allo stesso tempo. Guardare in faccia il lato oscuro del movimento può risultare così l’unico specchio in cui i ricercatori che vi sono impegnati smascherino anche il proprio lato oscuro. Sviluppare un nuovo criticismo come approccio all’analisi significa sposare una prospettiva scientificamente adeguata ad una posizione d’impegno civile interna al movimento. Comprendo che ciò possa creare enormi problemi a livello accademico, sempre geloso della propria distanza e neutralità sterilizzata e laboratoriale, ma i professori presenti all’incontro possono comprendere benissimo i limiti che questa stessa posizione si porta in seno nello studio di questo fenomeno sociale. Limiti che probabilmente hanno mosso il coraggio che li ha portati ad incontrarsi in un luogo di movimento, unendosi alla sensibilità politica che li ha portati a scegliere di studiare il movimento come proprio oggetto d’interesse, ritrovandosi ad essere soggetto attivo di proposte interne al movimento.

./english/62.txt:102:2) Il secondo intervento l’ho focalizzato sull’esperienza che il gruppo DemopraXXIs sta facendo nella città di Roma. DemopraXIIs, le pratiche democratiche del XXI° secolo, è un gruppo costituito per la maggior parte da dottorandi in filosofia politica che si propone di analizzare, sviluppare l’attenzione e partecipare ai processi democratici del secolo appena iniziato. Il suo orizzonte è la costituzione di una rivista on line che possa diventare negli anni un polo di discussione usato come ponte tra l’Università e i movimenti sociali portatori del germe democratico presente nell’intera società mondiale. Ma DemopraXXIs è un work in progress non solo perché è consapevole che l’obbiettivo della rivista sia lontano, difficile e da costruire pazientemente, ma anche perché si è proposto come laboratorio che permetta di chiarire in corsa il minimo comune denominatore dei soggetti che lo costituiscono. Il gruppo infatti si regge sul principio pluralista sia a livello politico che a livello dei riferimenti teorici: Marx, Castoriadis, La scuola di Francoforte, il movimento anarchico(etc), il pensiero critico, Foucault, sono diverse prospettive d’orientamento che si vogliono confrontare tra loro in vista dell’azione e della riflessione comune.

./english/156.txt:4:Il modo in cui immaginiamo questa rete, che è soltanto agli inizi, è in fondo piuttosto simile al modo in cui immaginiamo, o, per lo meno, io immagino, il processo di costruzione dello spazio europeo che vogliamo. Evidentemente quello che sta all’origine della scommessa che abbiamo fatto con la costituzione della rete di “Transform Italia”, e che è un assunto condiviso dagli interlocutori che abbiamo chiamato oggi a discutere e confrontarsi, è che l’orizzonte europeo sia in qualche modo l’orizzonte ineludibile al cui interno ripensare sia l’azione sia le categorie fondamentali di una sinistra possibile.

./english/156.txt:5:C’è oggi, a mio giudizio, almeno in Italia, un clima nettamente più favorevole ad un ragionamento aperto, innovativo sui temi dell’Europa. Io credo che in buona parte ci siamo lasciati alle spalle una stagione in cui il processo di integrazione europea è stato sostanzialmente avversato da un punto di vista reattivo, di mera resistenza, con una continua riproduzione di nostalgie e critiche che puntavano alla riproposizione dell’orizzonte nazionale come orizzonte, in qualche modo, da difendere rispetto ad un’integrazione, che si vedeva interamente nel segno del neo-liberismo.

./english/156.txt:8:C’è poi Toni Negri che, per esempio, all’inizio degli anni Novanta, ha pubblicato un volume, oggi forse più letto di quanto non sia stato letto all’epoca, sul potere costituente, che ha in qualche modo individuato nello scollamento progressivo tra il terreno della costituzione e l’istanza costituente, che continuamente i movimenti ripropongono, un carattere peculiare del nostro tempo. E ci ha così consegnato concetti e strumenti che ci permettono di confrontarci in modo nuovo, produttivo, con lo stesso processo costituzionale che oggi è aperto in Europa.

./english/156.txt:9:Ma io credo che il contributo di Toni, e per molti aspetti anche quello di Etienne Balibar, sia stato importante anche per un’altra ragione. Perché ha mostrato come – anche prima che conoscessimo, dopo l’ottantanove, l’accelerazione del processo di integrazione dell’Unione europea – lo spazio europeo sia stato immaginato, materialmente costruito, dalle lotte sociali, dai desideri dei soggetti sfruttati, dalle pratiche di cooperazione e di comunicazione che fanno la ricchezza materiale del tessuto produttivo della nostra società. Allora, anche da questo punto di vista, l’Europa che abbiamo di fronte è uno spazio estremamente complesso, estremamente articolato. Lo è anche dal punto di vista istituzionale, ed è per questo che dobbiamo guardare con occhi particolarmente attenti a quello che sta avvenendo dentro le stesse sedi istituzionali dell’Unione europea. Perché nel processo costituzionale europeo si scontrano una tensione verso l’innovazione e una resistenza delle tradizioni nazionali che per gli stessi movimenti sociali può essere un terreno di azione. È evidente che oggi il processo costituzionale europeo registra un’affermazione, un’egemonia di forze che rappresentano esattamente l’opposto della sostanza delle cose sperate da parte di coloro che sono all’interno di questa sala. Dunque, la nostra Europa non può che porsi altrove rispetto al processo costituzionale europeo, ma questo altrove non può che cercare a sua volta di interloquire e interferire con quello che avviene sul piano istituzionale. E io credo che uno degli obiettivi fondamentali dei movimenti della sinistra in Europa debba essere oggi quello di far in modo che il processo costituzionale non si chiuda, che si riapra continuamente, che dentro la riapertura continua del processo istituzionale si pongano le condizioni perché vengano rimesse in discussione quelle stesse fondamenta materiali dell’Europa che, fin da principio, erano state in qualche modo assunte come presupposto del processo costituzionale in atto. E mi riferisco al segno profondamente neo-liberale dell’integrazione economica, ma mi riferisco anche a quelle politiche di controllo e di governo dei confini dell’Unione europea che hanno tentato di fare dello spazio di Schengen una fortezza, che hanno cercato di tenere fuori dello spazio di Schengen le migliaia e migliaia di donne e di uomini che quotidianamente sfidano questi confini e, spesso, pagando un prezzo molto alto, riescono a varcarli.

./english/156.txt:12:Credo sia estremamente interessante da questo punto di vista e anche coraggioso il tentativo che è stato fatto da Rifondazione di investire nella costruzione di un soggetto politico nuovo della Sinistra Europea. E Fausto Bertinotti ha sicuramente il merito di aver voluto e di avere sostenuto questo processo. Evidentemente, questo processo è appunto soltanto agli inizi. Si sbaglierebbe, a mio giudizio, a pensare di aver già raggiunto l’obiettivo fondamentale. Si sbaglierebbe a pensare il Partito della Sinistra Europea come la soggettività politica radicale che può dare una risposta ai problemi che l’azione dei movimenti quotidianamente propone. C’è ancora molta strada da fare. Siamo in presenza di contraddizioni, di ambiguità, di difficoltà che gravano su questo processo. In alcuni Paesi europei più che in altri. Più in generale, io credo che ripensare la politica della sinistra in Europa debba fondamentalmente significare accettare la sfida di spiazzare continuamente gli schieramenti dati, debba significare un rifiuto testardo di accettare quella che è la cartografia esistente della politica europea. Io penso che sarebbe profondamente errato adagiarsi all’interno di una comprensione della cartografia politica europea che assegna a noi, soggetti radicali, il ruolo di coscienze critiche dell’Europa, e magari della sinistra moderata europea, dentro uno schema di riproposizione dell’esistenza di due sinistre in Europa come elemento, in qualche misura destinale.

./english/161.txt:121:laughing). This is all part of a simultaneous process of reflection and (re-)invention,

./english/162.txt:38:What are the effects of the crisis as it stands today? One can draw a few insights from recent developments in Argentina. In the late 1990s the Argentine state, under pressure from the IMF, desperately attempted to maintain the value of the peso with respect to the dollar, and more broadly, with respect to the standard of prosperity represented by the currencies of ¥ € $. A series of structural adjustments were supposed to improve the economy's health, and insure the continuing parity of the peso and the dollar; but their effect was to exclude increasing numbers of Argentines from access to employment, basic services, food, and finally even to their money, when bank withdrawals were frozen in late November 2001. Thus the state's maintenance of the peso's exchange value, ensuring the integration of the country's elite to the world economy, no longer permitted any use value on the local level. Resistance now became a question of sheer survival, and some Argentines spoke of a crisis in the very process of civilization: "The new state project implies, in the short term, an abrupt cut-off... of the systems of social reproduction: the state gradually detaches itself from the populations and the territories; and finally, from social cohesion itself." (11) But this detachment only gives the state the power of an empty affirmation, an entirely formal language of exchange, which is valid in theory but not in fact. And the void calls out either for a democratic invention, or for an authoritarian solution.

./english/162.txt:43:Just one more thing. I do not want to accord any privilege, in what follows, to that supposedly more "advanced" fraction of the world population which is so deeply involved with electronic networks. I think the opposition between the "Net" and "Self" – between a modernizing process that enforces our abstraction from historical ad cultural traditions, or failing that, determines a desperate and regressive retreat to the fixations of local identity – is simply false. (12) More interesting is the divide between the possessive individualism of the flexible personality, and a concern for human coexistence. As we saw above, the movement of movements found one of its beginnings in a concept of solidarity arising from the Zapatista struggles, which have fundamentally to do with questions of land. But the meaning of these survival struggles of the Mayan peoples could only reach the subjects of the developed world through the Internet, where the commodification of cultural and scientific knowledge is at stake. Here the essential struggle is to overtake and dissolve the language of ¥ € $, not through a return to the closed, bureaucratic frameworks of the Keynesian state, but instead through the political development of new principles of exchange and reciprocity. Thus this fourth field of resistance, with touches closely on human language but also on technical development, seems destined to furnish elements of articulation for other struggles, in a shared search for alternatives to the systemic crisis.

./english/162.txt:60:In this sense one could say that, just like the projects of commons-based peer production, these mobilizations begin and end with the fabrication of publicly available texts. For example, the People's Summit in Quebec City in April 2001 began long in advance, with many different studies of the consequences to be expected from the future agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. These studies led to the drafting of a remarkable document, "Alternatives for the Americas," which is a counter-treaty of great precision, composed through a process of knowledge exchange and political coordination on the scale of the American hemisphere. (17) It's also true that as a direct consequence of the massive demonstration that took place during the summit, the official working draft of the FTAA treaty was made public for the first time; until then it had not even been available to elected representatives of the American peoples, but only to executive negotiating teams (and scores of corporate "advisers"). In this way the counter-globalization movements constitute a public archive. And yet between the fundamental landmarks represented by these text publications, how many face-to-face debates took place, how many moments of singular or collective creation, how many acts of courage and solidarity? And how many emotions, images, memories, and desires were created and shared during the days of action in Quebec City?

./english/162.txt:70:Artistic practice has been one of the keys to the emergence of these "global social facts" – not least because artistic practice has also been one of the ways to hold off group violence, to open up a theatrical space that doesn't immediately become a war zone. This is obviously something that contemporary society risks forgetting, and that particular risk is reason enough in itself to go beyond the specialized, disciplinary definition of art, to try to relocate art within a much broader political economy. Before I do that, however, I want to draw one last group of ideas from Yochai Benkler. His paper closes with the problem of what he calls "threats to motivation." One of these comes from the failure to integrate the results of commons-based peer production into usable wholes which can make a project successful. Translated into political terms, this would mean the failure of the networked movements to change any tangible aspect of social life. That is a real threat to motivation; and I think it's vitally important to keep offering practical ideas and proposals about possible changes on all the scales of governance and existence, from the neighborhood to the world level, at every new demonstration. Benkler points to different strategies for putting together the results of common effort. These strategies range from self-organization of the integration process, to the delegation of this tricky point to a hierarchical structure or a commercial enterprise. Again the translation into our terms is obvious, and has become increasingly visible at events such as the European Social Forum, held in Florence in November of 2002. Just when the networked struggles get big enough to succeed, there is an enormous temptation to hand them over, in the name of efficiency, to a traditional politburo supported by professional media people. The problem with such expedient strategies is that they risk giving participants the impression that the voluntary production of political culture with their peers is being confiscated by somebody in a directive position. A fantastic example of this is the 30-thousand member ATTAC association in France, which, to the discontent of many members, is in fact a strictly controlled hierarchical organization at the national level. However, for ATTAC to have the social power it does, it has also had to produce a decentralized network of local committees, which operate very differently from the national bureau and regularly criticize or contradict its decisions. The tension you can see there in a very real situation, between collective process and effective decision, is at the heart of the democratic experiment today. You might even say that working though that kind of tension is the art of politics.

./english/162.txt:84:J18 in London was the most exquisitely planned and spontaneously realized artistic performance in which I have taken part, an awakening to new possibilities of political struggle that would be echoed throughout the world. Thousands converged in the morning at the Liverpool tube station in the City, receiving carnival masks in four different colors that encouraged the crowd to split into groups, outwitting the police by following different paths through the medieval street plan of Europe's largest financial district, then coming together again in front of the LIFFE building, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, which was the symbolic and real target of this protest against the global domination of speculative exchange. The choice of site was essential. Long years of effort by far-flung organizers and intellectuals had been required to understand and describe the ways in which capital had escaped its former national bounds, in order to redeploy itself transnationally in new oppressive systems; yet until the late 1990s, that knowledge remained largely abstract, floating in a deterritorialized space like the financial sphere itself. Here it was translated into tangible forms of embodied expression: transgressive dancing, defiant music, a verbal and visual poetics of resistance. For once, individual pleasure once did not appear as the negation, but rather as the accentuation of collective struggle, confronting financial abstractions which could be understood by the participants through the immediate experience of the stone-and-glass architecture, while the significance of each of their acts was multiplied by the knowledge that other, similar events were occurring all over the planet. Spontaneous invitations for passing traders to come join the party were combined with sudden attacks on private property, generating an unexpected, threatening, sympathetic and immensely confident image of revolt – a way to finally start answering the decades-old pleas for help from oppressed peoples in the South, while also responding to the unbearable social divisions that transnational capitalism imposes on countries like Britain. Of course this carnivalesque outburst was just one moment in a longer process of struggle, prepared by untold numbers of people under far harsher conditions. But the language of protest that emerged here nonetheless marked a turning point. It was the immediate inspiration for the larger and more complex confrontation in Seattle, six months later, which finally forced the messages of the global resistance movements through the frosty screens of the traditional media, opening the political crisis of global capitalism's legitimacy. A crisis which has not ceased to morph and mutate into the increasingly violent forms that it is taking today.

./english/172.txt:9:Important political changes have materialized in Latin Alemica that have shaken the neo-liberal offensive, and in some of them popular mobilizations managed to reverse the privatization process.

./english/172.txt:25:We call on all the European movements to open a large debate in order to decide all together new common steps during the next months within the framework of the ESF process.

./english/176.txt:10:This paper attempts to explore the role of the internet in the processes of organization and mobilization of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’, which is often characterized as an ‘internet-based movement’. It reports the findings of a survey undertaken in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum (ESF), which asked 257 respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the ESF (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university, news media), as well as the modes and methods of c72

./english/176.txt:17:This paper attempts to explore the role of the internet in the processes of organization and mobilization of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’, which is often characterized as an ‘internet-based movement’. It reports the findings of a survey undertaken in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum (ESF), which asked 257 respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the ESF (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university, news media), as well as the modes and methods of communication that were used in each context. The findings question the claims about the internet-based character of this movement, as face-to-face contact seems to be the predominant mode of communication. The survey also challenges the much discussed potential of the internet to mobilize politically indifferent or marginalized individuals, as a comparison between users and non-users of the internet revealed that users tended to be mobilized for the ESF through political or voluntary organizations.

./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:33: In terms of communication, the ‘role of media (who has access, who determines images?) and information-ecologies (who owns, produces, controls relevant data?)’ are of crucial importance for the diffusion of frames (Ibid, 13). However, again the focus of framing studies tends to rest on the mass media, neglecting the functions of more personal media, such as the telephone or email, in the process of framing.

./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:49:role of different communication media in processes of mobilization and participation. Constituting the first stage of my fieldwork, this study could then serve as the basis of a more in-depth inquiry into the claims about the role of the internet in the processes of organizing and identity formation, which were described earlier.

./english/176.txt:51: To an extent, this event is a reflection of the movement itself which can be better understood as a process facilitating the co-operation and networking of various actors (organizations, smaller groups and even individual activists) opposed to neoliberal globalization. And even though all social movements ‘tend to be fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries’ (van de Donk et al. 2004, 3), I would argue that this is even more the case for the ‘alter-globalization movement’, whose plurality and loose structure render it a fluid and mutable movement and hence a difficult object of study. In that respect, selecting a representative sample is an almost impossible task, as there is no exhaustive list of the groups or organizations involved in the movement. And even if there was, such a list would quickly become obsolete, as this movement is always in a state of flux, with existing actors withdrawing in order to focus on their specific campaigns and interests while new actors take their place. Thus, focusing on a specific event such as the European Social Forum, which is an expression of the movement as a networking and collaborative process, seemed to resolve the problems mentioned above.

./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/187.txt:6: 3. Process and stages

./english/187.txt:11: 6.2 Function and process of the Internal Consultation/ Description of the Internal Consultation process

./english/187.txt:22:The process of convergence among the multitude of Social Movements that are fighting for Another World: In a very short time span mass mobilizations have made possible the convergence of groups and networks working in a dispersed manner. In these newly created spaces of gathering, we have become aware of the importance and the complentarity of our social struggles, we have visualized common causes and enemies and we have discovered the system’s fragility, we have become aware of our strength.

./english/187.txt:39:With the goal of ensuring that the process of the European Social Consulta is as open, democratic and horizontal as possible, but always maintaining a very clear political framework and a spirit of respect toward all people, cultures and communities, we propose the following hallmarks to guide this process:

./english/187.txt:50:3. Process and stages

./english/187.txt:51:We propose that the process for the European Social Consulta be dvided into the following 4 parts:

./english/187.txt:53:Internal Consultation among collectives and social movements. The Internal Consultation consists of a process of diffusion and contact among movements and organizations through a system of questions that will spark a debate in order to help us develop an understanding of the various reactions, ideas, proposals and affinities toward the project. It will allow us to build this project together through a collective process, and will culminate with the First International Gathering where we will define the project’s subsequent stages.

./english/187.txt:54:Spaces of social debate: We will create local spaces of participation and discussion connected at the European level with as many people as possible. A multitude of dynamics might be useful for this: assemblies, seminars, gatherings, etc., around the questions, issues, objectives and with a methodology previously agreed upon through the Internal Consultation. From these spaces will emerge the critiques, analysis, proposals for transformation and the agreements that will be the starting points for the following stages. These spaces will be sustained and constitute teh nmost important part of the process.

./english/187.txt:58:Processes of Application: this involves moving forward in the application of the agreements around each aspect obtained in the spaces of social debate. This stage, as all others, would be subject to the agreements and consensus constructed throughout the entire process and would lead to initiatives coordinated at the European level that would create their own dynamics.

./english/187.txt:60:The initial idea would be to engage in a global analysis of the current economic, political and social system, but including Europe, its specific issues and the transformations we can promte from here, as a context of particular importance. In terms of levels and issues of debate, we start from the idea that the consultation process should integrate all those levels and themes of debate that might be of interest to those collectives and social movements that become involved in the process. It should marginalize neither analytical nor concrete debates and should attend to proposals for structural transformation (political, economic and social system), sectoral debate (ecology, social rights, militarism, immigration, gender, etc...) as well as concrete reforms (ending specific laws regarding immigration, abolishing the external debt, guaranteed income, tobin tax, etc...)

./english/187.txt:63:We understand the ESC as a network-based organizational process, at the European level, whose different elements function in an autonomous and decentralized, yet coordinated fashion on the basis of agreements tpreviously consensed upon at various territorial gatherings (European, regional, etc.).

./english/187.txt:69:As we have already explained, the “Internal Consultation” consists of a process of diffusion and contact among movements and organizations through a system of questions that will spark a debate in order to help us develop an understanding of the various reactions, ideas, proposals and affinities toward the project. It will also allow us to define the stages of the Process itself proposed above.

./english/187.txt:71:The main objective of the internal consultation is to ensure the active participation in the definition of the process itself from the various geografic and social contexts on the European content. That is to say that the first steps of the consulta and the initial decisions should be extremely participatory, transparent and should result form a process of debate and consensus, with the equal participation of all the groups involved.

./english/187.txt:73:6.2 Function of the internal consultation process

./english/187.txt:76:Parallel to this, we are beginning to promote the process:

./english/187.txt:78:Our first objective is to promote the creation of different promotor groups in each territory in Europe, so they can extend the debate surrounding this process in their own territory.

./english/187.txt:82:They are groups of people and/or collectives that get involved with this beginning stage of the process in order to:

./english/187.txt:85:Diffuse the internal consultation guide and explain the proposal for the European Social Consulta, encouraging all the collectives in thier territorial context of action (community, region, nation, state...) to participate in the process of debate, inviting them to attend the first European gathering.

./english/187.txt:97:In order to put all the proposals and ideas that emerge through the Internal Consultation in common, we belive it is important to hold a gathering at the European level with the objective of reaching a consensus among all the people involved around the process to follow, methodology, organization, the issues to deal with...and ultimately, to give shape to the European Social Consulta.

./english/187.txt:100:In order to give enough time in the process of the Internal Consultation so the largest possible number of collectives, coming from all over Europe, can participate, we propose that the first gathering be held between the spring and fall of 2002 in Barcelona.

./english/187.txt:109:Euroepan Social Consulta Process and Methodology

./english/192.txt:21:-> The mainstream of the trade union movement in Britain was actively involved in both the preparatory process and the Forum itself: feedback from various unions has been overwhelmingly positive, with reports of highly successful seminars involving important networks of activists;

./english/192.txt:40:Their apologists have offered various excuses. One is the alleged lack of democracy in the organizing process in Britain. One difficulty in this process has certainly been that participants have very different conceptions of democracy and often showed little tolerance of definitions different from their own. But the real problem with the British process lay elsewhere.

./english/192.txt:41:At different stages this process embraced a very wide range of forces - stretching from the Trade Union Congress and mainstream NGOs to autonomist groups with a history of intermittent violence such as the Wombles. Holding this coalition together would have been difficult in any circumstances. Of course, the Italian and French comrades also have developed very broad coalitions, but it was probably an advantage that these had been constructed well in advance of actually organizing the ESF, so that people had an experience of working together.

./english/192.txt:43:Nevertheless, a very heavy responsibility for the difficulties that developed must rest with the autonomist circles. Their attitude towards the ESF varied between outright opposition (theorized by the Wombles in a critique of the Social Forums as inherently reformist) and variable but usually not very constructive participation in the process (often through the agency of various fellow travellers).

./english/192.txt:55:We must also confront the fact that the process itself is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. ATTAC France rightly points to the fact that attendance at the European Preparatory Assembly has stagnated since Florence and argues that 'the functioning of the EPA must be improved in a logic of democratization, of representativity and of enlargement'. This is easier said than done, particularly given the stress laid in our procedures on meetings being open to all and deciding by consensus, which can give great power to disruptive but unrepresentative minorities.

./english/192.txt:56:Hence the strains that became visible in London. We need to understand this when we prepare for Athens. The divisions in the British process tended to polarize between a coalition of significant social movements and a disruptive but socially weak autonomist fringe. But there are some four powerful forces that will need to be brought into the ESF - the Greek Social Forum, the Genoa 2001 Campaign, the Greek Communist Party, and the trade unions, whose leadership tend to be linked to PASOK. Only the first two have been involved in the ESF process, and all four have a history of mutual conflict. Bringing them together will be a big challenge for us all.

./english/193.txt:5:Between 14 and 17 October, more than 25,000 participants came together at the ESF in London, located at the wonderful Alexandra Palace, as well as at several other locations in Northern and Central London where several ‘autonomous spaces’, ranging from a ‘radical theory forum’ to ‘tactical media’ and ‘beyond the ESF’, were also held. It is impossible to grasp all the issues discussed at the ESF, reaching from ‘life after capitalism’ to ‘life despite capitalism’, from ‘against privatisation’ to the ‘experience of the commons’, from the ‘women’s assembly’ to the ‘no border network’, from ‘organising for workers rights’ to the ‘first assembly of the Precariat in Europe’ (a theme barely present on the official ESF) and so on and so forth. The supply of seminars and workshops was enormous, but the process of merging seminars in the run up to the ESF in many cases had led to the bringing together of things that do not fit.

./english/193.txt:9:Ever since the disruption of state socialism and the spread of neoliberal hegemony across the world we live under a far-reaching process of capitalist transformation. Its contradictions and the engagement of people all over the world had led to the emergence of a movement of movements – this time we keep the plural. In the last years we have seen a kind of consolidation of that process, and the World and the European Social Forum (like other fora) have a remarkable part in that consolidation. But there are very different ideas about how to continue and which political forms are appropriate for a new kind of radical social transformation. There is a consensus about plurality and the richness of diversity, but also a comprehension of the need for coherence. Very often the problem is discussed in the form of simple dichotomies like the opposition between institutional politics and autonomy, between movements and parties, between avant-garde thinking and basic democracy, between civil society and state and so on. But these essentialisations are false oppositions, because all these oppositions in concrete life are contradictions in motion.

./english/193.txt:20:Phil Hearst, a member of the SWP and of the 4th International, raised the example of Argentina. In the deep crisis in 2001 movements like the Piqueteros emerged. They did not refuse state offers, they tried to use state benefits for their self-organisation. But lastly, Hearst claims, they failed: one could not get self-determination without a change of social relations and institutions as a whole. There is a need for a sustaining party on a national level (in opposition a woman from Argentina threw in that the old left militant parties brought the movement to death). In other places, for instance Venezuela, the transformed state is pushing civil society and indigenous communities to self-organisation.2 That kind of politics is founded in existing social conditions, not in a mythical concept of revolution. Revolution is not possible in a sudden crisis, it is a long process, Hearst insists: the left needs institutions for continuous politics. The plurality of movements alone does not develop a solid strategic convergence of positions. Moreover the different movements do not play an equivalent role in this process. A party, and not simply the sum of social movements, might still be the best agent of conscious ‘unification’ (Bensaid) in a ‘worker’s state’. Again the point is unification (instead of pluralistic coherence) and again it is the working class as essentially united, leaving the current weakness of workers’ resistance out of consideration as concrete relations between movements and party too. A Basque disputant put the point that Argentina was ‘a moment of subjectivity’, that will have far reaching consequences, not a failure of autonomous politics and social movements – but the example clearly shows the contradictions in such a process of social transformation.

./english/193.txt:25:There is a ‘desire for self-determination’, John Holloway continues.3 Self-determination starts as a movement out of the ruling social relations rooted in everyday experience (otherwise the struggle for communism would be meaningless). State and self-determination are incompatible, because the former is the negation of the last. The state is ‘a process of decision making in place of’. There is no room for a dialectical ‘as well however’, for saying we must construct a form of self-determination, however it is important to struggle within the state as well. Both forms of struggle cannot be pursued peacefully side by side, because they move in different directions. The state is the permanent and active intervention against self-determination. But there might be some room for a ‘but nevertheless’: while creating forms of autonomy, in ‘specific situations the struggle through the state could give us access to means for strengthening our struggle for self-determination’. But the desire for self-determination is a movement against and beyond representation, state and labour. This desire can not wait until a party reaches power, it can not wait, because capitalism is destroying us, undermining the conditions of reproduction: ‘ya basta’ and ‘que se vayan todos’. Self-determination has to start immediately, nevertheless this is a slow process – ‘we will walk not hurry, because we will have to go far’ – this understanding of politics breaks with linear temporalities.4 Therefore the communist revolution starts now but like an utopian star it remains an urgent (but hardly achievable) need.

./english/193.txt:29:In contrast to post-structuralism, Holloway reformulates an essential notion of subjectivity outside of concrete social relations, assumes Joachim Hirsch, a prominent author writing on critical state theory.5 Instrumental power in Holloway’s understanding alienates the subject from its immediate subjectivity, ‘dehumanises’. He therefore misses Marx’s cognition that the ‘essence’ of human beings in reality is the ‘ensemble of social relations’. Moreover in contrasting instrumental and creative power Holloway on the one hand denounces all forms of intermediate institutions and representations, and on the other hand offers creativity as a possibility free of contradictions. That is bound to a romantic notion of original communism, of a nonalienated community. But it might be necessary in a complex society to develop some objectified forms of institutions for mediation (Versachlichung und Vermittlung) – not all forms of objectification necessarily lead to fetishism, although there is a danger. Without intermediation it is doubtful if such a society would be a free one. Developing creative anti-power in itself is a contradictory process: there is a need for alternatives beyond fragmented local struggles, for an understanding about theoretical, social and political concepts, goals and strategies. Such conflicts in the movement are also conflicts about power that could not be negated. But it is of great importance, Hirsch tells us, that Holloway has formulated a clear critique of all political concepts trying to fight the existing power relations with their own weapons. And he has brought back the notion of revolution into our thinking and acting.

./english/193.txt:34:However autonomy is not simply a thing one can take. Autonomy has to be worked out, in search of new forms of social relations and subjectivities. Nearly 90% of the locally active members are women. In organising these new social relations a need for desaprender (‘unlearning’) became evident in the face of entangled modes of domination reproduced in the community (for example machismo) and became part of self-educating processes. The movement gives itself space for collective reflection to work on conflicts. Partisans tried to get into the movement, but their old forms of clientalism and domination prevented a deeper influence. There is no disintegration of the movement in the face of a new government. Things have been institutionalised, networks of organisations been created, durability is the goal (not conjunctural actions) – but as this is a process from below (like in Chiapas as well), quiet, slow, changing subjectivities, it is not that visible in the media. The state is absent, apart from its repressive functions. The experience of exclusion was necessary for the movement. ‘Neoliberalism itself induced us to appropriate its promises, but without reintegrating into the system that excluded us.’ But repression is getting harder.7 ‘Will we always need someone to organise us our lives’, Jara asked, ‘some political party, or union, or government?’ For Holloway the piqueteros (although they do not like this expression, because it hides the everyday production and reproduction within the community) are the most prominent case of ‘urban zapatismo’, burning holes into the structure, against the existing, breaking with identities – it is the movement of non-identity. This is not a loss, there is nothing to be repressed, and it should not be a sacrifice but a pleasure.

./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/193.txt:43:Parties like movements need institutionalised spaces for self-reflection and critique beyond the daily tasks. The connections might be intensified via interchanging personal, representatives of movements on (open) electoral lists of the party, active participation of party militants and movements on all levels of decision making, obligatory reports to militants and movements etc. (see Spehr 2004). Progressive parties in power could hold a strong defensive potential against repressive attacks, strengthening offensive political movements, assuring social achievements by giving them a legal form (for a possible future when the movement may be weaker). If they create a closed bureaucracy feeling independent from the movements, cutting the vital organic relations for negotiating compromises with the social bloc in power, the ‘party becomes anachronistic’, losing ‘its social content’ (Gramsci, Gef.7, H.13, 1579). ‘If the radical left tries to cooperate with the majoritarian left (participating in governmental coalitions or other strategic alliances), under conditions of neoliberal hegemony, it is under suspicion [and in danger] of renouncing its own positions for taking part in policy making processes’, pretending to ease the pain of politics otherwise implemented without their participation. Even because of its radical [ethical] standards applied to politics in such situations, ‘the radical left is seen as especially untrustworthy measured with these own standards’ (Brie 2004; Candeias 2004, 340).

./english/193.txt:51:Gramsci warned against sectarian, narrow-minded thinking: ‘A political party is not only the technical organisation of the party itself, but the whole active social bloc.’ (Gef7., H.15, 1774) In a specific hegemonic constellation ‘nobody is unorganised or independent from a party, if organisation or party is understood in its broadest sense not formally’ (Gef.4, H.6, §136). Each social bloc, as a convergence of different social groups, classes, genders etc., generates only one formation in the sense of this broader integral understanding of a party (that is nearer to the notion of social forces and movements than it is to parties in the narrow sense). All different partial formations, the non-commitment to plurality, are only transitional ‘reformist’ forms, oriented on simple negation or on transforming only partial dysfunctional elements, not the existing mode of production as a whole. Therefore a communist refoundation is more than a renewal of given party organisations (where you could become a member, pay your fee, and vote for your ‘leader’). It requires the reinvention of proletariat as Marx put in the Manifesto: ‘the proletariat recruits itself from all classes of population’ (MEW 4, 469), a diffuse milieu of released, redundant people without property except their own labour power. Under circumstances of the neoliberal, transnational mode of production this includes the increasing global industrial labour force, the modern precariat as well as the modern cybertariat, the rural labour force as well as landless people, the non-paid reproductive workers (mostly women), the migrant labour force – all of them shaped by differentiations along class, gender, race, nation, their positions in production processes, political alliances, cooptation by ruling forces, etc. If we take all these diverse fragmentations seriously we could come to a deeper understanding of a contradictory multitude that is to be worked out to a coherent social bloc of forces able to form social transformation. This new modern prince (Gramsci) cannot be understood ‘as a singular form of collective agency, for example a single party with a single form of identity’ (Gill 2003, 221). What is required is an articulation of the different political forms due to concrete situations, permanent reorganisation of organisational forms in the face of developing conditions, including the collective and individual ‘molecular change of modes of thinking and acting’, forcing this transnational partiality (Parteiung) to rearticulate again and again, arranging new and original problems to solve (Gramsci, Gef. 8, §51).11 This is not possible without involving constantly the active elements of subjectivity.

./english/193.txt:53:The relation between parties and movements, between state-oriented politics and autonomy is not an outward one; they are not separated from each other, but are not identical either. ‘We have to run the risk of contamination’ and vice versa, as Luciana Castellina put it (2004). The common perspective Roger Martelli formulated in 2000: ‘It is not about taking power, but giving it back to society’ or even taking it back (re--appropriating), starting a real process of what we in German call (Selbst)Vergesellschaftung – a process of (self)societalization. The goal is to build an alterglobalisation movement as a real democratic power able to achieve it objectives. The issue of how get there is still and will remain a very controversial process – dealing with antinomies means to understand the contradictions of the multitude.

./english/193.txt:91:8. In his analyses of the Social Forum process at the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation Berlin, October 19.

./english/195.txt:5:We cannot evaluate the recent London ESF without frame it within the story of the process that led to its production. This is the story of the contrast between two broad camps that have emerged in the course of the process itself. On one hand, those coming from many networks and organisations to make the ESF a temporary space-time common that would prefigure alternative practices and multiple non-exploitative doings in a "global city" like London. On the other, those whose efforts followed the Socialist Worker Party and Socialist Action lines, the mentalities of union bureaucracies and the directives of Ken Livingstone's office to monopolize and centralize the event. This became to be known as the struggle between “horizontals” and “verticals”.

./english/195.txt:7:Perhaps this distinction caused some confusion, since the definition of “horizontality” or “verticality” did not identify a specific group, organisation or network, nor a specific ideology or world view of politics and political events. Often, one could identify "horizontals" in "vertical" organisations and "verticals" in "horizontal" networks. However, we can understand the contrast described by the terminology in terms of modes of doing predicated on opposite organising principles. One, based on participatory, open and inclusive democracy, in which participants through their iterative relational practices reached consensus on both means to be employed and ends to be achieved and were willing to engage in the continuous learning process necessary for these practices. The other in which democracy was identified with a rigid vertical structure within which ends are defined by the few, and the means are seen purely as instrumental to those ends. For “horizontals” the means embody values as much as the ends (whether we use free or corporate software, whether information is posted freely or under coordinating committee control, whether working groups emerge from the ground up or “allowed” by a coordinating committee). Indeed because of this, the shape of ends emerges from negotiations of means. For the “verticals” it was just about “getting the job done”, that is, their concept of “job” and final outcome.

./english/195.txt:9:I think that the contrast between these substantially different ways of doing, these modes of producing events, is highly “educational” for all of us, and we can evaluate the final outcome in these terms. By focussing on process and the totality of our movements, what can we say about the ESF held in London last November? Ambiguous result. On the one hand, it has represented a clear step forward for our movement. This not only because 25,000 people have attended and all large events like these encourage encounters between people across networks. Also and especially because a section of the movement has overcome its insularity at events like these and, working with organizing principles based on horizontality, inclusiveness and participation, has broadened substantially the programme of and participation in self-managed and autonomous zones. About 5000 people, many of whom where wearing the bracelet of the “official” event, have been estimated to have participated in the broad range of activities of the autonomous zones, and defined future action programmes on crucial themes such as precarity, migration and communication rights.

./english/195.txt:11:On the other hand, there is also a sense in which the process of the ESF in London has not been a way forward for our movement, but a serious set back. The degree of subcontracting of the various processes of the “official” events, culminating with the hiring of an “event management” company, the environmental unawareness of its practices, the vertical control freakery that has dominated all moments of its production, suspicious of all productive networks from the movement that did not match the “way of doing” template of union bureaucracies and socialist parties, the contractual “terms and conditions” email sent to anyone purchasing tickets, the petty self-promoting splashing of UK union names on the walls of meeting rooms instead of reaching out to symbols that belong to all movements across the globe, not to mention the bullying, the trade unions’ and Greater London Authority’s financial blackmails and the monopolization of platforms such as the final rally, are just an indication that in terms of these practices, we have a long way to go to make another world possible. In the effort to “build” the movement, to “outreach” to people who have not yet heard about the horrors of the world, the organizers have forgotten that a process of radical social transformation takes much more than an increasing number of people laid down as “building bricks”. This relational incompetence is a heavy political liability in our movement, and cannot be justified by the ends of “educating” more people or outreaching into the mainstream union organizations, as Alex Callinicos argues in a recent posting to the ESF-UK email list. We cannot overcome this by choosing between the false polarity posed on us by those who portray the Social Forum as a space or as a movement of movements. We move beyond the impasse if we understand it to be both. Because to be radically transformative, the movement of movements must strive to set a limit to the voraciousness of capital, to be its true insurmountable barrier, and at the same time to constitute new social relations, new modes of producing and doing, including producing politics. The practice of this articulation is what constitutes an open space. Without this articulation and the efforts necessary for it, our collective political subjectivity as a transformative force is, simply, lost.

./english/199.txt:7:The third ESF has officially ended, but the barrage of attacks and counter-attacks around the autonomous actions and arrests continues to rage. The simmering conflict between the horizonal and verticals became fully visible when a group of activists from Beyond ESF, including the Wombles and many others, rushed the stage during an anti-Racism plenary Saturday night to denounce Ken Livingstone and the lack of democracy within the forum. Tensions grew after several activists were arrested on the way out, and resurfaced yet again when a highly respected Indymedia activist, who happened to have also played a key role in NOMAD and the broader ESF process, was dragged away by police after trying to make a statement following the march on Sunday afternoon. Things have since come to a boil as SWP members, the mayor's allies, and others dismiss such direct actions as violent, anti-democratic, and even racist, while their critics continue to defend the right to take direct action to publicly voice their concerns. Debates once pitting activists against mainstream politicians and bureaucrats in the WTO, World Bank, and IMF now rage within the very heart of the Global Justice Movement itself.

./english/199.txt:9:Before making too much of this situation, it is important to take a step back and reflect on the London ESF experience and the broader politics of autonomous space. Although perhaps more exaggerated this time around because of the nature of London's political culture- most notably the presence of SWP and Socialist Action- the tension between grassroots network-based movements and their more traditional organizational counterparts has been a constant since the beginning of the forums, and was present within earlier mass direct action mobilizations, including Seattle, as well. Intense struggles over political vision, tactics, and organizational form are not cause for alarm; indeed, they are constitutive of the convergence process that characterizes the forums and the broader movement from which they emerged. The important question is thus how to best manage such conflicts, rather than erase them entirely. And this is precisely where the politics of autonomous space has the most to offer.

./english/199.txt:19:The overall feeling of the official forum this year did leave a lot to be desired. It was not so much the massive cathedral dimensions of the Palace, which can actually be quite stimulating, but the way the internal space was organized. It felt more like a massive trade fair, with political ideologies, study programs, and volunteer opportunities on offer, rather than a true space of dialogue, encounter, and exchange. Not that previous forums lived up to this ideal either, but this was perhaps the furthest away. Whether the forum's commercial feel was a direct result of the influence of the GLA or the SWP, I'll leave for others to decide. On a positive note, however, the bitter conflict within the organizing process was certainly a major factor in the proliferation of autonomous spaces. As for the panel I attended on the future of the ESF, there was a definite sense of having arrived at a Crossroads, that we are beginning to reproduce the same events and actions, year after year. I sensed nostalgia for the excitement and novelty of Genoa or Florence , and a distinct lack of ability to envision an alternative path. Perhaps it is time to let go, and reinvent the forum as something entirely new.

./english/199.txt:33:Unfortunately, rather than accept the basic legitimacy of direct action to make publicly visible contradictions and disagreements within the forum process, some ESF organizers have chosen instead to denounce the recent actions as undemocratic and, even more alarming, racist. Their discourse sounds eerily like past statements from James Wolfensohn, George Bush, or Tony Blair. Why do they support direct action only when directed against others? On the other hand, it is unfortunate that activists chose an anti-Racist workshop to make their demands heard on Saturday night, although this has more to do with the fact that Ken Livingstone was speaking than anything else. There is simply no justification for the arrests on Saturday night or Sunday, and even less for the subsequent campaign of delegitimation. Yet all is not lost. There is still plenty of time for ESF organizers to react more constructively, and begin to incorporate the lessons learned leading up the next forum in Athens . On the other side, before the inevitable calls for abandoning the forum come again, we might wait and see, recognizing that the politics of autonomous space allow us to remain true to our own values, forms, and practices, while tactically intervening within the official forum to move out from our radical ghettos and simultaneously spark constructive change.

./english/199.txt:35:What I am ultimately suggesting is that we renew our vision of the forum itself, recognizing that our movements are too diverse, even contradictory, to be contained within a single space, however open it may be. This does not mean abandoning the process, but rather building on the London experience to recast the forum as a network of interconnected, yet autonomous spaces converging across a single urban terrain at a particular point in time. Some spaces may be larger, and thus generate more gravity than others, while the boundaries are always blurry, diffuse, and permeable. Moreover, there will necessarily be contradiction and struggle, even within and between our networks. Such conflict should not be feared, but rather recognized as an integral part of the forum itself. In places like Prague and Genoa urban space was divided among diverse forms of direct action practice. In London we finally began to incorporate a similar logic on our own terms, without reacting to an enemy. As for we critics, rather than return to our bunkers to recreate an imagined state of pure horizontality, we would do better to recognize that mass movements are always conflictual and contradictory, that horizontalism is about learning to manage conflict without reintroducing formal centers of command. This is the lesson I learned in London , and why I support the politics of autonomous space.

./english/201.txt:33:Much of this, in turn, stemmed from the way the event was organised. For over a year there has been serious criticism of the event's organisers for trying to control the process themselves rather than opening it up to all-comers. When you discover that the key organisation involved was the notoriously anti-democratic Socialist Workers Party ( SWP ), this may not seem surprising. But in combination with Ken Livingstone's Greater London Authority (GLA), which put an estimated £400,000 towards the event, it was a potent and frustrating combination for many.

./english/201.txt:35:Dave Timms, press officer for the World Development Movement , was involved in the long process of organising the London ESF. He explained to me how the SWP in particular had worked from the very start to make the London forum “their event”, run to “their agenda”.

./english/201.txt:39:Timms is not alone. Leading NGOs in Britain and many European activist groups involved in the process of organising the 2004 ESF have made similar complaints. In June, the Italian mobilising committee for the ESF published a statement about how the SWP had behaved at a European meeting: “They … were constantly unwilling to enter into real dialogue, tried to impose their own way and were often arrogant or used blackmail, repeatedly refusing to accept decisions and titles which had already been decided hours before. The result was that many of the other delegations were exasperated and were frequently compelled to raise their voices or in turn threaten to leave.”

./english/202.txt:5:Contradictory process

./english/202.txt:7:The ESF 2004 was an extremely contradictory event and process. Thousands of people found ways to use this space in the spirit of the WSF principles. They debated strategies for the anti-capitalist movement, while developing Europe-wide activist networks which could act together more effectively. Some devised alternative methods and capacities which could make another world possible. All this happened because activist gatherings generally find ways to make things happen according to the means that are available and despite the obstacles present.

./english/202.txt:13:Positive aspects of the ESF 2004 faced serious obstacles. UK activists highlighted these from the start of the process in autumn 2003, when we rightly tried to head off an ESF in London in 2004. Those negative aspects deepened – despite our warnings, and despite our support from activists throughout Europe, e.g. at the preparatory assemblies. Those assemblies lost control of the event and the preparatory process, which remained under control of a state-party nexus operating along managerial-entrepreneurial lines. Several features effectively structure the official ESF as a spectacle for mass consumption.

./english/202.txt:23:To make another world possible, the ESF preparatory process should follow the spirit of the WSF principles – especially by building activist networks and practical alternatives to capitalist domination. In particular:

./english/202.txt:25:• European assemblies as a political process. These events should include an opportunity for exchanging experiences of struggles, discussing strategic implications and building networks which could act together. Perhaps plan these as a mini-ESF, back-to-back with the organisational meeting. For activists unable to attend, the internet could provide opportunities to participate.

./english/202.txt:31:• Themes linking issues. Key themes/issues should be developed through a process much broader than a programme group.

./english/205.txt:9:The path that led from the ESF in 2003 to the following edition in London was a lot less straightforward than a mere crossing of the channel; it went through a lot more detours and accidents, and raises important questions as to the present situation of European movements in their processes of deterritorialisaton and reterritorialisation.

./english/205.txt:11:The London bid for the ESF was presented in Paris during the second edition as the result of an agreement between the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). It was discussed and approved at a closed meeting, one of those that still abound in Social Fora everywhere – like those that prepare the agenda of the Social Movements' Assemblies. The decision to present London as an alternative was never debated among British movements; in fact, the GLA (and the group behind, a small Labour tendency called Socialist Action, basically composed of advisers to the mayor, Ken Livingstone) had never shown any interest in the process at all, whilst the SWP, by means of its myriad front groups (Globalise Resistance, Stop the War Coalition, Project K etc.), although active in the WSF and the ESF, had made systematic efforts to stop the spontaneous process of organization of Local Social Fora, in places such as London, Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. The GLA's involvement was a demand made by certain key actors in the European process, such as Attac France, to make sure the event was financially viable. The beginning of the organizing process in December in London came as a surprise to many.

./english/205.txt:13:From then on, things couldn't have gone worse. In a first period, because the SWP and the GLA posed as fundamentally antithetic the participation of ‘serious organizations' – basically the British trade unions, still siding with the Blair government despite the odd criticism – and networks and groups based on ad hoc and horizontal ways of organizing, without administrative hierarchies and decision-making centres. This is where it began: a process of denial of all the potency shown by movements since the mid-90s, in favour of a provincial political pragmatism strictly concerned with the immediate agenda of the main groups involved. This problem was made brought to the attention of the ‘continental' actors involved (COBAS, Transnational Institute, different national Attac groups, Greek Social Forum, …), and the Preparatory Assembly that took place in London in February produced a document demanding that the British groups worked towards some sort of composition between the ‘verticals' – SWP, Socialist Action and trade unions – and the ‘horizontals' – all the others.

./english/205.txt:15:One thing, however, would structurally prevent this from happening: the ‘open secret' that haunts the organization of Fora, that is, the disguised participation of political parties. The hegemonic groups in the UK refused to recognize the problem as a tension between parties and movements, because they refused to recognize themselves as parties. In the sad excuse for a ‘mobilization' process that ensued, this became scandalously clear: non-publicized meetings were organized with different sectors (black, Muslim, women's movements, …), all of them held inside the GLA, and including almost only groups whose leaders were in some way connected to the SWP or SA. Thus, the ‘horizontals' went on denouncing the lack of transparency, the ‘verticals' went on pretending it was not their problem, and most of the ‘Europeans', although in active support of the ‘horizontals', had two clear limits in their intervention: not wanting to run the risk of there not being a Forum (a constant threat used by the GLA and the trade unions, claiming to withdraw their financial support if they didn't have it their way), and not being able to go deeper into the discussion of the participation of political parties, since that would be a source of general discomfort. It was thus that the idea of the ‘English exception' came to be – that this process was abnormal, but had to be taken all the way.

./english/205.txt:17:It was, in fact, abnormal: the level of political and financial lack of transparency, administrative incompetence (to solve basic problems, such as visas and accommodation or the official website, that besides being little interactive and not working for a long time was hosted at the GLA server), and the sheer bullishness (in the intimidation and ‘expulsion' of groups and individuals and the rapport with the ‘Europeans') led things to a point, right before the Preparatory Assembly in Berlin in June, in which the Italian and French groups publicly ventilated the idea of withdrawing from the process altogether. The resulting climate, obviously extremely hostile to the ‘verticals', helped the ‘horizontals' score an important victory: all the self-organized spaces could require their inclusion in the official programme.

./english/205.txt:19:The last months, however, saw a substantial worsening: two attempts at stitching up the selection of official plenary speakers (the first of which eliciting a letter from various British NGOs threatening to withdraw from the process) and the fact that the two bodies of the organization process in England – the Organizing and Coordinating Committee – had clearly been sidelined by the GLA, and that all relevant administrative decisions were being made at closed meetings among GLA advisers. The definition of the main plenaries, the result of complex negotiations between ‘verticals' and ‘Europeans', made the intentions of the two hegemonic groups towards the Forum very clear: the SWP wanting to make exhaustive use of the theme of the war and the Middle East so as to breathe life into its Stop the War Coalition and fuel its new ‘front party', the Respect Coalition, itself a previous attempt to capitalize on the anti-war movement; Ken Livingstone looking for a platform to apply some new ‘red' varnish to an otherwise entirely liberal government, insisting in his image of the man behind a multicultural London (both him and his racial adviser Lee Jasper were appointed to speak at the anti-racism plenary). As a whole, the agenda corresponded to the provincialism of the process, and themes like the opposition to the European Constitution – which, incidentally, is supported by the British trade unions – were left in the background.

./english/205.txt:23:In the far end of North London lay Alexandra Palace, a place normally used for big musical events, where most of the official programme took place. A huge space with a few thin partitions defining the area of the halls, the acoustic effect it provided was in perfect correspondence with the process: a reverberating confusion of voices through loudspeakers. Besides offering much less interesting plenaries, seminars and speakers than previous years, the space as a whole showed all the mistakes made throughout the organization. The seminars vaguely related to the ‘third world' took place on an unprivileged corner; the food was all provided by catering services employing low-wage work, plastic packages and corporate brands everywhere; the media centre was small and ill-equipped, while NGO, party and trade union stalls distributed enough leaflets, papers and stickers to drown a small town in.

./english/205.txt:27:No, it wasn't here – where the programme was politically almost homogeneous and empty or timid when it came to proposals – where it was at; the process had been successful in eliminating all conflict under a patina of forced consensus; the result wasn't convergence, but a feeling of back-slapping hollowness, enhanced by the uselessness of the big plenary format, with its ‘experts' and ‘leaders' preaching platitudes from a platform. Alexandra Palace was a dead geological stratus.

./english/205.txt:32:It is interesting to highlight that this year's ESF probably had its least ‘ideological' ‘opposition' ever: even at the conference of People's Global Action – anticapitalist network whose existence predates the Social Forum process and is very critical of it – in July there was a great number of groups interested in taking the ‘one foot in, one foot out' approach. It was above all a matter of occupying space and making oneself heard; that this should end the way it did was much less the result of a ‘principled opposition' than a consequence of the specific circumstances of the British process, and the fact that the London lives under a police State in disguise: Beyond the ESF (the largest) and a few other autonomous spaces were under permanent surveillance, with helicopters flying overhead and policemen at the door to take pictures and monitor the flow of people.

./english/205.txt:42:Many of the political forces active in the ESF process are the stratification of moments of deterritorialisation in the 60s and 70s: for example, May 68 and the peace movement. It is symptomatic that the two hegemonic British groups have never had anything like this in their trajectories. The third edition of the ESF has found the movements that came to light in the second half of the 90s at a crossroads that opens up new possibilities and calls for the overcoming of that moment.

./english/205.txt:50:A criticism that has been made (for a while in the so-called ‘global South', more recently in the ‘North') is that despite its principles of horizontality and refusal of representation, the period of the great demos belied a return of representational politics: they took place in the ‘North', amidst a young, white majority that claimed that ‘resistance is everywhere', but in the end of the day dealt with problems that were not close to their protagonists. This is, on the one hand, an oversight of the specificities of the European context – things like squats and social centres are not simply demands of ‘spoiled white brats', but a struggle of a youth that has been made precarious by the structural transformation of capitalism and the welfare reforms, and a struggle that (at least potentially) opens up to those of migrants, sans papiers and the unemployed. On the other hand, it does have an element of truth: the emphasis of these demos seemed always to be on struggles elsewhere, where the dark side of capital was more immediately visible, and they lacked a clearer definition of what the lines of conflict ‘at home' were. The resistance to capital is indeed everywhere, even in its core areas (and it's never enough to repeat that the core-periphery dynamic is repeated like a fractal all across the globe, also in those areas generically thought of as peripheral); one of the subjectivities formed in that period, however, is especially concerned with grassroots organizing processes in places like Asia and Latin America, in which structures such as the PGA European support group, for obvious material reasons, have been playing a relevant role in helping establish links, opening up discussions and helping with fundraising.

./english/205.txt:54:It was, however, another, deeper process of (re) invention that points to a tendency towards both spatial and political reterritorialisation that drew the most attention during this ESF.

./english/205.txt:62:The path leading from London 2004 to Athens 2006 begins in Paris, in November, with the Preparatory Assembly of evaluation of the process just finished and the beginning of the one to come. It shouldn't be much to expect it to be a burial of the British stage: it is highly unlikely that Socialist Action will remain involved after this, and the SWP will be left alone in the role of justifying the unjustifiable. However, to turn it into a simple condemnation of ‘the British exception' will mean that a significant opportunity to discuss the future of the ESF and the Social Forum process as a whole will be lost.

./english/205.txt:68:First of all, the inside/outside discussion, ore than ever, has proved to be empty. What was the ESF? Alexandra Palace or Beyond the ESF, Life Despite Capitalism, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination? In what seems to me to be the most correct sense, all of them. If Fora will be capable of expressing the diversity of the movement(s) they say to bring together and serve as a public arena, it'll be because of their capacity to incorporate conflict, not to subsume it under a semblance of false consensus. To that extent, the British process, with all its many flaws, points to a promising possibility in its recognition (tacit or explicit, in the form of inclusion in the official programme) of other spaces; the Forum as a constellation of related self-organized convergence spaces without a centre seems a lot more interesting than the present format.

./english/205.txt:70:Format-wise, this edition shows the possibility of transcending the obvious limits that Fora – so far built around plenaries with the ‘big names', normally resulting in generic analyses and platitudes with no visible impact, or the two-hour seminars and workshops in which any true convergence or common action are unlikely results – so far have shown. Let's take, for instance, the experience of Life Despite Capitalism, in its many interlocked sessions that lasted for a day and a half, or the whole programme (not explicitly organized as such, but effective none the same) around the issue of the precariat, in which there was a sense of build up leading to the Assembly of the Europrecariat. To this day the organizers have asked themselves the questions of how to make Fora less diagnostic and more constructive, without challenging the basic assumptions of the format. The plenaries, for instance, are living dead left-overs from the first WSF in Brazil, which was clearly planned as a one-off talkshop rather than a political ‘process'. The London experience points to yet new ways, although these have always been explored in the ‘periphery' of the Social Forum process (in the Youth Camp in Porto Alegre, in the Argentinean Social Forum etc.), without receiving the proper attention of its key players.

./english/205.txt:76:As strange as it may seem, the great lesson this year offers us is still the one everyone has heard a thousand times, without really seeing it in practice: the Forum seen as an event is useless, an empty spectacle with no practical results; as a process, it opens up to new deterritorialisations and reterritorialisations, combinations and recombinations, which should be the whole reason why they are organized in the first place.

./english/205.txt:78:A problem that remains is that of the closing of the process on itself; there seems to be, since the beginning, no remarkable renovation as regards the participants truly involved (a criticism that could be levelled at Social Fora pretty much everywhere), which results in an autistic and self-referential process. The consequence this year was obvious: the UK edition was taken over by the group that had been the most active until then and its partners of choice. The fact remains, however, that as long as there is any identifiable centre, like the plenaries and the thematic axes, it won't be enough to recite the ‘no locus of power' mantra to wish away the concentration of decision-making in a few, well-known hands. An interesting change has been tried out by the WSF this year, organizing an on-line consultation; why not a deeper, grassroots, de-centred process, like the one proposed by the European Social Consulta?

./english/205.txt:80:The so-called ‘Social Forum process' doesn't exist in the ether; it can only be as productive as the existing social processes, but it can also be a lot less powerful, and even destructive to previously existing relations and connections. It can only become what it' supposed to be if it functions as a feedback loop between political processes in progress and the organization itself; in other words, it can only be the open space it set out to be if its organization is diffuse in ongoing political struggles, not an invariant that comes to movements ‘from the outside', pre-structured by the efforts (however well-intentioned they may be) of a few actors. As long as it tries to produce a movement that is bigger and more united than it actually is, it's more likely to breed disaffection.

./english/209.txt:13:Another peculiarity of British politics which has presented a challenge to the organisation of the ESF in London is the democratic weakness of local government. In Florence and Paris it was, after all, the support of left dominated municipalities to the tune of millions of Euros which made the Forum possible. Paradoxically, the weakness of local government in London became a source of undue local authority control of important aspects of the ESF process. The peculiar politics of London and its relation to national politics is another essential part of any guide to the London ESF.

./english/209.txt:21:While for the Workers Party in Southern Brazil, the way to carry through the mayor's democratic mandate is through strengthening the power of the people over the state apparatus through a participatory system, for the political managers of the GLA the way to implement the will of the democratically elected mayor is through tough professional management and a minimisation of the layers of mediation between the mayor's senior management and the delivery of the service. This is a method which might be very appropriate to running the London Underground, where the problem is countering the pressures of the private sector and mobilising a staff who have little recent experience of working for a democratically elected boss to meet politically agreed goals. (They have been effectively employed by a Thatcherite institution, a Quasi Governmental Organisation - QUANGO). But the role of a local authority in relation to the European Social Forum is not managerial , beyond managing the toilets. It is to provide physical space and resources. This the GLA has done, impressively, by guaranteeing the funds for Alexander Palace in North London as the main site of the ESF. But in the process it has effectively run the management of the ESF.

./english/209.txt:23:The organisation of the ESF is intended to be process of democratic negotiation and co-operation between all those wishing to participate and who agree with its Charter of Principles. The idea is that different organisations, with different traditions and capacities would share their skills, resources and ideas and in the process learn how to work with each other, and ‘contaminate' each other with new cultures and perspectives. It's not an easy process and the timetable for the London ESF did not give much time for it. But the GLA's philosophy of centralised, almost Jacobin, management has endangered some of the intellectual and organisational resources for this task, built up from trial and error over the first two years of organising the ESF. Fortunately, aspects of the process have established sufficient momentum and infrastructure to be indispensable - most notably Babels ( www.babels.org ), the international network of volunteer interpreters. But the organisation of the ESF website, for example - a vital tool for the new horizontal ways of organising - is something which the GLA was not prepared to delegate to any significant degree. The result is an extremely expensive site which lacks many of the tools for interactivity and for information gathering which are vital to the development of the ESF process. These could have been provided in an expert way and at low cost by the technical activists of the movements. The overtly bureaucratic control of the website is symbolic of a wider problem of mistrust of the capacity of the self- organised new movements.

./english/209.txt:25:Underlying the centralised and narrowly professional approach to the management of the process is an understandable anxiety about funds and, until the mayoral elections in June, about damaging publicity. But the end result has been a process which has favoured deals behind closed doors over open democratic discussion. The leading role played by the GLA has tended to mean the process is dominated by organisations used to making such deals and which are centred in London . Thus the trade unions are involved more at a leadership level than through regional and local organisations where relations with social and community movements are much stronger. Politically the SWP, though an important part of the British left, is given a disproportionately greater weight than the more diffuse but nevertheless significant forces of the independent and libertarian left. This inflexibility and rather mechanical approach to coalition building does not create very favourable conditions for innovation and experiment.

./english/209.txt:27:Fortunately, the desire in Britain for the kind of open space and opportunity for transnational convergence which the ESF provides is strong enough to transcend any particular management method or political sectarianism. For example at a local level, in cities like Newcastle, Sheffield and Liverpool or small towns like Swindon , Bolton or Edgehill , activists from the new ‘alter- globalisation ' movements and the left of the trade unions have begun to work together, with peace movement activists and socialist feminists often acting as important cross-generational bridges. Meetings in these cities to mobilise for London are already gathering momentum, though in many ways this process of deepening involvement beyond London has begun too late for maximum impact.

./english/209.txt:29:Another force opening up the process are radical Non-Governmental Organisations like the World Development Movement, War on Want and Friends of the Earth. They do have the formal structure with which the GLA can deal. Moreover the GLA need their support for the legitimacy of their management of the process. But these NGOs - some of them part of influential international networks - are actually staffed by people committed to the ‘horizontal' methods of the movements for which the GLA and some of the unions have shown mistrust. These mainly young people have used their bargaining power to play a vital role in keeping the process open.

./english/209.txt:31:Another positive factor has been the creative way the ‘horizontals' have reacted to the negative aspects of the process. Instead of walking away they have put extra energy into organising ‘autonomous spaces' ( www.altspaces.net ) which will, de facto, be a welcome part of the diversity the weekends activities. The work of the European Preparatory Assembly has also been exemplary in building on the experience of Florence and Paris to give a lead and sometimes a gentle push to those in London unwilling to work in new ways.

./english/210.txt:3:To asses the 3rd ESF we must take into account that the two elements of which the ESF consists had drifted apart. If we look at the London ESF as a process it is not hard to agree that it was a European success. 25,000 anti-neoliberal-antiwar activists assembled in London , debated, exchanged experiences, built or strengthened networks, organized campaigns and had a good time. The Autonomous Spaces were better than ever. The Preparatory Meetings worked all year round guaranteeing in hard conditions enough transparency and democracy, the expansion of collective intellect networks like BABELS, NOMAD and the Memory Project, things are in a way getting less national and more collective.

./english/210.txt:11:The dominating left parties of course tried to use the ESF (mostly because of their own politics and not because they are just a party) to use and gain power inside the process, because some political parties still believe that they are the avant-garde of a defeated Left.

./english/212.txt:7:1. A Promising Process

./english/212.txt:10:The first European Social Forums (ESF) set the stage for the construction of the European alterglobalisation movement and successfully centred political debate on neoliberal globalisation. Since the first World Social Forum (WSF) held in Porto Alegre in January 2001, the Social Forums, and the ESF in particular, have become the most visible public expression of the alterglobalisation movement. Basing themselves on the Charter of Porto Alegre, which has become an indispensable reference, the Forums have become quasi-permanent processes of crystallization of new forces and struggles that were previously rather disparate. Prior to the Forums the latter acted in dispersed fashion, promoting alterglobalisation in a precocious albeit strategically unfocused way. Today, critical movements benefit from a wide array of tools of struggle and common objectives. This crystallization has been accompanied by geographic expansion. The first three WSFs in Brazil created the conditions for the incorporation into the alterglobalisation movement of powerful social forces from South America, notably the peasant and indigenous people’s movements. The Bombay WSF in 2004 likewise integrated Indian social movements into the global struggle. The geopolitics of alterglobalisation thus mirrors the process of neoliberal globalisation, though its scope is still less all encompassing. It is to be hoped that the WSF planned for 2007 in Africa will play a similar role to the 2004 WSF in India. The global movement still needs to expand its reach to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. China remains outside of this process, for an undetermined period of time. Completing this geopolitical expansion of alterglobalisation will require the promotion and development of Local Social Forums in a number of countries. LSFs are prominent organising tools favouring the embedding of the Forum process. The same can be said of the National Social Forums that have emerged in a number of countries. This process constitutes a major step forward in the struggle against neoliberal globalisation. Nonetheless, its future development depends on moving forward to new stages, thereby avoiding the threat of exhaustion, immobility and lack of creativity. In this respect, self-criticism and criticism are indispensable components of the dynamic of the Forums. We have to be lucid about the state of the process. ATTAC, acting as a movement on an international level, has been committed since its inception to the construction of the Social Forums. As such, it has a double obligation. Firstly, to reflect lucidly and uncompromisingly on the insufficiencies and some of the recently witnessed drifts of the movement. Secondly, to stimulate new thinking and propose new forms of action designed to strengthen and amplify the global movement. The WSF has already undertaken to reinvent its formula in 2005. The success of this reshaping will be judged in January. The same kind of effort must occur on a European level.

./english/212.txt:21:These critical comments should not obscure the positive sides of the process, notably the progressive federation of new organisations, as we indicated in point 1 or, more importantly, their convergence. Movements that had no contact among each other are learning to work together; misgivings and hindrances are being removed; the potential for common action is growing.

./english/212.txt:28:The above appraisal implies the need to completely restructure the process. The FSEs have multiple functions, some of which are already known, and others, which have become apparent through experience. But we have to imagine them as a holistic process. Our objective should be to translate this into reality for Athens 2006.

./english/212.txt:37:The above implies a necessary reform of the process of preparation of the ESFs, with three major objectives. First, the EPAs must become a real locus of decision making. Second, political debate must occur over the orientations to be implemented during the Forums. Lastly, the EPA’s functioning must be improved through democratisation, better representation, and expansion. The creation of democratic and representative national committees may be a means to favour these objectives. In this regard, we have to question the usefulness of the Assembly of Social Movements, since the EPA is already supposed to encompass the whole social movement. The EPA should be the locus for deepening the debate, for the construction of permanent logistic tools (financing, computerisation, etc.), and for articulation with the national preparatory committee of the host country. As far as the timing of ESFs is concerned, a biannual rhythm, alternating with the WSF, is appropriate to avoid the dissipation of militant energies and the exhaustion of the financial resources of the various organisations. A European gathering of the different ongoing campaigns could be held between two ESFs. Its aim would be to discuss the main mobilisations of the movement a year ahead. ATTAC France believes that the future of the ESF depends on the acknowledgement of these imperatives and their translation into action through adequate preparatory structures.

./english/216.txt:3:Attac Europe, Contribution to the discussion on the ESF process

./english/216.txt:8:The fourteen Attac organisations present at the European Attac meeting in Innsbruck December 3-5 would like to make the following contribution to the ongoing discussion as regards the future development of the ESF process, and the European meeting of December 18-19 in Paris.

./english/216.txt:10:1. We consider the ESF process a major step forward in building our struggles against neoliberal globalisation. It gives a visible expression to the diversity of the movements, and points the way towards the construction of a new kind of common political space in Europe.

./english/216.txt:12:2. Although the first three fora have permitted us to achieve many successes, the limitations of our work so far must also be acknowledged. In our view, the themes in focus must better reflect the breadth of struggles that people are experiencing in Europe. This would necessarily entail a different kind of balance between different issue areas, making social issues a key consideration of the process. For example, we consider it out of tune with political realities that the last ESF had so few seminars on themes such as unemployment and the struggle against pension reforms.

./english/216.txt:14:3. In our view, this situation is, to a certain extent, a problem of method. Currently, the process does not permit us to have the political discussions that are so essential for advancing together. We must find a way of working that allows for better confrontation of ideas and practices, elaboration of alternatives, strategising and decision-making for common action.

./english/216.txt:16:4. In rethinking the working method within the process, we believe that the guiding principle has to be striving for a process building from below, in the sense that it has to start from the considerations of different movements and organisations, including the many who are currently not following the process, but nevertheless consider it most important. We should consider what there may be to learn from the work being done for the WSF, in terms of broad consultations when defining themes, and technical solutions for facilitating strategic interlinkage and voluntary mergers of self-organised activities.

./english/216.txt:20:6. In the long run, we also need to reflect on the difficult question of representativity in the EPA, as regards democratically legitimate processes at national or local level, as regards social bases, and as regards geographic areas. These questions are crucial for the work we have to do; however, we recognise that there are no easy solutions to this and that further reflection on the best way to proceed is necessary.

./english/218.txt:4:Some organisations of the Belgium Social Forum would like to propose some practical suggestions concerning ESF and it's process.

./english/219.txt:37:At a time when the new European Commission shamelessly boasts a high profile of laissez-faire politics, we must start a process of mobilisation in all European countries in order to impose the recognition of both collective and individual social, political, economic, cultural and ecological rights for men and women alike. To enable all the peoples of Europe to join this process, we must build a movement that overrides our differences and groups all the forces of the peoples of Europe ready to be involved in the struggle against European neo-liberalism.

./english/224.txt:7:The following thoughts result from a discussion hold at the French initiative Committee for the ESF (CIFS). They don't pretend to be exhaustive and simply aim at highlighting the convergences expressed on that very day. They tackle primarily with the future of the ESF and try to open the debate on the perspectives for the ESF process.

./english/224.txt:9:The former three ESFs have been meeting points for the forces who, in Europe , refused the logic of neo-liberal globalisation in one way or another. Both in the preparation process and at the ESF as an event, new forces joined the movement during the whole three years, which enhanced the dynamics of the forums. Better knowledge of each other created by working in common favoured new convergences. The ESF process allowed important steps forward in fighting neo-liberal globalisation and building a social and citizen movement at the scale of Europe .

./english/224.txt:13:The organising process for debates and its results are not fully satisfying. The exchange of ideas, in particular during the plenaries, has not proved convincing. The time and energy devoted to the plenaries did not allow us to give the deserved importance to the seminars. The organisation of seminars played a minor role in the ESF process. Even with a number of alternative proposals discussed, their visibility and dissemination remained very weak.

./english/224.txt:37:- Culture should be integrated as such in the process.

./english/224.txt:39:- The process of building up a memory should be integrated into the very conception of ESFs and be developed in order to allow the capitalisation of the debates and a better visibility of the alternatives. The form, the continuity and the function of that memory should proceed from collective decisions.

./english/224.txt:41:- The political and decisional role of the European Preparatory Assembly should be strengthened, its representativeness enlarged and its democratic nature improved. The EPA should be the place for all decisions concerning the ESF process. It should allow the effective participation of all forces involved in the process and discuss the shared tools (Internet tools, solidarity funds) which it has developed. It is the role of the organisation committee of the welcoming country to implement the decision made at the EPA.

./english/226.txt:3:Explanation of the ESF Process

./english/226.txt:8:• The French organizers of the extraordinary European session in Paris are asked to devise the agenda and the by laws in such a way as to ensure two separate rounds of dialogue for all country delegates, one on the issue of the present state of the ESF process, and the other on future perspectives and needed changes. This should happen before the general debate is started, to enable a general opinion to form on these two issues within the European movement and, at the same time, to prevent country delegations who are stronger in numbers to dominate the rest of the session.

./english/226.txt:12:• In order to facilitate an easier discussion during the Paris session, we are stating here our points of criticism of the ESF process, the perspectives and the needed changes.

./english/226.txt:14:London was a great experience for many thousands people, both politically and personally. With immense desire to be involved in discussions and great combativeness many of them made use of the offer to discuss the political issues raised. The ESF process has gained political amplitude and meaning by the active engagement of unions and many other groups and initiatives. There is a greater chance now for this new social movement to become and important political factor within Europe.

./english/226.txt:28:The most important problem this movement has to solve is the encouragement to enter into dialogue and the willingness to reach consensus. But how is the movement going to deal with groups on one or the other end of the political spectrum, which don't want to enter into this process or are not able to? Do we exclude them and accept their heckling? Do we forgo their participation and with it forgo their wide political influence in the population? The consequence would be a schism and with it the failure of an idea which could really change the world. Is it possible that it could be a justifiable consequence in the interest of a political success strategy, to part company with such minorities, who do not really want the ESF in the spirit of Port Alegre with its free space of discussion, but seek to use it only for the advancement of their own egotistical group aims (who the fuck needs the ESF?).

./english/228.txt:8:Our goal is that the 4th ESF in spring 2006 in Athens becomes a major political event and a process for the Greek and European movement against neoliberal capitalist globalization. We will attempt to widen the already open space of Forums for all social movements, campaigns, acts of resistance, organizations and collectives in Greece , the Balkan area and Europe . We aim to connect this process with mobilizations on specific matters those days on which the 4rth ESF will take place, so in this way we can have a strong grassroots emphasis to the Forum.

./english/228.txt:21:2. Contacting again political spaces that do not participate today in the European Movement against Globalization; like antiauthotarian collectives and the left that has harsh relations with the Forum process. Of course we must bring back to normal our relation with the activists and groups that work together with us through “Autonomous Spaces”

./english/228.txt:23:3. We must offer very heavy support to the European Networks and integrate them in to the process.

./english/228.txt:39:Our NOC must be democratic enough so anybody or any group can find a way to access the process even if in the beginning they feel reluctant. These groups can participate as observers but with the right to speak and propose or they can have special roles. But we must start almost at once our work because of the February European Assembly in Athens .

./english/229.txt:8:The following notes, based on a collective debate that took place in Rome on November 8th, aim at disseminating a number of considerations and proposals of change regarding the organization and development process of the European Social Forum, prior to the extraordinary meeting of the European social movements, which will be held in Paris on December 18th and 19th.

./english/229.txt:13:Until now we highlitghted the “event” of the Forum, which is still a fundamental element, and the prapatory process has been considered as a mere organisational matter; this must not be the case, the preparatory meetings should be the place where networks and their members become protagonists of the Forum’s development, and decide and coordinate the European campaigns. The boundaries of the Forum are there not only to provide a platform for ‘public speech’ but also to work on objectives, campaigns, plans for implementation and mobilisation of strategies: in short put words into actions and practise what we preach.

./english/229.txt:15:What we have witnessed up to now, is a decision-making process based on meetings that represented national realities only. As a consequence, the European networks had little influence, while the role of the “local” delegates and organizing committee was excessively predominant; the obsessive attention toward the speakers, as if they were issues of high relevance and prestige; a deadline of meeting which is too short (yearly) are an obstacle to the project and the effective organization.

./english/229.txt:18:The process of organisation and management of the forum must be European and not “delegated” to the guest organizing committee, except for the inevitable “national” features; this must involve all the realities, which share values and goals and want to set up debates and exchange their expertise. The method of approval in the decision-making process must be preserved; our relation with the authorities cannot influence any stage of the preparation and development of the Forum.

./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/229.txt:31:The introduction of various forces in single countries cannot be delegated only to the structures of the organizing country, whose “grievances” make sometimes the decisional and organizing phase difficult. This appears decisive also in Greece, where important TU, political and social areas are still out of the ESF process, and we have to act so as to have them in the “Athens process”. In this sense, it is important to bring the proposal made in London in again, i.e. to create – and we need to start ritgh now, on the occasion of the Paris meeting - an European delegation of the ESF, which is able to involve the most significant greek components that aren’t included in the ESF, into this process.

./english/229.txt:34:The extension of lapse between a Forum and another (from one year to one year and half) is well accepted: maybe we could also agree for two years (with a regular deadline in spring), maintaining a travelling preparatory meeting every 3/4 months, with decisional and operative features, that can serve as a “dissemination campaign” for those countries, which are not involved in the ESF process yet.

./english/232.txt:8:1. The British process to build for the ESF has been, from the proposal to have it in London onwards, organized without an open, democratic, inclusive process. Actually no link has been created with the UK Local Social Forums and the very same groups which played a prominent role in the process by organising mobilising committees for the ESF did so also in the places where a LSF was working already. This attitude has generated more problems and divisions in the movement in Britain and, even if some people have been inspired by the ESF experience to go on to join a Local Social Forum, we are registering a lot of repercussions from what happened, with people pulling out from the LSF in several different places.

./english/232.txt:9:2. The process is as important as the ESF in itself and we cannot have a different world if we don't force ourselves to practice a different way of working together, based not on self-appointed representation but on a wider inclusive process in which all the differences can express themselves and reclaim the right to participate. In the British process most of the power was based on the monetary resources organisations could bring in, which is far away from the world we are claiming to want (i.e. one where money does not come first!).

./english/233.txt:39:· The ESF needs to be thought of as a continuing political process. It is time to ask, what have we learnt about political issues and actions (as well as about organising process) through Florence , Paris and London ? What has been achieved politically through the ESF process since 2002 ?

./english/233.txt:43:· Networking is the essence of the ESF process. The proposal made by Phil McLeish on the ‘horizontal' circuit some months ago ( http://www.commoner.org.uk/01-12groundzero.htm ) deserves to be re-visited.

./english/233.txt:59:· The political process and the procurement of support services should aim to make its own contribution to the social transformations we want – encouraging participatory, democratic, non-profit forms; feeding resources back into social movements from ESF funds rather than charging their supporters for capitalist services.

./english/234.txt:5:The third European Social Forum has shown the necessity of a change in the organizing formula and process of the forum itself. After Paris-Saint Denis, the European global-movement entered into a new phase. We have to report, on one side, the still positive presence of the constitutive elements of its "birth act" - the crisis of the consensus on the war and liberal politics, the tendency towards the coordination of initiatives on an European scale, criticism of the political representation of social struggles – but also, on the other side, that we did not reflect enough on the social composition of the movement and on the motivations of practice.

./english/234.txt:9:Even if the Forum's "formula" and the thematic axis which characterize it is still significant, the building process is also important, and the interlace between these two aspects has become crucial. It is necessary to reconsider, during the Forum, the relationship between plenaries/seminars/thematic assemblies/social movements assembly, assigning a greater relief to the moments of aggregation and constitution of European networks around the different initiatives; it is also crucial the way in which the thematic merging process is qualified. The process which brought to the call for a second day of action of the migrants' movement - subscribed by tens of actors involved in their struggles, who met inside but also outside the ESF, in the autonomous spaces - is the best example of the way in which it should be possible to build up a political process on a European scale not only merging "similar issues", but around the assumption of common political contents and passwords.

./english/234.txt:11:The ESF has to preserve the aspect of the popular University without reducing itself to this. The centrality of seminars and thematic assemblies (i.e. war, precariety, migrants, common goods) should be posed also inside the meetings of the European Preparatory Assembly. Not reproducing there a little Forum, but deepening every time the contents - not only the organizing aspect - of single issues. Enlargement and inclusion are not only democratic tendencies - although necessary - but they also depend from the attitude to connect different political spaces and social times, trying to exceed the simple merging process. Social movements are strange animals, whose destiny is to spring up again without dying.

./english/236.txt:5:We start from the premise that ethics is related to a choice in relation to how we think and act in the world and how we see and relate to others; and that everyone's knowledge is constructed socially, but human beings can act upon this construction. From this perspective, knowledge of ourselves and an awareness of the process of construction of our knowledge can be interpreted as an ethical responsibility. In this sense, as defined by Paulo Freire, being aware of the mechanisms that shape our understanding of the world, and of its partiality or non-determinism, is a precondition to a process of self-liberation, of going beyond prescribed understandings of the nature of reality and being. It is also an acknowledgement of human “unfinishedness” and of the possibility to conceive the world in a way other than the one we have inherited.

./english/236.txt:7:The notion of unfinishedness, as the belief in the partiality of one's knowledge and in the possibility that one might be wrong, associated with processes of self-reflexivity and unlearning, might give rise to positions that are more uncertain and humble and, therefore, more open to engagement with and contamination by difference. Difference, in this view, is something essential to transform and broaden perceptions in a process where cross-fertilisation or “contamination” may fundamentally affect participants: transforming the ways one sees the nature of reality, being and knowledge. Ethics, in this sense, is a call for relationship: an embrace of difference as an act of love.

./english/236.txt:11:The characterisation of the Forum as a pedagogical space can contribute to the nurturing of this kind of ethic. Rather than pedagogy defined as content transmission, this ideal pedagogy should be re-conceptualised as a willingness to learn and to teach, to challenge and be challenged, and to emerge different from this encounter, moving away from coercion and persuasion. This pedagogy should also cultivate an emphasis on critical engagement with and within the Forum making it a dialogical space where participants can reclaim their right to question knowledges and realities and share the ownership of the process and outcomes of the production of new contingent knowledge. Self-reflexive critical engagement can push the boundaries of the Forum and transform it at different levels. Besides being central to a pedagogy for decolonisation of minds and imaginations, it can also function as a safeguard against essentialisms and fundamentalisms, preventing processes of closure, promoting openness and supporting decentralizations of power in various dimensions, such as within organisational processes and the events themselves.

./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/237.txt:11:That admirable optimism was short-lived, however. Those of us who saw our struggles not merely as a three day event but as part of a wider social change through the rejection of domination and control by questioning the legitimacy of existing power structures; those of us who celebrate autonomy and define our processes though our actions and networks of exchange and diversity, were soon to discover that the door painted in the global colours of the ESF would very soon be closed in our faces and bolted from the inside.

./english/237.txt:15:The worlds of the mega-social forums from Porto Alegre to Florence have broad and pluralistic definitions through the sophistic guidance of a Charter of Principles, developed and set out from the World Social Forum process in 2001. These principles conceive social forums as spaces of “diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party contexts that, in a decentralised fashion, interrelate organisations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.”

./english/237.txt:17:However, worrying trends emerged in the formative stages of the UK ESF process which raised questions about the motivations of the groups holding the reins of the event, namely Socialist Action, the Socialist Workers Party and the Greater London Authority (GLA). We quickly witness a lack of spaces for open dialogue, the delegitimisation of local working groups (including the London Social Forum), vertical company structures for the event and, most disturbingly, the silencing of dissent in the process and non-consensus based decisions. The UK ESF was sold as a gathering for those opposed to war, racism and corporate power, global justice, workers' rights and a sustainable society” but essentially it became a giant market place of commodified politics, with blatant backroom dealing in seminars and the privatisation of the event management.

./english/237.txt:19:The ESF organisers, almost entirely from political parties, claim that “the process was entirely inclusive with every shade of opinion and viewpoint within the global social justice movement.” Whilst the cumulative impact of the ESF was substantial, the collective efforts to shape the ESF came in the pre-packaged polemics of the traditional left parties with recruitment drives and little sense of the linkages or relevancy to autonomy and the grassroots. The mistrust of the non-standardised, non-card carrying organisations and the installation of rank and file power hierarchies meant the effective rejection of self-organised, self-managed and autonomous intervention. Without the relevant credentials and party/union card mandating us to participate, we were sans papiers in a new terrain of (in)vested power.

./english/237.txt:23:Activists who did attempt to intervene in the ESF process to democratise the structures of control and exclusion were labelled “wreckers” and “anarchists.” The “Horizontals” was a term coined at around this intervening time as a polar opposite of the vertical structures of the ESF process. Though a few horizontals remained in the process to fight for the adherence to the Charter of Principles or fight for open spaces within the organising process, many saw the creation of autonomous spaces outside the ESF as a new space for convergence.

./english/237.txt:30:The autonomous spaces (AS) were initiated by loose collectives that had disengaged with the ESF, deciding to meet and shape alternatives for the Forum participants outside of the official ESF process. The variety of the initial groups that met included Horizontals, Wombles, Indymedia, LetsLink, creative interventionists (Lab of ii), carnival, urban, creative forums and clowns. It was a mix of people more used to supporting each others’ tactics and actions through solidarity rather than all-out collaboration.

./english/237.txt:32:The ASs did not have, nor represent, one single unified position on the ESF. However, they thrashed out and agreed on the general principle of standing some way outside of the official ESF process – whether that was one-foot-out or both.

./english/237.txt:34:Although highly critical of the organising process, many saw the ESF as a space to network with people and then take their dialogues to open, non-fee-paying spaces. In contrast, others saw the ESF as fundamentally flawed, merely representing a space for the co-option of real struggles. Defining our group territories in this broad landscape and shaping our boundaries without creating borders took time. It was not an easy process and should not be idealised, but it was at least open and honest. Over the summer we carved out our association through sharing resources, time and energy. We collectively imagined a world, not an event, that went beyond the ESF, in life without capitalism sharing our commons, refusing a ‘pay to say’ mentality, and freeing, in all manner, our messages.

./english/237.txt:41:The AS meeting points were occupied social centres, away from the closeted safety provided by the metal detectors and body searches at City Hall, which was the meeting place imposed on the ESF process to suit the busy agendas of GLA officials. While the social centre environments were vibrant and rooted in local actions and participation, they were also subject to state scrutiny by police photographers and intelligence teams. Our meetings of mothers, academics, media workers, participatory economists and pranksters were described to curious by-passers by the police standing in front of the doors as full of ‘radical political extremists’. Of course, this encouraged quite a few adventurous people to drop in who, upon seeing the criminalisation of ‘normal people’, offered their support!

./english/237.txt:45:As we began socialising our physical spaces volunteers from Indymedia London, as one of the groups fully engaged in the autonomous spaces, also tried to petition the ESF organisers to utilise the movement’s media and networked resources in the same way. We urged them to decentralise the ESF working lists, to socialise the communication tools and to utilise alternative and community media groups. Most of these points were ignored by the official process, however, including the suggestion of setting up Internet cafes and delegate resource centres at Alexandra Palace. So after multiple attempts, Indymedia turned its attention to working autonomously not only with ASs but also with NGOs engaged in advocating communication rights. This coalition highlighted the need for an activist gathering of thousands to address the issue of the freedom to communicate. Working with NGOs was often difficult for a group with very open networks, and potentially confusing information channels, non-9-5 working hours and exploitable energy. However, the result was that we managed to create a looser form of collaboration, which resulted in a wider understanding of communication as it moved from the margins to become a more central theme. The Camden Centre played host to four days of discussion on tactical media and communication rights as well as free internet and a media centre. Meanwhile, the wider collaboration and relationships built with Communication Rights advocates turned into a very real node of critical support when, as a result of an unrelated incident, Indymedia’s servers were seized during the ESF preparations by the FBI.

./english/237.txt:53:A truly internationalist spirit stood in contrast to the discussions about national quotas of speakers that occupied much of the ESF process for months. ‘Big name’ speakers were not the main priority at the AS. People came to exchanges real experiences, stories and plain words with validity and legitimacy born of their presence and action. We saw this as a way to effectively build networks all over Europe and broaden our movements in the UK.

./english/237.txt:59:The process of decentralisation in the AS worked for organising hundreds of workshops all over London, but it did suffer from a lack of cohesion during the event, which meant a more ‘pick and mix’ choice of participation. But with the ESF in town, choice was an aspect of everyone’s experience. Not being in one central place did mean that we were sometimes at odds with each other, on the one hand running our particular AS and the other really wanting to participate in someone else’s. We bonded over the action of creating the AS, rather than the actual experience of coming together during the AS. As a result, we experienced at the same time both an amazing, movement-building experience and a loss of wider integration.

./english/238.txt:7:Abstract: Language and communication needs are at the heart of the Social Forums. The emergence of Babels, the international network of volunteer interpreters and translators, demonstrates that alternatives to market capitalism can and are being actively produced through the ESF process. Unfortunately, like Florence and Paris before it, the London ESF continued to promote and communicate in the languages of the ‘power elite' whilst marginalising all others, with negative consequences for equality of participation. This article describes the Babels story so far before critically reflecting on the 'politics of language' as a contribution to the debate on the future direction of the ESF process. We conclude that in order to make the ESF, and all Social Forums for that matter, genuinely internationalist affairs from now on, trade unions, NGO, social movements, networks and individuals must work hand-in-hand with Babels at the beginning of every process, while Babels must pro-actively fight to put language politics at the heart of the Forum.

./english/238.txt:10:Language is at the heart of the Social Forums. Or at least it should be. The Porto Alegre Charter that continues to shape and guide the ESF process makes clear our collective commitment to “ reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action”. It reminds us that the Forum must always be open to pluralism and “the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles.” Breathing life into these worthy principles requires that people have the means to communicate with and understand each other in ways that are egalitarian and democratic. As Susan George writes in her new book ‘Another World is Possible If …', political activists are as guilty as the ruling classes in using language for purposes of power, control and domination:

./english/238.txt:16:Yet how much do ESF organisers and participants reflect on the people, skills, technology, and resources – and above all the politics – involved in enabling participants to understand and speak in the myriad different languages that define and bring the Forum to life? For example, a common misunderstanding among Forum goers is the assumption that interpreters are hired in by the Forum to cater for ‘international speakers'. Yet since the first ESF in Florence 2002, almost all simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, as well as document translation, has been provided in political solidarity by Babels, the growing international network of volunteer interpreters and translators that was born out of the Social Forum process. The development of Babels and the commitment of its protagonists to ‘learn from practice' pro vides one of the best examples of how alternatives to market capitalism can and are being actively produced through the Social Forum process. At the same time, the problematic way in which the ESF (organisers) and Babels relate both to each other and language issues is evidence of the contradictory political ethics and practices within the ESF that must be addressed during the process towards Athens 2006.

./english/238.txt:18:The aim of this article is to critically examine these issues as a contribution to the debate on the future direction of the ESF process. We begin with a brief overview of the Babels story so far before turning to how its identity, principles and activities are being developed by learning from practice. Then we reflect on the serious dilemmas and contradictions relating to language within the ESF through examples from the London ESF.

./english/238.txt:28:The success of Florence led to the emergence of new Babels coordinations in Germany , UK , and Spain alongside the original French and Italian pioneers. It also prompted more consideration of language issues by the Paris ESF 2003 organisers with Babels given decent office facilities, computers, a longer preparatory process and a relatively large pot of money (£200,000) to coordinate and innovate with. Boosted by Babels' participation in the counter-G-8 conferences in Evian and Annemasse, the Paris ESF was able to draw on over 1000 Babelitos from a volunteer pool four times that number.

./english/238.txt:37:Underpinning the Babels philosophy is a determination to continually reflect upon its role in each Forum and then learn and develop from practice. Out of this process, three important political pre-conditions have emerged for Babels involvement in Social Forums that are now guiding principles of the network. The first is that all interpreters and translators for the ESF must be 100% volunteers. This stems from the problematic experience of a two-tier workforce of voluntary and paid interpreters in Florence . Babels believes that hiring professionals or companies to ‘service' the Forum goes directly against the principles of solidarity and developing communicational alternatives to the market that are supposedly enshrined in the Social Forum's charter.

./english/238.txt:45:At a deeper level, in its efforts to bring to life these principles of ‘learning from practice', ‘solidarity, ‘horizontality' and ‘equality', Babels embodies the two main positive achievements of the Social Forum process. The first is its Gandhian philosophy of ‘being the change we want to see', also known as ‘pre-figurative politics'. In other words, Babels attempts to put into practice the very egalitarian and internationalist principles of the ‘good society' the alter-globalisation movement calls for in facilitating communication across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

./english/238.txt:51:For example, Babels is developing innovatory new language tools through activities like the Lexicon Project. This is an on-going effort by volunteers from a wide range of countries and backgrounds (teachers, students, professionals, activists) to create a comprehensive glossary of words and phrases to help interpreters and translators best reflect different meanings according to different national, cultural and politico-historical contexts. It is consciously creating a process of ‘contamination' in which the excellent language skills of the politically sympathetic trained interpreter/translator interact with the deeper political knowledge of the language fluent activist to constantly improve the communications medium within the Social Forums.

./english/238.txt:59: Despite the central role of Babels in both meeting the language needs of the ESF and developing alternative long-term communication infrastructures with others, the network cannot and does not function in isolation from the rest of the ESF process. Ultimately, Babels like everyone else involved in organising and participating in the ESF, must reflect critically on the outcomes and relationships being generated by our activities, and what this implies for future directions.

./english/238.txt:65:While it is true that language hierarchisation is a reflection of the continued dominance of West European political movements in the ESF process, the ESF organisers also heavily influenced the ‘demand' for languages through restricting the supply. From an early stage, it was decided that the London ESF would be a much smaller event than those witnessed in Florence and Paris . The main organisers effectively made sure of this by setting very high entry fees and only planning for around 20,000. They also believed that in such circumstances, most of the participants would come from Western Europe and thus began to communicate almost exclusively in English whilst asking Babels to translate important documents for the website into the other main languages. This inevitably acted as a major outreach barrier to the social movements of ‘majority Europe ' and beyond because many people did not believe that their languages would be spoken. This was reinforced by the huge travel costs and the failure of the ESF organisers to put into place an adequate system for helping participants – including interpreters – to receive Visas to enter Britain .

./english/238.txt:69:In general, Babels could not prevent the de facto officialisation of languages because coordinators were only provided with information about the language profiles of registered speakers and participants two weeks before the ESF took place. Prior to this, it was only able to build up a vague idea of the nationalities of people and sizes of delegations that would be attending from second-hand scraps of information. This is because from the very beginning of the ESF process, Babels coordinators were excluded from the information flows coming in and out of the ESF office, and their recommendations for how to integrate language needs into the heart of the organising process were generally ignored. Babels was also not allowed to have any autonomy over its own coordination budget. In other words, just like languages issues themselves, Babels was marginalised from the decision-making centre consisting of the Mayor of London's political office that runs the GLA, a handful of trade unions, and political sects like the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action and the Communist Party of Britain. These forces ultimately controlled the ESF and put up political walls and barricades around a supposedly open space.

./english/238.txt:71:Because of this, and a number of serious problems over accommodation and reimbursement for volunteers, Babels issued a number of critical public statements and nearly pulled out of the London ESF on several occasions. That fact that Babels stepped back from the brink each time was partly due to the fact that reaching a consensus to walk away is far harder than agreeing to get involved, especially in a a network bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Moreover, the UK coordinators of Babels who agreed to participate in this year's ESF did so with their political eyes wide open. The reality is that the Social Forums – and especially the ESF – are not politically ‘pure' spaces where everyone works together in mutual respect and harmony. They are instead political battlegrounds where self-interested factions fight for leadership and control and are met with resistance from those opposed to vanguardism. Babels thus currently accepts that the innovations and alternatives being generated by projects like itself and and Nomad come not only through the annual process of organising the ESF and WSF­, but also in struggle against those within them. And whatever the shortcomings of the organisation of this year's ESF, we still managed to gain an enormous amount of knowledge and experience that we will now share with future processes, particularly through adding value to the Lexicon and Sitprep projects. Most importantly, pulling out would have stopped the ESF from taking place – this was not a decision that Babels alone should have the power or right to make.

./english/238.txt:73:At the same time, in an organising process lasting just under 12 months, problems develop cumulatively and become institutionalised before anyone has noticed or developed the means to challenge them. Babels cannot shy away from its own responsibility in this regard. Through its inseparable development alongside the ESF, the majority of nationalities and languages of Babels interpreters, translators and coordinators also belong to the same Western Europe elite. This means that however much we criticise the ESF organisers' insular outlook, the way Babels has evolved inevitably acts to some extent as a reinforcing mechanism of bias. More seriously, while Babels may dislike being treated as a service provider, it has so far done little other than follow the market model imposed on it by the ESF organisers. This implies the urgent need for all of Babels volunteers, be they interpreters, translators or coordinators, to stand back from the ESF process and once again engage in a deep process of collective self-reflection and self-criticism in order to learn the lessons of London .

./english/238.txt:75:If we are serious about creating spaces for exchange between people from a diversity of social, ethnic, cultural and political backgrounds and contexts, with a multiplicity of needs, then all of us in the ESF process must collectively address head on the issues and politics of language and communication within our movement. Babels cannot obviously do this alone. Trade unions, NGO, social movements, networks and individuals must from now on work hand-in-hand with Babels to make connections with social movements and actors in marginalised countries and communities in the process help pass on knowledge to create new Babels coordinations. This is especially urgent for the next ESF scheduled for Athens in Spring 2006 due to the severe shortage of Greek interpreters within Babels. Without a genuine commitment by everyone to an unprecedented process of linguistic and popular outreach – and to the necessary resources this implies – the ESF is destined to remain centred around the Western European left and risks having the microphones turned off altogether.

./english/240.txt:7:Over the past few years, many networks and groups have been established around Europe to promote campaigns around refugee issues. A pre-ESF conference in September in London brought together 70 people from a large range of migration related networks, including British groups. The European Social Forum (ESF) was seen as one step in the wider process of migration as a social movement, an opportunity to address a new audience. The meeting was designed to bring about more cohesiveness among the Europen networks in the long term, and to discuss joint proposals for seminars and workshops for the official ESF programme as well as for the alternative spaces.

./english/240.txt:9:As a result, a second European day of action was launched at the ESF for 2 April 05, claiming freedom of movement and the right to stay as an alternative to the european constitutional process based on exclusion and exploitation. A number of seminars and workshops were held both in the official ESF and the alternative spaces. Speakers from migration related European grassroots groups and migrant self organisations participated, in many panels, discussing work, precariousness, information technologies.

./english/240.txt:31:3) To promote inclusiveness in the ESF-process, asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants should be able to become part of the organising process. In order to achieve this, the previous two points should be taken into consideration during the ESF-process.

./english/241.txt:7:Five years after Seattle and four after the first World Social Forum, it is time to reflect upon what has happened during the last, very resonant years, and about how to continue. In response to this, several initiatives with multiple trajectories are beginning to emerge from the intersection of political action and investigation. Their aim is to put archiving and research techniques at the service of the process of social mobilization and social change. There is not an homogeneous and/or established concept for defining this action. It’s more a “network” of concepts that are growing together around words like archiving, documenting, reporting, memory, systematizing, investigation and activist research. The development of conceptual tools is one of the key-points around it that it is necessary to face now.

./english/241.txt:11:These initiatives have a variety of different objectives: preserving what happened for future memory; making accessible the knowledge spread at international meetings for people who cannot participate to them, which helps to turn them into parts of a process and not just single events; creating networking tools to enhance the effectiveness of the process itself; critical analysis that sheds light on the contradictions of the process, etc.

./english/241.txt:15:Concerning the Social Forums process specifically, the question is starting to be addressed with the appearance of new actors. Concretely, there now exists an active Social Forum (SF) Memory working group depending on the World Social Forum International Council. This is a global space to coordinate and facilitate the archiving and systematization initiatives of Social Forums and to establish a protocol of memory coming from each forum. A European partner to this process has also emerged in the guise of the European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the European Social Forum (ESF) process. This is a working group depending on the ESF European Preparatory 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 allow us to have many expectations about the documenting of the London ESF by the UK organising committee and the ESF office, as a lack of attention paid to archiving, systematization or participative communication has created difficulties or disrupted several initiatives.

./english/241.txt:19:The networking organizational aspect gives an understanding of the nature and richness of movements that are involved within the Social Forum process; of what kind of organisations participated in the forum: thematically, regionally and by type and size; an understanding of the direction in which the process is growing through an evolution analysis; or which kind of connectivity the Forum has created; different models of participation etc.. It is focused on developing useful networking tools to reinforce the Forum’s dimension of “weaving” social networks.

./english/241.txt:26:But going further, the key for the future is to use technology. The use of technology to advance movements should also be the task of Social Forums and these need to be folded into the memory/systematization process. There are clear synergies amongst the News Technologies of Information and communication, the translation system and the possibilities for the systematization of the process and making it accessible. For example, using the Nomad translation system allows us to have a record of the event. The Website is a basic “wardrobe” of information sources on the Forums and a basic tool to spread the systematization of its results. We look upon the web as the primary organisational tool as well as the primary disseminating mechanism.

./english/241.txt:32:The Guide is an experiment in putting applied research and archiving techniques at the service of the process of social movement convergence in Europe and in particular around the ESF process. It is inspired to traditions like participation action-research and 'con-research'.

./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/241.txt:36:The research springs from the relation between the subject-investigator (the investigator as a subject) and the subject-investigated, both of whom are involved in the composition process. Rather than treating the social movements as objects of investigation, this non-instrumentalist research is an investigation without an ‘object’. Instead, the movements, as well as the investigator, are subjects in a process in which everybody is left reconstituted. It is not a research ‘about’ Social Movements; rather it is “from” and “for” Social Movements in the immanence of the process. Rather than locating itself at an already codified position already codified, it produces the terms of the situation. The subject-investigator participates in the situations investigated, is open about his or her motives and opinions, and is not necessarily a person with a specialized university education. On the contrary, the traditional role of the academic-investigator, as an individual specialist operating at a supposedly objective prudent distance, is questioned by this approach.

./english/241.txt:40:It is a piece of research explicitly tailored to action for the critical transformation of the current reality. The research pursues the creation of a knowledge that is valued for its practical effectiveness in generating changes, as opposed to an objective and contemplative theoretical knowledge, as in the traditional academic manner; knowledge that generates and maximizes action and whose fruits serve the process of constituting new antagonistic subjectivities through social movement convergence processes. In the sense of practical effectiveness the core of the Guide is to build useful “networking tools” such as a Directory and contact details of the collectives and organisations which have participated to the ESFs of Florence, Paris, London, organized thematically and by region; and a Map of the European networks developed within and around the ESF process. The level of utility is defined by the capacity of the use-builders of the Guide itself to make it grow through the identification of actors with the networking process, of resources for the action, of reflection for social transformation.

./english/241.txt:42:It also aims to reinforce action research/investigation as a new antagonistic commitment. Another aim of the Guide is the creation of a convergence space for common action amongst activist researchers/investigators operating within the social movements at the European level. For this reason it is and it will be carried out by an open network of groups and research centres, called the Action research network for the ESF confluence process. Moreover, the Guide will contain a specific Map/directory of groups which are producing research within and around the new movements in Europe too.

./english/241.txt:48:• A map of web-bibliographic articles on the European confluence processes, articles of reflection about the new social movements and the new confluence spaces in Europe and articles on the data and the new knowledge generated by the Guide itself, as a tool of reflection and debate

./english/241.txt:49:• A conceptual dictionary about the SF process and new movements in Europe.

./english/241.txt:53:The Guide has an explicit political commitment to the present cycles of protests and the ESF and it surroundings. It was born from the consciousness of this process of resistance and reaction rather than from a perspective that is merely communicative or contemplative. It is not intended to ‘give’ voice to the excluded populations, considered other from us, but to establish cooperation among ourselves, with the acknowledgement of our own exclusion from the outset. It is not constituted through a separated consciousness, but it makes the research one more tool in the process of confronting the system that excludes us.

./english/241.txt:55:It is a tool at the service first of all of the ESF confluence process: aiming to help the self-organization of the ESF itself as well as the creation of European and transnational networks. And it will produce knowledge, more self-consciousness among the protagonists of the ESF process; and more focused actions and strategies for the future.

./english/241.txt:57:In a process of collective creation, it is nurtured by a spirit of experimentation and cooperation through an open and pluralistic network structure. The Guide is developed from a network of very diverse nodes, politically and organizationally, such as research groups internal to the social movements (Transform! Italia, Transnational Institute, Glocal a-research centre) or social movement organizations (ARCI, EYFA, UNITED for Intercultural Action), in collaboration with academic departments/centres (The University of Florence or The Centre for the Study of Global Governance- LSE), Trade Union Foundations (like the CGIL’s Fondazione Di Vittorio), hackers support teams (Pangea), International archive institutions (IISH - International Institute of Social History) and a cluster of 40 advisers. It is also being developed with the collaborative interaction and recognition by the working groups internal to the social forum process which were mentioned above.

./english/241.txt:61:Building a Useful Guide for social transformation in Europe is a process that is now in process. Join it!!!

./english/241.txt:79:European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the ESF process working group of the European ESF assembly

./english/242.txt:9:But this implies relating technical developments to other social practices and uses for which the tools are developed. The user must be at the starting point and not only at the end of the production process. This is why the actors of Nomad, an international network of people committed to putting essential technologies into the public domain, link their technological developments to other practices (in translation, art, media, agriculture...). Nomad activists from across the globe have been working towards developing alternative technologies aimed at general empowerment of people.

./english/242.txt:17:Nomad defends the position that technological development involves not only a production of finalised tools but also needs to take into account, in the process of production, the ecological, economic and social consequences of the tools of production. This is why technical development must be linked to specific practices determined by specific ecological, economical and social contexts. Each context is to be considered as a new situation in which to experiment and invent.

./english/242.txt:19:Nomad is a space of experimentation for these technical and political issues. It sees the Social Forums as an experimental ground for the development of alternative technical solutions and alternative modes of organization (inside the process of the Forum itself and in relation to economic issues and aspects of knowledge transmission).

./english/242.txt:26:Since Mumbai, Nomad and Babels have defended the position that the setting up and building process of the Forum must be carried out by activists. The activists cannot remain the consumers of alternative speeches in a framework produced by capitalist groups. Activists should apply their vision of “another world” in the setting up of the Forum itself. From this perspective, the extension of the workshop spaces becomes fundamental. The WSF 2005 in Porto Alegre has started a shift towards this perspective. The process of building the Forum has being confined to five working groups (architecture, translation, sustainability, communication and culture) composed of activists who will try to apply the alternative principles of the “other world” we defend in the construction of the Forum itself.

./english/242.txt:50:Participating in the Forums as part of Nomad can only be on a voluntary basis. The purpose of the notion of voluntary participation is to clarify the basis on which someone is involved in the Nomad project. People involved on a volunteer basis are also involved on a political basis: they control their own contractual obligation. They are neither subordinate nor dependent on an employer or any economic necessity. Outside of the context of the Forums, a Nomad activist may be compensated, but only for specific technical tasks. The precept of voluntary participation also has a political aim: involving volunteers, rather than calling upon a service company affirms that the Forum actors must participate in the process of creating the Forum, and not just use the content of a Forum created by others in a consumerist mode. It aims to question the division of labour between producers (subject to management and dependent on that management because of their salaries) and deciders. This implies that Nomad and a commercial system cannot coexist within the Forums, i.e. we cannot have both unpaid volunteers and paid employees of a service company. It is indeed possible to hire a technical system when we cannot build it ourselves (then it would be better to choose an organisation that is part of an alternative economic perspective), but it is unfair and against the principles of the Nomad project to call upon a service company for these kind of technical questions and at the same time to get volunteers involved. When these situations occur the technical providers are completely free to use the tools developed by Nomad but cannot claim to be Nomad.

./english/243.txt:1:The Social Forum Process and Popular Education

./english/244.txt:13:• How do the groups, organizations and actors involved inside the ESF processes (including the autonomous spaces surrounding them) communicate between themselves, in other words how do groups involved in social transformation communicate with other groups involved in this same objective?

./english/244.txt:15:• How does the ESF confluence process communicate with the rest of society, in other words, how do actors and groups that care about social transformation communicate with actors, groups, and institutions not directly involved with the dynamics of the ESF and more widely with social transformation in general?

./english/244.txt:17:One of the main issues of the ESF process is to be able to build a corpus of information and knowledge about social transformation (all levels included: local, national, continental and global) that can get to be used in a sensitive, dynamic and interactive way for all persons who aim to integrate, use and develop this corpus of information and knowledge (two concepts which are related but not the same). After this main issue we could ask ourselves about how to get this informational corpus of knowledge from ESF spaces and spread it out inside the global mediascape of “mass media”?

./english/244.txt:27:Here it looks as though we are facing a double sociological problem of creating a process where the “analysis” of the situation of a social, political, cultural or gender conflict gets to be relevant enough to produce its own proposals of solutions to those conflicts. In a certain way we could say that the production of information from the social movements and from civil society involved in social transformation needs to be working at some points with networks that are practicing “activist research action”. But this article won't focus on this precise point that would be related with methodologies and contents shaping. We would rather here make a proposal to build more reflection around the way we produce and spread information related to the activities of our organizations and/or affinities groups.

./english/244.txt:29:When someone gets to go to an ESF, inside or surrounding spaces like the “autonomous spaces” s/he looks for several things generally: on the one hand, to learn, hear, meet new groups, persons, activities, debates, methodologies. This means that through coming and assisting to conferences, plenaries, speeches, debates, workshops, he/she is going to enlarge and expand her/his own knowledge of the contemporary objectives of social transformation, and aims and strategies to achieve it. On the other hand, all these dynamics won't depend only of the short laps of time when you get to walk with thousands of other people from one meeting point to another one inside the related spaces of the ESF. Those processes are expanded in your daily life through your communicational habits, your inscription to mailings lists, blogs, newsletters and other online tools to receive online flows of information and data.

./english/245.txt:11:Communication structures and tools, websites, mailing lists, computers, media centres, press policies, software platforms, and licensing of media are all highly political issues, yet they were repeatedly dismissed as low level practicalities by many involved in the 2004 UK ESF process.

./english/245.txt:13:The truth is that these issues are just as political the issues of providing good quality organic, vegetarian or halal food, or of using ethical supply or service companies - indeed more so, since some of these areas effect the way the social forum process is built, and the ways people can participate in it, or not, as the case may be.

./english/245.txt:15:These issues cannot be seen in isolation, since they can only be assessed within a wider political context. For example debates over the importance of key plenary issues and speakers, or the importance attached to the potential for positive interactions given the required seminar merging process, all effect the requirements of any communications strategy.

./english/245.txt:17:Many of the problems that are highlighted were due to both indecision and a lack of desire on behalf of the UK Organising Committee to address these issues. Problems with the UK process also had the effect of limiting participation in several areas, media and communications being one of these. This coupled with a lack of clear priority in these areas led to a subsequent failure to gain wider participation from groups or individuals who could have helped on a volunteer basis, thus ensuring the provision of tools or strategies was outside of the budget of the 2004 ESF.

./english/245.txt:24:Much is made of the Social Forums being more than just a conference. They are supposed to be a process - given that the actual event only lasts a few days and passes by in a blur of packed schedules, while the preparatory process lasts for almost a full year, this truth should be evident.

./english/245.txt:26:And yet the development of communication strategies and the tools to support them seems to have been woefully lacking. Given that this '"movement of movements" that we're always talking about has blossomed under concepts of decentralised networks and non-hierarchical communication, underpinned by the opportunities afforded us through the use of computers and the Internet, it should be clear that any ongoing Social Forum process should place these values and tools at its heart. Sadly with the 2004 ESF, this was not the case.

./english/245.txt:28:At the most basic level there should be a concerted effort to embrace communication technologies and locate them in the centre of the ESF organising process. This is essential both at the European level with the preparatory process and domestically within in the host countries.

./english/245.txt:30:The truth of these technologies however is that they do suit certain types of organising more than others. It was clear that with the London ESF there was a distinct dislike and rejection of interactive tools that facilitate open horizontal communication and participation. These were rejected in favour of strictly hierarchical models of communication and information flows. For example there seemed to be a clear unwillingness to use email lists for working groups within the organising process. Indeed when calls for an email list to be created for the Programme Working Group became too loud to ignore, one of the few people designated to deal with website based issues suggested they go away and produce a feasibility study into the advantages and disadvantages of setting up an email list! When this was rejected, they then suggested that anyone wanting to send a message to the entire working group could simply email her, and she would ensure that the email was sent out to everyone who had attended a meeting and supplied their email address. This may have been acceptable ten years ago, but not today.

./english/245.txt:34:Similarly there was an ongoing argument over the ESF website for London 2004. Much has been written on this matter and the private tendering and procurement process of the GLA in delivering the £40,000 website. Essentially the e-commerce functionality was deemed crucial to the ESF (which of course it was) and therefore the GLA took on the role of ensuring this was delivered. However the requirements for the other website functionality were never opened up for public discussion, all public interactivity was rejected, and too few people were trusted to participate and administer the site. All this was occurring at a time when the World Social Forum was producing a bold strategy to put electronic tools at the centre of building a better participatory process – a lead the ESF would be well advised to follow.

./english/245.txt:36:In parallel a range of activists and individuals created another website based on wiki technology (wiki is essentially an online notepad which allows people to easily add and edit text on a webpage). For a while, this website (www.esf2004.net) became the best source of information about the 2004 ESF, carrying reports, notes, minutes, discussions and notices of meetings, many of which were lacking from the official website – all constructed collaboratively. While it is true that many projects that were critical of the ESF processes found a home on this website, it did show the wider potential of these tools, and provided a space for communication and collaboration which was sadly lacking within the official organising structures. Indeed several initiatives were set up outside of the main ESF organising process, including web facilities, to demonstrate just how easy it is to create appropriate electronic tools to aid memory reporting and archiving efforts.

./english/245.txt:41:One positive development during the ESF 2004 preparatory process was the agreement at a European Assembly meeting to set up an ongoing European working group on web technologies, to try and ensure some continuity from one year to the next, to develop appropriate tools to support the ESF process, and to offer advice within these areas. It’s certainly true that there have been many problems in continuity, for example the handing over of the fse-esf website from one country to another. Related to this is the area of intellectual property and concept of ownership of information gathered, from email addresses to written reports and audio and video material. Problems have already been encountered with such data since there are laws and different frameworks to govern their usage. While attempts were made in London to avoid similar problems occurring again, for example with opt in permission for email addresses to be used in the future for ESF related contacts, this was a result of dealing with specific problems as they arose and not of a political recognition that these issues are part of our struggle for another world. This is an area that campaigners are working on globally to develop alternatives, both in practice and at a government and international institutional lobbying level, and certainly should be an area embraced by the ESF.

./english/245.txt:43:This move coupled with the now ongoing attempt to ‘systematise’ information and communication strategies together with the various ‘memory’ initiatives should strengthen the Social Forums concepts of themselves – something which is urgently needed to aid self-reflection, a process that the ESF is now supposed to be engaged in given the issues in London and the fact that the next forum has been scheduled for 2006 and not 2005. As part of this, it is essential to look closely at the pioneering work being done by the World Social Forum in its efforts to deploy NOMAD, the DIY simultaneous translation infrastructure, and to place free software and communication tools at its heart.

./english/245.txt:55:Because of the many problems of the UK process, organisations and networks who would have been expected to bolster any effort to gain press / media coverage did not engage in a publicity campaign. This meant that whole sectors of organisations failed to add their public weight behind the ESF. This failure should be seen as an important indicator of the attitude of many organisations towards the ESF - they may have participated in the Forum, but they didn't publicise it! Indeed many organisations even failed to link to the fse-esf website from their own websites.

./english/245.txt:57:One crucial factor for the ESF should be the involvement of the "Media of the Movements" – i.e. the progressive community media which is based in our constituency. However for the 2004 ESF these were treated as inferior cousins of the mainstream corporate press. There was an assumption that they would just provide coverage anyway. So instead of any campaign to involve them, there was little public encouragement given, until the very last minutes when some telephone calls were made to journalists of all types who attended the Paris ESF to encourage them to come to London. Press passes for the ESF were to be available to 'proper' journalists with National Press Cards, but while assurances had been given to media activists in London that community media would be able to gain press passes and access to the ESF media centre, this was never officially stated via the ESF website. Indeed during the preparatory process the media centre had been treated by many as "non-political" - as a purely practical issue disconnected from any political discourse. Some people even going as far as to ask how we can deal with ‘this problem of IndyMedia people and community media wanting to use the media centre’!

./english/245.txt:59:Indeed the ESF media centre was the only space available at Alexandra Palace with computers and internet access. That the biggest progressive political meeting in Europe should go ahead without any publicly available internet access is little more than a disgrace. While budget constraints were the main reason given, it was clear that these requirements had in fact been ignored for much of the preparatory process, since despite months of lobbying by media activists it was announced in August that there had been no ESF budget planned for any IT during the event, or even for a media centre! At least however it was agreed that the computers in the ESF media centre should run on open source software platforms. On the flip side, an alternative Indymedia Media Centre was set up in the Bloomsbury area by volunteers with over 70 computers available for use. One of the saddest failures was that AMARC (the world association of community radio broadcasters) and the UK's Community Media Association made an application to web stream live radio from Alexandra Palace - in the end all they were given permission to do was park their vehicle in the car park. They were given no power feed (and so had to bring their own generator) and were not given any internet connection, so the radio stream was impossible.

./english/246.txt:15:In fact, in the first two editions of the WSF there was very little discussion on how to integrate culture into the process as a whole. The cultural programme was basically arranged by the Culture Bureau of the Rio Grande do Sul state government, aided by the Culture Bureau of the Porto Alegre local authority. It consisted of a few exhibitions and film screenings spread around town (not in the space occupied by the WSF, the main campus of the Catholic University), seminars and pleanries on the subject, and most remarkably the concerts at the Por-do-Sol Amphitheatre, near the Youth Camp, on the bank of Lake Guaiba. In 2002, as a matter of fact, the organisation of the concerts was subcontracted out to an events manager. The Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) would only have a culture working group after the 2002 edition, when one person was hired to be responsible for the area and organise the group. It worked closely with the Rio Grande do Sul Culture Bureau, which was still in charge of most of the executive decisions – the BOC culture working group, mostly composed by NGOs and a few local authorities, was based in Sao Paulo, therefore having little contact with the reality ‘on the ground’ in Porto Alegre. This group subsisted ‘autonomously’ for a while after the WSF 2003, and became somewhat involved in organising the Brazilian Social Forum. In the run up to Porto Alegre 2005, it was (in theory) subsumed by an international BOC/ International Council methodology working group; however, it has remained exclusively Brazilian and largely unchanged in its composition.

./english/247.txt:27:Of course the everyday details of the proposals were not all perfect during these three years of the process. Certainly, the environmental illiteracy of the majority of people is one of the main causes, added to by technical and administrative problems. But we believe that the difficulties faced in the IYC only reflect the social-environmental problems through which we are (ourselves) confronted in daily life, in the distancing of humans from nature, in the general lack of environmental literacy, and in the total fragmentation of debate, which means that a lot of people still don ' t see politics in the environment or, worse still, they think the search for the solution to our problems should just be made at debate tables and not in daily practices.

./english/247.txt:29:Unhappily, we were not able to participate in the 4th WSF and IYC which happened in 2004 in India so we don't feel comfortable evaluating its proposed environmental plan, even though we are aware that there were serious environmental problems within that process.

./english/247.txt:39:The Environmental Commission is also planning the residues management, drawing the involved groups and movements into this process, prioritizing the organized social movements and focusing on the social insertion through jobs and income. The management and structure of the 2005 camp differs a lot, in terms of organization and concepts, from the previous experiences of the IYC. The new concepts made us work to decentralize the residues recycling process. The types of collected residues will be extended to five categories (recyclable material, organics, rejected residues, toxic residues – batteries, medical residues).

./english/247.txt:43:The practices proposed in the previous years of the IYC are being enlarged and improved not only technically, but also through the wider and more effective participation of environmental groups and organizations, in anticipation of the further internationalization of the Youth Camp process. What we believe to be fundamental is the consolidation of sustainability as a result of our daily practices, something that we can only achive in a horizontalized and collective construction process.

./english/248.txt:19:The permeation of market values was clearly visible at the Forum itself, where d iscussions on fair trade and the campaign to boycott Coke sat uneasily alongside the corporate food outlets selling Coca-Cola. But the real ‘innovations' lay behind the scenes. The GLA, having rested control of the budget-making process, kept this under tight wraps and assumed virtually the entire responsibility for the financial aspect of the forum. It brought with it the benefits of professional financial experience, but even this turned out to be doubled edged.

./english/248.txt:29:In addition, counting on the basis of financial inputs and outputs doesn't give a sense of the wider value of initiatives taken at the Forum. Projects such as Nomad, which could have archived the event (allowing, amongst other things, its speeches to be replayed for educational purposes) were ditched, as were most other initiatives that moved in the direction of long-term benefit for the social forum as a process rather than event. Such decisions were ultimately a consequence of how the GLA constructed its budget and allocated money. In particular, ticket revenues were left to bear a high proportion of the overall costs, which meant an increasing susceptibility to market pressures.

./english/248.txt:35:These initiatives are not incidental to the social forum process. They speak as eloquently as the rhetorical turns on the forum's main stages about alternatives to market-driven globalisation, with its tendency to destroy local production and bio-diversity as it spreads inequality around the world. Making the social forums into a laboratory for alternative economic practices will not result in the overthrow of capitalism, for sure. But it would at least be a step in the right direction if the forums were to prefigure, in the here and now, the kind of ‘other world' that they hope to bring about.

./english/249.txt:9:I have been participating in the preparatory assemblies since Istanbul in March, and have followed it from the sidelines since after Paris . I had a great time at the ESF in London , I achieved some good contacts and I also learned lots. I was with a group of newcomers to the ESF process, young union activists, who went here to learn and to enforce their activities back home. Generally, they went home with useful knowledge thanks to good people who arranged good and useful seminars and workshops. Seen from this perspective, the ESF in London was a success.

./english/249.txt:15:I have been told from people who participated in the first meetings after Paris , that the “ London bid” was promoted with promises of lots of money to do a great event. Obviously, there was les money to support this year's ESF than the previous years and it wasn't possible to offer free accommodation as was done in Paris . This was not a good start of the process. Before I arrived at the preparatory assembly meeting held in Istanbul in April, I joined the ESF mailing list, expecting to get information on what was to be discussed there. I never received any. Of course this made it impossible for me to discuss the ESF with my people here.

./english/249.txt:17:Therefore, in Istanbul I could only talk as a private person. This way of working gives power to the “inner circle” of the process, those who have been part of the process for some time and know each other. That can hardly be claimed to be a very democratic working style.

./english/249.txt:21:After the Istanbul assembly no minutes was ever made. Of course this enforces the power of the “inner circle”, making it very, very hard for new organizations or people who are not “nerds” with political meetings to have a say in the process. This was corrected after the Paris working group meeting after strong demands from several people from NGOs from different countries. We even got an agenda for the Brussels meeting.

./english/250.txt:7:Many changes have been introduced in the preparatory process of the next World Social Forum, which will be held in Porto Alegre from the 26 th to the 31 st of January and will only be composed of self-organized activities

./english/250.txt:33:The changes that were introduced in the preparation of WSF 2005 show one of the aspect of the forums' dynamic: that this is also a learning process. This means that many problems occurred during the process and that not everything that was planned could be achieved. The consultation and registration phase have shown that there is a strong interest in building the forum as a deeply self-organized process. However, because of the amount of answers and, amongst other things, because of some technical problems, the results of the consultation could only be partially analysed in a methodical way and were not sufficiently mutualized. Nor have we managed to create more profound links between the consultation and the process of registering events. Indeed, there was insufficient time to enable a strong appropriation by every participant of the changes that were introduced. Moreover, as these were significant innovations, the organizers themselves were learning new aspects everyday about how to facilitate the organization of a social forum in this way. Despite this, the new methodology is already a success because it has strengthened the dimension of the forum as a learning process and because it has lead to the greater involvement of every organization in the building of the forum itself. Those aspects that were not implemented this time around could still contribute to the shape of other social forums. From this perspective, it is important to try to manage to our work on a long term basis and not only to dedicate everybody's energy to the preparation of one single forum.

./english/251.txt:4:European Social Forum Processes

./english/251.txt:12:Part of this learning process inevitably brings into question our decision-making procedures and confronts us with the reality that thus far we have used consensus as little more than rhetoric. In light of this, I have included an outline of some consensus decision-making basics, which I base on years of experience teaching and using consensus techniques among groups of all sizes.

./english/251.txt:16:The European Social Forum was born in 2002 at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre where the decision was taken to set up regional social forums. Originally there were three countries interested in hosting the ESF: Italy, France and Greece. It was decided that Italy would host the ESF in November 2002 and Paris would host it the year after. The semi-official structures that arose out of these two ESFs created three or four loci of decision-making power. First, there is a local committee set up in the city where the ESF will take place. In the UK this was the UK Coordinating Committee (UKCC), which met every Thursday at City Hall. This is where all practical matters involved in organising the event can be discussed and hopefully resolved on a regular basis. Anyone who is involved in political organising or campaigning can be a part of this committee. This committee answers to the national organising committee, which is the second highest decision making body of the ESF. In the UK, this was the UK Organising Committee (UKOC). Meetings of the UKOC were held approximately once a month. In the ESF process, this committee is open to anyone in the country who wishes to be involved. This is in contrast to the WSF process where the membership of the Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) was originally closed to all except the eight founding member organisations. In the India WSF 2004, the Indian Organising Committee was larger and organisations earned their position on the committee by officially affiliating to the WSF. This more open structure is now being mimicked by the BOC for the WSF in 2005. Despite these differences, wherever the forum takes place, all decision taken locally are expected to be reported to this national organising committee to be approved of and/or amended. Finally, and most importantly, there is the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA), the highest decision making body of the ESF. These meetings are held approximately every other month in various cities across Europe and are open to all who can afford to get to them. These meetings create an opening for people from all over Europe to input into the ESF process, thereby making it a European process and not just a local event.

./english/251.txt:18:There is however another locus of power in the official ESF organising process: the office. For every ESF an office space is obtained (either by paying for it or by donation or a mix of both) and several people are hired to staff the office. In London there were two offices, one for the ESF and one for Babels. In all, nine people were employed full time by the ESF company and many others who were employed by the Greater London Authority (GLA) were working on the ESF in and out of the two offices. In Paris, several people were paid by their organisations or trade unions to work full time for the ESF. In addition to these full time staff there are also many full time and part time volunteers who work in the ESF office unpaid. The office staff is officially there to carry out the decisions taken by the local, national and European meetings.

./english/251.txt:20:These structures are the official macrostructures through which the ESF is meant to be organised. However, after actively having helped organise two ESFs and one WSF, it has rarely been my experience that these structures function entirely as they are meant to. This sometimes results in a gap arising between the official (or formal) and unofficial (or informal) structures of the ESF organising process. Even under ideal circumstances, in the day-to-day practice of organising an ESF there is no one body which has final decision-making power over everything. Nor could or should there be. Regardless of any decision-making structures that are set up, decisions will always be taken through a variety of different groups and people, and through a process of negotiation between these groups and people, be it at a local, national or European level. This has been the case in Italy, Paris and London. Nevertheless, the London ESF 2004 witnessed a stark shift in decision-making power, where it was not only the case that ESF structures were being adjusted for the day-to-day organising requirements (as they have always been to varying degrees), but also that alternative structures were being created.

./english/251.txt:39:Despite the few problems of accountability inherent in the macrostructures of the ESF, the official structures of decision-making, where the local committees and groups have privilege in daily decisions while the EPA ensures input from across Europe on critical political issues, is a rather effective and inclusive process. Unfortunately, the form which these meetings take can often be less inclusive. The official decision-making procedure of the social forum movement is consensus decision-making. However, in practice, due to a misunderstanding of what consensus is and a limited commitment to consensus, it is unclear what the exact procedure for making decisions is at the EPA.

./english/251.txt:47:These principles need to be explained at the beginning of every meeting and reinforced by the facilitator of the meeting or preferably by the meeting as a whole if possible. The Social Forum movement far too often assumes an awareness of consensus procedures that is not there. Most powerful organisations within the ESF process are not accustomed to working with consensus procedures as they tend to come from political party backgrounds or trade union structures which function through a more hierarchical and representative structure than the ESF. This lack of familiarity on the part of the key organisers and the participants creates a confusing atmosphere where all the weaknesses of consensus arise and very few of the benefits. If we are really interested in working through consensus decision-making structures then we need to be in a constant process of teaching ourselves and others how consensus works.

./english/251.txt:52:There is an obvious need for clear proposals in the EPA process. We have now witnessed many complaints by new-comers and old-timers alike that it is never clear what we are talking about at these meetings; topics get interchanged with each other and there is no system in place for keeping the interventions to one topic at a time. Nevertheless, several important questions arise around the idea of proposal-based discussion. The most obvious are: how proposals are written and by whom, and when and where are they presented and to whom? It was commonplace at UKCC meetings to have proposals brought to the meeting completely ignored with a “we’ll come back to that” or a “you can’t just introduce a document in the meeting when we haven’t seen it before.” There was no clear procedure for dealing with proposals brought to the UKCC and the result was such that proposals by certain people were adopted without proper presentation or discussion while others were refused or ignored, creating subcategories of legitimate vs. illegitimate proposals depending on which side of the political divide the proposal came from. The situation was so dire that when a proposal was presented to the UKCC (often after having been circulated by email), it was refused on the grounds that providing a written and photocopied proposal and distributing it at the UKCC meeting was an “unacceptable way to make a proposal.” When I interrupted the argument to ask what the acceptable way to make a proposal was, no one could tell me. Although it did become clear over time that the ‘acceptable’ way of making a proposal was to claim to represent as many people as possible (preferably the oppressed) and to have membership of particular political organisations/parties. If we would like to have an inclusive ESF organising process, we obviously have to consider all proposals equally, even when brought forward by politically less powerful organisations/people within the ESF process. Proposals cannot be branded as illegitimate or ill timed.

./english/251.txt:62:Is there any hope for consensus in the European Social Forum process?

./english/251.txt:64:The problems the EPA has faced in using consensus decision-making procedures are not new problems and are quite common to consensus in any group as large and diverse as the EPA. Ideally with such a large group based across such vast geographical distances, a spokes council system could be put in place where small groups meet in a decentralised fashion all over Europe to discuss the set agenda and then people selected by each smaller group to temporarily represent them go to the larger meeting. This would create a process which could include more than only those among us who are able to travel and who are brave enough to speak in a large room on a microphone. The small meeting size and the locality make it psychologically and physically more accessible to everyone. This structure has worked for much larger groups than the EPA, including the organising of the successful WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.

./english/251.txt:68:While I have seen genuine good will on the part of most people participating in organising the ESF, there is not a commitment by everyone to put the group first or to consensus, despite it being one of the guiding principles of the ESF. And what commitment there is diminishes day by day. In Paris we witnessed a struggle to use consensus decision-making without a very good sense of how it worked, but with a genuine commitment to making it work. Since then, even the way the word ‘consensus’ is treated has shifted greatly. Whereas in Paris ‘consensus’ was used as a powerful word to invoke shared values, in London it was perceived by many of the key organisers as a problematic word used mostly by trouble-makers. If the EPA wants to decide not to use consensus as a decision-making process and to place value instead on another type of meeting or structure, then we should do so, but it must be clear.

./english/251.txt:70:In London the biggest impediment to consensus was the lack of understanding and motivation to use consensus decision-making methods by those who had the power within the London ESF 2004 process. This lack of commitment to the principles of the ESF led to distrust and deep divisions across Europe. Implementing the above structures would go a long way to improving our meetings, but no structures can save us from an environment of hostility and selfish intentions. Our only real hope is if everyone commits to treating each other with respect. If this commitment cannot be reaffirmed by the European process in 2005 and beyond, consensus will indeed remain a waste of time and we should make our first priority redefining what decision-making procedures we would like to use instead. Perhaps we should just flip coins.

./english/252.txt:11:We, participants to the meeting of the European assembly in London on the 6th & 7th of March 2004, want to congratulate the assembly on making good progress towards hosting the European Social Forum 2004 in London. We believe we managed to make some pretty important decisions, crucial to the advancement of the ESF process.

./english/252.txt:13:But, we must say that the experience of the meeting itself was negative. Frankly; those of us who attended their first European assembly were shocked. We are afraid that what we experienced as an unstructured, noisy, aggressive and confused culture of discussion will be a major obstacle to furthering our common process. But, that being said, we also believe that many of our problems can be mended without too much effort.

./english/252.txt:41:and it tends to exclude those who lack these specific qualities. This is not to say that all those who know their way around a European assembly are all aggressive and self-promoting; on the contrary, many play very constructive roles. But the (culturally) excluded might be people who are new to the process (exactly those we most need to include!), people from smaller countries and organisations (who don't have a large delegation of allies to support them), and women. Women? Yes, if we were to do the statistics on who took the floor at our meeting in London, we're quite convinced it will emerge that this aggressive, laissez-faire political culture of ours benefits men at the expense of women.

./english/252.txt:45:d) FATIGUE. The described processes of inefficiency, exclusion and domination can make participants to the assembly feel powerless, and the overall effect might be one of deterring us from coming back next time.

./english/252.txt:49:So, we think we must be able to make the meetings of the European Assembly work better, for all of us. How? We will suggest a few guidelines. (Yes, we know we must strive for openness! Yes, we know we don't take majority decisions! Yes, we are suspicious of excessive formalisation, BUT: When we have put aside the formal constraints of traditional organisational democracy, all we are left with is self-constraint: We must all constrain ourselves at some points during the meeting, if it is to be a good and constructive one. So the process needs guidelines, agreed upon by consensus, that can help us develop the ability of self-constraint, together.)

./english/252.txt:63:5) When decisions are to be made, chairs must ask the meeting if it is in favour of a certain proposal, and also if there is anyone present who is against it to the point of wanting to block a consensus. There must be a clear and uniform way of signalling that one finds a proposal for consensus unacceptable (for example that those who are against it are asked to stand up) so that the participants have a clear overview of the different positions. If only a very small number of participants (one or two for example) are against a proposal, they should be asked if they could abstain from blocking the decision in spite of not agreeing. There must be ways of expressing dissent without blocking the whole process from moving forward.

./english/253.txt:9:This shift towards a more ‘bottom up' decision-making process was initiated by proposals worked on by the WSF International Council, which met in Peruggia , Italy from 7-10 April 2004. It makes sense therefore, to summarise the thinking behind this very important shift in the development of the WSF process. The Proposals of the Content and Methodology Commission of the IC are based on the following aims for the WSF:

./english/253.txt:14:To avoid the Forums becoming simply an annual event and to put concerted energy into creating a process that strengthens struggles and the development of alternatives in a cumulative way.

./english/253.txt:15:To ensure that the Forum process becomes more useful in promoting the density and dynamism of the relationships and networks resisting and creating alternatives to neo-liberalism.

./english/253.txt:17:To find ways of ensuring that the Forum treats divergencies as a source of strength and enrichment so that it does not simply represent moments of convergence on particularly struggles but enables a process of testing of different ideas in a process of continuing debate.

./english/253.txt:20:Obviously applying this to the ESF needs work. But this process could be very important to both unifying and Europeanising the organisation of the ESF and ensuring it reaches out to the widest range of networks and movements across Europe and internationally.

./english/253.txt:22:A key tool in this direct democracy is an electronic consultation process, though we need to find ways of ensuring that people who do not have easy access to the web are not excluded. People would register their proposed activities using keywords, spelling out their objectives and indicating how they can be contacted.

./english/253.txt:24:This active registration process (which needs to be encouraged by many different non-electronic means, public meetings, local forums etc) would be the basis of:

./english/253.txt:30:The electronic consultation would need to be wide in the sense of achieving the widest support possible, in social, political, cultural and geographical terms. It would need to be open in the sense that all proposals – as long as they are within the terms of the Charter – are legitimate as contributions to the themes and activity of the Forum. It would need to be active in the sense of based on proposals stimulating organisations, movements, campaigns and coalitions to participate in the process.

./english/253.txt:32:It is a process which needs committed facilitation from an international working group accountable to the Organising Committee of the Forum.

./english/253.txt:34:It would mean a radical break from the idea that the Organising Committee decides the themes and organises the mergers of seminars. The Organising Committee becomes primarily responsible for a process of facilitation, only taking a final decision on the basis of the outcome of this consultation process.

./english/259.txt:15:The First International Conference on Social Movements and Activist Research was a key event in such a process. Its publicity leaflet states its objective as the establishment of an adisciplinary ‘space of encounter, exchange, self-formation and debate’ by those participating in ‘social movements’ as both activists and researchers. It declares three starting points or principles:

./english/259.txt:18:3. that the privatisation, commoditisation and corporatisation of knowledges - a process to which universities worldwide are bound – acts both as a form of social exclusion and as a constraint on learning trajectories.

./english/259.txt:20:Held in north-east Barcelona in the Ateneu Popular de Nou Barris – a socio-cultural facility or community centre run by several local associations – the meeting attracted, at a guess, some 200 participants from throughout Europe and from North, South and Central Americas. As an organisational process as well as an event, great attention was paid to attempts to ‘do things differently’. An open organisational assembly had been held regularly in Barcelona during the year leading up to the meeting where anyone who wanted to participate in the event’s organisation could volunteer thoughts, experience, time and skills. A website (in Catalan, English, French, Italian and Spanish) was established in the months leading up to the event (www.investigaccio.org), where those interested were invited to propose themes, workshops and roundtables that might feature as part of the conference.

./english/259.txt:21:As such, the event itself was ‘self-constituted’ to a large extent. Papers were placed on the website prior to the meeting, enabling participants to share work and to establish links and collaborations before arriving in Barcelona. This was not to be a process of contributing abstracts that are selected by a few event organisers and then presented to a variously receptive audience. In order that costs could be kept to a minimum and participants to a maximum, accommodation was organised via a process of ‘buddying up’ with those living in Barcelona: I stayed with Nùria, one of the organisers of the meeting - a vivacious Catalan woman in the process of completing a masters degree, as well as involved in nationalist and gender-awareness initiatives. Several participants stayed in Can Masdeu: a self-sustaining social centre in squatted premises in the beautiful aromatic dry woodland of the hills surrounding Barcelona – a place and community that currently is under threat due to plans to build a road bypass through the valley in which it is located.

./english/259.txt:26:As such, the meeting’s proactive focus interacted substantially with the local contexts in which it took place, highlighting the ‘real world’ complexities influencing activist practice and research. Important issues that came up included: relationships between Catalan separatist politics and a radical activist politics that focuses on transnational issues; the integral significance of maintaining physical spaces for the existence and enhancing of alternative communities and organising practices; and current processes and events in Barcelona that are demolishing existing inner-city communities in the process of gentrifying and cleansing the city, particularly in relation to the city’s 2004 business and tourism-oriented Cultural Forum.

./english/259.txt:28:A key thread weaving through the intent and assumptions of the meeting was a validation of the knowledges that can be generated via subjective experience of, and participation in, multiple contexts. For many, this has arisen from a frustration with the methodological assumption of objective distance pursued in the burgeoning field of ‘social movement studies’. As Colin Barker and Lawrence Cox argue in a paper submitted as a contribution to the meeting2, such an approach contains within it its own limit: that in pursuing the observation, description and explanation of social movements as a distant object of research, the processual and recursively ‘agentic’ participation of the active subject is denied.

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

./english/260.txt:11:c. involve an unavoidable process of objectification that puts us in positions of

./english/261.txt:75:The overall change process is described as having three phases. Pre-planning requires negotiating roles and building relationships. Planning involves setting goals, analysing the situation, deciding what to do, and deciding how to monitor it. Action has two parts, implementation and monitoring

./english/261.txt:83:Three sets of important communication skills are described: expressive skills for stating a point of view non-defensively; listening skills for learning another's point of view; and process skills for managing the overall interaction

./english/261.txt:87:Some of the dimensions of community consultation processes are identified, and some of the issues determining design choices are briefly discussed

./english/261.txt:91:The cyclic or spiral process of action research is the source of some of its advantages. These advantages are enhanced if the researcher remembers that there are cycles within cycles within cycles ... This paper provides a practical illustration

./english/261.txt:99:In action research, it is possible to capitalise on the cyclic process by letting the data drive both the improvement of the process and the growing understanding of the research situation

./english/261.txt:107:A face to face version of the delphi process is described (delphi is a process which uses an expert panel to make complex decisions, and can be used for action research)

./english/261.txt:109:Dialectical processes (16k)

./english/261.txt:111:Dialectical processes (which craft agreement out of disagreement) are described, and contrasted with adversarial and consensual processes

./english/261.txt:113:Guiding a consultative process (33k)

./english/261.txt:115:Brief descriptions are given of a number of processes for giving, getting and exchanging information especially in community settings as part of public consultation activities

./english/261.txt:119:A description of a process a small group might use to enhance the group climate and especially the openness

./english/261.txt:123:A group planning process which can be used to develop a detailed action plan, including a plan for monitoring the success of the plan

./english/261.txt:135:Grounded theory, like action research, is an emergent methodology. This paper briefly describes its process and some of its most important features

./english/261.txt:147:A form of interviewing is described in some detail. The interviewing combines some of the features of structured and unstructured interviews, and uses a systematic process to refine the information collected

./english/261.txt:163:This is a description of "Option one-and-a-half", a dialectical process in which the strengths of two opposing options are combined to create a third and better option

./english/261.txt:169:Participative processes (26k)

./english/261.txt:215:Search is a consensus seeking process. This paper gives details of a workbook for a particular variety of short search

./english/261.txt:217:The Snyder evaluation process: an overview (16k)

./english/261.txt:219:An evaluation process is described; it combines processes for formative, summative and short-cycle evaluation (see next entry)

./english/261.txt:221:The Snyder evaluation process (64k)

./english/261.txt:223:A fairly detailed description is given of the Snyder evaluation process, a process which combines process evaluation for understanding, outcome evaluation for improvement, and short-cycle evaluation for ongoing improvement

./english/261.txt:227:Titled "Appropriate validity and its attainment", this paper by Bob Dick and Pam Swepson uses soft systems methodology to illustrate some of the ways in which action research processes like soft systems methodology can achieve good standards of rigour

./english/261.txt:247:A workbook-style process which can be used to analyse and learn from an interaction which you would like to have handled differently

./english/261.txt:251:Allowing participants multiple votes, perhaps within a cyclic voting process, can be used for exchanging information between participants about their priorities

./english/267.txt:45:If we refer to the commitment and the militant character of research, we do it in a precise sense, connected to four conditions: a) the character of the motive that underpins research; b) the practical character of research (elaboration of practical situated hypotheses); c) the value of what is being investigated: the result of research is only to be compared in its totality in situations that share as much the problematics being investigated as the constellation of conditions and concerns; and d) its effective procedure: its development process is already a result in itself, and its results leads to an immediate intensification of the effective procedures.

./english/267.txt:67:One question makes itself evident: is it possible such research without at the same time setting in motion a process of falling in love? How would the link between two experiences be possible without a strong feeling of love or friendship?

./english/267.txt:69:In fact, the experience of militant research resembles that of a person in love, on the condition that by love we understand what certain long philosophical tradition –the materialist one- understands by it: that is to say, not something that happens to one in relation to the other, but a process that as such takes two or more. [A process] that transforms the "self" into the "common." In such a love relation one participates. Such a process is not decided intellectually: it takes the existance of two or more. It is not an illusion, but an authentic experience of anti-utilitarianism.

./english/267.txt:77:In this book we refer several times to this processe of friendship or fal

./english/269.txt:31:The experience has been tremendously rich and a bit overwhelming. The questions multiply, little is certain. But a few tentative hypotheses emerge. In the first place, we know that precariousness is not limited to the world of work. We prefer to define it as a juncture of material and symbolic conditions which determine an uncertainty with respect to the sustained access to the resources essential to the full development of one’s life. This definition permits us to overcome the dichotomies of public/private and production/reproduction and to recognize the interconnections between the social and the economic. Second, more than a condition or a fixed position (‘being precarious’) we prefer to think of precariousness as a tendency. In fact, precariousness is not new (much of women’s work, paid and unpaid, has been precarious since the dawn of history). What is new is the process by which this is expanding to include more and more social sectors, not in a uniform manner (it would be difficult to draw a rigid or precise line between the ‘precarious’ and the ‘guaranteed’ parts of the population) but such that the tendency is generalized. Thus we prefer to talk not about a state of precariousness but about ‘precarization’ as a process which effects the whole of society, with devastating consequences for social bonds. Third, the territory of aggregation (and perhaps of ‘combat’) for mobile and precarious workers is not necessarily the ‘work place’ (how could it be, when this so often coincides with one’s own home, or someone else’s, or when it changes every few months, or when the possibilities of coinciding with a substantial group of the same co-workers for long enough to get to know each other is one in a thousand?) but rather this metropolitan territory we navigate every day, with its billboards and shopping centers, fast-food that tastes like air and every variety of useless contracts.

./english/269.txt:43:Third, the necessity of constructing points of aggregation is clear. Curiously, our process of wandering the city has led us to value more the denied right to territorialize ourselves. If this territorialization cannot take place in a mobile and changing work place, then we will have to construct more open and diffuse spaces within this city-enterprise. The Laboratorio de Trabajadores that we are considering constructing would be an operative place/moment to come together with our conflicts, our resources (legal resources, work, information, mutual care and support, housing, etc.), our information and our sociability. To produce agitation and reflection. A good idea, and a difficult one: at the moment we are thinking about it, not only the practical aspects but particularly the capacity this might have to construct itself as an attractor, connector and mobilizer of sectors as different as domestic workers and telephone operators.

./english/269.txt:47:Fourth, we hope to strengthen the local and international alliances we have established in the process so far. The book and the video which we have just published are meant as a means to this end. We will use the video to return to the spaces we have passed through in the past year or so, to the health center and to the neighborhood associations, in the plaza and in cyberspace, to keep open the conversations we have begun.

./english/272.txt:10:It is a moment when social movement activists, including activist researchers and also movement activists who are at the same time members of political parties, have become conscious of social movements – including potentially the trade union movement – as producers of knowledge. More than this, we have become conscious that this process of knowledge production is essential to the role of social movements as transformative subjects. As a consequence more and more movement activists are developing tools – of investigation and survey, of communication and exchange of ideas and information, of data collation and presentation through which the full potential of movements as producers and disseminators of emancipatory knowledge is realised. In this process, we are becoming more critically aware of both different kinds of knowledge (the practical, the theoretical, the intuitive, the systematic) and of the different social conditions involved in their production. Important questions remain unanswered about how, if we are critical of the conventional understandings and organisation of knowledge by traditional left political parties, social movements not only co-ordinate and systematise knowledge but how they take strategic decisions and effectively realise their power.

./english/272.txt:12:One way of understanding the political importance of this new self-consciousness of social movements as producers of knowledge is to highlight its origins. Also a sense of where this new political mentality has come from will give us a clearer idea of the distinctive political role of activist intellectuals. The creation, in practice at any rate, of a new politics of knowledge can be traced back to the late 60’s and 70’s and the new kind of social movements which began to emerge at this period - across the world in some form but most strongly in the US and Europe. In their diverse ways, the student and anti-Vietnam war movements, the radical militancy of workplace trade unionism, and perhaps most innovative of all, modern feminism, were in good part a response to the dead ends of previous historic paths to social progress: whether the model of the Soviet Union or the model of social democratic Sweden, or welfare Britain. These movements in their resistance to imperialism, to Fordist production, to gender subordination were also struggling to go beyond, transform or caste aside `actually existing’ institutions of social reform. Consequently, they found themselves transforming society without any precise directions or recipe. As a result they became, more or less self consciously engaged in a continuing process of experimentation, comparable to the scientific process.

./english/272.txt:20:2.This in turn led to a recognition of the differentiated nature of reality: people’s immediate experience of oppression and subordination was as real as the structures of class and or gender domination that produced them. Social movements of that period sought to act in a way that acknowledged all levels of reality, seeing people’s direct experience as important clues to understanding the hidden, structural causes of oppression and valuing their practical insights as vital sources of knowledge about the solutions. The new movements paid attention to language, culture and the expression of distinct identities but understood these as related to underlying structures of power. (This is in contrast to political parties dominated by a positivistic paradigm who tended to reduce reality to one level or one structure e.g. reducing gender to class, to regard direct experience as merely `proof’ or an `instance’ of a general theory; and not to value practical insight or skill as a distinct source of knowledge not anticipated by some general law and a source of potential power in the process of social transformation. It is also in contrast to the later development of a post-modernism which focused exclusively on language, discourse and meaning, denying the existence of material realities independent of our knowledge of them – I will discuss this briefly later).

./english/272.txt:28:Of course there’s nothing automatic about this logic but activist researchers can play a vital role in strengthening it. Instinctively this is the role that many activist researchers, whether in independent, movement oriented research projects or in academia, or through movement forms of investigation, played in the movements of the 1970’s. In fact this role for the movements was more important than activist research about the movements – though they often went together. Activist intellectuals sought to be in a close involvement with the movement and thereby to be in a position for their research and their intellectual labour to contribute to the process of political experimentation implied by this idea of the role of knowledge in deepening resistance. In this way they were/are able to follow up the insights of frontline activists and with systematic investigation deepen knowledge of the power structures and their points of vulnerability and strength, as a resource for the movement planning the next stage of strategy.

./english/272.txt:32:These could be understood as two of the functions of the World Social Forum and Social Forums more generally. Certainly, this is the direction in which the developing methodology of the WSF – and hopefully the ESF – is moving. There is growing self awareness of Social Forums as useful contexts in which practical and theoretical knowledge can be shared in order to identify the next action to be taken. Enhancement of the movements’ role as producers of emancipatory knowledge – knowledge integral to the work of social transformation - provides a useful criteria for the workings of the methodology. For it implies a mobilisation process that reaches out to all those involved in struggles for social justice, grass roots movements – not simply co-ordinating groups and NGO’s; it implies open, democratic and empowering discussions through which there can be a real exchange of different kinds of knowledge, from different sources – not simply speeches to a more or less passive audience; it implies ways of organising the event which reveals connections, commonalities and differences between movements so that knowledge of power structures and strategies of transformation from different angles are debated and compared – not simply parallel, separate themes; it implies a tough mutual interrogation and debate of each others knowledge, imbued as it is by values and politics – not simply the co-existence of different perspectives. Only these kinds of activities will move the dialectic of knowledge and action on.

./english/272.txt:34:But by discussing the future of the World Social Forum I am going ahead of myself. The reason why it is necessary to summarise what we can abstract with hindsight from the practice of the earlier movements is because these movements went through a significant defeat. As a result many threads of thought were broken and forgotten. (What I’ve said here is only a fraction of relevant thoughts). Not only did they suffer a significant defeat this but this defeat produced a distorted legacy. I’m thinking here of the legacy of a post-modernism which separated the movements’ concern with language and culture from their roots in resistance and action to change the material realities which language describes. Defeat also halted a half-finished process of new thinking and the emergence of subjects of socialist or radically transformative change. The movements rarely had the infrastructure and resources to survive, other than in memory, writing, scattered personal networks and the occasional project. There are exceptions which prove the point: for example Rifondazione Comunista in Italy has been able to maintain some political continuity between the innovative movements of the 70’s and the equally innovative movements of today and is as a result very different – in many but not all ways – from most conventional parties of the left. But generally, a weakening or defeat of the social movements left a vacuum and in many places, the traditional left, whether a warmed up Leninism or a defensive parliamentary socialism, moved back into an influence disproportionate to their size and political credibility with their limited and stifling approaches to knowledge.

./english/272.txt:38:This process of knowledge production in a process of resistance linking action, knowledge and power is perhaps the most important continuity between the new movements of the 70’s and the movements of today. In a context where the web, amongst other factors, makes the plural nature of knowledge, along with decentralised forms of co-ordination, commonplace apolitical, or cross political, ideas, this location of knowledge in the context of power and resistance is vital to the political radicalism of social movements and activist researchers within them.

./english/274.txt:36: The problem is that such an approach to envisioning radical alternatives is that it begins with abstract concepts and ideals as its founding basis, and then proceeds to try to fit life to those ideals. The danger of beginning with abstract values and goals as the basis for trying to plan social reality is that it’s very easy to get caught up in ideological conflicts through such a process, to get involved in conflicts over theoretical systems and interactions that may or may not occur when the new vision hits the pavement of actual existence. Conversely, such a process of going from abstractions can overlook very real pragmatic issues that can be glossed over in abstract models. And perhaps most important is that people don’t act like theoretical constructs – they act like people, whose behavior can never be fully described by any model of any kind. Among the areas which modern economics can be criticized for is that it is very good at creating abstract models of how an economy functions, but such do not describe (and really cannot describe) the actual functioning of the world.

./english/274.txt:51:The Non-Vanguardist Social Researcher and the Task of Utopian Vision“Rather than value being the process of public recognition itself, already suspended in social relations, it is the way people could do almost anything (including in the right circumstances, creating entirely new sorts of social relations) assess the importance of what they do, in fact, do, as they are doing it.” -David Graeber, from Toward an Anthropological

./english/274.txt:62: Utopian theory is not then abstractions and ideals that are designed to be imposed upon the world, dreams that will come into existence after the revolution, but is the collected experience of cooperative structures that can be generalized into a broader vision. This broader vision, however, is not an imperial vision or one that exists in some abstract universal space. It is a utopian theory that is more a process of coordinating, collecting, and connecting the experience and knowledge created through experience in a way that can be adapted and applied in varying situations and contexts in pluralistic fashion. The task of the utopian theorist is that of acting as a diplomat between struggles, sharing wisdom and experiences, connecting and synthesizing ideas created through everyday experience, and offer such back to the community.

./english/274.txt:66: It would be the elaboration and theorization of what James Scott called metis, or the informal rules and processes that sustain and support community practices and institutions. Scott contrasts this more informal“rule of thumb” knowledge to analytical and rationalistic knowledge that is characteristic of bureaucratic institutions and centrally planned

./english/274.txt:71:to reconceptualize utopian thought not as a static end but as a flexible and adaptable process.

./english/274.txt:73: Through this process knowledge and vision are created through experience, through the result of human experience and creation. The goal of utopian thinking should not be to come up with impractical schemes of a how a future society might work or to formulate plans that preclude them from starting to be created now. When Marx labeled his socialist predecessors as “utopian” that was his objection, that they had plans and dreams which were unobtainable, and therefore to a large degree useless in trying to alleviate the totally unnecessary suffering brought about by capital and the state. While neo-liberals like to pretend that the market is autonomous and self-supporting, working off of principles inherent to itself, such conceals the inventory of ideas, practices, and values which underlie it and allow it to adapt to continually changing circumstances. Similarly, the long-term success of building movements against the state, capital, and all forms of oppression, is to create those reserves of knowledge, experience, and ideas that will enable us constantly redefines the specifics of non-hierarchal organizing based upon the changing circumstances of time and place.

./english/275.txt:13:We start from the existential situation of activists as we understand and have experienced it. In this view, the process of becoming an activist is primarily a process of learning, which we will describe as if it happened to an individual, though of course often this learning is that of a class or movement.1 Initially, we become ‘activists’ because we find that something is not right in the world, and more specifically that it cannot be fixed within the normal ‘channels’. To become an activist, then, is to learn that the system does not ‘work’ as it claims, and to move towards the understanding that to achieve change we need to organize and create pressure.

./english/275.txt:15:For some, though not all, activists, this learning process continues, as we find that the system2 is itself part of the problem, and that its resistance to our struggles for change is not accidental or contingent but, at some level, fundamental to its nature. Thus we come to see ourselves as connecting our own issues with those of others, and of creating solidarity in opposition to given power structures. (For some activists this learning process is part of the bitter experience of defeat after having acted ‘by the book’; for others it is part of an intellectual conviction that the problem goes deeper than at first perceived; for others again it is the fruit of a conscious choice not to settle for concessions on our own issue at the expense of other, equally significant, issues.

./english/275.txt:22:We want to start where activists start in their own learning processes: with human beings’ experience of the world and themselves, and the ways in which they develop this.

./english/275.txt:34:[Processes of change], if they are within ‘social being’ seem to impinge upon, thrust into, break against, existent social consciousness. They propose new problems, and, above all, they continually give rise to experience … Experience arises spontaneously within social being, but it does not arise without thought; it arises because men and women … are rational, and they think about what is happening to them and their world … What we mean is that changes take place within social being, which gives rise to changed experience: and this experience is determining in the sense that it exerts pressures upon existent social consciousness.15

./english/275.txt:40:1.This is a concept of experience which assumes epistemological realism; that is, it is a notion of experience which asserts that there is a world out there which exists independently of our perception of it, and which conditions our way of knowing. Because that world is fundamentally material and social, we do not know it automatically or unproblematically, but rather as part of the practical process of experience, the discovery of needs, and attempts to resolve problems. This is then also a ‘critical realism’.17

./english/275.txt:42:2.It is a concept of experien ce which emphasizes social change through human agency: the material and social world that exists out there is characterized by a constant process of people’s becoming human beings, through reflecting on their social experience, developing their creative capacities and practices, and finding new ways of socially organizing these practices – and in the process transforming their world, for good or for bad.

./english/275.txt:68:By contrast, the role of the Communist Party for Gramsci was or should be that of a mutual process of self-education aimed at bringing everyone up to a common level.34 Theory, then, would be the result of a social process of working through existing knowledge.

./english/275.txt:70:Lastly, we could ask how far people are able to connect to and learn from other people’s struggles and learning processes: theory as generalized consciousness. This is obviously particularly relevant at the moment in the context of the ‘movement of movements’, but it is also a more general issue, of solidarity and internationalism versus particularism.

./english/275.txt:74:It is this exercise of ‘going beyond’ immediate surfaces and appearances which arguably constitutes the defining feature of theory. ‘Going beyond’ in this case means an effort to understand the wider ramifications of, and underlying processes that give rise to, whatever it is that we experience as problematic and frustrating in our everyday lives: ‘Theory attempts to understand things not apparent on the surface, to find the inner connections … And the point of all this is to understand the real world – in order to change it.’38

./english/275.txt:90:Secondly, the notion of experience proposed here is one which focuses on social change through the vehicle of human agency: ‘social structures exist by virtue of the individual who produce or potentially transform them’.43 This is where the meaning of theory as an exercise in ‘going beyond’ is widened and politicized. If theory manages to go beyond actual, experienced grievances and explain the workings of the processes and relations that yield these grievances, it may, in turn contribute to the capacity of human agents to articulate political projects that seek to go beyond the here and now:

./english/275.txt:98:Thirdly, the notion of experience put forward argues that we have to take into consideration the situatedness of experience. Here, yet another widening of the meaning of theory as an attempt to ‘go beyond’ occurs. If theoretical efforts actually succeed in bringing out the essential processes and relations that give rise to an experience of frustration and / or constraint, then it is likely that it will also make a contribution to advancing an understanding of the wider ramifications of a particular conflict in terms of how its dynamics are interrelated with non-particular, ie. global / universal dynamics. This, in turn, may help to articulate a political project that seeks to ‘go beyond’ the parameters of the local and specific. We shall elaborate on this point below.

./english/275.txt:104:This deepening of understanding and theoretical innovation through critical explorations of experience and the socialization of everyday understandings – the intellectual and practical process of going beyond – points they way towards the labour of abstraction, translation and communication.

./english/275.txt:117:Developing social movement practices and perspectives from militant particularisms towards more universal political projects entails ‘going beyond’ the specific and the local. Anchored in the assumption that local conflicts will tend to represent specific mediations of global conflictual processes, it entails an interrogation of the experience that has engendered this militant particularism in the first place, so as to unearth the dimensions of conflict that point towards such universal processes. This is what Harvey refers to as ‘the labour of translation’ and ‘abstraction’:

./english/275.txt:121:The possibility of exercising violence upon actual, local movement practices arises especially where abstraction is a project pursued ‘from above’ (eg. by a centralized organization existing prior to and beyond specific struggles), rather than as the result of an internal process of self-development ‘from below’ – or where a project initially developed ‘from below’ in one context is transplanted to another without real awareness of the need for effective and appropriate translation. This latter will be a constant challenge in terms of our engagement with insurgent architecture, whose validity depends on its appropriateness not just in general but also in specific instances:

./english/275.txt:131:Massimo de Angelis identifies a similar process in the emergence of a ‘new internationalism’ through the activities of the alter-globalization movement: that is, he identifies a process of ‘formation of social subjects, interconnected individuals who are in the process of developing shared visions of social transformation’ due to ‘practical necessity by different movements in their reciprocal interaction within the context of the global economy and their struggles’.57 He develops the comparative notion of ‘old and new internationalism’ according to two criteria: ‘the relation between national and international dimensions of struggle; the relation between labour and other movements’.58 The old internationalism is characterized as follows:

./english/275.txt:133:In most of the practice of ‘old internationalism’, the international dimension of struggle was subordinated to the strategic objectives of the national dimension … the immediate objective of the struggle was primarily national and the related internationalism was instrumental to it … This internationalism reflected the conditions of the time, in which the global character of capital was limited to trade and, for most cases, did not include production59 … Another important characteristics [sic] of ‘old internationalism’ was the relative separation between different issues and movements, separation that was reflected in the centrality of the labour movement and the subordination of other movements to it … [T]he ground for unity was generally formulated as instrumental to a goal. The goal was generally defined outside the process of unification60

./english/275.txt:137:The social practice of today’s new movements is forcing us to think about the process of unification, its forms, its objectives, its mechanisms, rather than only its results measured against the yardstick of an abstract idea or a given ideology … An international process of recomposition of radical claims and social subjects has been under way, a process which is forcing every movement not only to seek alliances with others, but also to make struggles of other movements their own, without first the need to submit the demands of other movements to an ideological test … [T]oday the ideological frame of reference seems to be the ongoing result of the process of recomposition is the multidimensional reality of exploitative and oppressive relations as it is manifested in the lives and experiences of the many social subjects within the global economy … [T]he interaction among these social subjects in various opportunities of struggle[,] creates an alternative mode of thinking which is increasingly able to root the multi-dimensionality of human needs and aspirations in the universality of the human condition.61

./english/275.txt:143:The movement of movements62 is perhaps more than anything the emergent outcome of such a process of abstraction, translation and communication. It gives rise, simultaneously, to a new field of problems. At the end of the day, the crucial, practical question for radical, anti-systemic movements is ‘How can we win?’

./english/275.txt:144:This process can be seen in two ways. One, ‘bottom-up’ approach is to explore the dialectic of universalism and particularity in the movements of the last four decades. In so doing, of course, we are questioning the uniqueness implied by de Angelis for the alter-globalization movement – but simultaneously placing it within a sphere of human practice which can be argued over, struggled for, and won or lost.

./english/275.txt:146:In the aftermath of defeat, movements shifted rapidly towards particularism and ‘identity politics’, a process aided by the new cultural capitalism’s willingness to commercialize particular kinds of revolt and by a process of academicization which favoured symbolic competition and distancing. This identity politics, it should be said, was not restricted to feminism or to black politics: in many ways the cadre Marxism of the early 1970s formed its own kind of identity politics, fiercely claiming universality in theory but often bitterly exclusivist in practice.

./english/275.txt:147:Despite eco-socialist attempts in western Europe to rally social movements around the projects of Green parties,64 the process of movement fragmentation was not reversed until the Zapatistas, drawing on the heritage of majority world community development, found ways to articulate a project of cooperation between diverse actors.65 The intercontinental Encuentros of activists that they facilitated, and the People’s Global Action network that sprang from these, made it possible for activists in an enormous variety of different movements and locations to start to recognize themselves in each other and to explore ways of acting together as a ‘movement of movements’.

./english/275.txt:148:The development of phenomena such as Indymedia, the Social Forum process, and the current anti-war movement have then supported and developed this remarkable process, for which the nearest genuine points of comparison have to be sought in 1968.

./english/275.txt:150:A second, ‘top-down’ way of approaching the problem is to focus on the social totality. In this perspective, it is in large part the confrontation with the core institutions of global capitalism that has made this communication between movements possible.66 Initially through the processes of neo-liberalism and war, felt throughout the globe in ways which are sufficiently similar to enable a comparison and brought about by sufficiently linked actors to enable an identification of their authors, people in many different social situations have come to experience their lot as untenable and to find themselves in each other.

./english/275.txt:151:The situation of public confrontation with the state plays a key role here, as a site in which the movement recognizes itself as a single (if diverse) movement and is seen by other participants as such. The imminent threat of destruction, whether in a single protest or via the long process of criminalization, poses a very practical problem to the movement, which highlights the need to preserve and extend cooperation and communication within the movement. As different groups find themselves arriving at the same point, the need to bring ourselves up to speed with each other also grows.

./english/275.txt:158:This paper has attempted to ground the need for theory within activist experience, and to characterize the ways in which social movements, seeking to transform the world, have found themselves forced to engage in a process both of developing theory to reach beyond their local situation and of building links of solidarity with other movements. We have highlighted the current ’movement of movements’, not so much as an example for a theoretical argument but rather as the starting point for a practical awareness of the need for activist theory.

./english/276.txt:9:1: Researching Movement Processes1

./english/276.txt:11:In order to carry out a meaningful exploration of the relevance of critical realism for social movement research, it is necessary to clarify how I conceive of the “research object” – social movements – and the knowledge interests that guide the research itself. Thus, in the following I present brief outlines of (a) how I conceive of ‘the movement process’ and the relationship between experience and theory in this process, and (b) social movement research as ‘insurgent architecture’.

./english/276.txt:13:1a): The Movement Process and the Experience-Theory Nexus

./english/276.txt:15:I shall start by giving a brief introduction to what I have elsewhere called ’the movement process’ (Cox and Nilsen, 2005). Starting from an understanding of social movements not as the static institutions that are predominant throughout mainstream social movement theory, but as ‘the organization of multiple forms of materially grounded and locally generated skilled activity around a rationality expressed and organized by (would-be) hegemonic actors and against the hegemonic projects articulated by other such actors’ (Cox, 1999: 99; emphasis in original), the object of research are those processes through which the scope of collective action is widened and deepened through reflexive self-activity. I have suggested that the various phases of this process can be discerned through the conceptual prisms local rationality, militant particularism, campaign, and social movement project, in order to formulate a developmental theory of the direction of the collective agency of subaltern social groups2.

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

./english/276.txt:26:If we want to figure out what is happening to us, why it is happening, and what to do about it we need to go beyond the immediacy and situatedness of experience. If this immediacy and situatedness is defined by forms of knowledge that are concrete, particular, and local, the knowledge that is forged through the efforts to go beyond this immediacy and situatedness is characterized by being – or containing intimations of being – abstract, universal, and global. By abstract I mean the result of the intellectual process of abstraction through which the real world is broken ‘down into the mental units with which we think about it’ and which eventually yields the abstract as ‘a reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind’ (Ollman, 1993: 24).

./english/276.txt:27:By universal I mean the interpretation of experience through loci of consciousness formation based on notions, concepts and symbols that are widely shared across societal and cultural boundaries (see Harvey, 1996 and 2000). By global I mean the – abstract and universal, as it were – social and geographical space beyond state territories (see Robinson, 2004; Sklair, 2004; Scholte; 2003). It is this exercise of “going beyond” immediate surfaces and appearances which arguably constitutes the defining feature of theory. “Going beyond” in this case means an effort to understand the wider ramifications of, and underlying processes that give rise to, whatever it is that we experience as problematic and frustrating in our everyday lives: ‘Theory attempts to understand things not apparent on the surface, to find the inner connections … And the point of all this is to understand the real world – in order to change it’ (Lebowitz 2003: 20).

./english/276.txt:31:As a movement process unfolds, and as activists seeks to “go beyond”, I would argue that what takes place is a process of transcendence of or move from the concrete experiences of a given lifeworld towards an more abstract understanding of the workings of a social organization of human practice; from particular interpretations of these experiences to more universal interpretations – and hence also a move from a politics of particularity towards a politics of universality; and a transcendence of or move from the local towards the global in the form of social movement projects that challenge the social totality. The homologous relationship between the movement process and the experience-theory nexus can be expressed diagrammatically as follows:

./english/276.txt:41:The compulsion towards insurgent architecture, I submit, could also be a central aspiration and a fundamental knowledge interest in social movement research. As Barker and Cox (2002: 7) have pointed out, there is a schism dividing academic theorizing about social movements and activist theorizing for and within social movements. The former is dominated by a drive towards providing “explanations” of the “normal”, “scientific” type, and the debates within the discipline centre around the type of explanations required, and the theory it generates, is thus of a contemplative nature. Social movements are defined as objects of study to be subjected to observation, description and explanation; they are not conceived of as active processes with which people, engage, experience and transform (ibid.: 4, 5). The latter centres not on providing general scientific explanations, but on generating ‘case propositions of a very definite and practical nature’ (ibid.: 4), that is, movement theorizing produces practical and concrete proposals for action in a given, conflictual setting. Social movement practice is thus characterised by a form of knowledge produced in an attempt to answer questions emanating from an active engagement with a particular context, be it other movements or more generally the social world ‘within which those movements move’ (ibid.: 6). By positing insurgent architecture as a knowledge interest in social movement research this schism might be transcended. For social movement research this would entail putting the focus of attention of the movement process and thus on activists’ attempts to “join the dots” between the particular struggles they are directly involved in and the totality in which these struggles are embedded, and the development of practices and ideas that can match the joining of the dots. In short, social movement research as insurgent architecture would seek to develop theoretical knowledge that can enhance activists’ capacity for transcending militant particularisms, build campaigns, and develop social movement projects9.

./english/276.txt:80:The nature of the relationship between society/structure and individual/agency needs to be further specified. Bhaskar proposes ‘the transformational model of social activity’ [henceforth TMSA] for grappling with the task of understanding the relationship between structure and agency (Collier, 1994: 141-151). What distinguishes TMSA from the humanist assertion that societies only exist as the outcome of human agency, the structuralist assertion that human action presupposes the existence of society, and the assertion that the social process is an interaction between society and people is the argument that we should not only distinguish between human practice and social structure, but between two aspects of both structure and agency (ibid.: 145). Hence Bhaskar proposes ‘an ontological hiatus between society and people’ (cited in Collier, 1994: 147) which entails that ‘people are not relations’ and, vice versa, that ‘societies are not conscious agents’ (Collier, 1994: 147)15. The crucial logical conclusion that follows from this is a distinction between ‘the properties possessed by social forms’ and ‘[the properties] possessed by the individuals upon whose activity they depend’ (Bhaskar, cited in Collier, 1994: 147). The TMSA thus follows the logic of the RCS in that allows us to question people’s views of the reasons why they do what they do and what is the outcome of what they do in terms of underlying structural mechanisms that condition their actions and the way in which these actions contribute to the reproduction of those underlying structural mechanisms:

./english/276.txt:82:On this transformational and relational conception, society is a skilled accomplishment of active agents. But the social world may be opaque to the social agents upon whose activity it depends in four respects, in that these activities may depend on or involve (a) unacknowledged conditions, (b) unintended consequences, (c) the exercise of tacit skills, and/or unconscious motivation. Accordingly, the task of the social sciences is to describe what social processes … must be going on for a Stock Exchange Crash or some other manifest phenomenon to be possible (Bhaskar, 1989: 4).

./english/276.txt:91:… people experience deprivation and oppression within a concrete setting, not as the end product of large and abstract processes, and it is the concrete experiences that mould their discontent into specific grievances against specific targets. Workers experience the factory, the speeding rhythm of the assembly line, the foremen, the spies, the guards, the owner, and the pay check. They do not experience monopoly capitalism (1977: 20).

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

./english/276.txt:100:The production of knowledge animates all phases of a movement process – from militant particularisms to social movement projects. However, the kind of knowledge which prevails in militant particularisms and campaigns are typically geared towards a politics that seeks ‘the amelioration of states of affairs’ as opposed to ‘the transformation of structures’ (Collier, 1994: 194). Indeed, while the development of campaigns entails the transcendence of the boundaries of militant particularisms and the development of collective identities that cut across socio-spatial divides, they are still limited forms of movement activity in that they do not address the issue of the social totality; this only happens with the development of social movement projects. The second prong of my argument thus runs as follows: social movement research moored in critical realist assumptions is particularly apt for developing knowledge which can contribute to the development of social movement projects that aims for the transformation of social structures in that critical realism deliberately targets structures as its ultimate object of knowledge and therefore has the potential to generate knowledge about how structures can be transformed. If the powers of societies or institutions are generated and constrained by inner structures, there are three questions that would define the critical realist approach to the study of societies or institutions: (i) what sort of things can be done and what sort of things cannot be done given the character of the extant structures?; (ii) if the structures had been different, would this have rendered possible the doing of other things?; (iii) how can one structure be transformed into another (Collier, 1994: 10). Thus Bhaskar argues:

./english/276.txt:105:One last point needs to be made. One could quite easily imagine that the critical realist approach to social movement research sketched out above can be viewed as being marred by an elitist or even totalitarian impulse. Doesn’t the above argument reflect an attitude of letting the high priests of critical realism, wielding the sceptre of privileged access to ‘the real’, loose on the imperfect world of activists, and then, after they have determined the nature of the enduring structure that causes the occurring phenomena that people react to, and inferred from this the narrow path that needs to be followed to transform this structure, having the activists follow them like obedient disciples? Well, no. There are three reasons why this argument does not hold up. Firstly, critical realism is not marked primarily by a belief in scientific knowledge where the hubris of certainty and infallibility strike the dominant chord. On the contrary, scientific knowledge – the transitive object of science – is ostensibly posited as being fallible and the scientific endeavour is not about attaining closure but about a perennial process of digging deeper, in turn rooted in the humility of the admitted fallibility. Secondly, as I hope has been made clear in the above argument, the relationship between activist attempts to “go beyond” and critical realist attempts to discern ‘the real’ is not one of qualitative difference, but of homologous affinity, which, hopefully, can constitute the basis for developing and strengthening the capacity of activists to build social movement projects. Thirdly, the knowledge interest which motivates the kind of critical realist movement research outlined in this essay – insurgent architecture – presupposes solidarity and participation – as opposed to superiority and subordination – between “researcher” (academic) and “researched” (activist). Indeed, it seeks to breach this divide as such; the insurgent architect can be an activist as well as an academic, if not both at once. However, this argument moves into the territory of research ethics and methodology, and will have to be explored elsewhere19.

./english/277.txt:6:The western Marxist tradition identifies the active engagement of human beings with their environment and with each other as a central ontological category. This physical, verbal and cognitive engagement is embodied through skill: the practical availability of what are often prediscursive modes of action, generated in collective learning processes such as conflict or alliance, materially sedimented in experience, practices, language, networks and so on, and thus continually subject to transformation or loss, but also constantly available as a resource for creative action. Movements, from above or below, are then different possible “proto-hegemonic” attempts at developing this potential from different starting-points and mobilising it around shared social projects and against others.

./english/277.txt:10:Such a politics of knowledge makes sense only given particular starting-points. A concrete example is given in the case of my own PhD research, which moved from a participant’s developing choice of priorities to a traditional intellectual’s attempt to relate the milieu to externally-determined projects. The class and other relations involved in this process are examined critically, with a view to bringing out the ability of participants to “locate” the researcher and fit my activity in turn into their own perspectives and projects. The cognitive implications of this analysis enable a more complex understanding of such research activity and point to important political and ethical issues around the potential value and limitations of research for participants and researchers alike. The paper includes a brief postscript, written in 2005 for this publication.

./english/277.txt:14:This paper begins with a paradox in social movement theory, moves backwards to an ontology of human existence, then forwards to outline a political epistemology, and concludes with the history of a research process. Worse, the maps it uses to explore this complex territory are those of an idiosyncratic collection of theorists who are on the whole neither the focus of much serious intellectual attention nor commonly seen as relevant to the discussion of social movements (with one or two exceptions in each case). To complicate matters further, these maps are themselves based on my speculative reconstruction of what I take to be the shared assumptions of this unlikely and heterogenous group of thinkers. The only justification for this paper is that it attempts at least to sketch out a possible perspective on some theoretical and methodological problems raised by research into contemporary social movements. If this perspective is convincing, it may help think about some old problems in a new light; if not, the questions asked may be large enough to provoke better answers from other points of view.

./english/277.txt:26:A first glimpse of what this might mean can be offered by the first section of the Communist Manifesto, with its dramatic claim that “The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class struggles” (cited from the Ryazanoff edition in Mills 1962: 47). This claim is developed into an analysis of the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie in the destruction of feudalism and the creation of a new world order, transforming economics and technology, national and international politics, communications and cognition; following this, by the analysis of the development of the workers’ movement from the experience of misery to the struggle against oppression, aided by growing concentration and communication, into a complex learning process of increasing political self-confidence and clarity towards another and final revolution. It would be more than possible to distil from these few pages the presuppositions of a general Marxist theory of social movements which was not other than the Marxist theory of history - but paying perhaps more attention to the discussion of the nature of movement activity, its preconditions and the context of its development towards the reshaping of society than has sometimes been the case.

./english/277.txt:32:The guiding thread which I think runs through these theories is a commitment to a view of history as nothing other than the product of human activity; and, more specifically, as the product of collective human action, articulated in conflicts which encompass the totality of society and in turn define that totality; conflicts which are not only grounded ultimately in the material activity of human beings but are at the same time conflicts over how that activity is to develop. In other words, I am arguing that western Marxism, so defined, is a theory of social movements, and one which elevates social movements to the central, perhaps the only, feature of the historical process and the social structure.

./english/277.txt:42:A more plausible and consistent answer would be a historicising one. On this view, it might be said, it is unlikely but not impossible that a class could develop into a “class-for-itself” without at the same time achieving some measure of hegemony over other social classes. This double articulation is of course the normal situation for a ruling class; its active side is expressed by Gramsci’s concept of a “passive revolution” or “revolution from above”. A ruling class which fails to maintain this hegemony is almost by definition in deep crisis. From the other side, Thompson’s account of the “making of the English working class” identifies the important role played in this process by a “demotic culture”, including important elements of the petty bourgeoisie; Gramsci’s analysis of the need to build links between the working class and the peasantry points in the same direction. (Everything depends, of course, on the question of who is exercising hegemony over whom in such situations, as the post-war history of the PCI illustrates.) It is, however, not impossible under unusual circumstances for a class to attain a high level of self-organisation in isolation, as the example of the SPD in Bismarck’s Germany suggests; the case of the PCF in contemporary France points to the possibility of such a situation arising precisely as the result of a loss of hegemony.

./english/277.txt:54:Thirdly, social movements are not identified with any one kind of social phenomenon. They are neither specific features of a political subsystem, for example, nor particular forms of unconventional organisation. Or rather, they may at times be expressed in these ways, but they may equally be found in the normal movements of capital, the everyday organisation of needs and desires, the thoroughly institutionalised relationships of corporatism. A good example of this openness of form, I think, can be found in the juxtaposition of papers from a session at the 1997 Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference. Colin Barker’s (1997) discussion of “moments of collective effervescence” examined those powerful moments during which social movements from below are capable of mobilising vast masses of people in dramatic challenges to the status quo. Mike Waite’s (1997) analysis of “flecks and carriers” included among other things a discussion of how movement ideas and experiences survive even in the worst periods of drought and on the stoniest ground. My own paper (Cox 1997) discussed relatively stable “movement milieux” in a time of active, but limited, social movements. From the perspective of the movement as a totality, all of these are important “moments” of a given history. Thus this perspective historicises movement activity over the lifetime of any given movement; it also historicises it, however, over the longer term, as against analyses of supposed “cycles” of movement activity (Brand 1982) or inherent “logics”, for example of institutionalisation (Scott 1990), which attempt to insulate the categories of movement activity from longer processes of historical change. Social movements, then, are not static forms, but change in both short and long historical movements in interaction with their opponents.

./english/277.txt:76:(C) This points to the third element of the analysis, which is to see human activity as practical learning activity. If skill can be lost, it can also be developed; whether practically, in direct interaction with the natural and social world, or indirectly, for example by transmission of particular modes of organising social movements and of thinking about politics. The point of Marxist theory, and socialist organisations, within the workers’ movement is arguably precisely to enable such indirect learning, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. Social movements are a privileged case of such learning, as Vester’s (1975) analysis of Thompson’s The making of the English working class seeks to establish. Vester argues that social movements represent “collective learning processes”, in which the elements Marx analyses as key to class conflict - an increasingly clearer self-understanding, a fuller grasp of social structure and historical process, and an increasingly adequate mode of organisation and struggle - are generated in the conflict with a movement’s opponents. The history of recent decades suggests that skill can be lost as well as developed. Hilary Wainwright’s (1994) analysis of the “politics of knowledge” of social movements also points, I think, in this direction, as does, from an earlier age, Banks’ analysis of social movements as a form of “social technology” (1972). As we shall shortly see, this is not all social movements are; but these points should be enough to establish an internal link from the bases of skilled activity to the articulation of social movements.

./english/277.txt:106:If our categories are to be historical, if they are to be geared to movements as they develop and are eroded over the short and long timescales of conflict, they must be oriented to the whole history of a movement, not simply to its current appearance at a single point in time. But how is this to be done? The western Marxist tradition offers two related ways of thinking the problem. The first is that outlined by Lukács, in his discussion of “imputed class consciousness”. It is interesting to note, given the disfavour into which the concept has fallen, that Lukács himself thought that the concept was similar to Max Weber’s “ideal type”; in other words that it was oriented to asking what, all other things being equal, one could expect the interests and self-understanding of a particular social class to be: “class consciousness consists in fact of the appropriate and rational reactions ‘imputed’ to a particular typical position in the process of production” (1971: 51; cf. note 11 on p. 81 for the reference to Weber). The problems with this point of view hardly need to be stressed; ah it is interesting that the obvious criticism - that this legitimates virtually any external imposition in the name of the “true” interests of the working class - is frequently made when these interests are identified as revolutionary; rather less frequently when social interests are identified in more conservative terms.

./english/277.txt:110:Two related assumptions have to be made to buttress this research strategy. These add up, I think, to what can be defined as a critical realist methodology (McLellan 1981; cf. Cox 1994). Such a methodology operates on the realist assumption that there are underlying patterns to the immediately discoverable empirical world, and that these are at least indirectly knowable. It is critical in two respects: first, as we shall see shortly, in that it stresses the social relations of knowledge as a key element in its account of the process of discovery of this underlying real. Secondly, and perhaps more unusually, that its aims are explicitly interventionist. In Touraine’s account, the point of such research depends on a rationalist strategy of bringing the movement - or at least the research participants - to a greater level of self-knowledge along the dimensions already mentioned; somewhat like psychoanalysis for social movements. But if we consider what kind of knowledge is gained, and what its use might be, we can perhaps see another point. Clearly to discover this hegemonic project or highest potential of a movement is not to predict that it will in fact achieve this level of articulation. It is rather to say that this is the highest level of articulation that it is capable of achieving as a movement, and thus to say something both about its limits and its potential. This is the kind of knowledge which is useful to movement activists, and in particular to those movement activists who are capable of thinking not only strategically (in terms of the options available given a fixed situation) but of taking the “point of view of totality”: of seeing the movement, its opponents and the social totality as all open to intervention and transformation.

./english/277.txt:114:But how is such knowledge generated? In the past two decades, the concept of reflexivity in methodology has gained considerable ground. One way of phrasing it is that there is no extra-social means of gaining knowledge of the social world, so that the means whereby that world is known - the social interactions entered into during the research process, and the situation and interests of the researcher themself - are a necessary part of that knowledge, not an unscientific accretion. Curiously, movement research has tended to make little or no reference to reflexivity. Yet two features of the concept are particularly interesting in the light of what I have said so far. The first is that its immediate antecedents are, precisely, movement-linked social theories: Marxism and feminism. The latter case is, perhaps, well-known; the former less readily recognised.

./english/277.txt:118:To do this is then also to collude with the knowledge interests of some participants and to conflict with that of others; just as activists do, in other words, so researchers find themselves in practice agreeing to a greater or lesser extent with the way some participants see the movement, and organising their research accordingly, and disagreeing to a greater or lesser extent with other views, and organising the research in ways which tend to exclude these other definitions - of the boundaries of the movement, for example. This is, I think, inevitable if the research process is to involve any identification of an object of research, if it is to involve any method of engaging with that object, and if it is to result in any analysis whatsoever. Yet if this is the case, it becomes crucial to be able to give a clear account of the politics of a specific research process.

./english/277.txt:132:My second point is perhaps simpler. It is not, I think, enough to describe the research process, even in these expanded terms, and leave it at that. What is important, for much the same reasons as in participant observation, is a way of bringing research to engage with the politics of the participants. The point in discussions of reflexivity is that the researcher’s own standpoint and knowledge interests cannot be separated from the research process. Yet if all that is done is to describe retrospectively what they did, and not why, little has been gained. It has frequently been suggested that more dialogue between researchers and participants would not be a bad thing; how much more than lip service is paid to this is hard to tell. One problem with it, as I can attest from my own research, is that it runs up against the pressure both parties are under (for rather different reasons), and seems to be superfluous to the central interests of both. A subsidiary problem is the question of comprehension. Both participants and outsiders are liable to find social theory in some respects difficult to grasp.

./english/277.txt:142:History of a research process

./english/277.txt:144:I want to conclude this paper with a brief analysis of my own PhD process as an example of some of the issues I have covered in this second half of the paper. The danger in “reflexivity” of this kind, of course, is that it can easily become self-indulgent, if the claim that our own situation as researchers is an important point of analysis is not taken seriously. To take it seriously, of course, is to subject such analysis to the same kinds of theoretical and political criticism as any other statements, rather than to shield them with claims to personal authenticity, identity, and so on.

./english/277.txt:160:It seems that the lapse of time between interview and transcription (1 - 2 years) and the unusual experience of seeing accurate transcriptions of one’s own speech, made reading transcripts something which could be done with sufficient “distance” to be useful and “objectifying”, in other words to help participants gain a clearer sense of their own self-understanding and history: an important part of “intervention” research. A second example, at the other end of the spectrum, is that participants have given me considerable assistance in producing an alternative magazine that grows out of much the same roots as the research. It is hard to know precisely what value they feel it has, but help has often been given unsolicited, which suggests that it is contributing to the shared project. Thirdly, as I have mentioned earlier, prior to the specific methods and process of research are the social conditions of research. To research a milieu means among other things to find a way of taking part in it and contributing in whatever way one can to that milieu. Thus, for example, one part of this role was for several years to maintain as an open room a college society which served as a crashpad, a drop-in centre, a library and other things for members of the milieu.

./english/277.txt:162:Such contributions do not, I think, add up to a picture of the leading role of Theory and Organisation; despite proceeding out of them, they suggest that their main contribution has to be analysed from the point of view of movement participants. Touraine suggests at one point that the process of intervention research is concluded when participants have come to adopt a more adequate understanding of the movement; I want to conclude with the suggestion that we might also ask whether the researchers have come to engage more closely with the participants.

./english/277.txt:168:Simultaneously, there has been a worldwide growth in activist research in and around the movement of movements, with the development of specific networks, thinktanks and get-togethers. Our movements are reflexive, and they make (more or less) critical use of the academy for their own purposes, including enabling gatherings, documenting movement processes and moving the networking process forward.

./english/277.txt:170:In this process, I think the distinction between

./english/278.txt:33:Capitalism is not a perpetual motion machine destined to last forever and a day. But if it isn't, what is it about the way this system works and develops that will eventually bring on its destruction? Marx believed he found the answer to this question in the process of accumulation and centralization of capital (or wealth producing wealth), especially when view in connection with the limited purchasing power of the workers. This relationship is often expressed as the contradiction between social production and private appropriation. Production and consumption follow two different logics. The former is determined by profit maximization; the capitalists invest in order to make and maximize profits. While what gets bought and consumed is determined by what people, most of whom are workers, can afford. And, as the capitalist never return as much wealth to workers (in the form of wages) as the workers produce (in the form of commodities), there is a constant pressure on the system to find alternative buyers for this surplus.

./english/278.txt:35:This contradiction intensifies as the gap between the amount of wealth produced (and producible) and the amount returned to the workers as wages grows, as it invariably does, chiefly through advances in science and technology. Increases in the workers' real wages, which can occur from time to time and from place to place does not seriously impede this process. Every decade or so for the past 150 years this contradiction has resulted in a crisis of overproduction (or, viewed from the perspective of the workers, of underconsumption), with the accompanying destruction and wastage of factories, machines, goods and workers. Eventually the need to rebuild what has been destroyed or left to wear out together with the appearance of new markets makes investment more profitable. There is a renewed burst of accumulation, and the cycle starts over. The new beginning takes place on a higher level; more is invested, more people, tasks, and area are involved all around the world; more is at stake. Capitalism has been saved, but only at the cost of increasing the scale of risk in the next crisis. In Marx's estimation, capitalism is a little like a drunk who drinks in order to steady his nerves until the time that... And that time always comes. Marx's prediction of the downfall of capitalism is not to be read as the prediction of the arrival of a comet on such and such a day, but as the projection of the most likely outcome of a worsening impasse, whose development one can see and study in the past and present.

./english/278.txt:39:In capitalism, grasped in this way, class is first of all a place in the system, a property of the whole at whose core we find the interrelated functions of capital and wage-labor. The groups of people, who realize these functions, i.e., use capital to exploit workers and use labor to produce value, are the capitalists and workers. Marx often refers to capitalists and workers as "embodiments" or "personifications" of capital and wage-labor (1958, 10, 85, 592; 1959, 857f.) Without denying that these classes are composed of real people, this is a way of saying that what makes them classes is not so much the qualities of the individuals but the relation of the group, qua group, to a central organizing function of the system. It is clear that workers, in this sense, are not more male than female, white than black, unskilled than skilled. As classes, the capitalists and the workers are viewed as extensions of the functions of capital and wage-labor, which themselves are only meaningful as parts of a system whose functions they are. Marx himself goes so far as to say, "capital is necessarily at the same time the capitalist... the capitalist is contained in the process of capital" (1973, 512).

./english/278.txt:57:Class consciousness in this subjective sense differs from the actual consciousness of each individual in the group in three ways; (1) it is a group consciousness, a way of thinking and a thought content, that develops through the individuals in the group interacting with each other and with opposing groups in situations that are peculiar to the class; (2) it is a consciousness that has its main point of reference in the situation and objective interests of a class, viewed functionally, and not in the declared subjective interests of individual class members (the imputed class consciousness referred to above has been given a role here in the thinking of real people); and (3) it is in its essence a process, a movement from wherever a group begins in its consciousness of itself to the consciousness appropriate to its situation. In other words, the process of becoming class conscious is not external to what class consciousness is but instead is at the center of what it is all about.

./english/278.txt:71:Finally, and possibly what distinguishes it most from individual consciousness as ordinarily understood, class consciousness is elastic and changing, and encompasses all the stages in the process of becoming what it potentially is along with the time it takes for this is occur. As such, class consciousness cannot be captured in any instant, nor can it be expressed in any simple, straightforward description. The time frame is stretched to cover the whole journey, but it is a journey with an end, a goal established by the situation of the class as such and evoked by all the conditions and pressures that constitute that situation, though most members of the class may not recognize this until very late. One of the most puzzling features in Marx's use of "class" is how he could claim that class is "the product of the bourgeoisie" while maintaining that "All history is the history of class struggle," and refer to various pre-capitalist groups as "classes" (Marx and Engels, 1942, 77; 1945, 12). In fact, class (in all of its aspects), class struggle, and class-consciousness all develop, mature, become over time, and only in late capitalist society do they realize their full potential. It is in this sense that each may be said to be a product of capitalism. In so far as many of their elements are present earlier, however, class, class struggle, and class consciousness can be said—if this limited sense is kept in mind—to have existed before. Moreover, viewed as historical processes, the mature form of each can be taken as present as a germ in its earlier stages and vice versa. Such is the nature of becoming as a dialectical category. As regards class-consciousness at the present time, rather than what any single person thinks, class-consciousness refers to how, when, from and towards what a whole class of people are changing their minds.

./english/278.txt:73:Studying class consciousness has something in common with trying to catch a wave at the moment when it breaks. All movement toward this point is treated as development, as preliminary, as the unfolding of a potential. Everything that either contributes to or retards it movement is equally the object of study, but the constant point of repair, the perspective from which the whole process is viewed and interpreted, the event that gives everything that proceeded it its distinctive meaning, is the moment at which the wave breaks. Naturally, there is the assumption, derived from a Marxist analysis of capitalism, that the waves will almost certainly break, that sooner or later the worsening problems of the system, together with the reduction and eventual disappearance of system-approved alternatives for dealing with them, will drive most workers to embody the consciousness of their class.

./english/278.txt:81:Does understanding imputed class consciousness as future class consciousness imply that socialism is inevitable? No, because class conscious workers are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a successful socialist transformation of society. How effectively these class conscious workers are organized, what political action they take, the character of the then opposition, and even luck will help determine the final outcome of the class struggle. Marx himself offered barbarism—the disintegration of advanced civilization—as one alternative to socialism, but living one hundred years ago, he did not give it the attention that it would receive today. The Cold War has led to the recognition that another all too realistic alternative to socialism is the death of humanity brought about by nuclear holocaust. Still another awful possibility is ecocide, or the destruction of our species through the rapidly escalating destruction of our natural environment. Many rate this last as the most likely outcome of our species' relatively brief sojourn on this planet. While occasionally sympathetic (if this is the right word) to this view, it should be clear that the factors effecting this outcome are, at least to a large degree, of a different order than those that influence the progress of class consciousness. Consequently, the possibility of ecocide, like the possibility of barbarism and nuclear holocaust, does not prevent us from treating imputed class consciousness as future class consciousness within a notion of present class consciousness viewed in the process of becoming.

./english/278.txt:85:Given the spatial and temporal dimensions of class consciousness, it is obvious that examining small pieces of this process, such as the consciousness of individual workers, which is separated from its social context and viewed statically, as it appears in an instant, simply will not do. This is, of course, what happens in most attitude surveys. Even if the questions are fair and the respondents honest (big "ifs"), attitude surveys cannot capture a process, a context, and a potential for change. It is as if one sought to catch the moment a wave breaks by photographing an earlier moment (and small piece) in its movement. But class-consciousness is not the kind of thing that shows up in a photo, or even in moving pictures. There are just too many aspects that are not immediately perceptible.

./english/278.txt:103:In investigating the different objective aspects of class consciousness, now conceptualized as class struggle, care must also be taken not to prejudge the particular combination of factors that will carry the wave to its breaking point, or, conversely, will ensure that it not get there, at least not now anyway. As we said earlier, any complex organism, and none is more complex than capitalism, has many compensating mechanisms for what is missing or not working as expected. Consequently, no social feature, either through its presence or absence, exercises an absolute veto on the development of class consciousness. No doubt the way in which consciousness develops has an important influence on the pace and form of the revolution. It does not follow, however, that there is only one road, a royal road, to socialism, and that socialists who are not on it are doomed to failure. Given the changing though still highly structured context provided by the process of capital accumulation, the class struggle allows for enormous flexibility and variety in how workers become class conscious. Yet, it remains the case that some paths of development are more likely—indeed far more likely—to be taken than others, and studying the objective aspects of class consciousness for each time and place is the surest means of uncovering what these are.

./english/278.txt:113:It is also extremely important to conduct such inquiries over a period of time in order to chart both the direction and pace of change. One of the most neglected aspects of class consciousness, largely because the process of becoming is not put at the center of what it is, is the speed at which it can develop (and also, unfortunately, undeveloped or come apart). This is still another reason for the priority we have given to the objective side of class consciousness over the psychology of workers. For if class consciousness can develop and spread with the speed of a forest fire, then—sticking with this analogy—it is more important to know the conditions under which this can occur, including the dryness of the grass, the extremes of heat, the duration of the heat wave, what kind of events can start a fire and how likely they are to occur, what techniques of fire preventions are available, etc., than knowing details about the currently nonflammable state of particular blades of grass.

./english/278.txt:121:I would also like to insist once again on the need to study class consciousness as a developing rather than a static phenomenon. Examining what is there in light of what is not (imputed consciousness), tracing the changes in the class' objective situation, following a group of workers over a period of time, stressing sharp transitions in their situations or behavior or thinking - all this is generally not enough. The very concepts we use in which to think about class consciousness, starting with "class consciousness" itself, must be opened up to allow the passage of time, to include where the content that is brought into focus has come from as well as where it is likely to go as part of its very meaning. Other change-oriented concepts, such as "process," "moment," and becoming," should be used in preference to "attitude," "factor," and "variable" to convey its relational parts. Only then can everything uncovered at a moment be consistently grasped as arising out of and arching toward something else. Otherwise, temporarily stalled processes are likely to combine with reified social forms and all too frequent intellectual laxness to produce prematurely finished results. Everything in class consciousness is in transition and must be viewed and studied as such.

./english/278.txt:123:As for which subsection of the workers should be given priority as subjects of study, the answer can be found in an updated reading of Marx's texts. Besides constituting the largest section of the working class in nineteen-century capitalism, industrial workers worked and lived in conditions that were in the process of becoming generalized. In this, as in so much else, they led the way. Because of their place and numbers in industry, industrial workers also had the power to bring the entire capitalist system to a halt. Hence, Marx's political as well as economic emphasis on this section of the working class. Today, industrial workers are no longer the majority of the working class, and their proportion as part of the class is becoming smaller, and while they set the pace when material conditions for the whole class were improving, the current drop in real living standards finds them trailing after other less favored, generally less unionized, sections of the class. Granted, they are still the main source of all real (as distinct from paper) wealth in our society, and they still have the force to bring capitalism to a halt by withdrawing their labor-power. From this, it would seem that industrial workers should continue to be a main subgroup in any study of working class consciousness, but—on the basis of current trends in capitalism—they must now share the spotlight with others. As the fastest growing sectors of the working class, highly skilled technical workers, low skilled services workers, and government and office workers should also be heavily represented in studies of working class consciousness.

./english/281.txt:9:world’ a new surge of radical theory. As a result within academia, especially in Northern Europe and USA, there is apparently more space for critical debate. When I began to get in touch with the ‘first side of the first world academe’, this process seemed to me, as a South-European PhD student, very impressive. However, as an activist, I very soon came across many people theorising Social Movements (SM) who were only familiar with the work being done within academia. Thus the initial optimism soon disappeared. Some questions then presented themselves: What is the meaning of our radicalism? Who is our critique for? Are we really in a radical age or is it becoming fashionable to be radical? This article provides me with the opportunity to reflect on these themes. Still I have to admit to a certain trepidation since I don’t see myself as a political theorist and writing in a foreign language will limit my ability to express myself clearly1. But I’ll try to write to the best of my ability, eroding academic jargons and talking not from the perspective of an abstract Knowledge but from my experiences (including all the voices who debate issues of relevance with me from time by time). I hope my reflections2 will be of interest to some of this journal’s readers. This paper aims to look at us. To me, being critical must start from self-criticism. ‘Self-criticism and personal change are not apolitical- refusing to be what the system requires you to be is a profound and powerful form of direct actions’ (Subbuswamy & Patel, 2001, 541-543). …Situating myself In truth, responding to the initial questionnaire was very hard for me, since I hate giving rapid judgements and I am acutely aware that a short response cannot escape generalisation. I did fill in the questionnaire at the end because as I understand the idea was for us to permit the reader to know where we are coming from (politically), in order to comprehend and critique our work more easily. But I feel I need to spend some more time elaborating my answers since some of the terms used in the questionnaire seem ambiguous to me.

./english/281.txt:17:Viewpoints that arise from potential subversive situations [...] are incorporated, neutralised and redefined within the discipline as methodological innovations or merely as qualitative investigative techniques (Gordo-Lopez, 2001). In other words deconstruction and qualitative methods can be used to justify reactionary practice. Deconstruction and relativism, for example, have been used by some to posit the notion that the Holocaust was an invention and to propagate their historical revisionist point of view. Has a similar process aided the reabsorption5 of critical psychology? I feel myself closest to the standpoint of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in the sense expressed by Bucalo (1997, 54), anti-psychiatry is not a theory but a practice…it is an everyday practice with which we confront other people’s experience and at the same time define our own...regarding interpersonal relations, anti-psychiatry does not limit itself to the negation of internment or the coercion of people’s subjectivities; it is furthermore an acknowledgment of those experiences/abilities within human beings. In other words being anti-psychiatry should be read as a way of being in relation to the world and the subjectivities within it. This is primarily a personal anti-psychiatry. Finally, the third set of doubts that the questionnaire evokes in me: What is the anti-capitalist movement? Is it really possible to talk about one anti-capitalist movement? For example, are the Mapuche movement, Tute Bianche or Attac part of the same struggle? Is there a lot of commonality between the anarchist perspective and NGOs’ politics? Do we fight for the same goals? Is there a common struggle? The definition of Social Movements (SM) is extremely varied and includes many groups with different styles and political positions and the attempt to find a common theory to explain them will result in homogenisation and simplification6. Even when we try to limit analysis to self-professed anti-capitalist movements we are still left with an enormous range of different groups and political options. What is the common ground? Do they work as friends or antagonists? Bearing in mind such heterogeneity, if we want to

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

./english/281.txt:33:spokespersons of the movement and dismiss the rest as ‘too radical’. I don't think it is necessary here to analyse the effects of these dynamics on the movement. Although it is important to note that declarations from alleged progressive intellectuals is intended to divide the movement and undermine alternative groupings. All this raises considerable doubts in me regarding the possible contributions of disciplines such as critical psychology (especially in English speaking countries), that are becoming academically acceptable. Moreover, we have to recognise that many intellectuals and academics jump on the radical bandwagon and try to take advantage of it, especially since there are so few specialists in this field. As an Italian militant involved with academia reports,13 Spring 1998 [...] explosion of the squatting phenomenon [...] many university barons show a sudden interest in ‘understanding’ squatters and I am called as a possible advisor [...] If I put myself forward as a squatting expert I will surely enhance my career prospects. Intellectual contribution to division and reabsorption In analysing the achievements and failures of Radical Social Movements we have to consider the tools, which the System employs to undermine the subversive power of activities and imagination. In my opinion two of the more successful strategies adopted by the System are reabsorption and splitting; in both, the part played by intellectuals and more specifically, academics, is determinant. Here I wish to examine these processes in more detail. When struggles gain public support the System puts into practice various strategies to re-colonize some of the more explicit demands. They take the demand, turn it upside down, empty it of meaning and use it as a slogan to shut up ‘popular protest’. Even some of the ‘human resources’ of the Movement, that is some of the activists, are reabsorbed into the body politic. This probably occurs for different reasons: some militants enter the movement not because they are completely disenchanted with formal politics but because they are not able

./english/281.txt:37:to enter it directly; some may genuinely believe they can subvert the System from within; some may not realise until much later that they are being used by shady political parties or groups; others still may feel frustrated by the ‘flawed’ strategies adopted by the Radical Social Movement or may even diverge politically from the new positions. In any case, since the System has been able to both recycle part of the movement’s demands and directly recruit some of its leaders, it can de-radicalise the militants. This is what I call reabsorption, in which both populist dictatorships and modern phallo-centric democracies specialise in, with academics as the state’s accomplice. Two painful examples can show how the process works. The first is the inclusion of ‘feminist’ discourse, within societies that arrogantly call themselves ‘first world’, into mainstream socio-political discourse. Politicians are now careful to be politically correct14 and encourage women participation in a world constructed on hetero-patriarchal philosophy. Some feminists lend themselves to such manoeuvres in order to obtain a ‘power quota’. And some may even pretend to be feminists as a matter of policy. Consequently we have positive discriminatory laws by which governments and trans-national organisations enhance their dominating positions and act as Father-figures to their subjects. So we witness in North Europe and the USA15 many gender study departments have completely compromised politics and use women as objects (rarely subjects) of study. This creates a vacuum in the intergenerational transmission belt and at the same time permits the marginalization of rebellious women who refuse to accept the lie of equality16. Moreover, Feminist philosophy has not escaped the pull of the univocal concept of power and the results are clear. It has entered into a dynamics in which the allegedly radical discourse travels on the same false path as traditional misogynist discourse... the self-serving lies of patriarchal discourse are converted into alternative discourse and projected as naturalism (Valcárcel, 1994, 81). 14 ‘Conceptual change not directly reflected in a transformation of practices and behaviours’ (Fernandéz, 2000, p 65). 15 In South Europe it is difficult make a similar analysis because there are so few Women Studies departments. 16 We are encouraged to believe that equal opportunities exist in the ‘civilised world’; we can abort unwanted pregnancies, we can work in the public domain. However, the government’s dominating attitude towards us remains intact which is typical of the hetero-patriarchal capitalist system we are living under.

./english/281.txt:40:In this sense activist critics of academia are still relevant; for example, Cecilia17, criticises academic Italian feminists who did not come out against the reformists who wanted to forbid abortion. The second painful example comes from the Italian anti-psychiatry movement. Law 18018 which in theory aimed for a more open model of psychic pain, left three enormous legislative holes: First, it retained the TSO19; second, it didn’t close the criminal ‘madhouses’ (Barbieri, 1995); and, finally, it supported the inabilitazione20 (Biglia, 1999). The government passed these laws with the approval of society since they were seen as liberating. The supposed empowerment either didn’t materialise or was pushed through in a reformist manner (Telefono Viola21). In this way the government boycotted all the genuinely alternative approaches. First, subsidies were eliminated and later on draconian laws were employed to shut down individual and collective radical projects. Ironically, the Italian psychiatric laws are still deemed ‘progressive’ by some. These were two examples from the past but I believe the germ of a very similar process can be seen in various sectors of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Academic writings have often favoured reabsorption of critics by recolonising collective knowledge within the borders of ‘scientific space’. The second phenomenon, which needs discussing, is the ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics of the state. Within autonomous groupings the development of a collective identity has always been a necessary component of recognising a common struggle and the fight against oppression. We need a group consciousness in order to be subversive, since ‘any group that leads an autonomous existence [...] constitutes a constant danger for the dominant group’ (Apfelbaum, 1999, p 269). Obviously if the identity becomes homogenising it could suffocate the group and the subjectivity within it (Biglia, 2003). As I explained before, various occasions are used to

./english/281.txt:47:the level of the people, [but you get the impression they feel] if you aren’t a professional you are nobody. They become more enraged on hearing pious progressive discourse on an abstract poverty, ... when we are here fucking hungry and are fed an excellent discourse … [you realize how empty it is] and that you are defrauded by It … for that reason organized women don’t trust professionals very much… In this case feminist professional attitudes caused feelings of exclusion. Similarly, various anti-capitalist groups create discourses and practices that exclude people who are not used to theories. Once again the role played by intellectuals is to erect barriers that maintain the separation between ‘popular’ energies and ‘revolutionary’ discourse. Critical contradictions and travelling within/out movements Some may agree with my criticism of mainstream theories but argue that they cannot possibly apply to critical theory since the latter operates within a different schema. I believe, however, that my criticisms do apply to critical theory as well. Below I will try to expand on this. The critic frequently engages in normative practice and more specifically academics expect their students to follow their lead in their work. At the beginning it may be necessary to create a group identity to protect the minority group from the incursions of ‘official’ theories (Biglia, 2003), but later on it becomes a way of monopolising the power. One of the reasons for this process maybe the necessity of working in a relaxing way. As Ussher makes clear: […] Today critical psychology means something different to me. It is not fighting for small change, for recognition, for an inroad into the mainstream of psychology. Those endeavours are admirable, and I have nothing but respect for those who wish to pursue that path […]. But I don’t have the energy, or the inclination, any more. I have come to the conclusion that innovative, meaningful research or teaching cannot be carried out, at least without great personal cost, if critical psychologists are having to justify their existences on a daily basis; if they are having to explain, persuade and cajole, rather then engage

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

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

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

./english/282.txt:45:If the academic quest is for the well-formed generic proposition or the superior explanation, that is, for the theoretical concept or generalization which covers a set of seemingly dissimilar cases or processes, it is not the case that movement intellectuals have no interest in these. However, their primary interests do not lie here. Rather, generic propositions perform a subordinate function in their reasoning, not as goals in themselves but rather as merely parts of an apparatus of activist argument whose central concern lies elsewhere - in formulating 'case propositions' of a very definite and practical nature. These take the form, in essence, of practical proposals, i.e. propositions that 'This is what we should do.'

./english/282.txt:51:The second example also involves the relation of theory and practice. Discussing 'mechanisms and processes', McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) propose that mechanisms 'concatenate into processes', which represent larger-scale objects for theoretical comparison. As it happens, Lukacs (2000), in his last 'Leninist' text), addresses related issues about theorization of processes. Only his case is, essentially, that processes 'concatenate' into what he terms 'moments of decision.' Lukacs's argument is not, of course, with contemporary American academic theorists, but with two representatives of what might be termed 'Second International Marxism', whose view of the historical process is rather inevitabilistic and 'processual'. The issue between them is how to explain the failure of the 1919 Hungarian revolution, in which the young Lukacs had been a committed participant. His opponents account for the defeat in terms of a set of 'processes' which were somehow beyond human intervention. For Lukacs, however, such general processes do no more than set the parameters, as it were, within which Hungarian communists could and had to work; indeed, these generated a variety of immediate 'moments of decision' when the actions of the Hungarian Communist Party leadership proved decisive.

./english/282.txt:56:All of this betokens a certain 'distance' between much social movement theory and actual social movement practice. To rephrase Marx's comments in the Theses on Feuerbach (1845), social movement theory is essentially contemplative in nature, at least with respect to its subject. (6) Social movements, that is, are engaged with as objects of study to be observed, described and explained; not as active processes that people engage with, experience and transform.

./english/282.txt:69:Activist thinking produces a particular kind of theorization of movements, which gives primacy to processes of self-understanding and attempts to start from the actor's perspective, while logically stressing fluidity and process (since actors in movements seek above all to move, not to carry on playing the same parts for the rest of their lives!) Its potential weaknesses include a tendency to reproduce accepted wisdom, to be embedded in unreflected cultural constructs, and a limited conceptual armoury - but one which is perhaps used more fluently and flexibly than the 'elaborated code' of academia.

./english/282.txt:102:The relationship between activist and academic theorizing is not simply that of a static contrast. As social processes, they are closely intertwined, in processes of colonization and resistance which operate in both directions. 'Theory', in the sense of the symbolic languages generated by these processes, is then affected in important ways both by the primary social locations of activist and academic theorizing and by the processes of (conflictual) dialogue which occur between them.

./english/282.txt:104:Processes of colonization and resistance

./english/282.txt:105:Marx's observation that the means of intellectual production are normally in the hands of the ruling class has an important corollary: that social movements from below (as opposed to, say, 'class war from above') often need to conquer or produce their own means of intellectual production. Social movement actors, for their part, have to 'create a new language' (Marx 1852), another way of thinking which is more or less adequate to their new way of acting. Activist theorizing, then, is in important ways a process of cognitive liberation.

./english/282.txt:113:But of course the process of 'enlightenment' is not as linear as that - which is after all where Marx's critique of Feuerbach starts. When budding activists start to think their way out of 'common sense', or to break what Blake described as 'mind-forg'd manacles', there is often an interest in forms of generalized understanding that might offer clarity, justification and a broader vision to underpin their activity.

./english/282.txt:117:Activist theorizing can thus present itself as a process of throwing off the contemplative 'muck of ages' gathered by traditional intellectuals within universities, or perhaps more exactly its creative reworking, its cultivating for other purposes (as with Marx and Gramsci themselves). (13)

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

./english/282.txt:127:Three recent borderline cases can highlight something of the ambiguities involved in this process. Naomi Klein's No Logo has become a major international bestseller, getting dedicated promotions in major chains of booksellers (an ironic fate for a book whose theme is the damage caused by transnational corporations). It is also increasingly used as an accessible introductory text in sociology courses.

./english/282.txt:135:Arguably Starr pursues a double purpose in Naming the Enemy. On the one hand, she attempts to use her activist knowledge and background as a resource to achieve recognition within academia - and the fact that her book is the first work by a sociologist on the 'anti-globalization movement' is likely to stand her in good stead in this process. On the other hand, and more interestingly, she also uses the apparatus of academic research to argue for particular positions within the movement and against others. (15) However, we have yet to see any evidence of success in this. (Perhaps the book's strong defence of fundamentalist responses to globalization may explain something of the silence that has settled over it since September 11th.) Nevertheless, it is worth signaling both that some academics do try to break out of the 'contemplative' mode and that they are not necessarily very successful in doing so.

./english/282.txt:137:Finally, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire marks a particularly complex practical relationship. Negri is orignally a left-wing academic who fell foul of the post-1968 witchhunts of 'terrorist sympathizers' carried out by the Italian state, a process which led hundreds if not thousands of Italians to seek exile abroad (Ruggiero 1999). Negri continued academic work in Paris, but returned to Italy - and jail - a few years ago to highlight the plight of less well-known exiles.

./english/282.txt:146:'Marxism' represents a particular crystallization of the theorizing processes of the workers' movement. From the late 19th century it has formed one of the most important languages within which - and against which - movement debates have been framed (not only in left parties and trade unions, but also for example in the ecological and women's movements). Its most famous 'names' are those of revolutionary activists, heavily involved in the various Internationals and suffering exile (Marx, Lenin, Lukács), political murder (Luxemburg, Trotsky) or imprisonment (Gramsci).

./english/282.txt:148:'Feminism', similarly, represents a long-drawn-out process of theorization, which by the late 19th century had acquired some stability as a body of knowledge linked with 'the first-wave women's movement', and which shares with Marxism the experience of a creative revival in the West associated with the social movements of the late 1960s and subsequently. It also shares something else with Marxism in this period, which is that of a migration into the academy. In part this is a reflection of movement success - the creation of departments of sociology and schools of women's studies undoubtedly reflects a need on the part of the university to respond to (and benefit from) perceived changes within society. It is also, however, a reflection of movement weakness.

./english/282.txt:161:Two important things happened to the theory at this point (Geoghegan and Cox 2001), both of them characteristic of what Alvin Gouldner (1971) describes as a 'scholastic' approach to theory, in other words one geared to the structural requirements of teaching, textbooks and literature reviews. Firstly, a contrast was constructed between 'new social movement theory' and 'resource mobilization theory', in the process homogenizing the former considerably (and often restricting it to suitably 'academic' authors such as Touraine and Melucci). This contrast, repeated ad nauseam in introductions to edited collections and 'overviews of the literature', was usually proposed as a debate between generic propositions ࠬa Lofland: 'resource mobilization theorists argue that?' while 'new social movements theorists argue that?.'

./english/282.txt:165:What was obscured most decisively in this process was the key political issue around which the literature had originally been constructed: the failure of social democracy to bring about revolutionary change in post-war western Europe, and the alignment of orthodox communism with the repression of revolution in Paris just as much as in Prague.

./english/282.txt:169:In the process, the banal but nevertheless significant point that by the 1970s the PCF was increasingly isolated within Marxism was conveniently forgotten. When teaching students, it is of course far easier to say 'Marxists said this, but new social movements theorists (or post-structuralists) said that', providing the illusion of an intellectual debate, than to recognize that what was originally at stake was initially a debate between Marxists over practical questions. For example: did 1968 represent a revolutionary moment in Paris or Prague? was it important to be present in student movements or should all energies should go into factory work? were movements against nuclear power a diversion from real issues or a significant new form of struggle? and did green parties represent a worthwhile strategy for expressing and radicalizing a range of struggles or a means for their co-optation.

./english/282.txt:219:In more active movements, rather than 'cosmology' determining 'action', people often radicalize their understanding of how the world works through the process of conflict with adversaries and the attempt to convince the unconvinced; the 'programme' similarly is something which is often implicit in the choice of particular battles over others, the formation of particular alliances, and the creation of alternative social relations - what Fantasia (1988) has memorably called 'cultures of solidarity'.

./english/282.txt:223:The boundaries between Eyerman and Jamison's 'dimensions of cognitive praxis', then, are themselves as 'ahistorical and transcendental' as Habermas, albeit attractive from a particular 'contemplative', 'traditional' position which is interested in categorizing movement behaviour. Real-life thought, however, is a complex process of struggle which does not always sit neatly within these separate boxes.

./english/282.txt:226:There is perhaps also a deeper criticism to be made: that it is itself a historical and sociological question whether it makes sense to distinguish a separate dimension of the cognitive praxis of movements from the rest of life. Lichterman (1996), contrasting the largely white and middle-class US Greens with black and Latina anti-toxics campaigners, noted that the former in effect constituted and understood themselves as an intentional community', alienated from their own social background and in conflict with important aspects of its assumptions. By contrast, the latter understood themselves as part of broader ethnic (and class) communities: they did not, that is, necessarily separate the thought processes involved in 'being activists' from those involved in e.g. 'being black'.

./english/282.txt:228:Similarly, Irish working-class community organizers may refuse the term 'activist' as referring to something alien to the everyday life and culture of the communities they see themselves as part of - while nevertheless being involved in processes of discussion, disagreement, conflict and education within those communities. In these cases, people are involved in a struggle over the meaning of everyday culture, and may set limits on the extent to which movement discourses are allowed to develop independently.

./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/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:32:According to Steward, this epistemological shift is brought up by different traditions: feminist ethnographies; subaltern, postcolonial and minority studies; discourse centered approaches; performance theory; and dialogic, reflexive and deconstructive approaches (1996: 25). The reflexive epistemology is explored thought new understandings of ethnographic work –“as a process of [listening], re-membering and retelling” (1996:7)- and through experimental writing –“ethnopoetic notations” (1996:9). The reader can feel the excitement about the new possibilities and at the same time the author points out that her work is not a final solution to the problem of representation.

./english/284.txt:34:New narrative practices and new terminology thus emerged, but what are the political consequences of this reflexive engagement with the text and this recognition of ethnography as a dialogical process? In our class discussions we left this question open- whether or not the epistemological shift was followed by changes in everyday and institutional practices in anthropology more generally. I would like to propose that it is possible to challenge “empire as a way of life” in Anthropology criticized bitterly by Said (1989: 216).

./english/284.txt:38:The provocative piece “Can the Subaltern Speak” by Spivak challenged the celebration of new ways of representation. In a brave critique, she attacks “our best prophets of heterogeneity and the Other” as being permeated by uncritical notions of representation, claiming to give voice to the oppressed in the ridiculous roles of “a Maoist” taken by Foucault and “a worker militant” by Deleuze (1988: 67). She is very skeptical of any achievement in the epistemological shift. On the contrary she maintains the persistence of the “epistemic violence” product of the colonial process where Europe is erected as the undetermined Subject holding the explanatory power, and the colonized are relegated to be the Others -the Objects to be explained- whose voice and agency have been stolen.

./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/284.txt:71:Spivak’s call for a deep engagement with the subaltern leads to a strong epistemological shift. She insists on the persistence of the “epistemic violence” product of the colonial process where Europe is erected as the undetermined Subject holding the explanatory power, and the colonized are relegated to be the Others –the Objects waiting to be explained- whose voice and agency have been stolen. Through recognizing the international division of labor and power, one is able to perceive its impact on the current ‘epistemological world order’. She is offering an epistemology that takes the subaltern into account not only as a case study, but as a source of knowledge and ‘expert’ production-the subaltern must be heard. Among global resistance movements in North America and Europe there is a lot of internal discussion about this topic. Mainly due to the mass media, the ‘spearheading role of southern social movements has been obscured, portraying the ‘anti-globalization movement’ as a negligible affair of ‘white-US and European-middle class kids’. However, in much movement discourse there exists an explicit attempt to recognize the role of grassroots communities from ‘poor’ countries as referential examples of movement building –from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, to the unemployed/piqueteros in Argentina, to peasant women in India- showing a similar effort to revert the canons of expertise. In this process, civil society from Europe and the US become the ‘students’ of their southern ‘teachers’ challenging colonial patterns.

./english/284.txt:73:Spivak warns us that the process of smashing the epistemological dictatorship is not easy. The subalterns in their very attempt to achieve epistemological status, cannot speak due to the risk of being co-opted by the very same violent epistemic framework. The subaltern’s political-economic exploitation would thus be reinforced. This political economy of representation offers the possibility to Anthropology to be radically reflexive, taking into account economic, political and epistemological privileges.

./english/284.txt:91:The opposition established between “there” and “here” naturalized a sense of “them” and “us” that Ferguson and Gupta want to problematize: “Ethnography becomes a link between an unproblematized “home” and “abroad”” (1997:72). The other is “subtly nativized” and “spatially incarcerated” (Appadurai in Gupta and Ferguson, 1997: 72). Even some attempts of experimental ethnographies are denounced for thinking as the other as “a preexisting ontological entity –‘survivors’ not products (still less, producers of history). They are victims, having suffered the deadly contact process with us,” (1997:73). This process of essentialization does not allow the other to speak and less to be heard. Ferguson and Gupta want to destabilize that “topography of power” calling for an awareness that spaces “have always been hierarchically interconnected”, instead of thinking of spaces as lost isolated enclaves “naturally disconnected” (1997: 67). Anthropological training should focus more on processes born from continuous historical contact, rather than in essences drawn from imagined ‘bounded units’.

./english/284.txt:93:The “deterritorialization” process of “a world of diaspora” has intensified the interconnectivity and shaken the fixity of clear-cut identities/spaces. The border between “here” and “there” becomes blurred, and “them” and “us” feel closer as well, erasing the gap between the anthropologist and its object. (1997:68-69). The ethnographer loses his/her distinctive position as the lonely traveler in search of the far away. The previous exclusivity of the ethnographer is overshadowed in a moment when everybody moves transnationally, including tourists, ‘terrorists’, company employees, journalists, immigrants, researchers, war prisoners, sweatshop workers…At the same time, the distances persist in terms of power relations, as Gupta and Ferguson point out “a politics of otherness persists that is not reducible to a politics of representation” (74). This emphasis on the “extratextual roots of the problem” connect to Spivak’s political economy of representation. The authors call for the politicization of differences produced as a result of process of domination, this opens the possibility to anthropologists to “changing more than our texts” (74-75).

./english/284.txt:100:This paper is a work in process. As a follow up on my second essay “Can the Activist Speak in the Academy? Decentering the Politics of Representation” and embracing the feedback provided, this paper attempts to respond to the question of ‘why Anthropology’ (and other disciplines) –is being perceived as a friendly ally by some current global justice activists [3]. This review of two theoretical pieces and a chapter of ethnography can give us a glimpse. The argument is that reflexivity offers a great tool of resistance contributing radical epistemologies, horizontally empowering practices, and networked awareness of global interconnectivity. Reflexive thinking and action can engage in a de-centered, horizontal and networked way with spaces of resistance, and at the same time making ethnographic practice a locus of antagonistic production of knowledge.

./english/290.txt:58:The Enlightenment, as well as the processes of industrialization and urbanization (linked to a growing preoccupation with the "hygiene" of populations) produced a gradual transition in the control of feminine sexuality, from religious sanctions to legal sanctions, which in many areas (US, Great Britain, Australia...) included the regulation of the exchange of sexual services for money. It was in this manner that prostitution appeared in the way we know it today, that is to say, as a specialized occupation or profession within the division of labor of patriarchal capitalism, and how it was restricted to determinate spaces and subjects (ceasing to be an occasional resources for working and peasant women).[2] The border between the whore and the good woman would thus remain constructed in a more rigid manner than ever. As such, if a woman was[3] (or of a strange sexuality, or a single mother or someone who liked fucking) she was called a whore and thus there was established a clear barrier that excluded her from other options (clearly, from the functions of the dignified spouse and mother). Even though if at first she did not have this profession, she could very easily end up having it. She was kept out of the matrimonial market (with its "normal" relations - monogamous, reproductive, and subordinated) and ended up either in some institution (prison, set up for lost young women...) or in the street, or more precisely, "doing the street".[4]

./english/290.txt:68:On the other hand, we speak of a continuum because we notice that the traditional fixed positions of women (and of genders in general) are becoming more mobile, and at the same time new positions are created. The whore is no longer just and only a whore and the sainted mother is no longer such a saint nor only a mother. At the same time, telemarketing firms and unions in that sector press for attention to be a differentiated profession, with its specific educational process: thus was born the atenta[8], that professional of listening and moving on [derivar] (to another telephone, another service, to an earlier caller or visitor), even, in a moment in which the job is increasingly less an element that organizes (individual and collective) identity, it remains to be seen if this position can come to coagulate as such.

./english/290.txt:81:In last place, we have urban questions: the crisis (and destruction) of worker neighborhood and their strong sense of community has given place to a process of privatization of public spaces, which finds its maximum expression in closed urbanizations, large commercial centers and the hegemony of the car. How to construct bonds, and beginning from there, relationships of solidarity and care, if we are not able to spatially prefigure a "we", if our everyday contact is reduced to seeing each other at the counter, through the glass of the windows or at the verge of the interior garden, under the blinding lights of the billboards or immersed in the vertiginous rhythm of shop windows. Maybe the neighborhood gangs are to as like Chesire¥s smile was to Alice: a sign for possible affective (and caring) territorializations in the privatized city.

./english/290.txt:152:[9] Those are only some of the aspects of the social machine and technology of genders that are opening and reorganizing, concretely, those which have seemed more pertinent to us in relation with the sex-attention-care continuum and with its relation to processes of precarization. Elsewhere we would like to develop other aspects of the reconfiguration of this machine inside a terrain of crisis of the traditional meanings of feminity and masculinity and also, since it could not be otherwise, of battle.

./english/291.txt:41:The social context that we live in today is the network-society. The factory has overflowed and has invaded the social, changing it into the principal lever of production. The wave of struggles in the 1960s and 1970s, on one hand, and the saturation of markets, along with the high levels of competition that introduced the process of globalization, on the other, obligated firms to develop techniques and technologies to make themselves more mobile and flexible and also more resistant to conflictivity and crisis: their survival depended, on one hand, on their capacity to detext (and take advantage of) the politico-institutional and social conditions and of the supply of most optimum raw materials, software, and machinery and work force; on the other hand firms' survival depended on their ability to respond within very brief time spans to oscilations of demand, thus in order to create (with a whole set of identification of needs/desires/forms of life and production of signs) the demand for a product even before manufacturing it. The key thus was in the multiplication of contacts and in a flexible and network organization that allowed a maximum fluidification of the circulation of information about local and international markets and an immediate production response to this information. In this manner, externalization, dislocalization and flexibilization became the slogan and communicative and relational work became the essential pivot, the active interface, of this ever more networked production.

./english/291.txt:107:Biosindicalism has nothing to do with bifidus. It is an attempt to name a series of recent practical and everyday experiments that are happening in the terrain of precarity, in a provisional, provocative, and extremely pragmatic manner. Biosindicalism is a contraction of life and sindicalism, where life crawls toward that tradition of struggle that has been sindicalism and deprives it of its most corporative and economistic elements. But: why insert into this medium? 1) Because life is productive. We are not among those who say, "Life has been put into production." It always produced: cooperation, affective territories, worlds... but now it also produces profit. The capitalist axiomatic has subsumed it. 2) Because precarity cannot be understood only from the laboral context, from the concrete conditions of work of this or that individual. A much more rich and illuminating position results from understanding precarity as a generalized tendency toward the precarization of life that affects society as a whole. And 3) because the labor has ceased to be a place that organizes (individual and collective) identity), a place of spontaneous encounter and aggregation and a place that nourishes the utopia of a better world. The reasons? The failure of the worker movement and the process of capitalist restructuration that accompanied it, as much as the push of the desire of singularity (of the feminist movement, the black movement, the anticolonial movements and other movements linked to the spirit of '68) that made the worker movement stall from the inside.

./english/291.txt:125:Thus, from the experience of fragility and isolation that produces the process of generalized precarization, the rights that we want to instantiate are rights of cuidadania: right to resources, spaces, and times that permit the placing of care in the center and, with that, the possibility of constructing the common in a moment in which the common is shattered. But, look, if we speak of care it is not as the exclusive task of women to care for others, but rather as an ecological mode of taking charge of bodies that breaks with the securitarian logic and that substracts itself from the logic of accumulation. Care as passage to the other and to the many, as a point between the personal and the collective. Care as a fundamental weapon against the precarization of our lives.

./english/292.txt:85:and money, in care for oneself. If this phenonemon is related to processes of medicalization of populations that began in the

./english/293.txt:29:Precarias a la deriva (Precarious women workers adrift) is a collective project of investigation and action. The concerns of the participants in this open project converged the 20th of June 2002, the day of the general strike called by the major unions in Spain. Some of us had already initiated a trajectory of reflection and intervention in questions of the transformations of labor (in groups such as ‘ZeroWork’ and Sex, Lies and Precariousness, or individually), others wished to begin to think through these themes. In the days before the strike we came together to brainstorm an intervention which would reflect our times, aware that the labor strike, as the culminating expression of a process of struggle, was unsatisfactory for us for three reasons: (1) for not taking up –and this is no novelty- the experience and the unjust division of domestic work and care, almost entirely done by women in the ‘non-productive’ sphere, (2) for the marginalization to which both the forms of action and the proposals of the strike condemn those in types of work –ever more common- which are generally lumped together as ‘precarious’[1] and (3) for not taking into consideration precarious, flexible, invisible or undervalued work, specifically that of women and/or migrants (sexual, domestic, assistance, etc.). As a friend recently pointed out in the context of the more recent ‘political’ strike against the war (April 10, 2003), “How do we invent new forms of striking when production fragments and dislocates itself, when it is organized in such a way that to stop working for a few hours (or even 24) does not necessarily effect the production process, and when our contract situation is so fragile that striking today means risking the possibility of working tomorrow?”

./english/293.txt:33:We saw that many of these jobs in the margins: the invisible, unregulated, unmoored jobs were in no way interrupted or altered by a strike of this type, and that the precarization of the labor market had extended to such an extent that the majority of working people were not even effected by the new reforms against which the strike was directed. Therefore we tried to think of new forms of living this day of struggle by approaching and confronting these new realities. We decided to transform the classic shut-down picket into a survey-picket. Frankly, we didn’t feel up to upbraiding a precarious worker contracted by the hour in a supermarket or to closing down the little convenience store run by an immigrant because, in the end, despite the many reasons to shut down and protest, who had called this strike? Who were they thinking of? Was there even a minimal interest on the part of the unions for the situation of precarious workers, immigrants, housewives? Did the shut-down stop the productive process of domestic workers, translators, designers, programmers, all those autonomous workers for whom stopping this day would do nothing but duplicate their work the next day? It seemed more interesting to us, considering the gap between the experience of work and the practice of struggle, to open a space of exchange between some of the women who were working or consuming during that day and with those who were moving in the streets. This small, discreet sketch of an investigation was the starting point for what became the project of the ‘drifts’.

./english/293.txt:45:These and other questions arose, as we have said, from reflections which in one way or another had long been circulating among us. In the first place, we too situate ourselves in the midst of change and continuity in productive processes, we too, in various ways, are faced with a new work context strongly marked by neoliberalism.

./english/293.txt:49:A dominant tendency in much neo-Marxist thought points to the emergence of so-called immaterial work (work which is affective, communicative, creative, linguistic, etc…).[2] This work, which has to do with cognitive processes, production of knowledge, languages and links is not, despite what many analyses might suggest, homogenous. It is heavily marked by the social value assigned to the different kinds of work within this category, which is what establishes a difference between giving a hand-job to a client and designing a web-page.

./english/293.txt:61:We see that some of those that participate in the debate on immaterial work are deaf to the question of reproduction and its relationship to patriarchal and racial domination. Facing this reality, we recuperate part of a long tradition of debate within feminism which precisely does elaborate a Marxist idea of reproduction in the broad sense, crossed through by multiple power relations. This orientation coincides with the ideas of Foucault about power and the processes of subjectification, that is to say, about modern forms of domination which to a great extent are not based upon the direct exercise of violence but rather in the active production of submission, an idea which has been amply developed, with different emphases, by thinkers like Butler or Pateman. It coincides also with many of the radical, materialist and psychoanalytic tendencies within feminism, those that give important weight to questions such as the sexual division of work, the control of sexuality, normative heterosexuality or socialization within the family.

./english/293.txt:65:The debates on reproduction smattered through the whole decade of the 1970s now have new things to offer which should be brought to light.[4] From them we rescue an analysis of reproduction, of the articulation of capitalism, patriarchy, racial domination, and now more than ever, the history of colonialism, the geographical asymmetries which have produced the inequalities motivating the displacements of populations in the last decades. We also rescue the political thought and practice which thematize the body as a place of expression of domination and exploitation, and we think of the “productive body” or the “production of the (sexed) body” as a continuous process of incarnation of subjectivities which are simultaneously bound and struggling to determine the conditions of their development. We also rescue the feminist theorizing on the public and the private as a form of approaching the continuities and discontinuities between what happens in the realm of relations and homes and what happens in the more socially valued realm of employment, politics and the State. The growing integration of these realms, of employment and personal life, of education and employment, etc., as a historical process which produces differentiations and as a political criticism of the segmentations of modernity seems to us an essential path for investigation.

./english/293.txt:89:We decided, moreover, that this drifting should be done in the first person, that is, with each one telling the others about herself, and walking together towards a prudent but sustained approximation of the differences between us. We talk, therefore, of seeking common places and, simultaneously, of singularities to strengthen. This approximation has grown through the subsequent debates which have made us modify the initial utterance “we are precarious workers” for others less prone to affirming identity as an original element and more attentive to the processes of (de)identification.[7]

./english/293.txt:133:The drift permits us to take the quotidian as a dimension of the political and as a source of resistances, privileging experience as an epistemological category. Experience, in this sense, is not a preanalytic category but a central notion in understanding the warp of daily events, and, what is more, the ways in which we give meaning to our localized and incarnated quotidian. It is not exactly an observation technique; it does not aspire to ‘reproduce’ or approach daily experience as it habitually occurs (an ideal of classical anthropology which has proved difficult to realize) but rather to produce simultaneous movements of approaching and distancing, visualizing and defamiliarizing, transit and narration. We are interested in the point of view of those that guide us –how they define and experience precariousness, how they organize themselves on a daily basis and what are their vital strategies in the short and the long term, what they hope for- without dismissing, in this process, the dialog and complicity which is produced in our encounter. There is no going back; once you get home from a drift your head keeps buzzing until the next one.

./english/293.txt:140:PRECARIOUSNESS AS A PROCESS

./english/293.txt:144:We depart from a rudimentary definition of precariousness and precarization as a process, and we define a series of initial axes which might help to comprehend this many legged reality. What is clear is that this word, often a hollow vessel, has taken form thanks to what each one has brought. We have preferred to overfill it in order to later give it greater precision.

./english/293.txt:156:3) the intensification of the production process (result of ‘just in time’ production with extra hours which are no longer considered such, both because they are not optional and because they are not paid);

./english/293.txt:184:We dedicated several meetings to defining the axes of our approach, which later, in the course of the drifts, would take more shape. The axes which came out of our debates were informed by our experiences of time (stress, excess, saturation, the impossibility of planning, instability…), of space (mobility, life territories, borders, displacements, sedentarism…), of income (badly paid work, lack of resources, loans from friends and families with guaranteed work, limited access to public services and misappropriation of various cards…), of care and relations (communities of work, affect, sociability), of conflict (possibilities and processes of struggle…), of hierarchies (in many cases diffuse and painful), of risk (insecurity, vulnerability) and of the body (discipline, abuse, sporadic care, compulsive sexuality…). After various drifts, the axes took shape and meaning beyond our own initial intuitions.

./english/293.txt:198:Mobility is the quality which best describes the present malleability of the work force around the three axes: time, space and task. Mobility in the disposition of rhythms and schedules, mobility between jobs and, beyond that, in geography, in vital decisions, in lifestyle, and mobility in ‘unit acts’ and in the ways of developing them, always subject to mutations, to processes of evaluation and adjustment, a constant auditing. Mobility opposed to the old staticness, to bureaucratization and routine and, without a doubt, to the organizational capacity of persons who in any moment may find their functions modified and recombined, persons who don’t know the limits of what they have to do, and in general, of what they themselves are.

./english/293.txt:331:Another interesting element of relationship which merits further investigation is the link between people working together, which was alluded to both by the telephone operators and by our guide in social nursing. In the case of the operators, the companies attempt by all means to reduce the contact between the employees, whether by giving them little physical space to rest - as we had the opportunity to witness in situ, all squeezed together in the Qualytel office – or by using strategies oriented to generate competition and individualism, such as what they call “horizontal promotion”[30] or incentives[31] (which are also used in public health). Nevertheless, the company knows that a good portion of the work is done thanks to the exchange between the workers which assures the transmission of the savoir faire accumulated by the veterans who have been there longer, and – take note – are already more burnt-out[32], and of the information necessary in the course of the telephone calls, information which certainly does not reside in the few folders which we found in the offices, nor in the computers, but rather in the heads of those who are answering the calls. The control of this process rests in modulated management, employing surveillance techniques (listening and recording), hierarchization (operation personnel: operators, coordinators and supervisors, and structural personnel), displacement and time changes (since the job is organized by campaign some workers are located in the headquarters of the operating company while others are in the contracting company, and thus they are continually changing) and differentiation based on salary and value (of the campaign, of the sex of those who are executing it, of their wardrobe, of the company, etc.). The sense of being in transit is permanent: the scientific organization of total work.

./english/293.txt:401:Income is inseparable from residency papers and the condition of being a migrant woman. Both form the closed circuit of domestic work in which many women find themselves trapped, unable to develop their professions or interests. In this circuit the servile dimension also becomes manifest, a dimension which is most clearly and materially expressed in the very form of the salary: on the one hand, the salary appears ever more the variable vulnerable to adjustment by economic policy, that is, it is the task of the salary to absorb macroeconomic shocks, the rise or fall of the moment; on the other, it is ever more individualized: the standard wage (that which is calculated in the contract and which is based on the qualification of the worker: an irreversible element) is only a small part of real wage income, whereas an increasing part is based upon the degree of implication, zeal and interest demonstrated during the process of work, that is, after the contractual moment. Thus the salary becomes less and less a result of a contractual relation (and a relation of force) and more a purely individual remuneration for services rendered.[34]

./english/293.txt:421:For us this investigation is, above all, a way of thinking together towards collective action, an effort to locate the scattered sites of conflict and know how to name them, to inaugurate other previously nonexistent ones along with those we already experience: in the process of job-seeking, in the job-interview (that grand machine of daily humiliation!), in networks, in shopping centers, on the telephone, in the park, in social centers… After this first cycle of drifts, whose itineraries and reflections we try to collect in this text from the June 20th strike to the more recent and frustrated strike against the war in Iraq on April 10th, we have thrown out two questions, in first and in second person: “What is your war? What is your strike?”.[36]

./english/293.txt:429:As much in the course of the drifts as afterwards in the two workshops of Globalized Care, we have only just begun to go over some of the memorable recent experiences of struggle: the janitor’s strike in Ramón y Cajal Hospital, the struggle of the Qualytel telephone operators, and other gestures, bursts, protests and budding processes of uprising. For some the encounter with the janitors in our brief visit to the hospital was strange, alien: alien to us because we saw them in a localized conflict, still influenced by unions like CCOO[37] (with which the workers of the Eurolimp-Ferrovial contract in Ramon y Cajal had had such confrontations in order to maintain their autonomy and their grassroots structure), in a conflict in which the question of precariousness resides basically in the increasing loss of rights, in the disappearance of the workers’ functions in order to intensify their activity, and in the absolute repression of any and all burst of protest.[38] But we immediately recognized the intimacy of the relationship they sought with the patients and their families and with other social groups outside of the realm of the unions, and we identified with their discourse about care as something related to citizenship and their criticism of the privatization of health care.

./english/298.txt:43:This dictatorship of the flexible would not be a safe process for the tenured who imagine themselves as directors of transformation and safely above the fray.

./english/298.txt:50:The UK higher education system has gone from being a manageable cottage industry more or less autonomously run with a moderate number of students living more or less well on a grant system, to something that in places really looks like mass higher education – without the grants and with a new system of fees. There is obviously much to be said about this process.

./english/298.txt:82:On the other hand, it is not simply reproducing classes and professions but also participating in a larger process of qualitative recomposition at a moment of crisis for post-fordism in the mode of information of which the outsourcing of white collar work from the US is an example. Higher ed is not simply engaged in the production and reproduction of knowledges but also in that of an abstract social labour power which can be multiply deployed across a range of productive sites (from call centres to Reality TV shows).

./english/298.txt:86:TT: For me a key moment of this process involves an engagement with managerial control. I would like to talk about your essay on managerialism in ‘rhet-comp’ [rhetoric and composition].3

./english/298.txt:102:TT: Yes, the Protestant spirit is, at many levels, well and alive in managerial discourse. And maybe you have a point when you say that, from capital’s viewpoint, it is simply a matter of building an informational reserve army of workers. On the other hand, we also need to ask what social needs and desires and what processes of subjectivation does this reserve army express – what values it is capable of creating.

./english/298.txt:143:TT: I don't know about 'tutelage' but I would definitely be for a greater effort to open up connections with other forms of labor on the basis of what academic labor shares with them (from the common plague of managerial command and its attack on the time of life to the common implication in the diffuse social factory). On the other hand, there is also a specific contribution that academic labor can provide. This specificity is part of its role as a key site in the production and reproduction of knowledges and forms of control (from policy-oriented social research to scientific patents and new technologies); in its contribution to the production of specific forms of labor directly implicated in the reproduction of the social (from doctors to computer scientists, from managers to artists and social workers); but also in its relation to a wider abstract social labour power (informated, affective and communicational), which exceeds the disciplinary power of the work/wage relation. As you said, a big part of the university's work is still institutional: reproducing hierarchical differences and producing docile subjects, so hacking the machine of social reproduction in Higher Ed is bound to be complicated work. I doubt whether a successful engagement with this process would produce another 1968 - the latter was still a revolt against the institutions, while we know now that power operates in and through networks. But it will definitely be a challenging process to be part of - requiring commitment and imagination.

./english/299.txt:25:In the months that followed the ≥Grand Show≤ of December of 2002, we began to give shape to what all of us understood as a second phase in our exploration of womenπs precarious work. Some moved to other places and no longer shared the day to day of Precarias in Madrid, others joined the group or proposed particular initiatives: the publication of a text in a book or a web page, participation in a conference, collaboration in a video, or else accompanied us in organizing processes or in a mobilization.[1] This coming and going makes room for a mode of networked cooperation which is not so much about belonging, in this case to the group of Precarias, as it is about opening a field of communication and fluid action - sometimes perhaps too diffuse - which we hope will become a means of constructing a new space of aggregation: the Laboratory of Women Workers.

./english/299.txt:63:But first, might we ask again why sex work? We already knew, either from first or second hand experience, about the polemics that surround prostitution: those within the feminist movement[11] and those that habitually come up in public speech, for example in the media, so prone to prohibitionism. The debate between abolitionists and the defenders of the rights of sex workers that -- for those who do not know -- have cost us great battles, schisms and much bad blood, seem to be at a dead end, and we are not going to be the ones to reproduce them here. Some activists and scholars that are working in this field, prostitutes or otherwise, affirm that they are tired of warring against positions which are too narrow, deterministic and victimizing, and of feeling alone against the renewed wave of criminalization that is upon us and which strikes, first and foremost those sectors of society which are traditionally the most persecuted and marginalized. The touchstone continues to be the rights of the workers, or in other words the recognition of this activity as work and therefore as generator of a series of rights (although these are in the process of being dismantled in almost all sectors) comparable to those which are acquired through other kinds of work, and not as violence or sexual slavery, as something over which no woman might have full power of decision, or as the epitome of patriarchal and capitalist domination.[12]

./english/299.txt:323:Aside from all of the above, there is something particular about this kind of work, although this something is present in varying degrees in all kinds of activities: social value and relational value. These jobs one does out of vocation and as an investment in oneself. Therefore the learning process (free) never ends and the result, the work itself, is in many cases a nexus of connections and possibilities one must know how to maximize.[47]

./english/299.txt:343:The generalized orientation towards communication as a process is fundamental. It is no longer a matter of the old subject-object or emission-message-reception schemes, now it is a different and much more sophisticated model inspired in pragmatism, semiotics, ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism. In this orientation shared and unshared codes are put into play, the meaningless and the misunderstood, the implicit, the performative and the illocutionary force, the mediation and translation of some signs to others, gestures and, in general, incarnation, expectations, tastes and habits. Thus the features of the information regime[48] ≠ fragmentation, preeminence of the visual, modular assemblage, synopsis, des/recontextualization, interchangeability, integrity, motion sensitivity ä- do not form static and discreet functional units as in the industrial period but rather units that are reversible and recombinable, also in function of feedback processes: market studies, polls, call-ins, audience levels and sale of associated products, etc.

./english/300.txt:14:These interactions between social spheres though don’t occur out of the blue. One of the main arguments of this essay is that the impetus for the combination of radical geography and participatory research (or even similar projects such as popular education) comes from ‘society’ in periods of heightened conflictuality and mobilization. In a more general sense, as Harvey puts it: “The history of our discipline cannot be understood independently of the history of the society in which the practices of geography are embedded… The difficulties and alternatives geographers now face are likewise rooted in conflictual processes of societal transformation” (Harvey 2001; p.108).

./english/300.txt:20:The tradition, or movement as some would prefer to call it (see Blaut 1979), of radical geography in the Anglo-American countries appeared and coalesced in the late 1960’s. It emerged largely as the response and engagement on the part of geographers with the series of social struggles and processes of social transformation occurring throughout the time period. Movements against the war in Vietnam, anti-colonial struggles in countries of the Global South, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, what seemed to be the string of international revolts in ’68, provoked a reaction. As Peet states: “radical science in general and radical geography in particular are, at least in North America, of fairly recent origin. They are largely the product of the events of the 1960’s,” (Peet 1977; p. 7). Geographers were “forced by events to question the conceptual bases and practices of their discipline,” (Harvey and Smith 1984; p. 102).

./english/300.txt:51:As critical geography grew different trends and foci emerged, came together, specialized and divided. Two examples of this are welfare geography which was firmly embedded in the quantitative modeling tradition, and Marxist geography which in general criticized that same tradition. Yet even though both developed quite a bit during this period, far less attention was paid to the inclusion of affected communities or social movements in the research process even if this was of concern during the early years of their respective development. Welfare Geography for its part developed very elaborate models to measure the spatial distribution of ‘public goods’ necessary to attain a certain level of “quality of human life” (Smith 1977; p. xi). In one of the most important works of that tradition, David Smith describes the mission of welfare geography to be “the study of ‘who gets what where, and how’” (Smith 1977; p.7). Marxist geography, as one can imagine, emerged with a more radical critique of the direction and methods of the discipline. Marxist geographers had their work cut out for them in some sense. Considering the general dearth of complex spatial thinking in Marxist thought, and the previous lack of engagement between geographers and Marxists, Marxist geographers had to engage in elaborating theoretical mechanisms that would allow the mutual incorporation of the two traditions. Besides elaborating on these general debates though, Marxist geographers began to apply their thinking to the different subfields of concern in human geography at the time, for example: geopolitics/imperialism, regional development, urban geography and planning, and human-environment relations (Harvey and Smith 1984).

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

./english/300.txt:59:With regards to breaking down the walls between academy and the ‘outside’ and challenging the researcher/researched divide feminist geographers have made some impressive contributions. Ideas on these issues come out very clearly in the symposium on feminist geographic research called ‘women in the field’ from 1994 in the Professional Geographer. The contributors pointed out that the political “objectives [of research] ideally work toward critical and liberatory ends, which are not formulated in terms of altruistically saving an exoticized ‘other,’” (Nast 1994; p. 57, italics original). Katz in the same symposium discusses how to establish a “mutual learning” process amongst participants in a research project particularly with reference on how each related to structures of power (Katz in Nast 1994). Nast and Kobayashi also discuss “…forging bonds between the academy (itself a ‘field’) and the world-at-large,” (Nast 1994; p. 57). Koboyashi explains “’[t]he political is not only personal, it is a commitment to deconstruct the barrier between the academy and the lives of the people it professes to represent,’” (Koboyashi in Nast 1994; p. 57).

./english/300.txt:61:Feminist geography has thus been able to provide very profound critiques of the process of research and the dynamics between observer and observed, the academic institution, and the audiences that receive academic knowledge. These critiques develop in a more profound way some of the same issues that came up during the experiments with participatory action research that emerged during the late sixties. Yet issues of direct community participation (much less control) in the research process have still been a problem in terms of meeting some of the ideals stated above by some feminist geographers. In another symposium on feminist participatory research by Farrow, Moss and Shaw these geographers mentions some of the problems and constraints of their own work in terms of how participatory it was or could be. Issues such as that of paratrooping into a community or struggle without a clear mutual relationship with those being researched, predefining research questions and methods without much ‘community’/‘researched’ input, issues of who the research is produced ‘for’ and whose needs does it meet (even if it is participatory is it addressing the community’s concerns or only the researcher’s?). Limitations in doing this sort of participatory research were also brought up by the authors for example: the difficulty of doing profoundly participatory research in order to meet degree requirements, and the issue of needing to predefine issues and questions to a funding agency and being constrained if those same questions need to be changed due to community needs. Feminist geography has provided many theoretical tools for dealing with issues of participatory action research thus contributing to the production of ‘contact zones’. However, the attempts at concretely ‘deconstructing the barrier’ often surrounding the academy are continuing to struggle to find bridges.

./english/302.txt:19:Precarias a la Deriva has been, until now, a research project on precariousness which aspired to take ourselves, our own precarious realities, as a point of departure, and to interpolate others in search of new forms of resistance and new spaces of encounter and cooperation built out of multiplicity. In our wanderings we have arrived at three certainties. We have determined that particular precarious positions - understood in the classic sense such as instability of employment ­ are inscribed in a general tendency towards the Œprecarization¹ of life as a whole. This tendency which threads through all social strata as a threat (³If you don¹t hew to the norm you¹ll fall into permanent instability²) and effects all spheres of life (employment, unpaid activities, urban spaces, domestic environmentsŠ) as a force of uncertainty and social atomization. We have also realized that, though the processes of precarization effect all of us, they do not effect us in the same way: society is stratified along lines of class, sex, sexual orientation or identity, age, national origin, ethnicity, level of educationŠ which place us in positions which are asymmetrical and sometimes in conflict. Any project which aspires to produce something shared must deal with these forms of stratification: genuine Œborders¹ which impede social bonds and sow fear of the Œother¹. Lastly, we have intuited that the territory in which precarious women might come together is not necessarily the ³workplace²: how could it be when this so frequently coincides with one¹s own house, or someone else¹s? When the workplace changes every few months or when the odds of coinciding with a group of fellow workers for long enough to get to know them is one in a thousand? Often the strongest alliances, the networks of cooperation which diminish fear, lend courage and generate the capacity for transformation are constructed outside the workplace, in other spaces far from the boss¹s gaze, the isolation of the household or the bureaucratic discipline of the residency, the hospital, the school. For this reason our efforts are now dedicated to creating a space of encounter and empowerment in the center of Madrid in which we and other precarious women (of other national and social origins, with more or less lines in their CVs, more or less money in their pockets, more or less persons dependent upon them) might find counsel and tools for self-defense against the thousand and one daily injustices we face. But also where we might find spaces for expression and analysis of our precarious realities which permit us to mutually enrich ourselves and to imagine practices of cooperation and resistance against the precarization of our lives and against the borders which each of us face.

./english/303.txt:26:Beyond the purely cognitive dimension, militant ethnography also generates practical embodied and affective understanding. As anyone who has participated in a mass direct action can attest, these events generate extremely high levels of emotional energy, involving alternating sensations of tension, anxiety, fear, terror, collective solidarity, expectation, celebration, and joy. Such affective dynamics are not incidental; they are central to sustained processes of movement building and activist networking. In this sense, the ethnographer’s body actually becomes a research tool (cf. Parr 2001). Indeed, as Margaret Meade once pointed out, “In matters of ethos, the surest and most perfect instrument of understanding is our own emotional response, produced that we can make a disciplined use of it (cited in Jacknis 1988: 172).”

./english/303.txt:30:My own research explores the cultural logic and politics of transnational networking among anti-corporate globalization activists based in Barcelona. I am interested in how transnational networks like Peoples Global Action or the World Social Forum are built and constructed, and how activists generate emotional energy, while physically representing alternative networks through embodied political praxis during mass direct actions. Through militant ethnography I hope to shed light on the concrete processes through which activists can build more effective and sustainable movement networks. My specific project thus involved long-term participant observation with the international working group of the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance (MRG), a broad network involving squatters, Zapatista support activists, anti-debt campaigners, radical ecologists, and other collectives. Between June 2001 and September 2002, I actively participated in action planning and coordination around mobilizations in Barcelona, Genoa, Brussels, Madrid, and Seville, while I had previously taken part in mass actions in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Prague. Moreover, since MRG was a European convener of PGA and many activists were also actively involved in the Social Forum process, I was also able to help organize PGA and WSF-related gatherings in Barcelona, Leiden, and Porto Alegre.

./english/303.txt:39:There is insufficient time here for a full ethnographic account of the space of terror that subsequently emerged in Genoa (see Juris 2004). Rather, I want to simply point out that it was only by becoming deeply involved in the direct action planning process, which at times meant positioning myself at the center of extremely intense and sometimes personalized debates, that I could fully appreciate the complexity and logic of direct action planning and the accompanying fear, passion, and exhilaration. Moreover, it was only through engaged participation that I began to realize how diverse activist networks physically express their contrasting political visions and identities through alternative forms of direct action. Tactical debates were thus about much more than logistical coordination; they embodied the broader cultural politics that are so important to activist networking and movement building. Learning how to successfully negotiate differences on the tactical plane would thus serve to help build more sustainable networks more generally.

./english/303.txt:58:Julia Paley (2001) enacts another kind of critically engaged ethnography, working with urban community groups in Chile to analyze power relations and political processes that shape and constrain their strategic options at particular historical junctures. In this mode, ethnography becomes a tool for collective analysis about the outside world. Finally, in his study of gender, race, religion, and grassroots Afro-Brazilian movements, John Burdick (1998) suggests that ethnography can help movements represent themselves in order to capture the social and cultural heterogeneity among mobilized and non-mobilized constituencies. Militant ethnography can thus help activists carry out their own ethnographic research.

./english/303.txt:60:For Burdick, this means supporting movements in their efforts to reach out to a broader public. But it might also suggest working with activists to help them analyze different movement sectors, understand how they operate, their goals and visions, and how they can most effectively work together. In my own case, for example, I spent hours talking to MRG-based colleagues about diverse movement sectors in Barcelona and elsewhere and how they might best coordinate through flexible, decentralized structures. We held similar conversations about regional and global networking processes. In this sense, transnational activist networking always already involves a form of militant ethnography, while militant ethnography among contemporary local/global movements necessarily requires the practices of transnational networking.

./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/306.txt:71:And why do we insist that there be a space only for women? One response is that it brings us joy, strength and inspiration to be, create, speak among ourselves: we are comfortable, which is important in an often unfriendly world. But that’s not the whole story. We are also restless, agitated, upset. We fight our bid for collectivity, its difficulties and its limits. We stretch ourselves, mobilizing and pushing ourselves, daring ourselves to share our concerns and express our desires. We are many, different, each one with her story; the alliance is neither natural nor a priori but rather a continuous process of recognition and communication into which we launch ourselves again and again, committed to a strategy of uniting ourselves.To maintain a space where women can cultivate this kind of alliance is necessary because the general lack of meeting spaces is especially acute in the case of women, who either because we are between several precarious jobs or because we are confined to our houses and domestic tasks, because we feel threatened in the street or because we are marginalized within political organizations, have fewer opportunities to create the networks of support and solidarity which we need. It permits us a space from which to think through the multiple singularities of our lives, to create strategies and tools to politicize them, to explore new ways to express ourselves and relate to each other. A space for women is a deliberate space, a space which, because it situates itself outside the ‘normal,’ may function as a laboratory of social, political and artistic relationships.

./english/306.txt:75:Many projects of investigation and feminist study meet in the Eskalera Karakola. The house’s unique position as a self-managed feminist space makes it an important convergence point between the feminist movement and feminist thought, which in other environments are often divorced from each other by institutional policies which habitually separate the ‘active’ from the ‘reflective.’ The breadth and flexibility which self-management permits has also permitted stunningly diverse projects to arise out of the Karakola, and has permitted the cultivation of far-flung networks of feminist cooperation. The capacity to fit all these projects and concerns under one roof has produced a rich process of recombination and mutual feedback which transforms and strengthens all. This flux of knowledges, this collectivity of abilities determines the projects which arise from the Karakola and the political forms in which they take to the street.

./english/306.txt:79:Our project is a bid for public and self-managed spaces in general and also a bid for this house in particular, for its history and its structure, and for this neighborhood of Lavapies with all the specific problems it faces at this historic moment. Lavapies, faces a process of ‘rehabilitation’ which denies the active participation of the residents and turns its back on the urgent necessities of the neighborhood’s present inhabitants, opting instead for a transformation of the neighborhood which will imply expulsion and homogenization of its population. Innumerable urban investigations show that the homogenization of neighborhoods, that is, the reduction of diversity both of population and of use of space, impedes the formation of social density and leaves even more vulnerable all those who are not young, mobile, male heterosexual natives with steady employment. Women, precarious workers, migrants, handicapped people and elderly people prosper in environments in which we can all live, where all can cover our needs nearby and at decent prices, where there are sufficient social infrastructures like clinics, daycare centers and parks, where there are spaces for meeting and for organizing, where it might be possible to create a social fabric of mutual care and social cooperation and not of police control. We are talking about spaces in which an active, participative citizenship might be constructed.

./english/306.txt:95:The processes which configure the space where we move, the space we inhabit, are processes saturated with power relationships. Urban space is configured through multiple transformations and political, social and economic negotiations. Urban space, then, is a non-neutral territory. In this territory the stamp of the global capitalist order is inscribed, but it is from here, also, from these micro-spaces (from the cities, from the suburbs, from the social centres, from the Karakola), where people constantly battle and renegotiate the configuration of territories. Different desires, different necessities or concerns, political practice, victories and defeats configure the terrain through which

./english/306.txt:109:nurseries, clinics. We can say Lavapiés is an area lacking in all kinds of social resources and urban plans related to the necessities and the desires of its inhabitants. This is not unintentional. It forms part of a chain of policies which consistently attend to individual and private property interests above social and public interests. Lavapiés is a privileged area for real estate speculation. Its current re-building and the commercialisation of a young, bohemian, alternative, different, multicultural imaginary, are weapons capitalism is beginning to use to sell the area as one of the hippest and most in-demand in Madrid. Thus we confront an urban rebuilding process directed to young and wealthy people, and a process of (impossible) segregation of the poorest, oldest, migrant, illegal and otherwise marginal people. A lot of residents with old rents are barred from their own houses by real state companies that sell their apartments at inaccessible prices. Conditions for those who are able to stay, are equally hair-raising: 12 square metre flats with no bathroom inside; whole buildings supported by props and in constant danger of collapse; humid flats with no smoke outlet or ventilation. All these apartments were the ones that, with the 1997 Lavapiés Plan of Restoration, began to be recognized as sub-standard housing. The Plan promised to eliminate these houses and relocate their inhabitants. To date, none of the sub-standard housing has been eliminated nor has any resident be relocated. The inhabitants cannot pay the restorations imposed upon them and the houses meant to relocate them stand empty. None of the equipment promised for the area has been built (not even the much-desired and long-promised clinic).

./english/306.txt:123:But none of these configurations of power is definitive. Other ways of relating and the praxis of resistance are plotted within its bosom. Territories are reorganised and power structures are questioned. The Karakola is an operation to confront the hetero-patriarchal order and the greedy process of global capitalism, creating a space where other kinds of politics can take shape.

./english/306.txt:151:Political processes are not unfamiliar to us; for this reason, we search for ways to promote participation in them, capacity of decision, of action, of transformation, in what we could call the formation of an active, public and participative citizenship. This is not something we can take for granted, especially as women who have seen the

./english/306.txt:165:To speak about territories is then to situate ourselves. And to situate ourselves means to reveal the intertwined relationships which configure us and which we configure, it is to deepen in the necessity of understanding each other not as stable subjects (not from the essentialist perspective of being women), but as a constant process that can more or less be located in spite of the complexity of the social composition and the new world order. Situating ourselves, understanding each other from a partial position but not an indefinable nor an insufficient one, thousands of questions are raised and we consider it is important to face them. Some of the interests we raise from the Karakola are:

./english/306.txt:169:1/ Investigation, analysis and reflection upon the processes of transformation of work. We depart from the hypothesis that while work was once centred in the Fordist factory and assembly line production, this model has changed into

./english/306.txt:171:a growing intensification of the productive process that on one hand has exceeded the old factory to reach the most unexpected corners of life in all its dimensions and, on the other hand, has meant the end of work as we knew it and the birth of a series of multi-formed activities

./english/306.txt:195:2/ Understanding and intervening in permanent global war and the quotidian war which surrounds us. The new world order begun after September 11th and the Genoa events has established a logic of war that reduces the world to two sides- terrorists and non-terrorists, violent people and non-violent people- and these have become structures for the legitimisation of the imposed order and for the criminalizing of social movements. To break these dichotomies, to seek new means of expression that will really allow us to subvert these simplifying and oppressive models, in short, to insist upon another perspective capable of confusing these simple categories and rupturing the duality of this war empire. Mobilisations against the invasion of Iraq were full of fascinating efforts to break with this discourse. For us the question was how to place ourselves within the demonstrations: to be part of the spontaneity and the flow in the streets during those days while at the same time placing ourselves in a non-neutral way, expressing our concern about the sexist and homophobic chants and slogans, placing our bodies as complex marks impossible to subject to the simplifying, divisional and criminalizing violent/non violent discourse, while at the same time expressing the need to broaden the discourse against the war. The war, we said, does not start nor end in Iraq. Women’s bodies are used as battlefields in war; but they are also where the weight of the hidden economy is borne, whether a country is in war or not. Poverty produces wars: global war also has to do with the hetero-patriarchal order. Global war, we said, is also the daily war we suffer, fight against and negotiate daily. These processes cannot be separated from the social and immediate reality of our existence, from the

./english/306.txt:213:as the line which normalises and establishes sex/gender and desire. The proliferation of other sexualities demands the denaturalisation and shifting of the sex/gender/desire system. Nevertheless, we are witnessing a process through which the proliferation of gay and lesbian sexualities is

./english/306.txt:237:Of course these places of institutional condensation vary greatly in magnitude and in strength, from governmental institutions, supra-governmental, transnational and non-governmental organizations, to trade unions, neighbours’ associations, the academy, cultural and other pressure groups and social collectives… but what is important is our process of cartography placing them in the same multi-relational sphere more than in a hierarchical system of one or two directions. This way, the object of political transformation is the wider field of power relationships which participate in these crystallizations. When, on the other hand, one of them is placed throughout the whole political horizon, there is little space for real transformation since often proximity, concealing the complex plot existing outside our approach, allows us to only articulate a reactive politics of refusal and denial of one or several of these institutional condensations, or else a confusing and undetermined amalgam of them, which pretends to find an uncontaminated‘outside’ as a way of escaping those relational flows-, or a normalizing politic in search of an inside of some of these manifestations of crystallisation

./english/306.txt:311:c) And last, how to be able to effect real displacements and shifts in the very matrix of power. On the one hand, as we have noted, it is of crucial importance to address the issue of normalization or standarization upon which capital is nourished, visibilizing the new borders of exclusion and marginality. We need a political imagination beyond normalization, capable of articulating speech not from an alien "outside". On the other hand we must conceive ourselves as situated, colonized, power-saturated subjects able to provoke real break-downs and destabilizations from there. In this sense we know that such break-downs, with their emphasis on the body and the quotidian at the centre cannot depend upon individual, isolated choices; they require a collective prectice. The point for us is how to generate real collective agency inscribed in daily practices which do not suppress differences but are able to deconstruct and dislocate processes of normalization. How to build up a discourse that, from a sense of partiality, of the local and the fragmentary, can account for the multiple conections of the new global network.

./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/307.txt:8:between teacher and pupil – thus creating contexts and moments for reciprocal learning. Recognition of reciprocal ignorance is its starting point. Its final point is the shared production of knowledges as global and diverse as the globalization processes themselves. Beyond the gap between theory and practice, PUSM intends to tackle two problems that currently permeate all movements for an alternative globalization. First, the scarcity of reciprocal knowledge that still exists between movements and organizations active in the same thematic area and operating in different parts of the globe. Social forums have been powerful instruments in arousing this need and showing the importance of reciprocal knowledge. However, given their sporadic nature and short duration, they have been unable to fulfill this need. Without this reciprocal knowledge, it is impossible to increase the density and complexity of movement networks. Without this expansion it is not possible to augment significantly the efficacy and consistency of transformational actions beyond what has been achieved so far. The other problem is the lack of shared knowledge among movements and organizations active in different thematic areas and their respective struggles. This gap is even wider than the previous one, and bridging it is equally important. Because it is impossible and undesirable to have a general theory globally encompassing all movements and practices in all thematic areas, we need to create conditions for reciprocal intelligibility among movements through methodologies akin to translation. Methodologies, that is, capable of detecting what is common and what is different among different themes, movements, and practices, in order to identify the points and modes of articulation where links can be made – without any of these movements and practices losing their identity or autonomy. What is at stake, in a word, is to find out what is common and what is different between the indigenous and the ecological

./english/312.txt:22:While the nation-state retains a central role in the ‘politics of research’, the last two decades have also witnessed a process of increasing internationalisation in this field. This process takes place at two levels: one level is that regarding the production of scientific knowledge; the other is that regarding the shaping of a multi-level governance of the higher education system.

./english/312.txt:26:Second, the internationalisation of the higher education system proceeds relentlessly at the level of the European Union. This process takes place, on the one hand, through the increasing relevance of the European research projects and the emphasis laid on ‘networking’ amongst research centres and university departments at a supra-national level (cf. the periodical Framework Programmes; the Research Training Networks, the European doctorates etc.). Institutional collaboration is established among the abovementioned ‘centres of excellence’, while those that are excluded from these networks are considered as ‘marginal’ or, simply, the ‘Others’. On the other hand, the Europeanisation of the higher education system takes place through a more intense co-operation amongst national governments in the realm of higher education policies (see the inter-governmental conferences held in Paris, Prague and Bologna since 1998 onwards) . This co-operation has had particularly relevant effects on the standardisation of university degrees (i.e. the 3+2 degree and the ‘credit system’). These developments have strongly affected learning mechanisms in European universities, forcing university students to improve their productivity and to conform their personal attitudes and values to an increasingly ‘competitive environment’.

./english/312.txt:28:Such an internationalisation of the politics of research has thus consisted in a process of globalisation ‘from above’ in which ruling actors and institutions have played a dominant role while the grassroots actors have remained at the margins of the process. Today, the less powerful sectors within the academia are not only excluded from the governance of the internationalisation process but are also affected by the outcomes of the process itself in terms of increasing competition, work flexibilisation and shrinkage of the research autonomy. This urgently requires the formulation of a perspective of globalisation from below which is capable of shaping an alternative to the present scenario. This perspective calls for the formation of a post-national public space of research and cultural exchange in which internationalisation would be perceived as a process aiming to develop practices of mutual recognition and encounter amongst equals rather than strategies of competition and selectivity amongst unequally empowered actors.

./english/313.txt:4:Invitation to action research the Social Forum Process

./english/313.txt:12:The common will on these searchers is the political commitment, the volunteer on contribute to the social transformation process, being part of the critical network to the Neoliberal globalization. And also the criticism to any theory that want to speak from a neutral place, from where you can see everything. Instead it is recognized that the thought is always situated.

./english/313.txt:15:An other of its characteristics is that the validity of the process of research as procedural, as effective in it self, further than look to an arrive.

./english/313.txt:16:The researches look to spring from the relation between the subject-investigator (the investigator as subject) and the subject-investigated in a composition process. For non-instrumentalist research; investigation without an ‘object’; rather than treating the social movements like objects of investigation, they –as well as the investigator- are subjects in a process in which everybody is left reconstituted. It is not ‘about’ Social Movements; rather it is from and for Social Movements but in immanence, that is, rather than locating it-self on a position already codified, it produces the terms of the situation.

./english/313.txt:24:I’m presenting with this article some lines to draft an initial cartography of clusters of search on the interaction among politics and investigation. The perspectives, among the many others, to build this cartography is by ordering the space on the interaction among political action and investigation referring to the process of creation, if collective or individual, and the “management” of the knowledge, if by free or by property channels.

./english/313.txt:46:Around the Zapatista suggestion and way “walk asking” and its rich Consulta process, there are some initiatives using the mechanism of survey, interview and discussion groups as a excuse to talk to the others and talk with themselves, to break the distance in the hiperfrangmentated social space, searching common notions that describe the own reality and searching forms of resistance and cooperation. Some inquire and co-research experience could be found around the Italian magazine Deriva Approdi and Posse, or Initiatives of the German collective Kolindo on Telemarketing. At the Spanish State on precarity, Precarias a la Deriva, Colective Estrella and Entransito (Malo, 2004).

./english/313.txt:51:Their aim is to endow the archiving and researching techniques on the service of the process of social mobilization and social change. There is not an homogeneous and/or establish concept to define this searchers area and experience being developed. A “network” of concepts that grown together around are archiving, documenting, reporting, memory, systematizing, summarizing, investigaction, research from/for social movements and activist research.

./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/313.txt:61:The networking organizational aspects gives an understanding of the kind and reach of movements that are involved with the SF process; what kind of organisations participated in the forum: thematically, regionally and size; to which direction is the process growing throw evolution analysis; which kind of connectivity the Forum created; kinds of participation etc., and it is focus on developing useful networking tools, to reinforce the Forum dimension of “weave” social network.

./english/313.txt:76:The Guide is an experiment of applying research and archive techniques in the service of the process of confluence of social movements in Europe and in particular de ESF process.

./english/313.txt:77:The Guide researches program are situated from the action of transform social movements, that is, implied by the needs, directly or indirectly expressed by the social movements and develop from research groups and collectives internal to the social movements process.

./english/313.txt:78:The Guide core is build useful “networking tools” such as a Directory and addresses of the collectives and organisations which have participated to the ESFs of Florence, Paris, London, organized by ambits of actuation and regions and a Map of the European networks developed within and around the ESF process. The level of utility could be defining as the capacity to grown the identification of actors and resources for the action and reflection for social transformation of the use-builders of the Guide.

./english/313.txt:79:It also aimed to reinforce the action research/investigaction as a new antagonistic commitment through finalised to the creation of a confluence space for common action of the activist research/investigaction within the social movements at the European level. For this reason it will be curried out by a network of groups and centres of research, the Action research network for the ESF confluence process, which develop the research. The Guide will also contain a specific Map/directory of groups which are producing research within and around the new movements in Europe.

./english/313.txt:85:Map of web-bibliographic articles on the European confluence processes, articles of reflection about the new social movements and the new confluence spaces in Europe and articles on the data and the new knowledge generated by the Guide itself, as a tool of reflection and debate

./english/313.txt:86:A conceptual dictionary about the SF process and new movements in Europe.

./english/313.txt:89:It is a tool in the service first of all of the ESF confluence process: helping the self-organization of the ESF themselves as well as the creation of European and transnational networks. It mean to produce knowledge and more self-consciousness among the protagonists of the ESF process; and more focused actions and strategies for the future.

./english/313.txt:91:In a process of collective creation, it is nurtured by a spirit of experimentation and cooperation through an open network structure. The Guide is developed from a network of very politically and organizationally diverse nodes, such us, social movements internal research groups (Transform¡ Italia, Transnational Institute, Glocal a-research centre) or organizations of the social movements (ARCI, EYFA, UNITED for Intercultural Action), collaboration of academic departments/centres (The Centre for the Study of Global Governance- LSE), hackers support teams (Pangea), civil society institutions (IISH - International Institute of Social History) and a cluster of 40 advisers. With the collaborative interaction and recognition of the internal SF working groups, mentioned above.

./english/313.txt:101:A creative line is the collective construction of cartography maps “a caballo” of process of social mobilisation. Some examples are the maps of Bureua d’Etudes and the University Tangente about multinational networks, the bonairence Grup of street art about resistance, the map against/about the Forum of the cultures (but not against the War) of Barcelona or the map of conflicts in metropolitan territory of Rome done by Transform! Italia (publish us: “La riva sinistra del Tevere” by Carta).

./english/313.txt:111:The open editing process had led to Wikipedia becoming the world's largest encyclopaedia in less than four years of operation, with 450,000 articles and 77 million words in the English edition, and over 1.3 million articles in all language editions combined (as of January 2005). Vandalism is a recognized problem, though much of it is caught and reverted by users who monitor the recent changes. Critics claim that Wikipedia contains much inaccurate information and can never be as authoritative as a traditional encyclopaedia. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is one of the most used reference sites on the World Wide Web and has been widely endorsed.

./english/313.txt:134:Baker and Cox (2001) presented the key different between activist theorizing and academic theorizing is that the second one is essentially contemplative, “the academic quest is for the well-formed generic proposition or the superior explanation, that is, for the theoretical concept or generalization which covers a set of seemingly dissimilar cases or processes” and “movements are seen as objects of study to be observed, described and explained, not active processes which people engage with, experience and transform” (Baker and Cox, 2001).

./english/313.txt:143:As I present the text, this article tries to present the first line coming from an approach willing of mapping/cartography the fertile space crossing political and investigation, theory and practice, an initiative being develop on the “Action research network for the ESF process” framework, present and INVITE to participate on the reflection. To know better the possibility of a political action by research and to develop a useful tool to help to develop it.

./english/313.txt:165:European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the ESF process working group depending on the European ESF assembly:

./english/313.txt:185:Glocal a-research centre, Barcelona – Action research network for the ESF process.

./english/315.txt:9:After a navigationally-challenging half-hour suburban walk from the main Social Forum spaces of Bobigny, north-east Paris, we eventually found our allocated space for the somewhat grandly titled ‘Radical Theory Workshop’. We – Steffen Böhm (co-editor ephemera: critical dialogues on organisation, University of Essex), Jeremy Gilbert (Signs of the Times, University of East London), Jo Littler (Signs of the Times, Middlesex University), Oscar Reyes (Independent Student Media Project, University of Essex), myself (University of Warwick), Tiziana Terranova (University of East London) – registered the workshop as a response to our shared sense that the ESF in Florence last year, while electric, eclectic and inspiring, was rather low on theoretical content and reflection with regard to contemporary supranational socio-political ‘movement(s)’. Our blurb for the workshop registration process went something like this:

./english/315.txt:67:An explicit intention is to establish a space for a longer and more structured ‘Radical Theory Forum’ to coincide with, or be part of, the next European Social Forum, which is to be held in London in 2004. Possibilities for participation in the organising process of the next ESF were also raised, and details for the next preparatory meeting were flagged up at the workshop (13th-14th December).

./english/315.txt:77:In sum, and as someone pointed out in the final feedback, it is clear from the number and diversity of participants that the notion of ‘Radical Theory’ compels us, even if we are not sure exactly what we mean by the term. It is also apparent that there is a demand for critical and reflective thinking spaces to be at the heart of the social forum process.

./english/316.txt:9:The World Social Forum (WSF) is probably most identified with the recent international wave of protest known as the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Whilst intimately interrelated with the latter, however, the WSF is just one emanation of this much more general phenomenon and process. How can these and their inter-relationship be best understood?

./english/316.txt:25:It is, on the other hand, not too difficult to identify a rising number of processes which have provoked this movement These include:

./english/316.txt:61:The WSF has been held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001-3, and is scheduled for Mumbai, India, in 2004. If the earlier-mentioned protest events were frequently marked more by opposition than proposition, the Forums have not only been devoted to counter-proposition over a remarkably wide range of social issues (with a wide range of significant collective actors). They have also demonstrated that what is shaping up is much more than a Northern, or even a Western-hemispheric, internationalism. The Forum process, moreover, has now reached take-off, with national, regional and thematic forums taking place all over the world. Some of these may be unknown to the WSF itself. The WSF has also become both the subject and the site of intense reflection concerning its own significance, nature and future. (Fisher and Ponniah 2002, Transnational Alternatives 2002, Sen 2003, Santos 2003, Whitaker 2002).

./english/319.txt:13:The wider issue, of course, here is the alleged exclusionary, top-down, undemocratic and bureaucratic way the whole process was organized. I don’t pretend to understand the full dynamics of it and my involvement in the preparation has been partial, but I fear that a lot of people spent the preparatory months chasing spectres. True, left to their own devices, there are organizations (no, I won’t say the name!) that might like to exert much tighter control over the process. But, if anything, this movement has developed an organic intolerance of such practices. Crude manifestations of hierarchy are almost instinctively rejected and everybody knows that.

./english/319.txt:20:While sharing the concerns about the role of Local Social Fora, we must not forget that the ESF is not a national event/process and it is on the European level that decisions are taken. Quite often in the run up to London, decisions were taken here, only to be overturned in the European assembly. I don’t see the choice of the host country as particularly important, and I could also argue that having the ESF in a country without a high level of grassroots mobilization could kick-start and facilitate such a development (even within the wider region, e.g. the Balkans, Central Europe etc).

./english/319.txt:21: The point, therefore, is to enhance democracy, representation and diversity on the European level and enable grassroots groups to get fully involved. Big organizations are advantageously resourced to participate consistently while smaller groups miss out on that empowering process. On-line discussion and consultation can go some way in addressing this imbalance, as could a more inclusive co-ordination on the national level.

./english/319.txt:25: The potential for multiple positive outcomes (whether we see the ESF as a process or as an event) is all too obvious. However, this potential is partially (and that’s a serious part) unrealized due to what seems to me as a double failure.

./english/319.txt:29:Second, the formulation of concrete alternatives and strategies. The forum can not of course act as a representative legislative body or decide on a political programme. What it can act as, though, is a bright platform on which the very diverse analytical work that has already been done on specific issues and strategies can be brought together, debated upon and synthesised when possible. The point is not to come to a consensus; that is neither possible nor even necessary. What’s important is that ideas are analysed and contrasted, their advantages and drawbacks clearly elaborated, their starting and finishing points thoroughly mapped out. It will then be the task of the forum to publicise and champion this process and its outcomes as widely as possible, to put them out there as serious and concrete points of reference for the movement to draw on in present and future struggles. In practical terms, this could take the form of choosing a couple of issues each time and then having an opening plenary that will map out the process, a sufficient number of seminars that will tackle their different dimensions and a final plenary where the various approaches and ideas will be presented and debated upon.

./english/319.txt:31:This will hardly be a straightforward, easy or simple path. Blood will be spilled over the choice of issues. A lot of work is needed before and during the forum to break down each topic, maintain inter-connections within a coherent framework and enable synthesizing procedures. A significant amount of preparatory work will be demanded by advocates of diverse perspectives. The necessarily centralized nature of such a process will be anathema to many, but, for example, the overall number of centrally planned sessions within the ESF doesn’t need to increase. Everybody recognizes the need for concrete analyses and alternatives; this is one way for the forum to contribute to that aspiration.

./english/320.txt:13:This essay engages with the collective political agency of dominant and subaltern groups in the era of global neoliberal capitalism from three different angles. The first part of the essay outlines the basic framework of a Marxist theory of social movements, which proposes that the collective political agency of dominant and subaltern groups be conceptualized in terms of social movements from above and below. Moreover, the argument is made that the making and unmaking of historically specific social organizations of human practice are fundamentally animated by the dialectical relationship of conflictual process between the two. The second part of the essay applies this framework in a prolegomenon to an analysis of, on the one hand, the implementation, consolidation and globalization of neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s, and, on the other hand, the transition from defensive to offensive struggles against neoliberalism and the emergent crystallization of a new political subject in the form of the movement of movements. The third part discusses the role and relevance of normative ideals of rights and justice for the movement of movements, and argues for the development of an ethics of praxis through which new universalisms can be articulated. The essay concludes with some reflections on the role of activist research vis-à-vis these processes.

./english/320.txt:19:What I want to propose here is that Marxism does not have a specific theory about social movements because it is in itself a theory of social movements. To say this suggests a much broader view of social movements than that dominant in much mainstream sociology, where social movements are thought of as field-specific institutional formations– i.e. unconventional or informal political organizations and campaigns, but excluding (with a few honourable exceptions) such issues as revolutions, political parties, popular culture and consciousness, states and capital. What I propose is that the conflictual historical process of developing needs and capacities through the social organization of human practice constitutes the kernel of Marxism as a theory of social movements.

./english/320.txt:37:– a resistance which is in turn countered with a mixture of attempts at consent and coercion. Thus hegemony must be viewed as a process, as opposed to an achieved state of affairs:

./english/320.txt:54:Movements Fom Below: The Movement Process - From Local Rationalities to Social Movement Projects

./english/320.txt:56:If movements from above attempt to create structures, which in turn generate routines, the activist experience in movements from below tends to reverse this order. Thus the point of departure for my approach to the understanding of the collective agency of subaltern social groups – social movements from below – is that of the existential situation of activists and the learning processes that are inherent to movement activity. I start from people's situated experiences of a social world that is problematic relative to their changing needs and capacities, and their attempts to combine with other people with similar experiences to do something about this. This can be referred to as the movement process and I propose the terms local rationality and militant particularism, campaign, and social movement project as conceptual prisms that might allow us to formulate a developmental theory of the direction of the collective agency of subaltern social groups. If we are to start with and from people’s situated experience of a given lifeworld, we start from the context of everyday lives with all their manifold practical routines and received wisdoms. Gramsci’s (1998: 333) concept of ‘common sense’ serves as an apt prism through which to view the experiential rationality that guides everyday activities and mentalities in the sense that it constitutes an amalgamation of two elements: Firstly, the established ways of doing things – that is, the routines that constitute the molecular workings of a hegemonic social organization of human practice, and its "received wisdoms" (the general outlook that this a natural way of doing things, "the way things have always been done", or "the only way of doing things"). Secondly, the practical but often tacit experience of the existent as somehow problematic in the form of "ticklish" knowledges or "grudges" that there is something wrong about the present state of affairs, that this is not due to individual maladjustment, and the subaltern skills and responses that are developed so as to act on such grudges. These knowledges and their grudges can perhaps be likened to what Scott (1985) calls everyday forms of resistance

./english/320.txt:63:At times, local rationalities may erupt in the form of overt acts of defiance and opposition to the dominant social organizations of human practice. What I want to consider is the nature of the struggles that might emerge when localrationalities are made more unitary and coherent. I propose the concept militant particularism as a tool for grappling with the forms of struggle that may emerge if such a process of extraction and development takes place. That is, militant particularisms are what emerge when local rationalities move from existing as tacit potentialities (latent within common sense) to becoming embodied in explicit practices (and good sense), through conflictual encounters

./english/320.txt:67:skills, idioms, and imaginaries of which they are made up can be generalized; these can then transcend the particular locale in which they have emerged and thus be applied across a spectrum of specific situations and singular struggles. This is one reason for speaking of local rationalities, as something which can firstly be derived from experience and hidden transcripts and articulated in public ways. This process of practices, skills, idioms, and imaginaries specific to a given site of conflict and struggle transcending the boundaries of this site is fundamental to the process of abstraction and translation through which activists go beyond the immediate parameters of the local of resistance in which they are situated.

./english/320.txt:69:These are processes of learning, cooperation, andorganization through which the scope of social movement activity is broadened anddeepened, i.e. they are processes through which militant particularisms communicate andinterconnect with each other, develop common strategies and identities across socio-spatialboundaries, and simultaneously deepen their self-understanding. I use the term campaign toconceptualize the organization of a range of local responses in ways that connect people across multiple such situations and challenge the construction of those situations.

./english/320.txt:73:However, they do contain – in the local rationality that spawns them – a germ of transcendence. As activists “join the dots”, connecting different issues, linking up with different groups, and criticising the structures that cause their problems or frustrate their campaigns, they are starting to move beyond this field at the same time as they find their place within it. (Those who have already reached this point nevertheless have to argue their case with those who haven’t: Barker and Cox 2002). Such movement processes emerge when activists take the process of abstraction one step further and relate the particular issues around which local struggles and field-specific campaigns emerged to the logic of a social totality and articulate a politics which seeks to rupture and go beyond this totality, towards the constitution of a political project for an alternative social organization of human practice.

./english/320.txt:84:What follows from the approach to social movements as coming both from above and from below is a notion of social structure as the sediment of social movement struggles. An extant social organization of human practice – a society – can be conceived of as a "truce line" between collective actors from above and below, with inherent antagonisms and contradictions that may give rise to new rounds of contestation and struggle that may engender new processes of change in this social organization. In this section I outline very briefly some concepts that allow us to grapple with these processes of change.

./english/320.txt:105:The current conjuncture, I submit, is one of a nascent organic crisis and contention between emergent world historical movements from above and below. From above, there is the project of neoliberal restructuring. From below a ‘movement of movements’ for global social justice is in the process of crystallizing. In what follows, I offer a brief and broad-brushed sketch of this scenario. The Crisis of Organized Capitalism and the Emergence of Neoliberal Restructuring The late 1960s and early 1970s marked the onset of a profound crisis in the social structure of accumulation commonly referred to as ‘organized capitalism’ (see, e.g., Lash and Urry 1987). The golden age of capitalism that had lasted since the end of WWII crumbled: By the end of the 1960s [organized capitalism] experienced cracks in its foundations and began to fall apart under conditions of stagnant production, declining productivity, and intensified class conflict over higher wages, greater social benefits and better working conditions. These conditions created a profit-crunch on invested capital’ (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: 14; see also Armstrong, Glyn and Harrison 1984 and Harvey 1990). Simultaneously, the advanced capitalist state and the social compact that underpinned it faced a loss of legitimacy. From below, this was evident in the global uprisings of 1968 (Katsiaficas 1987; Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein 1989; Wainwright 1994).

./english/320.txt:108:In the face of economic stagnation and loss of legitimacy, social democracy generally resorted to its conventional strategy of stimulating demand through such measures as increased public spending and credit expansion. This strategy staved off the crisis temporarily, but by the mid- and late 1970s, it was clear that the crisis was of a structural rather than conjunctural character and that the tried-and-tested crisis management of social democracy were insufficient to address this structural crisis (Bonefeld 1995, Fagerberg et. al. 1990). By this time, the uprisings of 1968 had waned and assumed the character of a ‘war of position’ as opposed to a ‘war of manoeuvre’ (Cox 2002). From the space of contention that opened up in the 1960s, the New Right emerged as a social movement from above capable of implementing and giving direction to a process of change in the social organization of human practice that centred on a project of global neoliberal restructuring.

./english/320.txt:111:… capitalist reproduction depended on a deflationary integration of labour into the capital relation so as to reduce the ratio of debt to surplus value through an effective exploitation of labour. In other words, money has to command labour for the purpose of exploitation rather than keeping unproductive producers afloat through an inflationary expansion of credit … The regaining of control over the money supply involves a deflationary attack on social relations through the intensification of work and a reduction in public spending that put money into the hands of workers (Bonefeld, 1995: 45). Monetarism represented a direct effort to restructure the social structure of accumulation that defined organized capitalism – the rise of monetarism, then, was the emergence of a social movement from above to dismantle organized capitalism yet ‘containsocial reproduction within the limits of its capitalist form’ (ibid.: 49). In the UnitedStates, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe, this process was spearheaded inthe 1980s by conservative parties, the epitomes of which are of course Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (see, e.g., Piven and Cloward 1982 and Jessop et. al. 1988).

./english/320.txt:116:At the dawn of the twentieth century, the process of neoliberal restructuringhad given rise to an epochal shift towards ‘global capitalism’ characterized by ‘therise of transnational capital and the supersession of the nation-state as the axis ofworld development’ (Robinson 2003: 12; see also Robinson 2001 and 2004). The poch of global capitalism emerged through a process of ‘intensive expansion’ in which ‘those ultural and political institutions that fettered capitalism are swept aside, paving the way for the total commodification … of social life worldwide’ (Robinson 2001: 159). This process has been designated by David Harvey (2003: ch. 4) as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ – a contemporary form of ‘primitive accumulation’ where social, ecological, cultural, and intellectual “commons” are commodified ‘and brought within the capitalist logic of accumulation’ (ibid.: 146). This unfettering has altered the power relations between capital and labour:

./english/320.txt:118:The restoration of the power of capital over labour is evident in sense that the mechanisms through which the process of accumulation by dispossession is effected have been redistributive rather than generative: while economic growth during the 1980s and 1990s fell far behind the average rates of the 1960s and 1970s, such mechanisms as privatization, financialization, crisis management and manipulations, and state redistributions have increased the incomes and decreased the expenditures of capital and, vice versa, decreased

./english/320.txt:130:Whereas the transnational capitalist class was able to implement and consolidate neoliberal restructuring as a hegemonic project of global reach from the late 1970s to the 1990s, this does not mean that subaltern social groups merely acquiesced to this process. Throughout much of the postcolonial world, structural adjustment programmes were met by protests since their very inception in the mid-1970s: During the decade or so from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, a veritable wave of more-or- less spontaneous popular protests engulfed those countries, mainly in the Second and Third Worlds, in which austerity measures had been adopted as part of structural adjustment and economic reform programmes – often under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – which forced rapid economic liberalisation and the dismantling of many forms of state control, state intervention and state subsidy. The characteristic form of protest was the ‘bread riot’, although this combined in many instances with other forms of protest and struggle (Seddon and Dwyer 2002: 1).

./english/323.txt:27:first collective space, in which to disseminate information and engage in the difficult process

./english/323.txt:204:micropolitics. This coincided with a process of politicisation of the network that, at its outset,

./english/325.txt:52:1) The notion of outsiderhood. All interviewed queers expressed the feeling that in some stage of their life, they did not quite ‘fit in’ the neat categories of society at large or their local culture. When society deems an individual as deviant of abnormal, he/she can either opt for a process of adaptation or actively choose to reject society’s norms and take a certain pride in being an outsider. Then the search for those with a common identity or experience starts. So in a way this notion of being an outsider forms the glue that keeps gatherings like Queeruption together. However, Turner (2000: 8) states that since most individuals will experience a failure to fit precisely within a category, this experience opens up the possibility that we’re all queer. Many queers told Van Husen they also did not fit into the mainstream gay and lesbian culture because they either refused to identify as man or women or as gay or lesbian. Besides this, they consider the gay and lesbian scene as conservative and commercial. A lot of them connected their own position in relation to other oppressed groups. This feeling of solidarity seems to form one of the cornerstones in a community like Queeruption (Van Husen 2004:10).

./english/325.txt:83:-the rejection of ‘collective identities’ because identity is considered as a process of creating and maintaining borders (between women and men, gays and hetero’s, black and white people etc.) and could encourage group conformity (Heckert 2002). The ideal is not to strive for one identity but for many identities. The concept of identity is changed into affinity (McDonald 2002). The most important thing is not to be something together, but to do something together, not where you come from, to which group you belong, but what your aim is (Holloway 2002). In this way they criticize the existing intentional communities, because in general most of these ‘communes’ don’t make much of a conscious effort to reach out to people who don’t share their political and/or counter-cultural views. Unlike these kinds of communities alterglobalists plea for ‘breaking out of the ghetto, to take up the challenge of putting into practice the importance of diversity, sacrificing the security, predictability and simplicity that come from relatively closed and homogeneous collective identities (Abramsky 2001: 554, my print in italics). Their ‘free places’ they see as alternative political and socio-economic spaces with room for differences and without precise boundaries and identities.

./english/325.txt:91:-The concept of revolution has got a different meaning. The DiY-part of the movement don’t strive for ‘unity’ and rejects power in its traditional meaning. ‘Revolution is not a moment in the future in which the power is taken from the ruling class, but is a social process that is lived daily in the here and now’ (Longo Mai 2002). Or, as the Dutch-Belgian Journal Mba-Kajera used as their slogan: ‘Revolution is not to overthrow the existing system, but the creation of something new’. ‘The starting point is not how to oppose capital, but how to build a better life beyond it’ (Jordan 2002). These ideals are expressed and brought into practice in ‘free places’ in many squatted buildings, more legalised ‘social centre’ (in Italy), in the communities organized by the Piquetero-movement in Argentine, by the Zapatistas in Mexico etc.

./english/331.txt:33:Economic globalisation is a controversial and emotive issue. It raises questions of environmental responsibility, democracy and power, equality and justice, which are not value free, and I believe that the ethical context of economic processes should be taken into account when teaching pupils. I recognise that this position is inherently political, and necessitates extreme caution. It is, however, in line with Professor David Hargreaves' view:

./english/331.txt:45:The process of economic globalisation has causes and consequences rooted in the inter-related economic, political, social and environmental spheres. Current debate addresses complex relationships between all of these factors. It is not my intention here to analyse these issues in depth, but to focus on the moral values that underpin key perspectives.

./english/331.txt:111:Morality must always begin with the individual, but refer to universal values. Economic globalisation cannot be addressed as an abstract process, or one that individuals have no agency in.

./english/332.txt:11:The answer is straightforward. It was blocked by the informal and unaccountable leadership of the “process”. This leadership is made up of thinly disguised representatives of the European Left Parties and members of the Fourth International, the International Socialist Tendency and other far-left groups.

./english/336.txt:33:direct voice to the Society in the process of preparing and taking

./english/337.txt:10:With this letter we would like to express some comments, but also some concerns and some suggestions, regarding the ESF process.

./english/337.txt:15:First of all, we would like to stress the fact that we consider the ESF process to be one of the most important and indispensable spaces for European networking activities. The ESF process supports the building of a European space for « social movements ». In this space, our collective actors can exchange knowledge and weave links in order to elaborate alternatives to the neoliberal agenda. This space is also a privileged tool – not the only one - to build common mobilizations (G8, European Summit for 2007…). It stimulates the convergence of diversity. This process is clearly enriching for all of us (at least, for those of us who can directly take part in this process). There's hardly any other space that is capable of bringing together so many heterogeneous political actors, and without the ESF process political discussions would continue to be restricted either in an exclusively national framework or in the rather formal networks of traditional political parties, unions, large NGOs and their international co-operation.

./english/337.txt:19:Finally, this Forum was more successful in its enlarging process for Russia, central and oriental Europe, Turkey and Balkan countries. We will have to make sure this aspect is confirmed in the future. Unfortunately, the Scandinavian and Northern countries were not strongly represented.

./english/337.txt:24:A very encouraging development within the ESF process is the increasing ability of the different networks to cooperate on a European level. This development indicates a change in the process. It must be taken into account.

./english/337.txt:28:We also have to discuss collectively about the building of a new relationship between networks and the EPA plenum. Until now, the EPA plenum exercised a « monopoly » on the elaboration of the programme. This Forum has shown that something has changed. Our next challenge is to build a dynamic discussion to adapt our collective preparation of the Forum to this evolution where networks – born within or outside the ESF process (Education, Health, GATS/WTO, War, Latin America, Public services, No Vox, Tax Justice, etc.) – feed the dynamics of the whole process as they build their own dynamics. How can this networking dynamic be facilitated without impoverishing our common space?

./english/337.txt:39:The time for the public debate (after the “speakers’ time”) was often reduced, due to the number of speakers (sometimes 7 or 8). This could be seen as a “side-effect” of the merging process. And with this, some seminaries were again turned into “plenaries”.

./english/337.txt:43:Moreover, the Forum has a very limited impact on « mainstream public opinion », which doesn’t see this space as an « alternative policy-producing » process. This function – a space to build common alternatives– is, as we all know, the more theoretical part of our process. Some of our remarks here before could help to enrich the process. But this issue has to be thoroughly addressed.

./english/337.txt:45:4) Concerns about the present process, and suggestions

./english/337.txt:47:Before and during the ESF in Athens we also saw some developments in the preparation process that were quite alarming and need to be addressed, in order to improve the ESF process as a platform for our common struggles.

./english/337.txt:50:• The function and scope of the EPAs are interpreted very differently by the individual participants, ranging from a deciding body or "committee" to hardly more than the public organisational framework for the next ESF, and others see it simply as a fine opportunity to improve their cross-national networks. The undefined functioning of EPA has given space for an informal yet deciding small circle taking decisions internally and getting the "official" legitimation at the end of the EPA to formally maintain the democratic principles of the ESF process.

./english/337.txt:52:• We always see the same small group moderating the EPA without transparent legitimation. This "tradition" is obviously not accepted by a growing number of participants and needs to be replaced by a more democratic approach. We could consider designating a co-ordinating group which is responsible for insuring an open and transparent procedure of the EPA. This group could be composed respecting the diversity of participants : countries, size of the actors, thematic networks, etc. Yet of course, the members of this co-ordinating group would not be there to represent their own approach / category of actor, but to ensure the best common process for all.

./english/337.txt:54:• A very tedious characteristic of the EPA is the missing agenda agreed upon beforehand. This would ideally allow to start the necessary discussions on local or national levels prior to the EPA and to feed the results back into the ESF process. A political document (attached below) was discussed and adopted during an EPA working group meeting in Brussels (15-16 January 2005). This document integrates several proposals regarding the preparation of EPAs. We should commit to using and updating it.

./english/337.txt:56:• Also problematic is the reluctance against the use of sophisticated technical tools supporting the ESF process. Before the ESF in Athens for example, the ESF Internet Team had, during countless hours, prepared a quite powerful Website to facilitate the coordination process (which included a web-forum supporting political or technical discussions). Apart from this, we also have a mailing list. Unfortunately these tools have not been used as a help for political discussions. As a consequence, the EPA has to carry the whole burden of all political discussions. This makes the ESF far more complicated than it would need to be if it had a proper agenda and completed some first discussions beforehand. In addition, this absence almost enforces the construction of a small and informal circle where discussing political topics is made easier.

./english/337.txt:58:• In Athens we saw the confirmation of the high influence and visibility of political parties, which is a clear breach of The Charter of Porto Alegre. Moreover, this situation could - even in the short term - drastically reduce the scope of potential participating groups or individuals, and ultimately prevent the needed extension of the basis for a future ESF. We urgently need to discuss the place of political parties within the process of the Forum. We obviously know that the question of the relationship between social movements and political parties is different from one country to another, from one tradition to another. We also know that a political party can use a social movement as a « showcase ». Nevertheless, we propose to open a calm and constructive discussion on this sensitive point, in order to find adapted solutions for the future, solutions inspired by the principles of the Charter of Porto Alegre.

./english/337.txt:75:Taking advantage of EPA meetings, initiatives, events and campaigns linked to the ESF process are organised. They may range from theme campaigns to global campaigns. They inform the EPA of resulting work.

./english/337.txt:84:Currently, the working groups of the EPA and those of initiatives linked to the ESF process start working on Fridays. The EPA takes place on Saturdays and Sunday mornings, ending at 2pm. We propose that if and when required, the working groups may begin before, and that the EPA plenum may end late afternoon on Sundays.

./english/339.txt:3:The fact that approximately 300 meetings were held in Athens from 4th-7th May 2006 and were organised by hundreds collectives from all over Europe shows that the European Social Forum is the biggest and most pluralist European laboratory of radical ideas. The variety of the topics that were discussed in the European Social Forum proves not only the vigour, but also the depth of its reflections. Therefore, it is confirmed that the European Social Forum is neither a meeting point of various resistance groups nor a body for the international co-ordination of movements. Having contributed to the collective process of the configuration of its program and having a clear view of the way it was materialised we have to make the following observations:

./english/339.txt:5:2.We consider that the program of Athens respected the pluralist character of the European Social Forum. After a long period of disputes and criticisms, it was proved again that the Forum is open to all the viewpoints that are developed in the movements. Moreover, it was evident that it constitutes a process where every collective is given the space it needs independently of its size.

./english/339.txt:6:3.The great participation in the seminars showed that a lot of discussions were particularly interesting and, apart from the activists, a wider public was motivated to attend. These discussions did not only touch upon important social matters but they were distinguished by the wealth of their ideas. It was the first time that such a mass process of political dialogue had ever been held in Greece.

./english/339.txt:9:6.The national particularities and the current political occurence in each country were again underestimated when the time had come for the European mobilisations. Neither the Forum in his totality, nor the individual networks can function ignoring the fact that a European mobilisation cannot be organised with an administrative decision from above without a prior consultation process in a national level.

./english/340.txt:5:By working collectively through democratic, participatory processes and voluntary work we tried with a lot of effort to build an anti-commercial context that would result to an open Forum, without exclusions, accessible in terms of the cost (registration, transport, food), and facilitating attendance by offering free hospitality to as many participants as possible.

./english/340.txt:7:Furthermore, in a country with several thousands of immigrants it was of great importance that the organisation of the social forum would not only bear antiracist features but it would facilitate in every possible way the essential attendance of immigrants and the putting forward of those subjects that the immigrants wanted to stress. Based on the same principles and having as a starting point the decision about the thematic spaces that we had taken altogether, we accomplished to put a great deal of emphasis on them. Essentially, the Social Forum of Athens gave a great deal of visibility to matters and spaces that up to now did not participate organically in our processes.

./english/340.txt:8: In every step of the preparation, we tried to collaborate with groups from all over Greece and abroad (Voluntary Work Thessaloniki, Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network, No Vox etc.) that up to now did not participate systematically in the Forum process and we created new groups that would be responsible for organizing aspects of the forum (group of architects, group of technical support, catering etc).

./english/340.txt:10:Last but not least, we estimate that the work and the effort of the Network of Culture, with which we collaborated closely throughout the process, played a major role in the free participation of artists from all the fields of art and gave new features in the process by showing that the culture is a field of equivalent priority in the European movements.

./english/342.txt:3: Some of the objectives that the European Assembly had put forward for the social and geographical enlargement of the forums were met in the 4th ESF. In more detail, the mass participation of —more than 2,0001— activists from the countries of the former Eastern Europe and from Turkey, the social profile of the participants from the above-mentioned countries (members of social and political organizations, ecological movements and workers’ associations, feminists, unemployed, people who experienced the Forum for the first time), as well as the “average age” of the delegations prove that the Forum might not only concern westerners, “citizens of the world” with the financial means to travel and to intervene, but also socially, politically and culturally wider groups. This orientation was given great importance by the overall political framework, which was the axis of the forum —although its building process was not always “peaceful”—, a framework that functioned as a beacon for the planning of the Program group, the Logistics group and the Finance’s group. To make a long story short, the decision to organize a Forum, that would be cheap, independent from state authorities, pluralist and open, with the aim to enlarge the participation in the movements formed the political point of the 4th ESF.

./english/342.txt:7:1.Solidarity Fund (S.F.). The Solidarity fund motivated all those people who wished to participate but were unable to do so, either because they lacked the financial means or because they could not find the necessary funds. There were no criteria (political or of any other kind) for the financial support of delegations and individuals, who wished to be included in the solidarity fund. Every person who asked us to cover the expenses —either full or by half— of their transport, accommodation (in hotels or in other spaces) and free feeding within the Forum was included in the S.F. Furthermore, there was provision for free feeding and accommodation for those people who arrived at the forum and were not included in the delegations or in those who had already registered. The total ammount that was allocated to these delegations was 69,280 euros (Eastern/ Central European countries) and about 20,000 euros to the participants from the Middle East. Undoubtedly, the undertaking of the S.F. has a long way to go. It is crucial to investigate and to systematize the raising of resources, not only in view of a ESF; such a practice should be the constant concern of a movement, avoiding though the financial involvement of state. Moreover, it is worthwhile to find ways to make the S.F. widely known so that not only those who have participated in the Forum process know about it. Finally, through the process of exchange and mingling with our companions it would be advisable to transfer the message that the “western organizing committees” are not committees of the “financially robust”, but of ordinary activists against the neo-liberal globalization.

./english/343.txt:42:3. Bringing together actors is a process designed to end the isolation many struggles face, to build forces and to better coordinate. This allows us to identify a common enemy and enumerate the different mechanisms it uses to exploit and subject. In real terms the Assembly is also a space for debate and exchanging views on the international situation, on relations with political parties and left-wing governments, on the nature of and dialogue with the various resistance movements. By doing so we can define joint working approaches, agreements, agendas, calendars and joint campaigns, while at the same time respecting movements' independence. This type of process has to respect the rhythm of the various collective actors, for fear of paralysis and the alienation of grassroots militants. It is also necessary to draw up our own agenda separate from the agenda of capitalist institutions.

./english/343.txt:44:4. The working method must therefore be in keeping with these trends, i.e., with clear objectives in mind and it must be democratic. It must aim at creating the Assembly's public space. With this in mind the following proposals have been put forward, without wanting to stifle the process:

./english/344.txt:21:Other international organisations involved, such as the European Trade Union Confederation (1974) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC 1948). are similarly social-reformist and based in Western Europe. The unification also involves the trade-specific internationals (e.g. public service or agriculture) of the ICFTU and WCL. Some of these have already merged. However, these further complicate the merger. The Global Union Federations associated with the ICFTU in the Global Unions network, are much older than, and autonomous from, the ICFTU. Those of the WCL are merely departments. The WCL, moreover, seems reluctant to have the global or regional merger reaching down to national level. The role of the ETUC in the whole process needs emphasis for two reasons. Firstly, it provides an explicit or implicit model of a unified union body, being formally autonomous from the existing international centres and having long included national unions of both the Communist and Catholic tradition (Moreno 2005). Secondly, however, it is itself self-subordinated to the European Union and thus to an elite social accord of problematic value. This has been extensively argued by veteran left labour specialist, Richard Hyman:

./english/344.txt:63:The French CGT (ex-WFTU), however, has been playing an active part in the unification process (Confédération Générale du Travail 2006, Schwartz 2006).

./english/347.txt:44:The meeting showed that fears (or hopes in some cases) that ESF/EPS process is dead are still premature. But it does remain in a comatose state – a condition deliberately fostered by its undeclared and informal inner leadership. This is not altogether surprising surprise.

./english/348.txt:14:Also once again we want to support the self-determination right of the peoples like a first step for resolutions of conflicts and development of the societies. Also we support the sovereignty of the peoples, having or not having national states and all the open democratic processes as in Basque Country and in Ireland.

./english/356.txt:28:* Local Social Forum are a crucial point in the process (its not possible

./english/356.txt:33:* The organisations, TU and ONGs involved in the Esf process have to take

./english/356.txt:38:become part of this process to access the information about the local social

./english/356.txt:42:in LSF but also for the ones not involved in the process

./english/358.txt:14:All people can take part in the drafting process by sending amendments and proposals, which will be discussed definitively in Paris on January 13-14, 2007.

./english/359.txt:24:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/359.txt:50:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won’t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/359.txt:85:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/359.txt:89:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/359.txt:109:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/360.txt:24:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/360.txt:50:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won�t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/360.txt:85:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/360.txt:89:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/360.txt:109:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/362.txt:85:But these monopolies also need a global system to operate. The change in the nature of imperialism does not negate the importance of changes in the processes of labour and other dimensions, which need to be taken into account so that the popular classes can reinvent efficient forms of organisations. But in order to be efficient at the global political level, and in North-South relations, we have to take into account the basic fact that imperialism now operates collectively as a triad, represented by the U.S., the E.U. and Japan.

./english/363.txt:11:It looks like there could be something big happening "out there" - not in the sense of "somewhere far away, in other countries", but close to hand, within processes of globalisation and resistance which are just as real here in Ireland as anywhere else: "out there" where working-class communities are struggling to take back control of their everyday contexts, where Irish activists are working in solidarity with the Zapatistas, where trade unionists are pushing partnership to the limits, where women are demanding childcare provision, where Netslaves are realising that ?35,000 a year really means three and a half hours travel a day and a house in nowhere, New Suburbia.

./english/363.txt:17:History, Hunter Thompson said, is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit (1972: 65). And of course there is no way that one person can reasonably hope to grasp all these different things except at third hand. We grasp the world we're in at first hand, through the politics of our own everyday situations and conflicts, and at second hand, through other people's actions and words. But what they (and we) reflect is the echo of six thousand million people, all working with their own situations and trying to make sense of them in the process. So this paper comes with no guarantees!

./english/363.txt:25:Giovanni Arrighi, in an important and massively documented book (1994), undermines the widespread assumption that "disorganised capitalism" (Lash and Urry 1987) is a new phenomenon. We knew, of course, that capitalism had been global for a long time: Marx and Engels told us so (1967), and a bit later, in a different key, so did Eric Wolf (1982). What Arrighi does is to show how over its five or so centuries of domination, capital has constantly cycled between two processes. One, associated with the domination of a particular world power (Genova (3), Holland, England, the US) has been a process of productive investment within an increasingly organised regime of production. The other, associated with the revolt of capital against the fetters increasingly represented by that situation, has been a process of investment above all in financial markets, undermining both the regime of production and the world power associated with it.

./english/363.txt:27:If so, our current situation, where "all that is solid melts into air" (Berman 1983), is not in itself qualitatively new, except for the question of where on earth capital can go next. Processes of commodification can certainly be intensified (Offe 1984), but they run up against limits, both social (Lynch and McLaughlin 1995) and natural (Strange 2000). Arrighi's question is what new world power might be capable of imposing a new hegemony on the ashes of the "American Century"; the slender hope he offers is that the East Asian powers, who seem the only possible candidates, may not be strong enough to ensure another round of the same old samsara. So far, so depressing - and so disempowering.

./english/363.txt:39:George Katsiaficas (1987) observed, more than a decade back, that global capitalism has systematically given rise to what he calls "world-revolutionary moments", when the coexistence of large numbers of people facing related problems and brought into interaction with each other precisely through the capitalist production process (as the Manifesto noted, though on a far greater scale) gives rise to near-simultaneous moments of revolt and attempts at creating another world (see also Arrighi et al; 1989).

./english/363.txt:43:Such times happen, in other words; and they have often had major and long-lasting effects on "structure", for good and for bad. They also, though, have long-lasting effects on movements, on the processes, institutions and cultures through which ordinary people develop their agency. In Ireland we do not need to be reminded of the enduring effects of the long nationalist revolution on structuring everything from land and religion to the left and literature. It is worthwhile, then, having a closer look at the "road from '68" as a way of finding out what is currently happening with popular agency.

./english/363.txt:49:Revolutionary moments are simultaneously the result of long periods of experimentation and development on the part of relatively few people, of a sudden flowering of creative energy on the part of large numbers of ordinary people, and of rapid processes of learning and making the world anew. They have their pre-histories, but they are greater than the sum of their parts, and the world after a revolution does not simply collapse back into its earlier components, because people have reorganised the ways they do things and the ways they think about their activity.

./english/363.txt:56:In the late 1970s and the 1980s in particular, the "war of manoeuvre" of 1968 turned into a "war of position": on the one side, disorganisation from above rendered irrelevant these projects of transformation in their existing forms; on the other hand, the "learning process" (Vester 1975) of 1968 had not gone away, but had carried on burrowing under the surface to blossom in movement after movement: the women's movement, the ecological and anti-nuclear movement, the peace movement, movements for Third World (4) solidarity, community development, regional movements and so on.

./english/363.txt:73:A couple of years ago I attempted an "immanent critique" of contemporary movements, starting from the Irish alternative movement (Cox 1999b). The idea behind this kind of thing is to take what movements say about their goals seriously, and to think about movements as learning processes in which people try to find ways of doing things which are adequate to the goals they set themselves. Of course, there are all kinds of other processes which can divert this development (co-optation, repression, insulation, economic interests etc.), but it is nevertheless a useful sort of exercise to think "what would have to be the case if we wanted to do this?"

./english/363.txt:77:Translating these into counter-hegemonic politics, conflictual cultural strategies and popular self-definitions, it was clear firstly that such a situation is considerably from the existing shape of Irish movements, secondly that change in that direction would require a remarkable (but not impossible) process of creation, and thirdly that in disorganised capitalism there is scope for this kind of thing. Two years back this seemed a very long-term strategy; today it seems entirely within reach. I don't want to push this particular analysis (though I've brought copies along!), so much as to say that we can and should engage in this kind of thinking: "what would we need to do if ? we were serious about the goals we proclaim and the processes we value?"

./english/363.txt:86:Revolutionary moments as learning processes

./english/363.txt:87:As Michael Vester (1975) wrote of EP Thompson's Making of the English working class (1963), movements are learning processes. We could add: movements in revolutionary periods are exceptional learning processes. Movements in "ordinary periods" are still hamstrung by the subject-object dilemma: they tend to take much of the social world as given; activists often talk about "ordinary people" as being simply passive objects (of the media, their jobs, peer pressure etc.); and activists tend towards an abstract voluntarism which is missing out the people who do in fact reproduce - and are hence also capable of transforming - the structures they experience.

./english/363.txt:91:In many ways this process is similar to that familiar to community educators (Horton and Freire 1990), but speeded up and above all on a broader scale, without the "safe" boundaries of community and with the inclusion - real and virtual - of a much broader spectrum of humanity. "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive", was Wordsworth's verdict: despite conservative clich鳬 people once mobilised tend to stay active as far as it is in their power (Gottlieb 1987; see Inglehart 1990 for a massive debunking of the "youthful radicalism" thesis) because, after all, to experience ourselves as subjects is to live a more "fully human" existence; what else are we doing here? What else keeps us going?

./english/363.txt:101:A starting point is to analyse the differences in the way this "post-68 process" has been lived through in different contexts. In effect, different definitions of the situation have exercised a significant counter-hegemony on movements from below within different "national-popular" contexts. Borrowing shamelessly from work I've already done (Cox 1999a), I want to distinguish three distinct trajectories, without of course assuming that they are hermetically sealed from each other: the "national-popular" is of course itself a construct within a larger "world-economy" (Wallerstein 1987).

./english/363.txt:108:By contrast, the legacy of the continental Sixties has been above all political. This is the case above all for (West) Germany, Italy and perhaps the Netherlands, where long histories of "pillarisation" have continued with the development of extensive "alternative scenes" (e.g. Consorzio Aaster et al. 1996, Cox 1992). This process, where political cleavage structures (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) hardened into separate and opposed institutional clusters covering everything from culture and the media through trade unions and political parties to sports clubs and youth groups, determined the development of the post-Sixties movements as well as that, earlier, of left and right, religious and secular subcultures covering all spheres of life.

./english/363.txt:127:In terms of the perspective I developed at the start of this paper, "capacity-building", a key element of community politics in contemporary Ireland, is part of the "political economy of the working class" - ordinary people developing their own ability to act as subjects rather than objects through processes which are becoming part of ordinary life in working class Ireland. In particular, the valorisation of everyday skills, and the stress placed on starting from where people are, are important means of embodying this changed situation within the routines of everyday life.

./english/363.txt:129:This is quite a remarkable process, and one which is far outside the experience not only of many activists from other countries, but of a good few activists and left intellectuals here in Ireland. Martin Geoghegan (2000) has explored the reasons why community activists tend to speak (and act) in public in ways which have the effect that leftists with a more traditional version of "politics" do not recognise the significance of what is happening. Despite this, the existence of widespread, popular working-class modes of organisation which are in working-class hands and organised in non-authoritarian ways is rare in contemporary Europe.

./english/363.txt:140:The process of partnershipping, though, has important consequences which parallel developments within the environmental movement. The more obvious is the way the process enables the state to put its shape on the movement, defining who is in which "sector" (youth work, for example, being separated from community work) and setting people who should be close partners in competition for funds with one another. Less obvious, perhaps, is the sheer organisational challenge of "keeping up with the state": going to all the meetings, reading the material, making the funding applications, and all the rest of it - raising the individual cost of participation in ways which tend to separate off a skilled elite from an increasingly fragmented grassroots, and provoking the famous "end of volunteerism" even where unemployment is still a major problem.

./english/363.txt:143:This analysis could be extended to other kinds of movements in contemporary Ireland. For the moment, I want to point to three common kinds of weakness associated with this situation, which are certainly not particular to community politics. The first, crudely speaking, is populism. In essence this consists of a process that starts from taking people where you find them and finishes by leaving people where you found them. There is of course a tension within any movement between the immediate issues that provoke mobilisation and the broader potential that is opened up at an individual level and for the movement as a whole. What is damaging though is when the two are not effectively linked, and particularly when it is felt to be "radical" to insist on "concrete needs" at the expense of broader questions of power and economics. The net effect is of course to win ha'pennies and lose pounds.

./english/363.txt:145:The second is what is becoming called "the movement society" (eg della Porta 2000). Where movements are legitimate actors in the eyes of state and media, the process which happened with NGOs a long time ago - of organisations existing because they have an interlocutory role - can become dominant. This can happen even where those organisations engage in acts of stylised protest (consider the IFA!) As Peillon (1998) has documented, low-level but widespread protest is a fairly general feature of Irish society, and can as easily be used against immigrants as against incinerators. If populism fetishises "concrete results", the movement society runs the risk of fetishising "stepping out" in the most ritualised forms (the Mind-Body-Spirit festival at the RDS is hardly going to have the cardinals shaking in their boots, let alone the TDs?.)

./english/363.txt:174:This kind of communication is best developed in co-operative processes geared towards practical action, of course; but the practical action itself then needs to be "at the level of the (potential) movement" - we need to set ourselves tasks which enable, to use a horrible metaphor, a "highest common factor" rather than a "lowest common denominator" to emerge. This is of course part of that learning process which Marx described as characteristic of working-class revolutions: because they do not come "from above", they are not simply the headbirths of intellectuals, there is a constant process of grasping for the skies, falling back, and trying again, perhaps in another place.

./english/363.txt:182:So far I've tried to answer the questions "where are we?" and "what is happening?" All this puts me in the awkward position of having to think of an intelligent answer to the question "what should we do?" Here I'm taking "we" as meaning intellectuals, in Gramsci's sense (which I'll discuss in a minute) - and intellectuals who are in some sense actively committed to (some part of) the movement process I've been talking about. In other words, if what I've said is more or less accurate, what difference would it make to what we do?

./english/363.txt:195:What professional intellectuals do is to dedicate themselves to the organisation of social activity and the articulation of social ideas as a more or less full-time activity. The hegemony that they orchestrate is not a matter of uniformity or conformity, rather a convergence of a broad spectrum of social forces and modes of thinking behind a particular social project (Peillon 1982 offers some interesting points of reference for this in an Irish context). In the process, some of the needs of the groups they organise and speak for are met, others are not; some practices find themselves integrated into the social structure, others are not; some forms of thinking are developed and ratified, others are not.

./english/363.txt:197:"The enemy", then, is this process of organising everyday participation in and consent to the structures of capitalism, patriarchy and racism. In individual terms, it is those people who devote their lives to this activity, and who will find it hardest to remake themselves, who are the de facto opponents of the new movement. The ordinary people who participate in those structures and consent to "the way things are" but do not dedicate their lives to keeping them that way are, by contrast, precisely the people who we are seeking to engage with if we are serious about changing things.

./english/363.txt:208:One way of thinking about the new movement is as a kind of prefigurative politics - prefiguring not so much "the new society" as a new way of doing politics, and in particular new alliances. One aspect I have found particularly interesting is a sense of a move away from comparing "cookbooks for the future" and "red / green" debates on theology - characteristic both of periods of defeat and of elitist approaches which start from where a popular movement might finish - and towards discussions of strategy and "red / black" debates (7) which are about "what do we do?". This suggests at least the possibility of allowing people to learn from and through practice, and that agreement on where to go might emerge out of the process of struggle - which is, after all, where movement intellectuals derive their understandings from in the first place, albeit sometimes through circuitous routes.

./english/363.txt:218:What they can perhaps do is develop tools that ordinary people can learn to use when and if they feel the need strongly and clearly enough to be able to act on their own behalf: modes of organisation, processes of self-education, ways of talking, which are appropriate for the new purposes that people give themselves in such situations. Such tools are badly needed: without them, people who have not had a long experience of autonomous activity, of head-on confrontations, of working together in cooperative ways, will "reinvent the wheel" in the shape of some of the most basic mistakes of past movements (see WSM 1998 for some important reflections on this).

./english/363.txt:221:Three kinds of things are particularly important here. One is the development of autonomous institutions. It is in the nature of contemporary capitalism, which has commodified or otherwise colonised so many of the needs met in previous generations by movement institutions, that there is (notoriously) little space for developed movement organisations. Nevertheless, if they are thought of not as "the new society in the shell of the old", but rather spaces within which we can learn how to interact with each other in new ways around practical tasks, to sustain even marginal institutions is a useful act in itself. (One important example, not so marginal at present, is the demonstration: the extensive participatory planning processes behind the current "global demos" and the widespread discussions after the events are quite remarkable in these terms.)

./english/363.txt:241:"Globalisation" involves a slow withdrawing of consent from this process on both sides, and this is no bad thing. One way of thinking about the right-wing domination of Irish politics (which is, both in terms of voters and parties, consistently the furthest right system in western Europe over the last few decades) is in terms of the deep effectiveness of the modes of popular mobilisation and consent developed within the nationalist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To see these breaking down is to see new possibilities opening up.

./english/363.txt:248:The extent to which the people are no longer willing to be governed is another matter, though. It is a great step forward that the protests against capitalist globalisation can enable the development of new connections in Ireland, within the traditional (and traditionally sectarian) left, between "social" and "ecological" interests, and so on. At the same time, these connections are still weak and largely ad hoc; although they are giving rise to new thought processes among activists, they are not yet giving rise to new realignments. Nor are they very broad in scope: in particular, little effort has been made to connect with community activists, with feminists, or with ethnic minorities.

./english/365.txt:16:It is clear that personal digital media are important to these activists. One indicator is the expansion of a web-based communication infrastructure, marked, for example, by the growth of the Indymedia activist information network (www.indymedia.org) from one outlet to more than 100 in the three years following Seattle. Many activists cite the importance of personal digital media in creating networks and coordinating action across diverse political identities and organizations (see on-line interviews at http://www.wtohistory.org). A key issue is whether these communication practices merely reduce the costs or increase the efficiencies of political action, or whether they change the political game itself. My interest in this article is to explore some of the ways in which digital communication networks may be changing the political game in favor of resource poor players who, in many cases, are experimenting with political strategies outside of conventional national political channels such as elections and interest processes.

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

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

./english/365.txt:28:Various theorists have discussed the transformation of social structures and identity processes associated with economic globalization in the so-called post industrial

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

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

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

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

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

./english/365.txt:39:The emergence of a politics that is shifting away from organizational conventions such as leadership, ideology, and government processes invites a fresh theoretical perspective. The goal of this analysis is to begin explaining how webs of contentious transnational politics operate on such a large scale, particularly among groups and individuals joined by little binding leadership or ideology, and whose protests cover such diverse political issues.

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

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

./english/365.txt:75:Internet Applications as Organizational Process

./english/365.txt:119:Agre. P. (2002) “Real-time politics: The Internet and the political process”. The Information Society. 18: 311-331.

./english/366.txt:50:Now that the war on Iraq--or one phase of it--is over, last winter's intense outpouring of antiwar sentiment feels like a distant episode. The peace movement is collectively catching its breath and wondering what to do next. At a June convention in Chicago, UFPJ consolidated its far-flung coalition by forging a unifying program for a new wave of movement-building. Many in the peace movement are looking to the 2004 elections, when MoveOn's fundraising and outreach muscle--the group seeks to raise tens of millions of dollars and mobilize a million volunteers--could be a factor. In a much-debated experiment in online democracy, MoveOn challenged the power of pundits and wealthy campaign donors to wield control over the presidential nomination process, by asking its 1.5 million American members to vote on which Democratic candidate the organization should endorse. Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, the top two vote-getters, have both emerged as magnets for antiwar Democrats disaffected by the party's tepid opposition to Bush's extreme agenda. But Dean, who outfundraised his competitors last quarter through a torrent of small online donations, is the only one of the pair to have caught the Internet wave. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi, sees the net as the missing element that will make Dean's 2004 run a "perfect storm." (It couldn't hurt that MoveOn was a paid technical adviser to Dean's campaign, prompting charges of partiality from the Gephardt and Edwards campaigns during the MoveOn primary. Exley says other Democrats declined such assistance, but wouldn't say which ones.)

./english/367.txt:21:The split in the CPI resulted in the formation of the “right” CPI, which openly advocated an alliance with the progressive national bourgeoisie, but which also had a more democratic (or at least less autocratic) inner party regime. The left split-off, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), was to become the world’s most unreconstructed Stalinist party. But it incorporated in an uneasy alliance two wings — those who wanted accommodation within the capitalist state under somewhat different theoretical premises than the CPI, and those who wanted an armed struggle to overthrow the “comprador-ruled, semi-feudal, semi-colonial state,” as they characterized India. Within a few years, this wing started accusing the other wing of the CPI(M) of being equally revisionist and opportunist, and eventually it split off to form the CPI(ML) and a few other Maoist parties. The spark which led to the split was a peasant uprising in Naxalbari, from which came the name “Naxalites” [a term often used in the press for the Maoists]. The CPI(ML) and the other Maoist groups splintered, united, splintered, and in the process, the original radicalism was lost. Before looking at that history, however, we need to look at a few other sectors of the left.

./english/367.txt:58:International agencies like the United Nations and its various organizations played an important role in this process. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a dramatic change. The small voluntary organization which was linked to the mass movement still existed, but it was increasingly elbowed out by a chain, which ran from international donor agencies to large donor organizations in India with headquarters in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc., on to local offices or smaller NGOs in big cities, and through them to lesser NGOs in small towns, rural areas, or in working class or pauperized sectors of the big cities. And the entire language of the bulk of the NGOs had shifted. They tended to view the masses whom their activities served as “beneficiaries.” A clear hierarchy had sprung up. Behind the continuing veneer of participatory democracy, the reality was one of a steadily growing bureaucratization. In addition, NGOs, even when totally honest and dedicated, fostered relations of dependency.

./english/367.txt:79:The West Bengal government has now stated clearly that it will no longer pay the salaries of teachers appointed to new posts in colleges. In schools, a school service commission has been set up to centralize appointments. This has two effects — it ensures that a fair sprinkling of party cadre get jobs — the West Bengal equivalent of the Nomenklatura — and it slows down the entire process of appointments, in effect cutting down employment in the educational sector.

./english/367.txt:139:“These policies are underpinned and reinforced by the expansion of the participatory budget from Porto Alegre [the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, where the PT has headed the municipal government since 1989] and the other municipal PT strongholds to the state administration. The process has been surprisingly successful, and is already transforming the relationship between the state and society.

./english/367.txt:141:“The participatory budget process is based on open public meetings at the local level. These establish local priorities for government spending, and elect delegates to a regional level, which discusses in greater detail. State officials provide assistance and information, but have no vote in the assembly, which approves and supervises implementation of the final budget…”

./english/367.txt:143:But the most lasting contribution of the PT project in Rio Grande do Sul may prove to be its reappropriation of democracy as a fundamentally progressive concept. According to Ubiratan de Souza, “The participatory budget combines direct democracy with representative democracy — which is one of humanity’s greatest conquests, and which should be preserved and developed. As we strive to deepen the democracy of human society, representative democracy is necessary, but insufficient. It is more important than ever before that we combine it with a wide variety of forms of direct democracy, where the citizen can not only participate in public administration, but also control the state. The participatory budget in Porto Alegre and the process of implementing a participatory budget at the level of Rio Grande do Sul state are concrete examples of direct democracy.”

./english/367.txt:145:The participatory budget in Rio Grande do Sul was undoubtedly an important learning experience for the workers and others who participated in the process. It undoubtedly contributed to the participants’ understanding of economic and political questions and their desire for more control over the decisions that affect their lives. And this concept was not developed by those who would ultimately surrender meekly to the IMF. However, as long as the state apparatus remains in the hands of the capitalists, the extension of democracy to direct democracy would not be as massive a change as Novak seems to have imagined. There would be a necessary conflict between the aspirations of the toiling people assembled in the participatory budget’s discussion processes, and the demands of the IMF, of imperialism, of Brazilian big capital and the central banking system.

./english/367.txt:153:As outsiders to the WSF process, the RUPE ideologues and their cothinkers use labels on those who do participate in the WSF. It is certainly true that huge numbers of reformist, or nonrevolutionary, organizations participate in the Social Forums. They include well-meaning reform-minded groups like those fighting for housing for all, and so on, to sheer cranks. But on November 9, 2002, when Florence was brought to a standstill by a million-strong demonstration against the planned imperialist war on Iraq, that too was associated with the European Social Forum, the European regional version of the WSF. It was quite an experience to be marching in that demonstration! Are we to suppose that those who called that march are also subtle agents of imperialism? In that case, at least they provide more support to the revolutionary cause by such huge mobilizations than anything they provide imperialism.

./english/368.txt:32:Business now grapples with how to manage an entirely new kind of workforce --one which cannot be "deskilled" without being destroyed, one whose control of both the tools and processes of production necessitate an uncomfortable reorganization in structures of command away from the rigid hierarchies that developed with the Taylorist and Fordist organization of manufacturing.(6)

./english/368.txt:52:Alternatively, participants in social conflicts in society have extended their struggles from other zones of human space into cyberspace. Groups of individuals who have already organized discussion and action outside of cyberspace --such as the indigenous and campesino groups in Chiapas and their supporters-- can reach others through it. Reaching others may involve drawing individuals into their organizing efforts and it may involve creating new connections with other groups for collaborative efforts. Those groups whose members generally have individual access to The Net can use it to enhance their own internal communications. Such "networking", as we have seen, predates cyberspace, but The Net (like mail, telephone and fax before it) has dramatically extended and speeded up the process.

./english/368.txt:64:The result of such processes interweaving cyberspace and other zones of human space is a new composition of social relationships increasingly difficult for capitalists and the state to manage. Precisely to the degree that its self-elaboration has been outstripping the ability of managers of capitalist society to repress or co-opt, this growing "social" composition has moved beyond a "class" composition. It is not merely the self-reconfigured structure of power by workers against their exploiters; with new threads and new weaves the social fabric is being rewoven into textures with less and less of a "class" character. This self-activity, of course, continues to be constrained by the oppressions of class but it increasingly weaves according to it's own innovative designs.(20)

./english/368.txt:74:As the number of people involved in these processes of uploading, re-posting, translating, etc. has grown, so has their self organization. What began as, and to a degree still is, an interlinked set of spontaneous actions has become more organized. On some lists, for example, a cooperative division of labor has emerged so that a dozen or more people take individual responsibility for tapping and reposting relevant material from particular sources to a single site in cyberspace.(27) In this way the skills and resources of many separate individuals and computer systems are connected in ways that benefit everyone tapping the pooled information. In another case, the best material from a few such poolings is reposted to those who need the information but don't have time to search out even a reduced number of sites.(28) As a result of such co-operation, the work of culling The Net has been drastically reduced for the vast majority of those needing and using information about the struggles in Mexico for purposes of mobilization and solidarity.

./english/368.txt:78:Throughout this whole process, the circulation of Zapatista materials and reports from independent observers on The Net has been accompanied by increasingly systematic reposting of commercial media stories. While the commercial media has largely ignored The Net as a source of information and understanding about what has been happening in Chiapas, the reverse has not been the case.

./english/368.txt:96:In less public view, researchers in universities and think tanks have been paying much closer attention and have seen serious threats to the current political order. Even before the role of the Internet in the Zapatista struggle was recognized, analysts were beginning to call the attention of policy makers to grassroots uses of electronic communications. One widely quoted report was Sheldon Annis' 1991 "Giving Voice to the Poor" published in Foreign Policy, an influential American journal in that field. Annis provided details of how grassroots utilization of The Net was "empowering" and "emboldening" the poor by undermining elite control of information. Generously, if somewhat naively perhaps, he recommended that state institutions such as local governments and the World Bank shift expenditures toward increasing flows of information which can assist the "political empowerment" of the poor and "processes of democratization".(37)

./english/369.txt:15:The conference took a stand in favour of a process leading to the establishment of a European anti-capitalist formation that would constitute a credible alternative to the social-liberal left in government. In this spirit, the conference supports the PRC's call to organise a Forum of the Alternative Left next October.

./english/369.txt:57:a) The EU's governments, united for once, have decided on one of the most brutal and odious turnabouts in their recent history: to prevent and criminalise so-called "illegal" immigration by using their fleets in the Mediterranean and their armies on the borders with the east and the Middle East. But mass displacements of human beings are the direct result of large-scale surplus exploitation of a quasi-enslaved work force and the plundering of natural resources by big financial, industrial and commercial corporations, with absolutely unbearable features: endless repayment of foreign debt; hundreds of millions of starving human beings; and the new "war economy" which drives people and conscripts children into the army and the labour process. The same global capitalism that exploits, oppresses and kills arrogates to itself the right to track down, imprison, expel and over-exploit those human beings who run away from this hell in a search for refuge and survival in the countries of their "masters".

./english/369.txt:91:This state apparatus is neither usable nor reformable for the peoples or the world of labour. It must be overthrown, so as to open up a radical democratic constituent process from below. It is up to the peoples and the world of labour to decide what kind of Europe they want to live in, with what sort of institutional relationship among the member states, and on what social and economic bases. Such a conquest of radical democracy will necessarily go hand in hand with overturning neo-liberal policies and replacing them with a program of urgent social measures in the interests of the workers and the poorest layers of society. Starting now, we must demand that at the very least any "new treaty" or "constitution" be submitted to a referendum organised simultaneously in all member and candidate states.

./english/369.txt:127:One of our major difficulties at this stage is reflecting social demands and the social relationship of forces on the political level in order to defeat neo-liberal policies. Our conclusion is that we urgently need to develop the perspective of a European political formation as a space and process in which social and political, anti-capitalist and alternative lefts engage in discussion so as to move forward.

./english/370.txt:17:The first part of this migration, when control of machine-aided processes moved from the human body to the hardware, may be said to have taken place in the eighteenth century when a series of inventors and builders of automata created the elements which later came together in the famous Jacquard loom, a machine which automated some of the tasks involved in weaving patterns in textiles. Jacquards loom used a primitive form of software, in which holes punched into cards coded for some of the operations behind the creation of patterned designs. {1} This software, however, contained only data and not control structures. In other words, all that was coded in the punched cards was the patterns to be weaved and not any directions to alter the reading of the cards or the performance of the operations, such as the lifting of the warp threads. Therefore, it was the machine's hardware component that "read" the cards and translated the data into motion, in which control of the process resided. Textile workers at the time were fully aware that they had lost some control to Jacquards loom, and they manifested their outrage by destroying the machines in several occasions.

./english/370.txt:20:The idea of coding data into punched cards spread slowly during the 1800's, and by the beginning of our century it had found its way into computing machinery, first the tabulators used by Hollerith to process the 1890 United States census, then into other tabulators and calculators. In all these cases control remained embodied in the machine's hardware. One may go as far as saying that even the first modern computer, the imaginary computer created by Alan Turing in the 1930's still kept control in the hardware, the scanning head of the Turing machine. The tape that his machine scanned held nothing but data. But this abstract computer already had the seed of the next step, since as Turing himself understood, the actions of the scanning head could themselves be represented by a table of behavior, and the table itself could now be coded into the tape. Even though people may not have realized this at the time, coding both numbers and operations on numbers side by side on the tape, was the beginning of computer software as we know it. {2} When in the 1950's Turing created the notion of a subroutine, that is, the notion that the tasks that a computer must perform can be embodied into separate sub-programs all controlled by a master program residing in the tape, the migration of control from hardware to software became fully realized. From then on, computer hardware became an abstract mesh of logical gates, its operations fully controlled by the software.

./english/370.txt:23:The next step in this migration took place when control of a given computational process moved from the software to the very data that the software operates on. For as long as computer languages such as FORTRAN or Pascal dominated the computer industry, control remained hierarchically embedded in the software. A master program would surrender control to a subroutine whenever that sub-task was needed to be performed, and the subroutine itself may pass control to an even more basic subroutine. But the moment the specific task was completed, control would move up the hierarchy until it reached the master program again. Although this arrangement remained satisfactory for many years, and indeed, many computer programs are still written that way, more flexible schemes were needed for some specific, and at the time, esoteric applications of computers, mostly in Artificial Intelligence.

./english/370.txt:26:Trying to build a robot using a hierarchy of subroutines meant that researchers had to completely foresee all the tasks that a robot would need to do and to centralize all decision-making into a master program. But this, of course, would strongly limit the responsiveness of the robot to events occurring in its surroundings, particularly if those events diverged from the predictions made by the programmers. One solution to this was to decentralize control. The basic tasks that a robot had to perform were still coded into programs, but unlike subroutines these programs were not commanded into action by a master program. Instead, these programs were given some autonomy and the ability to scan the data base on their own. Whenever the found a specific pattern in the data they would perform whatever task they were supposed to do. In a very real sense, it was now the data itself that controlled the process. And, more importantly, if the data base was connected to the outside world via sensors, so that patterns of data reflected patterns of events outside the robot, then the world itself was now controlling the computational process, and it was this that gave the robot a degree of responsiveness to its surroundings.

./english/370.txt:29:Thus, machines went from being hardware-driven, to being software-driven, then data-driven and finally event-driven. Your typical Macintosh computer is indeed an event-driven machine even if the class of real world events that it is responsive to is very limited, including only events happening to the mouse (such as position changes and clicking) as well as to other input devices. But regardless of the narrow class of events that personal computers are responsive to, it is in these events that much of the control of the processes now resides. Hence, behind the innovative use of windows, icons, menus and the other familiar elements of graphical interfaces, there is this deep conceptual shift in the location of control which is embodied in object-oriented languages. Even the new interface designs based on semi-autonomous agents were made possible by this decentralization of control. Indeed, simplifying a little, we may say that the new worlds of agents, whether those that inhabit computer screens or more generally, those that inhabit any kind of virtual environment (such as those used in Artificial Life), have been the result of pushing the trend away from software command hierarchies ever further.

./english/370.txt:32:The distinction between centralized and decentralized control of given process has come to occupy center-stage in many different contemporary philosophies. It will be useful to summarize some of this philosophical currents before I continue my description of agent-based interfaces, since this will reveal that the paradigm-shift is by no means confined to the area of software design. Economist and Artificial Intelligence guru Herbert Simon views bureaucracies and markets as the human institutions which best embody these two conceptions of control.{3} Hierarchical institutions are the easiest ones to analyze, since much of what happens within a bureaucracy in planned by someone of higher rank, and the hierarchy as a whole has goals and behaves in ways that are consistent with those goals. Markets, on the other hand, are tricky. Indeed, the term "market" needs to be used with care because it has been greatly abused over the last century by theorists on the left and the right. As Simon remarks, the term does not refer to the world of corporations, whether monopolies or oligopolies, since in these commercial institutions decision-making is highly centralized, and prices are set by command.

./english/370.txt:59:One drawback of the approach of Behavioral AI is that, given that the agent has very little knowledge at the beginning of a relationship with a user, it will be of little assistance for a while until it learns about his or her habits. Also, since the agent can only learn about situations that have recurred in the past, it will be of little help when the user encounters new problems. One possible solution, is to increase the amount of meshwork in the mix and allow agents from different users to interact with each other in a decentralized way. {10} Thus, when a new agent begins a relation with a user, it can consult with other agents and speed up the learning process, assuming that is, that what other agents have learned is applicable to the new user. This, of course, will depend on the existence of some homogeneity of habits, but at least it does not assume a complete homogenous situation from the outset, an assumption which in turn promotes further uniformization. Besides, endowing agents with a static model of the users makes them unable to cope with novel situations. This is also a problem in the Behavioral AI approach but here agents may aid one another in coping with novelty. Knowledge gained in one part of the workplace can be shared with the rest, and new knowledge may be generated out of the interactions among agents. In effect, a dynamic model of the workplace would be constantly generated and improved by the collective of agents in a decentralized way, instead of each one being a replica of each other operating on the basis of a static model centrally created by a knowledge engineer.

./english/371.txt:40:The World Social Forum is not merely an annual event in Porto Alegre. It has become a global movement, a continuous process to create an open space for free and equal exchange of thoughts and action. In terms of numbers it grew from 25,000 people in the first meeting 2001 to more than 100,000 this year. But it is not just the numbers that count. The Forum has created an alternative to capitalist globalisation. It has created a new hope, a new power which is playing a profound role in helping to free people all over the world from the shackles of despair and false consciousness propagated by the global media. But more thinking is needed to close the gap between what is called political activities and social activities, between women’s groups and socialist groups.

./english/372.txt:13:The depth of the problem first really struck me when I first became acquainted with the consensus modes of decision-making employed in North American anarchist and anarchist-inspired political movements, which, in turn, bore a lot of similarities to the style of political decision-making current where I had done my anthropological fieldwork in rural Madagascar. There's enormous variation among different styles and forms of consensus but one thing almost all the North American variants have in common is that they are organized in conscious opposition to the style of organization and, especially, of debate typical of the classical sectarian Marxist group. Where the latter are invariably organized around some Master Theoretician, who offers a comprehensive analysis of the world situation and, often, of human history as a whole, but very little theoretical reflection on more immediate questions of organization and practice, anarchist-inspired groups tend to operate on the assumption that no one could, or probably should, ever convert another person completely to one's own point of view, that decision-making structures are ways of managing diversity, and therefore, that one should concentrate instead on maintaining egalitarian process and considering immediate questions of action in the present. One of the fundamental principles of political debate, for instance, is that one is obliged to give other participants the benefit of the doubt for honesty and good intentions, whatever else one might think of their arguments. In part too this emerges from the style of debate consensus decision-making encourages: where voting encourages one to reduce one's opponents positions to a hostile caricature, or whatever it takes to defeat them, a consensus process is built on a principle of compromise and creativity where one is constantly changing proposals around until one can come up with something everyone can at least live with; therefore, the incentive is always to put the best possible construction on other's arguments.

./english/372.txt:37:All this does not, of course, mean that anarchist theory is impossible--though it does suggest that a single Anarchist High Theory in the style typical of university radicalism might be rather a contradiction in terms. One could imagine a body of theory that presumes and indeed values a diversity of sometimes incommensurable perspectives in much the same way that anarchist decision-making process does, but which nonetheless organizes them around an presumption of shared commitments. But clearly, it would also have to self-consciously reject any trace of vanguardism: which leads to the question the role of revolution intellectuals is not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow, what precisely is it? This is an area where I think anthropology is particularly well positioned to help. And not only because most actual, self-governing communities, non-market economies, and other radical alternatives have been mainly studied by anthropologists; also, because the practice of ethnography provides at least something of a model, an incipient model, of how non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might work. Ethnography is about teasing out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underly certain types of social action; the way people's habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is precisely that: the first thing we need to do is to look at those who are creating viable alternatives on the group, and try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing.

./english/373.txt:12:It is my opinion that, when talking about the so-called anti-globalisation movement, it is possible to trace two parallel processes. One, which I named new radicalism, began with the Zapatista insurrection, has brought about creating of the Peoples’ Global Action network. The second one, I call traditionalistic, has developed separately, culminating by the creation of the WSF and regional forums. The history of these tendencies that have mainly developed simultaneously is relatively well known. Demonstrations – the Global Days of Action – and forums, as well as the Indymedia that has inaugurated a quite specific mode of activist communication, have all become the most important distinctive manifestations of the movement itself. The new radicalism implies an attempt to distance from the practices of the old left; to move away from the area of the conventional politics and to devise a new political space, the "politics from below"; pre-figurative politics (i.e. the modes of organization that consciously resemble the world you want to crate); direct action and social disobedience; anti-capitalism and anti-statism.

./english/373.txt:24:I believe that time has come to develop some different models of strategic communication with the whole forum process.

./english/373.txt:36:It is therefore necessary to replace the formula "abandon or contaminate" by the formula "participate or abandon". The "contamination" is not a sincere one, the very expression is an entristic one: furthermore, it is not even productive. Closed in a suburban building of the forum, we are doomed to marginalisation and dissipation of energy. It is necessary to enter into dialogue with other participants in the movement, to organize ourselves so as to be able to reclaim the movement. To say that another forum is possible. In any case, it is necessary for us to turn to building of our own network, PGA, the optics of which would include reflection on the vision and strategy, options, on details of a different world we wish to create. Why dissipate the energy of the new radicalism, is the question that imposes itself, on endless projects? Why don’t we formulate a unique, coherent anti-authoritarian politics within the Peoples Global Action network? It would be the politics based on the bottom-up organizing, open and transparent methods, broad participation, anti-authoritarianism, multi-tactical approaches, innovation and spontaneity. We have to abandon sectarianism and " marginalization pleasure", but also avoid the trap of accepting the traditionalistic and bureaucratic rules of the game and the struggle for power, which we are not accustomed to, bearing always in mind that the goal of anti-authoritarianism is not to be small and isolated. Our goal should be the movement building. Not "summit -hopping": we should try to connect our local work and networking, instead of getting lost in "networks of networks" and "process of processes", hoping from one place to another.

./english/373.txt:40:Then we should, if the new radicals cannot participate in the process of forum building, abandon it and build our own forums.

./english/373.txt:44:1. An open letter should be sent to the organizers of the WSF and regional forums, as well as to the notorious Secretariat for Call of the Social Movement, requesting commencement of the dialogue and joint work on democratising the forum process.

./english/375.txt:31:We have been witnessing, world wide, changes in capitalism over the last quarter of century. This should not surprise us. The whole history of capitalism ahs been of change, with new areas of production advancing and old areas disappearing. The process always takes the form of the advance of capitalism drawing people into new workplaces, at a higher level than in the period before. This exactly true of the present period.

./english/375.txt:37:Here Hardt and Negri made a great deal of growth of what they call service employment and they give the impression that service employment is all what they call ‘informational’ employment – employment to do with the processing of information.

./english/375.txt:49:Two simultaneous processes are changing this picture over time.

./english/375.txt:163:I sense almost a sense of nostalgia for what capitalism built in its development, and also a forgetfulness about the brutality of that process of development. I don’t know if work is better or worse than it was a hundred years ago. It is almost certainly better in someway, worse in others. What we have to remember is the centrality of struggle, history of struggle is part of that history to, and we must not just talk about the achievements of capitalism. So I want to ask you to develop more this idea of multitude, where the concept of multitude belong within the system of exploitation and domination.

./english/375.txt:206:The revolutionary subject is a combination of the exploited classes. The hegemonic role of the working class in that alliance is determined by its role in production. Its centrality is related to the centrality of that class in the reproduction of society itself. When Marxists talk about strategy, they are talking about a process that takes us from where we are towards an objective in the future. When we talk about the self organisation of workers today it is directly linked to how we see the organisation of workers in society in the future. So when we talk about the soviet style of organisation of workers with leaders who are subject to immediate recall we a looking towards a future society built around that form of origination with the great mass organisation sovereign. The party in this situation play the role of an intermediary, carrying the historical experiences. We have to centralise just as the bourgeoisie is centralised.

./english/376.txt:8:As the Second Preparatory Committee meeting (PrepCom-2) is currently being conducted in Geneva, Switzerland (17-28 February), additional discussions have been rising about creating an alternative to the ongoing WSIS process.

./english/376.txt:11:. Its direct aims are still sketchy as of now, being a new group and all, but somehow, it is becoming a good space for alternative discussions about the past and ongoing WSIS-related events. It would be beneficial for women to monitor this site because it is important to learn the other aspects of the WSIS, specifically what advocates and communication networks have to say about the ongoing official processes.

./english/376.txt:13:So far, there has been a critique that the official process is becoming a platform for an agenda that is not beneficial to all but only to a select group of stakeholders. Other critiques observed from other mailing lists like the point out troublesome principles in existing official and non-official documents like the Orientation Non-Paper which was drafted by the president of the Preparatory Committee. An example of the troublesome principle can be seen in how the paper deals with women (or the nominal mention of women, for that matter) in the key principles. Civil society players from NGOs monitoring the WSIS have also stated that official documents have problematic statements (concepts appear vague, ideas appear not properly/professionally drafted) that can have dangerous interpretations (or misinterpretations).

./english/376.txt:21:What are the aims of activity outside, in opposition, or in parallel to the official WSIS process?

./english/376.txt:23:Various aims have been proposed. [What follows is by no means comprehensive but provides a snapshot of concerns that many feel are not being adequately met, if they are addressed at all, within the official WSIS process.]

./english/376.txt:38:4. Demand the democratisation of the decision making process:

./english/376.txt:44:Mainstream all these groups throughout government, civil society, the private sector, multilateral bodies and processes related to information and communication, with adequate funding and mechanisms for participation.

./english/376.txt:53:There is general agreement that all these goals should be advanced both within and outside the WSIS process.

./english/376.txt:55:It is unclear how important WSIS will be. Some see activity outside the process as a way to increase pressure on the inside and help advance our concerns in the WSIS Declaration and Action Plan. Many prefer to think of it as an opportunity in terms of people who will be concentrated in Geneva, and in terms of international press coverage of the summit that can be used to inject our concerns into global media space. Others see it as an appropriate moment to push forward the growth of the global media justice movement in many parallel local events, or to advance the idea of a human right to communicate.

./english/377.txt:16:A young man, who is part of the electoral reform and accountability campaign, located in Bombay was so overwhelmed by the throbbing, procession and drums and loudspeaker filled campus or fields of the Nizam College – and all so peaceful, no violence at all, no garbage thrown all around like a political party congress, no hierarchies at all, no cars, just space, space and space, and crowds, crowds and crowds milling together, finding their way around – was so captivated with this marvel, he was transformed for life. He realised that what he was doing was just a small corner, compared to where other campaigns had reached.

./english/379.txt:16:As the third millennium unfolds, one of the most dramatic technological and economic revolutions in history is advancing a set of processes that are changing everything from the ways that people work to the ways that they communicate with each other and spend their leisure time. The technological revolution centres on computer, information, communication and multimedia technologies. These are key aspects of the production of a new economy, described as postindustrial, post-Fordist and postmodern, accompanied by a networked society and cyberspace, and the juggernaut of globalization. There are, of course, furious debates about how to describe the Great Transformation of the contemporary epoch, whether it is positive and negative, and what are the political prospects for democratization and radical social transformation.[1]

./english/379.txt:38:Significant political struggles today against globalization are mediated by technopolitics, that is the use of new technologies such as computers and the internet to advance political goals. To some extent, politics in the modern era have always been mediated by technology, with the printing press, photography, film, radio and television playing crucial roles in politics and all realms of social life, as McLuhan, Innis, Mumford and others have long argued and documented. In representative democracies participation is mediated by technology, as the disastrous failure of voting machines and the voting-counting process in the US 2000 presidential election dramatized (see Kellner forthcoming).

./english/380.txt:13:Moreover, advocates of a postmodern break in history argue that developments in transnational capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of post-Fordism, or postmodernism as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Jameson 1991; and Gottdiener 1995). Others define the emergent global economy and culture as a "network society" grounded in new communications and information technology (Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998). For others, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and its market economy (see apologists such as Fukuyama 1992 and Friedman 1999 who perceive this process as positive, while others portray it as negative, such as Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Eisenstein 1998; and Robins and Webster 1999). Some theorists see the emergence of a new transnational ruling elite and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair 2001), while others stress global fragmentation of “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996). Driving “post” discourses into novel realms of theory and politics, Hardt and Negri (2000) present the emergence of “Empire” as producing emergent forms of sovereignty, economy, culture, and political struggle that open the new millennium to an unforeseeable and unpredictable flow of novelties, surprises, and upheavals.

./english/380.txt:37: From this perspective, globalization cannot be understood without comprehending the scientific and technological revolutions and global restructuring of capital that are the motor and matrix of globalization. Many theorists of globalization, however, either fail to observe the fundamental importance of scientific and technological revolution and the new technologies that help spawn globalization, or interpret the process in a technological determinist framework that occludes the economic dimensions of the imperatives and institutions of capitalism. Such one-sided optics fail to grasp the coevolution of science, technology, and capitalism, and the complex and highly ambiguous system of globalization that combines capitalism and democracy, technological mutations, and a turbulent mixture of costs and benefits, gains and losses.

./english/380.txt:61: In addition to technologically determinist and reductive postindustrial accounts of globalization, there are economic determinist discourses that view it primarily as the continuation of capitalism rather than its restructuring through technological revolution. A large number of theorists conceive globalization simply as a process of the imposition of the logic of capital and neo-liberalism on various parts of the world rather than seeing the restructuring process and the enormous changes and transformations that scientific and technological revolution are producing in the networked economy and society. Capital logic theorists, for instance, portray globalization primarily as the imposition of the logic of capital on the world economy, polity, and culture, often engaging in economic determinism, rather than seeing the complex new configurations of economy, technology, polity, and culture, and attendant forces of domination and resistance. In the same vein, some critical theorists depict globalization as the triumph of a globalized hegemony of market capitalism, where capital creates a homogeneous world culture of commercialization, commodification, administration, surveillance, and domination (Robins and Webster 1999).

./english/380.txt:65: From these economistic perspectives, globalization is merely a continuation of previous social tendencies; i.e. the logic of capital and domination by corporate and commercial interests of the world economy and culture. Defenders of capitalism, by contrast, present globalization as the triumph of free markets, democracy, and individual freedom (Fukuyama 1998 and Friedman 1999). Hence, there are both positive and negative versions of economic and technological determinism. Most theories of globalization, therefore, are reductive, undialectical, and one-sided, either failing to see the interaction between technological features of globalization and the global restructuring of capitalism, or the complex relations between capitalism and democracy. Dominant discourses of globalization are thus one-sidedly for or against globalization, failing to articulate the contradictions and the conflicting costs and benefits, upsides and downsides, of the process. Hence, many current theories of globalization do not capture the novelty and ambiguity of the present moment that involves both innovative forms of technology and economy -- and emergent conflicts and problems generated by the contradictions of globalization.

./english/380.txt:77: Moreover, with the turn toward neo-liberalism as a hegemonic ideology and practice, the market and its logic comes to triumph over public goods and the state is subservient to economic imperatives and logic. Yet the term technocapitalism points to a new configuration of capitalist society in which technical and scientific knowledge, computerization and automation of labor, and information technology and multimedia play a role in the process of production analogous to the function of human labor power, mechanization of the labor process, and machines in an earlier era of capitalism. This process is generating novel modes of societal organization, forms of culture and everyday life, conflicts, and modes of struggle.

./english/380.txt:117: Consequently, I want to argue that in order to properly theorize globalization one needs to conceptualize several sets of contradictions generated by globalization's combination of technological revolution and restructuring of capital, which in turn generate tensions between capitalism and democracy, and “haves” and “have nots.” Within the world economy, globalization involves the proliferation of the logic of capital, but also the spread of democracy in information, finance, investing, and the diffusion of technology (see Friedman 1999 and Hardt and Negri 2000). Globalization is thus a contradictory amalgam of capitalism and democracy, in which the logic of capital and the market system enter ever more arenas of global life, even as democracy spreads and more political regions and spaces of everyday life are being contested by democratic demands and forces. But the overall process is contradictory. Sometimes globalizing forces promote democracy and sometimes inhibit it, thus either equating capitalism and democracy, or simply opposing them, are problematical. These tensions are especially evident, as I will argue, in the domain of the Internet and the expansion of new realms of technologically-mediated communication, information, and politics.

./english/380.txt:121: The processes of globalization are highly turbulent and have generated new conflicts throughout the world. Benjamin Barber (1998) describes the strife between McWorld and Jihad, contrasting the homogenizing, commercialized, Americanized tendencies of the global economy and culture with traditional cultures which are often resistant to globalization. Thomas Friedman (1999) makes a more benign distinction between what he calls the "Lexus" and the "Olive Tree." The former is a symbol of modernization, of affluence and luxury, and of Westernized consumption, contrasted with the Olive Tree that is a symbol of roots, tradition, place, and stable community. Barber (1997), however, is too negative toward McWorld and Jihad, failing to adequately describe the democratic and progressive forces within both. Although Barber recognizes a dialectic of McWorld and Jihad, he opposes both to democracy, failing to perceive how both generate their own democratic forces and tendencies, as well as opposing and undermining democratization. Within the Western democracies, for instance, there is not just top-down homogenization and corporate domination, but also globalization-from-below and oppositional social movements that desire alternatives to capitalist globalization. Thus, it is not only traditionalist, non-Western forces of Jihad that oppose McWorld. Likewise, Jihad has its democratizing forces as well as the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who are now the most demonized elements of the contemporary era, as I discuss below. Jihad, like McWorld, has its contradictions and its potential for democratization, as well as elements of domination and destruction (see Kellner, forthcoming).

./english/380.txt:129: Hence, it is important to present globalization as a strange amalgam of both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and heterogeneity, difference, and hybridity, as well as a contradictory mixture of democratizing and anti-democratizing tendencies. On one hand, globalization unfolds a process of standardization in which a globalized mass culture circulates the globe creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere. But globalized culture makes possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world, thus proliferating hybridity, difference, and heterogeneity.[5] Every local context involves its own appropriation and reworking of global products and signifiers, thus proliferating difference, otherness, diversity, and variety (Luke and Luke 2000). Grasping that globalization embodies these contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization and heterogeneity, is crucial to articulating the contradictions of globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions.

./english/380.txt:137: In their magisterial book Empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of “Empire” and an assortment of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-full situation. As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a multidimensional mixture of expansions of the global economy and capitalist market system, new technologies and media, expanded judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.[6] Combining poststructuralism with “autonomous Marxism,” Hardt and Negri stress political openings and possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent process of the restructuring of capital.

./english/380.txt:141:Many theorists, by contrast, have argued that one of the trends of globalization is depoliticization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and end of traditional politics (Boggs 2000). While I would agree that globalization is promoted by tremendously powerful economic forces and that it often undermines democratic movements and decision-making, I would also argue that there are openings and possibilities for both a globalization from below that inflects globalization for positive and progressive ends, and that globalization can thus help promote as well as undermine democracy.[7] Globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism, a tremendous restructuring process, which creates openings for progressive social change and intervention. In a more fluid and open economic and political system, oppositional forces can gain concessions, win victories, and effect progressive changes. During the 1970s, new social movements, new non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and new forms of struggle and solidarity emerged that have been expanding to the present day (Hardt and Negri 2000; Burbach 2001; and Foran, forthcoming).

./english/380.txt:145: The present conjuncture, I would suggest, is marked by a conflict between growing centralization and organization of power and wealth in the hands of the few contrasted with opposing processes exhibiting a fragmentation of power that is more plural, multiple, and open to contestation than was previously the case. As the following analysis will suggest, both tendencies are observable and it is up to individuals and groups to find openings for political intervention and social transformation. Thus, rather than just denouncing globalization, or engaging in celebration and legitimation, a critical theory of globalization reproaches those aspects that are oppressive, while seizing upon opportunities to fight domination and exploitation and to promote democratization, justice, and a progressive reconstruction of the polity, society, and culture.

./english/380.txt:244: On a global terrain, Hardt and Negri (2000) have stressed the openings and possibilities for democratic transformative struggle within globalization, or what they call Empire. I am arguing that similar arguments can be made in which globalization is not conceived merely as the triumph of capitalism and democracy working together as it was in the classical theories of Milton Friedman or more recently in Francis Fukuyama. Nor should globalization be depicted solely as the triumph of capital as in many despairing anti-globalization theories. Rather, one should see that globalization unleashes conflicts between capitalism and democracy and in its restructuring processes creates new openings for struggle, resistance, and democratic transformation.

./english/382.txt:27:Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. A victory at the ballot box isn't a blank check for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

./english/383.txt:136:Argues that the intensification of the process of capital accumulation begins to

./english/385.txt:41:Jia Ching Chen recalled that once during the week of protest, in a jail holding cell, he was one of only two people of color among many Anglos. He tried to discuss with some of them the need to involve more activists of color and the importance of white support in this. "Some would say, 'We want to diversify', but didn't understand the dynamics of this." In other words, they didn't understand the kinds of problems described by Coumba Toure. "Other personal conversations were more productive," he said, "and some white people started to recognize why people of color could view the process of developing working relations with whites as oppressive."

./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:47:The New Economic Policy has already shown spectacular results. Foreign investment is increasing by leaps and bonds. Multinational corporations are entering almost every sector of the economy. Share markets, of course with the usual ups and downs, are showing a great activity and vibrancy. Availability of consumer goods - essentially luxurious - has increased. The choice of the consumer has multiplied. At the higher levels salaries have shot up. A new affluence is in evidence all over. Economic principles and policies are oriented to meet the demands of the 250 million middle class while neglecting the survival demands of the poor through employment generation. This process is basically the inversion of the Keynesian principle.

./english/386.txt:55:With the globalising of the Indian economy there is a radical reorganisation of manufacturing activity. The manufacturing process is trans-nationalised fragmented and dispersed across country. It becomes extremely capital-intensive and constantly replaces labour. The thrust of contemporary capitalism is more on dead labour than on living labour, on transfer of new values rather than creation of values. Similarly it is seen that it is not industrial but finance capital which dominates the economic scene. Speculation then becomes more important than manufacturing.

./english/386.txt:123:A major organisation at the forefront of the struggles against infiltration of Global capitalism was the Karnataka Rytha Rajya Sangha (KRRS). It became famous in the early nineties by its agitation against Kentucky Fried Chicken and against the attempt at gaining monopoly rights on seed and plant material by Transnational companies like Cargill. The farmers were outraged by the prospect of buying seeds every season from multinational seed companies. Methods of seed presevation integral to the farming experience and knowledge system of farmers since the time immemorial will be destroyed by this process.

./english/387.txt:47:The success of the Latin American Assembly of Peasant Women was manifested by the overwhelmingly favorable response to their proposals for equal presence in all levels of the peasant organization (from international to local) and in all instances of the agrarian reform process (from land titles to co-op leadership). The energies and enthusiasm unleashed gave added vitality to the proposals for coordinated joint continental action around peasant demands.

./english/387.txt:64:In Peru, the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP) is in the process of regrouping forces, battered by assassinations by the Fujimori regime, Sendero Luminoso the fanatical Maoist sect, and the political divisions provoked by the Leftist electoral parties cannibalizing members. In some regions the CCP has organized “rondas campesinos,” peasant self-defense groups to resist paramilitary forces and the “exemplary actions” of Sendero sectarians. Lopez and other peasants are critical of the trajectory of former movement leaders who gain elected office. “The closer to parliament the further from the people.”

./english/387.txt:84:The MST sees their urban organizing project as part of a national political struggle. To that end, they have formulated a program called “Project Brazil” which is based on a reversal of all the major free market counter-reforms: the re-nationalization of basic industries (petroleum, telecommunications, etc.), the socialization of the strategic heights of the economy—banking, foreign trade and an integral agrarian reform, which limits cheap exports and promotes linkages between cooperatives and industrial food processing plants.

./english/388.txt:8:What are the main points of disagreement – and agreement – among the world’s social movements? In the first book in English on the World Social Forum, two American activist/academics talk about the process, the people, and their vision for a future world. Thomas Ponniah and William Fisher spoke to openDemocracy's Solana Larsen under a tree in Porto Alegre.

./english/388.txt:17:Thomas Ponniah: I talked with the anti-Apartheid activist and poet Dennis Brutus in the autumn of 2000. Dennis explained that the WSF was an attempt to bring together progressives from all over the world to renew the process of envisioning a new world. It seemed obvious to me that there was a need to document the process. This was the impetus; it is only through documentation that activists and intellectuals can continue to build on the knowledge produced at each forum. I put the idea to Bill [William Fisher] and he agreed to co-edit a book on the alternatives presented at the forum.

./english/388.txt:35:WF: We saw many more divergences. But these were the ones that echoed most widely and seemed most significant to us. Convergences are harder to identify but are just as important. The one we focused on – it leapt out at us – was a commitment to a participatory democratic process.

./english/388.txt:55:TP: The choice of making India the base of the 2004 WSF was pretty much a consensual process. At the last forum, it was proposed that India host the WSF in 2003. The Indian members of the International Council said no, and that they needed more time to consult Indian civil society. One of the representatives told me at the time that only 200 or so activists in India even knew about the forum. At the International Council meetings in Barcelona in spring 2002, it was agreed that India should first host an Asian Social Forum and, based on the success of that event, the International Council and the India Working Committee should decide whether India could host the WSF in 2004. The Asian Social Forum was held in January in Hyderabad and was a great event that has filled many people with optimism about the WSF being held in India.

./english/388.txt:57:Also, the process of the forum moving around different parts of the Global South is actually playing out the democratic ideal, in the sense that movements are very wary of becoming bureaucratised, centralised, sedimented. So we have to have a forum that is structured in a more fluid manner. It cannot be permanently located in one place or it would just become a new IMF or a Soviet Union. Movements have learned from their history and from their adversary. The forum has to move. Porto Alegre is a great alternative, but so is Kerala in India, or Chiapas in Mexico where movements and governments are also experimenting with new forms of democracy. Porto Alegre was not known four years ago on the global left, and now, hopefully, parts of India will also become known for their alternative forms of governance. So I think it is a good thing. I hope that the forum also moves to Africa sometime in the near future so that we can learn from the innovations of African movements as well.

./english/388.txt:65:TP: The fact that we now have regional and thematic forums, and soon perhaps national and local forums, is an extension of the process. What this means is that if the global WSF ever collapsed, or fragmented, the process would continue, because there are now regional forums that are independent of the initial event. In this sense the WSF is already a great success because it has produced forums that go beyond itself – that will outlive it.

./english/388.txt:67:WF: It’s important to think of all these various forums as the WSF. They are the process that is the WSF. It is not just about this annual meeting.

./english/388.txt:73:The heart of the difference lies in this: is the WSF a process, an open social movement, or a powerful institution? Clearly, if it were the latter then it would be able to do things and achieve things. Some people would like to see it become the institution that would then be able to make another world emerge.

./english/388.txt:75:We don’t think that there is a single consensus that could come out of the forum. Nor would we want to see it powerful enough to institute one idea, as the consensus idea of the forum. So we are among those people who see the WSF as an absolutely new but significant process.

./english/389.txt:24:• Governance be retained as one of the thematic areas including both the contribution of ICTs to the consolidation and enhancement of democratic process at all levels from local to global and the democratic management of international bodies dealing with ICTs (e.g. ICANN, IETF, ITU);

./english/391.txt:8:It is also important because it has achieved the unification of the two generations of civil society: the NGOs that emerged in the 1970s to fight for human rights, sustainable development, full participation for women, etc, and in defence of human rights, of a sustainable environment, of the full participation of women, of the indigenous movement, and the movement that arose in the 1990s as an opposition force to the neoliberal globalisation process.

./english/392.txt:3:FOR A WSF PROCESS IN INDIA

./english/392.txt:19:process in the country. So I hope that we will be able to get this information at the January 9−

./english/392.txt:33:with hosting the next Forum alone but with building a WSF process in India. I see the two as

./english/392.txt:43:process

./english/392.txt:50:· Whether or not we host it, we need to see the Forum as a process and not as an

./english/392.txt:73:WSF process was born in Brazil and that the invitation has come from them to us in India.

./english/392.txt:85:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:91:we should definitely use the opportunity of the Forum process as a vehicle to build close

./english/392.txt:109:especially strongly in the context of organising a world meeting and process such as this.

./english/392.txt:115:that the World Social Forum process will itself get dragged into these turbulent domestic

./english/392.txt:119:World Social Forum process as such but rather with domestic currents in India that the

./english/392.txt:135:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:153:regional ones and then the next major one in 2004), will itself make this process and

./english/392.txt:176:meeting and process.

./english/392.txt:182:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:193:process

./english/392.txt:199:Social Forum process but one that is not partisan, either in terms of issues or in

./english/392.txt:219:ii) If the process of organising major meetings is going to continue, and if the

./english/392.txt:230:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:234:and richness that this can and will bring to the WSF process, we must ask the

./english/392.txt:238:iv) Given the nature and potential of the WSF process, it will be essential to first

./english/392.txt:245:specific prior agenda). The danger of the WSF process becoming captive to

./english/392.txt:247:v) We also need to insist that there is a conscious and planned process of

./english/392.txt:249:new Secretariat, including through a training and skill−building process, and

./english/392.txt:258:process calls a ’Mobilisation Committee’ within the country − and by implication, of

./english/392.txt:259:building a vigorous process of widespread and non−partisan mobilisation and

./english/392.txt:280:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:303:9. Whether or not we host it, we need to see the Forum as a process and not as an

./english/392.txt:306:and critically see ’the Forum’ as an ongoing organising and mobilisation process − rather

./english/392.txt:307:than virtually as only a one−off event held once a year. We need to craft it as a process

./english/392.txt:324:across the world has been one of the most important achievements of the World Social Forum process so

./english/392.txt:326:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:334:process.

./english/392.txt:338:parallel and in tandem. Indeed, one way of viewing the Forum as a process

./english/392.txt:340:their respective semi−autonomous processes to come together, rather than as

./english/392.txt:371:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/392.txt:383:Jai Sen, January 2002 − ’The WSF : Some Concerns and Considerations for a WSF Process in India’

./english/393.txt:16:referred to in India, ever since the WSF India process began, in January 2002. In other words, I

./english/393.txt:57:Charter – to be respected by all those who wish to take part in the process and to organize new

./english/393.txt:66:Charter - to be respected by all those who wish to take part in the process and to organize new

./english/393.txt:87:becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be

./english/393.txt:91:permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the

./english/393.txt:97:3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this

./english/393.txt:98:process have an international dimension.

./english/393.txt:99:3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process

./english/393.txt:102:4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of

./english/393.txt:110:4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of

./english/393.txt:228:proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and inequality that the process of capitalist

./english/393.txt:237:inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally

./english/393.txt:254:process of dehumanization the world is undergoing and reinforce the humanizing

./english/393.txt:258:and private life - will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of

./english/393.txt:265:15. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and

./english/393.txt:269:14. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements

./english/394.txt:41:work they did around the Forum, as a part of what in India was called ‘The WSF India Process’, a

./english/394.txt:49:Those who took the responsibility for setting up the WSF process in India also came to the

./english/394.txt:171:contributed over time to splits taking place in the World Social Forum process in the country. In

./english/394.txt:181:the very first year of the Forum process in India. Although FAIG is widely understood to be

./english/394.txt:186:which those in the leadership of the Forum process in India – led by groups affiliated to the CPI(M)

./english/394.txt:217:process such as the World Social Forum, there is always the completely unpredictable possibility of

./english/394.txt:239:clear that there has been some mistake, and those initiating the Forum process in the country

./english/394.txt:274:6 WSF India, June 2002 – ‘Building another world - The WSF India Process : A note for discussion’. 6 pp.

./english/394.txt:286:World Social Forum process in India’. Forthcoming in Sen, Anand, Escobar, and Waterman, eds – The

./english/394.txt:321:Forum process in India and internationally’. Available at http://www.choike.org/cgibin/

./english/394.txt:324:the first year of the World Social Forum process in India’. Forthcoming in Sen, Anand, Escobar, and

./english/395.txt:232:The Forum as Event, not World Process

./english/395.txt:238:Porto Alegre that ‘another world is possible,’ it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building

./english/395.txt:251:‘systematisation’ process, among others, as well as the working groups that the International

./english/395.txt:254:political process. The dominant impression that remains is therefore that the WSF is basically a

./english/395.txt:273:world politics and of looking beyond the Forum as a world event to seeing it as a world process.

./english/395.txt:415:Sousa Santos put forward the important proposition that conventional social and political processes

./english/395.txt:589:of organisations in social processes, we need to be willing to recognise and acknowledge the

./english/395.txt:624:structures of authentic representation. This history, and this process — the struggle — are of

./english/396.txt:44:The evolution of humanity is characterized, among other processes, by the need that individuals and collectives have, of establishing forms of interaction. We know that the first efforts of the newly born are a way of emitting sound in order to generate a space of communications. The spoken word, in any tongue, is a tool for dialogue since the beginning of life itself.

./english/396.txt:118:FIRE is about an international radio that broadcasts a critical content that combines sound with text and images with colors with an innovative treatment of the information. This interactive concept of radio is the creative process of a group of women that learn day to day to take advantage of the technological resources, in order to open channels that enable conversations within the networks and that allow women to create new forms of inclusion and disclosure of issues and perspectives for the sake of advancing their own human rights and those of all of humanity.

./english/396.txt:166:One example is the FIRE-PLACE at the Beijing + 5 UN process.

./english/396.txt:232:The FIRE-PLACE was also featured in other media while at the UN: AMARC´s PULSAR Press Agency, Australia Community Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, United Nations Women’s Radio, Women’s International News Gathering Service, the newspaper WomenAction during the Beijing + 5 process and The Independent of Mexico, Ciberbrújas of AMARC, Radio France International, Radio Caracol of Colombia, France Press Agency, the electronic magazine Drum Beat, FAIR in EUA, etc.

./english/396.txt:289:Although much work lies ahead, Sergia noted that "one positive step that we have already gained is that for the first time from the regional prep-com, discrimination on the basis of sexual preference is already in the agenda. I want to use this marathon to call on listeners to mobilize with us and support us so that the richness of plurality in our region expresses itself in the process toward the conference."

./english/396.txt:439:"The tendency of concentration of what is called the "world data processing society" is given by the rich countries, by which the dissemination is not determined only by the changes in technology, but should be understood in the specific structural and institutional context". (Guillian Marcelle, Coordinator of the Gender Equity working group of the African Information Society.)

./english/396.txt:443:When the spectrum of communications is analyzed, there is little doubt about the power it withholds. Those who own and decide in the media have the power to define that is socially prominent and relevant, wiping out of the social setting extensive sectors of the population. For the next years, the right to the communicate of the so called "voiceless" will continue to be a right to conquer and for those of us who do communications, it is a commitment for the sake of the "humanization" of humanity in the collective process of communication

./english/396.txt:569:It is a “multimedia radio” in permanent construction, where the oral language will bring its meaning to the information and communications technology in the process of exchange and navigation in the Internet, while at the same time allowing women to be there in that venue, both as producers and users of its resources.

./english/396.txt:585:FIRE reaches listeners directly through its live broadcasts and multimedia web pages in Spanish and English, but also reaches wider audiences through its multimedia strategy which simply means that through networking with other media venues, there is a process of re-broadcasting, re-distribution and re-publication of its programs. These unique strategies are consistent with FIRE’s objective to “connect voices, technologies and actions, amplifying women´s voices worlwide.”

./english/397.txt:40:Everywhere in the world dockers can relate to the experience of Liverpool. In the Brazilian port of Santos a strike was provoked in April by COSIPAR, the giant company processing iron ore in the Amazon, when it employed casual dock labour. In the same month Amsterdam dock workers blockaded a road tunnel for the same reason.

./english/398.txt:18:Eduardo Fernandez of the Southern Cone Trade Union Federation said that in Latin America in particular there were strong alliances between trade unions and civil society groups that were forged during the long years of dictatoriship throughout the region. 'If the WSF process has to go forward there must be respect for diversity within the movement' he said.

./english/399.txt:32:Decomposition: the process in which the traditional cultural forms have destroyed themselves as a result of the emergence of superior means of dominating nature which enable and require superior cultural constructions. We can distinguish between an active phase of the decomposition and effective demolition of the old superstructure - which came to an end around 1930 - and a phase of repetition which has prevailed since then. The delay in the transition from decomposition to new constructions is linked to the delay in the revolutionary liquidation of capitalism.

./english/399.txt:42:Unlike the Special Branch sergeant, Malcolm Mclaren obviously did'nt do his homework properly (Or maybe, schoolboy prankster that he is, he did'nt care about the exam results as long as he became a personality cult). However in 1957 the soon to be Situationists did not accept this as the way things would remain, not if they had anything to do with it. In opposition to this process they formed 'the Situationist International': a group consisting mostly of artists, intellectuals and the like (it has to be said), which set out to develop a new way of interpreting society as a whole. (Prior to the S.I. the Lettrists, who predated Punk by almost 30 years sporting trousers painted with slogans).

./english/399.txt:121:They had no illusions of overthrowing Bourgeois Society in one foul swoop. No Revolution. The plan was to stage a series of revolutionary shocks. Each one setting off a irreversible process of change. The March 22nd Movement acting as detonator but not attempting to control the forces it unleashed. They realized such a revolt could not last, but at least it would provide a glimpse of what was possible. If they failed it was just a matter of time before another situation developed in another place in another way.

./english/400.txt:11:Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1998a, 1998b) have elaborated an analytic framework for the study of information warfare. While they approach the topic primarily from a military and strategic studies perspective, they claim a wider applicability for their framework, in particular emphasising its usefulness in analysing the growing importance of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, criminal networks and, of particular interest here, non-governmental organisations. This framework comprises three levels of analysis - organisational, strategic and doctrinal. The analysis of these three levels is underpinned by a general conceptual approach which distinguishes two views of information: an information processing view which concentrates on the organisation, storage and transmission of particular pieces of information; and a 'structural' view of information which addresses meaning and values, and the ways in which information is embedded and embodied in organisations, artefacts and people (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1998a). These structural and processing views are presented as complementary, rather than rival, ways of looking at information and provide a way of integrating technological and organisational emphasises in discussions of information warfare.

./english/400.txt:35:The importance of ICTs in social netwar is twofold. Firstly, they provide the communications infrastructure by which networked organisation can be sustained particularly at a transnational level. Secondly, they constitute a terrain on which aspects of social conflicts are played out. Discussion of ICTs and information as terrain is separated here into their related structural and procedural aspects (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1998a). The structural dimension is concerned with ideas and values, and ways in which the Internet and more conventional media provide an arena for 'hearts and minds' battles for wider public support. The information processing aspects are seen more directly in discussions of issues such as denial of service and Internet security.

./english/400.txt:37:At the information processing level ICTs, and in particular the Internet, provide both weapons and targets in social netwar. ICT systems and infrastructures may be vulnerable to digital and or to physical attack (e.g. Boulanger, 1998; Cobb, 1999). The objective of such an attack may be the basic denial or disruption of service to an adversary, as for example in the case of 'ping' attacks aimed at disabling major internet portal sites early in 2000 (Financial Times, 2000). Alternatively, a digital attack may involve gaining illicit access to an adversary's information system in order to subvert it. Examples of both of these types of attack are apparent in social movement campaigns. Protesters subverted the Nike Web site, redirecting users to a site calling for the disruption of a world economic summit in Australia (Richtel, 2000). Following the breakdown if the Middle East peace process, both Palestinian and Israeli activists and supporters have attempted to disable the other side's Web sites by using widely available software to overload a server by bombarding it with email or 'ping' requests (Whitaker, 2000).

./english/400.txt:89:For ICEM the cybercampaigns have primarily been 'hearts and minds' operations (primarily addressing structural rather processing informational aspects, in Arqilla & Ronfeldt's terms) seeking to use the web to raise the profile of the various disputes both directly and indirectly. They have gone beyond simply disseminating information, to provide mechanisms for supporters to register support for the campaign. The opportunities to send protest messages were not, however, intended primarily to disrupt adversaries' information systems - rather they aimed to give a way for passive readers of the pages to become more active participants in the campaigns. An internal secretariat report emphasised this as follows: "The interactive nature of the technology lends itself perfectly to changing readers into concerned observers and then into active participants". However, the cybercampaigns do appear to have had an impact on the availability of adversary's service in at least two cases. In the first case (Campaign A), despite claiming that they had received relatively few protest messages, the company were reported as having established a parallel email system as a contingency (Arsenault, 1996). In Campaign D, internal mailing lists, the addresses of which had been known to ICEM were either removed, or had access controlled, shortly after their publication on the campaign Web sites.

./english/401.txt:26:The secular trinity of c19th socialism was Labour-Internationalism-Emancipation. As early-industrial capitalism developed into a national-industrial-colonial capitalism, the internationalism of labour became literally international, and simultaneously lost its emancipatory aspiration and capacity. The dramatic – and labour-devastating – development of a globalised-networked-informatised capitalism is raising the necessity and possibility of a new kind of labour internationalism, capable not only of defence against neo-liberal globalisation but also of an emancipatory challenge to such. This implies self-liberation from the traditional (understanding of the) working-class, the trade-union form and socialist ideology. Such an emancipation can be assisted by a recognition of the actually-existing work and workers produced by a globalized-networked-informatised capitalism. Positively it requires a close articulation of labour with the global justice movement (a.k.a. 'anti-corporate' and 'anti-capitalist'), and serious address to processes, discontents, movements and alternatives previously considered marginal or irrelevant. It also requires reconsideration of the relationship between labour, internationalism, socialism and utopia. The paper responds to the 'New Labour Internationalisms' theme of an international research project on 'Rethinking Social Emancipation'.

./english/401.txt:138: Oliveira/The Internationale in Brazil. Although apparently addressed to the international and internationalism, this paper is primarily concerned with the past and present of the Brazilian trade union movement, particularly the long-central metalworking/auto workers unions, and particularly the process of struggle/negotiation with the state and employers as Brazilian industry reels under the violent effects of neo-liberalism on a world scale. Oliveira does, however, devote several pages to the past and present of Brazilian and autoworker internationalism. He identifies three phases: 1) the anarcho-syndicalist internationalism of the first generation of workers, brought to Southern Brazil by immigrants from Southern Europe; 2) the party internationalism of the Communists in the 1920s-30s, later opposed by US efforts at a pro-capitalist internationalism - both marginal to the national-populist unionism of dictator Getulio Vargas; 3) a factory-worker internationalism that began under the military dictatorship, as Brazil became a major metal/motor manufacturer, and counterpart unions - particularly in Europe - became interested in the increasingly militant unionism of the São Paulo ABC region.

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

./english/401.txt:166:As we know, Communist mythology has now collapsed and, as a result, ‘class unionism’ is today riven by innumerable problems and fragilities. Not only have the strikes of the working class been ‘cannibalized’ by capitalism, the administrative structures of the main trade unions have also largely become instruments of state regulatory action. The trade unions themselves have also contributed to this process, by ‘cannibalizing’ the old proposals of emancipatory action. In the midst of all this, the conquests made by workers and by the traditional trade union movement have largely given way before the pressures of co-option, and have imperceptibly entered the dynamic of the system, becoming absorbed by the rationale of regulation… However, alongside the discrediting of the ‘old’ worker- and national-based trade unionism, there are signs of revival, especially on the level of ideas and political debate. These, which occur as much in academia as in the trade union domain, point towards the emergence of a ‘new’ social trade union movement of global or international character…

./english/401.txt:177: Dietrich and Nayak/Fishworkers in India. Focused on the non-industrial fisherpeople of Southern India, D&N reveal how their fate has been largely determined by the inter/national capitalist market and both Northern and Indian state development and/or modernization policies. Far from accepting this fate, however, fishworkers have been attempting, for 30 years or more, to organize themselves both for defense, within the existing structures, and processes and counter-assertion beyond such. Their struggles have been rich, complex and even contradictory, since they have had to come to terms with class identity/divisions, and with communal identities (ethnicity, caste, residence, religion). They have also had to negotiate with the local and national state apparatus, and with organizers/intellectuals from the church, parties, unions. In so far as Kerala has been a progressive state within India, and that unions of the left have a major presence there, the fishworkers have also had to confront the statist and developmentalist left:

./english/402.txt:10:Amilcar Cabral, assassinated leader of anti-Portuguese struggle in colonial Africa, suggested that after independence there would occur the ‘suicide of the petty-bourgeoisie’. Nice idea, but no cigar! As the more-sceptical Frantz Fanon argued at the same time, the post-colonial elites were going to do everything they could to retain and increase their privileges. There are striking power/wealth differences between Forum participants, particularly visible in the case of the South. In two or three Latin American cases known to me, the poorer participants travelled by bus – this sometimes meaning a 4-5 day journey, with entry obstacles at various border-crossings. There is no reason to assume that any elite is suicidal (nor that I was going to abandon a hotel with hot and cold running internet) without irresistible pressure from outside or below. In so far, on the other hand, as the WSF elite has declared certain principles relating to liberty, equality, solidarity, pluralism, the respect of difference and the pursuit of happiness, then it might be possible to confront them (us) with the necessity of re-balancing the power equation. The elites could then put their efforts, in their home states/constituencies into facilitating rather than dominating or controlling the Forum process.

./english/402.txt:12:The experience of women within the Forum might point here in different directions. I have no figures for this year, but at both previous events, women were almost 50 percent of the participants. There are powerful feminists on the panels and in at least the IC, quite capable here of making the Forum a Feminist Issue. There are numerous panels on gender and sexuality in both the Central and Marginal programmes. Whilst the recent Latin American/Caribbean Feminist Encounter considered alternatives to the old pattern, and addressed itself centrally to globalisation, it seems to have not identified itself as such with the Forum process. Despite a discernible shift in the international women’s/feminist networks, over recent years, away from the inter/state bodies and toward the public arena, I am wondering whether the lobby has not been shifted from that old site to this new one.

./english/402.txt:40:The open secret of the electronic media, the decisive political factor, which has been waiting, suppressed or crippled, for its moment to come, is their mobilising power. When I say mobilize… namely to make [people] more mobile than they are. As free as dancers, as aware as football players, as surprising as guerrillas. Anyone who thinks of the masses only as the object of politics, cannot mobilize them. He wants to push them around. A parcel is not mobile; it can only be pushed to and fro. Marches, columns, parades, immobilize people […] The new media are egalitarian in structure. Anyone can take part in them by a simple switching process […] The new media are orientated towards action, not contemplation; towards the present, not tradition […] It is wrong to regard media equipment as mere means of consumption. It is always, in principle, also means of production […] In the socialist movements the dialectic of discipline and spontaneity, centralism and decentralization, authoritarian leadership and anti-authoritarian disintegration has long ago reached deadlock. Networklike communication models built on the principle of reversibility of circuits might give indications of how to overcome this situation. (Hans Magnus Enzensberger 1976:21-53)

./english/402.txt:50:I am concerned about the future of the Forum process but not worried. Pandora has opened her box, the genie has is out of the lamp, the secret of fire is now an open one. Already in Florence, young libertarians were mumbling, ‘Another Forum is Possible’. This possibility is not only a matter of information and communication technology (which has yet to produce an English/Spanish translation programme with an appropriate vocabulary). It may be the combination, precisely, of this with youth, given that urban kids have grown up with cellular phones, playing arcade computer games, and therefore with an affinity for any computer technology, and a healthy disregard for attempts to coral such. (I was moved to produce my first-ever Power Point production, on WSF2, by my 12-year-old granddaughter, Joelle, who is also puzzled about my resistance to the cell phone, text-messaging and computer chat).

./english/402.txt:52:For the rest, I am inspired by: energetic and innovative social protest, and original analyses of the local-national-global dialectic in Argentina; by the belated appearance in Peru of a network, Raiz/Root, which clearly has some feeling that the WSF is more than an NGO jamboree; by the Kidz in the Kamp who were discussing under a tree, and with informal translation, how to ensure that the emancipatory and critical forces had more impact on the Forum process; by the struggle, against all odds, of the US Znet people to mount ‘Life after Capitalism’, an event of post-capitalist propuesta within the Forum; by the increasing number of compañer@s, of various ages, identities, movements and sexual orientations, who believe that, in the construction of a meaningfully civil global society, transparency is not only the best policy but the right one.

./english/403.txt:23:We began to follow a whole series of dynamics of sabotage: in fact no-one had set out to commit sabotage, yet there existed a continuity of imperfect operations such that by the end the product was completely useless ... What is spontaneity? In reality it is my inability to establish an organisational, i.e. voluntary, precise, determinate relationship with another worker. In these conditions spontaneity acts through the very communication which the labour process as such, as a machine foreign to me, determines (Negri 1979: 64-5).

./english/403.txt:57:In other words, any discussion of how to process the volume of information circulating within and between the various movements engaged with the Zapatistas immediately raised questions about the nature of the power relations existing within and between the various class forces with which they were associated. For his own part, Neill (1997b) saw no simple solution to the problem; any real answer, he believed, would only follow from a serious exploration of how to challenge the more general problem of ‘hierarchy — of race, gender, nation, work, wages — within the [global working] class’.

./english/403.txt:87:Day’s definition suggests rather more than ‘transmission’, and is far away from notions that see information as indifferent to its medium. At the same time, it also provides a useful starting point for making sense of the ways in which information is handled in organisations and movements that claim commitment to participatory decision making processes.

./english/403.txt:91:This touches in turn upon some arguments raised in an interview that Anita Lacey and I recently conducted with another Melbourne comrade, as part of a small, ongoing enquiry into the use of information and ICT in local anti-capitalist politics. Active in a network that seeks to open up space for an ongoing dialogue between environmental and workplace activists, Colin defined useful information as ‘what can facilitate the process of building bridges and crossing borders’. Sceptical of the notion that trust — ‘the most important question’ — could be established ‘through the screen’, his biggest concern was that the enormous quantities of information available online may blind us to the knowledge and wisdom available from face-to-face encounters with those who have experienced and learned from earlier struggles against capital and the state.

./english/403.txt:97:If we take this requirement to listen and understand ‘before you speak’ seriously, then maybe we need to rethink our understanding of the process of communication itself. Perhaps then we’ll also find the need for some new starting points in grappling with the meaning and utility of information, as part of our reconsideration of those with and from whom we aim to be informed.

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

./english/405.txt:8:Their authors are connected to the history of the process that started in Porto Alegre. Ignacio Ramonet created the famous sentence: "Another world is possible"; Fran�ois Polet is assistant to Fran�ois Houtart, an important figure on the WSF International Council. The central arguments of both texts is very similar and can be summarised into three essential ideas: a) By unfolding itself, every year, in the form of thousands of activities and hundreds of ideas without hierarchy among themselves, the WSF keeps its participants fragmented and reduces itself to a folkloric parade of ideas and good intentions; b) The way to avoid this huge project losing itself is to make the Forum a great "general assembly of mankind", where actions that have priority are chosen to be adopted by all participants; c) The first step was taken in Porto Alegre, on January 2005, at the Plaza S�o Raphael Hotel, when nineteen intellectuals announced a manifesto that put forward twelve ideas that alterglobalisation should defend so that it would no longer be "morally victorious but without being effective". And in particular, at the end of his text Ignacio Ramonet suggests that it is only through government actions such as those being taken by Hugo Chavez that it is possible to avoid falling victim to neoliberalism.

./english/408.txt:32:Much more could be said about all this, since it reflects the debates going on among activists and intellectuals involved in both the WSF and the ESF processes (and elsewhere as well, for all I know). But I want to conclude by emphasizing just what a stunning success the Bombay WSF was and by thanking all those responsible. They have thrown down a huge challenge to themselves to capitalize on their own achievement, and they have set a new standard for the rest of us to aim at.

./english/409.txt:19:Which is where the World Social Forum came in: ATTAC saw the conference as an opportunity to bring together the best minds working on alternatives to neoliberal economic policies--not just new systems of taxation but everything from sustainable farming to participatory democracy to cooperative production to independent media. From this process of information swapping ATTAC believed its "common agenda" would emerge.

./english/409.txt:21:The result of the gathering was something much more complicated--as much chaos as cohesion, as much division as unity. In Porto Alegre the coalition of forces that often goes under the banner of antiglobalization began collectively to recast itself as a pro-democracy movement. In the process, the movement was also forced to confront the weaknesses of its own internal democracy and to ask difficult questions about how decisions were being made--at the World Social Forum itself and, more important, in the high-stakes planning for the next round of World Trade Organization negotiations and the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City at the end of April.

./english/409.txt:59:The griping about a "coup détat of the French intellectuals" was symbolic of a larger problem. The organizational structure of the forum was so opaque that it was nearly impossible to figure out how decisions were made or to find ways to question those decisions. There were no open plenaries and no chance to vote on the structure of future events. In the absence of a transparent process, fierce NGO brand wars were waged behind the scenes--about whose stars would get the most airtime, who would get access to the press and who would be seen as the true leaders of this movement.

./english/409.txt:67:With a sweeping new round of WTO negotiations set for the fall, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) being negotiated in April, these questions about process are suddenly urgent. How do we determine whether the goal is to push for "social clauses" on labor and environmental issues in international agreements or to try to shoot down the agreements altogether? This debate--academic at previous points because there was so much resistance to social clauses from business--is now very real. US industry leaders, including Caterpillar and Boeing, are actively lobbying for the linking of trade with labor and environmental clauses, not because they want to raise standards but because these links are viewed as the key to breaking the Congressional stalemate over fast-track trade negotiating authority. By pushing for social clauses, are unions and environmentalists unwittingly helping the advancement of these negotiations, a process that will also open the door to privatization !

./english/409.txt:69:But that is not the strategy leading up to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. Several large labor organizations and NGOs have taken government money to organize a parallel Peoples Summit during the official week of meetings, and have yet to issue clear statements on the FTAA. Not surprisingly, there were tensions about these issues at the forum, with those favoring direct action accusing the Peoples Summit organizers of helping to make the closed FTAA process appear open to "civil society"--perhaps just the public relations gloss Bush needs to secure fast track.

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

./english/409.txt:72:Perhaps the real lesson of Porto Alegre is that democracy and accountability need to be worked out first on more manageable scales--within local communities and coalitions and inside individual organizations. Without this foundation, theres not much hope for a satisfying democratic process when 10,000 activists from wildly different backgrounds are thrown in a room together. What has become clear is that if the one "pro" this disparate coalition can get behind is "pro-democracy," then democracy within the movement must become a high priority. The Porto Alegre Call for Mobilization clearly states that "we challenge the elite and their undemocratic processes, symbolized by the World Economic Forum in Davos." Most delegates agreed that it simply wont do to scream Elitist! from a glass house--or from a glass VIP lounge.

./english/416.txt:19:We necessarily need to think about broadening our Network. We must win more people and from more and various structures for the support of our work. We must achieve a more productive and effective work. The issues of repression should not get lost inside the ESF process.

./english/417.txt:63: the forum process previously.

./english/417.txt:70:  Since the social forum process is not a process of rich people, it had to be organized as

./english/417.txt:137:-> For each ESF process there should be a structure responsible for Eastern European inclu-

./english/417.txt:201:process

./english/417.txt:217:social issues, party participation hinder that process.

./english/417.txt:225:process only get mobilized for an ESF if they are listened to, if proposals made are taken up

./english/417.txt:231:the process. The Charta of Principle has to be fulfilled in order to take along as many move-

./english/417.txt:233:tive for the process.

./english/417.txt:324: tive for the process. Fulfilling the Charta of Principles is a responsibility of the whole

./english/417.txt:348:  For each ESF process there should be a structure responsible for Eastern European in-

./english/417.txt:356: merging process. Self organized events/platforms were a success; however, fragmenta-

./english/417.txt:367: lost in the process.

./english/419.txt:11:IG. 8. There is the need for an enlargement to have all the spectrum of social movements, trade unions, ONGs, individuals in the ESF process

./english/419.txt:12:IG. 9. No implication of young people in the process

./english/419.txt:18:IG. 15. There will be a day of global action in 2008. What will be the process to build for it?

./english/419.txt:26:IM. 6. How to give in each country the possibilities to participate to networks and to the process

./english/419.txt:40:IE. 2. Role of EPAs: it’s working to prepare ESF. The process needs to improve and involve more people, being open, efficient and inclusive.

./english/419.txt:45:IE. 7. Normally the people who can participate are the ones who have big organisations who can pay for them. How to involve all in the process

./english/419.txt:61:PM. 1. Women in all the process and in self-organised space (Women assembly)

./english/419.txt:62:PM. 2. Launch a new enlargement process (not only to other country but also new organisations, other components of the movement)

./english/419.txt:64:PM. 4. Improving merging process by new methodology (first selecting themes, than having discussion by themes for merging preparation, networks actors of the merging, selfmerging, more time to work on the merging)

./english/420.txt:41:national law. The entire process takes place beyond the political public of

./english/420.txt:138:Successful integration is a reciprocal learning process. Here in Germany,

./english/470.txt:15:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/470.txt:41:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won’t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/470.txt:73:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/470.txt:77:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/470.txt:97:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/472.txt:9:The central point of unity in the movement is its opposition to the neoliberal model promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) and transnational corporations. The IFIs condition loans to the governments of developing countries on a fiscal austerity that requires those governments to limit spending on their people’s needs. And the corporations invest in manufacturing plants for export, driving down wages as they threaten to move their investments in search of cheaper labor. In the eyes of their critics, IFIs and transnational corporations perpetuate poverty in the Third World, while increasing the steadily growing riches of the First. Indeed, the Forum’s “Charter of Principles” broadly states that the WSF is “opposed to neoliberalism and to the domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism…. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests, with the complicity of national governments.”2

./english/472.txt:31:Just as the wef found its home in a luxury ski resort in the Swiss Alps, the WSF’s organizers chose Porto Alegre as an appropriate site for their gathering. Porto Alegre had been a longstanding PT municipal stronghold and a showcase for the PT’s brand of participatory democracy. The most important exemplar of participatory governance in Porto Alegre is the participatory budget process, in which public assemblies decide how to spend each year’s municipal budget. The process of deliberation is also a process of education, through which participants learn to respect one another’s points of view and put the interests of the community above their own parochial interests.

./english/472.txt:33:The PT and the city government spared no effort in showing off the budgeting process to WSF delegates. Under the PT mayor, the city provided major financial and logistical support for the Forum in its first years, as did the PT governor of Rio Grande do Sul, the state of which Porto Alegre is the capital. When the PT lost the gubernatorial election in 2002, however, the state withdrew some resources from the WSF. And the party’s loss of the mayoralty in 2004 further dampened the welcome in 2005.

./english/472.txt:52:Undoubtedly, such a large event makes the full consultation of all potential participants impossible. It is difficult for such a process to function in an open, deliberative way or, even more, to give such a huge constituency a say in advance planning. Critics from the direct action movement, however, insist that anarchists have adopted consensus mechanisms that give representation and create unity among a large number of tight-knit affinity groups in massive demonstrations. According to David Graeber of the activist network, Peoples’ Global Action, these mechanisms provide a model for democratic deliberation in large assemblies. But they have rarely been applied in anything more than short-term actions.

./english/474.txt:16:Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's former chief of staff José Dirceu praised Chávez's "Bolivarian social revolution", which he described as a "process that is unique in South America, where for the first time, oil revenues are being distributed in order to, slowly but surely, bring about change ."

./english/474.txt:18:Dirceu said in Caracas that the Forum was held here because of the process of change that Venezuela is undergoing, which is "based on real participation by the people."

./english/476.txt:10:Porto Alegre in 2001 expected some 1500 participants. Some 10,000 came. The bulk of the participants in 2001 were from Latin America, France, and Italy. The basic principles of the WSF were that it was an "open meeting place" for "groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism." Its theme was "another world is possible." It was a "process," not an organization. It would not take positions as such, or make proposals for action, but it might generate such positions and proposals by some or all of those taking part in the WSF. It was "plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party" and acted in a "decentralized fashion." In short, there was to be no hierarchy or organizational discipline.

./english/477.txt:6:Porto Alegre in 2001 expected some 1500 participants. Some 10,000 came. The bulk of the participants in 2001 were from Latin America, France, and Italy. The basic principles of the WSF were that it was an "open meeting place" for "groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism." Its theme was "another world is possible." It was a "process," not an organization. It would not take positions as such, or make proposals for action, but it might generate such positions and proposals by some or all of those taking part in the WSF. It was "plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party" and acted in a "decentralized fashion." In short, there was to be no hierarchy or organizational discipline.

./english/480.txt:8:moment. Using historical examples from colonial discourse analysis and recent ‘development’ processes,

./english/484.txt:4:The author reflects about the proposals and perspectives of WSF and wonders if it is really a new space for politics. He analyzes the Forum’s process as being democratic and questions its future.

./english/485.txt:4:After the conclusion of the fourth WSF, held in India, the authors debate the politics about the open space that took place in Mubai and reflect about the importance of a geographical changing in this edition. They conclude the article saying that the changes show that the Forum is a process in a constant and growing movement

./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/502.txt:8:Their authors are connected to the history of the process that started in Porto Alegre. Ignacio Ramonet created the famous sentence: "Another world is possible"; François Polet is assistant to François Houtart, an important figure on the WSF International Council. The central arguments of both texts is very similar and can be summarised into three essential ideas: a) By unfolding itself, every year, in the form of thousands of activities and hundreds of ideas without hierarchy among themselves, the WSF keeps its participants fragmented and reduces itself to a folkloric parade of ideas and good intentions; b) The way to avoid this huge project losing itself is to make the Forum a great "general assembly of mankind", where actions that have priority are chosen to be adopted by all participants; c) The first step was taken in Porto Alegre, on January 2005, at the Plaza São Raphael Hotel, when nineteen intellectuals announced a manifesto that put forward twelve ideas that alterglobalisation should defend so that it would no longer be "morally victorious but without being effective". And in particular, at the end of his text Ignacio Ramonet suggests that it is only through government actions such as those being taken by Hugo Chavez that it is possible to avoid falling victim to neoliberalism.

./english/510.txt:4:This year, the World Social Forum will be polycentric! In other words, it will be held practically simultaneously in Bamako, Mali; Caracas, Venezuela; and Karachi, Pakistan. It will be an opportunity for the process to take root on a global scale.

./english/510.txt:8:At the close of the first World Social Forum in January 2001, its organizers circulated a memo in which they proposed to convene World Social Forums every year, at the same date as the Davos Economic Forum. In 2002, a new WSF was held in Porto Alegre, and the holding of other Forums in various places of the world was encouraged. It had become clear that, along with the success of the first edition of the Forum (two persons expected, 20,000 participants!), the process of World Forums had to be continued as an alternative to the one-sided thinking (pensée unique) of the World Economic Forum.

./english/510.txt:24:In fact, the work program of each forum ensues from the activities proposed and self-managed by its participants. The registration process enables them to find out about the proposals from others, with common themes and convergences appearing quite naturally. The overall objective of overcoming neo-liberalism is shared by all. And each of these themes can be deepened based on the real interests of the participants, and not by decisions by a higher authority, this latter being non-existent and unacceptable in the Forum process.

./english/510.txt:32:(1) The International Council brings together around 100 organizations supporting the World Social Forum process. It decides on its general directions.

./english/512.txt:8:The World Social Forum process can be said to be expanding strongly. More than just expanding, though: that expansion is bringing something new, a qualitative change in the kind of unity that has been forged among those who want to build the “other possible world”, a unity that respects diversity and in which everyone plays a leading role. The Forums do not result from decisions by an international summit that schedules and monitors them: they are always the initiatives and the responsibility of the civil society movements, groups and organisations of the country or region where they are held, with support from an International Council on which those groupings also participate. The Forums’ organizers – or facilitators, as we call them – in turn encourage participants to self-organise their activities at the Forums.

./english/512.txt:15:The aim of the political process launched in 2001 by the WSF remains the same: to permit encounters among “groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth” (1).

./english/512.txt:30:It may be that holding the next World Forum in Africa – a new social, economic and political reality – will reduce the scope for proposing that kind of single focus. The way of doing politics that it expresses, however, is the same as lies behind four challenges that the WSF process faces if it is to continue and expand, which may be a subject to be discussed by the International Council in March. Two of these challenges could be said to come from outside the Forum, and two from inside.

./english/512.txt:35:The Forums’ organisers ask something even more difficult of governments that dialogue with the WSF process – because they take a position on the same field of battle against neoliberalism: they ask them to help without interfering. Not all governments are willing to do that. It is hard for them to resist the temptation for self-promotion at the event. This difficulty in respecting the autonomy of civil society is a natural result of the political culture that prevailed throughout the last century.

./english/512.txt:39:Why should governments and parties not be given the central place they have always enjoyed and their activities be supported through the WSF process? That would risk reducing the whole meaning of the Forums to dust. Of course, governments and parties have a role that is very often decisive in bringing about the changes required to build the “other world”. But why not let civil society reinforce the battle fronts and do so autonomously?

./english/512.txt:62:Experience shows that this second path is not effective, and also that it is contrary to any construction of the “other possible world” – which must necessarily be characterized by respect for the diversity and differences in pace among people, or it will not be “another” world. Nonetheless, union has been maintained – the WSF process is now in its eighth year – and that is probably because, from the outset, the rule among the Forums’ organizers has been that decisions are made by consensus. That too takes time, but it means that decisions are upheld by all those who take part in them, for the good of preserving union.

./english/512.txt:69:The Bandung Conference, in the struggle for economic and political independence for Third World countries, was a conference of heads of state, not of peoples – even though the former may present themselves as representatives of the latter. Its proposal thus presupposes that everything depends on governments, and that real action for change depends on taking political power. Now that is a hotly debated issue in the WSF process, which is a space for peoples to interrelate through their organisations. In that respect, the initiative taken at Bamako adds to one of the challenges coming from outside the Forum, that is, the endeavour to increase governments’ presence in its actions. Caracas offered na unparalleled opportunity to gain a vigorous ally: President Chavez, who is notorious combatant in the anti-imperialist cause, and presented by some at “the leader we were needing”.

./english/512.txt:82:This challenge is the greatest of the four mentioned here. It first arose at the 2001 Forum, where for the first time the organisers of the Assembly wanted to put out their final “Appeal” as coming from all the participants at the event, and using the official Forum website for that purpose (3). It associates the value set on action by the social grassroots – which is an option taken by the Forum – with the feeling of urgency of calls to action. But instead of integrating naturally into the process that is underway, it holds to the type of competitive political action that is felt has to be changed in order to build the necessary union.

./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/513.txt:10:The rapid emergence of regional, national and thematic Forums soon led to the emergence of a process anchored in diverse realities being built from a basis of multiple critiques, but which merge together in shared hopes of a world of peace, justice, rights, diversity, and radical changes in patriarchal, class-based, racist and exclusive relations.

./english/513.txt:14:In its short life the Forum has quickly shifted from revealing the manifold relations of oppression which underlie all human relations to that of developing alternatives that have become forceful proposals that have in turn given rise to a process of developing strategies to achieve radical changes in human relations.

./english/513.txt:18:But the course to be taken entails looking at its identity, defined not only by its founding principles but also by the very process generated by the social dynamics which form it. Pluralism is a strong element of its equally complex and rebellious identity.

./english/513.txt:33:There are also those who see it as both a starting and an arrival point for developing a process of struggle that is clearly defined by a concrete agenda of struggle against capitalism.

./english/513.txt:41:Of course, the Forum can’t supplant movements or their actions or go back to a single line or a supreme command; its challenge lies in becoming a subject of change so that its accumulated wealth of proposals and ideas leads to advancements in the fight against the present model of development. This challenge to be creative implies a number of definitions and the collective acceptance that the Forum is not just an event but a process, and as such can’t limit itself to convocations.

./english/513.txt:44:The frequency of the Forum’s meetings is also under debate; its analysis alludes to different notions of time in the world. There is no single time; different civilisations, cultures, and even our movements and processes which are part of this process, have different concepts of time. To standardise timing and periodicity under a succession of events contradicts the Forum's pluralistic principles.

./english/513.txt:46:In fact, within the rhythms of the Forum, there is the time-frame of the events, that of struggles, of practices and of debates, which are all inter-related. The challenge lies in how to combine the timing of the processes of struggle with that of the Forum events; in how to avoid an imbalance, where the timing of the events affects that of struggles. On the contrary, they should contribute to strengthening them, taking into account that they have their own specific terrain and agendas.

./english/513.txt:60:We are entering the first, novel experiment of the Polycentric Forums, which coincide with regional initiatives, and we hope that they won’t be down-graded because up to now the emergence of regional Forums has had the advantage of generating a distinct view of globalisation from specific realities and so broadening the idea of processes that are based on local realities and experiences.

./english/513.txt:62:However, in the Forum’s creative process there’s a striking coincidence. The three countries that have responded to the convocation – Venezuela, Mali, and Pakistan – are from the South. This opens up horizons for looking from and towards the South, developing a perspective that recognises the South as a source of alternatives, which inscribes the multiplicity of visions for the future which co-exist here. Because it is precisely here that age-old universal proposals of a different, alternative world to that of the northern-western-centric one continue to survive, though they have not as yet been fully expressed and made their presence felt in the Forum.

./english/513.txt:65:The Forum is undoubtedly the largest planetary initiative, bringing together citizens, in history. Its accumulated experience is benefited by the wealth of an important trajectory of struggles and resistance to old and new forms of domination; its heritage of critical thought, alternatives and visions of change are an inexhaustible source of proposals and actions; its participatory, pluralistic and diverse character is the terrain for building new democratic practices. In sum, in its short life the Forum has begun a wide-ranging process of opening up possibilities for struggle against the development model. Its growth now implies the need to invent strategies to politically organise resistance to the model and to do so, from a pluralist and diverse prospect of hope, that the Forum awakened on a planetary scale when it affirmed that “Another World is Possible”.

./english/519.txt:22:The World Social Forum process has decided, in this scenario of fragmenta-tion regarding the international left wing’s initiatives, to have a polycentric 4th edition, with three events of Global South continental reach. In the beginning, the idea was to have them taking place simultaneously, but they ended up happening in different dates, the first was in Bamako (in Mali), followed by the one in Caracas (Venezuela), both in January, 2006 and in Karachi (Pakistan) in March 2006 (postponed due to the earthquake that hit the country). Afterwards, the Forum in Bang-kok, which should take place on October 21st and 22nd, was added to the polycentric process. There will also be the Brazilian Social Forum, in Recife, from April 21st to 23rd and the European Social Forum, in Athens, from May 4th to 7th.

./english/519.txt:24:These events deepen the dialogue with the current progressist processes, within a situation in which mobilization and campaigns that have always been part of the global movement are facing difficul-ties and/or are cohabiting with a bigger state protagonism – FTTA, WTO, transgenic, patent medi-cines, Kyoto Protocol, International Criminal Court, protests against the IMF and the G-8, cam-paign against war, etc.

./english/519.txt:28:In Bamako, the African edition of the polycentric Forum has, for the first time, introduced com-pletely the self-organized dynamics, which characterizes the Forum’s format within the continent. Ten thousand people participated in the event and hundreds of activities took place, it was a suc-cessful process, assembling the entirety of debates on pan-African tradition and its renewal and also many questions that are strongly present in the continent – from the free trade impact to Aids, from migrations to the role of international agencies. The Forum also witnessed an important effort to re-cover the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and socialist tradition, inherited from Bandung – a seminar stimulated by Samir Amin, right before the Forum, debated the non-aligned movement’s legacy, which was born in April 1955, in Indonesia. Bamako demonstrated an improvement of the WSF process in the continent and sealed a promising direction towards Nairobi 2007.

./english/519.txt:30:The political space in Caracas has been marked by the bolivarian experience and by the presence of Chavez government – which is natural, due to the characteristics of the proc-ess, in which the State has a string role. The Caracas WSF was an opportunity for international left wing sectors to get more acquainted with the Venezuelan experience and to dialogue with the axle built by Chavez and Castro, with its political initiatives, and to relate themselves with the Latin-American left wing recovery process.

./english/519.txt:34:But the Forum, with its eighty thousand participants, was also an opportunity for social movements to confront at a continental and international level and to launch again campaigns regarding certain themes, such as how to fight free trade (including the articulation of a global action plan to derail the WTO), the defense of water as a common good (integrating Latin-Americans and the Europe-ans) and a greater integration of the continents in the fight against war and militarization; the social movements could also again articulate themselves regarding the variety of themes, which make the richness of the Forum (external debt, indigenous people, women, Haiti, ecologists, fight against state-terrorism, sexual diversity, rural reform, etc). The Forum has witnessed the first unified inter-national labor union conference since the beginning of Cold War. The regional integration alterna-tives agenda, already reinforced by the ALBA proposal, has improved and has acquired density. And the Caracas Forum has witnessed a growth on the participation of movements and organiza-tions from the United States, integrating them more in the WSF process (with the perspective of having a Forum in the United States, in 2007). The remarks contained in many evaluations are re-lated to infrastructure, highlighting the difficulty caused by the activities being dispersed in a big city (the same kind of observation is also present in evaluations about Bamako).

./english/519.txt:36:These events have expressed tensions that are part of the WSF, which have been present in the process since its beginning. In one side, there is some questioning about its characteristic of being an open space that is not deicision-making. In the other side, regard-ing its autonomy before government and political parties. Although these tensions are not new, they have gained more intensity, mainly due to the current conjuncture of the global movement being more dispersed politically, but also due to each Bamako’s and Caracas’ events particularities.

./english/519.txt:38:Since the Forum has been constituted, an expressive sector within the International Council defends that the WSF, or at least the IC, should adopt resolutions which, supported by the legitimacy of the WSF process, would point directions for the movement. On this matter, it has been always dis-cussed that the “brand” WSF should be used to sign under a platform or position concerning a cer-tain theme (remember, for instance, the discussion during an IC meeting that preceded Porto Alegre 2003, whic discussed if this body should adopt a position against the Iraq invasion, a consensus among the participants).

./english/519.txt:42:The WSF has shown itself very efficient in giving impulse to the left wing’s political struggle in the beginning of this century. Innumerous declarations, platforms and calls have been coming out of the process’ events and have been fundamental to organize from the referendum on the FTTA in Brazil to the protests against the invasion of Iraq on February 15th, 2003. In each forum, social movements network meetings agree on an agenda for global mobiliza-tions, which is reference to thousands of movements and organizations. Declarations such as the “World Charter on the Rights to the City” have been produced in many forums. During the Caracas Forum, de declaration “Another integration, urgent, possible and necessary” was made. The “Ba-mako Call”, written in a seminar that took place one day before the Forum, is an important refer-ence to our days, assembling much of what the WSF has produced up to now. Some examples of “conclusions” produced “during the Forums” could be multiplied infinitely, and many would point out its efficiency as an impelling force to the organization of initiatives which are central to the left-ist movement nowadays.

./english/519.txt:52:Adopting resolutions “as” the Forum means the establishment of deliberative bodies that surpass the powers and the function of being the process’s facilitators (as they are today, from the IC to the OCs). This would mean to open processes – natural, but inevitable – of dispute for power, with all its problems, something that the Forum has succeeded in avoiding. Within the processes of delibera-tion, this would mean imposing the opinion of some people upon others, which would jeopardize the efficiency of the Forum in its current format where the political argument and the voluntary ad-hesion to any proposal, declaration or campaign prevails. To abandon theses victories obtained by the Forum would mean a great political retrocession to the current left wing.

./english/519.txt:57:At the Mumbai Forum, during a panel about the WSF’s future, Sohi Jeon already warned us about the fundamental implications of this: the Forum process must incorporate the big protagonists from popular struggles in regional, national and local levels, which is the only way for us to keep grow-ing and strengthening, which is also the only way of condensing sets of networks that compose the global movement and the WSF process. Our concern regarding this topic was reflected in the last Porto Alegre Forum, in which we adopted the methodology of stimulating the convergence of themes and struggles, increasing initiatives of dialogues and meetings among different actors.

./english/519.txt:59:This year’s polycentric process surely enables an enlargement in the WSF’s horizontal relation with some regional and national processes – in Bamako and Caracas this was clear and we hope that the same occurs in other stages of the process (Karachi, Athens, Bangkok, and for us in Brazil, Recife). We also have to evaluate the methodology’s efficiency within these events and verify if the worries that have guided us in Porto Alegre 2005 are being properly contemplated. But for the 7th WSF in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007, we must fundamentally build a participative process for the event‘s preparation, a methodology and a communication process that enables global connections of the processes, which at this moment are relatively dispersed – and this in a bigger qualitative scale than has ever been done in any WSF process’ events. But always keeping in mind that the Forum does not substitute social movements nor any kind of struggle, on the contrary, it is an instrument to assist them.

./english/519.txt:61:Another discussed issue in the WSF since its creation is the relation-ship between the Forum and governments and parties. We went on these problems in Porto Alegre in 2002 when PT and the French social-democracy tried to emphasize their presence in the Forum aiming the electoral dispute and again in 2003 when Lula went to the Gigantinho to justify his trip to Davos the following day. In 2005 the WSF watched Lula’s efforts again trying to make the PT government the best ever and Chavez presenting himself as the most authentic left leadership in the continent. In Mumbai the dispute engaged by an Asian communism sector led to the Mumbai Resis-tance parallel realization. In the European Social Forum process each event had to deal with prob-lems in the relationship with the left parties in the countries that were holding the events — wid-ened in the London edition because of the relationship with the London Authority. We did not build the WSF process separated from the party and government disputes but we have always tried to weaken the impact of these disputes preserving the process authonomy in a way that it would not link the process with any specific project, no matter how worthy it is.

./english/519.txt:63:But we must face opposite tendencies: the WSF process’ events are used to being big, complex and expensive, what means that the relationship with the governments is essential to negotiate things from infrastructure to security. These issues generally go through progressive parties towards the event’s financing — and no matter how clear the rules are, the one who pays does influence or feels like influencing the process. No doubt this is one of our biggest politic fragilities.

./english/519.txt:65:In the last period, this attempt of linking the Forum and some left sectors received a new impulse because of the situation present in Latin América with the new left parties or left-origin parties gov-ernments. It produced a renewal of nationalizing temptations, reinforced by the strengthening of the sectors with government resources access. The frustration with PT and Lula’s government moved tendencies in the region towards Chavez government, which has been leading important social changes and anti-imperialist struggles. It is essential to the global movement and to the WSF proc-ess to dialogue with all the positive experiences in the anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist struggles in progress. The choice of Caracas to host one of the events of the policentric process refelcted the recognition of Bolivarian Revolution’s positive role.

./english/519.txt:67:However, with all we have been through in the WSF process with the parties and the leftist gov-ernments, this national protagonism reinforcement indicates that since now we must develop more precise protocols concerning the relationship between the WSF events and host governments and the parties that search for protagonism in these events. And we are facing a situation in which it is clear that in some cases there has been a loss of parameters, with some IC members defending that all leftist efforts now should look for the alignment with the “block that seems to be appearing around Venezuela, Cuba and Bolívia”.

./english/519.txt:73:If the leftist governments ought to be defended from the imperialist ag-gressions, we should also learn with the “real socialism” collapse and emphasize the fragility of so-cial change processes whose focus is unilaterally the state machine — and this fragility became clear to many Caracas Forum participants. This should not be seen as an antagonistic critic to the Bolivarian Revolution, but as a part of a dialogue that tries to contribute to the improvement of this process. This is the same kind of criticism that many components of the WSF process have made to castrism, from the leftist point of view, what we, the Latin American people do emphasize stressing the difficult conditions imposed by the imperialistic enclosure to the Havana regime and the Cuba people heroic resistance — approach that usually leftist sectors from outside the continent take as condescendence. On the other hand, the concrete problems of revolutionary processes in progress stimulate the debate within the WSF on the political power and the State as a changing element to-wards another world.

./english/519.txt:77:Agreeing or disagreeing with Holloway’s ideas (I am among those who disagree with the argument that it is possible to change the world without “undertaking” the power), each socialist movement experience has been reinforcing the idea that parties and governments, even the most progressives, exist within places of dispute which normally leads them to relate themselves with the various forces in a “friend” and “enemy” logic. Using power to induce changes, or simply adapting them-selves to the current order looking for self-benefit, this logic has a destructive dimension in the popular protagonism and in long-lasting participatory democracy process. In the other hand, the so-cial movements performance is based on the coherence of struggles for the multiple interests and causes of more plural civil societies.

./english/519.txt:81:After the polycentric process, Nairobi 2007 will face the challenge of putting in perspectives different experiences of the global movement. The VII will be a moment to dialogue with the African dramatic reality, to learn from its struggles and enrich the movement against neo-liberal globalisation and imperialism.

./english/522.txt:17:In other countries, in the lands of expansion, it is rather the existence of the world process which serves as reference. It is this which allows the initiation of the dynamic of convergence specific to the social forums, which constitutes their “trademark”. It is always difficult to seek to understand the characteristics of a country that one knows very little of, but, at the risk of caricaturing a necessarily complex reality, it seems to me that such has been the case in Pakistan.

./english/522.txt:36:Fifth element of success, the forum constituted a new stage of a regional process, in South Asia, begun in India during the forums of Hyderabad (2003) and Mumbai (2004). It also initiated a unitary dynamic in Pakistan itself, which should continue: discussion was immediately opened, after the experience of Karachi, on the regular organisation of a Pakistani social forum. To be followed up and confirmed, then

./english/522.txt:43:2. Integration. A certain number of movements which should logically have participated in the forum did not do so. This was notably the case with the feminist organisations of Lahore. The process of integration in the dynamic of the forums of all the components concerned is not then finished. This problem goes back probably as much to questions of functioning (opening of structures) and orientation as of “visibility”.

./english/522.txt:47:4 On the left. This polemic on the nature of the social forums divided the Pakistani left. Some political movements supported the process from the beginning. This is particularly the case of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) whose activists were perfectly at home in the forum. The Awami Tehreek (from Sind) was very present. A little before the forum, a front was set up between six left organisations [5]. That probably facilitated a broader participation of left forces in the forum.

./english/522.txt:57:1. The functionality of the forums. With the emigration of the WSF outside of its Latino-European countries of origin - after Mumbaï (2004), Bamako and Karachi (2005) - the utility of the forums (of this type of forum) has now been tested positively in very varied contexts. Nothing is universal or eternal, but the adaptability of this form of action (and of the process which supports it) has proved remarkable. It has been tested on the international level in countries where the social movements are strong or weak, in favourable and unfavourable political situations, in highly defensive or counter-offensive conjunctures.

./english/522.txt:59:Of course, each forum has its own characteristics and functions. But the form “forum/process”, “meeting space/place of impulsion of actions” clearly responds to needs linked to the period and not only to a specific political geography. We already knew it, but this is a confirmation of it. The forums allow the rallying of resistance (in its diversity) in a time of globalisation, when the crisis of the socialist reference has not been overcome and the modes of centralisation of the past period (around the workers’ movement or armed struggles) do not work as before.

./english/522.txt:65:3. Internal contradictions. A recurrent polemic on the role of the NGOs in the process of the WSF re-emerged in Karachi. The “left” critique of the forums is often formulated in too abstract, too “external” a fashion. The success of the forums has nothing obvious about it, it expresses something new. To be pertinent, the critique should then begin by understanding this and recognising this; it should be formulated in, let us say, a more “internal” fashion.

./english/522.txt:67:The evolution of the world of NGOs poses a problem? Effectively. Some, in the name of global civil society, weaken the local or national activist fabrics. In the name of a citizen-based discourse, they stifle social radicalism. In the name of democracy, they monopolise visibility to the detriment of otherwise more representative organisations. But the world of the NGOs is not homogeneous; and it is not alone in creating a problem. The same is true of the trade union bureaucracies, intolerant “rank and file” movements, authoritarian political leaderships, of naïfs and cynics and (oh how many!) egotistical personalities and manipulative individuals. In short, it is not enough to denounce the NGOs (many of whom have their place in the forums) to ensure the popular dynamic of the process.

./english/522.txt:69:The poor are, in society, invisible. On the contrary, the forums should ensure the visibility of the most exploited and oppressed. Since the very beginning in Porto Alegre this has not been self-evident. The gap can be large, inside the forum, between the “street” and the platforms. Since 2001, some progress has been accomplished, but the process is not one-way - there are also regressions.

./english/522.txt:71:Just as the experience of the forums merits being defended against a “left” critique which is too “external”, it is necessary to take seriously the contradiction at work among the people of the forums. We should neither hope nor wish for a process without contradictions. But for a new forum to merit the name “social”, the most audible voice should be that of the most exploited and oppressed, their movements should be at the heart of the process.

./english/522.txt:73:4. Globalisation of resistance. The process of internationalisation of forums began from 2002 with the European Social Forum in Florence. It experienced a qualitative leap with Hyderabad (India) and Mumbai in 2003-2004. It is today again the case with Bamako and Karachi (Caracas occupies a specific place in the deepening of political themes). That will again be true in 2007 with Nairobi.

./english/522.txt:75:All the regions are not yet integrated in the same way in the process (weakness in Northern and Eastern Europe), nor represented in the same way in the international bodies (under-representation of Asia and Africa). But it is very rare to see a movement spread so rapidly in the world (in more than 40 years of militant activity, it is only the second time that I have seen it). A remark which goes, more generally, for the whole of the global justice and anti-war movement.

./english/522.txt:77:The forum in Karachi was made possible by this world expansion of the process; in return it gives it dynamism in a country and a zone of strategic conflicts. A sole regret: that too few organisations in Europe and Latin America took this opportunity to acquaint themselves with the stakes in South Asia.

./english/527.txt:20:I will briefly analyse three topics: the content, the process and the strategy of the WSF.

./english/527.txt:34:The political dividing lines within the movement are paralleled by differences on the process of change that the movement aims at. One has to wonder, indeed, whether the public outcry against neoliberalism and the demands for more democracy are equally understood by all movements. For some, democracy is an end in itself. Radical democracy is seen as synonymous with socialism. For others, democracy is only an instrument to dismantle neoliberalism, or even just an epiphenomenon.

./english/527.txt:56:This is the background against which debates on the strategy of the movement take place. It is not an easy situation, since the dividing lines concerning content and process do not run in parallel. It means that some radical democrats and horizontalists can be found with the neokeynesianists and with the post-capitalists. Those who are promoting sustainable development are to be found with the advocates of strong states and with the defenders of local autonomy.

./english/527.txt:70:In 2005, nothing was done with this proposal. Until the WSF in Bamako of January 2006. One day before the Forum a number of movements gathered to discuss and adopt an ‘Appeal of Bamako’, a text of some 20 pages with an interesting programme. Most post-capitalists should be able to agree with it, certainly if they believe in strong states and the important role of political and social agency. The initiative was promoted by Samir Amin, François Houtart and the people of ‘Le Monde Diplomatique’, all founders of the WSF process.

./english/527.txt:76:The authors of the ‘Appeal of Bamako’ are also being blamed for not understanding the dynamics of the forum. They underestimate the importance of democratic processes. Last year’s text, the ‘consensus of Porto Alegre’ certainly was no consensus, but it was a clear and short document. Why has no one tried to organise a debate around it? This could have led to a new document in 2006. Now, movements are asked to sign the ‘Appeal of Bamako’, without any possibility of participation in the drafting of the text and without any possibility to amend it. This clearly is an old-fashioned top-down approach that is difficult to accept. Moreover, in Caracas the text was presented in a seminar by seven gentlemen – not one single woman – and again without any possibility for the audience to discuss it. The WSF deserves better than this hierarchical way of doing.

./english/527.txt:82:Nevertheless, we should ask ourselves how the other world can come about? It cannot be a spontaneous process, the simple result of 100.000 people shouting that another world is possible. What the different movements in the WSF are talking about is, one way or another, linked to power relations. Those who have power never give it away willingly. Which means that nothing will change unless – as a start - the 100.000 people go and shout their slogans at the front door of the World Bank or the IMF.

./english/527.txt:100:The WSF has to find its way, as François Houtart notes, ‘between a 5th International and a social Woodstock’. The WSF is a festival and the WSF is political. The WSF has to be politicized, which means that many political actions within the forum should be possible. The WSF should not become the victim of its success. Its process has to be deepened in order to find a number of practical, post-capitalistic, radical democratic alternatives. The WSF is an open forum and should remain an open forum. But it also should be able to encourage the wording of strategies and alternatives, in both a pragmatic and idealistic way. We will indeed have to change ourselves. As Peter Waterman says, the main problem of emancipation is not the enemy, it is us.

./english/529.txt:22:The overwhelming feeling of solidarity which pervaded the whole event, was especially important given the context in which it was held, -the extremely precarious and divisive Pakistani political situation. For Pakistanis to meet so many fellow actists was more important than the big picture discussion. Although some people might believe the pipe dream that what ails Pakistan, -multiple independence struggles, environmental and natural catastrophe, widespread poverty and illiteracy, and the leadership of an unelected, uniformed USA-Puppet general commanding a military junta can be solved within any existing democratic process they are wasting irreplaceable time. It’s abundantely clear that no politics can deal with, or is even recognizing what will happen to Pakistan’s, or any other economy in the world, once the price of fuel, doubles, triples or quadruples, as it may well do this very year There is no political system in the world that can deal with this, nor have any even begun to consider it.

./english/532.txt:21:The values engendered by our fledgling networked culture may [...] prove quite applicable to the broader challenges of our time and help a world struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems [...] One model for the open-ended and participatory process through which legislation might occur in a networked democracy can be found in the open source software movement.[7]

./english/532.txt:23:Rushkoff does not try to draw direct parallels between FLOSS and other forms of activity in the manner of Schneider and Lovink, but argues equally problematically that the model used in open source software composing communities could be usefully applied to democratic political organisation. A growing willingness to engage with the underlying code of the democratic process,’ he contends, ‘could eventually manifest in a widespread call for revisions to our legal, economic and political structures.’[8] Clearly, then, the idea of openness has appeal across rather different constituencies – here we already have both the reformist-liberal and the radicals activists claiming openness as their ally. Indeed, as ICT theorist Biella Coleman suggests, the widespread adoption and use of the idea of openness and its ‘profound political impact’ may precisely be contingent on its peculiarly transpolitical appeal. ‘FLOSS,’ she writes, resists

./english/532.txt:68:These hallmarks function to structure participation in the PGA process. In theory, they allow the network to remain ‘open’ while designating the kinds of activities that don’t fall within its field. PGA meetings, for example, do not exclude those who don’t subscribe to ITS hallmarks, but neither would discussions explicitly contrary to them be given much attention. Certain kinds of discussion are openly privileged over others on pragmatic grounds.

./english/532.txt:79:the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site.

./english/532.txt:82:Accounts such as this and De Angelis’ bear out my argument that an extreme amount of expectation is being focused on openness as an agent for change. Not only is openness central to the organisation of the social movement, but in many cases it is taken as read that the organisational quality of openness is inherently radical and will be productive of positive change in whichever part of the social-political field it is deployed. This is seen, for example, in the work of the group Open Organisations, comprised of three individuals – Toni Prug, Richard Malter and Benjamin Geer – who were previously closely involved with UK Indymedia, and who have until relatively recently been united in their belief in the radically liberatory potentials of openness. For them, it is simply an as-yet insufficiently theorised and elaborated form and thus they have been working on what might be characterised as a ‘strong’ or ‘robust’ openness model which recommends a set of working processes or practices intended to foster it. ‘Open Organisations’ are entities that

./english/532.txt:83:anyone can join, [that function with] complete transparency and flexible and fair decision making structures, ownership patterns, and exchange mechanisms, that are designed, defined, and refined, by members as part of a continual transformative and learning process.[17]

./english/532.txt:87:In effect, by creating ‘structured processes’, Open Organisations try to provide for a consistent openness. In doing so, they implicitly recognise that there are inconsistencies between the rhetoric and behaviour of contemporary political organisations. But what are these problems and who, indeed where, are openness’ discontents? In fact they may be found everywhere. In the case of Inydmedia’s ‘open publishing’ project, for example, openness has been failing under the pressures of scale. Initially small ‘cottage-industry’ IMCs were able to manage the open-publishing process very well. But, in many IMCs, when the number of site visitors has risen past a certain level, problems have started to occur. Popular IMC sites have become targets for interventions by political opponents, often from the fascist right, seeking opportunities to disrupt what they regard as an IMC’s ‘countercultural’ potential and a platform from which to spread their own rhetoric. Of course there is nothing to prevent this in the IMC manifesto; but it has impelled the understandable decision to edit out fascist viewpoints and other ‘noise’, using the ad hoc teams whose function was previously to develop and maintain the IMC’s open-publishing system. Some IMCs have ultimately been seen to take on a rather traditional, closed and censorial function that is all too often undeclared and in contradiction with the official IMC ‘become the media’ line. In other words, Indymedia channels are often politically censored by a small group of more-or-less anonymous individuals to quite a high degree.

./english/532.txt:91:Whenever we have been involved in PGA-inspired action, we have been unable to identify decision-making bodies. Moreover, there has been no collective assessment of the effectiveness of PGA-inspired actions [...] If the PGA-process includes decision-making and assessment bodies, where are they to be found? How can we take part?[18]

./english/532.txt:93:This problem runs through the temporary constitutions and dissolutions of ‘open’ organisations that make up the social movement. The avowed ‘absence’ of decision-making bodies and points of centralisation can too easily segue into a concealment of control per se. In fact, in both the FLOSS model and the social movement, the idea that no one group or person controls development and decision making is often quite far from the truth. In both cases it is formally true that anyone may alter or intervene in processes according to their needs, views or projects; but practically speaking, few people can assume the necessary social position from which to make effective ‘interventions’. Open source software is generally tightly controlled by a small group of people: the Apache Group, for example, very open-handedly controls the development of the Apache Web server, and Linus Torvalds has the final say on the Linux kernel’s development.[19] Likewise, in the social movement, decision making often devolves to a surprisingly small number of individuals and groups who make a lot of the running in deciding what happens, where and when. Though they never officially ‘speak for’ others, much unofficial doctrine nonetheless emanates from them. Within political networks, such groups and individuals can be seen as ‘supernodes’, not only routing more than their ‘fair share’ of traffic, but actively determining the ‘content’ that traverses them. Such supernodes do not (necessarily) constitute themselves out of a malicious will-to-power: rather, power defaults to them through personal qualities like energy, commitment and charisma, and the ability to synthesise politically important social moments into identifiable ideas and forms.

./english/532.txt:99:To examine how much this ‘pretence’ is the rule within the social movement is beyond the scope of this piece. But what is clear is that each of the five characteristics of ‘openness’ described above, when subjected to scrutiny, reveal themselves as extremely compromised. The details, for example, of meetings and discussions are published and circulated, but this information is primarily received by those who are able (and often privileged to be able) to connect to certain (technological/social) networks. Likewise, the language of a ‘call’ or equivalent can determine whether a party will feel comfortable or suitable to respond to it: like PGA’s ‘hallmarks’, language and phraseology is a point of ‘soft control’, but not one that is openly discussed and studied. Furthermore, meetings may be ‘open to all’, but they can quickly become hostile environments for parties who do not or cannot observe the ‘basic’ consensus that is often tacitly agreed between long-term actors in a particular scene. This peer consensus can indeed, on occasion, so determine the movement’s ‘open’ decision-making process as to turn it into a war of attrition on difference, with divergent points of view gradually giving themselves up to peer opinion as the ‘debate’ wears on and on. The ‘block’ or ‘veto’ is in fact rarely used because of the peer pressure placed on those who would use it (‘Aw, come on, you’re not going to block, are you?’ – a common enough plaint at movement meetings). In some cases the apparently neutral ‘moderator’ role can also become bizarrely instrumentalised, giving rise to the sensation that ‘something has already been decided’, and that the meeting is just for performative purposes.

./english/534.txt:20:Holding the forum in Venezuela was controversial, and reflects long debates within the forum over the relationship between civil society and party politics. On one hand, Hugo Chavez's government is engaging in a process of social change in line with the goals of the WSF. As such, Caracas was a logical venue for a debate on how to construct a better world. On the other hand, from the beginning, the WSF was designed to be an expression of civil society that explicitly rejected the participation of political parties, armed groups, and statist solutions. These debates over the role of state structures in fostering social justice have long run through the political left, these debates within the WSF are only its most recent manifestation.

./english/534.txt:46:What role will the forum play in that process? The WSF tends to remain, to a certain degree, a place where organisations quickly organise events, but then fail to realize their potential to network and connect with other movements and struggles until the next forum the following January. Attendance is still largely limited to those with the time, resources, passports, and visas necessary to travel to a central location. Participating organisations and movements must engage in an evaluation of how they can realize meaningful articulation of these struggles throughout the year.

./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/535.txt:24:It is interesting that 10.2% of the participants at the 2005 WSF in Porto Alegre disagree, when asked if they thought the process of globalization means the concentration of wealth makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. 15.4% agreed that globalization means more opportunity for all, rich and poor.

./english/535.txt:28:When asked about what process should be used for building “the other possible world” the WSF talks about, 90.4% said the road should include strengthening the mobilization of civil society on the global, continental, national, and local level. 72.3% said the path to building “the other possible world” should include the democratization of governments, 59.3% said it should include direct action, 59.2% said it should include the democratization of the multilateral organizations (the UN, WTO, World Bank, IMF), and 13.5% believe the road should include direct action with the use of force.

./english/544.txt:12:Since the WSF has not claimed to be working to devise coherent strategies or formulating a specific programme of action, there can be no formal yardstick to measure its success or failure. Given its abhorrence of hierarchical structures and its penchant for networking on a horizontal plane, the WSF tends to be informal in its approach. Its goal is to provide an open space for the underprivileged of the world to come and raise their voices. In that respect the WSF succeeded in its mission. A common complaint was that it was somewhat chaotic. By its very nature, a process of this kind cannot be regimented and squeeze people into tight, rigidly-organised programmes.

./english/544.txt:22:Pakistani NGOs have never been famous for mobilising the masses for any cause. The process of creating awareness and bringing people together for social change has not been easy in this country. The basic tool used by activists, namely interpersonal meetings, has had limited application in a society where community participation and social capital have not been its strength. The agencies which facilitate these contacts, such as trade bodies, students unions, human rights groups, have been destroyed over the years by oppressive governments that feared their power. Another tool used by social activists, namely, lobbying to influence policymakers has been more widely used. But in the absence of mobilisation and the backing of a large number of people, the lobbyists have at times not had the political clout that is needed to persuade those in office to change policies.

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

./english/544.txt:28:This consultation rightly perceived the WSF as a long-term process of engaging forces of anti-war and anti-neo-liberalism under one banner. “Realizing the need to diffuse the process in Pakistan the group committed itself to a continued struggle and efforts to take it further to all corners of the country. The group also pledged to continue its struggle to unite all progressive, rights-based and democratic forces in Pakistan against the common threats to the world and marginalised groups,” the press statement released on the occasion had said.

./english/544.txt:34:It is not that there is no pool of human resources to mobilise in Pakistan. The WSF meeting in Karachi and the response to the earthquake in the north in October 2005 amply prove that the people would participate in a public process if they are provided direction and leadership. On both occasions young people from all walks of life and of all classes turned up, be it the WSF venue or the earthquake relief centres to participate in the activity announced.

./english/549.txt:6:Many are those of us who have played roles in the successful processes such as the Ottawa mine ban convention, setting a stop to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) and in the process leading to the ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2003. Most recently, the Nobel Prize Committee renewed their recognition of civil society by awarding Wangari Maathai the Nobel Peace Prize (2004).

./english/549.txt:8:But nominations, power and awards bring with them expectations and responsibility. When speaking of the abstract concept of 'global civil society' a very concrete space within the 'global civil society' comes to mind: I think of course of the World Social Forum process, a process that has emerged into the largest self-formed, autonomous and spontaneous gathering of civil society to date.

./english/549.txt:12:But, the WSF was not created to be against issues covering the rainbow of political colours but rather it was created to be for something. My thesis here is that the WSF process is a process for initiating a process toward global democratisation.

./english/549.txt:16:Let me first define 'democracy' versus 'democratization'. Whereas 'democracy' can be seen as a given model of democracy, democratisation is perceived as an open-ended process. A process of democratisation is never 'finished' but constantly alive. As someone has put it "Democracy cannot be imported or exported, but rather, it should be supported".

./english/549.txt:19:I mentioned 'democratization' as a process as opposed to a(ny) given model of democracy. By being an open-ended process, a process of democratisation initiated through a few concrete steps leaves space for other subsequent reforms. But how do we then initiate a process of true global democratisation?

./english/549.txt:21:One way is to listen to the issues raised within the WSF process. The Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (Ibase) in Rio de Janeiro have collected some statistics on events organised at the WSF III and they list over 80 events organised on the issue of water alone. In an IPS interview with Joseph Stiglitz the three most visible issues raised at WSF IV were listed as a call for a solution to the debt problem, an implementation of a tax on currency transactions and concern about the privatisation process in the world and notably those concerning water. During the WSF IV, Ibase carried out a survey inquiring about the WSF participats' priorities in 'building another world', which resulted in the listing of education and water as two prime issues of civil society organisations.

./english/553.txt:43:The EU not only wants to take a more aggressive – or, as it calls it, more ‘activist’ – stance in its dealings with trading partners. It also wants to initiate various new bilateral processes, and it suggests the introduction of new measures such as prior consultation with business abroad and at home, including regarding the design of new regulations; private access to dispute settlement for EU companies; restricting access to government procurement contracts in the EU for countries that do not reciprocate; and full parity in bilateral negotiations.

./english/553.txt:96: * Tackle non-trade barriers and aim for regulatory convergence. Apart from the usual SPS, TBT, IPR issues, DG Trade wants to open up a new frontier: it sees barriers not only in certain measures themselves, but also in the way they are introduced “without sufficient consultation”. Therefore discipline is needed, including “dispute avoidance mechanisms”. This goes in the direction of the “prior consultation commitments” that the USA is seeking in its bilaterals. In the case of the US, when countries want to change their rules affecting business and trade, they need to involve their trading partners during the decision-making process. The EU calls for “consultation, early warning procedures, exchange of information and the possibility to comment”. The Commission also proposes stronger monitoring, enforcement and dispute resolution mechanism which should be accessible to the industry.

./english/553.txt:116:The external dimension must be taken into account at an early stage of decision making in order to minimise regulatory frictions with trading partners. “International regulatory cooperation is the right tool”, says the Commission, “helping to choose the least trade restrictive system, minimize the cost of regulations for domestic business and ‘upstream’ dispute resolution… One good example has been the consultation process for the REACH directive where the voice of the industry outside Europe became heard…. We should be ready to improve our level of transparency, prior information, chance to comment…”

./english/553.txt:120:While the Commission uses REACH as a positive example, NGOs argue that, on the contrary, REACH demonstrates how the lobbying activities of the chemical industry have undermined legislation that was designed to protect people and the environment.[4] It was the European business lobby that called on non-European companies to intervene as well. Interestingly, the European Parliament found that large TNCs exporting a few bulk chemicals would mostly bear the costs.[5] But clearly the pressure of the giant corporate lobby industry is not sufficient for the Commission; in future the Commission will call in non-EU corporate interests to take part in the decision-making process. The Commission wants to be more transparent (to foreign business, not to its own civil society) and wants to listen to foreign corporate grievances before making decisions “affecting the market” – decisions such as those on environment, health or social regulations. This will make the EU even more undemocratic. Finally, the Commission also wants to equip people for change. The Commission is aware that if it wants ambitious agreements serving EU corporate interests, then it will also have to offer something in return. The Commission is prepared to open up sensitive sectors of the EU economy while admitting this will bring about “transformations which are disruptive to some in the EU”.

./english/553.txt:191:To date, trade policy has not been very high on the agenda of most movements, trade unions and NGOs in Europe. With many ongoing problems at the domestic and EU levels, such as the push for the Services (Bolkestein) Directive to create a single services market in Europe, the EU Convention process and the increasing precariousness of jobs in Europe, most of the aforementioned groups have been focusing on other issues.

./english/565.txt:23:instructions to follow, ingredients to mix, and a transformation process

./english/565.txt:26:cakes, programs have to be baked too. The process of turning source code

./english/565.txt:487:being empowered by the process, whereas they're usually excluded.

./english/565.txt:687:run application software such as word processing programs and web

./english/566.txt:29:making the hiring process more fair and pushing standards higher.

./english/566.txt:31:people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you'll get

./english/566.txt:71:approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow

./english/569.txt:27:This is, in our view, a potentially disastrous development. One of the great beauties of our movement - and of the forums that have emerged from and helped to sustain it - is the way in which people from all sorts of backgrounds and with the most diverse preoccupations come and mix together, participating in a process of mutual contamination in which we learn and gain confidence from one another. This dynamic was greatly weakened by the thematic fragmentation and vast size of the WSF site in Porto Alegre this year - all the more so because there were no generalizing events to compare with the magical opening ceremony at Mumbai, when 100,000 sat listening to speakers like Arundhati Roy, Chico Whitaker, and Jeremy Corbyn against the velvet backdrop of an Indian night. We know from the experience of the European Social Forum in London that putting together collectively organized plenaries is painstaking work. But it is work that helps to hammer out priorities for the movement, and to give the forum focus and direction.

./english/571.txt:11:Movement can emerge, occur or take place only in space. The most interesting attempt to create a global space for critical social movements is the World Social Forum (WSF), organized since 2001 annually in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in January 2004 in Mumbai, India (2). In the coming years, the main events of the forum will take place in a decentralized form (2006) and in Africa (2007), which will imply new challenges for the process, until now associated strongly with the city of Porto Alegre. Even though the event has in the beginning been organised simultaneously with – and also as a protest against – the World Economic Forum (WEF), in each subsequent gathering there have been fewer attempts to interact with the WEF. The process has caused a considerable amount of enthusiasm, as well as various sceptical comments on its possibilities to facilitate social transformations.

./english/571.txt:13:The best-known slogan of the WSF is “another world is possible”. The enthusiasm caused by the apparently simple and ambiguous phrase can be understood as a counter-hegemonic challenge to the equally famous slogan of Margaret Thatcher, “there is no alternative”. After five annual social forums, however, simply repeating that another world is possible is no longer enough. An increasing amount of participants and observers of the WSF process have started asking what the other world(s) might look like. Thus far, the WSF has been able to provide few concrete answers to that question. While the inability has been often considered a key limitation of the WSF, for some of its original creators, the WSF should not even attempt to give any clear answer to that question, at least not through a unified voice.

./english/571.txt:15:The World Social Forum is a space that, according to its Charter of Principles, “brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil society from all the countries in the world” (3). The Charter was drafted by the Brazilian Organizing Committee soon after the first WSF meeting and approved with modifications by the WSF International Council in June 2001 in São Paulo. It has achieved a quasi-constitutional status within the WSF process, even if its authority has occasionally been challenged.

./english/571.txt:19:Many debates have been waged in and around the WSF about whether it should be considered simply a space for these movements or could it become some kind of movement of movements itself. There are many actors who would like to see the WSF evolving into a fully-fledged political movement. The idea is that this movement should make a real political difference by altering the course of globalisation. The official line in the WSF process has, however, been that political projects that go beyond the Charter of Principles can be an attribute of the organizations that take part in the WSF but never of the WSF itself.

./english/571.txt:21:The WSF 2004 in Mumbai, India, made the social forum process more truly world-wide (5). In fact, Mumbai meant opening up the space of the forum in two distinct ways. Firstly, since most participants tend to come from the region surrounding the venue, the flavour of Mumbai was rather different from Porto Alegre. In the previous three forums, Latin Americans and Europeans dominated the scene, and therefore the move to India was a symbolic opening towards the world as whole. Secondly, this time a significant portion of the participants were dalits, i.e. the casteless people of India, and other marginalized groups. Academic intellectuals and NGOs were in minority, with the exception of the workshops, panels and roundtables in English (simultaneous interpretation facilities were not available to the same extent as in Porto Alegre).

./english/571.txt:23:In 2005, the WSF returned to Porto Alegre. When the International Council of the WSF in January 2003 decided to hold the WSF 2004 in Mumbai, it simultaneously decided that the WSF 2005 would be back in Porto Alegre. In fact, it would probably have been impossible to reach a consensus on India if there had not existed the promise of returning to Brazil. Those who feared that organizing the Forum in India could turn out to be a total failure were thus bought off with the idea that even if Mumbai fails, it would be back to the good old Porto Alegre in the following year. Moving the annual WSF event to another continent included difficult questions about the continuity of the process, including its institutional memory, which the Brazilian Organizing Committee had provided.

./english/571.txt:29:One way to avoid political silence without violating the Charter of Principles is to facilitate processes whereby organizations that take part in the WSF produce political declarations. The most important attempt to move beyond the self-imposed limits for declarations and other forms of political action is the Assembly of Social Movements that has taken place in all annual events of the WSF. Ideally, most of the participating organizations would sign such declarations and they could have powerful political impact. Until now, the social movement declarations produced during the WSF events have not been circulated very widely and their impact has been relatively modest. Nevertheless, they have created controversies among the WSF organizers.

./english/571.txt:31:Even if these declarations do not officially claim to represent the WSF as a whole, Chico Whitaker, one of the key initiators of the WSF process, and others have been highly critical of them. Whitaker fears that the media may consider them as semi-official conclusions. This can then lead to political disputes about whose concerns get to be expressed in the declarations. In the 2005 WSF in Porto Alegre, a “manifesto” signed by 19 intellectuals that included Ignacio Ramonet, Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Bernard Cassen and (mostly) other “non-young” males, caused similar concerns (6).

./english/571.txt:47:There has been concern from the very beginning of the WSF process about the involvement of the Workers’ Party of Brazil. Even if the party has not formed part of the organizing committee or other official organs of the WSF, its presence has been visible in many ways (10). After the party won the federal election of 2002, the Lula government’s economic policies have alienated many of its original supporters. In the WSF 2005, Lula received plenty of criticism both because of his economic policies based on concessions to the IMF, and thereby on neoliberalism, as well as for his decision to travel to the World Economic Forum of Davos directly from Porto Alegre. Lula has tried to take some international steps to counter this criticism. The so-called Lula-Chirac Initiative by the Presidents of Brazil and France, joined also by the Presidents of Chile and Spain, includes proposals for global taxes and other measures in the global fight against poverty. The Report of the Technical Group on Innovative Financing Mechanisms “Action against Hunger and Poverty” (11), and the related summit in New York at the end of September 2004, at the time of the General Assembly meeting, appear to many as the biggest step thus far towards the adoption of new global mechanisms of finance. Perhaps due to the rather neoliberal framing of these proposals, they have not caused a lot of interest at the WSF.

./english/571.txt:51:One of the biggest challenges for the WSF process is how to find innovative ways of being political in the globalizing world. On the one hand, many would agree that traditional party politics, geared toward conquering state power, is not sufficient to change the world. On the other hand, an increasing amount of activists are getting frustrated with the prevalent depoliticized understandings of civil society. How to be political in the 21st Century? Reproducing traditional political parties on a global scale may not be possible or desirable, but we believe interesting intellectual and political work could be done to explore the possibilities and limitations of party-like transnational organizations. The following offers simply some sketchy notes of this process.

./english/571.txt:55:The WSF could be conceived as a parliament in the original, Latin sense of the term, as a place to talk and converse (parlar means to talk, mentum a place or space). For the time being, however, there is no general session of deliberation, neither are there other mechanisms for democratic will formation. Even if George Monbiot (2002) has suggested the WSF could form part of the process of building a real “world parliament in exile”, the WSF cannot be considered anything like a parliament in the contemporary, deliberative sense, not to speak of legislation. There are many groups within the WSF that aim at building global democratic institutions, and some of them place considerable emphasis on world parliament as a key to any global democratization. Only few of these groups, however, believe that the WSF itself could or should be transformed into a world parliament.

./english/571.txt:63:In the polyarchies of the West, members of political parties stand as candidates in elections and for various state offices. Thereby they gain access to the process of law- and policymaking. Other political actors may lobby representatives and officials or put pressure on them through media, for instance. Although in reality the powers of national law- and policymakers have been increasingly limited, at least there remains a relatively unambiguous idea what politics is all about. In world politics, however, it is not clear what forms political activities should assume. If the WSF became a movement, and a more formal organisation, could it also become a global political party in some sense, even in the absence of parliamentary institutions? Alternatively, should the WSF somehow facilitate the creation of global political party-like organizations? What should world political parties do?

./english/571.txt:67:We believe it is important that concrete strategies of change will emerge from within the space (or movement) of the WSF. Global democratic changes are not possible without transformist global political movements, which must consist of not only civic actors but at least in some point also of states. Any transformation requires regulation also in the form of international – and later perhaps global – law. Currently, only states can create and change international law. Whatever form global civil society will assume, including the possibility of replacing the term “civil society” with something much more accurate and imaginative, it can only achieve transformations by making interventions in more traditional-sounding processes, with the aim of creating new forums of deliberation, agenda-setting and decision-making. To the extent that the empowerment of global movements will be based on well-articulated programmatic visions, they may also constitute steps toward world political parties.

./english/571.txt:71:The World Social Forum is a crucial process of rethinking politics and political possibilities to create “another world”. With Mumbai the WSF process itself became more global and less tied to one particular locality, the city of Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil. Gradually and hesitantly, the structures and procedures of the WSF are becoming more clearly defined and, possibly, democratic. While the WSF acknowledges that it is actually making at least some decisions on behalf of all the participants, it continues, first and foremost, to provide spaces for NGOs and movements.

./english/571.txt:75:The WSF V, back in Porto Alegre in January 2005 and bigger than ever before, has also received an overwhelming amount of positive commentaries, especially by people who were already articulated within the networks that constitute the “planet of Porto Alegre”. For casual observers, the event may have seemed somewhat chaotic. For those more involved in the process it was a good (even if limited) example of the methodology that emphasized constructing processes. The particular WSF events are excellent opportunities to meet and debate, but the emphasis is increasingly in the intellectual and political activities that continue all year round.

./english/571.txt:77:The story of the WSF remains unwritten. Will it become an institution in its current form or be transformed into something else than open space? During 2004, there were various changes in the organizing process. The new Brazilian Organizing Committee consists of 23 organizations, instead of the earlier eight. The main themes of the event were no longer directly decided by the International Council but resulted from an open consultation process in which, in principle, everyone could participate through the Internet.

./english/571.txt:81:With all the limitations, these changes tell us that there exists a learning process in the World Social Forum and that it is in movement, even if not a movement of a traditional kind. After the WSF V, during the first days of February 2005, there was a melancholic mood in Porto Alegre where activists knew that the forum is unlikely to return to their city during the coming years. In the International Council meeting of January 2005, Roberto Savio from Inter Press Service made a proposal that the WSF should return to Porto Alegre in 2008, but this proposal did not receive much support. The inevitable geographical movements of the WSF events will, however, be important only if they are accompanied with a movement that makes the WSF an increasingly relevant space for radically democratic changes of the world.

./english/574.txt:17:After a successful experience of significantly reducing the official plenaries at the fourth WSF in Mumbai in 2004, the International Committee of the WSF took the risky decision to eliminate the official programme altogether. Instead, it initiated a `consulta’ with the all past participants in the Forum asking them to propose the main themes of the Forum, using keywords to summaries their priority themes. The results formed the basis of 11 clusters or `terrains’ around particular themes: militarism, trade and debt, common goods, social movements and democracy and more. Organisations then proposed and registered their activities within these terrains which also were the physical focal points of the WSF. The theory was that groups would put their plans on the WSF website, other groups would notice an overlap or a connection with their activities and there would be a process of merging and connecting. A team of facilitators was appointed to encourage and help this process.

./english/574.txt:29:If you wanted to be spoon fed was to pick up a copy of the rather lifeless free sheet Terra Viva which announced on day four of the Forum that 19 people – 18 of whom were men - had drawn up a `consensus’ of the Forum in an effort to give coherence to the process. The names were impressive including Edward Galeano and Samir Amin. It appeared, however, `from on high’ and did not reflect the new `bottom up’ methods of consensus building being worked on in the tents alongside the river Guiaba. Nevertheless it served a purpose, provoking discussions about more rooted ways of both bringing together and giving powerful expression to the work of the Forum.

./english/577.txt:26:The challenge for the Forum, thus, is not of how certain kinds of ideas may dominate, but to ensure that the Forum is truly representative of the upsurge of global opinion against imperialist globalisation. Today, large mass and political movements are handicapped in their ability to participate in the Forum, because of lack of resources. As a result the Forum tends to be dominated by highly funded NGOs, largely from the North. While many of such NGOs have and are playing a major role in opposing globalisation, there is an inherent asymmetry in the participation in the Forums. It is critically important, if the Forum is to become truly representative of global mass movements that the WSF process is able to draw in a much larger participation from such movements. This is happening to an extent and the proactive manner in which mobilisation for the Forum was done for the WSF 2004 in Mumbai – where a conscious effort was made to ensure representation of mass and political movements – has contributed to this. But a lot has still to be done in this regard, and if the WSF process is to be “directed” in any manner it should be to ensure that such movements are able to come into the process in large numbers and also that they represent adequately all geographical regions of the globe. If the Forum becomes really representative, then it would really be up to the movements to use the space provided by the Forum to work out shared visions and actions. Clearly, the WSF is not going to be the forum to take forward such actions, that is something that the movements themselves would have to decide.

./english/577.txt:30:The 2005 Forum, while formulating the programme, had articulated in clearer terms the direction provided by WSF 2004 in trying to ensure that shared concerns and themes are not discussed in dispersed events. The attempt from the event registration process itself was to try to ensure that events are largely organised by combining the efforts of different organisations. This is a process that has to be accelerated, and the methodology used in 2005 to be evaluated to improve upon it further. The WSF 2005 had also departed from earlier practice by not having any events directly organised by the WSF – i.e. all events at the WSF 2005 were organised by individual participating organisations. The response to this innovation was mixed this year, and many felt that the absence of some large “unifying” events with broad political messages led to the diffusion of the political sharpness that the Forum was able to provide. This is again an issue that will have to be evaluated by the International Council of the WSF. In fact, in the absence of such unifying events, the only two large events this year were those addressed by President Lula of Brazil and President Chavez of Venezuala. While these were not formally part of the WSF programme, they drew huge crowds from WSF participants.

./english/577.txt:32:The International Council decided in its meeting just before the Forum in Porto Alegre that in 2006 there would not be a single Forum, but attempt would be to organise dispersed Forums in different continents. In 2007 the Forum travels to Africa, the venue for which is being discussed within the African Social Forum process. Mumbai had shown that the WSF can be made to be a success in a setting vastly different from Porto Alegre, and the WSF is now poised to sprout wings and fly to different corners of the globe.

./english/579.txt:26:The Central government is clearly determined to push through privatization of valuable public properties. Since few would wish to buy up loss-making or sick industries unless they have high-value assets worth stripping, or can easily be made highly profitable, New Delhi has tried to follow a dual strategy. This is to sell off some of the big profit makers (oil companies like Hindustan Petroleum and Chemicals Limited and Bharat Petroleum and Chemicals Limited) and to starve potential profit-makers of necessary modernisation-investment funds. The latter tactic is being applied to Air India and Indian Airlines whose most profitable air routes are being opened up to competitors. Failing balance sheets and profit and loss accounts can then be used to justify equity divestment and privatization. HPCL and BPCL were nationalized by Acts of Parliament, and a Court ruling that this status can only be changed by a similar political process has stalled matters; while resistance to efforts at privatization of the Indian banking system is still strong.(5) In the beginning of the nineties, public sector assets were around 15 percent of GDP. Today, they are around 12 percent of GDP.

./english/579.txt:48:One of the central purposes of the Indian organizers of the WSF was that it should stimulate the further development of an ‘anti-fascist front’ nationally against the Sangh/BJP. The intent here is not an electoral bloc but the formation of a long term alliance of left parties and their mass fronts with the big social movements and a range of progressive NGOs to collectively mobilise in civil society. Has the Asian Social Forum at Hyderabad in December 2002 and WSF 2004 helped bring these forces together? Mutual suspicions and tensions remain within the social movements and parties as well as between them. There has been the constant jockeying for public representation in the ‘star system’ that is a seemingly unavoidable aspect of the Social Forum process. There are the inevitable fears about manipulation and doubts about ulterior motives. One of the important issues thrown up by the WSFs is whether it might not be better for parties to participate openly as such instead of informally exercising behind-the-scenes their substantial influence as they now do whether it is the PT in Brazil or the CPM and CPI in India.

./english/580.txt:29:But the way the large events in the WSF 2003 and the ASF 2003 were organised, were fundamentally different. In the ASF there was much less attempt to focus the programme – most of the events, including the major conferences, were organised by different groups. The ASF organisers merely played the role of facilitators in the process. The only events directly organised by the organisers (other than the opening and closing events, which also took place in the WSF) were the four panel discussions, the testimonies and the “voices” programme. On the other hand the organisers at the WSF directly organised the ten Conferences, over 30 panel discussions and 4 round tables. This was in addition to the testimonies and the opening and closing events. In addition, of course, there were the large number of smaller self-organised events (workshops and seminars) at both the WSF 2003 and the ASF.

./english/580.txt:39:The programme group was also required to draw lessons from the functioning of the Programme Committee of the ASF. While, during the ASF, we had set up thematic groups, these groups did not function optimally. As a result a bulk of the work was done centrally. The question was, is there a way to have a more decentralised manner of functioning or do we assume that this would be too difficult to attempt? Experience at the ASF also showed that programme and mobilisation often went hand in hand, i.e. the groups that got mobilised to attend the ASF were largely those who also showed interest in organising events at the ASF. The question arose as to how we could build on this experience. The ASF experience was important in this regard, because – at least in India – mobilisation efforts centred much more crucially than in the WSF on looking at the Social Forum as a process and not an event. As a result most states (provinces) in the country had their own social forum processes and some state level event preceded the Asian Forum. We will return to this aspect in slightly more detail later.

./english/580.txt:62:In order to facilitate large “self organised” events, submissions were invited from everybody, irrespective of the size of the event proposed. That is, organisations were given the option of submitting proposals for large events of 4000 and 8000 capacity. Unfortunately this required a process of “choosing” as the number of applicants for large events was more than 200. Criteria for choosing from among these proposals were worked out which included ensuring that those that were accepted would represent a proper mix of thematic content, geographical spread, and sectoral representation. It may be noted that no proposal was rejected, and those that didn’t find a place in the large spaces, were given the option of holding their events in smaller spaces.

./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:72:After the deadline for submissions, extensive efforts were made to reach out to those who had submitted proposals, encouraging them to merge events that had shared concerns and themes. The programme webiste, which drew heavily from the website of WSF 2003, was also designed and operated in a way that facilitated this process. The Content commission of the IC, worked with the programme group of the IOC to facilitate this process at least as regards large self organised events.

./english/580.txt:74:· As regards co-ordination with the IC/ Content commission and Asian Groups – it has to be admitted that co-ordination was sub-optimal. Two meetings were held with the Content Commission (in Perrugia and Mumbai) and two meetings with Asian Groups (in Chennai and Mumbai). But the participation in these meetings was not representative in nature. This again points to need for something raised above – finding a way to have deeper interactions at the regional and global levels for Social forum processes. However, even the limited interactions were valuable in at least, to a limited extent, injecting a global flavour into the deliberations of the programme group of the IOC.

./english/580.txt:78:· The mobilisation efforts in India before WSF 2004, built upon the momentum created before the ASF in 2003 and there was, in general, a deepening of the WSF process in most regions in India. This found reflection in the very large number of events in Mumbai that articulated the concerns of a diverse section of groups. The vibrancy of the participants in Mumbai and the large presence of sections who are marginalised by globalisation while at the same time facing the brunt of the impact of neo liberal economic policies was, in large measure, the result of the deepening of the WSF process in large parts of India. Unfortunately this process could not be carried out extensively at a global level, except for global groups that had links with Indian groups that had been part of this mobilisation process.

./english/580.txt:108:· As briefly touched upon earlier the co-ordination with the IC/Content Commission and Asian Groups was not adequate. Both time and resources were a constraint. Possibly a better use of the electronic media could have circumvented some of this problem. However, we need to accept that enough attention was not paid to the need for a more global consultative process by the IOC.

./english/580.txt:110:It must be noted here that some of the gap in co-ordination was covered by the Brazilian Sectt. deputing two of their senior associates to work closely in with the Programme Group in India. Their presence and help is deeply appreciated and helped in a large way to ensure a continuity and co-ordination with the WSF process in Porto Alegre.

./english/580.txt:112:· The success of the mobilisation process in India finding a reflection in the content would need to be followed up internationally, though that would be a more difficult task. Similarly the experience of including cultural events in the format of the WSF is something that future Social forums can benefit from.

./english/580.txt:120:· The experience of “opening up” large events for “self organisation” has been positive and needs to be followed up. However care must be taken to ensure that these events do not come to be monopolised by a select band of large organisations that have international contacts and resources. More efforts are required to try to bring together groups with shared interests, in jointly organising these events. This will also help in facilitating the process of the crystallisation of issue-based coalitions.

./english/580.txt:134:· Widening of the WSF mobilisation (expansion) process should be an integral part of the WSF programme content – i.e. the programme should reflect the concerns of new constituencies that a wider WSF process in different regions opens up.

./english/580.txt:138:· Process Documentation (memory of each WSF) be done by a group that starts work six months before the event. This group should work closely with the content and methodology groups but should be a separate entity.

./english/582.txt:55:A WSF International Council meeting openen, two days after Mumbai 2004 ending, the process that will lead to Porto Alegre 2005. In a year, the meeting of those who want a new world, will be again organized in Brazil. From now on, there are twelve months of work, to guarantee the flame to keep lighted.

./english/586.txt:4:The fourth edition of the World Social Forum (WSF), which took place in Mumbai (India) this past January (16-21), was a very significant step towards consolidating the WSF process. The three previous editions, having taken place in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and attracting only a modest number of African and Asian delegates, led many to believe that the WSF, even though allegedly world-wide, was indeed a Latin-American and European initiative. The success of the Mumbai WSF signifies that the spirit of Porto Alegre — the “Porto Alegre Consensus” that a more just and solidary world is possible, as is the political will to fight for it — constitutes a universal aspiration. If the WSF could be recreated in Asia, there is no reason why it couldn’t be recreated in Africa or in any other part of the world. As a matter of fact, the decision has already been made that the WSF following the one in 2005 — set for Porto Alegre since last year — will take place in Africa. Whether in 2006 or 2007 depends on whether the WSF continues to be an annual event or becomes biennial, a decision to be taken at the next meeting of the WSF International Council (IC) this coming April.

./english/586.txt:8:By its very success, the Mumbai WSF creates new challenges for the WSF process. I single out three main ones. The first is the Forum’s expansion. It is not just a question of geographic expansion, but the expansion of themes and perspectives as well. Meeting in Mumbai, the IC decided to encourage the organization of local, national, regional and thematic forums, in order to deepen the syntony of the “Porto Alegre Consensus” with the concrete struggles that mobilize such a diversity of social groups across the globe. Furthermore, the WSF has been collecting an impressive amount of knowledge concerning its organizations and movements, the world we live in, and the proposals that go one being presented and implemented to change it. This knowledge must be carefully evaluated to be adequately used and render the Forum more transparent to itself, thus allowing for self-learning for all the activists and movements involved in the WSF process. Finally, as knowledge accumulates and the large areas of convergence are identified, the need for developing plans of collective action increases. The issue is not so much to augment the WSF’s efficaciousness as a global actor — efficaciousness is not gauged by global as much as by local and national actions — but mainly to prepare responses to the attempts of the World Bank, IMF and the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to coopt the agendas of the WSF and sanitize them in favor of solutions that will leave the ongoing economic disorder intact. Given its open-space nature, the WSF will not present proposals in its own name; it will rather facilitate the articulation between the networks that constitute it, in order to deepen plans of collective action and put them into practice.

./english/589.txt:28:Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), member of CADTM international network, is a secular voluntary organisation established in 1981 to be an interface between Scholars, Academics and Social Activists; to initiate the process of social awakening through critical reflection and alternative discourse thereby contributing to strengthening people’s struggles towards the goal of a just and more humane social order.

./english/589.txt:50:This entails developing and promoting more focussed advocacy, lobbying and campaigning strategies ranging from Dalit to gender rights and from rights of minorities and children to the struggles of the people for livelihood and against suppression of human and democratic rights and erosion of cultural values. The programme also seeks to promote and strengthen civil society organisations in building solidarity- action networks on critical issues affecting the lives and “rights” of the people, to challenge the structures, cultures and dynamics of violence, inequality and injustice, and for the promotion of participatory, democratic politics and economics which makes people as the centrality of the social process.

./english/589.txt:110:The cooperative director considers that the opening up of borders letting foreign, cheaper products invade the Indian market must be stopped. Third world countries are fighting fiercely to gain market shares. All parties will lose on a long-term basis, as the race is on to bring down prices. This implies lower income for tea producers. The same logic can also be applied to other products. The cooperative director is pessimistic: he stresses that the government is entirely involved in the neo-liberal process, especially given the loans received from the World Bank in exchange for these policies.

./english/590.txt:10:His analyses of the relationships, be they between the WSF and the advance of the struggle against neo-liberalism, or between the WSF and the parties and the politicians, or of its Charta of Principles make the nature of the WSF perfectly clear: “a space and a process, and absolutely not an entity”, which has created “a historical crossroads”. I will keep my commentary limited to two questions treated in his book.

./english/590.txt:24:As far as the need for concrete proposals is concerned, we are without any doubt in front of a problem of comprehension of the process. After each Forum, things no longer go on in the same way: participants return to their homes with a more elevated level of knowledge, conscience and articulation with others in action. Moreover, in the Forums there always come to light new initiatives and hundreds of “final documents”. What we have not yet accomplished, and is creating anxieties in observers worried by the results of the process, is to make these more visible.

./english/594.txt:20:Finally, what filled me with hope was the unity meeting of 45 left-wing organisations, Maoists and Trotskyists, which decided that we all need to work together in a concrete manner to contribute to a new socialist and non-sectarian world within the WSF process. One very important issue which the left must come to terms with is the attitude towards NGOs, especially in Asia. We must get away from narrow sectarianism and find ways to work with NGO activists in opposing neo-liberalism and imperialism, while at the same time never shying away from political debates. The failure of narrow sectarianism was clearly shown in the case of the isolated Mumbai Resistance 2004 which attracted a few thousand people compared to the 100,000 who attended the WSF.

./english/598.txt:9:Can you ask them to go? an anxious volunteer pleaded with Gautam Mody, trade union organiser turned honest spin doctor for Januarys fourth World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai. A group of politically motivated Buddhists were performing a dance outside the forums media centre and taking up a lot of space. Leave them, said Mody, as firmly as a conventional press officer might order a demonstration to end. Why does it take so long for people to let go of the old way of doing things? he grumbled. He went on to explain how the streets outside his union offices in Delhi are always cleared of anyone loitering with political intent. Were creating a new culture here, Mody said. In the past the labour movement too often preferred to meet behind closed doors, and we would even send people to investigate who was listening. The social-forum process is completely open. That is not always easy to accept.

./english/598.txt:25:In this way social forums put into practice the assertion of the womens and ethnic minorities movements of the 1970s, that movements of the oppressed and marginalised need autonomy to develop and identify their own needs, identities and sources of power. Political parties do not have a monopoly of the power to achieve change; indeed generally they have flunked the task of reform. The emergence of social forums doesnt make the political party redundant. It leaves it a distinctive contribution to the wider process of struggle carried out by a plurality of actors: the role of linking extra-parliamentary campaigning with the very different timetables and tactical necessities of electoral politics. To perform this role effectively - to act as amplifiers rather than mufflers of the movements in the streets and the workplaces - parties have to open up their methods of organising and thinking. Every way of reforming party policy has to start from an experimental approach, Rifondazione Communista leader Fausto Bertinotti told the Mumbai Forum. Practice has to come before theory. The collective intellect is the movement, and the party is helping to contribute to that, but it cannot in itself be that collective intellect.

./english/605.txt:4:IV World Social Forum (WSF) held in Mumbai, India, from January 16th to January 21st 2004 has proved the vitality of the“WSF-Format”, from the “open space” method that gradually has been built in the three Porto Alegre forums, in the two European Social Forums (Florence and Paris) and in the Asiatic Social Forum (Hyderabad), as well as countless another forums. The Mumbai Forum has renewed and expanded the achieve of the proposal, generating a wave of vitality in the process. But, after three years, there is a general perception that it needs a change in its directions, focusing specially on the articulation of actions capable of having an impact in the balance of world power. This was the focus in the discussion in the International Council (IC), gathered in Mumbai in January 15th, January 22nd and 23rd in order to prepare the process towards V WSF to be held in Porto Alegre, in January 2005.

./english/605.txt:8:There is an estimative that 135,000 to 150,000 people took part in the 1,200 WSF activities. The WSF 2004 has done a great impact in Indian left sectors. This country is marked by regionalism, communalism and diversity in languages, religions and cultures. It has been prepared since 2002 – in fact, the Asian Social Forum in January 2003 was its first rehearsal. It was done in a more plural and demanding context than the former WSFs, stimulated by a more heterogeneous left sector than the Latin American or European ones. It was the result of the unitary action of organizations who come from very distant political traditions – from Gandhism to the more traditional Communist Parties, from various Maoist organizations to NGOs. This unity was carefully built thanks to a wide preparation and mobilization process in the different regions in the country. That explains why the Forum was marked – respecting its Charter of Principles – by a less reticent posture towards the political parties, eliminating the image, for times raised, that they are strange to the Forum and to the wider struggle that makes sense to it.

./english/605.txt:12:Therefore, the IV WSF was made in a context so far away from the western political culture. It was an highly popular event, militant and feminist – reinforced by the massive presence of ground popular movements, not only from India but from most parts of Asia. There, the Forum has become a space for activities which were, first and foremost, protests and invitations to political action. Mumbai and the Indian Organization Committee have qualitatively enriched the WSF process, introducing several elements that must, from now on, be considered in future initiatives.

./english/605.txt:29:Enrichment and process enrootment

./english/605.txt:38:The renewal of the WSF process in Mumbai was amplified by strong presence of the Asiatic delegations – from Pakistan to Japan, from Bangladesh to Filipines, from Palestine to Afghanistan. Exiled tibetan monks marched side by side with participators of popular movements in Thailand; activist against war in Central Asia countries and in the muslim world were with Korean trade-union militants. Their problems, cultures, organization forms and political practices introduced lots of questions that will take time to be assimilated by the WSF process.

./english/605.txt:44:The popular character of the IV WSF resulted in a big measure by its wide process of preparation, evolving an Indian committee, embracing almost every progressist movements in the country, an Asiatic net of support (which realized two very representative meetings, in Chennai and Mumbai) and an organization committee with greater operational capacity. All of this meant a big effort of dialogue and political understanding and had been expressed in pluralism and evolving of the ground movements in the Mumbai event.

./english/605.txt:48:To the WSF Mumbai represented a giant quality step in the scope of dialogue that it facilitates and in its social enrootment. From the “another world struggle” point of view, this was probably the most important step since the proposal was enforced, in January 2001. But only the follow-up of the process will verify its ability to translate in an effective articulation of the struggle held in “West” and in these world regions, which cannot be subsumed to any common label.

./english/605.txt:64:Mumbai consolidated the “method” of open space established by the Charter of Principles of the WSF. Today almost everyone in the left know that the Forum do not take resolutions, that political parties and guerilla organizations do not participate in the organization and why is that so. They know, in the other hand, that political parties are not unwelcome guests – in fact they are important participators in the process with which the Forum dialogues and wants to empower. The game rules, although strange to certain political cultures, are less and less inquired.

./english/605.txt:66:In Mumbai, that originated a clear political delimitation. We had had parallel events organized with the intention of concurring with the Forum – which the Indian Organizing Committee has wisely treated as complementary initiatives. The most important one was the Mumbai Resistence 2004, convoked by a little international net of Maoist parties, through their mass fronts. They had inquired the idea of open space, the fact that the Forum does not take resolutions, its not explicit socialist character and the fact that the WSF does not valorize the armed fighting in the social change. But we also had had the II People´s Encounter, whose promoters had broken up with the WSF process because they did not accepted working with the mass organizations which identified themselves to political parties. Both events (and sectors from the Forum itself) had echoed also the critics that the international financial ties of certain organizations active in the process condition and moderate its political agenda. In the end the parallel events had had a marginal participation, which symbolizes the political delimitation established by the WSF process, of its ability of imposing a new and very united field of discussion.

./english/605.txt:68:But the relation between social movements and political parties had had an important step with the IV Forum. Until now, it was Brazilian reality – where most of participants had supported PT and meant that the best option was to let the party away of the process as institution – which had informed, in a good measure, the perception of this relation. The political culture dominant in some European countries, such as Italy or England, had brought to the process some inquiries on the “form” posed by the Charter of Principles (which naturally conditions its results). These inquiries were administrated in the European Social Forum. Now, Mumbai experience had introduced new elements.

./english/605.txt:70:Very heterogeneous from the political point of view, the Indian left had found in the Forum´s formula a practical manner of building a process of unity that was urgent to it. Pressed upon by the hinduist fundamentalism and religious sectarism, struggling with an extreme-right government which threatens the acquisitions obtained since the Independence, the Indian left had shown that today almost every single political formations – from parties born in the official communist movement to the gandhist socialism – can deal positively with the method of the open space.

./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/605.txt:74:However, most revealing of the incidence of the global movement and of the WSF on the political recomposing processes, was the meeting carried out in January 20th in Mumbai among “radical” political parties (convoked by initiative of the European Meeting of Anti-Capitalist Parties and the political streams of Asia-Pacific, with highline to Indian Maoists engaged with support to Mumbai Forum. For the very first time, streams so distinct – from Trotskism to Maoism, from the official communist to the critic Marxist – met, debated the new situation of the left in the world and created a net to continue this dialogue.

./english/605.txt:78:From this body of initiatives, it seems clear that slowly a very positive modus vivendi is built between political parties and the Forum process (and vice versa).

./english/605.txt:81:Mumbai has enriched the WSF agenda and integrated new and important forces in the process. But also reinforced the will of the Forum being a new and more useful tool to multiply political action and moving current correlation of forces. The more the neoliberalism seems sold out, the more this aspiration nourishes. At last, the Forum is not an end in itself, but a mean so what thousands of movements in the world can articulate and strengthen their struggles. And in Mumbai, with the consolidation of the Forum in the most conflictive and populated zone of the planet, this will has gained a sense of emergency. That has expressed in several critical discussions and self-criticism among the process protagonists, who point the need of changing directions towards Porto Alegre 2005. What balance can be made today about the Forum´s role in motivating our alternatives?

./english/605.txt:83:A first aspect seems clear: the Forum process has created spaces of encounter to the anti-systemic forces in the world – today fundamentally the annual Forum. In its very heart, took place lots of activities which have given consistency and motivated a common agenda of international mobilizations. The protests against war in January 15th 2003, as well as manifestations against OMC meeting in Cancún in September 13th, were focuses of debates in the WSF process in the years 2002 and 2003. And it came up from Mumbai activities a clear call for manifestations on March 20th 2004. Establishing a reference agenda for movements with capacity of militant convocation has been, in fact, the practical role of the assemblies in “World Net of Social Movements” and now also the “General Assembly of the Global Movement against War”.

./english/605.txt:85:But has the WSF process empowered the struggles and national mobilizations? As stated Sohi Jeon during intervention in the conference “Neoliberalism, war and the WSF meaning”, in Mumbai, “the real agent or the subjects of the change, of the constitution of alternatives, are not merely the participants in the Forum, not even the Forum itself, but the workers, the peasants, the women, those racially oppressed in each community and country. They are the subjects of the change.” (The World Social Forum at a Crossroad in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br).

./english/605.txt:87:In this field, the balance is much less clear. The role of the Forum is more indirect and unequal. An interesting dynamics seems to have been established in the relation between the regional and national plan in Western Europe, through the European Social Forum, although it is too early to a definitive evaluation. Sometime in the next future, we can study also the strategic results of the process for India. But after three years it seems clear that we have a problem of enrootment to be overcome in Brazil and Latin America case – although the continental campaign against ALCA has been empowered by the Forum process. TheV WSF must sediment its vocation of creating a new political culture in the country and region.

./english/605.txt:90:Globally, the changes in the national field still are limited, most of times they are just promises, justifying Sohi Jeon´s question “is the WSF richness is really redirected to the mass movements in each community and nation?”. This seems to be the fundament of the demand that Via Campesina and other entities have raised as they propose a change in the periodicity in the World Forum for two years, with canalization of more energies to local processes, which should be alternated with the global ones. Not denying WSF utility as space and place of articulation, but highlighting the experience and the pedagogical process to participator, they propose moving to another phase in the process.

./english/605.txt:94:But articulation and formulation of plans of action should be put in the right context. When one demands that the Forum make alternatives, proposals and plan of action viable , in fact, what is demanded is a change of the correlation of forces that only can come from a wide process of retro-feeding between the Forum and thousands of movements and national and local entities. Some exemplar actions, such as the proposal by Arundhati Roy in the Mumbai´s opening (Do Turkey´s Enjoy Thanksgiving? in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br) – boycotting in a systematic way two big and emblematic corporations in neoliberal globalization –, can be made viable in Forums such as the present ones. That is not the same for dozens of proposals that are already becoming patrimony of the global movement. In order to switch so much the force correlation, we should make a great political and organizational quality jump, making it possible the capillar articulation in the international processes with a great number of national processes.

./english/605.txt:96:The fact is that the Forum still is much more a sequence of events than a permanent process. As an event, it ought to have a festive and mediatic dimension, in order to multiply its impact. Some severe critics still carry their batteries against this essentially positive dimension of the process (what is different from transforming it in a show), but the backstage problem is another one, one of the structural relation between the Forum and the wider movement which gives sense to it.

./english/605.txt:98:Mumbai had given important steps in definition of a new shape for the event, based on the self-organized activities. However, moving forward in the direction of the dimension of the Forum process is not just a question of anticipation of inscription dates and fusion of activities (as correctly has been elaborated), it presupposes also the condensing of the net of relations among thousands of entities and movements all over the world. That makes the event a moment of encounter of permanent processes articulated in shape of vast nets. There already are, in a dispersed way, several thematic nets and very important campaigns. When the Brazilian Organizing Committee followed, in II and III WSF, the movement´s pressure for participation in the events promoted, it had reached more than thirty thematic nuclei. Bringing these thematic or sectorial focuses inside the Forum as open and dialogical processes, which maintain their own dynamics is, as already put by the indian female comrades, a great organizational and political challenge for the WSF. And it demands a huge investment in cheering up, permanent communication (of contents and not only of procedures) and memories of multiple kinds of processes and initiatives.

./english/605.txt:100:The internalization and articulation in the WSF process of what today is dispersed in hundreds of initiatives is related with another challenge. A net structure works only if disposes of facilitating and recognized nuclei, efficient and well positioned. The WSF architecture must evolve with the process. The initial structure of Organizing Committees and International Council had shown insufficient as long as the Forum had internationalized itself. It was introduced the figure of WSF Secretariat, today shared with the Brazilian and Indian Organizing Committees, and the International Council had structured itself in work commissions.

./english/605.txt:102:The situation today challenged is transitory. The International Council, created between the I and the II WSF, has freezed its composition immediately after the II WSF, showing great difficulty to deal with the expansion of the process and becoming more plural – what becomes unbearable with the consolidation of the Asiatic process, in which do not exist entities with the kind of structure of those which composed the IC still today (especially the international nets of NGOs and great trade union centrals with access to international trips). Besides, mentalities and postures characteristic to international organizations of hierarchical kind still shock, in their interior, with the net conceptions and practices. And, at last, the limitations of the regional processes still did not viabilize the constitution of a sufficient number of facilitating nuclei of the process, so that could become natural the redefinition of the functions between a qualitatively wider and more plural IC, with a more political and less organizational role, and these nuclei with ability of collective and quotidian acting. The process architecture will be shaped and stead, in a great measure, by development of the regional forums, by the experiences provided by them and by the constitution of organization collectives which are socially rooted and emerged as their Organizing Committees.

./english/605.txt:104:But the consolidation regional forums must still overcome several obstacles. It is not enough that a group of entities from a certain area have good will or even material resources for making viable and stable a Regional Forum process. The real processes flow through central countries in each region, in which the structure of civil society is more solid and the political situation is more cozy. The search of alternative ways may here be a disaster. Besides, the regions (almost) never are continents in the geographic sense – for example, if there is a more stable identity of the Europe (Western) or even America (Latin), there are lots of Asias, far beyond the Indian subcontinent, regions which must find their own tracks. We must find a difficult balance between resisting to substitutivism (which could take us to passivity) and effectively support the most fruitful initiatives.

./english/605.txt:106:Thus, the formatting of the WSF 2005 – as a friendly and efficient process in the articulation of proposals and political action to effective them – can only lead to a jump of quality in consolidation of the WSF process if accompanied by the internalization, by the process, of a important part of the campaign activities and more acting international nets, of changing the “institutional” architecture of the process, structuring it in a system of nets, and the consolidation of a certain number of regional stable forums inspired in their real dynamics. The challenges are not small. But are not unreacheable.

./english/611.txt:30:That said, this WSF marked a continuing evolution of the forum process in desirable directions. The slogan "another world is possible" has now become so central and ubiquitous that it begins to grate a bit in its constant repetition. But, on the plus side, the constant repetition is provoking further elaboration. People are taking the slogan beyond assertion to description. The WSF has been propelling a mood receptive to vision and is now getting serious about pursuing vision directly. To not only assert another worlds possibility, but to also describe its main features will be very much to the good. And the same is true for the WSFs continuing impetus toward causing diverse and even mutually hostile elements to civilly attend to each others words. This too is good.

./english/611.txt:34:The response from what I think is probably a large majority of WSF organizers is that the WSF and the forum process more broadly isnt about itself becoming a new programmatic organization, or even about itself congealing a movement of movements, but is about creating a mechanism for all those who themselves might wish to do those things to interact with one another and learn from one another and create ties and then act as they deem desirable.

./english/611.txt:38:I think this formulation is reasonable. The forum process shouldnt try to become what it is too broad to sensibly attain and it should persist in what it does well. Yet, the fact remains, the glue that has held the forum process together and the innovation that has given it momentum, are beginning to lose their gloss. Something needs to be upgraded or renovated or added to provide new momentum, even while carefully avoiding risking what is still working well.

./english/611.txt:40:What about this as a possibility? The Social Forum process, at every level, is about information exchange. One big improvement would be if the information exchanged, especially that which is highlighted and emphasized in the most major and best promoted sessions, swung more toward issues of vision, strategy, and practical lessons from what people are doing, and away from descriptions of oppression and analyses of oppressions all too familiar systemic roots. But even this reorienting of focus, as positive as it would be, would still leave us with a gigantic apparatus being used only to talk, dance, sing, and otherwise experience one anothers views and styles, and to do so only for a few days each year. Cant the WSF apparatus do something that is more sustained, without pulling apart inwardly?

./english/611.txt:44:No one related to the WSF process, I think, would balk at either of these agenda items as being somehow contrary to their local beliefs or priorities. It so, then why cant the WSF help organize into existence an international movement working on behalf of enlarging alternative media on the one hand, and of coercing better content from mainstream media on the other hand?

./english/611.txt:48:The only ideology this media movement would need is that truth in media is better than lies in media and that media concern for the well being of billions is better than media concern for the well being of thousands and that media in the hands of the people is better than media in the hands of corporate behemoths. And this ideology could be adopted without violating or even transcending the WSFs current definition - which is to facilitate honest, respectful, progressive, information exchange. A WSF media focus might provide excitement and momentum sufficient to rejuvenate and galvanize the forum process, as well as providing an immensely valuable contribution to movements worldwide.

./english/611.txt:58:As another possibility to consider - perhaps in parallel - what if we the Social Forum process began to see itself as the fledgling infrastructure of an experiment not only in international communication, but also in participatory democracy? Can we envision social forums forming locally in cities and villages all over the planet? I am told there are a hundred in Italy. Imagine that density of per capita local forums, and even four or five times that level world wide.

./english/614.txt:19:· In the first place, with relation to the Conferences, seminars and panels spaces. By the general rule, in these four years, there hasn’t been many advances further than the critic to neoliberalism (with no built record of it so far), and we carry a huge deficit regarding the reflection and confrontation around the strategies of struggle in order to oppose the system and, besides, the elaboration of alternatives, not understood as an intellectual exercise of experts, but rather, as a process of reflection and contrast built from the dynamics of the social movements struggles. The process of building alternatives as the “food sovereignty” can serve as reference to this matter, that we should start by defining those issues in which, because of the urgency of the problems, as well as because of the movements developments, could be approached.

./english/614.txt:55:Regarding the International Council that tutors the undertaking of the WSF with all the legitimacy granted by its history, it must not be converted neither in a private space of those who constitute it at the moment, nor in a closed space where what happens and what is to happen in the WSF is dissolved. Otherwise, after four years, it’s time to create spaces of democratic participation, both in the reflection on the future of the Forum (how to move forward in the consolidation of this process), and in the decision making process on the issues that affect it. And concerning these issues it results a contradiction that the social movements, who constitute the spine of the Forum, at the same time, except for some networks and some very concrete social movements (Via Campesina, World March of Women, CUT) are marginalized in these processes of refletion and decision making. Even more in moments when by the time that has passed and the consolidation of the WSF itself, its future is under debate and in which the International Council has been given executive functions that deeply contrast with its central role: to facilitate the accomplishment of the WSF and its development based on the criterias with which it has been created and respecting the Charter of Principles.

./english/614.txt:57:It’s not a matter of questioning the representativity of those who constitute the Council, but to coordinate a participatory process in the definition of criterias to the WSF procedures (periodicity, country, form, structure…), and to integrate in its structure the assemblies and organizing committees of those Forums that have been constituted during the past years, to integrate these experiences in the building of the WSF. In any case it seems obvious the members of Organizing Committees should be integrated that in the IC, and note that this situation has not been acepted regarding the Indian Committee, after the success of Mumbai.

./english/618.txt:7:When India was approached in January 2002 to initiate the WSF’s “migration” out of Porto Alegre, Indian organisations were still only marginally integrated into the international process of social forums. They had only two years to assimilate this unifying “philosophy” and to assemble the necessary conditions for success, especially of assuring the presence of delegations from all over a country in many respects as diversified as the whole of Europe. After a successful trial run – the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad – in January 2003, social forums were organised in India’s states, very often at the grassroots level of groups of villages.

./english/620.txt:29:Without going into the merits or otherwise of the above criticism, the larger issue is how can a space be created that allows for not only a diversity of issues, but also of political streams and size? We feel that this cannot be done by a set of ‘rules’ or by an IC/International Secretariat imposing its “decisions” on the organisation. The groups that are a part of the WSF must internalise a vision of WSF by which all hegemony is seen to be counter productive. The IC/Secretariat can only reinforce this by the WSF process and in constructing the program of the events.

./english/620.txt:32:As already identified in the accompanying note, two changes from the WSF Brazilian/European process in India were:

./english/620.txt:34:a) Looking at WSF not just as an event but also a process. For this, a number of state, district level events were also organised.

./english/620.txt:38:This helped in creating not just one centre of power for the event, but multiple centres with groups coming together for their events. The selection of the self-organised events was also based not on the thematic content alone but also to help promote diversity. All this succeeded in mitigating the tensions that quite often surround the process of choosing events and speakers.

./english/625.txt:16:All this reflects the more participative process in which the WSF was built up in India. First, a great Asian committee was set up, then a broad-based Indian committee and, finally, an organising committee. This structure contemplated the diversity of political positions and organisational outlooks, so as to maintain dialogue among all social forces. This implied balanced participation, alternating public exposure, a multiplicity of mechanisms to contemplate a diversity of standpoints.

./english/625.txt:32:On the other hand, such convergences have made it possible to devote greater attention, from one Forum to the next, to topics raised by WSF participants, and to their strategies for influence and change. This would appear to strengthen the idea of the WSF as a process, as against seeing it as just an event.

./english/625.txt:38:However, the frequency of the world event depends on other factors, such as support for travel by movements and players from poorer countries; the centralised type of WSF; and what is achieved from between one edition and the next. Frequency must thus be considered in the context of the WSF as a process and take account of all variables.

./english/629.txt:4:The success of the World Social Forum 2003 in Porto Alegre and its process of globalization throughout the year of 2002, brought about many questions about its continuity. Many valuations have been written, pointing to different directions, as well as new proposals have been put forward for the organization of 2003, 2004 and 2005 events. In fact, the Forum faces a positive crisis, one of growth, that demands a deeper look at some of the issues remarked in its Principles Charter. To avoid the risk of destroying its potentialities, it is imperative that some ambiguities are overcome, before the process moves toward irretrievable crystallized orientations. A timely occasion for this could be the next meeting of the WSF International Council - better prepared and longer than the previous ones - expected for June 2003.

./english/629.txt:6:The present text intends to contribute for this debate, approaching three themes that have become fundamental for the continuity of the Forum process:

./english/629.txt:16:Whether the Forum is to be considered as a space or as a movement has become a basic and preliminary option in this stage of the process. To elude our answer, by not putting it clearly, is the best way to create difficulties.

./english/629.txt:24:The actual discussion then turns ou to be: would transforming the World Social Forum into a movement, now – or if not now, later on, as the process advances – be a good strategy to achieve the objective that aggregates all participants, that is, the overcoming of the neo-liberalism and the construction of “another possible world”? Or, inversely, would it be helpful for us, in order to attain this objective, to be able to count - now and along the development of the process – on spaces like those that are opened by the World Social Forum?

./english/629.txt:28:Furthermore: if we do it, we will be – without any help from those we are fighting against...- throwing away a powerful instrument of struggle that we were able to create drawing on the most important political discovery lately: the power of the free horizontal articulation, which explains the success in Porto Alegre, as well as in Seattle and of the February 15th manifestations against the war. And we have to bear in mind that if the horizontal social articulation still has so much to contribute now for our fight, it will also be necessary in the very process of construction of the world we want.

./english/629.txt:34:A movement congregates people - its militants, as the militants of a party - who decide to organize themselves to accomplish, collectively, certain objectives. Its formation and existence entails the definition of strategies to reach these objectives, the formulation of action programs and the distribution of responsibilities among its members – including those concerning the direction of the movement. The one who assumes this function will lead the militants of the movement, getting them – through authoritarianism or democratic methods, according to the choice made by the founders of the movement - to be liable for their commitment in the collective action. Its organizational structure is necessarily pyramidal, however democratic the internal process of decision and the way used to choose those who will occupy the different levels of management might be. On the other hand, its efficacy will depend on the explicitness and precision of its specific objectives, and therefore, of its own delimitation, in time and space.

./english/629.txt:44:As the squares, the Forum is an open space, as its Principles Charter also specifies. But it is not a neutral space like the public squares. The Forum opens from time to time in different parts of the world - in the events where it takes place - with one specific objective: to allow as many people, organizations and movements as possible that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and struggles of others, discuss proposals of action, to become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Thus, it is a space created to serve a common objective of all those who converge to the Forum, functioning horizontally as a public square, without leaders nor pyramids of power in its interior. All those who come to the Forum are willing to accept these conditions - for this reason, in order to join this “square”, one must agree with its Principles Charter.

./english/629.txt:50:The objectives of these new initiatives, in their turn, do not have to be all clear and precise, differently from what occurs in the movements. Some are still being apprehended, in a generating process, - waiting to be hatched in the incubator - demanding time to mature.

./english/629.txt:98:In fact, a great challenge emerges, in my opinion, for the continuity of the Forum process, and for the fulfillment of its vocation of “incubator” of more and more movements and initiatives: to multiply such “spaces” worldwide – genuinely open and free, without drawing the attention only to specific proposals. We must hope that nobody, however inadvertently, contributes to drive the Forum to a closing process until it disappears as an open space.

./english/629.txt:100:However,it is all a matter of choice. People and organizations who are preparing events this year or in the next ones, within the process of the World Social Forum, and the members of its present International Council or of the enlarged Council that will get together in June, may consider that they should adopt an orientation of the type proposed by the so-called “ social movements”. Nobody can prevent this decision. It’s an option. Each of the participants of the Forum process will then decide about the continuity of its own participation, for one should bear in mind that the Forum is not yet a movement and there are no rules to belong to it or of respect to majority decisions even when they are taken in a way considered democratic. What we cannot do is fail to discuss this question clearly and frankly, so that we can be fully aware of the consequences of such decisions.

./english/629.txt:122:Without any doubt the priority given to the self-organized activities – that expresses in the practice of the events organization the option for Forums-spaces and not for a Forum-movement - would be much conducive to accomplishing the objectives of the WSF, formulated in its Principles Charter and indicated in the beginning of this text: to allow as many people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism as possible to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and the struggles of the others, discuss proposals of action, become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Because in fact it’s in the self-organized workshops and seminars that this can occur, and not in the traditional context of large meetings and congresses, where the people listen passively to what respectable people have to say, and by chance be lucky enough to have the opportunity of formulating questions.

./english/629.txt:126:The discussion about the option of whether to be a space or a movement is also important because transforming the Forum in a movement can bear negative effects to the continuity of the process, as it opens the possibility of disputes of power, that can erode or even destroy it from inside. As the WSF Principles Charter establishes that WSF is not a space for disputing power, having – until now – the character of a horizontal and open space, this prevented the occurrence of such disputes effectively in its events. But their preparation is not immune to that.

./english/629.txt:130:There are also those who deem it necessary to bring that dispute even to the Brazilian Organization Committee – currently the Secretariat of the Forum process – and to its International Council. They even say that the present composition of the Brazilian Committee is not representative, because it does not take into account the proportional participation of all the forces or political tendencies that should be in the direction of the Forum process. They also say that the International Council should be “conducted” by some persons, or reduced to a group representing the others.

./english/629.txt:134:It would seem desirable that the composition of the Organization Committees of the Forums-spaces had a diversity ensuring the respect to diversity in the events. But it won’t be necessary to count on the proportional diversity and importance of the organizations and movements that will participate in these events, as these organizations and movements will not come to the forum to receive orders. And yet, still more important than the diversity in the committees is the credibility of people and organizations composing it. They need to invite all the others without leaving any doubt about the real interest of this invitation. Or without rendering those invited afraid of the possibility of being used, by those who invite, to carry out their own real objectives – as it might happen when political parties decide to assume “generously” the support of the process.

./english/629.txt:138:Naturally other levels of organization for valuations and propositions for the Forum process, besides the Organization Committees of the events – such as enlarged committees, councils, assemblies - can amplify the effect of the process, should they manage to incorporate an even larger variety and representation of movements engaged in the construction of the “other world”. But, in an option Forum-space, those types of organization - as it occurs with the organization committees – ought not to intend to direct those movements and organizations, but only to endorse and support the creation of more and more Forum-spaces.

./english/634.txt:14:Aside from numbers and mega-male events (which were not as prevalent as Klein makes out, although the general impression is that women were less well represented than the previous year—an ominous sign!), the atmosphere at Porto Alegre III was electrifying – 5 days of multi-ethnic, multi-racial, internationalism in a country bubbling over with hope after the overwhelming electoral victory of a veritable “working-class hero” to Brazil’s presidency (Lula). Social analyst Peter Waterman has given the flavor of Porto Alegre III in this personal commentary: “[I was inspired by the] energetic and innovative social protest, and original analyses of the local-national-global dialectic in Argentina…by the Kidz in the Kamp who were discussing under a tree, and with informal translation, how to ensure that the emancipatory and critical forces have more impact on the Forum process…by the increasing number of compañer@s, of various ages, identities, movements and sexual orientations, who believe that, in the construction of a meaningfully civil global society, transparency is not only the best policy but the only one” (Waterman, “First

./english/639.txt:29:Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by big men and swooning crowds is that there isnt much glory in it. To work, it requires genuine humility on the part of elected politicians. It means that a victory at the ballot box isnt a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

./english/643.txt:8:It is also important because it has achieved the unification of the two generations of civil society: the NGOs that emerged in the 1970s to fight for human rights, sustainable development, full participation for women, etc, and in defence of human rights, of a sustainable environment, of the full participation of women, of the indigenous movement, and the movement that arose in the 1990s as an opposition force to the neoliberal globalisation process.

./english/645.txt:7:The final triumphs of the World Social Forum (WSF) were the questions with which it ended: When next? and Where? They affirmed that after three years, Porto Alegre is no longer an event but a process. There is a new eagerness to those questions now, arising from the victory of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the Brazil elections last October. The Left is in.

./english/645.txt:9:PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 27 (IPS) - The final triumphs of the World Social Forum (WSF) were the questions with which it ended: When next? and Where? They affirmed that after three years, Porto Alegre is no longer an event but a process.

./english/646.txt:6:The concentration of power in transnational and global institutions was one of the most significant social processes of the 20th century. Despite this, democratic theory and practice have remained nation-state-centric. Examples of cosmopolitan democratic thinking and transnational democratic practice throughout the century were ignored by most analysts and politicians. The 1970s project of the New International Economic Order (NIEO), for example, was considered a failure by most commentators of the next two decades.

./english/646.txt:46:In the decision-making process within the OC, CUT and MST have generally acted “generously” towards their smaller colleagues. In this sense, the disparity of resources has generally not translated into significant disparities in decision-making power. The disparity in resources should, moreover, not be exaggerated. Some of the smaller participating NGOs have better access to financial resources; for example, IBASE, a Rio-based research institute, has been an important fund-raiser for the WSF.

./english/646.txt:68:One aspect of decision-making somewhat neglected in the WSF process is the possibilities opened up by information technology. Of course, much of the informal decision-making and strategic planning of the forum takes place through e-mail. The organisers have, however, been reluctant to explore ways in which cyberspace could be used in organising more formal decision-making processes. Peter Waterman has argued insightfully and provocatively that the WSF “uses the media, culture and cyberspace but it does not think of itself in primarily cultural/communicational terms, nor does it live fully within this increasingly central and infinitely expanding universe”. He sees the WSF as “a shrine of the written and spoken word”

./english/646.txt:80:It has become increasingly clear that the WSF is much more than a series of increasingly large annual events. Indeed the main mechanism for the globalisation of the WSF process has been the holding of regional and thematic forums in various parts of the world. Among the most impactful of these events was a forum on neoliberalism organised in Argentina in August 2002, the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002 and the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad in January 2003. These forums have formed part of the semi-official forum calendar, maintained and controlled jointly by the Organising Committee/Secretariat and the International Council.

./english/646.txt:86:Further debate ensued in Bangkok in August 2002 when the Brazilians strongly opposed the plans of the Italians to invite political parties to take part officially in the European Social Forum. According to the Charter of Principles, the WSF process is “non-party”, but the Italian delegates responded by accusing the Brazilian Organising Committee of hypocrisy, since the PT was so visibly present in all the Porto Alegre forums. The Italians claimed that the open violation of the Charter by the Brazilians had been always accepted by WSF participants and that therefore the Brazilians should not get upset when minor political parties play a small role in a regional forum.

./english/646.txt:88:Another controversy related to plans to organise a social forum event in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2002. The event was to focus on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), coinciding with a FTAA ministerial meeting. During early 2002 the Quito event made it onto the semi-official list of WSF events, but by mid-year it had been taken off. There was no visible public debate, but one of the main reasons was the insistence of some IC members that the Quito event would be too focused on one particular issue (FTAA) and with too narrow an organisational basis. Nevertheless, the event, and many of its slogans and other symbols spread the word throughout the WSF process, even if it was not in the semi-official list.

./english/646.txt:90:These controversies are examples of the growing pains of the WSF process. On the one hand, there are reasons to maintain coherence and some underlying rules in the process so that the WSF brand does not simply evaporate. On the other hand, too much control by the IC and the Secretariat is bound to constrain the creativity and motivation of those in charge of the decentralised events.

./english/646.txt:92:Apart from the semi-official list of regional and thematic forums, a myriad of local events have been organised under WSF banners. Many of these events have neither received, nor asked for official recognition by the WSF governance bodies. Their proliferation is one of the most vital signs that the WSF process is indeed expanding. But the fact that they are often beyond the control of any centralised WSF body complicates the attempts to see the WSF as a movement of movements, with a more or less clearly defined political strategy.

./english/646.txt:96:The WSF provides a flexible space for actors who may wish to construct projects in very different contexts, local and global. Those organisers emphasising such flexibility urge the WSF to avoid issuing declarations of support for any one political process. As Cândido Grzybowski puts it, “political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum”. Sensing a more pronounced dichotomy between forum as a space and forum as a movement, Chico Whitaker meanwhile has criticised the “self-nominated social movements” that “seek to put the forum inside their own mobilising dynamics, to serve their own objectives.”

./english/646.txt:106:George Monbiot has suggested that the WSF process could contribute to the building of a “world parliament in exile”. Some others who locate the WSF more explicitly in the historical traditions of socialist movements have envisaged it as an “opposition party” or “radical international”. From this perspective, it is particularly important to modify its organisational design and the way its decision-making structure functions. The fear of many is that the politicisation involved in such a process could destroy the forum as a relatively neutral space that facilitates encounters between different kinds of civil society actors.

./english/646.txt:124:What is clear about the future of the WSF is that what is most precious is the myriad encounters between different groups and activists which take place within its confines. Geographically, most participants have come from the southern cone of Latin America (especially Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) and southern Europe (especially Italy, France and Spain), but there has been a conscious effort to facilitate the participation of people from Asia, Africa and other parts of Latin America. Even though in numbers the Asian participation has been modest, the process has attracted increasing attention especially in India, where the WSF 2004 will take place. And participation by groups from the United States has been growing every year.

./english/646.txt:144:Meanwhile, it does seem as if within the WEF there is slightly more openness towards the issues discussed by critical social movements. But now, the movements are less willing to engage in dialogue. In January 2003 the International Council decided that in future, the main event of the WSF process would no longer take place simultaneously with the WEF.

./english/646.txt:146:WSF 2004 in India will be a crucial moment. On the one hand it offers the concrete possibility of giving the process a better geographical (and corresponding thematic) balance. On the other hand, it will be difficult to find local governments willing to dedicate as much energy to the process as was the case in Porto Alegre. The host city of Mumbai (Bombay) has a government that is far more distant from the WSF ideals than that of Porto Alegre.

./english/646.txt:148:Then there are the issues of funding. WSF events have received considerable funds from organisations such as Oxfam UK, the Ford Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. This support has not hitherto awakened any significant debates on the possible relations of dependence it could generate. But it should be taken into account, for example, that in order to get funding from the Ford Foundation, the organisers had to convince the foundation that the Workers Party was not involved in the process. Since autonomy from political parties has been important for the WSF organisers for various other reasons as well, the importance of funding conditionality should not be exaggerated. However, the organisation of WSF 2004 in India may imply more critical attitudes towards foreign funding.

./english/646.txt:162:Despite various references to the necessity of imagining and constructing a different world, the issue of democratic global order has not had a very high priority in the agenda of the WSF. There have been claims by intellectuals and groups working on issues of global democracy that the WSF process has been too much dominated by nationalists whose discourse is dominated by anti-globalisation themes. As noted by Michael Hardt, those who “advocate strengthening national sovereignty as a solution to the ills of contemporary globalisation” have dominated the representations of the Forum. More polemically, he also claims that while the “non-sovereign, alternative globalisation position” has not obtained a prominent place in the Forum, it may well have been the position of the majority of the participants.

./english/651.txt:6:The World Social Forum is part of that process. Its short trajectory is indicative of how expectations regarding globalization are shifting. As a Forum, its aim is precisely to enable a global agenda to be built up in a process of dialogue among the whole diversity of civil networks, public campaigns, alliances and coalitions that, in their specificity and differences, stand in opposition to the dominant globalization. That purpose was helped by identifying as anti-Davos, as counter to the ideas and perspectives issuing from the World Economic Forum. That is how it was in 2001, at World Social Forum I in Porto Alegre, which surprised by its innovation and multiple potential. Now, from January 31 to February 5, at World Social Forum II, once again in Porto Alegre, adhesion to the idea of the Forum and the major impact it has had in the world media have turned the tables. Although it has existed for only two years - negligible against the 32 of the World Economic Forum at Davos - the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre now seems to be dictating the agenda. Now it is from their side, from Davos, that the opposition - anti-Porto Alegre - has to come...

./english/654.txt:21:Naturally, there are other tensions that come up even among those who organize the Forum or those who come to help them. For instance there are those who would prefer the Forums International Advisory Council to become a new world direction of the struggle against neo-liberalism, controlling and guiding that process. The perspectives of continuity assumed by the organizers seem to aim in another direction, with the consolidation of the method oriented by the Forums Principles Chart. It is more and more accepted that the Forum is a process and not an event or a new international organization directed by the leaders of a substitutive "unique-monolithic thought", which would be fatal to the Forum itself. It is also necessary , for example, to see to it that the conferences dont end up with guiding syntheses, voted by their respective audiences, or that they do not prevail over the workshops. At the same time, the decisions taken by the organizers so far aim at enabling the power of attraction of the Forum to generate in other parts of the world the same mobilization it has engendered in Brazil. The 2003 Forum will probably start with some ten regional or thematic Forums in the different geopolitical areas of the world, from September to December 2002, before a new world Forum, to take place once again in Porto Alegre. In September 2003 it would start in the same way, with the possibility of finishing it with a world meeting in India in 2004.

./english/654.txt:23:In fact, the biggest challenge for the organizers of the World Social Forum does not consist in defining new and better contents that could lead to even more concrete proposals, but to guarantee the continuity of the form the Forum was given - a case in which the means are determinant for the aim to be reached. The contents will naturally arise from the process thus launched, within mankinds struggle towards another world, and they will necessarily lead to the different editions of the Forum, with matters common to all and with the specific issues of each region of the world where it will take place. What is most important is to ensure that that new paradigm of political transforming action, created by the World Social Forum, is not absorbed by the "old models".

./english/658.txt:25:This is a challenge that was raised since the first Forum. Several of us have highlighted that the World Social Forum is not just a protest movement. It is, of course, but its purpose is to go further and to also be a process of elaboration of plural and diverse proposals to face and overcome neoliberalism. This year, we took a significant step by endeavoring to leave a written record of the results of the debates, not only of the conferences but also of the seminars and workshops. But a look at the page on the conferences on this Web site shows that some of the reports of the conferences of the last two days are not still available and that translations are not systematically provided. Reinforcing the teams that help to produce these written records, resulting from the debates, will be a key task for the next events. By the way, these written records are just that: written records of the different, and hopefully contradictory, exchanges -- we cannot expect them to be summaries, which would drown the diversity of opinions. But it is better to leave a written record, that to leave no record at all.

./english/668.txt:18:Instead, the international organizing committee for the event decided to hold a series of regional World Social Forums over the next year. This increasingly decentralized process will culminate in the 3rd World Social Forum, to be held once again in Porto Alegre this time next year. "An important part of the World Social Forum process," says Atila Roque, an event organizer and CorpWatch adviser in Brazil, "is developing new ways to organize internationally and regionally -- we are at the beginning stages of figuring it out."And despite the lack of "concrete" results, most here agreed that the World Social Forum is of immense value. Its importance of the ongoing nature was perhaps best summed up by a delegate from India, who told the closing ceremonys jubilant and massive crowd that it has become an symbolic landmark for those working for social change everywhere. "As we move into the 21st century," he told the cheering throng, "Porto Alegre will be etched into the collective historical memory of all those working for a different world."