The World and US Social Forums: a Better World Is Possible and Necessary [1 ed.] 9789047442875, 9789004167698

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The World and US Social Forums: A Better World Is Possible and Necessary

The World and US Social Forums: A Better World Is Possible and Necessary Editedb y

Judith Blau and Marina Karides

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

Originally published, in part, as Volume 3, No. 1 (2008) of Brill’s journal Societies Without Borders. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The world and US social forums : a better world is possible and necessary / edited by Judith Blau and Marina Karides. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16769-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. World Social Forum. 2. Social movements--International cooperation. 3. Anti-globalization movement--International cooperation. 4. International economic relations. 5. Democracy. 6. Globalization-Social aspects. I. Blau, Judith R., 1942- II. Karides, Marina. III. Title. HN18.3.W664 2008 306.209172’4--dc22 2008018901

ISBN 978-90-04-16769-8 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

Contents Preface: Why Write about the World Social Forum ....................... Immanuel Wallerstein

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Introduction .................................................................................. Marina Karides and Judith Blau

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PART I SOCIAL FORUM PROCESS: THE USSF AND ITS RELATION TO THE WSF 1. In Defense of World Social Forum VII ..................................... Marina Karides and Thomas Ponniah

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2. The US Social Forum: Building from the Bottom Up ............... Michael Leon Guerrero

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3. New Politics Emerging at the US Social Forum ........................ Jackie Smith, Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum, Christopher Hausmann

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4. Another United States Is Happening: Building Today’s Movement from the Bottom Up. The United States Social Forum and Beyond .................................................................... Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome W. Scott 5. A Different (Kind of ) Politics Is Possible: Conflict and Problem(s) at the USSF ............................................................ MichalO sterweil

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PART II DEBATESA NDS OCIAL THOUGHT: HIGHLIGHTING THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 6. Reading Nairobi: Place, Space, and Difference at the 2007 World Social Forum ........................................................ JanetCo nway

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7. Is the World Social Forum the Privileged Space for Reinventing Labor as a Global Social Movement? .................. 117 Peter Waterman 8. Is the World Social Forum a Democratic Global Civil Society? Stellan Vinthagen

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9. Social Forums – Challenges and New Perspectives .................. 149 Chico Whitaker PART III BRIDGING ACTIVISM AND ACADEMICS 10. Reformist Reforms, Non-Reformist Reforms and Global Justice: Activist, NGO and Intellectual Challenges in the World Social Forum ............................................................... 157 PatrickBo nd 11. Feminists and the Forum: Is It Worth the Effort? ................... 173 LyndiH ewitt 12. Sociology, Human Rights, and the World Social Forum ......... 191 MarkF rezzo 13. Another Structure of Knowledge Is Possible: The Social Forum Process and Academia ................................................. 205 StevenS herman 14. World Social Forum: Re-imaging Development and the Global South beyond the Neo-colonial Gaze .......................... 223 Eunice N. Sahle Notes on Contributors .................................................................. 239 Index ............................................................................................. 245

Preface: Why Write about the World Social Forum This book has two audiences, in some ways rather different audiences. One audience is that of persons who have been involved at some level in the processes of the World Social Forum (WSF), and who are debating its merits and its limitations, in the hope of making it more effective and relevant to the issues of global justice and equality which are its raison d’être. The second audience is all those persons not yet involved in the processes of the WSF but who might be sympathetic with its purposes and hopes, and are seeking a clearer picture of what has been going on and what might go on in the future. The remarkable things about this book is that it succeeds in talking to both audiences at once. A reader cannot fail to notice how different the articles in this book are – in their focus, in their emphases, in their degree of optimism or reticence, in their vision of what the World Social Forum has been up to now. That is not accidental. It is an accurate reflection of the process about which the authors are writing. The WSF is an “open space.” This has been the central organizational principle of its existence. This principle has been a contested one. There are many persons active in the WSF who are not sure this is the best way to organize the WSF. But up to now, the principle has prevailed. So, whether or not one thinks it is a good idea, it remains a reality. An open space is almost by definition somewhat chaotic – or at least not tightly organized. The participants come from an incredible variety of organizations – in terms of geographic location, primary area of concern (environment, labor, feminism, etc.), level of organization (international, national, local), internal structure (NGO, social movement). Inevitably this means they also vary in their basic political outlooks. They are unified only in their stated commitment to be against neoliberal globalization and imperialism in all its forms. They all claim to believe that “another world is possible.” What is the point of an open forum? The first and most basic point is to be very inclusive of all groups that are struggling for global justice and equality. The second point is to make it more possible that all of these groups learn about each other, learn from each other, and if possible as a

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consequence create networks of social and political action that might not otherwise exist. The third point is to create a rumbling force that will grow worldwide and thereby have a major impact on the transformation of the world in this period of transition from our existing highly unequal, highly polarized capitalist world-system to some other kind of world that will be more democratic and more egalitarian and not to a still worse system (a real possibility that we must always bear in mind). When one reads these essays, one sees that it is not at all easy to maintain the vitality and encourage the growth of a space as structurally loose as the WSF. But one also sees that so far, despite all the problems that author after author elucidates, the WSF has been growing in numbers and vitality and that the so-called WSF process has been a remarkable achievement. For one thing, although there has been grumbling from many quarters, there have not been any destructive divisions. For another thing, the WSF has shown itself capable of learning about itself. My first contact with the WSF was in 2002, and my most recent in 2007. I can attest that the WSF of 2007 was different in significant ways from that of 2002, and in almost every way the changes have been an improvement. This process of self-learning has been one of the things that has held the WSF together, and turned most participants into activists who wish to improve the WSF rather than leave it. What can those people who have not yet been involved in the WSF process learn from this book? They can learn that the WSF process is an exciting and for the most part a fulfilling adventure of the spirit. And they can perhaps learn how, when, and where they can insert themselves into the process. So the book thereby becomes a pedagogical tool, a basis for discussion and debate, a stimulus to social and political action. In the world struggle for global justice and equality, the WSF has been the only game in town in recent years. Were it to disappear tomorrow, for any reason, it is hard to see what would replace it. And we would all feel the loss. So that is the last lesson of this book. We all need to throw ourselves into the efforts to build upon what has been useful and successful in the WSF process and seek to find the ways in which the efforts to learn from the errors can lead to remolding the WSF process into one that is still more useful and successful. Immanuel Wallerstein

Introduction Marina Karides and Judith Blau You can’t blame the youth, You can’t fool the youth, You can’t blame the youth of today You can’t fool the youth You teach the youth about Christopher Columbus And you said he was a very great man —Peter Tosh, Can’t Blame the Youth (1972)

“The time is now!” is a well-spoken phrase especially applicable to a US audience just learning about the World Social Forum (WSF) and the social forums that have sprouted up around the world. The first United States Social Forum (USSF) has been marked as one of the most momentous occasions in recent US political history; those who attended can attest to the power that filled the streets of Atlanta, GA during the opening march in the summer of 2007. Globalization, global restructuring, corporate or global or finance capitalism, post-fordism, post-modernism, the global assembly line – terms and phrases that all refer to more or less the same thing, the increasing economic, cultural, social and political exchange between nations over the last thirty years. Yet this process is not neutral, as many economists and governments of wealthy nations, especially the US, would like us to believe. While inequities between regions have existed since the days of Columbus (who still gets presented in most elementary schools as a benevolent adventurer), the recent exacerbation of these global inequalities is most evident in the world-wide debt patronage of post-colonial nations as well as in the intensified environmental degradation, high rises in poverty and unemployment, and loss of affordable housing that is occurring in all nations. Yet our social ills – homophobia, racism, hate crimes, the increased violence against women – are also part and parcel of a global economy that is shepherded by a self-absorbed corporate elite. Members of this elite work

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egregiously long hours to maintain a system that provides them with exorbitant privilege and power, ownership of several homes, and financial investments. At the same time they haggle for lower wages, less time off, and no benefits for their domestics, gardeners, pool cleaners, and security guards who work egregiously longer hours just to survive. With inequities becoming more widespread and penetrating, the world is ripe for resistance and change. The WSF represents a global awareness of a wide variety of people, groups, and organizations that strategize to counter both the logic and the material experience of globalization and create their own systems of production, distribution, and politics. Struggling to end or remedy the inevitable ails of capitalism through social movement and volunteerism is a long standing tradition in the US and elsewhere, but the WSF is a new space and process that helps to build a permanent network of communities for justice and human rights. This book is an offering to those who have never attended a social forum event. We hope the thoughts, descriptions, and revelations of the contributers will entice you into coming to the next WSF in Belem, Brazil, a port city in the Amazon, in 2009 and the next US Social Forum scheduled for 2010 – location to be announced. We can study the world from our classrooms and learn of the grave social inequalities that exist in this country, made strikingly visible by the institutional fiasco in response to Hurricane Katrina. We also can watch television, read the newspapers, listen to the radio, and check internet sources for news. Yet attending a social forum is a unique and rich source of information and presents the opportunity for a deeper understanding of how most people live in this world, what they must contend with, and how they struggle. The “World is Your Campus” is the slogan of study abroad programs in the US and there has been a tremendous rise in student participation in these programs in the last few years. The good news is that young Americans are ready to travel and willing to learn outside the US college classroom. While study abroad programs have their benefit, some of them lack a wider understanding of the global processes that impact these countries and the political and economic connectedness of all nations. The social forums teach about the local impact of global processes. Lasting up to five days with additional pre- and post-forum events, the new perspectives, cultural forms, and confident calls to make another world possible which are presented at the forums make participants dizzy with learning that often takes months to process.

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Go to the WSF or the USSF for the education but leave as part of the action that is changing planetary consciousness and bit by bit building the structures to liberate the poor, the grassroots, and the marginalized. Social activists from around the globe organize the thousands of events that take place at the WSF. These include grassroots organizers, the leaders and workers in small and large non-governmental organizations, but most potently WSFers are the vendors in the streets, the pastoralists in the green, the garment workers in the factory, and the homemakers, and migrants who fight for justice daily. Our volume devotes its first section to United States Social Forum. In the first chapter Thomas Ponniah and I discuss the beginnings of the WSF process and examine the rhetoric around the last WSF event in Nairobi, Kenya. Two chapters in this section are written by activists – the first by Michael Guerrero of Grassroots Global Justice and the second by Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott of Project South, who served on the National Planning Committee of the USSF. The chapters by Jackie Smith, Rachel Kutz-Flamenbaum, and Christopher Hausmann and Michal Osterweil present first hand accounts of the US Social Forum while providing an analytical assessment of the role of the USSF in future organizing and political goals. Social justice work is riddled with contradictions and so the mid-section of our volume is dedicated to debates around the social forum process. These essays should be of particular interest to students of politics, sociology, democracy, and geography. Stellan Vinthagen takes a critical look at the decision making process of the WSF and Janet Conway draws our attention to the very important influence of geography on the forums and the communities located in the vicinity of the event. Peter Waterman reflects on his decades of dedication to workers’ rights and considers how labor, a long-standing international movement, can integrate itself into the social forum and what direction the movement might take in this new setting. The section concludes with an essay by Chico Whitaker, one of the founders of the WSF who challenges us to bring the social forum process forward. With our last section, we hope to provide some clues as to how to bridge academic pursuits and study with the world of social activism. In the US the gap between the two is larger than in many nations and so we turn to African scholars, Patrick Bond and Eunice Sahle, for their experience in bridging scholar activism. Mark Frezzo and Steven Sherman, critical American sociologists, explore, respectively, the study of human rights and

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the structure of knowledge in relation to the WSF. Lyndi Hewitt provides us with keen insight and a feminist perspective on how to study the forum while simultaneously participating in it. Finally, we’d like to thank A.J. Bruno and Stacey Ann Ray, graduate students in Sociology at Florida Atlantic University for their help with references and indexing. We believe our collection presents a broad enough scope to give readers a taste of the social forum process and an understanding of some of the intellectual debates it has spawned. We also hope it expresses the ultimate optimism of social forums and encourages your local participation and global engagement.

PART I SOCIAL FORUM PROCESS: THE USSF AND ITS RELATION TO THE WSF

CHAPTER 1

In Defense of World Social Forum VII Marina Karides and Thomas Ponniah . . . globalization from below shall be about clarification of value from within the movement and connection of the grassroots resistance. Indeed, the poor and the marginalized people struggles must protect the egalitarian nature of the WSF and safeguard it. Steve Ouma (2007) Programmes Coordinator and Deputy Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission

A radically democratic change in the perception of global justice and human rights has occurred in the last seven years. The World Social Forum (WSF), as a meeting space and a process, is an innovation that has shifted the way NGOs, grassroots activists, and national movements strategize to meet their goals. Engagement in the WSFs is growing – an increasing number of participants: activists, organizers, and academics are following the evolving process of the Forums. This essay contends that the overall WSF process embodies an uneven, often contradictory, but evolving democratization with WSF7 advancing this agenda via its presence in one of the most peripheralized countries that included a substantially improved gender discussion and representation in comparison to previous Forums. In the weeks following a WSF event, the Forums are subject to evaluations that are found on blogs, at the websites of organizations that participated, and are spread through listserves1 that we believe largely influence persons’ perception of what occurred on the ground at the WSF. While we actively engage in these post-Forum discussions we remain critical of them. The World Social Forum is a novel social phenomenon that is still conceptually undigested. In addition, because it is such a large event, many of us 1

Interestingly, though not the focus of this article, the Forum process receives little mainstream media attention even though the events attract tens of thousands of participants from around the world.

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who study the Forum believe that it is difficult to present a full story of what occurred on the ground at a single event. The range of issues and organizations that attend, make most assessment of the World Social Forum partial. Yet we also recognize that the Forums can be characterized according to some general trends with the most important of these being greater internal democratization. We focus on the most recent WSF, held in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007 and attempt to balance our account with some comparative data on the three nations (Brazil, India, Kenya) in which WSFs have been held with an assessment of the critiques of the Nairobi WSF and the Kenyan Organizing Committee that planned the event. Participants criticized the Kenyan Organizing Committee for permitting corporate involvement, the limited access to the forum by Kenya’s poor, and over-representation of NGOs and religious organizations. Both of us participated in WSF7 as organizers and participants. Our analysis benefits from having attended the previous forums. We begin by presenting the roots of the World Social Forum and eventually conclude with the achievements of the most recent edition of the WSF held in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007.

The Roots of the WSF Process Since 2001 the World Social Forum (WSF) has attempted to provide an open space for the global justice movements to develop alternatives to the current world order. The official origin of the Forum can be traced back to January 2000. One month after huge protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization (WTO), three long time activists sat down in Paris to discuss alternatives to contemporary globalization. The first was Oded Grajew, the founder of the Brazilian Business Association for Citizenship (CIVES) that pulls together progressive businesses aligned with the Brazilian Workers’ Party. The second was Francisco Whitaker, of the Brazilian Justice and Peace Commission (CBJP). The third was Bernard Cassen, chair of ATTAC-France (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) and director general of the journal Le Monde Diplomatique. Grajew proposed the idea of a Forum that would be an alternative to the World Economic Forum annually held in Davos, Switzerland. Since 1971 the Davos Forum has focused on bringing together world leaders, corporate executive officers (CEOs), and some non-governmental orga-

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nizations (NGOs), to discuss the global economy. In the popular activist imagination the Davos Forum is perceived as the primary institution that discusses, formulates and advances contemporary globalization. Grajew, proposed a counter-summit, to be held simultaneously, that would debate alternatives to the current world order. The others agreed. The burgeoning global mobilizations needed to become visionary movements, not simply mobilizations against neoliberalism, but for a new society. Together they decided on three key framing concepts: one, the event should be held in the Global South, preferably in the city of Porto Alegre, in Brazil – home of the famous participatory budget process; two, its name should be the World Social Forum in order to juxtapose it to the World Economic Forum; and three it should be held at the same time as the World Economic Forum. A number of Brazilian civil society organizations formed the Organizing Committee for the Forum. They were the Brazilian Association of NonGovernmental Organizations (ABONG), Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC), the Brazilian Justice and Peace Commission (CBJP), the Brazilian Business Association for Citizenship (CIVES), the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IBASE) and the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights. In March 2000 the city of Porto Alegre’s assent was secured. The city and its state government of Rio Grande do Sul, were under the governance of the Brazilian Workers’ Party. Thus the coordination of the first Forum was driven by a number of Brazilian organizations within the context of a progressive city and state. Porto Alegre was seen as an appropriate initial site for the World Social Forum because the city had been governed by the Worker’s Party since 1988 and was celebrated for its innovative participatory budgetary process grounded in radical reform of the relationship between the public, the government and business. The reform was and is radical because it inhibited corporate control over the democratic process by giving popular mobilizations leverage over the municipal government. The annual participatory budget process of Porto Alegre was designed according to the following distinct stages. The process begins in March with citizen forums across sixteen geographic and sectoral areas of the city. Forums of five hundred to seven hundred people elected two representatives and two alternates to serve one year on the budget council. In April and May, the forum representatives organized smaller assemblies to propose the budget priorities of the public for the following year. Between May and mid-July, the proposed

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budget priorities were forwarded to the current Municipal Council (33 councilors elected by traditional democratic means). Simultaneously, the forum representatives attended training sessions on municipal finance. A draft budget was constructed by the budget council and municipal bureaucrats and sent to the mayor and the Municipal Council for consultation. Between October and December, the participatory budget council amended the budget for a final approval from the Municipal Council and for eventual implementation in January. Altogether the four phases aimed at maximizing public involvement in setting the city’s social and economic development priorities.2 The success of this innovative, engaged, financial planning process made Porto Alegre the ideal home for a movement searching for alternative social models. Along with this “official origin” there are two unofficial sources of the World Social Forum. The first is oriented around an indigenous social movement. In 1994, the Zapatistas led an indigenous uprising in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. At the time the Zapatista rebellion was called the “world’s first postmodern revolution”3 because, the movement made extensive use of internet networks; as well, unlike previous revolutionary struggles, the Zapatistas did not want to take control of the national state, they simply wanted autonomy in certain indigenous territories. This stance towards government was different from past uprisings in the 20th century where the revolutionaries had sought state power. Linked to their emphasis on autonomous organizing, the Zapatistas identified with struggles all over the world: anarchism, feminism, queer politics, anti-racism, and every possible movement against oppression. In 1996, the Zapatista convened a world conference called “The International Gathering For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism”. This meeting pulled together 3000 activists from 43 countries to debate strategy against contemporary globalization.4 That encounter could be seen as the unofficial first WSF. The second unofficial source of the WSF also emerged in 1996. The suggestion for a counter-summit to Davos was, in fact, formulated during the twentieth anniversary of the Tricontinental Center in Leuwen, Belgium.5 The Center had been founded in 1976 as a research institute specifically focused on national liberation processes in Africa, Asia and 2 3 4 5

Rebick 2000, pp. 26–29. Golden20 01. EZLN199 7. Houtart and Polet 2001.

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Latin America. The Center is the focal point of network research institutes located throughout Global South. The groups associated with the Center organized the first anti-Davos event in Switzerland in 1999, thereby highlighting the importance of an alternative to the World Economic Forum. Thus, along with the Zapatistas’ “Global Encounter For Humanity Against Neoliberalism”, the Tricontinental Center also contributed a crucial element that would lead to the formulation of the World Social Forum. The Open Space The Zapatista encounter and the Tricontinental counter-summit were steps towards creating the World Social Forum. The culminating step was the introduction by Grajew, Whitaker and Cassen of the “Open Space” concept of the Forum. Many have wondered whether the Forum is a new global political agent, replacing the past role of the Soviet Union, or the Working Men’s Internationals. The Forum organizers, as outlined in the WSF’s Charter of Principles, defined the Forum not as an agent, but as an open pedagogical space that enables mutual education, networking and the production of diverse alternatives.6 The Charter explicitly prohibits the Forum from becoming a deliberative body. The Forum’s Charter is upheld by its International Council that brings together over a hundred of the most prominent social movements in the world. As a whole, though with many disagreements, they have ensured that the Forum acts as an arena, not an agent, through which social projects can be formulated. For example the global protests of February 15, 2003, that coordinated ten million activists around the world to mobilize against the war in Iraq, was organized by activists at the 2003 World Social Forum. The Forum organizers themselves did not call on activists to unite against the war, nor did they write a collective manifesto denouncing the war.7 The Forum was the space within which anti-war movements coordinated the global protests. The essence of the Forum then is to be an arena for the articulation of multiple alternatives. The search for new social visions has been a popular one. The first Forum in 2001 had over ten thousand activists from around the world gather in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The second Forum had over 50,000 participants. 6

World Social Forum 2001, Fisher and Ponniah 2003. Ponniah was the official note-taker at the 2003 International Council Meetings one day before the start of the 2003 World Social Forum. Some members of the International Council argued that the Forum should take a unified statement against the war. The International Council as a whole disagreed. 7

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The numbers at the third swelled to over 100,000. The fourth, held in Mumbai, India, totaled over 120,000. The fifth returned to Porto Alegre, increasing to over 150 000 people. The sixth was held in three different sites: Venezuela, Mali and Pakistan. And its the most recent, in January 2007, to which we now turn our attention. It was held in Nairobi, Kenya. Along with the seven World Social Forums held since 2001 there have also been over a hundred and fifty regional and thematic forums held around the world.

Criticizing WSF7 All of the World Social Forums, along with being lauded individually for providing a new direction for which to build a wide, rich, global scope for social justice and human rights initiatives also have been subject to a range of criticism from WSF participants. The criticisms, tensions, and questions directed at the WSF from within the WSF reflect its participatory democratic principles, that is, its commitment to an open space. The critiques reflect an organic movement within the WSF to continually selfmetamorphose in order to better meets the principles of egalitarian justice that it espouses. Far from dissipating the successful, persistent efforts of the Forum, the challenges to the WSF sustain a foundational operating goal – to renegotiate conditions so that the event may pre-figure the new societies participants are intent on creating across the globe. There is an established range of criticisms that are perpetually presented at most Forums. These include basic organizational difficulties, the lack of transparent accountability of the leading bodies of the WSF, the huge resources utilized for organizing a single world conference, and the limited presence of women and feminism. Each new Forum brings forth a new set of critiques that are particular to it and the context within which it takes place. Yet we argue that the criticisms of the most recent forum in Nairobi were less reflexive than usual, in that they did not take account of the more challenging socio-economic condition of Kenya, particularly in comparison to the other nations, where the Forum has been previously held. Below we review some of the key concerns that surrounded the WSF Forum in Nairobi and then offer an analysis. Fundingth eF orums It is particularly challenging to coordinate an event that is not just representative of the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised but also a place

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where these groups participate, mobilize and network. This hurdle was significantly highlighted in the Kenyan context in which resources are substantially limited. Unlike other locations where WSFs have been held, the Kenyan Organizing Committee did not have the same access to public and non-profit financial resources. As noted earlier the Forums are rooted in Porto Alegre, Brazil where the state, governed by the Workers Party for almost two decades till 2004, could facilitate the logistics and provide financial assistance for the establishment of the World Social Forum. Similarly, in Caracas, Venezuela where one of the 2006 Polycentric Forums was held, the national government of Hugo Chavez offered full financial support providing venues for events and free public transportation to WSF participants. Even in these two contexts, where the state actively supported the WSF, there were logistical difficulties, organizational challenges, and the marginalization of groups within the Forums. For example in Porto Alegre for WSF V, the organizers were faulted for the marginal location of the indigenous tent. The tent was at such a distance from other meeting spaces that most of the WSF participants did not attend events held at the indigenous rights space so that eventually activists working in this space abandoned their tent in order to participate in the wider Forum. In Caracas criticism was waged against the secondary status of the Youth Camp, which has generally been a free location for young activists, to reside and self-organize. The youth camp was too far a field from other events, offered limited safety, and was generally uninhabitable due to flooding. While the Forums held in Latin America had government funding, the first WSF held outside of Porto Alegre in Mumbai, India relied on no public or private funding but on the financial support of national and international NGOS. The lack of government support in India provoked the Indian Organization Committee to mobilize resources from various movements and through volunteerism rather than buying services or relying on provisions from the state. The organizing committee in India was also able to refuse funding from the Ford foundation, symbolizing the complete rejection of sponsorship by transnational corporate entities.

Capitalists in, the Poor out? The relocation of the WSF to Kenya was the first time the main event was located in the peripheral rather than semi-peripheral nations (although

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one of the three components of the 2006 polycentric Forum was held in Bamako, Mali in 2006). Highlighted among the criticisms of WSF7 was the participation of corporate entities, the cost of food and drink, and the limited opportunity for entry by very poor Kenyans. We sum up below the discussions of the various challenges that were identified at the WSF 2007.8 We conclude by offering some thoughts why corporate capital involvement and social exclusion occurred at the Nairobi WSF and suggest that this reflects political economic conditions of Kenya rather than Kenya’s organizing committee willingness to sacrifice the principles of the WSF. Telephones, Water,a ndF ood Widely condemned on progressive websites was the presence of Celtel, a formerly African and now Kuwait transnational telecommunications company that had exclusive rights at the WSF. In exchange Celtel provided all communication equipment for the event and WSF publicity banners, which also prominently featured the company’s logo. The Kenyan Organizing committee was criticized for using Celtel, for permitting its conspicuous presence on the stadium grounds where the forum was held, and for facilitating an increase in Celtel’s customer base. A secondary criticism raised was that the Forum utilized Celtel rather than Safaricom, an African telecommunication company. However, Professor Onyango Oloo, national coordinator of Kenya’s organizing committee, stated that Safaricom had been approached by the WSF to partner with the conference but turned down the offer because they identified it as too politically partisan. Another private contract the WSF entered into was with Kenyan Airways that became the official airlines of the WSF offering discounted airfare to participants of the Forum. Engagement with large corporations compromises the principles of the WSF. The corporate presence was also felt through the water suppliers, Grange Park, another contract agreed upon by the Organizing Committee. Water was sold at three times the usual cost in Kenya. The cost of water was one aspect of the general problem of the availability of food and drink at the WSF site. First, food stalls by small or individual vendors, were not apparent in the central areas around the sta8 These criticisms appeared on the various list-serves associated with WSF commentary, such as WorldSocialForum-Discuss Archives (http://mail.openspaceforum.net/pipermail/ worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum.net/).

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dium where many of the Forum events were being held. Instead these vendors were located somewhat to the side and were sparsely visited. The venues that were centrally located were strikingly upscale in terms of the cost per meal and the formal attire of food servers and cooks. Unfortunately participants, along with not knowing that there were numerous food venues just outside the main area of the Forum, were also unaware that the centrally located venue, the Windsor Café, was an extension of a golf resort owned by John Mikuchi, Kenya’s Internal Security Minister also know as the “Crusher” for both his work under British colonialism and in inhibiting free media.The knowledge of the ownership of the prominent food stand came late but not too late for protests to occur within the Forum venue by younger Kenyan slum residents who took direct action, surrounded the Windsor café and fed themselves from the overpriced food stall. Indeed the very poor and disenfranchised slum dwellers drew attention to what was considered one of the most insidious faults of the Nairobi Forum; poor and low income Kenyans were financially constrained from attending the forum. From the first day of the event, the slum residents, many from the nearby Korogochu settlement (one of the larger slums in Nairobi), held protests at the entrance gate of the WSF that was held at Nairobi’s major sports stadium. Many Nairobians considered the admittance fee, Ksh 500 (about $7.50) very high especially in light of the fact that many earn little more than that per week. By the evening of the 3rd day of the Forum, WSF organizers, who had earlier diverted participants towards gates where protests were not being held, agreed to permit free entry to the slum dwellers assuaging the tensions building among activists. Protest on entry fees for Kenyans were also conducted within the Forum in which slum residents and WSF participants headed for the administrative offices and serendipitously found the organizers at a press conference. Coverage of the confrontation claimed that protesters were able to use the media forcing organizers to publicly commit to rectify the situation. Finally, the venue, Kasarani stadium, was also criticized, because it is an exclusive venue where most Kenyans or even inhabitants of Nairobi have never visited.

A Political Economic Analysis Commenting on the shortcomings of the social forums is a perpetual activity of participants, progressive websites, and those who stand outside the WSF

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though participate in the global justice movement. It is worth considering why there is limited analysis of why such shortcomings occur. While the criticisms noted above are accurate and need to be reviewed, most do not offer a diagnosis of the challenges faced by the Kenyan Organizing Committee. Table1

Social and economic indicators of nations that hosted the WSF Brazil

Population GDPp erca pita Percentofp opulation below poverty line NumberofN GOs

188,078,227 8600 31 276,000

India 1,095,351,995 3700 25 1.5m illion,est .

Kenya 34,707,817 1200 50 1000,est .

CIA World Fact Book 2007. Institute Brasileiro de Goegrafia e Estatistica 2004. Indianngos.com. Nomadnet.com.

Kenya is the poorest and smallest nation that has held the WSF. Table 1 shows that Kenya’s GDP per capita is less than half of India’s and a little more than a fourth of Brazil’s. More striking is the poverty rate in Kenya that includes half of the population, double that of India’s and approximately 40 percent higher than that of Brazil’s. While the Brazilian and India poverty are high, Kenya’s extensive poverty is one demonstration of its peripheral position in the world economy. Table 1 also includes estimates on the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in each of these nations. While India’s population size helps to explain why there are more than a million NGOs, the sheer number of organizations provides an understanding of the resources that the local organizers of WSF in India could mobilize. This may have given them increased access to International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) with greater resources. Kenya by comparison has a much smaller NGO community, one that may be more burdened given the poverty levels of the nation. Brazil although having a relatively low rate of NGOs, was assisted in the organization of the WSF by government funds and infrastructure. The Kenyan Organizing committee is made up of about 8 sub-committees with 10 members each. When the youth protested the overpriced food

17

venues, Professor Oyungi, came out to address the group, clarified some false accusations – such as the WSF Nairobi logo being stolen from youth creators – and agreed to address the issues that included the prohibitive cost of entry to the Forum for at least half of all Kenyans. In appreciating the radical democratic roots of the WSF, it is worthwhile noting that the adjustments made during the WSF event in Nairobi was brought forth not by the international participants per se, although many participated in protests, but from the subaltern groups of Nairobi, specifically the residents of the poorest slums that face daily and deeply the worst of neoliberal globalization. The social and economic indicators, presence of NGOs, and short time for preparations, does not explain all the reasons that the WSF committees relied on contracts with corporations but we think it offers some important background. While the criticisms of the WSF in general and in Kenya, are necessary for ensuring continuous democratization there appears to be a systematic lack of analysis as to why anti-democratic transgressions occur at WSF VII. Granted, some commentary does recognize that attempts at prefigurative politics takes place in a large context of corporate domination and its consequent social inequality. However, interrogating the contexts where WSF has been held may deepen our understanding of how to deter future infringement and further the goal of making other worlds possible. Feminist Fusion in the Seventh Round The success of the World Social Forum lies in its ability to reinvent itself. The 7th edition of the Forum demonstrated this in various fields but most notably in terms of gender and feminism. Although women were still not equally represented as panelists, there was a greater consciousness that they should be and thus the beginning of an understanding of the fundamental role gender inequality plays in fueling the neo-liberalism. This advance can be largely attributed to the efforts of various feminist and women organizations such as the Feminist Dialogues. FeministDia logues In 2003 the first Feminist Dialogues were held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, meeting a few days prior to the World Social Forum. The Feminist Dialogues created a space to share concerns globally, and provides one of the first locations outside of the United Nations, for women from a wide range

18

of nations and organizations representing the Global South and Global North to converge and identify collective interests and discuss strategies to challenge neo-liberal globalization and how to participate as feminists in the larger global justice movement. Although they have developed into an on going exchange between progressive, action oriented feminist groups, the Feminist Dialogues were created due to the neglect of women, feminism, and gender at the World Social Forum. The Feminist Dialogues frame their discussions in terms of fundamentalisms: older, religious-based fundamentalisms and newer, economic ones to conceptualize the injustices women experience globally. Women have been absent from important decision-making sites of the WSF. For instance, the Charter of Principles, while an effective document, was developed by 13 men.9 In addition, women have been in short representation as panelists particularly in the larger, WSF-sponsored events that men tended to dominate in early Forums. The other prominent criticism waged by feminist organizations is that neo-liberalism rides on gender inequities is often absent from events. The WSF events and thematic programming have not integrated feminist political economy in their critique of globalization but in many ways have ghettoized it. Thematic Integration We suggest that that in the 7th Edition of the World Social Forum there was a larger representation of women on panels and that there was a thematic integration of feminist perspectives on globalization and neo-liberalism throughout the program. Consistent with the overarching theme of the WSF Vll, “People’s Choices, People’s Alternatives,” women and gender were for the first time a distinct thematic axe that organized the programming of the WSF. The number of axes and topics vary from year to year and are primarily decided upon by the local organizing committee. The definition of the theme in the program was as follows: The objective of this activity is to demonstrate how neo-liberalism strengthens the patriarchal nature of society and the inequalities between sexes. How the neo-liberal policies produce the depauperation of women, and the oppression. The alliance between conservative categories and the owners of all markets produces cultural 9 These criticisms appeared on the various list-serves associated with WSF commentary, such as WorldSocialForum-Discuss Archives (http://mail.openspaceforum.net/pipermail/ worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum.net/).

19 schemes and women-man relationship that are produces cultural schemes and womenman relationship that are systematically oppressive and limitative of the political freedom and the freedom of the body.

We suggest that the increased representation of women and integration of feminism in the program of the WSF VII reflects the commitment to participatory democracy and a broadening appreciation of the intersections of gender inequality and neoliberal globalization. Yet we also suggest that the Kenyan context and the continental context contributed to highlighting gender inequality in WSF VI, the first WSF held in Africa. In many African nations and tribes the contributions of women’s economic and social roles are widely recognized and many women participate in government.

Conclusion Although we believe that a distinct “essence” runs through the WSFs that is rooted in the foundation of its development, our comparison of nations that have held WSFs suggest that political, economic, and social conditions of these nations shape the WSF both in its content and structure. There were numerous criticisms hurled at the World Social Forum held in January 2007 in Kenya – most focused on economic issues such as the presence of corporations on the site and the prohibitive cost of entry for the average Kenyan. These criticisms were only partially correct because they lacked an awareness of the Kenyan political economy and a recognition of WSF7’s achievements. Kenya is poorer than the previous sites in which the Forum was held. It was inevitable that it would face challenges in terms of raising adequate funding for the Forum and thus understandable that there would be some corporate presence – though not necessarily as much as there was. Interestingly what few of the critics noted were the achievements of this Forum, with the most significant being the emergent presence of women and gender-related discussions in many of the workshops. The inclusion of Kenya and the evolution of a prominent feminist discourse within the Forum are significant steps forward. The Forum has consistently demonstrated a commitment to greater democratization, not only in its embrace of diverse voices, but also in its willingness to relocate from its original Brazilian location with the intention of expanding participation from other regions. The decentralization of the WSF is helping to facilitate a

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world-wide mobilization around human rights and social justice. The emergence of gender will intensify the Social Forum’s expanding, radically democratic challenge to the current form of globalization, while establishing a precedent for WSF 2009 in Brazil.

References Indymedia Africa 2007, ‘Another Network Is Possible!’, Independent Media Converges on WSF 2007, January 30, http://kenya.indymedia.org/uploads/2007/01/indymedia.pdf. CIA 2007, World Factbook 2007, ‘Brazil’, September 20, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html. CIA 2007, World Factbook 2007, ‘India’, September 20, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html. CIA 2007, World Factbook 2007, ‘Kenya’, September 20, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html. Fisher, William F. and Thomas Ponniah 2003, Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, London and New York: Zed Books. Golden, Tim 1994, ‘The Voice of the Rebel Has Mexicans in His Spell’, New York Times, February 8. Indiangos.com 2007, ‘Indian NGOs Forum’, February 6, http://www.indianngos.com/ ngosection/newcomers/whatisanngo.htm. Institute Brasileiero de Geografia e Estatistica 2004, ‘Non Profit Private Foundations and Associations in Brazil’, December 10, http://www.ibge.gov.br/english/presidencia/ noticias/noticia_impressao.php?id_noticia=273. Ma’ anit, Adam 2007, ‘World Social Forum 2007: Warts and All’, The New Internationalist, January 26, http://interact.newint.org/blog/adam-maanit/wsf 2007-warts-and-all. Mentalacrobatics 2007, ‘Drama at the WSF’, Archives January 2007, January 22, http:// www.mentalacrobatics.com/think/archives/2007/01/drama_at_the_wsf.php. Morrison, Dan 2007, ‘Critical Reflections, Unknown Directions’, COA News January 26, http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1613. Ngane, Trevor 2007, ‘WSF: What Happened in Nairobi’, Indymedia Germany, January 29, http://de.indymedia.org/2007/01/167151.shtml. Onyado, Rosemarie Muganda 1999, ‘Are NGOS Essential for Kenya’s Development?’, Nomadnet, November 20, http://www.netnomad.com/NGOSDN.html. Rebick, Judy 2000, Imagine Democracy, Toronto: Stoddard.

CHAPTER 2

The US Social Forum: Building from the Bottom Up Michael Leon Guerrero Atlanta has never seen anything like this,” commented Jerome Scott of Atlanta-based Project South, this march was the most multinational action I have ever seen. Rebick( 2007)

It may be too early to judge the historical significance of the United States Social Forum (USSF), but ultimately it could mark one of the most important political moments in recent US history. From June 28 through July 2, 2007 over 12,000 people rallied under the banner “Another World is Possible, Another U.S. is Necessary!” They convened in the summer heat of Atlanta, Georgia, and wrote the latest chapter in the history of the World Social Forum (WSF). The USSF signified a turning point in both the emerging social movements within the US, and perhaps the global social forum process as well. One of the salient characteristics of the USSF was its diversity. A number of writers have commented on the range of ethnicities represented, the large numbers of poor and working-class delegates, the range of sexual identities and more. Canadian writer Judy Rebick (2007) commented, . . . the racial diversity not only of the participants but of the leadership is remarkable. It is no longer just black and white, Indigenous people have a place of pride, there is a rainbow of immigrants, and children of immigrants: Latino, Chinese, Korean, South Asian, East Asian, every place you can think of and always hyphenated with American. There are more people with disabilities than I have ever seen at a movement event and the LGBT presence is visible and proud.

International relations scholar Thomas Ponniah (2007) wrote that the USSF was more diverse than any of the World Social Forums in the last

22

three years. The USSF and the World Social Forum in India in 2004 embodied cultural and economic diversity among the most visible speakers and facilitators, not just among delegates. According to Tammy Bang Luu, Chair of the USSF Outreach Working Group, it was the intentionality of the organizing process that assured the diverse representation. A fundamental principle for us was to assure the participation of the most marginalized communities in the country. We initiated the USSF based on the belief that working-class people, the poor, indigenous people and people of color must be central to the leadership of creating fundamental social change in the U.S. This meant a massive investment of time, patience and resources in the outreach process.1

Grassroots Organizing in the US The driving force behind the organizing of the USSF was a sector of grassroots organizations largely overlooked in national politics. For the past three decades these organizations have been building dynamic community and worker institutions in indigenous nations, working class neighborhoods and communities of color. This grassroots movement represents the potential for new political direction and hope for fundamental change in the US. A wide array of organizations makes up the grassroots organizing sector. They include anti-racist organizations (Project South, Institute for the Elimination of Racism and Genocide in Atlanta and the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans), farm workers organizations (the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in south Florida, the Border Agricultural Workers Union in El Paso, TX, and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Toledo, OH) environmental justice organizations (Indigenous Environmental Network, the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, PODER in San Francisco, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Oakland, and the Southwest Organizing Project in New Mexico), welfare rights organizations (Community Voices Heard in New York City), groups fighting displacement and gentrification (Miami Workers Center, Tenants and Workers United in Alexandria, VA, and POWER in San Francisco), labor and community formations (Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio, TX, the Labor/Community Strategy Cen-

1

Tammy Bang Luu, Interview with author, July 4, 2007.

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ter in Los Angeles, Domestic Workers United in New York, and the nationwide Jobs with Justice), immigrant rights groups (National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Oakland, CA and Padres y Jovenes Unidos in Denver, CO), Queer liberation organizations (FIERCE in New York), youth and student organizations (United Students Against Sweatshops), and cultural organizations (AlternateROOTS in Mississippi and New Orleans). There is no unifying vision or ideology that brings them together, but there are some commonalities. Many have antecedents in the political struggles of the 1960s and ’70s.The leadership of these organizations generally views their work within a broader global context. They seek social justice and environmental sustainability. They promote human rights and social justice. Many share an anti-imperialist perspective. They emphasize the building of a grassroots, democratic membership base as essential vehicles for fundamental social change. They forge coalitions, networks and alliances locally and internationally. They organize in poor, working- class, people of color and indigenous communities. They are under-resourced and overworked. It was this sector that would land the most important contemporary international process in the US.

The Emergence of the Global Justice Movement The World Social Forum is a global phenomenon that was conceived through important historical precedents. Among them was the “Battle in Seattle” in 1999. Fifty thousand people launched a monumental assault on the summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Mass marches and waves of protestors exercising civil disobedience effectively shut down the proceedings. The Global Justice Movement (GJM), as it came to be known, continued its offensive for the next 5 years, mobilizing tens of thousands to protest the neoliberal institutions that make up the pillars of global capitalism – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the Summit of the Americas, the G-8, and the United States military. At its peak, estimates as high as 30 million people in 600 cities and 60 countries took part in the largest protest in world history against the impending US invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003.2 For three decades neoliberal policies of corporate-globalization, militarism and imperialism have dominated world politics, wreaking havoc on 2

Simonson2003.

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workers and communities throughout the world. During that time the rich have become richer. The poor have become poorer. Entire communities have been displaced creating massive global migrations. The planet’s survival hangs in the balance as northern countries and emerging developing nations intensify their industrialization and strip away environmental laws. The GJM offers hope to shift the balance of power from global capitalists to those who live under the weight of their neoliberal policies. Organizers within the GJM realized, however, that protesting was not enough. The movement had to offer an alternative vision for the global economy and governance. To define that vision, the movement needed its own space for dialogue.

The World Social Forum In late January of 2001, as it does almost every year at this time, the World Economic Forum convened in Davos, Switzerland. In this Alpine ski resort the political and economic elites from the most powerful countries and corporations meet to shape the global economy. Meanwhile, half a world away, in the heat and humidity of the industrial harbor of Porto Alegre, Brazil, over 15,000 people gathered for the first ever World Social Forum. Workers, farmers, scholars, artists, and others met in defiance of those at the World Economic Forum and founded a worldwide phenomenon. WSFs have now been held on 3 continents and have hosted as many as 150,000 people. Hundreds of continental, regional, national, local and thematic forums have convened in dozens of countries under the banner “Another World is Possible!” Social forums are huge and dynamic social events that include workshops, theater, debates, concerts, panel presentations and film festivals.

Diversity in the GJM One of the criticisms of many social forums, however, has been their lack of diversity. The critique carries over into the GJM generally. In the wake of the “Battle in Seattle”, Betita Martinez (2000) explored the question of diversity at the event. She estimated that only 5% of the protagonists were people of color. Personal interviews with participants cited a range of possible reasons for the disparity. This included the lack of resources, a lack of understanding of the significance of the WTO and how it related to

25

local struggles, and the perception that the WTO protests would be dominated by “white hippies”. The images of Seattle were in contrast to the campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), just 6 years earlier. People of color were central to this struggle, particularly Latinos and indigenous peoples. Unions, church organizations and grassroots groups like the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) played a lead role in organizing cross-border actions and political education. “The struggle against NAFTA for us was not about jobs leaving the U.S.,” stated Rubén Solís of the San Antonio, TX based Center for Justice, “it was about finding common-cause with workers, farmers and communities in Mexico.” On January 1, 1994, on the day that NAFTA took effect, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) launched its first offensive. The struggle of the Zapatistas and their global call to fight the neoliberal agenda inspired the emerging GJM. The defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1998 marked a shift in the global justice struggle. French politician Catherine Lalumière (1998), acknowledged the rise of the movement, “For the first time, one is seeing the emergence of a “global civil society” represented by NGOs which are often based in several states and communicate beyond their frontiers. This evolution is doubtlessly irreversible. On the one hand, organisations representing civil society have become aware of the consequences of international economic negotiations. They are determined to leave their mark on them. Furthermore, the development of the Internet has shaken up the environment of the negotiations. It allows the instant diffusion of the texts under discussion, whose confidentiality becomes more and more theoretical. It permits, beyond national boundaries, the sharing of knowledge and expertise.”3 The GJM was gaining momentum, but in the US the terrain was dominated by non-governmental organizations such as Public Citizen, the International Forum on Globalization, and Global Exchange. Without the challenges of building organization within affected communities, they had flexibility and nimbleness to engage in global campaigns and policy advocacy. As the GJM evolved, the lack of grassroots US representation in the movement short-changed opportunities to establish common cause between social movements from the North and South.

3

La Lumière 1998.

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In December of 1996, SNEEJ hosted a Working Group Meeting on Trade and Globalization bringing together grassroots organizations involved in global justice organizing. At this gathering they adopted the “Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing”. Among other things the 6 principles called on global justice activists to be inclusive, emphasize bottom-up organizing, let people speak for themselves and work together in solidarity and mutuality. The Principles provide a blueprint for collaboration between grassroots groups and trade policy advocates. The growing importance of the Internet referenced by Lalumière had consequences in the US. Martinez (1999) cited the digital divide within the GJM as a potential contributor to the racial imbalance at the Battle in Seattle. The problem of unfamiliarity with the WTO was aggravated by the fact that black and Latino communities across the U.S. lack Internet access compared to many white communities. A July 1999 federal survey showed that among Americans earning $15,000–$35,000 a year, more than 32 percent of white families owned computers but only 19 percent of black and Latino families. In that same income range, only 9 percent of African American and Latino homes had Internet access compared to 27 percent of white families. So information about WTO and all the plans for Seattle did not reach many people of color.4

The resource imbalance within the movement was also a factor. Sustaining relationships at the international level has always been difficult for organizations with few resources and a commitment to organizing locally. The situation sharpened in the late 1990s. The resource base for the once vibrant environmental justice movement, for example, began to diminish. This was due partly to shifting priorities by foundations that supported environmental justice and grassroots organizing in general. Dependence of the grassroots sector on philanthropic institutions has been flagged as an Achilles heel by several organizers and scholars.5 But support for social justice movements from other sources, particularly faithbased communities, also began to decline sharply in the ’90s.6 Institutions like the National Council of Churches, the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, and the Racial Justice Commission

4 5 6

Martinez2 000. INCITE!2 007. Associated Press 2004; Grossman 2006.

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of the United Church of Christ historically played key roles in supporting social justice, such as the civil rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s, the anti-war movement in the ’70s, the sanctuary movement for Central American refugees in the ’80s, and environmental justice in the 1990s. Churches provided resources for grassroots organizations and educated largely white congregations about the struggles of the poor, working class and communities of color. During the 1990s, however, the ultra-conservative evangelical movement was gaining momentum, challenging the established churches for membership and depleting their resources. The Catholic Church was mired in a wave sexual abuse lawsuits, draining the enormous coffers of the Vatican. What resources remained in the churches were diverted to less transformative efforts like the Industrial Areas Foundation, which promotes an “anti-ideological” approach to organizing and discourages coalition-building with progressive grassroots forces. Despite these challenges, grassroots organizations continued to establish global connections. The Indigenous Environmental Network was building relationships with networks in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The environmental justice movement was also forging international relationships through the Environmental and Economic Justice Project based at Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) in Los Angeles. Jobs with Justice (JwJ) also emerged during the 1990s as a vital formation in the Global Justice Movement. JwJ brings together unions, students, churches, and community organizations in more than 30 cities for mutual support and action. The organization played a key role in the Battle in Seattle and was active in the global mobilizations that followed. JwJ and SCOPE were among the few US grassroots organizations present at the historic first World Social Forum in 2001. The momentum of the MAI victory carried through to the Battle in Seattle. Global justice activists were beginning to feel that the tide was turning in the struggle against neoliberal capitalism and US imperialism. The political offensive of the movement in the US was stalled however, on September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, there was a moment of paralysis in organizing efforts. Communities struggled with the question of patriotism and national security. The destruction of the Trade Center set off a chain reaction as fear and uncertainty swept the country. The Bush administration moved quickly to intensify the national and international security apparatus and mobilized for war. Eventually, however, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003 stretched the limits of US military might, and the political credibility

28

of George W. Bush. People all over the world mobilized against the invasion of Iraq, culminating in the historic protests on February 15, 2003.7

Genesis of the US Social Forum Four months after 9/11, roughly 40 organizations participated in a delegation to the second WSF. Sponsored by the French American Charitable Trust and other foundations, the delegation included JwJ, SCOPE, the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) and others. The event provided an inspiring backdrop to dialogues among the US delegation. It also sparked a critical self-examination as to why the movement was not able to build organizations on a mass scale like those from other countries at the WSF. Several organizations agreed to continue the dialogue in the US. This process led to the eventual formation of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). GGJ was created to provide capacity for the grassroots sector to be proactive in its participation internationally and to strengthen national grassroots movement building in the United States. Beginning as a loose affiliation of organizations, GGJ’s primary function was to organize delegations of grassroots leaders to the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre in 2002, 2003 and 2005, Mumbai, India in 2004 and Caracas, Venezuela in 2006. These delegations allowed grassroots organizations to meet and interact with global justice colleagues and gain insights and inspiration from organizing models and strategies of international allies. During the early years of the WSF, members of the WSF International Council (WSFIC) were calling for a United States Social Forum. US representatives, particularly Jobs with Justice and GGJ, resisted the call. Their caution was based on the fact that there was not broad public awareness about social forums. If convened in the early years of the WSF, a US Social Forum would not represent the broad demographic and political diversity of the United States. In the WSFIC meeting in Miami, FL in June of 2003, GGJ agreed to initiate a process to assess the potential for a USSF. Later in 2003, mobilizations took place at the Summit of the Americas in Miami, including the Root Cause March. The march was organized by south Florida based grassroots organizations Miami Workers Center, Power U and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. To many it marked the first 7

Simonson,2003.

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time that a political pole was defined by the grassroots movement within the US-based Global Justice Movement that was distinct from labor, the environmentalists, and the anarchists. Fifty grassroots organizations convened in Washington, DC on April 14, 2004. After two days of deliberations, the organizations declared their support for a USSF. By August, twenty-two founding organizations established the USSF National Planning Committee, and in the spring of 2005, the city of Atlanta was selected to host the forum. Five years after the momentous Battle in Seattle, the Global Justice Movement in the US suffered a major political setback in the same city. In October of 2004 the Northwest Social Forum in Seattle collapsed within two weeks of the event.8 The Indigenous Programming Committee and subsequently the Youth Programming Committee withdrew from the process stating that Indigenous people were marginalized from the organizing process. A second setback soon followed as George W. Bush assumed the Presidency for a second term. During 2005 and 2006, significant political events would shape the evolution of the US Social Forum. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the breech of the levees in New Orleans created the worst natural and human-made disaster in US history. Negligence and the subsequent abandonment of the population by local, state and federal governments during the fatal crisis created ideal conditions for genocidal manslaughter of the majority Black population.9 At least 1,500 people died, and up to 1.2 million people were displaced. The progressive movements responded with material support, but not with a coordinated national effort. Politically the response was even weaker. The lack of a mass movement initiative in support of the Gulf Coast allowed the Bush administration to continue to leave the region in ruins, the people displaced and reconstruction in the hands of corporate developers.10 In March of 2006 progressive movements demonstrated their collective action. Millions of people, primarily Latino immigrants mobilized in cities throughout the United States. House Bill 4437 introduced by Rep. James 8

Doherty2004. Testimonies from the International Tribunals in New Orleans on August 29–September 2, made clear that 2 years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, people remain displaced. Survivors also powerfully described their horrendous experiences and the government response of repression and violence instead of support. 10 Institute for Southern Studies 2007. 9

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Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin called for massive increases in the militarization of the US-Mexico border including a 700-mile expansion of the border fence, mandatory detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, and expansion of the authority of police agencies to enforce immigration laws. Passage of the bill in the House set off a massive wave of marches in small towns and major cities throughout the country and motivated other Congressional initiatives. The marches were followed by boycotts and strikes on Workers Rights Day on May 1. These mobilizations halted the momentum of the extreme Right, ultimately stopping passage of Sensenbrenner’s initiative in the Senate and any new immigration legislation.

The Road to Atlanta In June of 2006, the Southeast Social Forum (SESF) was held in Durham, NC. The event was the first of two regional social forums organized by members of the USSF National Planning Committee. Two years after the setback of the Northwest Social Forum, the SESF signaled new life for the social forum process in the US. Over 700 people attended the forum, primarily African American and Latino. Farm workers from south Florida, workers from the inner cities of Alexandria, VA, and homeless people from Atlanta came by the busload. “It was like a big family reunion,” commented Ms. Paulette Richards, from LIFFT in Miami, “You come to this big gathering and meet all these people that are fighting for justice where they are from . . . We share the same struggle.”11 The SESF set the tone and built momentum towards the USSF. Stephanie Guilloud of Project South characterized the spirit of the event in YES Magazine, “What we saw is that people were ready to engage and confront the edges that have kept us apart.”12 The Border Social Forum (BSF) in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua in October 2006 built upon the success of the SESF. The BSF strengthened not only east-west connections between the movements in the southwestern and southeastern United States, but north–south relationships as well. Over 1000 people came from northern Mexico, Cuba and from through-

11 12

Miami Workers Center with LIFFT and Miami en Acción 2006. van Gelder 2006.

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out the United States. In Frontera Norte-Sur News, forum organizer Ruben Solis said the event built on years of cross-border movements to “bring together all that’s happened before in a new phase of development.”13 The Border Social Forum was key to landing the international process in the US Latin American media, particularly Telesur, covered the proceedings. Social movements in Latin America were winning major political victories, including the stalemate of the WTO in Cancún in 2003, defeat of the FTAA at the Summit of the Americas in Mar de Plata Argentina in November, 2005, and a string of national political victories. Since 2002, newly elected Presidents in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay have openly confronted neoliberal policies, issuing a strong challenge to US hegemony in the region. Latin American social movements have strengthened their coordination through formations like the Convergence of Movements of Peoples of the Americas, the Continental Social Alliance, the Continental Campaign Against the FTAA, and the social forums of the Americas. US-based grassroots organizations like Southwest Workers Union, GGJ and others began to forge new relationships with these movements. This was important to defining the political vision of organizing the USSF.

The US Social Forum After a three-year organizing process, the US Social Forum convened in Atlanta, GA on June 27, 2007. In total more than twelve thousand people came as registered delegates representing more than one thousand organizations and collectives. The USSF reflected a cross-section of the US by geography, race, age, gender and sexual orientation. Every state in the country was represented, as well as 68 countries, several indigenous nations, and US occupied territories Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawaii. The original objectives of the USSF National Planning Committee (NPC) were to 1) be intentional about outreach to grassroots groups rooted in working class communities of color and broaden participation from that foundation, 2) assure that the USSF would not be just an event but a movement building process, and 3) be aware of the NPC’s international

13

Patterson2006.

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responsibility, making local and global connections and build an antiimperialist movement within the US. The demographics of the NPC helped to ensure the diversity of the overall process. The NPC was composed of roughly 85% people of color, 64% women, 51% under the age of 40 and 15% queer identified. The range of relationships of the NPC members facilitated outreach to communities that are traditionally marginalized from national political efforts. The majority of the roughly 50 NPC members were grassroots organizations including GGJ and several of its member organizations, as well as other sectors, including the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Ruckus Society and the American Friends Service Committee. The choice of Atlanta was also critical. Breaking with social forum custom, the first USSF was not held in a politically friendly region. The state of Georgia is one of the most conservative of the United States. The city of Atlanta, however, has a rich history of civil rights organizing, well known as the home of Dr. Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. The majority of the population is primarily people of color with 62% of Atlantans identifying as Black or African American.14 Project South anchored the USSF process in Atlanta. The participation of youth was incorporated directly into the activities of the forum. The representation of young people in the planning process was vital in assuring their integration and presence. “We exceeded our goal of having 20% youth” stated Monica Córdova of the SWOP in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Chair of the USSF Youth Working Group, “For the majority it was their first experience going to a social forum.”15

South by Southwest Connections One of the highlights was the arrival of the Peoples Freedom Caravan. Organized by groups from the southeastern and southwestern United States such as Southwest Workers Union (SWU), Southern Echo of Mississippi, the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans, the Southern Human Rights Organizing Network in Mississippi and SWOP. The caravan passed through seven cities and was a symbol of unity among 14 15

City of Atlanta 2004. Interview with author, July 5, 2007.

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diverse communities. Organizers sought to connect the struggles and histories of African-Americans, Latinos and Indigenous peoples in the southern US. “This is a different kind of event that will take on the democracy divide that exists between races, classes, cultures and regions,” said Genaro Rendón of SWU.16 Beginning in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the caravan stopped in cities that represent historic social justice struggles: San Antonio and Houston, Texas, Jackson, Mississippi, Selma, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana. At each stop more buses and vehicles joined. More than 800 people representing seventy organizations arrived with the caravan in Atlanta at the moment the US Social Forum opening march began. The Gulf region was a reference point for the movements at the forum. As Jerome Scott explained, “We did not respond well as a movement to this disaster. It revealed to us a bit about the weakened state of popular movements in the U.S.” The Levee Call was a document issued by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It was an indictment of the Bush administration and a call for a unified front to rebuild the Gulf region: We invite both the massive movement in the Mexican, Latino and Asian communities demanding immigrant rights and the anti-war movement to link with a movement for Reconstruction and the Right of Return to the Gulf Coast. We are all challenging the same system of oppression. And there is a developing recognition that our unity would represent a powerful force for human rights and global justice – a force not seen since the massive mobilizations of the 1960’s.17

To foster this movement convergence, the NPC identified six areas and organized plenaries around each: 1) The Reconstruction of the Gulf Coast in the Post Katrina era: Challenges, Visions and Strategies 2) Imperialism, War, Militarism, and Prisons: Towards a US Based on Peace, Economic and Environmental Justice 3) Voices of the Indigenous Community: From the Heart of Mother Earth. 4) Immigrant Rights 5) Gender and Sexual Liberation: Integrating Gender and Sexuality Throughout the Movements 6) Workers Rights in the Global Economy.

16

Southern Echo, SouthWest Organizing Project, Southwest Workers Union, “Get on the Bus: Peoples Freedom Caravan”, Press Release, May 3, 2007. 17 PHRF2005.

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According to Cindy Wiesner of the Miami Workers Center key moments occurred in each of these areas over the previous two years that represented an opportunity or a challenge to catalyze a national movement. For the most part this did not happen. Exploring these issues at the USSF presented an opportunity to understand the state of the social movements in the United States and the potential to develop a convergence among them. She explains: In the case of the Gulf Coast, we did not mount a political or material response organized at a national level. The immigrant communities mobilized millions to the streets in 2006, but we did not have an infrastructure in place to implement an organizing process afterwards. We also lacked a collective vision of just immigration policies, which is why we continue to respond to reactionary initiatives in Congress rather than promoting our own initiatives. There are millions of people organized against the occupation in Iraq, but we do not have consensus on a plan to withdraw nor have we defined a new relationship between the people of the United States with the Middle East region. The right wing in the U.S. is exploiting the question of same sex marriage to divide communities and consolidate their political base. We don’t have an overall strategy to fight the criminalization of people due to their sexual orientation and to strengthen the solidarity movement with the lesbian, gay, queer, transgender and two spirit communities.

The indigenous plenary highlighted the ongoing assaults by the US government and multinational corporations to exploit energy resources on native lands. Twa’le Abrahamson described the legal mechanisms imposed by the government to facilitate the exploitation of petroleum in the region. Indigenous communities from Alaska experience the impacts of climate change from two sides: “the destruction of our land by the drilling and mining for oil and coal and the destruction of the ecosystems due to climate change that we depend upon. Polar bears are drowning because there is no ice for them to rest as they swim in the ocean.”18 Other Indigenous lands like Hawai’i are occupied to serve as military bases for the US. “25% of the islands in Hawaii are under control of the U.S. armed forces”, said Ikaika Hussey, of the organization DMZ Hawai’i, “the military has become part of the culture of the island.” Hussey made a comparison with the historic trajectory in Cuba, both islands being centers of sugar production, military bases and playgrounds for the rich yet realizing separate fates in 1959 with Cuba gaining its independence and Hawaii being incorporated into the United States. 18

Presentation at USSF, Indigenous Rights Plenary, June 29, 2007.

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New Formations The state of organized labor in the United States is tenuous, with only 7% of the US workforce organized in unions. The American Federation of LaborCongress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) split in 2005, with some of the largest unions including Service Employees International Union, UNITE-HERE and the Teamsters seceding to form the new Change to Win federation. Meanwhile other worker formations have emerged, including workers centers and community/labor hybrids. Farm worker organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have won key victories against two of the largest fast-food corporations: Taco Bell and McDonalds. Stewart Acuff, the National Organizing Director of the AFL-CIO reflected on the sense of urgency facing the labor movement, “We are divided by racisim, sexism, and nationalism. The time has come to dismantle all these barriers amongst workers, that is the responsibility of our times . . . There’s so much more that unites us than divides us, we need to advance towards one movement, one struggle, and one community.” A vital new workers formation was founded at the USSF. Various organizations from New York, California and Virginia announced the creation of a national network of domestic workers, including Domestic Workers United, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, CAAAV: Women Workers Project, Andolan: Organizing, South Asian Workers, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. Unity Housecleaners Cooperative, Las Señoras de Santa Maria, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, San Francisco Day Labor Program, Women’s Collective of la Raza Centro Legal, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, Pilipino Workers’ Center of Southern California. CASA: Comite de Mujeres Buscando Justicia. Carolyn de Leon, organizer and former nanny explained that many years ago in Atlanta, African American domestic workers, who used to be called “washerwomen” went on strike to protest the abusive conditions and low wages, “It seems fitting that the national voice for our movement would be re-born here.”19 Hundreds of topics surfaced in the multitude of self-organized activities. One of the most significant was the issue of displacement of poor people 19

Domestic Workers United, “New York Domestic Workers Close the Legislative Session with Significant Gains and Join the First National Meeting of Domestic Workers Organizations in the US”, Press Release, June 27, 2007.

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from their homes in the inner-cities. During the past two decades gentrification has descended upon urban centers throughout the United States, resulting in a process of development similar to Latin America. Since the fifties, the middle-class of the US moved to suburban areas on the outskirts of cities. The public resources followed these communities supporting their growth, while the city centers were left to deteriorate. This is where the poorest communities and people of color primarily concentrated. But in recent years the mentality of urban planning has changed, emphasizing the concept of “livable cities”, where middle-class professionals can walk to their offices and easily access the culture and vibrancy of the community. Now the face of the inner-cities is changing as condos and highpriced shopping centers begin to dominate the urban landscape. Meanwhile the city’s poor are forced to the outskirts of the city, often without vital infrastructure like public transportation or accessible workplaces. The Right to the City (RTC) coalition was founded to fight this trend. Comprised of 30 organizations in 8 cities, RTC brought to the forum hundreds of people from Boston, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and other municipalities that have been fighting for the right to stay in their communities. “We wanted to utilize the forum space to continue building unity amongst our organizations,” said Jon Liss of Tenants and Workers United en Alexandria, Virginia “and initiate campaigns at a national and regional level.”20 Another core issue at the forum was trade policy, particularly related to the question of migration. Over 100 activities were registered on these topics. The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) and GGJ organized a series of workshops, partnering with other national groups like American Friends Service Committee, the Alliance for Responsible Trade, Korean-Americans against War and Neoliberalism (KAWAN), and Witness for Peace. “Our goal is to re-frame the debate about immigration in the U.S.,” explained Colin Rajah of NNIRR, “Global migration is a concrete result of neoliberal policies that are displacing entire communities throughout the world”. One of the workshops highlighted the severe impacts of “free” trade policies on farmers and farm workers throughout the world. KAWAN organized a “counter-signing” ceremony to the US South Korea Free Trade Agreement at the USSF. According to Hyun Lee of KAWAN, “The treaty represents a death-sentence for millions of farmers and workers in Korea.” 20

Website Right to the City gathering in L.A.

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The USSF culminated with a Peoples Movement Assembly (PMA) on July 1. The PMA was adopted from the Social Movement Assemblies that are convened at each WSF and provide a space for social movements to present and adopt political declarations, positions and campaigns. Over 40 declarations were presented on issues ranging from the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast to trade agreements. The PMA will be an ongoing process that will run parallel to the USSF and will allow movements to continue to communicate, coordinate and mobilize. Challenges The USSF was not immune to some of the internal tensions that have divided the Left and the GJM. One well-known peace activist had a pie thrown in her face. Indigenous delegates protested when the microphone was taken from an indigenous person during the closing of the Peoples Movement Assembly. One observer saw these incidences as indicative of “destructive patterns across the Left”.21 Certainly these dynamics exist and played out in a few, isolated cases. Most participants and observers who have written about the USSF, however, saw that these instances did not affect the overall significance, impact and spirit of the event. . . . there was a freshness to the USSF, “ wrote Darryl Lorenzo Wellington (2007) in The Nation, “It was a coming together of activists who operate under the radar in the United States, who brought something new to the table: an army of small organizations devoted to their communities, whose efforts rarely make the evening news, acting locally but (potentially) connecting globally.

“It gave us a sense of unity and humanity that I don’t think existed in a long time,” said Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of The Ordinary Peoples Society (TOPS) in the Dothan Eagle. Based in Alabama, TOPS organized one of the most inspiring activities at the USSF – a family reunion of ex-felons throughout the south and their families. Conclusion The USSF was testimony to the resiliency of the people who make up the grassroots GJM in the United States – the poor, the marginalized, the 21

Kohn2007.

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unrepresented. It was a clear example that in a deliberate concerted effort to overcome our barriers we can demonstrate peoples’ power on a mass scale. Fundamental political change in the US will largely depend on the potential of this sector to continue to converge and grow through processes like the social forum and the PMA. The USSF also consolidated a crucial missing piece in the worldwide GJM. It creates possibilities for new collaborations among grassroots organizations and other sectors. It has also begun to open political breathing room to allow for more open debate on alternatives to global neoliberal capitalism. Some may dismiss the glowing assessments of the USSF as idealistic or romanticized. But it has been a long time since the US Left has had an opportunity to speak from a reference point of hope, vision and possibility. Rev. Glasgow’s vision of his organization’s work in the city of Dothan, Alabama applies to the Global Justice Movement as well, “The bottom is what holds up the top. If we could revitalize the bottom, then we revitalize the whole city.”

References Associated Press 2004 ‘Poll: Protestant Majority in U.S. Eroding’, MSNBC: http://www. msnbc.msn.com/id/5465761/. City of Atlanta, Demographics, 2004, http://www.atlantaga.gov/client_resources/government/ planning/cdp/2004cdp-03demographics.pdf. Doherty, Eric 2004 ‘Northwest Social Forum Will Not Be Held October 15–17: Statement of the Planning Committee of the Northwest Social Forum’, http://lists.resist.ca/ pipermail/news/2004-October/001301.html. Grossman, Cathy Lynn 2006, ‘Some Protestant Churches Feeling “Mainline” Again’, USA Today. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence 2007, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Institute for Southern Studies 2006, ‘One Year after Katrina, The State of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast’, Southern Exposure, Volume XXXIV, 2: 2–3. Keaton, Hollie 2007 “Extraordinary People”, Dothan Eagle. Lalumiére, Catherine 1988, Report on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, http://www. geocities.com/w_trouble_o/lumier.htm. Martinez, Elizabeth (Betita) 2000, ‘Where Was the Color in Seattle: Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle Was So White’, Colorlines Magazine, spring. Miami Workers Center with LIFFT and Miami en Acción 2006, Building Another World, a Report from the Southeast Social Forum. Patterson, Kent 2006, ‘The Ciudad Juarez Border Social Forum: Cross-Border Movements Growing’, October 23, Frontera Norte Sur News.

39 Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee website 2006, ‘The Levee Call’, http://www.peopleshurricane.org/levee-campaign. Ponniah, Thomas 2007, ‘The Contribution of the U.S. Social Forum: A Reply to Whitaker and Bello’s Debate on the Open Space’, World Social Forum website: http://www. forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos. Rebick, Judith 2007, ‘Another U.S. Is Possible’, Rabble News, July 2, 2007, http://www. openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=455. Solís, Rubén 2007, Informe Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and COMPA Norte, Unpublished manuscript, March 28. Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) 1996, The Jemez Principles of Organizing, SNEEJ website, www.sneej.org/Resources/Documents/ jemez.doc. van Gelder, Sarah, Fall 2006, ‘Southern Revival’, YES Magazine. Wellington, Darryl Lorenzo 2007, ‘A Grassroots Social Forum’, The Nation, August 13.

CHAPTER 3

New Politics Emerging at the US Social Forum1 Jackie Smith, Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum and Christopher Hausmann

The World Social Forum process represents an important innovation in political practice that can help democratize national and global politics. The potential and promise of the Social Forum Process lies in its ability to mobilize people into global politics – counteracting the depoliticizing tendencies of neoliberalism – and in its role as a laboratory for experimentation in new forms of political identity and practice.2 The social forums emerged from a widespread notion that economic globalization has made existing forms of representative democracy increasingly irrelevant to people’s needs. Changes in the organization of the global economic system have contributed to the fragmentation of local communities and the depoliticization of citizens. Transformations in the workplace and in the organization of politics have expanded the distance between citizens and governments.3 In the workforce, increased competition and the deindustrialization of western economies have meant reduced wages, declining unionization, and greater job insecurity. Workers often work longer hours or multiple jobs simply to maintain their income levels, thereby reducing the amount of time and energy they have to devote to their roles as citizens. This has undermined traditional social institutions, as people spend less time working to build community and articulate and advance common aims.4 In government, more decisions are framed in technical rather than political

1

See Whitaker 2003. We are grateful to the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and the Office of Research at the University of Notre Dame for financial support for Smith’s and Hausmann’s research. 3 Brunelle2007. 4 Wuthnow1998. 2

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terms, thereby justifying rule by experts rather than by the more democratic processes of public deliberation by informed citizens. The depoliticization of citizens enables powerful corporate actors to advance their interests in economic globalization at the expense of other social goals. Norris argues that transformations in how political parties organize have contributed to declining rates of political participation in many western democracies.5 As parties rely more on the mass media to promote candidates, they spend less time cultivating local constituents and more time raising large contributions to pay for media advertising. At the same time, however, she observes that social movements and protest politics have been helping to “reinvent” democratic participation at a time when public confidence in established representative democracies is waning. Social movement actors – including organizations, informal networks, and individual leaders – help make democracies dynamic by educating the public and creating opportunities for political engagement where formal policymaking institutions are lacking. Markoff illustrates how social movements have shaped the evolution of democracy since the 18th century, arguing that they continue to be vital players in ongoing struggles to defend democracy against the constant threats from anti-democratic forces.6 The World Social Forum Charter of Principles explicitly frames the forum as a multi-level process for creating “open spaces” where participants can “introduce onto the global agenda the change-inducing practices that they are experimenting in building a new world in solidarity” (World Social Forum 2007). Not surprisingly, then, many activists in the social forums discuss their efforts as contributing to new forms of politics.7 Organizers frequently use the phrase “World Social Forum process” to signify that they are not simply organizing episodic meetings, but that they are developing conversations and organizing strategies across the various times and places of WSF-inspired gatherings. Regional, national, and local social forums and global “days of action,” are important mechanisms through which the WSF process has both diffused around the world and evolved as an “experiment in global democracy.” Th e interconnected and long-term nature of the process allows participants to develop political identities and relationships to the process over time. This process-orientation is important to helping the WSFs re-engage 5 6 7

Norris2002. Markoff1999. See Sen and Saini 2004.

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a depoliticized public. The WSF is thus both a model and an incubator for a new form of politics, one that counters depoliticization by providing global open space for discussion, deliberation and planning; by bringing new people into dialogue and action around a range of political issues, by facilitating the development of new political identities that transcend national polities; and by enabling and encouraging experimentation with new political practices that are relevant to a multi-level political arena. As expanding and inclusive political space, the WSF creates opportunities for individuals to cultivate their “political imaginations”8 as well as skills in global citizenship. Global political processes offer few channels for democratic input. There are no elections for global public officials, and few international policies are subjected to public debate, particularly transnational debate. The foreign-policy-making processes in most countries severely constrain possibilities for public deliberation on international policies. The WSF fills this vacuum by providing a politicized arena where people can learn about and articulate positions on global issues. They do so as part of a dialogue with diverse groups of people, fostering appreciation for the needs and perspectives of others while cultivating skills in political negotiation and compromise. Using participant observation methods to examine how different groups mobilized at the USSF, we consider whether and how this new politics was evident in the first United States Social Forum (USSF). Hausmann attended preparatory meetings of activists traveling to the USSF from Chicago, and he rode the bus with the group and observed sessions organized and attended by one of the lead groups in that coalition. Kutz-Flamenbaum examined the feminist presence at the Forum. And Smith engaged the USSF process to try to develop new strategies for peace and justice organizing. We reflect on what our experiences tell us about the Social Forums’ ability to contribute to the evolution of new forms of political participation.

Hausmann: Stories and Strategies for Public Housing The Coalition to Protect Public Housing (CPPH) is a network of public housing residents based at the Cabrini-Green housing development. It was created in 1996 to protect the rights of public housing residents and 8

Khasnabish2004.

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defend access to public housing in the face of repeated incursions by the Chicago Housing Authority and US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CPPH had much more experience with Social Forums than other Chicago-based groups. The group distinguished itself at the 2006 Chicago Social Forum by reporting on their experiences at the 2005 WSF in Caracas. It was one of the few groups to make connections between a seemingly local battle and global institutions. This international work of CPPH, in conjunction with Poor Peoples’ Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), attracted the attention of the UN Special Rappoteur on Adequate Housing, who declared Chicago’s public housing a violation of residents’ human rights. Their work in Caracas and with the PPEHRC put the CPPH in a position not only to lead discussions of housing at the USSF, but also to help bring groups working on other issues into the Social Forum process. When I began observing the Chicago groups preparing for the USSF, I immediately recognized Marcus, a young CPPH organizer whom I had met at the Chicago Social Forum. Marcus and other CPPH leaders played a central role in raising funds – though small grants and local fundraisers – for the trip to Atlanta. Unlike most other organizers I met there, Marcus had a very clear sense of what he expected to accomplish at the USSF. He explained, “Three things: build relationships with other groups, build a broader movement, and integrate a human rights framework into the struggle for housing.” The CPPH facilitated three workshops at the USSF. The first two workshops set the substantive and emotional stage for the third, which occurred on Saturday afternoon, the day USSF planners had designated for discussing strategy. The CPPH hoped to use this panel to mobilize around House Joint Resolution 32, a Constitutional Amendment, sponsored by House Representative that would recognize adequate housing as a human right. The room was packed. I estimated about one hundred twenty people in a room that was perhaps twenty five by thirty feet. As the nine speakers from various regions shared their experiences with public housing, each infused a new perspective, but they consistently identified the Department of Housing and Urban Development as the key target of mobilization. Perhaps the most compelling panelist was an activist who recounted the “manmade disaster” of Hurricane Katrina. The multiplicity of stories generated a palpable sense of excitement. Indeed, the challenge of the workshop seemed to be translating the excitement of the conversation into

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concrete objectives. One panelist appealed to the group, “We have to take all this energy, all this knowledge here, but we have to do something with it.” The facilitators played a critical role in creating space to discuss future steps for collaboration. They invited participants to help shape the goals, and when speakers veered off into lengthy personal stories, they related those stories back to the key topic: “Okay.” “What I want to know is: What goal do you have?” “What is it you would like to happen?” Groups from New Orleans and Miami focused upon the connection between New Orleans and a building national movement. A panelist from New Orleans outlined how activists planned to hold a Peoples’ Tribunal on the second anniversary of Katrina. “There will be no peace in the French Quarter. There will be no peace anywhere until we have housing!” He added, “Whatever this national movement does, we’re in.” “As New Orleans goes, the rest of us go,” another person reaffirmed. “Capitalists are focusing on New Orleans, and we need to focus on New Orleans, too.” As the conversation oscillated between New Orleans and a broader housing movement, other groups voiced their perspective. A disability rights group organizer urged others to collaborate in advocating for accessible housing. One of the panelists agreed and emphasized that adequate housing meant adequate housing for all. Marcus, who stood beside me throughout the last twenty minutes of the workshop, obviously valued these contributions. “There are specific groups that have to get a chance to speak. They have to have a voice, to be part of the process here.” As a young man stood up and spoke, he explained, “He’s from a national organization that represents rural and small towns. That’s huge. They’ve got people in every county in the nation.” After another, “He’s a good organizer. He represents a lot of people.” As the meeting came to a close, an organizer from Miami announced that the coalescing movement had an immediate opportunity to act: housing groups from Atlanta were going to converge upon the city hall abruptly after the USSF. I turned toward Marcus to see his reaction, “I guess we’re not leaving until tomorrow afternoon!” he said excitedly. At a follow-up meeting in Chicago, numerous leaders reported that they had developed new collaborative projects which were now under way. For its part, the CPPH circulated a newsletter that described their collaborative protest with the Atlanta housing groups. It had also begun a national collaboration with other public housing groups. As one CPPH activist said, “The difference between the USSF and other meetings is that at the USSF you saw commitment. We met, and we’re moving forward.”

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Since returning from the USSF, the Chicago-region network of USSF participants is transitioning from identifying with one another based upon their shared experiences at the USSF toward a more general understanding of their common purpose. The network is currently organizing what social forum activists have called “report backs,” or gatherings at which people who attended a social forum share their experiences and observations with members of their local community. Report backs reflect the process orientation of the Social Forums, helping mobilize new actors and foster new ways of thinking and relating. As one participant put it, “We need to think about who we are, what we can offer. Are we a group of people who went to this fabulous event in Atlanta, or are we a group that’s found something in common, a group that’s committed toward working together in the future?”

Kutz-Flamenbaum: (Re)Building a Global Women’s Movement The women’s movement in the US is a diverse and disparate entity. In preparation for the USSF, the feminist activists I interviewed highlighted the importance of building a women’s movement in the US and globally; suggesting that while there are many influential women’s organizations there is no coordinated movement. For many of these activists, the USSF was meant to be part of the solution to this dilemma as an opportunity to work on “movement building.” Within this context, “movement building” was at the forefront of my concerns at the USSF. I attended the “Rebuilding Women’s Movements Across All Borders” workshop, intrigued by the idea in the title of “Rebuilding.” I thought: These were people who believed that women’s organizations already worked together to promote gender equality. They are quick to acknowledge that work, but they also believe that there was more work to be done and that the USSF was one place to begin doing it. With this optimistic assessment, I entered the workshop room and saw that many were similarly attracted. The room (which held about fifty people) was mostly full as the session began and people continued to enter. While most of the people in the room were women, the room was much more diverse according to age and ethnicity than I am often used to seeing in forums dedicated to the “women’s movement.” Probably half of the attendees were people of color. As people began to speak, I heard the voices of many nonnative English speakers mixed in with dialects from across the US.

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The workshop began with introductions and a brainstorming session in which the participants were asked to suggest overall trends they thought were critical to understanding the current political environment. These were grouped into the categories of “state,” “market,” and “civil society” and written on large pads of paper. Even though this was a workshop on “women’s movements,” the workshop began by trying to sketch the overall political and social reality for all people. In fact, only four explicitly “women’s issues” were mentioned in the twenty-five or so issues that were raised. This is significant for several reasons. First, this orientation toward broad politics implies that women’s rights are human rights and that a successful women’s movement is concerned about women’s rights in the broadest and most inclusive sense. Second, this orientation served an important point in establishing norms and priorities for “(re)building” the women’s movement. The non-gender specific orientation encouraged participants to think broadly and legitimized the perspectives of those participants who emphasized interconnections among issues. This broad orientation helps nurture more expansive and inclusive collective identities within the women’s movement. After the brainstorming session, the facilitator transitioned into explaining that this workshop was organized by a network called “Women’s Transformation Watch/ Observatorio de Transgresión Feminista.” The origins of the campaign, she explained, was a meeting of Central American and Mexican women leaders and feminist activists at a meeting on “Imagining and Rebuilding Feminist Movements for the Future” held in Panama in August 2006 and organized by Just Associates. They developed this campaign to provide international pressure in locations where women’s rights were threatened. While applying this political pressure through monitoring and information sharing is an important component of the Women’s Transformation Watch, the facilitator also explained that meetings like this were a fundamental part of their work because it provides an opportunity to create new connections and engage in “movement building.” She stated that the fundamental orientation of Women’s Transformation Watch is that social, political and economic forces have “destroyed the social fabric” and the key goal of a new women’s movement is to build a new social fabric. The mood in the room was very supportive and positive about the projects of Women’s Transformation Watch and the overall implicit commitment to working together as a group to build a women’s movement. There was one interesting moment that could have led to fracture though: hanging from the table at the front of the room was a campaign banner that

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read “Observatorio de la Transgresion Feminista/Women’s Transformation Watch.” One of the audience members pointed out that a direct translation would make “feminista” into “feminist” and that the organization could be called “Feminist Transformation Watch.” There were many murmurs of agreement that “feminist” is more powerful and important for a women’s movement than “women.” The facilitator said that this issue was a major source of debate among the founding members and that they ultimately decided that “women” was better in English speaking countries due to a sense that “feminist” makes English speaking people – specifically women in the US – uncomfortable. This emphasis on feminist versus women underscored that the women’s movement in the US is often in a defensive position to a degree that is not true in other countries in the Americas. Thus, women’s groups have much to learn and gain from working with their counterparts in other countries. This fact was further emphasized by two other speakers who were part of Women’s Transformation Watch. They observed that by sharing stories, activists can collect ideas about various forms of resistance, renew the “social fabric”, and help (re)build an identity as a global women’s movement without losing appreciation for the local struggles of women around the world. The first speaker, Viola, represented a sewing collective called Fuerza Unida, which emerged from a campaign targeting Levi-Strauss. Viola told her story of a being laid off without warning or severance package in 1990 from a Levi-Strauss factory in San Antonio, Texas. She said that since they “no longer had anything to lose” she and some other Mexican-American women began organizing a campaign called “The Thread of Justice” to force Levi-Strauss to give better severance packages in future layoffs. Viola described herself as a shy woman, who had trouble speaking English and anxiety about her immigration status, but who ultimately led a campaign of women just like her to bring a picket line outside the Levi-Strauss headquarters in California. She recounted the victory of forcing Levi-Strauss to make better provisions for future workers as equally important to the fact that she and her colleagues learned to speak out and become self-sufficient through their sewing cooperative. The second speaker was Maria of FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavor), who described her group’s mission as “listening to women’s stories, looking through women’s eyes, and connecting with one another.” She explained that these precepts were important to organization and movement building because they helped to “build the social fabric” and to

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meet the goal of “amplifying women’s voices worldwide” through a “strategy of multiplication.” Maria relayed the story of the founding of FIRE which began as a short wave radio in Costa Rica in 1991. She emphasized that the group has thrived by “doing what women do best; which is finding solutions with what we have at hand.” They began broadcasting over the internet before it was popular after they were evicted from their broadcasting studio. While traveling to Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, many journalists had their technology confiscated at customs when entering China. But the customs officials couldn’t imagine how FIRE could use their microphone without a transceiver to do any real reporting, so they were allowed through. They called their stories in through a phone line. The emphasis on personal stories and sharing experiences continued after the two speakers completed their presentations. As the floor opened to the audience, participants shared their own stories of work they have done, congratulated the speakers on their work, and asked questions about the strategies the speakers used including inquiries into alliances and requests for technological advice. The already inviting and inclusive feeling in the room transformed into a shared space which reverberated with a commitment to the overarching goal of building a global women’s movement. The issue of “feminism” was not raised or debated, no organizations or movements were criticized, and instead it seemed that everyone in the room was interested in moving forward and working to create a new movement that wasn’t riddled with the familiar critiques and fractures. The session exemplified a new kind of politics, built around inclusive identities and a global analysis that linked local struggles to a larger movement and drew upon the collected wisdom and experience of a wide range of campaigns and individuals. Della Porta and her colleagues refer to these as “flexible identities and multiple belongings.”9 Women’s Transformation Watch and Just Associates organized just one session. But several of the themes that emerged in this session were repeated in others throughout the USSF. These sessions consistently reflected the ideas that we need to (re)build a women’s movement that makes connections with other movements, prioritize the telling of women’s stories in forging those connections and relationship-building between individuals from diverse locations and backgrounds, think broadly about “women’s rights,” and commit to making a “global women’s movement.” 9

della Porta et al. 2006.

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Smith: Uniting for Peace at the USSF Despite the fact that the February 2003 global day of action against the Iraq war grew directly from the World Social Forum process, very few US peace activists have been very active in global justice and WSF activism. I have long thought that US peace activists tended to frame their struggles in rather parochial terms, often reacting against the unilateralist policies of the US government rather than promoting ideas for making the US a more responsible part of a global polity. Peace activists from other countries have been involved in the global justice movement and the World Social Forums (WSFs), but major US peace and antiwar groups have had limited involvement in the process (United for Peace and Justice leaders did attend the WSF beginning in 2005, partly in response to an initiative of Italian peace groups). I therefore hoped to encourage more US peace activists to participate in the USSF by organizing a “Peace Caucus” as part of the workshop program. The Peace Caucus was a series of three workshops during which participants discussed the challenges of building coalitions to do peace and justice work, considered ideas being put forward by diverse groups, and developed consensus on strategies for helping renew and strengthen social movements working to end war and its underlying causes. While I had hoped the Peace Caucus would draw a diverse array of groups, participants were mostly white, middle class, and working largely within the traditional mainstream of the peace movement such as United for Peace and Justice, American Friends Service Committee, and groups working to reform the United Nations. Nevertheless, several activists of color and people working in low-income communities attended, providing valuable insights into how to transcend racial and class divides. A key theme that emerged from the session is that peace organizers are constantly faced with the urgent need to stop particular wars while also wanting to address the underlying causes of war. In the context of ongoing wars, those discussing long-term strategies for preventing future wars can look callous if not misguided. Several participants stressed the urgency of ending mass violence quickly and were reluctant to shift attention from this goal. Participants also observed that the structure of the US electoral and policy process leads groups to adopt narrow, single-issue frames such as those advocating an end to a particular war or military intervention or against a particular weapons system, rather than advancing more complex proposals to address the structural causes of violence and militarism.

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The second Peace Caucus session presented several “visions” of how those concerned with peace and justice might focus their energies, and I invited speakers from groups that I felt were promoting particularly innovative approaches for addressing the problem of war and violence, such as the proposal for a global Marshall Plan and for a US Department of Peace. Comments from participants, however, identified important limitations of these proposals, particularly their failure to adequately address inequalities in the distribution of economic and political power in national and global societies. In other words although there were valuable new ideas in these proposals, they were still too much like the old forms of politics to galvanize this group. Nevertheless, ideas about a collective vision began to emerge from these first two Peace Caucus sessions, and as facilitator I sought to keep these common threads at the forefront of our consciousness as the discussions proceeded. For instance, it was clear that for those focusing on the urgency of ending current wars as well as for those concerned with economic justice, the aim of securing human rights and dignity was paramount. Several participants spoke about the need to affect broader cultural change to shift people’s thinking and attitudes away from violence and militarism and towards notions of human rights, peace, and solidarity. These common goals formed the basis for building consensus in our third and final meeting of the USSF Peace Caucus around an action statement that we would put forward at the Peoples Movement Assembly on the final day of the USSF. To ensure that we would have a fruitful third session, I invited people to participate in a planning session the following morning. We would meet in one of the “open spaces” provided by USSF organizers to allow groups to engage in coalition-building work during the forum. Half a dozen Peace Caucus participants helped develop a set of questions and structure for the third session. They agreed to do the preparatory work for the session, which included revising the draft “Citizen’s Peace Plan,” which I had put forward as a discussion draft for the group, preparing to report to the group on the United Nations’ “culture of peace” initiative, and attending several workshops that also sought to build coalitions between peace groups and other movements. We decided to devote the first hour of the session to reaching consensus on a one-page, 7-point “Citizen’s Peace Plan for Iraq,” which was developed from consultations among many peace activists and stated in strong but general enough terms to encourage many groups to adopt it. We

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wanted to make a strong statement from the USSF that could help many groups advance calls to end the ongoing devastation in Iraq and avert even greater escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. The second hour would be used to develop consensus upon specific actions that people present at the Peace Caucus (and hopefully others) agree to take up upon their return to their home communities. The third and final Peace Caucus session required discipline to ensure that we accomplished our work in the time allotted, and participants were both cooperative and critically engaged. A key part of the session was discussion of other USSF sessions where people considered how to strengthen coalitions across class and racial divides. Not surprisingly, perhaps, we heard that “peace” work in communities of color tended to focus on ending gun violence in neighborhoods, fighting the “prison industrial complex,” and combating military recruitment. In this context, however, we could move beyond mere observations about these different priorities to discuss ways of forging unified struggles against militarism and violence. Activists working in diverse communities discussed openly how the different cultures of organizing and speaking present in middle-class and low-income communities hinder efforts at effective communication and trust-building between groups. We reached consensus on a final resolution to put forward at the USSF’s closing “People’s Movement Assembly” (see http://www.earthaction.org/ en/ussocforum.html). What was interesting and a bit surprising to me was that the actions we agreed upon did not include any calls to join a campaign or even to work towards a particular policy goal. The call to action emphasizes relationship-building. Participants agreed to move outside their comfort zones to attend meetings and events sponsored by groups different from their own. They also agreed to support civil society more generally by contributing to the World Social Forum process and by remaining vigilant to the need to support each others’ work for peace. Instead of calls for “no war” or for specific institutional changes, the Peace Caucus is calling for efforts to foster a “culture of peace, human rights and justice.” This requires a shift from the familiar campaigning strategy towards more conscious efforts to link the means we use to promote peace with the ends we hope to achieve. Ironically, even though we were meeting in a space remote from most of our home communities, and despite the fact that we were urging a global understanding of peace movement work, the call to action reinforced the need for new forms of action in local contexts.

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Following the USSF, participants promised to bring the Peace Caucus Declaration home to their own organizations, using their organizational newsletters, websites, and “report back” sessions to spread the word about the Citizen Peace Plan and our ideas for strengthening the peace movement’s diversity and its attention to economic justice issues. For my part, I posted our declaration on the USSF web page “blog” space (https:// www.ussf2007.org/en/node/17828) organized numerous report backs in my community, and wrote pieces for newsletters. I also emailed our declaration to those who were part of the Peace Caucus, encouraging them to help publicize it and to otherwise carry out the commitments we made to each other in Atlanta. While we are not certain what policy impact all this will have, we can say that the process is providing people with new and concrete steps they can take to strengthen peace work in this country and world.

Conclusion: New Politics at the USSF In all three cases we observed, the level of intensity and commitment exhibited by participants showed most clearly how truly important the WSF process is. People spent considerable time and money to travel to Atlanta for five days where they crammed into crowded rooms, raised their hands to wait long periods of time to speak, and attended early morning and late evening meetings in addition to full workshop schedules – all because they believed that participation in these discussions and workshops really mattered. In observing and participating in the USSF from various perspectives, we realized that preparing for and attending the forum provides some of the few opportunities for disenfranchised citizens to engage in political struggles that link their local concerns with global politics. We argued that the key features of the new politics advanced by the WSF process are that they mobilize new people into global political arenas, they nurture new identities and understandings of problems, and they contribute to the introduction of new political practices. We saw each of these aspects at work in Atlanta. By all accounts, the forum mobilized a majority of participants from among those groups least represented among the voting public in this country. People of color, indigenous peoples, youth, former prisoners, poor people, and immigrants were all prominent among the USSF attendees. Such groups are not only excluded from participation in

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the global political processes that affect them, but they lack an effective voice in local and national politics. We saw evidence of new understandings and identities in the cases we studied when organizers helped participants make connections between their local problems and global level policies. The articulation of claims in terms of human rights – which was seen in all three cases – reflects a shared discourse and framing within this broader movement that may be an important conceptual mechanism for developing “unity in diversity.” Also, the shared experience of participating in a social forum contributes to the articulation of new, “flexible identities and multiple belongings” that link individuals across geographic and sectoral divides. The three cases we explored also provide evidence of new sets of practices that help constitute the new politics of the WSF. We each witnessed particular types of story-telling as political action. Activists used stories to compare experiences of globalization, to share accounts of effective strategies for countering opponents, and to report back to local communities about the USSF and its meanings. Each of these cases also showed that the forum helps focus activists’ attention on relationship-building over campaigning and ideological work. While they seemed no less concerned about achieving radical social change, participants in the USSF seemed open to the ambiguities of coalition-building. They were often explicit in recognizing a need to come together across the multiple boundaries that divide people in order to move beyond the failures of past movements. This seems to entail more attention to the work of movement building than to debates about ideology and ultimate objectives. One other observation about how new politics is advanced in the WSF process is that leaders are crucial to making this happen. In each of our cases, leadership roles were played by individuals and groups that had experience in the WSF process and transnational organizing. These leaders organized sessions to help more people learn how the process works. They helped link the experiences in Atlanta with the global WSF process, and demonstrated for others the skills in effective use of the open space created by the process. Effective leaders in this context are process-oriented and maintain flexibility in defining their agendas and projects. They skillfully manage that tension between allowing people ample space to participate while also guiding the discussion in productive ways. Our account of the USSF, in short, provides glimpses of an emerging new politics, a process of revitalizing political involvement of actors marginalized by neoliberal globalization and power politics. We show how

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Social Forums offer concrete, sequential opportunities for actors to develop new relationships and learn to “talk across difference”.10 By challenging people to understand their issues and even their identities in new, global ways, Social Forums facilitate communication about effective social change strategies. They create encounters in which activists can “make the path by walking;” they help bridge what is with what could be. By exploring the opportunities the USSF created for activists to try out new ways of thinking about and acting in the world, we hope to have contributed to understandings about how political practices develop in response to global transformations.

References Brunelle, Dorval 2007, From World Order to Global Disorder: States, Markets and Dissent, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. della Porta, Donatella, Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca, and Herbert Reiter 2006, Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Khasnabish, Alex 2004, ‘Globalizing Hope: The Resonance of Zapatismo and the Political Imagination(s) of Transnational Activism’. McMaster University Working Paper Series, Hamilton, Ontario, http://globalization.mcmaster.ca/wps/Khasnabish.pdf. Markoff, John 1999, ‘Globalization and the Future of Democracy’. Journal of World-Systems Research 5:242–26, http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html. Norris, Pippa 2002, Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism, New York: Cambridge University Press. Sen, Jai and Mayuri Saini (eds.) 2005, Talking New Politics: Are Other Worlds Possible?, New Delhi: Zubaan. Waterman, Peter 2005, ‘Talking across Difference in an Interconnected World of Labour’. in J. Bandy and J. Smith (eds.), Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield. Wuthnow, Robert 1998, Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Waterman2005.

CHAPTER 4

Another United States Is Happening: Building Today’s Movement from the Bottom Up The United States Social Forum and Beyond Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome W. Scott If another world is possible, another US is necessary. —http://www.ussf2007.org

From the Inside Out: How and Why We Enter This Process Our perspective and our work on the US Social Forum (USSF) process is from the inside out – as movement builders, as Project South (anchor organization in Atlanta, GA), and as part of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), an alliance of sixty grassroots groups across the United States that spearheaded the USSF. As part of GGJ we were involved in the USSF planning process since 2002, and members of the USSF National Planning Committee since 2004.1 We share a brief analysis of the US Social Forum and a reflection on the essential unity of theory and practice in our struggles and movement to fundamentally transform the United States and global society. The US Social Forum is the story of the growing union of the grassroots and of the working class in the United States in all our diversity. The US Social Forum process – which is ongoing – expresses an intentionality of grounding and organizing our movement in this sector, from the bottom-up, and putting the voices and leadership of those most adversely affected at the center. It embodies our efforts toward convergence and intersectionality 1

Katz-Fishman and Scott 2006, http://www.ggjalliance.org.

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of the many fronts of struggle and issues among all our communities. It helps create organizational and movement infrastructure and coordination – building trust, relationships, and networks across historic divides; and increasing our capacity for developing structures and processes for planning, implementation, evaluation, and social transformation. The US Social Forum process is also about articulating a shared analysis and consciousness of the systemic root causes of our problems; visioning together another United States as part of another world we are fighting for; formulating a collective strategy, plan, structure and process to get there; and doing grassroots fundraising and resourcing to make it happen. The US Social Forum as an integral aspect of the World Social Forum process, strives to link local, national and global organizing in a way that builds a powerful and transformative US movement worthy of uniting with our sisters and brothers in the global South. The US Social Forum Comes to Atlanta and the US South As the US Social Forum unfolded in Atlanta, June 27 to July 1, 2007, the energy, the excitement, and the spirit of a movement rising was tangible. We were 1,000 organizations and 12,000 participants registered and credentialed, and about another 3,000 who just arrived. We were grassroots, Indigenous, African American, Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander, Arab, Palestinian, working class, immigrants, women, queer, youth, elders, differently abled, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and atheist. We came from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam; and internationally from sixty-eight countries.2 The decision by the National Planning Committee to bring the first ever US Social Forum to Atlanta reflected our understanding of the strategic nature of the South in US history, especially in the struggles and movements for equality, justice and systemic social change. The US Social Forum officially began with a wreath-laying at the tomb of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. We wanted to honor those who had come before us, and to lift up the US South as the place where the most intense exploitation and repression and resistance has been fought out in the United States.3 2 3

National Planning Committee 2007a. Katz-Fishman and Scott 2004b; Kelley 2002.

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We organized a festive and political opening march of over 5,000 that led off with Indigenous nations from the region; and lifted-up the many local struggles around public housing, the public hospital – Grady Memorial, and public transportation – MARTA – that also expressed gentrification struggles across the country and the world. More than 950 self-organized workshops – many overflowing – were held on “consciousness” day, “vision” day, and “strategy” day. The US Social Forum National Planning Committee planned and facilitated six plenary dialogues addressing the historic and ongoing exploitation and multiple oppressions of our communities and our resilience and resistance, with speakers who brought the voices and visions of organizers at the grassroots. The plenaries came from our analysis that social movements grow in power and influence because organizers and activists seize the moments that confront them. In the last few years, progressive organizers and activists experienced critical opportunities to build a more vibrant and effective movement in the United States. We enjoyed some successes; and we suffered many set-backs. As organizers, activists, and movement builders we had not yet drawn the lessons from these experiences to develop plans for moving forward. The US Social Forum offered that space to shine the light on six key movement-building moments to learn the lessons from these struggles. The plenaries opened with the powerful and moving stories of the struggles in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast two years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in “Gulf Coast Reconstruction in the Post-Katrina Era: Challenges, Visions and Strategies,” and continued with “US Imperialism, War, Militarism and Prisons: Movement Towards a United States Based in Peace, Economic and Environmental Justice,” “Indigenous Voices: From the Heart of Mother Earth,” “Immigrant Rights,” “Liberating Gender and Sexuality: Integrating Gender and Sexual Justice Across Our Movements,” and “Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy.” Activists and grassroots groups organized major campaigns and mobilizations around these struggles, especially around the Gulf Coast, the war, and immigration. Despite these efforts little if any legislative change has taken place; and, in fact, we have suffered regressive policies and deepening crises in our communities. The biggest lesson from all this is that we, as grassroots and working class activists and organizations, need to think and act beyond mobilizations and policy changes to long-term movement building and political and economic education for systemic change.

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We recognized that these fronts of struggle are deeply interconnected and related to all the crises in our communities within the context of today’s globalization and neoliberal policies – growing poverty and systems of oppressions rooted in class, race, nationality, gender, sexuality, ability, and age. The lessons learned inform all of our work, and inspire us to develop a critical consciousness and a bold vision. These struggles, when connected strategically, can form the basis of a powerful movement to challenge the legitimacy of US hegemony, and to help build a cooperative world of peace, justice, equality, solidarity and self-determination.4 The US Social Forum program also included a film festival; and hundreds of cultural performances and presentations, and concerts. Fourteen solidarity tents offered spaces to gather informally. We networked, formed new alliances, deepened relationships, dialogued; and shared calls for campaigns, actions, and next steps in the Peoples’ Movement Assembly the last day. The Peoples’ Movement Assembly process was formed in relation to the US Social Forum to allow for the follow-up and follow-through on activism, organizing, and movement building. While the social forum process is an “open space” for dialogue and discussion; the Peoples’ Movement Assembly can take action, and support and endorse organizing and campaigns.5 The movement registration process worked; and the written program was out on time and user-friendly. The peoples’ media justice center brought the US Social Forum to our communities and the media to the social forum. But, despite our best efforts, the mainstream media continued to ignore our movement and the US Social Forum, marginalizing our crises and struggles. The children’s social forum engaged our children in working for another United States and another world. Medics on bicycles and first-aid stations were there for our health and well being; as was movement security; movement translation and interpretation; and movement logistics. The tech team created a website, handled servers, communications and more. Thousands of volunteers filled 2,000 volunteer slots of 4 hours. The People’s Freedom Caravan from the Southwest to the Southeast brought buses with a thousand participants to the US Social Forum from New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Buses from Dur-

4 5

http://www.ussf2007.org. Peoples’ Movement Assembly 2007a and 2007b; also see below.

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ham, Miami, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, and San Francisco brought thousands more. We put in place a grassroots resource mobilization and fundraising process, including the “pass the hat foundation.” The Peoples’ Movement Assembly urged us to bring forward resolutions, declarations, and actions for affirmation, including the January 26, 2008 WSF global day of action, when activists, organizers and movement builders around the globe will coordinate actions for justice and equality in their communities.6 We committed to continue the movement building process. The next US Social Forum will be in 2010. Although the first USSF was a success, we have much organizing, educating, relationship building, and movement work to do between now and then. The US Social Forum and the movement we are building are about our struggles to challenge power, privilege, exploitation and all the systems of oppression and destruction as we work toward unity across our differences. It is about developing a US-based movement that is internationalist and in unity with the global movement, with our sisters and brothers in the global South. It is about converging our many fronts of struggle – the many communities and issues we represent – into a broad and inclusive movement. It is about lifting up the people’s radical history of the US South as a base for our movement building. Finally it is about linking theory and practice in our vision and strategy to transform society. The US Social Forum is, for us, a victory on many levels. As we were planning and organizing we heard from many people and places great skepticism and doubt. They said we could not do it because: • • • • • • • • •

6

The South is too backward. We are too working class and low-income. We are too many people of color. We are the grassroots speaking for ourselves. We are women. We are queer, transgender, two-spirit. We are youth. We are from the disabilities community. We don’t have enough money.

Peoples’ Movement Assembly 2007b.

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What they meant was not lost in translation. They were saying: • • • •

Where Where Where Where

are are are are

the the the the

superstars? experts? big NGOs (non-governmental organizations)? white folks, especially the white men?

Wer esponded: If a movement is possible in this country, in the United States – the heart of imperialism, global capitalism, white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy – we have to do it, we are the only ones who can do it. And we did!

On the Organic Unity of Theory and Practice – Deepening Our Praxis Much has been written and said around the debate about the social forum as an “open space” and as a space to make declarations, manifestos, to plan campaigns, and coordinate days of action.7 It is about both these processes and more. What is not really focused on, but is implied and is central, is the deep dialectical integration of theorizing the social realities and economic and political systems that oppress and exploit our communities, visioning the society and the world we are fighting for, and strategizing the movement building work we need to do over the long haul. At the heart of the USSF process for some of us is precisely this organic unity of theory and practice. There are fundamentally two different, though interconnected, strategies around movement building praxis in today’s reality. One focuses on uniting the working class in all our diversity – race, nationality, gender, sexuality, region, religion, culture, age, ability – and converging all our struggles as the essential foundation for building a transformative and libratory movement. The other calls for uniting those who are ideologically left, whether or not they represent a base.8 We embrace the first strategy, understanding that the ideological left will be drawn to a movement with a broad and inclusive base organized from the bottom-up, and that political and economic education at the grassroots is key to long-haul movement 7 8

Bello 2007; Ponniah 2007; Santos 2006; Smith and Karides 2008; Whitaker 2007. Peery2002.

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building. Our praxis reflects this strategy and informs our participation in the US Social Forum. The social forum process for us, as grassroots organizers and movement builders, has been a multi-year process and is, at its core, about building a movement from the bottom up that will transform the US South, the United States, and be part of a global movement for another world. This movement building process embodies and includes both open space for dialogue, reflection, analysis, vision, and an intentional process for developing infrastructure, for planning political program and action – long-term strategy and day-to-day activities and tactics. Because the World Social Forum Charter of Principles organizes the social forum process as an “open space,” movement building organizations within that space formed the Social Movements Assembly at the first World Social Forum in 2001 to allow for coordinated actions and political positions to be put forward.9 The Social Movements Assembly was most visible at the World Social Forum in Nairobi in 2007 where it coordinated a full day of consultation and action plans to facilitate movement-building work in the global context.10 At the US Social Forum we organized the Peoples’ Movement Assembly as the form that would facilitate the intentional movement building process in the US context. The Peoples’ Movement Assembly is a strategic movement building process for consultation and coordination of struggles and actions in the United States much as the Social Movements Assembly is in the global context.11 It included regional and sectorial meetings during the forum and a gathering of all participants to present resolutions, declarations, campaigns and actions the final day of the US Social Forum. Many of us understand that struggle without theory is reactive – it can only reflect on its past without an analysis of root systemic causes, of how change happens, and where we are going. At the root of today’s myriad crises is a system of global capitalism and imperialism that remains white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, and militaristic. What is new in this moment is a technological revolution in the way society produces and distributes the necessities of life, and travels and communicates. Electronics, computers and robots are replacing industrial age machines, resulting in fewer good jobs and lower wages. But this technology also makes it possible to create an abundance of all the things people need. Only the 9 10 11

http://www.forumsocialmundial.org. Bullard2007. National Planning Committee 2007b.

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market and the profit motive stand in the way of distribution of these basic necessities to poor and working class communities in the United States and around the world.12 This late twentieth and early twenty-first century economic foundation of society is driving war and neoliberal policies at home and abroad. The other side of this contradiction is that it also creates the abundance that makes possible a cooperative, peaceful, and egalitarian society and world. Theory brings this vision and power of transformation to our movement. Thus, the Peoples’ Movement Assembly, as well as other strategic work within the social forum process, allows us to unite theory and practice to deepen our movement building praxis in this historic moment. The ability for us to do this intentional, intersectional, educational and convergence work is what brings us to the social forum process. Many of us would not have undertaken this task, have brought the US Social Forum to the South, and have organized it as we did without a theory and strategy of movement building and the social change process. The US Social Forum was not – for many of us – a spontaneous process or event; and that is key to next steps and where we go from here. So for us the US Social Forum was a great success – it expressed our theorizing and strategy about what the task was before us to build a base for today’s transformative movement rooted in the working class, inclusive of communities of color; those marginalized because of poverty, gender, sexuality, age, ability; and internationalist in outlook. Only this base offers the solid foundation to build a movement upon. The twentieth century post-World War II era of McCarthyism and anticommunism, of economic expansion and social reforms disconnected theory and social struggle, academic and working class intellectuals, and across race/nationality/ethnicity and gender/sexuality. Many in all walks of life became disoriented because of the rising standard of living, government welfare programs for the poor, and civil rights to end racial apartheid, religious and gender discrimination. Some declared: “we won.” But the structures of global capitalism, imperialism, colonialism and militarism, white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy remained intact; and the ruling classes never gave up ownership and power. There were no “good old days” for the most marginalized communities in the United States. Since the seventies, the social reforms and economic and political gains fought

12

Katz-Fishman and Scott 2005a; Peery 2002.

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for and won by marginalized communities have come under attack and been rolled back by the economic and political elite. Today, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we are living the crisis of global capitalism and neoliberal policies in the electronic age. Globalization and automation mean working people are increasingly superfluous in the production and distribution of goods and services. Global capital searches the world for the cheapest labor; and labor migrates around the world in search of vanishing and low wage jobs. Public services and property are privatized to create new markets and sources of profit for capital in crisis. The bubble of speculative capital fueled by the orgy of credit and debt is about to burst. War and militarism, growing fascism, and all forms of oppression are daily realities, as are social and ecological destruction – at home and abroad.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Social Destruction: A Wake up Call for the Movement The intentional government and elite destruction of infrastructure (levees, etc.), public services, and community in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast before and in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is one of the most visible expressions of today’s realities and struggles. It pulled the covers off of all the evil things that exist in the United States; and deeply impacted the social forum and the movement process. The US Social Forum was already several years in the planning; the National Planning Committee had it first face-to-face meeting in August 2005; and the USSF date was set for summer 2006 in Atlanta, GA. Then, August 28, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast; the levees broke and New Orleans was flooded. The nightmare, the abandonment and death that followed in the wake of this human-made disaster was not to be believed in the United States – richest and most powerful country in the world.13 New Orleans and the Gulf Coast became a symbol – it was the reality that was happening to all of us, but more intense, more potent, more toxic. The aftermath of Katrina was a screaming wake-up call to our movement – we are not prepared, we cannot defend, help, support, protect our communities under siege. We did a consultation with organizations across the 13

Bergal 2007; Klein 2007; South End Press Collective 2007.

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Southeast, with survivors, and internally displaced people, especially those most devastated. They wanted and needed to be in the USSF movementbuilding process, but also needed to address their most immediate needs of day-to-day survival. In Atlanta, host city for the US Social Forum, 1000s of internally displaced people were now living and trying to rebuild their lives, homes, and communities. Following the consultation and some internal struggle, the National Planning Committee moved the US Social Forum from the summer 2006 to the summer of 2007 so the survivors and fighters from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast could fully participate. We could begin to build a movement that in the future could respond quickly to the massive attack on our communities – African American, poor, working class, immigrant, Indigenous, women, children, elders, queer, disabled, incarcerated. Katrina became the touchstone for thinking about the USSF plenaries, and was the powerful lead-off plenary on June 28 – lifting up the voices, demands and visions for a reconstructed New Orleans and Gulf Coast. Activists and organizers formed the New Orleans Organizing Committee in early 2007; and mobilized several busses and hundreds of participants from the region to the US Social Forum. The New Orleans Organizing Committee continues to do movement-building work; and one of the first collective actions coming out of the USSF process and the Peoples Movement Assembly was support for the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in New Orleans, August 29 to September 2, 2007.14 The energy and momentum from the USSF process also contributed to the mobilization of grassroots organizations and community activists in the ongoing protest against the injustice facing six young black men in the Jena 6 Case in Jena, Louisiana.15 With the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, MN in August 2007, those living at the headwaters of the Mississippi River also learned practically the crisis of the destruction of infrastructure and what it means for life and community. Whether we call it destruction and creative chaos, or disaster capitalism and the shock doctrine, it is clear that global capitalism is using crises – of human-induced disasters of nature and war – to militarize and privatize every aspect of social life.16 The ruling class has a vision for the 14

http://www.internationaltribunal.org. Color of Change 2007; National Planning Committee 2007b; New York Times 2007; Southern Poverty Law Center 2007. 16 Katz-Fishman, Brewer and Albrecht 2007; Klein 2007. 15

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reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, of Baghdad and all the Middle East, of every city across the globe that serves the interests of the rich and powerful. One of the key lessons many of us take away from this is that the system is broken and cannot be fixed. Only a peoples’ movement from the bottomup with a vision of a cooperative and peaceful world that is organized to satisfy human needs can offer a resolution to the collapse and destruction of society and the planet. To reconstruct the Gulf Coast for the people is a challenge to our bottom-up movement – to do so is to build a movement for systemic and social transformation. The future will be our vision or their vision, our world or their world – there is no compromise in this moment.

Next Steps: Make It happen! Our consciousness is raised. We are beginning the process of visioning the society and the world we are fighting for. When a critical mass of us shares a vision of a cooperative and egalitarian society, we can develop a longterm political strategy and grow our organizational forms to make it happen. Popular education as part of building a broad and deep mass movement infuses consciousness-raising, visioning and strategizing into the process from the bottom-up. Through revisiting praxis – theory and practice unity – in the early twenty-first century, we can gain greater clarity about historical necessity, today’s objective forces of technology and their relationship to society and economy, the state, human agency, political organization, and the revolutionary process. We are evaluating and summing up our multi-year USSF process and drawing lessons for going forward. We accomplished much – the huge success of the US Social Forum itself, demonstrating that with a largely volunteer and grassroots movement base we can plan, organize, and implement an event and movement building strategy as big as the US Social Forum. We can develop movement capacity and infrastructure with a long-term perspective. In the opening for the Peoples’ Movement Assembly July 1, 2007, several speakers suggested that we are modeling, walking the talk of a new paradigm of movement building grounded in the grassroots and diverse communities of the working class in the United States in the twenty-first century.17 17

Peoples’ Movement Assembly 2007a.

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We struggled internally over many things – large and small – and resolved most differences and reached practical unity on others. We strived to walk our talk – to challenge individualism, subjectivity, and various forms of relative privilege; and to create collective and horizontal processes and infrastructure for our movement with principle and integrity. We made mistakes; and were able to correct many of them in the moment and not have things spit apart. That’s all good. But how do we get better? How do we deepen and broaden our movement? How do we collectively create a vision that is compelling and transformative, that is rooted in twentyfirst century realities? Our challenge is building on this movement process to make another United States and another world happen. Through the social forum process in Atlanta and beyond, we affirm: • We are the grassroots firmly grounded in our communities and struggles; and we are internationalists in unity with struggles around the world. • We are organizers; and we are movement builders. • We are popular educators; and we study theory. • We understand our problems are systemic; and we are creating a vision for our future. • We are tacticians; and we are strategic – converging our many fronts of struggle into an overarching movement. • We are progressives; and we are revolutionaries. • We are the people; and we are making our own history. Movement building for systemic transformation is a long haul process. It is happening. Be part of it. Make it happen!

References Bello, Walden 2007, The Forum at the Crossroads. Foreign Policy in Focus, http://www.fpif. org/fpiftxt/4196 (May 4, 2007). Bergal, Jenni et al. 2007, City Adrift: New Orleans before and after Katrina, Baton Rouge: LA, Louisiana State University Press. Blau, Judith and Keri E. Iyall-Smith (eds.) 2006, Public Sociologies Reader, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Bullard, Nicola 2007, ‘Short Repost of the Social Movements Assembly (1) World Social Forum’, Nairobi, http://www.focusweb.org/full-report-of-the-social-movements-assembly. html (January 24, 2007). Color of Change 2007, Colorofchange.org Jena 6 Defense Fund information page, http:// www.colorofchange.org/jena_fund/info.html (October 7, 2007).

69 Fried, A. (ed.) 1997, McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare – a Documentary History, New York: Oxford University Press. Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, http://www.ggjalliance.org (June 20, 2007). International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, http://www.internationaltribunal. org (September 30, 2007). Katz-Fishman, Walda, Rose Brewer, and Lisa Albrecht 2007, The Critical Classroom: Education for Liberation and Movement Building, Atlanta, GA: Project South, http://www. projectsouth.org. Katz-Fishman, Walda and Jerome Scott 2004a, ‘A Movement Rising’ in An Invitation to Public Sociology, pp. 53–55, Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Katz-Fishman, Walda and Jerome Scott 2004b, ‘The Black Radical Traditions in the South: Confronting Empire’ in R. Coates (ed.), Race and Ethnicity across Time, Space and Discipline, pp. 191–222, Leiden: Brill. Katz-Fishman, Walda and Jerome Scott 2005a, ‘Global Capitalism, Class Struggle, and Social Transformation’ in B. Berberoglu (ed.), Globalization and Change: The Transformation of Global Capitalism, pp. 123–140, Lanham, MD: Lexington. Katz-Fishman, Walda and Jerome Scott 2006, ‘A Movement Rising: Consciousness, Vision and Strategy from the Bottom Up’ in Judith Blau and Keri E. Iyall-Smith (eds.), Public Sociologies Reader, pp. 69–82, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kelley, R. 2002, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Boston: Beacon. Klein, Naomi 2007, ‘The Shock Doctrine’, The Guardian UK, http://business.guardian. co.uk.comment/story/0,,2165023,,00.html. Lenin, V. I. 1969 [1961], What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, New York: International Publishers. Martinez, E. 1998, De Colores Means All of Us, Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Mertes, T. (ed.) 2004, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible?, New York: Verso. Mohanty, C. T. 2004, Feminism without borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. National Planning Committee 2007a, Sum-up Meeting, Atlanta, GA (July 2, 2007). National Planning Committee 2007b, Evaluation Meeting, Decatur, GA (September 24–26, 2007). New York Times 2007, ‘Justice in Jena’, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/opinion/ 26walters.html (September 26, 2007). Peery, N. 2002, The Future Is up to Us: A Revolutionary Talking Politics with the American People, Chicago: Speakers for a New America. Peoples Movement Assembly 2007a, Panel discussion and assembly, Atlanta, GA ( July 1, 2007). Peoples’ Movement Assembly 2007b, E-mail correspondence, [email protected] (October 30, 2007). Ponniah, Thomas 2007, The Contribution of the U.S. Social Forum: A Reply to Whitaker and Bello’s Debate on the Open Space, http://lfsc.org/wsf/ussf_contribution_thomas.pdf. Project South (ed.) 2005, Today’s Globalization: A Toolkit for Popular Education in Your Community 2, Atlanta, GA: Project South, www.projectsouth.org. Robinson, William 2005, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

70 Santos, Bonaventura de Sousa 2006, The Rising of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond, New York: Zed Books. Smith, Jackie, Marina Karides, Marc Becker, Christopher Chase Dunn, Dorval Brunelle, Donnatella della Porta, Rosalba Icaza, Jeffrey Juris, Lorenzo Mosca, Ellen Reese, Jay Smith, Rolando Vasquez 2008, Global Democracy and the World Social Forums, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. South End Press Collective 2007, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation, Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Southern Poverty Law Center 2007, ‘The Stroke of a Pen’, http://www.splcenter.org/news/ item.jsp?aid=286 (September 28, 2007). United States Social Forum, http://www.ussf2007.org. Van Gelder, S. 2006, ‘Southern Revival’, YES! Magazine, Fall 50–52. Whitaker, Chico 2007, ‘Crossroads Do Not Always Close Roads (Reflection in Continuity to Walden Bello)’, http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Crossroads_do_not_always_ close_roads. WorldS ocialF orum,ht tp://www.forumsocialmundial.org.

CHAPTER 5

A Different (Kind of ) Politics Is Possible: Conflict and Problem(s) at the USSF Michal Osterweil The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, and non-party context that, in a de-centralized fashion interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete actions at levels from the local to international – to build another world. —WSF Charter of Principles

What Was So Great about the USSF!?: Outline of a Problem Almost every report or commentary I have read and heard from friends, activists, internet sources and journals about this year’s first ever United States Social Forum, held in Atlanta, June 27–July 1, have been celebratory. Even International Council (IC) members, the international organizing committee of the World Social Forum, now in its 7th year, reportedly stated that this was the “best social forum they ever saw,” “rais[ing] the bar across the board”.1 I share the glowing reviews and enthusiastic assessment. The Forum was undoubtedly a huge success: an impressive, even if surprising for some, coming-into-visibility of a broad-based, radically diverse, grassroots movement for social change, the likes of which had not been seen in the US for a long time. I can also concur with members of the IC and others and say that despite certain shortcomings, including its taking place in corporate hotels with little alternative fare, it was probably the best example I have seen of what a forum can and ought to be.2 However, the question remains: why? What made it so great? It might be stating the 1

Cardinale2007. I have been to five other Social Forums: two World Social Forums in Brazil, 2003 and 2005, and three European Social Forums, in 2002, 2003, and 2004.

2

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obvious, but it is one thing to pull off a successful social forum – that is, a good version of a certain kind of event, (i.e. “that was a great party”) – it is quite another for that also to be perceived as something of political significance in and of itself. In general, descriptions have attributed the success and power of the USSF to certain clearly visible qualities.3 1) The fact that it was a truly grassroots affair that actually involved and represented a social base that was diverse in most ways imaginable – i.e. in terms of race, class, ethnicity, geography, age, ideology and gender. The leadership itself was largely comprised of women and people of color. 2) It avoided the preponderance of super-stars, as well as big NGOs, or fronts for political parties.4 This allowed for more and different perspectives to comprise the content and experience of the workshops, plenaries and informal spaces, and it also allowed for the qualitative inclusion of many more people. 3) It was futureoriented without betraying the open-space principles underlying the very idea of the Social Forums. In other words it balanced the presentation of concrete political content within a non-directed space of encounter. 4) And, finally the over 900 workshops, tents and panels that filled the 5 days were demonstrative of the richness and diversity of the rainbow of contemporary movements, individuals and organizations that dot the social justice landscape in the US. While I agree with these assessments and concur that each of these aspects were both positive and significant, especially when considered in relation to other forums, I think they are also missing something. Those features taken in themselves are not sufficient to explain what, besides drawing a diverse range of people, made this forum so powerful. Or what it meant or produced politically that would make so many people so excited about it. Beyond suggesting that the forum was inclusive, what do these features have to do with the success, or perceived success of a “new” political space, concept, and instrument like the USSF? While clearly, taken together they become greater than the sum of their parts, I also think it is crucial to delve more deeply into why they matter. This requires on the one hand addressing prior questions, such as why diversity, decentraliza.

3

Most of these articles and reports I refer to were posted to a listserv, [WSF-Discuss], and range from articles published elsewhere and reposted there, as well as more informal posts and responses. They are all available at openspaceforum.net. 4 Parties, NGOs and academic/political superstars were quite prominent at other Social Forums.

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tion, and the ability to articulate clear political trajectories without imposing a unified program on the event and its participants, are so politically potent, and on the other, it means understanding how these are different, not only from our current politics, but also from what constitutes most people’s understanding of “the political” more generally. For while on the Left it has become almost a given that diversity is a “good thing” in itself, I suspect that, more often than not, diversity is considered good because it suggests that we are quantitatively closer to reaching “true” democracy. While I do not discount the fact that more inclusion is desirable, I think that as examples like the USSF show us, the reasons it is are not simply quantitative, or about getting more people represented. Instead, at places and events like the USSF, diversity and inclusion matter at a different register: they indicate a qualitative shift in the political modes and capacities – away from the logic of representative democracy, and towards something quite different. Beyond bringing us closer to what we already think we know should be our objectives – i.e. getting more people represented, or surpassing difference to build a mass movement – the USSF and other examples of this “new” politics help create a new political modality that is more concerned with addressing the pitfalls of both our dominant (polemical) political culture, as well as previous approaches on the Left. The argument I would like to put forth in this paper, then, is that forums address these pitfalls by employing and co-creating (new) cultural politics.5 This includes producing critical subjects and knowledges that, through a commitment to difference, reflexive experimentation, as well as openness to conflict and even failure, are better able to confront the complex and difficult political problems of our day. This conception of the political products of forums radically shifts our definition of “political outcomes” – away from things like political programs and demands, premised on the notion that movements already know what they need and want, to a notion of emergent outcomes, which include among other things new problematics, knowledges and cultural capacities.6

5

For more on “cultural politics” see Alvarez et al. 1998; or Osterweil 2004b. For an excellent argument about social movements and problematics, see Free Association 2007.

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Introducing the Debates: Towards a New Political Modality The question of the “newness” of the politics emerging from spaces like social forums, and of the broader set of alter-globalization movements of which they are a part, has been highly contested in both academic and activist spheres. In fact, it has been cause for serious debates and arguments within the Social Forum movement, almost since its inception in 2001. These debates are couched using various terms, ranging from “movement vs. space,” “verticality vs. horizontality,” “party vs. network,” or quite simply as Old left vs. New.7 But as many authors have pointed out these oppositions are indicative of much more profound fault lines grounding the very ways we think and know social change.8 While I cannot adequately summarize these debates here, it is clear that there are critical political and epistemological differences at stake, differences that do in fact make all the difference in how we read the effects or success of something like a social forum. However, while there are certainly stark distinctions, the dissonance is also at least partly the result of the fact that our political categories and comprehension have not yet caught up with the radical and emergent properties posed by the forum. Properties that in certain moments (like at the USSF) make themselves tangible, but then get translated back into the vocabularies and formulas people already have. I hope that by starting from a concrete case that has been almost universally deemed a success, the USSF, I can find a way to more effectively explain the “newness” of social forums, specifically the new political modalities they bring forward. My argument very clearly builds on the work of a growing number of activist-scholars that see social forums as compelling us to look for (political) outcomes and effects both elsewhere and differently. These authors argue that the forum is important precisely because, in the words of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “the ‘movement of movements is not one more movement. It is a different movement”.9 Here, I follow quite explicitly on arguments about the importance of understanding and maintaining the forum as an open, utopian space and process10 that functions

7

For more on this distinction see Whitaker 2004; Teivanen 2004; Nunes, 2005, Osterweil 2004b; see also Reactions to the Bamako Appeal, posted at http://www.cacim.net/ bareader/home.html, as well as on several discussion lists. 8 Tormey 2005; Escobar 2004. 9 Santos 2004, p. 236. 10 Whitaker 2004; Tormey 2005.

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according to “different” political logics and epistemologies11 and whose cultural- and micro-political effects do not mean abandoning or ignoring the institutional or macro-political altogether,12 but rather forces us to rethink the articulation between these various levels. The notion of cultural politics associated with certain areas of the “movement of movements” departs from a particular political analysis: . . . a cultural-political approach recognizes neo-liberal capitalist globalisation as a complex and ubiquitous entity and process. This entity far exceeds any identifiable institutions or policies, and both pervades and helps produce every aspect of human life – from our very conceptions of individuality, to our beliefs in progress and rationality. . . . According to this analysis, an effective politics must not only work to change existing policies and economic agendas, but must also seek to oppose neo-liberal capitalist globalisation in all of its iterations: from the individualistic, atomised and controlled human subjects it produces; to its monopoly on value and elimination of difference in all spheres of life; to its dependence on mono-cultural and hegemonic logics.13

Following on this definition, all of the arguments briefly mentioned above, contribute to a larger claim that social forums, and many other parts of the “movement of movements,” cannot be measured or judged according to traditional macro and institutional definitions of the political, neither by the political actors who comprise them, nor by social scientists who study them. Since, as Conway puts it, the WSF is “producing new political practices and discourses that would heretofore have been unimagined,” we require new lenses and categories with which to both register and then evaluate political efficacy.14 Building on this “family of arguments,” I want to add that in addition to working through culture, affect and the micro-political in ways previously written about,15 the strength of these forums also comes from the different modes of political engagement and practice they help create. These modes are closely related to the cultural-political analysis mentioned above, but are quite specifically concerned with addressing the limits of 11

Escobar 2004; Santos 2004. Osterweil, 2004b; Conway 2007; Chesters and Welsh 2006. 13 Osterweil 2004b, p. 503. 14 Conway 2007, p. 1. 15 These include producing critical subjects, new social relations, new ways of knowing, and different forms of political and social organization. For a more thorough discussion of cultural politics, see Osterweil 2004b. 12

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current models (and cultures) of democracy – specifically of multiculturalism and deliberative democracy – as well as our conceptions of conflict and difference. This means moving away from democratic theories dominated by representational logics,16 to theories of ethical engagement with difference, in which no subject or problem is presumed to be fully constituted prior to their entrance into the political field, but is instead constituted through conflictual or agonistic political engagement.17 However, before proceeding at this abstract, theoretical register, one that goes against the emergent ethic and modality of the topic at hand, I want to turn to the concrete where these new modes of democracy present themselves.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like! It was actually during the final day of the forum, during the People’s Movements Assembly, that the uniqueness and strength of the event struck me quite profoundly. It began when one of the organizers of the USSF cut-off the microphone of an Ecuadorian indigenous man who was speaking on the stage of Atlanta’s quite massive Convention Center in front of thousands of forum participants. This was the Forum’s concluding assembly where representatives from different constituencies, issues, etc. could present various proposals that had been made throughout the five days to the rest of the world of the forum. As such, the circumstances for cutting off the man’s microphone were by no means simple, or simply “wrong:” The man, who was speaking on behalf of the indigenous caucus, had gone over his allotted time, and there were many speakers representing various issues and caucuses who still had to make their presentations (notably, his lapse was largely because he had been one of two representatives speaking in a single slot, and each of them had translated themselves into two different languages). As I sat in the audience watching his lips move passionately, but no voice come out, my stomach fell. Although I understood the organizer’s rationale, and could even relate to the difficult situation she was in – being charged with the responsibility of making sure all groups managed to have their voices heard – the act of silencing that man felt immediately and obviously “wrong.” 16 17

For more on representational logic, see Tormey 2006; Thrift 2007. Mouffe1 999.

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A few minutes later, my hunch was confirmed when the stage was taken over by indigenous activists who had come out to redress what they had perceived to be an intolerable insult. For several minutes the tension was almost unbearable. One of the men on stage, who we were later told was part of the Warrior clan, took the microphone and began to reprimand the entire auditorium. He spoke to us with much anger and mistrust. He accused all of us of being responsible for the prior insult, and for participating in an institution and politics that was hypocritically perpetuating racism against Native Americans, and therefore failing to be part of progressive social change. His words were so strong that I felt queasy and found myself thinking, “Oh no! please! Let’s not let this end like this . . . let’s not let this be the note and tone we leave on! It was sooo amazing until now.” But then the warrior began singing beautifully with the drums, the Ecuadorian man spoke again, there was gorgeous music, and another man – also passionate, but not as angry – took the microphone. Tom Goldtooth explained that this was a healing ceremony that needed to be completed in order to make clear that a wrong had been done, and to allow the possibility of moving forward. When he finished speaking he called a woman to the microphone explaining that she was in charge of the emotional wellbeing of the community. The woman was almost to the point of tears. She spoke slowly and deliberately, saying that she understood that the organizers were trying to manage the limited amount of time there was, but that they had to realize, considering the history and experience of indigenous people at the hands of so many others, how hurtful the action had been. She thanked the organizers and the audience for listening, and for allowing the ceremony to be completed. After she spoke, there was a tangible sense of relief in the Auditorium. There seemed to be a common feeling that while the hurt and mistake had certainly not been erased, we had gotten through it without falling apart. In fact we were stronger for it! Soon, and to my surprise, I realized I was crying, but also smiling, thinking: “This is what another politics looks like!” When the ceremony was completed, the moderator who had cut off the man’s microphone returned to the stage, humbly, but confidently. She very sincerely thanked the indigenous caucus, and said something to the effect of “well, I hope that next time I fuck up like that people will call me out again. I expect there will be a lot of trials and errors, but I am confident we will be able to work through them.”18 18

Myp araphrasing.

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There is a great deal to say about this incident, but to begin with, it is critical to point out that there was no way the moderator could have known ahead of time what the “right” response to the situation would be. My own judgment that her choice to cut the man off was “wrong,” came from a feeling arrived at viscerally and in the heat of the moment, but not because of certain clearly defined parameters or rubrics of value. This is important to point out, since the moderator was actually proceeding according to the rules of the assembly, which were themselves largely based on Time. As such, we are not speaking of a matter of an error or political choice made in bad faith or wrong politics, but the actual and unexpected clashing of different systems of value. (This is not to suggest that the moderator actually values time over voice, but that in this particular context that was her role.) While we often fear such clashes, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflict is not only inevitable in true democratic relations – it is fundamental to them. The key, then, is to re-conceptualize the role of conflict and difference.

Conflict, Difference and Problematics: (New) Principles of Political Engagement While some people considered this incident an unfortunate glitch in an otherwise great event, I felt that not only did the moment exhibit a political maturity rarely visible in politics today, it also seemed to demonstrate the productivity of both conflict and difference in generating new knowledges, problematics and capacities. It is probably no coincidence that contemporary political theorists see difference and conflict as some of the key challenges facing modern politics today.19 Mainstream philosopher, Robert Nozick, argues that “the problematic animating contemporary politics is the search for ways in which different visions and different projects can be reconciled, can co-exist without annihilating each other”.20 Mouffe, on the other hand, stresses the importance of difference and conflict to a functioning democracy. Notably, commitments to diversity and difference have also had quite a prominent place in the WSF’s charter of principles – both 19

I am using difference in a broad sense to refer both to diversity in terms of culture, race, gender, class, but also political diversity, i.e. different political ideologies/approaches. While there are distinctions (in political effect, etc.) among different kinds of difference, in this piece I am trying to argue that there is a similarity that runs across them. 20 Tormey 2005, p. 397.

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in terms of cultural and political pluralism.21 They have also been widely discussed in articles and analyses about past forums, especially the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, as well as in myriad theoretical discussions about potentiality of the social forum concept. However, despite having read many of these,22 before experiencing the moment described above, I am not sure I had a good understanding of the “real” significance, or effects, of this commitment to diversity or difference. That is, theoretically and viscerally I agreed with Left Turn’s widely circulated statement, “The Social Forum process is not so much about putting aside differences, as it is about placing them at the center – of bringing whole movements and whole selves to the table”.23 However, what that could actually mean in practice, and why so much was at stake, (besides movement-building), were things I could not quite articulate. I think this was on the one hand because of how I was used to thinking of difference, diversity and conflict politically, and on the other, because a very different kind of understanding becomes available when one not only thinks, but actually experiences – corporeally, emotionally, and intellectually – what the presence of diverse subjects can do and mean. For, as I mentioned at the outset, the Left often treats diversity as something to be worked through in order to achieve more unity and more complete “democracy.” Based on representative or quantitative notions of democracy that do not recognize the constitutive and qualitative importance of difference in and of itself, diversity is essentially treated as a problem to be solved. Moreover in this model, the more people are represented, the more likely their interests will be heard, and the more legitimate decisions made with the name of democracy will be. While I also believe that the presence and participation of different voices is crucial – especially those who have been historically marginalized, othered and/or excluded – there are fundamental differences between a politics of engagement with difference,24 and the assumptions underlying representative politics. These

21

See especially principle 9. see Conway 2007; Santos 2004; Escobar 2004. 23 Tang2007. 24 Without getting into intense theoretical debates I would like to acknowledge I am using diversity and difference quite interchangeably throughout this section because I believe they are mutually constitutive. Moreover a commitment to difference (as opposed to essentialist versions of identity/diversity) is what distinguishes this sort of argument for diversity from liberal or representational ones. 22

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problems are fundamentally two-fold: 1) representative politics are based on an idea that a subject enters preconstituted into the political field with certain interests, automatically and necessarily related to a preformed, or essential, identity, and 2) the belief that there is such a thing as a rational consensus or objective answer that will be arrived at via deliberation among diverse subjects each representing the view of their constituency. These false assumptions have significant consequences for contemporary political life. For today, more often than not rather than actually including different perspectives, or arriving at a rational consensus based on deliberation among different constituencies, the political process in western democracies tends to turn into a frustrating game of trading, persuasion,25 or fighting, where, healthy “democratic confrontation is replaced by a confrontation between non-negotiable moral values or essentialist forms of identification”.26 As such the myths of multiculturalism and deliberative democracy devolve rather quickly into helping to constitute a polemical and vitriolic political culture.27 Some in fact argue that this is particularly significant for the Left, that in the wake of the demise of “actually existing socialism,” the rise of neoliberalism, and the visible multiplication of struggles, often based on particular identities, is often characterized (sometimes unfairly) as having a fractious, defensive and rather combative culture that has little patience or room for mistakes.28 Instead, rather than acknowledging the imperfectness, incompleteness and complicated nature of any political choice – especially when different interests are at stake – almost any mistake or difficulty is treated as an opportunity to condemn and attack a political other. This is generally followed by reverting, often even more dogmatically than before, to believing in the righteousness of one’s own position. This polemical approach is quite destructive, especially given the complex and difficult nature of many political problems today. As Foucault put it,

25

Persuasion often has very little to do with reason, and more to do with pressure, or incentives. 26 Mouffe, 2002, p. 7. 27 There is a risk here that my analysis will be seen to conflate the problems of multiculturalism with those of polemics and traditional notions of political outcomes. My point here is to show the interesting, and even surprising intersection of the two. 28 See, for example, Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Hall 1996; Grossberg 1992 on the problem of unity on the Left.

81 polemics allows for no possibility of an equal discussion: it examines a case; it isn’t dealing with an interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; . . . But it is the political model that is the most powerful today. Polemics defines alliances, recruits partisans, unites interests or opinions, represents a party; it establishes the other as an enemy, an upholder of opposed interests against which one must fight until the moment this enemy is defeated and either surrenders or disappears”.29

Hanging in the balance is not simply a more or less pleasant experience of debate or discussion. As Foucault also notes, “a whole morality is at stake, one that concerns the search for truth and the relation to the other”.30 This means that in addition to being unenjoyable, the polemical approach eschews the possibility or necessity of “shared investigation” in uncertain and complex times – two conditions that certainly characterize the present. Moreover, it is not simply when obvious differences emerge that polemics take over, as if they were merely a place of retreat in moments of conflict. Some of the most intense disagreements and debates about the substance, nature and purpose of the forum play themselves out precisely on this terrain. For underlying many of the core debates about the effectivity of forums, in which people pit the notion of “movement” against the concept of “open,” “undirected” “space” – as if the former were real action, and the latter mere talk – are the same presumptions that lead to polemics. For in traditional conceptions of politics (the movement rather than space version of the forum) dealing with difference necessarily means being able to work through diversity to achieve unity, or working to convert diverse subjects to align with a certain position. In other words inclusion of many and different people is largely instrumental to the greater goal of building a mass (unified) movement. This focusing on gaining support for a political program converts the forum precisely into a space where the only object is to recruit people to one’s side in order to gain force.31 While not dismissing the importance of gaining strength and building a movement, it is important to recognize how such a move works counter to the unique logics and possibilities of social forums. Having said that, it is also questionable whether such politics are ever very effective. For as Foucault also 29

Foucault 1997, emphasis added. Foucault1997. 31 One need only think of the intense debate over the Porto Alegre Manifesto, or the Bamako Appeal, to get a sense of just how central this misunderstanding is. For more on the G19, or Porto Alegre Consensus, see http://www.ipsterraviva.net/tv/wsf2005/viewstory. asp?idnews=153; also see the text of Bamako appeal. 30

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points out, rather than facilitate progress and action, polemics actually stifle political progress and creativity, “as the interlocutors are incited not to advance, not to take more and more risks in what they say, but to fall back continually on the rights that they claim, on their legitimacy, which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their innocence”.32 Quite simply then, at one level, the ability at the USSF not to fall into old patterns – not to retreat into polemics, including identitarian or sectarian positions; not to trash or abandon the forum as a viable political tool or space, even though it was clearly far from perfect, even though there had been quite an intense conflict – was quite remarkable in itself. This, however, is a purely negative reading of the moment – pointing out solely what was not done, and what did not happen. The fact is that participants did not simply not regress into dogmatic, polemical positions, something that could have also been done by publicly ignoring the problem altogether; they also acted. They quite directly acknowledged and addressed the conflict, without pretending it was something simple or easily resolvable. Perhaps even more remarkable was the fact that this was done collectively, in an almost spontaneous manner in such a way that things were able to proceed, even progress, despite the fact that the forum in no way “got over” or definitively resolved the differences and difficulties that had emerged. Clearly this built on the atmosphere and conditions cultivated by preparations for, and experiences of, the forum itself; but I believe it also had everything to do with a recognition – even if unarticulated – of the “new” political possibilities offered by the forum. As such, the approach made visible, and in a sense discovered through the lived experiences of social forums, not only mark a notable departure from this dominant polemical political culture and modality, it also demonstrates another kind of political logic. Being less focused on achieving certain objectively identifiable ends, it is more interested in helping to create the conditions of possibility, or the means, for political action in contexts of radical diversity and complexity. Although clearly related to Habermasian theories of the public sphere, this mode of engagement diverges from models of deliberative democracy because it is not primarily concerned with “rational” debate and the search, through deliberation, for a single solution or “Truth.” Following the logic of encounters and openness, and like Fraser’s subaltern counter-publics, difference is not treated as

32

Foucault1997.

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something to be overcome, but is recognized as both central and productive – the stuff democracy is made of. As such, the political mode emerging from the social forums is both sophisticated in its acceptance of contingency, difference and relationality, and productive because it fosters the conditions for more reflexively and adequately dealing with both conflict and the complex problems of our day. Complex problems that often, and despite our sincerest efforts, have no clear-cut or obvious solutions (i.e. problems that arise within the forum). Looked at in this way, the conflict – between the moderator and the indigenous caucus, or the seeming neutrality of rules (i.e. time limits) and unexpected needs (i.e. to speak and to translate) – produced political outcomes that though unforeseen, were certainly positive. Not only did it demonstrate the durability of the forum as a political space, it also pointed out new problematics. By this I mean, it made problems that were previously unarticulated – i.e. the conflict between time and voice, and between different political cultures – more visible. In so doing, the presumed objective of the assembly – to hear all of the resolutions – as well as its overall effects was transformed. For, in addition to identifying new problems or problematics, the incident also helped produce (or cultivate) less dogmatic, formulaic or ideological knowledge (know-how)33 and political actors that are more capable of reflexive and dynamic practice. This of course was not solely an outcome of the particular moment, but of the logics and possibilities of the forum space and modality. While perhaps it would be hard to measure the success of the forum based on these qualities, the long-term transformational possibilities are significant.

Rethinking Conflict, Critique and Difference – Politically In general, I think that even those committed to antagonistic approaches to social change sometimes have a limited understanding of the effectiveness of conflict. If we take a step back however, we can see that some of the most effective movements have been effective not despite of, but because of, both difference and conflict. Take feminism, for example: Although it is true that feminism has not been completely successful in achieving gender equality, it is almost undeniable that it has profoundly transformed our social relations, our cultural norms, our very ways of being and seeing 33

Varela 1999; Eyerman and Jamison 1998.

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in the world. Moreover it has contributed greatly to reformulating our theoretical understandings of knowledge, power and resistance. In other words it has been effective in widespread and durable ways. The object called feminism, however, has always been rife with conflicts, rifts and problems. Open conflicts have taken place between and among women from different economic and cultural backgrounds, of different sexual and gender identities, and from and within different global regions. In fact one could argue that one of the reasons feminism has been so significant despite its most problematic manifestations, is precisely because it has managed (or been forced) to really engage the conflicts and complexities that have traversed it throughout its history. So, feminism, as an object of harsh critique, but also as a shared horizon, space, and ethic has been extremely productive and effective. While obviously this is because the condition of machismo and patriarchy are widely and deeply felt, I would argue that it is also because the multiple and at times contradictory elements that comprised it have worked not only against patriarchy, but also to transform the very meaning and practice of feminism. This required addressing changing conditions and demands, as well as the coming into visibility of problems and conflicts that could not be foreseen in the abstract. It has also been politically productive far and beyond the feminist movement, and throughout, it has not only improved feminism, it also contributed to some of the most important insights about dealing with difference, the political nature of the personal, etc. – insights that have since become part of the vocabularies and repertoires of movements and academics far and wide. Something similar can be said of the productive nature of struggles within Marxism, as well as many other political theories and movements. Seen in this light, we arrive at very different conceptions of both the effects and trajectories of movements, ones that suggest a very important place for the lived (i.e. non-abstract or theoretical) experience of conflict. So, beyond the notion of diversity provoking necessary “agonism” ala Mouffe; conflict, critique and difference can also be understood to be essential to the work of improving political practices, concepts and visions. In fact, beyond the USSF, these have had a central role in the way social forums have developed over the last seven years. Consider the trajectory of the WSF in Porto Alegre: Between 2001 and 2005 the spatial, organizational, cultural and economic make-up shifted completely. It changed from what looked quite like the traditional UN and

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NGO meetings of the 1980s and 1990s, to “a city within a city,” comprised of semi-autonomous thematic territories.34 Whereas the first year the forum was dominated by corporate products, Microsoft based programs, and quite conventional building materials, by 2005 this city’s different thematic territories utilized ecological construction, organic and solidarity products and food, and so allowed for alternative forms of accommodation and consumption. Moreover, while the first few editions were filled with big plenaries with big-name speakers – (there was even a VIP lounge), all invited and chosen by the organizing committee, by 2005, there were no official plenaries and the choice of what workshops and what speakers were invited was left to each thematic area. The question then becomes how and why these changes were made. Notably, at its outset there was little mention or connection to the alterglobalization movement (AGM) that had become quite visible at various counter-summits like J18, Seattle, Prague, etc.35 This was quite striking given the fact that many people saw the WSF as an intentional response to counter-summit protests. In fact, the WSF was timed to oppose the World Economic Forum, but rather than protest, it was to do so by being a space to share and discuss positive proposals. In fact, whether or not it is acknowledged, it is quite impossible to imagine that the WSF would have so much resonance – beyond the typical NGO, UN crowd – had it not been for the mobilization of energies, imaginations, and sheer bodies in various instantiations of the AGM (including the Zapatista movement that had held two “Encuentros for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism” in 1996 and 1997). Moreover, it is hard to imagine that without the kinds of knowledges, experiences, and critiques, contributed by various areas of the AGM, the WSF would have transformed as it did. For example, the International Youth Camp (IYC) – a campground set up in a park in the center of Porto Alegre – was created during the first year of the WSF because hundreds of people, many of them young and without the financial means or official sponsorship of NGOs, demanded and then self-organized affordable accommodation. Similar processes of demanding change and/or creating self-organized responses, took place with regards to contesting the centralized and hierarchical form of the first few forums, the presence of corporate products, etc. 34 35

For a more detailed description of the evolving nature of the WSF, see Nunes 2005. Nunes2005.

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Now, while some attribute this to a progressive learning curve of the Organizing Committee, it would be naïve and false to suggest that this learning had nothing to do with the fact that errors, lacks and problems, were constantly pointed out – either directly in the form of demands made upon it, or indirectly by the example of autonomous actions or spaces created to oppose it. One need only glance quickly over the numerous articles, volumes, and email correspondences, written about and to forum organizers to get a sense of just how constitutive critique and conflict has been to what we now know as the WSF.36 As such, acknowledged or not, the main forum as event, space and process has been transformed by an iterative process, in which critiques and at times actual conflict, pointed out deficiencies, contradictions and problems, and these then became the basis for its continuous transformation.37 Unlike a process of polemics in which the critics or opponents seek to destroy the “constituency” or organization not already in agreement with them, the forum is a perfect example of progress through problematization and conflict.

Concluding Thoughts Many have investigated and written about the politics ushered in by the Zapatistas, Seattle, and Social Forums – to name just a small part of what has come to be known as the “movement of movements,” – often trying to ascertain why they have captured the imaginations of so many the world over. While the reasons are too numerous to review here, one underlying and often underestimated factor is that they have posited deliberate and explicit responses to both the practical and theoretical failures of previous political approaches on the Left. One element of this seems to be an ability to – rather than fall apart and split into factions at the first site of conflict, difference or error – acknowledge these, and in fact use them as the points of departure for renewed invention and knowledge.38 These inventions and knowledges are themselves not constrained by the traditional terrain or modality of the political. 36

For more on the relationship of critique to the forum see Osterweil 2004a, and also the Sen et al. 2004. 37 For more on the presence of iterative processes in the movement, see Chesters and Welsh 2006. 38 See Conway 2007 on WSF as a site of knowledge production (2007), and Santos 2004.

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In the traditional understanding and practice of politics – specifically democratic politics – difference and conflict are generally seen as things to be overcome or transcended in order to achieve a greater unity, in order to come closer to the assumed goal of building a mass political subject. While many people in and around the forum continue to treat the creation of a unified political subject as the ultimate goal, as if this whole talk of openspace, politics of encounter, culture, etc. was just an instrumental step on the way to the “real” work of creating a unified movement, those of us who were at Atlanta know that that is not the case. The politics of the forum, as demonstrated in Atlanta and elsewhere, imply not only a different way of doing politics, but a different political goal altogether. That goal is, in a sense, to find a way to keep things moving, to prevent the repetition of old political mistakes that are often based on ignorance, blindness and habit. This means cultivating critical bodies and subjects that can take action even when they know that the many conflicts and problems they face lack clear-cut or simple solutions, and that democracy is about the process. This does not mean believing that the more directed traditional political work of campaigns, protests and policy change are not useful or even necessary. Simply that the reason the forums are so powerful is because they are doing another kind of work, one that is complementary, but not equivalent to our traditional political strategies. As Eric Tang put it, At the USSF, we should look forward to a politics of “both/and.” . . . And we can be deliberate, even prescriptive, in offering a step-by-step plan to build the left while at the same time recognizing that the blueprint is always beholden to what we can not readily discern: those seemingly small acts of struggle which come together at strategic moments to create tremendous change.39

To this I add, while we might not be able to readily discern them, after events like the USSF, it seems quite possible to argue, that at the very least one can be confident that the conditions of possibility for their emergence are indeed being established.

References Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar 1998, Cultures of Politics/Politics of Culture: Revisioning Latin American Social Movements, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 39

Tang20 07.

88 Bamako Appeal, posted at openspaceforum.net, http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/ tiki-read_article.php?articleId=66 (accessed June 10, 2007). Cardinale, Matthew 2007, ‘Politics: U.S. Social Forum Forges Common Ground’, http:// ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38397 (accessed 7/3/07). Chesters, Graeme and Ian Welsh 2006, Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos: Complexity and Social Movements, London: Routledge. Conway, Janet 2007, ‘Reinventing Emancipation: The World Social Forum as Site for Movement-Based Knowledge Production’, unpublished paper, talk presented at UNC Chapel Hill, Social Movement Working Group Symposium, March 9, 2007. Escobar, Arturo 2004, ‘Other Worlds Are (Already) Possible: Self-Organization, Complexity and Post-capitalist Politics’ in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation. Eyerman, Ron and Andrew Jamison 1991, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Foucault, Michel 1997, ‘Polemics, Problematics and Problematizations’ in Paul Rabinow (ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, pp. 111–119, trans. Robert Hurley et al., New York: The New Press. Fraser, Nancy 1997, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Postsocialist Condition, New York / London: Routledge. Grossberg, Lawrence 1992, We Gotta Get out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture, New York: Routledge. Habermas, Jurgen 1991, ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’ in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Hall, Stuart 1996, ‘On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall’ in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge. Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe 1985, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal 1999, ‘Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?’, Social Research 66(3): 745–758. Mouffe, Chantal 2002, ‘Which Public Sphere for a Democratic Society’, Theoria ( June) 55–65. Narayan, Uma 1997, Dislocating Culture: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism, New York: Routledge. Nunes, Rodrigo 2005, ‘The Intercontinental Youth Camp as the Unthought of the World Social Forum’, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 5(2): 277–296. Osterweil, Michal 2004a, ‘De-centering the World Social Forum: Is Another Critique of the WSF Possible’ in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation. Osterweil, Michal 2004b, ‘A Cultural-Political Approach to Reinventing the Political’, International Social Science Journal: Explorations in Open Space 182: 495–506. Osterweil, Michal 2007, ‘Becoming-Woman? In Theory or in Practice?’, Turbulence: Ideas for Movement 1: 22–23 (www.turbulence.org.uk). Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 2004, ‘The WSF: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Globalisation’ in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation.

89 Sen, Jai, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.) 2004, World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Dehli: Viveka Foundation. Tang, Eric 2007, ‘Bringing It Back Home: Building the 2007 US Social Forum. Left Turn 23’, http://www.leftturn.org. Teivanen, Teivo 2004, ‘The WSF: Arena or Actor’ in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation. The Free Association 2007, ‘Worlds in Motion’, Turbulence: Ideas for Movement 1: 26–27 (www.turbulence.org.uk). Thrift, Nigel 2007, Nonrepresentational Theory: Space, Politics and Affect, London: Routledge. Tormey, Simon 2005, ‘From Utopian Worlds to Utopian Spaces: Reflections on the Contemporary Radical Imaginary and the Social Forum Process’, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 5(2): 394–408. Tormey, Simon 2006, ‘Not in My Name: Deleuze, Zapatismo and the Critique of Representation’, Parliamentary Affairs 59(1): 1–17. Varela, Francisco 1999, Ethical Know-How. Action, Wisdom, and Cognition, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Whitaker, Chico 2004, ‘The WSF as Open Space’ in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation. Wilson, Ara 2007, ‘Feminism in the Space of the World Social Forum’, Journal of International Women’s Studies 8(3): 10–27. WSF Charter of Principles, http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1557.html (accessed August1,2007 ).

PART II DEBATES AND SOCIAL THOUGHT: HIGHLIGHTING THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

CHAPTER 6

Reading Nairobi: Place, Space, and Difference at the 2007 World Social Forum Janet Conway

Introduction The 2007 World Social Forum (WSF) took place in Nairobi, 20–25 January, at the Moi Sports Complex in Kasarani, on the outer ring of the city and in close proximity to many informal settlements. It was the first time the world event was held in Africa and was the product of a continent-wide organizing process reaching back as far as January 2002. It succeeded in attracting participants from all 53 African countries, across numerous ethnic, linguistic, religious and geographic divides. Somewhere around 57,0001 people registered, about two-thirds of them Black with at least 50 per cent participation by women. About 60 percent of attendees were from Africa and almost 70 percent of these from Kenya.2 The overall numbers were considerably less than the 100,000 plus that had attended the annual WSF since 2003 in Porto Alegre (2003, 2005) and Mumbai (2004) but with dramatically more people from Africa and the African diaspora than had previously been at any World Social Forum. Over 1300 events were mounted. Critics and apologists alike acknowledge that it was the most significant gathering of progressive forces in Africa in terms of both size and substance that had ever taken place. For the World Social Forum and

1

The final report of the organizing committee suggests close to 75,000 people participated. The difference in numbers is attributed to those admitted for free (without registering) and those who participated in WSF activites outside the main venue. See Organizing committee of WSF 2007, p. 35. 2 Organizing committee of WSF 2007, p. 36.

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for the world-wide movement against neoliberal globalization, the event asserted the central place of Africa, both as the region most devastated by neocolonialism and at the heart of resistance and alternatives to the reigning world economic order. Even before it concluded however, the Nairobi event provoked a barrage of criticism that quickly elided into a diagnosis of the exhaustion of the WSF as a global project. Most of the controversies had to do with the character of the space that was produced there and what it signalled about a more global political drift in the WSF. The event was said to be NGOdominated, little more than a “trade fair,” and thereby co-opted by the more elite, institutionalized, and reformist forces at the expense of putatively more radical mass movements. Critics were also alarmed at the visibility of churches, modes of overtly religious expression, and discourses of abstinence as a strategy to combat AIDS and opposition to abortion. Others focused on the protests by local poor people for free access to the Forum, the lack of accessibility created by the fee structure, and the middle class character of the event. Visible corporatization of the event was a scandal to many, with prominent sponsorship by Celtel and Kenya Airways, and the provision and exorbitant pricing (by local standards) of food and water controlled by corporations, including elite hotels and restaurants. Mid-way through the Forum, protests erupted around a restaurant that had been granted prime location in the stadium when its ties to the nefarious Minister of Internal Security were revealed. Accusations of corruption and collusion were quickly leveled at the local organizing committee. Finally, the visible presence of (armed) security personnel on the grounds prompted critiques of the militarization of the event and the irony of the WSF locking out poor people. Critical commentary on the event was rapid, relentless and unforgiving. A great deal emanated from the North but also, more authoritatively, from Kenyan activists and local WSF organizers,3 who accused key figures in the local organizing process of nepotism, authoritarianism, and intolerance of dissent. The controversies provoked by the Nairobi event also became the occasion for a reprise of a larger debate about the World Social Forum. The most enduring controversy about the Social Forum, including among its proponents, has to do with the assertion that it is a “space” to serve, incubate, and advance progressive movements, but is not itself a “movement,”

3

For Example, Oloo 2007; People’s Parliament 2007.

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understood as a more unitary political organization that makes decisions and embarks on actions. The political contradictions evident in the Nairobi event led leading left intellectual Walden Bello to propose that the WSF “fold up its tent and give way to new modes of global organization of resistance and transformation”,4 a defense by WSF founder, Chico Whitaker,5 and a flurry of other similar interventions. This article is an analytical response both to the body of criticism about Nairobi and to the terms of this larger debate. I want to make a case for analyzing the World Social Forum in different terms. I will argue that it is essential to recognize (1) the difference that geographic place makes in the production of Social Forum spaces and in any assessment of a particular Social Forum process/event; (2) the plurality of ‘open space(s)’ that the WSF process is throwing up globally, to analyze the production of those spaces and compare them as praxes producing variable outcomes; and (3) that encounters across different kinds of difference are happening across the diverse places and spaces of the Social Forum, and the central role this should play in our assessment of any particular Social Forum process/event. This article addresses the challenge of ‘reading Nairobi’ but, more generally, it seeks to elaborate an approach by which to more adequately analyze the World Social Forum, both as a somewhat coherent global political process while also recognizing the exploding plurality of the WSF as a multi-faceted phenomenon. This requires an interpretive framework that allows for different and intersecting levels of analysis: between any one event and the multiple longer-term and larger-scale processes (locally, regionally and globally) in which it is embedded; of events/processes at different scales, in different world regions, at differing points in time and their relation to what is unproblematically called “the process,” in the singular, at the global scale. I want to appreciate the particularity of Nairobi as a node in time and space, toward understanding the global ‘process’ as an uneven, chaotic and conflictual work in progress that nonetheless is making specific and irreducible contributions to myriad struggles for a more just world. I am not an expert on Africa. To read Nairobi in any modestly adequate way, we need more work by African social scientists committed to the Social Forum process. I am writing as a scholar of social movements and of

4 5

Bello2007. Whitaker2007a .

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the WSF, an activist committed to the process, white-skinned and from the global North, and returning from my first trip to Africa. In my reading of Nairobi, I want to assert the irreducible importance of placing the event in its African historical and geographic contexts and of listening to the diverse (and conflicting) perspectives of African organizers and participants about what the process and the event signified for them. As an outsider, I do not know enough to weigh them in any authoritative way. I have sought to be informed by them and to have them interact with my own observations and political sensibilities in order to produce an inevitably partial reading of a complex event that, like the WSF itself, still eludes our theoretical, analytical, and political grasp.

The WSF in Africa and Africa in the WSF To begin to assess the significance of the Nairobi event, it is important to situate it in the history of the WSF process. The history of Africans in the anti-globalization movement and in the WSF process, as on the global stage more generally, has been one of struggle for visibility and voice. Undeniably, Africa is the world region most devastated by neoliberalism and neocolonialism. Arguably, its situation and its peoples should be at the centre of the WSF imagination. However, also due to its economic and political marginality, the numbers of Africans in attendance at the world events in Brazil and India have been minimal. Africans have been few on the WSF’s International Council (IC) where only 6.3 percent of the member organizations are headquartered in Africa.6 Africans made a breakthrough in terms of numbers and visibility in the 2004 event in Mumbai, with 350–400 participants, the majority sponsored by Action Aid (UK), the Dutch NGO, HIVOS, or associated with the African Social Forum Council (ASF).7 The number of Africa-based organizations involved in the world event went from 40 to 400 between 2001 and 2004. The ASF, through its Senegalese secretariat Environment and Development in the Third World (ENDA), first produced African Flame, a newspaper which appeared daily during the Mumbai event and reappeared in Porto Alegre the following year. In Porto Alegre in 2005, 60 people were sponsored by ASF plus about 300 others. This delegation orchestrated about ten events, 6 7

Wekken2005. Mutasa2004.

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including a dialogue with Afro-Brazilians, with the explicit intent of raising the visibility of African issues and making a claim for African movements on the global scene. From their first appearance at the WSF, African organizations have been carriers of a pan-African identity and politic. The Social Forum in Africa was a continental project from its inception, with goals to both insert Africans into the world movement and to strengthen grassroots struggles for economic justice across the continent. Prior to the WSF event in Nairobi, there had been four African Social Forum events: Bamako, Mali in January 2002, with about 200 participants from 45 countries; Addis Ababa in 2003 with 200 from 40 countries; Lusaka, Zambia in December 2004 with 500–650 participants;8 and Conakry, Guinea in December 2005. The numbers in attendance at the pan-African Social Forums have not been large but the events have all been very international, involving participants from 30 to 45 African countries. Bamako was one of three sites for the polycentric WSF in 2006, along with Caracas and Karachi. It was the smallest of the three, with about 5000 participants. The inaugural ASF event in Bamako in 2002 was, according to Patrick Bond, one of the first such gatherings to convene progressive NGOs, labour, activist churches and social movements from all parts of the continent9 and observers continue to make such claims about Social Forum events in Africa. ASF member, Taoufik Ben Abdallah, claimed that the 2007 WSF was the most important event of post-colonial Africa. Organizers reported that their working together across national, linguistic, regional and religious difference, and across the great geographic divide of the Sahara, was unprecedented, and resulted in participation in the event from all countries of the continent. The strong pan-African orientation of the Social Forum process in Africa marked the Nairobi event and departed significantly from other WSF processes, which, in the case of Brazil, were originally more cosmopolitan, and India more nationally-articulated. A radical vision of African integration and unity, including as an explicit alternative to the neoliberal NEPAD, was an overt goal of the ASF since its origins.10 In my view, this panAfrican praxis and politic might be one of the greatest achievements of the process and an emergent (and resurgent) alternative.

8 9 10

See Brill 2005 for a report. Bond 2005, p. 437. African Social Forum 2004.

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As early as 2003, a sub-regional strategy for enrooting the Social Forum across the territory of Africa had been articulated by the ASF at its meeting in Addis Ababa. The patterns of sub-continental Social Forum organizing have been politically and culturally specific, reflecting distinct histories of struggle and repression, to some extent, expressing institutional cleavages. NGOs appear to dominate the process in West Africa while combative grassroots movements are more prominent in Southern Africa, for example. The turn to the local and national scale was undertaken more recently, around 2005, as an extension of this effort to enroot the Social Forum in local places and in ways relevant to grassroots movements. By the Nairobi event, 30 national-scale Social Forums had taken place.11 Some national fora have been larger than the continental events. For example, the Nigerian Social Forum attracted 3,000 at the height of a general strike and occupation of oil facilities. The Zimbabwe event involved 1200 participants, again reflecting a high level of national mobilization against the Mugabe regime. Over 100 Social Forum events took place in Africa in the year leading up to the 2007 WSF. Whatever the contradictions of the Nairobi event, the Social Forum process on the African continent appears impressively robust. It is geographically widespread, internally diverse and, as one would expect, organizationally and politically uneven. The continental process, underway since 2002, has been internally fractious. The African Social Forum Council was formally constituted in the summer of 2004 in an effort to broaden and democratize a process that had hitherto been assumed by a few people representing Africa at the WSF (and the Social Forum in Africa) without any structure of accountability. Long-standing tensions had burst out publicly at the WSF in Mumbai the previous January with criticisms leveled at the Senegal-based Secretariat by other Africans present around its failure to organize a regional event prior to Mumbai, the lack of transparency in selecting delegates to attend the Mumbai WSF, and the same old faces being featured repeatedly as international delegates and speakers.12 In this context, according to Mutasa, Action Aid was quite justified in supporting delegates to attend the WSF outside the ASF structure. The African Social Forum Council was formally constituted in July 2004 and was comprised of forty representatives from the continent’s five sub-regions.13 However, an open challenge to the legitimacy 11 12 13

Organizing committee of WSF 2007, p. 7. Mutasa2004. Wekken2005.

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of the ASF Council was issued in Lusaka in December 2004 at the continental event. Social Movements Indaba of South Africa declared the Council unelected, self-appointed, unrepresentative and dominated by NGOs and challenged them to hold an open plenary to establish political direction.14 In addition to challenges to its legitimacy from below, the African Council has also struggled for identity and autonomy at the global level within the International Council. This manifested, for example, in a struggle over the location and timing of the 2007 WSF. The decision for Nairobi was eventually made by the African Council, but this was after a struggle with the IC who had earlier been directly approached by Morocco in a bid to host the world event. In assessing the Nairobi event, it also seems important to recognize the context of Africa in general, and East Africa and Kenya more specifically, as significantly more colonized and dependent than either Brazil or India. The latter two are regional hegemons and emerging global economic powers, with vibrant civil societies with large progressive middle class sectors. The extreme poverty and immiseration of a high proportion of Nairobi’s population, over half of whom live in slums, and that of the region and the continent, makes for vastly different social conditions and social forces in the making of the WSF. The ‘development’ apparatus is pervasive, donors cast a long shadow, opportunistic NGOs abound, and discerning the boundaries between these and genuinely liberatory and enabling social institutions is fraught with difficulty, especially for those coming from outside. Aside from the familiar macro-economic and social indicators that raise questions about popular organizing capacity, it is also important to recall that anti-colonial independence struggles were waged and won as recently as the 1960s and 70s across most of the continent. Furthermore, the postcolonial history of Kenya and great parts of Africa has been characterized by brutally repressive and exploitative regimes which have systematically suppressed the formation of autonomous parties, unions, social movements and civil organizations. Social movement activists, including Social Forum organizers, are regularly harassed and detained by their respective governments.15 In Kenya, the dictatorial Moi regime was ousted only in 2003, with lawyers, churches, and NGOs in the forefront of the democracy struggle. Progressive forces also assume these organizational forms and

14 15

Alexander and Mbali 2004. Bond 2005, p. 438.

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this history of repression and struggle in Kenya puts the prominence of churches and NGOs at the 2007 WSF in a different light.16 Notwithstanding the predominance of these organizations, indeed often due to their support, the poor and the marginalized of Kenya were everywhere apparent in the Nairobi event if one went looking for them: the Mau Mau veterans; the thousands of slum dwellers; the Masai and other groups of pastoralists and ‘minorities’; small farmers, many of them women, protesting Economic Partnership Agreements. Their presence was often, although not always, supported, organized, and or articulated by NGOs and churches, many of them local, some with international connections. In some sessions which I observed, the discourses were often descriptive, testimonies of suffering and wrong-doing, in which people were just beginning to articulate collective identities and rights claims – to land, food and water, and basic services. Many were not ‘militant’ and ‘political’ in the ways we associate with ‘antiglobalization’ movements. Was this because these groups were associated with NGOs or churches? Or does it reflect a more general condition among poor and marginalized communities in an impoverished region and subject to abusive and highly exploitative governments? Are there progressive mass movements that were crowded out by NGOs or excluded by co-opted organizers? We need more social science, from both African activists and scholars, on civil society, social movements, NGOs and churches in the region and in the Social Forum process to answer these questions with any confidence. In sum, then, I would say that the mere fact of the world event taking place in Nairobi was a triumph against tremendous odds. Bringing together tens of thousands of progressive Africans from across a vast and diverse continent was unprecedented and placing Africa squarely in the sites of the world-wide global justice movement represents a critical accomplishment.

Place: The Local Worlds of the WSF The option to move the world event geographically embodies a recognition that place matters in terms of the global event as well as for the placebased processes in the host region. In 2002, the WSF’s International Council 16

For a critical exchange on the prominence of NGOs at the Nairobi event, see AbdulRaheem, 2007 and Gutierrez 2007. For a larger perspective on the proliferation of NGOs in Africa, see Shivji 2004.

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first began to consider the merits of mounting a WSF outside of Brazil as a way of further internationalizing the process. Some key leaders recognized the significance of the territoriality of the world event in determining who participated in what numbers, the themes, issues and alternatives under discussion, and the horizon of possible futures. The proposed ‘local’ and ‘regional’ fora emerged as an extension of this deliberation and represented an emergent understanding of the WSF as ‘process’ not just event, and further of the possible value of multiple spaces and processes unfolding at multiple scales and temporalities in multiple regions of the world. The decision that the 2006 WSF be polycentric was also an expression of this desire to deepen the process of internationalization through a strategy of regionalization. Furthermore, the emplacement of Social Forum processes in so many different contexts enroots them in locally-specific and otherwise diverse ways. Those local practices and processes take on a dynamic of their own, with their own process innovations, political breakthroughs, multiculturalisms, as well as conflicts and limits. I contend that we have to appreciate Nairobi, indeed any particular WSF, in this light and resist the temptation to read off the latest event a peremptory diagnosis of the health of the WSF as a global process. However, having said that, proliferating place-based and multi-scale practices are producing difference within the global process and are thus transforming it – in addition to whatever effects they have on the politics of their specific places and social movement networks. This, therefore, does raise the thorny question of what the limits of Nairobi indicate about the state of the global process. At the same time, however, we must be open to possibility that Nairobi also presents the world process with its own achievements, insights, breakthroughs and challenges. For instance, the claims of local, poor people’s movements on the WSF at the Nairobi event present the world process with serious political questions: about the status of the local, the poor and the subaltern in the WSF event/ process. These are not new questions for the WSF. They have been haunting the process from the beginning. Major breakthroughs were made in Mumbai that were, for whatever reason, not carried back to Brazil. The Nairobi event was the occasion for these questions to be raised again, in a combative and highly effective way, that will be difficult to ignore from now on. This is a critically important development and a fruit of the Nairobi experience. In the WSF from the beginning, there has been a de facto recognition and valorization of the emergence of resistance and alternatives to

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neoliberalism from the most local to the most global. The creation of conditions for contact, recognition and inter-change among movements and organizations working at a variety of scales, in a range of modes, and on a multiplicity of issues and fronts, and with a pluralism of strategic approaches has been one of the most significant innovations of the Forum. Each instantiation of the WSF in whatever place at whatever scale is characterized by the participation and valorization of activists operating at a variety of scales, and the (possibility of ) horizontal exchange among them. This aspect is closely related to the presence, role and status of ‘place-based’ movements in the processes and events constituting the WSF, their own evolving multi-scale politics/practices, and the relation of these practices to their “subaltern strategies of localization”.17 In Nairobi, ‘local’ movements made a dramatic claim on the ‘world’ event. A slum-dwellers’ organization called the People’s Parliament stormed the gates and disrupted a press conference to protest the cost of registration fees which they claimed made the World Social Forum inaccessible to poor people from the city. At an assembly of social movements on the last day of the Forum, their spokesperson, Wangui Mbatia, had this to say: For many of us this is the first WSF. What I like about the WSF is that it brings the world to me as a Kenyan poor person: not only the world but the best of the world. In this room, I have met people who believe in the same things as the Peoples Parliament and people who are courageous enough to believe that a better world is possible. I am concerned that there are many Kenyans who have not been able to attend the WSF. We have had to come every single morning to get those doors open so that ordinary Kenyan citizens can attend the WSF. We believe the WSF is a conversation by, between, and amongst people. It is not fair that 90 per cent of the people in the rooms are not Kenyans. That is not just. We have fought day after day after day to get in. But we are not just fighting to get in: we are fighting to be recognized because we are people too.18

This eruption by a poor people’s organization politicized the question of who the ‘open space’ of the WSF is for, which constituencies should have privileged access to it, and whose presence should not simply be left to their own self-organizing capacities, especially in terms of resource mobilization. Furthermore, it intensified the questions of place and scale: which places and scales of activism should be privileged at any particular Forum? 17

Escobar 2001. While all social movements have their own spatialities and territorialities, they are not all place-based in the same ways or to the same degrees. 18 Social Movements Assembly 2007.

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Should a World Social Forum in Nairobi privilege the participation of Nairobi slum-dwellers? Kenyan organizations? Or strive first and foremost to be a pan-African edition of a world process, as the leadership of the African Social Forum had in mind? The protests by the Peoples’ Parliament, which attracted much support from WSF delegates and some organizers, signalled a boiling point for issues that have been simmering from the beginning of the Social Forum process with varying intensity in different places and with various responses by different organizing committees: how ‘local’ should the world event be? how international? how popular or ‘grassroots’? how intellectual? Even as the poorest and most remote places and peoples are increasingly constituted by ‘global’ processes, international political circuits, including of insurgent civil society, are largely peopled by cosmopolitan elites, urbanized and educated in the terms of Western academia, whether geographically located and or politically identified with the global South or the North.19 This is also true of the WSF, especially in terms of its leadership and governance at the global level. The debate about the status of the local in any world event, i.e., concretely, the presence, role, and status of the local-scale activisms of the resident population, unavoidably overlaps with the question of the subaltern in the WSF and, by extension, in world civic politics. The issue of poor people’s access to the WSF and the near universal support it garnered in Nairobi indicates, in IC member Gustave Messiah’s view, “a great increase in the ethical demands of the alter-globalization movement,”20 whether made by those who feel excluded from it or on itself by its own constituents. In the space of the World Social Forum, perhaps most notably in the 2004 edition in Mumbai, India, some of the poorest and most subjugated peoples in the world came to participate and make claims. Of the 80,000 official delegates, about 30,000 were dalits (untouchables) and a great number of these were adivasis (tribals). Of these, 40–45 percent were women. They came both demanding and offering recognition, solidarity, and dialogue vis-a-vis the thousands of other movements and groups gathered in the WSF. These movements of extremely poor and marginalized people had heretofore been largely invisible on the international stage

19

For a fuller exploration of issues associated with the cosmopolitan culture and politics of a transnational activist class, see Conway 2007a. 20 Messiah2 007.

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despite impressive levels of self-organization and forays by individual leaders into UN-sponsored international fora. These groups recognized and helped construct the WSF in India as a transnational political space of a new kind. Similarly in Nairobi, the Mau Mau Veterans’ Association, survivors of the mid-20th century anti-colonial struggle against the British, enjoyed their first opportunity to speak of their experience to an international audience while, in their own words, they “are the unseen and the unheard of Kenyan society,” their claims for land and recognition repeatedly rebuffed by successive post-colonial regimes. The Masai, a tribal group of pastoralists being systematically displaced from their land by ‘development’, were in the 2007 WSF in the hundreds, visibly present in the space and organizing their own discussions primarily for their own constituency. In Caracas, Venezuela in 2006, 400 activities or about one-third of the planned events were proposed by newly emergent local groups. In a society in the throes of the Chavez-led Bolivarian revolution with little experience of autonomous civil society formations, the Social Forum was an opportunity for these groups to encounter each other, to articulate for themselves their hopes and visions for Venezuela in the transnational space created in their city by the presence of the World Social Forum.21 These claims on the Social Forum by localized subaltern groups appear to be growing over time and as the WSF moves geographically, as place-based movements recognize the potential for their own struggles in the Social Forum’s arrival in their city, country or region. The degree to which place-based subaltern groups can make these claims is also, of course, contingent both on their organizing capacity and on the particular politics of in/exclusion practiced by the local organizing committee. However, as the world process has unfolded and each major social forum event throws up new problematics and plural visions of both the Forum and the movement, organizers have demonstrated great reflexivity and constant innovation. The process is not perfectly linear, systematic, nor comprehensive, and certainly not conflictfree. Some key organizers in Nairobi made some regrettable choices and, by many accounts, demonstrated more arrogance than openness. However, the issues raised, whether about the participation of local poor people’s organizations, or of ethical consumption or financing are not new nor unique to Nairobi. The limits of Nairobi have ignited a global debate that needed to happen. In many quarters of the WSF process, there is a well21

Lander20 06.

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established culture of learning, including from mistakes. The controversies raised by the Nairobi event may well be its most enduring contribution to the global process.

The ‘Open Space(s)’ of the WSF The Brazilian founders of the WSF vigorously defend the Forum as an open space for free association of non-party civil society entities that are united in their opposition to “rule of the world by money” but are otherwise stunningly diverse. They see the praxis of the Forum as fostering the emergence of a new political actor, that of “planetary civil society,” imbued with a new political culture. It is society that will change the world, not the Forum itself, but the WSF is singular in the functions it has assumed. In particular, the Forum is a space to unlearn the practices of the 20th century left, its hierarchies, violence and authoritarianism, and to learn how to resolve conflicts non-violently, to dialogue with difference, to learn how to live with diversity, and to recognize multiple paths for changing the world.22 Whitaker and other Brazilian founders also insist that the Social Forum is not a space of power, but one of consensual association, self-management and horizontal exchange. The fact that the Forum is not an entity in itself, does not issue statements, take positions, or embark on actions, protects it and its participants from being consumed by internal struggles for hegemony. Its non-deliberative character frees its participating groups to encounter one another, to listen and to learn, and to be transformed in ways they could not be otherwise. In this view, the Forum’s central function is one of cultural transformation of the movements and groups of civil society that respond to its summons. The critics of ‘open space’ argue variously that the concept itself is wrong-headed and depoliticizing in its embrace of liberal pluralism; that the Forum is not really open in its exclusion of parties, governments and armed groups; that it excludes proponents of neoliberalism; that the open space is a free market, wherein those with more money and organizational muscle can dominate; that the open space has degenerated into a festival or, in the words of Hugo Chavez, a Woodstock of the left. Others observe that all social spaces are riven through with power and inequality, and that the Social Forum is no exception. 22

Whitaker2007b .

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In Nairobi, the point that the well-organized and well-resourced can dominate open space was borne out in concerns about NGO domination at the expense of social movements, that of institutionalized groups over the grassroots, activist, or community-based, and of the large over the small.23 But this important point is often elided with a political critique of open space tout court, and especially its non-deliberative character, as in the statement of South Africa’s Social Movements Indaba about the African Social Forum in Lusaka in 2004: “The under representation of social movements in relation to NGOs is reflected in the political content of the forum. It manifests in the persistence of the notion that the Africa Social Forum in nothing other than a space, in contrast to the perspective that it should have a programme to advance our struggle against neoliberalism.”24 In my view, the global and abstracted terms of many debates about open space are increasingly sterile. They are obscuring our capacity perceive the plurality of spaces or, more precisely, the plural praxes of open space, and their experimental, dynamic and evolving character, that the WSF process is generating world-wide. Recognizing the inherent plurality of the WSF, a more fruitful question to pose about any particular event is what kind of space is being created? What are the particularities of this instantiation of open space, arising from place, scale, and other decisions made by organizers? What are its breakthroughs and inspirations? its limitations and co-optations? What do the lessons of a particular praxis hold for the local movements and the global process? Rather than reading the latest event as an ultimate vindication for either the proponents or opponents of open space or, indeed, the last word on whether the WSF, or the movement itself, is waxing or waning, it may be more productive to recall the Zapatista wisdom that we will make the path by walking. In my view, the Forum as a political form and organizing methodology has generated unprecedented creativity and collaboration among disparate actors in major world regions. The limits of this undertaking are not yet in sight and it is a grand experiment which needs to be respected, nurtured and safeguarded. In Whitaker’s words, the WSF has issued a powerfully compelling “summons” to which hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of organizations have responded. The WSF’s embrace of pluralism and diversity is, in my view, post-liberal in its clear condemnation of neoliberal capitalism and the inequalities and oppression it has entrenched. 23 24

People’s Parliament 2007. SMI quoted in Alexander et al. 2004; Bond 2005, p. 437.

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In placing a premium on practice, in opposing the hegemony of “any single way of thinking,” in cultivating an ethic of solidarity among suffering and struggling people, their organizations and movements, and in asserting its critical positionality in the Global South, the WSF’s praxis of pluralism is something new, both post-marxist and post-liberal, the broader implications of which have hardly been noted. Having said that, however, the praxis of open space is variable across the places and scales of the Social Forum and is changing over time. And the praxis of open space is never entirely straightforward, unproblematic, or without risks. It is surprising, for example, that the WSF has not been targeted for infiltration or take-over by its enemies, or by the enemies of its enemies. There is no indication that right-wing forces or reactionary, fundamentalist anti-imperialist movements have exploited the openness of the Forum to enter, participate, or mount their own activities under more benign banners. In India, organizers decided to specify further criteria for participation to ensure that Hindu nationalist movements, which were anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist but also anti-Muslim and anti-feminist, were not welcome in the Forum. In Kenya, in response to the heavy presence of churches in the 2007 WSF, some of them overtly homophobic and anti-feminist, there has been a call by some for stricter guidelines for activities in the WSF venue.25 While wanting to err on the side of openness, organizers are grappling with the call for greater oversight to protect the space as one hospitable to and respectful of the full range of emancipatory movements, even as many recognize that understandings of “emancipatory” are plural, shifting and sometimes uncertain. It is also critical to recognize that inequalities among movements get reproduced in the open space unless there is affirmative action to ensure that marginalized and minority populations are present and their voices and perspectives amplified. Feminist commentators on the WSF have been most insistent about this, noting that women regularly make up half the participants but only a tiny fraction of the speakers at the WSF, and protesting the historical marginality of feminism as a perspective despite the founding presence of feminist networks in the WSF.26 In some Social Forum processes, organizers have made explicit choices to reach out to marginalized constituencies to encourage and support their participation.

25 26

See, e.g., Articulación Feminista Marcosur et al. 2007. Conway 2007b; Vargas 2003; Alvarez et al. 2004.

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Indian organizers sought out the dalit movements. In Nairobi, organizers subsidized the participation of 6,000 slum dwellers. Organizers of the Caracas edition of the 2006 polycentric World Social Forum actively supported and subsidized the participation of poor peoples’ organizations from the US and of indigenous peoples from the Andean region. In the practical politics of organizing Social Forums, some groups of organizers have actively sought to compensate for historical marginalization and contemporary inequalities. However, thus far, these practices and other kinds of political decisions by organizers affecting the character of the space of any particular event have not informed the discourses about ‘open space,’ which remain abstracted from actual practices. Here, as in many instances of movement-based knowledge production, practice is leading and theory is lagging.

Difference: The raison d’être of the World Social Forum Difference as an analytical vector in reading any specific WSF event or process has to do with the character and scope of diversity in the ‘open space’ of the forum, its ethos of respect for difference, and its production of “transcommunality”.27 On the question of difference, recognition, and the possibility of communicability, the challenges are far greater than the discourses of open space admit. As a new kind of movement space, the WSF is enacting a new culture of politics among social movements that is both allowing for and requiring communicative practices across identities/ differences that had not previously encountered one another or, if they had, had not been ready, able or open to negotiate their differences. Furthermore, the diverse movements of the WSF are encountering each other on a historically unequal playing field. Some movements (and their discourses) have been hegemonic relative to others, historically and currently, in and beyond the Social Forum. Some voices and movements remain far more excluded and ‘subaltern’ than others, including in the WSF. This raises very profound questions about the character of the WSF’s putatively ‘open space,’ its limitations, inequalities, and exclusions. Two questions underlie this inquiry on difference. The first is if and how the Social Forum is enhancing communicability across various kinds of difference and whether this is enabling capacities for mutual recognition, 27

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negotiation, convergence and or solidarity. The second is if and how the Social Forum is producing inequality and or marginality and how these might be ameliorated or overcome.28 Moving the world event across regions of the global South is critical to deepening the international, multicultural, and inter-civilizational character of the global process and the possibility for genuinely dialogical encounters among movements across difference. But every Social Forum process, from local to global, is giving expression to different kinds and combinations of difference. This includes those arising from the diverse places and scales of the activists assembled in any particular Social Forum process, as well as across issues and identities arising from other axes of social differentiation. Assessing the effects of any Social Forum process on localized social movements has also to do with that Social Forum’s politics of diversity and inclusion and how these get enacted in a particular placebased process. In Nairobi, one noteworthy breakthrough was the ‘coming out’ of the African LGBTQ movement, its boisterous claiming of the public spaces of the Social Forum, its assertion of the dignity of queer persons and of its right and responsibility as an emancipatory movement to be present in the WSF. The Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) was the host of the brilliant Q Spot, a tent that became one of the most vibrant spaces of the WSF where, for the first time, activists spoke publicly about being queer in African contexts of extreme homophobic violence and in Kenya specifically where sodomy is punishable by fourteen years in prison. Stephen Barris, of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, had this to say about Q Spot: the show was almost stolen by the audience. They came to see with their own eyes those gays and lesbians, black, African, like themselves. The activists improvise and make impromptu circles of chairs. Ten, twenty, sometimes thirty people surround an activist, their questions and comments blurring together: “You’re gay? Really?” “That doesn’t exist in Africa.” “How did you get like that?” “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” and, always, “How do you do it?” “What?” Sex . . .” Once their curiosity is satisfied, it is clear that the young people really want to understand. This also seems to be one of the rare chances to talk about sexuality and pleasure, and the freedom of language and tone seems liberating. The groups laugh together with the

28

This is a much bigger discussion, both theoretically and empirically, than I can do justice to here. For other works exploring this problematic, see Conway 2008 forthcoming-a, 2008 forthcoming-b.

110 activists as the young Kenyan activists readily reverse the questions: “And you, how do you make love?”29

Q Spot was a triumph and breakthrough, both in its Kenyan and African contexts and in the global process of the WSF. As with the claims made by local and poor people’s movements discussed above, the claims made in Kenya by queer movements were not the first made on the Social Forum. The first Forum on Sexual Diversity was held as part of the first Americas Social Forum in Quito in 2004 and followed up in Caracas in 2006. The Quito event was organized by a coalition of indigenous, feminist and queer organizations. The tensions among the discourses of these movements were not resolved in Quito but they were on the table, being named and explored, even as these movements actively collaborated in conceiving and mounting the event. Their various constituencies co-occupied the space, shared platforms, organized their own discussions, facilitated crossmovement dialogues, ate, assembled and marched together. The Quito event notwithstanding, sexual minorities have had to fight with organizers for visibility, voice and recognition at other iterations of the Social Forum, including in Nairobi. There was an awful incident at the closing ceremonies in which a lesbian activist was booed off-stage, chased and threatened, with apparently no reaction by organizers to defend her. The achievements of Q Spot and GALCK, like those of Poor People’s Parliament were, in large part, made in spite of the Social Forum organizers in Nairobi rather than because of them. Their contributions to enlarging and democratizing the Forum are significant for the global process insofar as they are carried forward by WSF organizers and participants and by those who think and write about the Forum. Ever-expanding diversity is arising from sheer multiplicity of forms of domination/resistance to which the movements of the Social Forum attest and the array of social locations, places and scales from which they arise. However, mutual intelligibility among movements, including those who share opposition to neoliberal globalization, is not a given. Some movements are more experienced with working across (some kinds of ) difference than others. For all the movements, the sheer array of diversity in the WSF is confronting them with a historical challenge and invitation to unprecedented degrees of reflexivity, solidarity and transformation.

29

Barris200 7.

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In Nairobi, feminists, queers, and Christians openly, visibly and publicly shared the space of the WSF, mutually tolerant but not so mutually intelligible – even as South African Bishop Desmond Tutu went on the public record during the event saying that “Africa must deal with two evils: the dominance of men and homophobia.”30 Since the Nairobi event, feminists especially have raised concerns about some church groups’ public discourses of sexual abstinence and opposition to abortion in the WSF space. While recognizing the valuable work done by many groups in Africa associated with churches and mosques, they are rightly concerned about what they perceive as a denial of sexual and reproductive rights in the heart of the WSF and call for a rejection of such manifestations of “fundamentalism.”31 The enormous presence of church groups at the Nairobi event, their undeniable presence and legitimacy in poor communities, and their historic roles in human rights and anti-Apartheid struggles in Africa, confront the WSF with a major intellectual and political provocation about the status of religious traditions, discourses and organizations in the movement, and the boundaries of acceptable difference. Many of the leading movements of the WSF are rooted in the emancipatory discourses of modernity, most notably Marxisms, and are resolutely ‘secular.’ They are deeply ambivalent, if not outright prejudicial, toward anything that smacks of ‘religion’.32 But the question of religion, both in world affairs and in the global justice movement, is not going away and the Nairobi event indisputably put this on the WSF agenda.

Conclusion In my view, the power and potential of the Social Forum as a new political form and process rests on five features: (1) its character as a non-deliberative yet highly participatory and inclusive ‘space of spaces’ with multiple centres; (2) its global diffusion as a form and method through the proliferation of local and regional social fora; (3) the increasing internationalization, interand multi-culturalism of the global process, signaled by the WSF’s move from Brazil to India in 2004 and to Kenya in 2007; (4) the incorporation

30

Barris2007. Articulación Feminista Marcosur 2007. 32 For relevant discussion of secularism as religion and “religion” as itself a problematic term, see Balibar 2007. 31

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of place-based and localized movements in a new kind of internationalism; and (5) a growing recognition of multiplicity, of diversity and pluralism as organizing principles in fostering a new politics for a new world with the space for many worlds within it. These features have emerged in practice and become definitive even as their significance can only as yet be dimly perceived. Their possible meanings depend on how future political practice, experimentation and debates over the future of the WSF unfold. Nevertheless, that the World Social Forum is a world-historic movement-based political innovation is indisputable. The practices that constitute the WSF are knowledge practices which embody new ways of doing politics. Although drawing on many historical legacies and, in some case, perpetuating old problems, taken as a whole, they represent a rupture with how progressive politics has been practiced and progressive social transformation imagined. They are harbingers that point beyond themselves and, as such, they evade existing theoretical and analytical frameworks. As Stuart Hall wrote about the ‘new social movements’ of the 1960s and 70s, “movements provoke theoretical moments. And historical conjunctures insist on theories: they are real moments in the evolution of theory”.33 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the context of the surging world-wide anti-globalization movement, the creation of the World Social Forum has provoked such a theoretical moment. In this exercise of reading Nairobi, using key concepts of place, space, and difference, I have proposed some ways of approaching the World Social Forum, both the 2007 edition as a sui generis event and, through it, the global process, in order to better apprehend its meaning. Central to this undertaking is recognizing the Forum, understood both as an annual event and global process, as inherently and increasingly plural. There is no one ‘World Social Forum’ even as there are distinguishing features of the Social Forum as a specific political-cultural form. There is no one World Social Forum process, if by that we mean anything globally unified, coherent and linear, unfolding according to a single logic. As the Social Forum as a particular political form and methodology has diffused across the planet, the WSF is more accurately represented as a world-wide, movement-based, multi-scale, and multi-sited cultural process, constituted by many sub-processes, characterized by great unevenness, but more or less

33

Hall 1993, p. 105.

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seeking convergence, in loose co-ordination and broad solidarity. As a multifaceted phenomenon, the WSF is evolving daily, and eluding attempts to manage it in anything more than very partial, highly de-centred and consensual ways. While the deliberations of the WSF’s International Council are an important pole in shaping the world-scale process, the proliferation, dynamism, geographic dispersion and multiculturalism of WSF processes continually overwhelm the IC and any occasional attempts to control and or represent the WSF. This is also true of the organizers of any Social Forum event, especially the gigantic world-scale extravaganzas. However, the periodic concentration of forces and energies in the world event do make it a critical node in space and time for the consolidation and articulation of the process on a world scale and a privileged site for ‘reading’ the process, even as the world process cannot be reduced to it. About the World Social Forum in Nairobi, I have argued that we need to read it in its place, located in its historical and political geographies, and in the context of the global WSF process. I propose that we need to appreciate the specificity of the praxis of open space that was instantiated in Nairobi and the particular breakthroughs toward greater recognition, inclusion, and communicability that were made there, whether by design or accident, because of or in spite of the organizers. The controversies of Nairobi represent important challenges for the global process and for Social Forum organizers everywhere, many of which were not new or unique to Nairobi. Some of the controversies produced creative and courageous responses on the spot that successfully politicized questions of inclusion and should be considered fruits of the Nairobi event and contributions to the global process. More broadly analytically, I have argued for a move away from the global abstractions of the space versus movement debate. I have sought to problematize treating the WSF, as event or process, as a single thing, an undifferentiated whole. Instead, I have advocated recognizing the plurality of the spaces, places, and differences that constitute the WSF, both as event and as a global process. Seeing more clearly what is actually going on, even if through a glass darkly, is an irreducible first step in analyzing and theorizing this new moment that the World Social Forum represents.

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References Abdul-Raheem, T. 2007, ‘World Social Forum Winds-up in Nairobi’, Pambazuka News, 25 January. African Social Forum 2004, ‘Another Africa Is Possible! Addis Ababa consensus, January 2003’, in Jai Sen, A. Anand, A. Escobar, and P. Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, pp. 312–314, New Dehli: Viveka Foundation. Alexander, A. and M. Mbali 2004, ‘Have the Slaves Left the Master’s House?’, http://www. ukzn.ac.za/ccs. Alvarez, S., N. Faria, and M. Nobre 2004, ‘Another (Also Feminist) World Is Possible: Constructing Transnational Spaces and Global Alternatives from the Movements’, in J. Sen, A. Anand, A. Escobar, and P. Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, pp. 199–206, New Dehli: Viveka Foundation. Articulación Feminista Marcosur et al. 2007, ‘Another World Is Possible in Diversity: Affirming the Struggle for Sexual and Reproductive Rights: An Open Letter to the International Council of the World Social Forum’, Nairobi and Lima: Programa de Estudios sobre Democracia y Transformacion Global, http://www.cadtm.org/article.php3?id_ article=2473. Balibar, E. 2007, ‘Secularism Has Become Another Religion’, Tehelka.Com, 5 October, http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ne061007SECULARISM.asp. Barris, S. 2007, ‘Respect for All! Another World Is Possible – for African LGBT people, Too’, http://www.ilga.org/news_results.asp?LanguageID=1&FileID=1030&FileCate gory+50&ZoneID=2. Bello, W. 2007, ‘The Forum at the Crossroads’, Foreign Policy in Focus, 4 May, http://www. fpif.org/fpiftxt/4196. Bond, P. 2005, ‘Gramsci, Polanyi and Impressions from Africa on the Social Forum phenomenon’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, 2: 433–440. Brill, M. C. 2005, ‘Exploring the Emerging Social Movements in Africa at the Third African Social Forum: Africa Trip Report’, Washington: Africa Action, www.africasocialforum.org. Childs, J. B. 2003, Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Conway, J. 2007 forthcoming-a, ‘Geographies of Transnational Feminism: The Politics of Place and Scale in the World March of Women’, Social Politics. Conway, J. 2007b, ‘Transnational feminisms and the World Social Forum: Encounters and Transformations in Anti-globalization Spaces’, Journal of International Women’s Studies 8, 3: 49–70. Conway, J. 2008 forthcoming-a, ‘Dialogues across Difference at the World Social Forum: Decolonizing ‘Open Space’, in S. Moore and R. Mitchell (eds.), Power, Pedagogy and Praxis: Social Justice in the Globalized Classroom, London and New York: Routledge. Conway, J. 2008 forthcoming-b, ‘Reinventing Emancipation: Knowledge Production at the World Social Forum’, in J. Sudbury and M. Okazawa-Rey (eds.), Activist Scholarship: Social Movements and Emancipatory Knowledge, London and New York: Routledge. Escobar, A. 2001, ‘Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization’, Political Geography 20: 139–174. Gutierrez, E. 2007, ‘Challenging Tajudeen’s View on the WSF’, Pambazuka News, 31 January.

115 Hall, S. 1993, ‘Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies’, in S. During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd ed., pp. 97–109, London and New York: Routledge. Lander, E. 2006, Presentation by leading member of the organizing committee of the Caracas edition of the 2006 polycentric World Social Forum to an orientation session for WSF delegates from Canada and Quebec. Caracas. Messiah, G. 2007, ‘After Nairobi: A New Round of World Social Forums’, http://www. forumsocialmundial.org.br. Mutasa, C. 2004, ‘Whither the African Social Forum?’, http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/ d0000698/index.php. Oloo, O. 2007, ‘Critical Reflections on WSF Nairobi 2007’, http://www.forumsocialmundial. org.br/noticias_textos.php. Organizing committee of WSF 2007. 2007, People’s Struggles, People’s Alternatives: Narrative Report, Nairobi, Kenya, http://www.wsf2007.org. People’s Parliament 2007, ‘The World Social Forum 2007: A Kenyan Perspective’, http:// www.cadtm.org/article.php3?id_articles=2437 (accessed 28/09/07). Shivji, I. G. 2004, ‘Reflections on NGOs in Tanzania: What We Are, What We Are Not and What We Ought to Be?’, Development in Practice 14, 3: 689–695. Social Movements Assembly 2007, Short Report of the Social Movements Assembly, World Social Forum, Nairobi, 16h-18h, 24 January 2007. Vargas, V. 2003, ‘Feminism, Globalization and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’, Cultural Studies 17, 6: 905–920. Wekken, R. 2005, ‘A Picture of the African Social Forum Process’, http://www.nigd.org/ docs/PictureAfricanSocialForumProcess.pdf. Whitaker, C. 2007a, ‘Crossroads Do Not Always Close Roads’, http://wsflibrary.org/index. php/Crossroads_do_not_always_close_roads. Whitaker, C. 2007b. A New Way of Changing the World, Nairobi: World Council of Churches.

CHAPTER 7

Is the World Social Forum the Privileged Space for Reinventing Labor as a Global Social Movement? Peter Waterman

The World Social Forum (WSF), represents a global pressure-cooker of contemporary progressive and emancipatory social movements and ideas. This is the case also for the international trade union and labor movements, regardless of their still somewhat marginal position within the WSF. What follows are reflections on such matters, including, eventually, the reasons for distinguishing between ‘progressive’ and ‘emancipatory’, ‘unions’ and ‘labor’ – and for the ‘relative marginality’ of labor and unions at the WSF. A couple of days (daze?) into the simultaneous stimulation and confusion of the 7th World Social Forum, Nairobi, January 20–25, 2007, I had a background item on labor, written prior to the forum, published in the semi-official Forum daily, Terra Viva.1 The article suggested a tension between a dominant trade-union tendency, propagating ‘Decent Work’, and a marginal one that I dubbed the ‘Emancipation of Labour’.2 Reading my piece, in cold print, in Nairobi, I had a flashback to the World Festival of Youth and Students, Moscow, 1957, 50 years earlier . . . . . . these festivals were organized by the World Communist movement, of which the International Union of Students was a prominent part. Aged 21, I was the English Editor of its magazine, World Student News. In Moscow I was expected to be part of the team producing the Festival’s daily paper. I turned up for duty a couple of days before the Festival began and

1 2

Waterman2007a . Compare Bieler 2007.

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was asked to do a report on the International Student Day which was – evidently – yet to occur. Questioning this Soviet journalistic practice I was informed that the slow production process did not permit us to report events after they had occurred. “But what,” I asked, “if it rains?” “Don’t worry, came the reassuring reply, “If it doesn’t rain in the newspaper then it didn’t rain”.

Candidates for Categories Back to Nairobi: My little anxiety attack was about whether my speculative piece in Terra Viva was in danger of being rained on by reality. It turned out that my pre-Forum assumption about the dominant role of Decent Work (DW) was borne out in the Forum. This strategy was energetically promoted, top-down, by the new International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). DW appeared to be the pensée unique (single idea) to which all union events were subordinated, whatever or whoever they were actually about (children, women, migrants, the informal sector and trade, worker rights, etc.). Indeed, this concept or strategy was being enthusiastically endorsed and promoted even by Southern unions, by labororiented NGOs or autonomous labor movements, such as StreetNet.3 But did the Emancipation of Labour (EoL) tendency exist outside my fevered imagination? EoL proved to be scarcely trumpeted by the body that had funded my participation in the Nairobi WSF. This was the Swedish NGO, Agora/Arena, itself supporting a book project co-edited by Andreas Bieler (Germany/UK), Devan Pillay (South Africa) and Ingemar Lindberg (Sweden). The project had, actually, no political pretensions. But the book may nonetheless make an original contribution to the EoL in so far as it addresses not only the unionized or unionizable working class but also that growing proportion of the world labor force outside the ‘formal sector’ and therefore non-unionized or un-unionizable. My own contribution to the collection is on the implications of globalization and the global justice movement for the future of labor internationalism.4 But despite a well-attended and often lively three-session seminar at the Forum, this research project turned out to have no common theoretical orientation or distinct strategic implications, and no clear political orientation. Or, rather, 3 4

Streetnet International Report 2007. Waterman2007b .

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it seemed to have one foot in the Thirdworldist Marxist project of Samir Amin5 one foot in (ex-?) social-democratic Scandinavia, and toe-holds in South Africa and Nottingham, UK (ideologically unqualifiable). This may all shape up, of course, as a result of the Nairobi exchanges, or possibly of comments on the Global Working-Class Project’s Nottingham website. At the moment of the WSF, however, the project seemed to be balancing, or caught, between various New Left (1968) paradigms, either explicit or implicit. Readers may judge the outcome for themselves.6 My second candidate, after the Global Working Class Project, for the EoL logo was Labour in Movement: Facing the Challenge of Globalization, an initiative coming from a group of WSF-friendly unions and unionists, and ‘base’ movements of unions, mostly in Western Europe. It has some connection with a network called Transform! I had been in correspondence with Marco Berlinguer, the coordinator of this initiative, for some time and had understood that this WSF effort was a primarily political one, however cautiously expressed. If, however, it is to be reasonably characterized as an EoL project, then it has to be further understood as an emancipation that began at the Nairobi WSF with a whisper rather than bang. After several rounds of informal discussion (part of it under a shade tree, symbolically sited outside the pavilion occupied by Decent Work), what appeared was a proposal for a ‘WSF inspired’ network and website on labor globally, startling in its modesty. This document was then submitted to a morning workshop that was impressively well attended. My rough guess is that there were 200–250 people there – including several from the Global Working-Class Project. What this initiative amounts to is no more – or less – than its title. The modesty of this proposal, and the caution with which it is being launched upon the WSF and the wider world of work, should not be under-estimated. The proposal states: Neoliberal globalisation implies the most vicious attack on labour in living memory. Yet labour has so far had neither the necessary centrality, nor even visibility, within the WSF process. We propose for this purpose to build a labour network on and in the WSF process. This network will link different experiences, understandings of and skills engaged in every place and every aspect of work.

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Bamako Appeal 2007. Bieler et al. 2008.

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Although I feel this proposal lacks bite, if this network/website does come into existence, it will not only be the first labor body to address itself to labor ‘on and in the World Social Forum’ it would also, I believe, be the first global network on, and of, ‘labor-in-general’! There exist, of course, endless union websites, as well as many autonomous labor-support networks and websites. But, with welcome exceptions, the union websites tend to reproduce the pyramidal structure of the unions themselves, with no feedback feature, far less open discussion. And the ‘alternative’ labor websites, including those for solidarity on particular issues, with particular countries, or for particular categories (e.g. contingent, casual, day or precarious labor) – even on Global Labor Strategies – do not have the holistic potential of this proposal. It may be because of the breadth and openness of the initiative that the workshop response was so positive, receiving the support of speakers, for example, from the Italian CGIL, the Quebec-based World March of Women, the South Africa-based StreetNet, the New Trade Union Initiative in India, various European ‘base’ organizations, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT-Brazil), the Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA Argentina), and even from officers of some of the traditional tradeunion internationals present. In any case, the proposal then went forward to a chaotic afternoon session on the 4th and last day of the forum, at which all proposals on labor were supposed to be discussed and eventually forwarded to . . . the WSF-in-General? . . . the Closing Ceremony? . . . the International Council of the WSF . . .? Here, in a tent divided by canvas from even noisier others, with no sound equipment, with interpreters valiantly struggling to make sense of speakers behind them and facing the opposite direction, just two proposals were submitted to a largely bemused and uncomprehending audience. One was Decent Work, submitted at length, in French, by a woman unionist from Haiti. I understood only that there was going to be a three-year campaign internationally on DW. The other proposal was the Labour Network, presented in English, under the same constraints. Whilst reassured, to some extent, that reality had provided at least two candidates for my two Terra Viva categories, I was disappointed that there were only two proposals to go forward and that those that did were being forwarded under the conditions of what has to be called Chaotic and Incomprehensible Democracy. In the event, the Labour Network proposal, if not the Decent Work one, was forwarded further, landing in the tent of the Social Movement Assembly (2007).

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Actually, I should have identified a third EoL candidate at the Forum, the Bamako Appeal of 2006 itself, since Ingemar Lindberg had apparently drafted the challenging labor chapter (actually half-page) of that 2005 project, and Samir Amin was apparently the inspiration for the global labor book itself. But Amin only turned up to briefly and vaguely bless the book project. And I missed either attendance at or verbal reports of the 10-session World Forum of Alternatives (WFA) events that were in some way the follow-up to his Bamako Appeal. The first WFA conference of this NGO was entitled (in caps): FOR THE UNITY OF THE WORKING PEOPLES (WORKERS, PEASANTS, WAGE EARNERS, UNEMPLOYED, INFORMAL), RIGHTS AND ACCESS TO LAND

My non-attendance (due to the timetable clashes inevitable when 1,200+ events occur in three days) is regrettable, since there were a number of major organizations and speakers listed, including Ingemar Lindberg. But despite the promise of this event, the WFA failed to make an appearance or take a stand at the final collective event on labor strategy. So unless and until something issues from it, the nature and purpose of the WFA labor project remains unclear.7 There may well have been other such initiatives occurring in corners of the enormous Forum site.

The Meaning of Decent Work and the Emancipation of Labor I have elsewhere dealt at some length with Decent Work.8 Depressingly, indeed, a search suggests I am one of maybe only two or three people who has criticized it at any length.9 So a repetition may not be out of place: DW is a projection at the global level of the kind of social partnership (i.e. a junior partnership of labor with capital and state) that existed for working people in certain West European countries under National Keynesianism, around the third quarter of the last century: the model is, or was, Scandinavia.10 DW deals with labor and social rights and conditions but 7 8 9 10

As also in Amin 2007. Waterman2005. Compare Vosko2 003. For the decline, see Bieler and Lindberg 2007; International Union Rights 2007.

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raises no question about whether the work that is decent is also useful, and necessary, it raises no question about capitalist or state ownership and control, nor does it consider whether the DW strategy increases the power and autonomy of laboring people. DW, moreover, did not originate with the trade unions, with some latter-day Karl Marx, or the labor movement at all: it was thought up by Juan Somavia, Director General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN’s inter-state body for labor questions. Whilst no one can possibly reject the notion of improving wages, rights and conditions, neither can one assume that this global NeoKeynesian project is 1) possible, and 2) will not be eventually dumped in the same garbage bin as national Keynesianism. DW is, further, being promoted top-down by the inter/national unions concerned, without any preliminary discussion of such challenges (and many hypothetical others) by either unions, labor NGOs, labor researchers, or, of course, workers themselves. Moreover, the Decent Work coalition actually consists of the ITUC, like-minded union internationals,11 and three or four Social- or Christian-Democratic NGOs, all from the West, the majority based, like the ITUC, in Brussels (base also of major DW inter-state funder, the European Union). No one, finally, has even considered whether this new socialpartnership project is not going to reproduce the failure – after 15 years of effort – of its forerunner, the ‘Social Clause’ campaign. This was intended to lobby international labor rights out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor – bodies that were destroying them. It has been quietly buried: no funeral, no flowers, no obituary . . . no accounting of costs.12 As for the Emancipation of Labour, this is a rather more problematic concept since it began in my mind simply as a provocative slogan. True, it is inspired by the early labor movement, at a time when this was intimately related with democratic, international solidarity and national independence movements, and often led such. The word ‘emancipation’ is older and wider than the historical labor movement, having been used, of course, by the movement against slavery, by the women’s and other such movements. Applied to labor, ‘emancipation’ reminds us of that historical tradition that considered wage-labor as wage-slavery – something to be liberated from. As with the women’s movement, ‘emancipation’ could suggest to

11 12

ETUC20 07. Waterman2001.

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labor the necessity for collective self-activity against alienation: in this case the alienation of human productive and creative capacities to the benefit of capital and state (not to speak of patriarchy, imperialism, consumerism, racism, competitive individualism and ecological destruction). ‘Emancipation’, for me, also has to do with self-transformation, with the reinvention of one’s own behaviors and identity, and from the ineffective means by which one has previously expressed oneself collectively. Which is what I have been concerned with when writing on the ‘emancipation of labor internationalism’.13

Progressive or Radical? Another reason for caution about the epithet EoL is uncertainty about how Labour in Movement (or anything from either the World Forum of Alternatives or the Global Working Class project) will be seriously radical rather than generally progressive. My feeling is that the emancipation of labor, or even its effective defence, requires subversion of the dominant ideology, the use or invention of new language, new ways of doing things, and forceful assertion. It eschews diplomacy, which is, after all, a code of behaviour for international elites (it means shaking hands so that the daggers fall out on the floor before discussions begin). Emancipation is not simply a new policy or strategy – which many around the Forum are certainly advancing – but a new ethic or culture. For myself, ‘emancipation’ implies not simply a leadership or policy challenge to those who have hegemony within the international labor movement, but the creation of a new culture, ethic, modes of relating to workers, union members, other union leaders – and ‘labour’s others’ – that vast majority of the world’s working people beyond the reach of unions.14 Now, there is actually no binary, far less a Manichean, opposition between the two labor tendencies I identify above. StreetNet, for example, identified itself with both in Nairobi. Moreover, I think that Decent Work has to be recognized as a step forward from the pathetic Social Clause lobbying campaign, and as representing an assertion where years of ‘concession bargaining’ and state-dependent protectionism represented retreat. It appears, further, from Nairobi as if DW was to be a matter of union 13 14

Waterman2004a . Jha 2007; Waterman 2007c.

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campaigning, thus engaging rank-and-file unionists, who might then question what kind of pig there is in this poke. And, on the other hand, the emancipatory – or at least innovatory and adventurous – tendency I have identified, is itself an unknown quantity. Bearing in mind, moreover, the monolithic nature and hegemonic claims of the Decent Work project, it does seem to me that its origins, its assumptions, its implications simply have to be subject to open discussion, and then within several concentric agoras, the crucial one being the most distant and difficult: that of workers themselves, where they work and live (as Nairobi demonstrated, most working people outside the capitalist core may be more concerned with their rights as inhabitants than their rights as workers).15

The Privileged Place/Space for Dialogue on Labor Globally? The privileged place and/or space, for dialogue on the re-invention of a global labor movement under contemporary conditions, may at present be the World Social Forum and the wider Global Justice and Solidarity Movement (GJ&SM). I mention the second of these entities, however problematic it might appear, because we must remember where the WSF comes from, where it is situated and that many union organizations and other labor movements are active within the latter, even when they might not be present in the former. The privilege I accord the WSF is due to the principles underlying its formation. These could be traced back to an ecumenical document of the 1980s, attached to the latest defense of the ‘Forum-as-Space’ by Forum founder, Chico Whitaker. Arguing the necessity for ‘intercommunication’ in emancipatory struggle, this document lists its necessary characteristics: freedom of expression, liberty of information, equality of opportunity, mutual respect and openness toward the others, mutual confidence, active co-responsibility, acceptance of heterogeneity and of the dynamic of conflicts that go with it. The aim is to transform ‘domination power’ into ‘service power’. The latter implies: First of all, the exercise of the power each of us disposes in terms of COUNTERPOWER, that which aims to neutralize the power of the dominated over the resources that they dispose of as the stopping of a factory or the denouncing of a lie. In the second place, the exercise of an ALTERNATIVE POWER, which aims to eliminate

15

Oloo200 6a.

125 our dependence on the dominating when for example we discover the ways to satisfy a given need without using resources owned and controlled by the dominating.16

I would consider such principles to be represented and promoted, if not hegemonic, within the WSF and the broader GJ&SM. They are also a matter of self-reflection within and around such.17 The reason why I here say that a new way of being, thinking and acting is not hegemonic within the Forum is revealed by the relationship between the inter/national trade union organizations and the WSF in the period leading up to Nairobi. What is publicly known is that there was tension between the Kenyan Confederation of Trade Unions (COTU) and the organizing committee, with COTU initially complaining of exclusion but later reporting a settlement and, indeed, a certain satisfaction with the Nairobi WSF. The tension was at least in part due to the international unions’ desire to get all WSF activities under the banner of Decent Work. There was resistance by members of the International Committee to having this inter-state organization policy (issuing from the ILO) stand in place of ‘Labour’ in the official program.18 According to one account, the union side (local? regional? international?) threatened a boycott of the Nairobi WSF if the ILO/ITUC language was not used. And the relevant committee felt it had to back down in the face of the threat. All this politicking explains why in some parts of the published WSF program the word ‘labor’ is used and in other parts ‘decent work’ (uncapitalized?). It seems, in any case, as if a certain amount of dirty work was involved in the advancing of Decent Work. The labor question in Nairobi was thus surrounded by clouds of complicity and compromise that made it difficult to see any little swords of justice around. Petty and insignificant as this affair might seem in the light of what publicly – and promisingly – occurred in Nairobi, it surely still requires public clarification. Because, if that kind of pressure was exercised, and if the WSF did feel obliged to quietly concede, then this surely exemplifies the old way of doing (labor or left) politics. And this is surely in contradiction with the necessary new ethic as variously expressed above by Chico Whitaker (from Liberation Theology in the 1980s), Ezequiel Adamovsky (from the 21st century autonomists, 2006) . . . or myself, from Moscow, 1957. 16 17 18

Whitaker 2007, p. 239. Wainright et al. 2007. Oloo2006a .

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If I still argue that the WSF is a privileged place for the reinvention of the international labor movement, then how do I explain the latter’s relatively low profile? So far, it seems to me, the WSF and the trade union organizations have had an instrumental rather than an affective relationship. This means that each has used the other for its own predetermined purposes – the ITUC most recently for promoting Decent Work, the WSF for demonstrating its inclusion of what is, after all, the major organized body of the popular classes globally. The unions have, traditionally, run a full program in their own WSF space, but this is one which simultaneously concentrates and isolates. Thus, despite formal ITUC urgings that unionists participate in other events, this is more likely to be on group or individual initiative of the unionists19 than anything more structural, effective and visible. Now, many feminists continue to complain of the low profile or even marginalization of women within the WSF. This is not my impression, either from their autonomous activity in preparation for the Forum (Feminist Dialogues), or their activity in its International Council, or their presence in public Forum events and its open spaces.20 I would argue that the higher profile of women compared with labor has been a result of the determined activity of feminists and women’s networks, recognizing their affinity with the Forum but systematically pressing their issues within and upon it. There has also been much more reflection on the Forum from the women’s movement than from the labor one. The reasons are not far to find. The trade unions and even the broader labor and socialist movement are children of early/mature capitalism. The women’s movement and feminism are, in their present incarnation, the children of mature or late (I adhere to the ‘principle of hope’) capitalism. They were, indeed, a major force in the New Social Movements of the 1970s–80s. Without them one cannot understand the nature of the WSF and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement. Thus, we see a leading male organizer publicly reflecting on the position of women within the Forum,21 but we do not yet see middle-class Forum organizers (men or women) seriously reflecting on the role of labor there.

19 20 21

Bonin 2007; de Schryver 2007a, b. Vargas2 007. Oloo200 6b.

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Post-Nairobi Update: Reality Bites 22 After nine months gestation, the baby of an emancipatory labor internationalism is still refusing to be born. Having myself been involved in three different international labor events (or labor events internationally), and having received reports from a fourth, it gives me no pleasure to say this. But, as would-be midwife, I still have a duty of explanation. I think the problem is that the union left internationally is still 1) a prisoner of the union form as we have known it since 1945, 2) limited by capitalism’s notion of work, as that which is done for wages in a large-scale industrial or clerical enterprise (capitalist or state), 3) disoriented by the violent assault of neo-liberal globalization and the collapse of Communist, Social Democratic or Radical-Nationalist utopias. As a result of one or more of the above it is unable to pose or even imagine a post-capitalist alternative. Given the increasing ambiguities of the World Social Forum’s ‘other possible world’, even a union embrace of the WSF would not necessarily challenge the ILO/ITUC Decent Work hegemony. Far less would it be likely to stimulate an autonomous international movement for the liberation of life from work. Major Southern unions and the ITUC itself have recently submitted themselves as candidates to the WSF’s crucial new ‘Liasion Committee’ – meant to keep the operation running between meetings of the massive and unwieldy International Committee. These candidatures are unlikely to be evaluated according to their opposition to a social partnership with capital, national or international. So from where are we to draw, on what ground are we to base, any optimism of the will? And where is a labor alternative most likely to be able to shape itself? Well, signs and sounds of autonomous and emancipatory labor movements and thinking are still to be found here, there and everywhere. Last year we saw the greatest ever Mayday ever in the USA – and it was of illegal immigrant workers! National and regional labor support and solidarity networks in East Asia quietly but vigorously address the urgent needs of new working classes of China and Asia, unionized or not. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions is making the most serious self-criticism and carrying out the most energetic search for an alternative strategy addressed to all working people in South Korea.23 Word has it 22

Some of what I mention below may be detailed in Waterman 2007a-d. Others, in this changing situation, are hearsay and will have to be confirmed later. 23 Yang Kyung-kyu 2007.

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that an international union-plus-social-movement seminar on ‘A Fair Globalisation’ in Lima, Peru, September, 2007, actually heard radical positions and ended with a singing of ‘The Internationale’! Recent books, magazines and websites suggest a rise in radical-democratic thinking, and a desire for international dialogue, that has not existed since the 1970s. However, I am wondering whether we will not have to wait for some equivalent of the Zapatista uprising of 1994, or the Burmese uprising of 2007, to shake international labor out of a caution – if not an inertia – that presently paralyses it. And I am also convinced that any emancipatory labor internationalism is going to need a virtual platform or agora if it is to have any international profile or force. And that that profile and force will need to express themselves also beyond the WSF, within the rather wider and deeper space represented by a global justice and solidarity movement that is still in formation.

Acknowledgements Thanks to the following for feedback on previous drafts or related writings. Dan Gallin, François Houtart, Paul Garver, Andreas Bieler, Marco Berlinguer, Ingemar Lindberg, Mac Urata and others. The usual disclaimer applies.

References Adamovsky, Ezequiel 2006, ‘Autonomous Politics and its Problems: Thinking the Passage from Social to Political’, http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/05/25/225244 &mode=thread&tid=9. Amin, Samir 2007, ‘Le Forum Social Mondial est-il utile pour les luttes populaires ? Les formules des forums sociaux le sont-elles?’ [Is the World Social Forum Useful for Popular Struggles? Are the Social Forum Formulas Such?], http://www.nadir.org/ nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/nairobi2007/0201le_forum_social_mondial.html. Bamako Appeal 2007, ‘The Bamako Appeal’, in Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar (eds.), A Political Programme for the World Social Forum? Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements: A Reader, pp. 151–176, New Delhi: CACIM and Durban: Centre for Civil Society. Bieler, Andreas and Ingemar Lindberg 2007, ‘Swedish Unions and Globalisation: Labour Strategies in a Changing Global Order’, Global Working Class Project, http://www. nottingham.ac.uk/politics/gwcproject/index.php. Bieler, Andreas, Ingemar Lindberg, and Devan Pillay 2008, Labour and the Challenges of Globalisation: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity?, London: Pluto.

129 Bonin, Marie-Hélène 2007 ‘World Social Forum: Stronger Alliance of Unions with Social Movements’, http://www.alternatives.ca/article2784.html?lang=en. CACIM (India Institute for Critical Action: Centre In Movement), http://cacim.net/twiki/ tiki-index.php?page=CACIMHome. Choike, ‘About the World Social Forum’, http://www.choike, org/nuevo_eng/informes/ 4601.html. Decent Work, Decent Life, http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?rubrique69. De Schryver, Marc-Antoon 2007a. ‘De Belgen op het WSF (1): Luc Hamelinck van het ACV’, 260107, http:www.indymedia.be/nl/node/6885. De Schryver, Marc-Antoon 2007b, ‘De Belgen op het WSF (2): Eddy van Lacker en Caroline Copers van het ABVV’, 280107. http: www.indymedia.be/nl/node/6919. E-Library for Social Transformation, http://www.openelibrary.info/main.php. International Union Rights 2007, ‘Focus on Labour Rights in the Nordic Countries and Baltic Region’, International Union Rights, 13: 2–23. Feminist Dialogues, http://feministdialogues.isiswomen.org/. Global Labor Strategies, http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/. Global Working Class Project, http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/gwcproject/index.php. International Trade Union Confederation, www.ituc-csi.org/New Unionism, http://www. newunionism.net/. Jha, Praveen 2007, ‘Globalisation and Labour in India: The Emerging Challenges’. Global Working Class Project, http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/gwcproject/index.php. Oloo, Onyango 2006a, ‘Social Movements Set to Assert Their Presence at WSF Nairobi 2007’, http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/38952. Oloo, Onyango 2006b, ‘Gendering the WSF Nairobi 2007 Process: A Contribution to a Debate by Onyango Oloo, National Coordinator, Kenya’, www.nigd.org/nigd/nigdwsf-area/wsf-material/WSFArticles. Reese, Ellen, Erika Gutierrez, and Christopher Chase-Dunn 2007, ‘Labour and Other Antisystemic Movements in the World Social Forum Process’, Department of Sociology, University of California-Riverside, http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows17/ irows17.htm. Sen, Jai and Madhuresh Kumar (eds.) 2007, A Political Programme for the World Social Forum? Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements: A Reader, New Delhi: CACIM and Durban: Centre for Civil Society. Social Movement Assembly 2007, ‘Full Report of The Social Movements Assembly: World Social Forum, Nairobi, 16h–18h, 24 January 2007’, http://www.focusweb.org/fullreport-of-the-social-movements-assembly.html. Streetnet International Report 2007, ‘Streetnet International Report on the World Social Forum (WSF2007), Nairobi, Kenya, 20–25 January 2007’. Transform! European Network for Alternative Thinking and Political Dialogue, http:// www.transform-network.org/index.php?id=395. Union Ideas Network, http://www.uin.org.uk/. Vargas, Virginia, ‘Una mirada al FSM de Nairobi’ [A view of the Nairobi WSF], e-mail received 16-02-07. Vosko, Leah 2003, ‘Decent Work’, The Shifting Role of the ILO and the Struggle for Global Social Justice’, in Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Stephen McBride (eds.), Global

130 Turbulence: Social Activists’ and State Responses to Globalisation, pp. 174–190, Aldershot: Ashgate. Wainright, Hilary et al. 2007, Networked Politics: Rethinking Political Organisation in an Age of Movements and Networks, Amsterdam: Transational Institute. Waterman, Peter (ed.) 2001, ‘Labour Rights in the Global Economy’, Working USA (guestedited special issue), 5: 9–86. Waterman, Peter 2005, ‘From “Decent Work” to “The Liberation of Time from Work”: Reflections on Work, Emancipation, Utopia and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’, http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/03/24/170247&mode=nested&tid=4. Waterman, Peter 2007a, ‘Trade Unions, Labour and the World Social Forum’, Terra Viva, January 2, http://www.ipsterraviva.net/tv/Nairobi/en/viewstory.asp?idnews=777. Waterman, Peter 2007b, ‘Trade Union Internationalism and the Challenge of Globalisation: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?’, Global Working Class Project. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/ gwcproject/ index. php. Waterman, Peter 2007c, ‘The Networked Internationalism of Labour’s Others: A Suitable Case for Research’, Conference of the International Association of Labour History Institutions, Linz, Austria, 13–15 September 2007. Waterman, Peter 2007d, ‘International Labour Studies (UK) in the Light of Social Justice and Solidarity (Globally)’, http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article. php?articleId=440. Whitaker, Chico 2007, ‘Annex 12: For an Evaluation of the International Study Days Project: Why It Is Necessary to Continue It?’, in A New Way of Changing the World, pp. 225–246, Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches. Yang Kyung-kyu 2007, ‘The Crisis and New Challenges of the Korean Labour Movement’, Notes of Presentation to 30th Anniversary Conference of the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Hong Kong, Asian Labour Update( HongK ong).

CHAPTER 8

Is the World Social Forum a Democratic Global Civil Society? Stellan Vinthagen

We live in a multi-centered world in which world politics is formed by states together with transnational corporations, intergovernmental organizations as well as various non-governmental actors. Within it a major player has arisen, one which some call the “second superpower”, the “movement of movements” or the “global justice movement” – and its main convergence centre: the World Social Forum (WSF 2001–).1,2 So far 500,000 persons have participated in the WSF which yearly gathers several thousands of civic organizations in about thousand workshops, discussing the present world order and what to do about it. Since the end of the 1990s we are witnessing what is most probably the broadest transnational mobilization of social movements ever in history of mankind. The “Battle of Seattle” 1999 against WTO and the seventh World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, 2007, are just the tip of an iceberg in this ongoing networking and cooperation of various movements around the world.3 This “movement of movements” is mobilizing several millions of people in very different contexts and around very different topics, people that converge in their criticism of the present militarized neoliberal world-order which is dominated by the world’s only super-power; the USA.4 The World Social Forum is possible to understand as a global counter-hegemonic project in which the

1

della Porta 2007. The movements gather at several other occasions but then in minor numbers, e.g. the Peoples Global Action meetings and at convergence centres during protests against topsummits of multilateral regimes (e.g. G8 or WTO). 3 Polet2004. 4 Appelbaum and Robinson 2005. 2

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contemporary corporate globalization, neoliberal hegemony and US military dominance is contested.5 The movements that converge at WSF articulate so different strategies, demands, ideologies, groups and technologies that if understood as one movement, as della Porta (2007) argues, it is a movement united around heterogeneity, a quite unusual identity of a movement 6 For the purpose of my argument it is irrelevant if the movement is one or several. We know for a fact that several movements are converging at the WSF. Still, as an arena for world politics, in which contending social groups form the politics of the world, WSF is simply not enough, since it only unites one part in the struggle, excluding its opponents.7,8 But WSF is one part in the constitution of an infrastructure of world politics, as a potential candidate of what until recently was mainly a theoretical concept: a “global civil society”. Against a united neoliberal globalization and US imperialism a global civil society will matter. Scattered societies and groups need to find their own empowering and mutual cooperation in order to stand a chance of self-defense and transformative struggle making other possible worlds a reality. This article focuses on the specifics of the main institutional platform of the movement(s) – WSF – regarding its democratic and global quality and scope. Firstly, to what extent is WSF the forum of the social world, i.e. globally engaging the social groups of the world? Secondly, in what sense is WSF a participatory forum for the people that do participate? Thirdly, to what degree is the forum really the social world’s own forum, i.e. is the decision-making of WSF democratic? And, as a conclusion then, is WSF possible to understand as a “democratic global civil society”? I will shortly consider other candidates of global civil society and discuss the contested and usually liberal and Western understanding of “civil society”, just enough to make my argument clear. But I will not try to determine the conceptual limits of a “global civil society”, its history or wider relations to the political economy and its global regimes, or its relation to the global justice movement(s). This is not the place to discuss globalization, the

5

Santos200 6. Vinthagen 2002, 2003. 7 Abrahamsson2003. 8 Global arenas of world politics exist today, built by the combined effect of a global confrontation chain between the main actors of globalization (the summit protests from Seattle 1999 to Rostock 2007), the contending networks of WSF and WEF, and the communicative network of networks (Internet), see Vinthagen unpublished. 6

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world order or democracy as such but the role of the WSF within such phenomena.

Candidates of Global Civil Society There are other potential candidates of a global civil society, now existing candidates or historical. The 19th century abolition movement (against slavery) was arguably the first transnational human rights movement uniting various social groups in different countries.9 But it was focused on a single issue of minor global concern for its world order of British Imperialism. And it was mainly a Western movement, building unity between activists in North America and Europe, lacking profound organizational links with African societies. The 19th and 20th century internationals on the other hand did include a greater variety of groups, also from within the Global South. But it was again an initiative from the North, uniting only a special sector of oppositional groups (Marxist parties and trade unions) and it was attempting ideological conformity (with one socialist or communist strategy).10 Thus, the internationals typically split into new versions of the international when ideological and strategic differences appeared (at least four internationals developed of which some still exist). The 20th century anticolonial movements did produce its own networks, mainly through the Non-Aligned Movement initiated at the Bandung Conference.11 But that was a unity of nation states, not of movements. On the other hand it can be argued that the international anti-apartheid movement was part of “the emergence of a global civil society” and thus a forerunner to WSF.12 The period after the Second World War made for the first time a global civil society possible, according to Thörn (2006), through new media and the growth of international governmental organizations, together with the international networks of individuals, groups and organizations within the anti-apartheid movement. The networks of the movement was, in turn, possible through the political use of the new media – what Keck and Sikkink (1998) calls “informational politics” – transnational organization and

9 10 11 12

Keck and Sikkink 1998. Santos2006. Sen et al. 2007. Thörn 2006.

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mobilization, and the mobility of activist travelers in which an “extended face-to-face interaction” made identification with the “distant other” concrete.13 Such fostered “solidarity” united Africans in the neighboring Frontline states, Europeans, Americans and exiled South Africans with the struggle inside South Africa, and made an international anti-apartheid movement possible. Still, it is doubtful if it before it dissolved ever did sustain a global enough infra-structure possible to be labeled a “global civil society”. I would not argue against the anti-apartheid movement as part of the emergence of a global civil society, but would differ as to if it ever constituted such a society. The struggle was not globally and socially inclusive enough. Simply not enough national civil societies were enough integrated in the struggle. And again, the issue, anti-apartheid, was not enough of a global concern, neither for the majority of the worlds populations, nor for the guardians of the Cold War world order, even though the implicit idea of “racial equality” was potentially more controversial, at least if taken literally. The World Social Forum, on the other hand, contest the core of contemporary world order – neoliberalism and US Empire – and is so open for participation from anyone interested that it has been criticized for letting too many different groups to join (beside various social movements, also NGOs, Churches and academics) with too many ideologies and strategies.

The World Social Forum The WSF Organizing Committee states that WSF is “characterized by plurality and diversity, is non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party”, thus belonging to the civil society sphere (WSF 2007). Among the key documents outlining the World Social Forum is first and foremost the founding document Charter of Principles (COP) in which it is stated in the first paragraph that “The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking . . . by groups and movements of civil society . . . committed to building a planetary society”.14 The Charter of Principles emphasizes plurality and open space and encourage participation of some movements/organizations (e.g. workers, indigenous groups, farmers, women, 13

Thörn 2006. Together with a clarifying “Note from the Organizing Committee on the principles that guide the WSF”, see http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/.

14

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and youth) and discourage others (e.g. neoliberals and fundamentalists), while forbidding some (mainly military/guerilla, governmental and political parties). The Charter need not be understood as pacifist and anarchist, only that it outlines a forum in which not all groups are welcome.15 Already here it is clear that WSF is trying to forge a space for a new politics since the Charter rejects two of the main strategies of earlier liberation attempts: the revolutionary army and the oppositional political party. A second break with older liberation traditions is the rejection of joint resolutions at WSF. Since WSF does not have and do not strive to get a political leadership or joint decision body it also refuses the typical “conference declaration”. On their own initiative it is still possible for alliances of movements or specific meetings at a forum to issue their declarations, but then not as the concluding declaration of the forum but as their own, as one of several declarations emanating from the forum.16 WSF is not a global party or new international but an “open space” for cooperation, networking, colearning, campaign-building, action-planning and dialogue between various groups, organisations and movements. An open space is an interactive collaborative learning structure in which self-organised activities are encouraged.17 The administration of this space is run by the International Secretariat in Sao Paolo together with the Organising Committee (which is based in Brazil but assists and integrates new countries that host the forum). Nowadays the International Council with its 100+ members is the main decision body. But since WSF is an open space the Council only decide on the place, time, themes, organization and funding of the forum – the content is constructed by the participants. World Social Forum is today not only a massive yearly event somewhere in the Global South but a process of 50+ forums a year which are decentralized geographically, divided into 15

This has of course created much debate within and outside WSF, although it is made clear that people from such groups can participate in their “personal capacity”, not as “representatives” of their groups. 16 Still, some groups try to go around that. At the end of the forums the “Assembly of social movements” stages a mass-meeting and adopts a statement developed by some persons during the forum. This statement is sometimes treated as or mistaken as the statement of the forum. Prominent leaders of movements or intellectuals have at several occasions also issued political programmes for the WSF and the movement, stirring heated debates and accusations of trying to lead a movement which rejects global leadership. See Sen et al. 2007. 17 Whitaker 2006; Sen and Kumar 2003.

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specialized sectors or themes in which e.g. Mayors, Judges, trade unions, parliamentarians meet at their own forums.18 Participants decide themselves how to use the space. WSF offers firstly a space for learning and info-exchange. Secondly it makes contact-building and networking possible. Thirdly an option exists of coordination, to act in concert with each other. Without having to make decisions it becomes possible to act in awareness of the plans of other movements and organisations. Fourthly, and most ambitious, it is possible to use WSF as a space in which to organise together, create new campaigns as well as plan and decide on joint actions, but not through WSF as a whole.

The WSF as a Self-Reformable Process WSF has already from its start been experimenting with and developing its structures. WSF is a self-organized and collective learning process and not a fixed and ready-made model of how to do the new politics. It has a “remarkable capacity to reform itself ”.19 Its “self-reformability” and creative innovations are probably its major characteristic feature.20 Even though WSF from its inception was a clear break with the authoritarian and orthodox left, it was a rather top-down event in the beginning, emphasizing a difference between ordinary “participants” and “delegates”, with mega-gatherings (“conferences”) within the forum in which prominent leaders talked to thousands. Still, the increased emphasis on self-organized sessions (“workshops”) is a break with this monologues mass-communication. WSF has evolved step by step into a more participatory process, especially from 2003.21 Now sessions are developed from consultations with participants and concerned social groups into “thematic axes” (2003–) and all sessions are regarded as equal (2004–) and self-organized (2005–). Also the dominance of Brazilian organizations in the International Secretariat and Organizing Committee is broken. A strengthen International Council has made a broad involvement of various countries, social movements and NGOs possible. With the early decision to promote national, regional and special thematic forums and the change of location of WSF since 2004 the

18 19 20 21

See “Social Forums around the world” at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/. Santos 2006, p. 46. Santos20 06. Santos20 06.

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forum is increasingly integrating a global population in the process. Since 2004 the International Council leads the WSF process and new national Organizing Committees are integrated into the permanent administrative work, making the organizational teams more international. In response to maybe the major criticism of WSF from participants and outsiders – of being just a “talk-shop” with no clear program for action or alternative – various measures which facilitate cooperation around actions and campaigns have been developed, e.g. the “Wall of proposals” (2005–) and the 4th day of action proposals (2007–).22

What Is a Democratic Global Civil Society? “Civil society” as a concept is since the early 1990s inherently contested by various actors interested in their own use of civil society.23 The positions end up between the liberal enthusiasts who make civil society nonconfrontational and the critical pessimists who dismiss entirely such a Western concept.24 A common view is regarding civil society as that diverse “third sector”, the non-governmental and non-commercial sphere of society in which groups of people in concert – in various formal or informal, more or less organized associations – try to “mould rules” of society.25 But even as a third sector of rule-molding our concept of civil society can emphasize different aspects.26 It can be a counter-force checking the power of the state(s). Or a communicative space (of cultural rationalisation and articulation of demands/needs) in relation to both the power-administration of the state(s) & money-competition of the market. Or a transnational articulation of plural societies (and universal rights) in relation to multilateral/global regimes and transnational corporations. Kaldor (2003) outlines different versions of global civil society in which it is possible to understand WSF as something of either the “activist society” building a global 22

On “Wall of Proposals” see Santos 2006, p. 79. On 4th day of action proposals see www. wsf2007.org and Vinthagen (2008). On the debate on a political program see Sen et al. 2007. 23 Lipschultz 2004; Walzer 1998. 24 See Axford 2005; Glasius et al. 2004. 25 Scholte 1999, pp. 3–4. 26 This division is reworked from Kaldor 2003. She also mention the earlier understanding of civil society as the law-upholding state (rule based civilisation with rights and security) in contrast to nature and the international “anarchy”, which is not applicable here.

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public sphere or the “postmodern society” building a “plurality of global networks of contestation”, distinguishing it from various civilized, market or tamed societies.27 A global civil society implies organized communication on a global level, with global public spheres, collective identities and collective actions. The communicative processes and organized structure of the World Social Forum make the articulation of global issues, identities, movement cooperation and network-building possible. A global civil society is not just the interlinking of 200 national civil societies but the institutionalization of global political spaces, both in opposition to and functionally integrated with a global market and a global state. Today a global market already exists but no global state.28 I still think a global civil society is possible. Some kind of state-infra-structure or complex of state-like institutions is necessary for an (emergent) infra-structure of a civil society to materialize. But that does already exist, although no coherent and centralized global state. Together with the UN, EU, the International Criminal Court, WTO, IMF and the World Bank there exists another 200+ intergovernmental organizations.29 If there were no global regimes and elite networks of decision-makers to direct the demands to, social movements would not get organized on a global level. The global civil society, therefore, need to be understood as different to the national. It is: a political space in which a diversity of political cultures interact and intersect. Contrary to national civil society, global civil society does not have a single political counterpart. Rather, actors in global civil society often act simultaneously in different political arenas, in opposition to, and sometimes in alliance with, supra-national organizations as well as nation states and local Councils.30

Jan Aart Scholte (2007, p. 6) argues that a global civil society is a “transplanetary political space where associations of citizens seek, from outside political parties, to shape the rules that govern one or the other arena of social life”. For Scholte, then, also business associations as well as tradi-

27

Kadlor20 03. To Lipschutz (2004) that is a key problem making global civil society difficult to conceptualize. 29 Thörn 2006. 30 Thörn 2006, p. 205. 28

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tional organizations do count as “civil society”. With such a broad definition WSF becomes a very limited expression of civil society. Instead, here civil society will be understood as inherently different and often opposed to market logic. The type of institutions and organizations that makes a relative independent articulation possible varies according to history and context of the society in question, but fundamentally it is an organized facilitation of a communicative rationality, contrasting the political economy system’s logic of power and money, as well as cultural status-hierarchies.31 In my search for a global civil society I am trying to understand a common and as such a global quality of different civil societies. My tentative proposal is that a civil society with a global potential is a society which, facilitated by dominant powers or in opposition to them, creates formal or informal, temporary or permanent spaces of communicative rationality.32 This communicative space can be constructed separate to or within spheres dominated by states, status-hierarchies or markets. This means, as a consequence, that civil society is collaborative action built on communication that articulate needs and demands and mould rules without the use of organized military, state or corporate means or traditional authority (violence, power, money or status-influence). As communicative praxis civil society is inherently a democratic project. If we note the difference between the democratic idea and the present historical democratic institutions its emancipatory potential also becomes visible. There is a great difference between the idea that the people concerned decide together through a free argumentative discussion in which these decisions are implemented effectively, and the historical institutions of the national and centralised system of liberal parliamentary democracy in which a majority elects a group of representative professionals. Such democratic institutions are a lot more democratic than earlier but still situated within a global apartheid system and a non-democratic market domination.33 31

Habermas 1984; Cohen 1998; Cohen and Arato 1994. The (modern) civil society is not opposed to tradition per se but tradition as a final statement, cultural status hierarchies as monopolies of meaning, i.e. such sacred quality of certain positions, objects or values which negates critical reflection. See Cohen and Arato 1994, e.g. pp. 433–442, and their argument for a communicative rationalization of the culture, tradition and “lifeworld”. 32 Kaldor 2004 argues for a similar “common core meaning” of the civil society concept which, although it is based in Western thought, is common for different societies. For her that is “a rule-governed society based on the consent of individuals”, i.e. rules grown out of communication between equals. 33 Appelbaum and Robinson 2005.

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The point here is that there are historical changes of democratic institutions and the moment when we believe that history has reached the end of democratic development, we will loose the little democracy we have. Instead there is the possibility to continue an old tradition of democratisation through movement struggles, in which we earlier have moved from the King to the Parliament, from property votes to universal suffrage, and now maybe have the possibility to move from a national democracy to a global one (which builds on local difference). Contrary to a conventional view a legal framework securing civic rights of organization and critical opposition is not necessary for a civil society, although often helpful.34 It can even be argued that the new interest in the concept is a result of the recent anti-authoritarian struggles in Latin America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.35 The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa did forge a vibrant national civil society despite living under a systematic repression from a racial dictatorship. It was even possible for the movement to involve about one million people in a grassroots dialogue in which the future constitution was formulated. 1952 the Freedom Charter was adopted at an ANC conference, in a voting process during which the dictatorship arrested participants. And this, in fact, has been and still is the normal way a democratic framework is created. The sociologist of history, Charles Tilly, has shown that democratization happens typically after a mobilization wave of oppositional movements, only sometimes before.36 A civil society under an authoritarian regime is necessarily emancipatory (as being institutionalized civic communication).37 WSF should be understood as such. Therefore WSF as a global civil society needs to be described as an emancipatory global civil society, not a classic liberal civil society.38 WSF is as such attempting to liberate various (national or other) societies from the present non-democratic world order. But the question is if WSF is such a society in empirical reality?

34

See e.g. Santos 2006, p. 42, as one who argues that a global civil society is meaningless without a “global mechanism to guarantee global civic rights”. 35 Kaldor20 03. 36 Tilly 2004a, 2004b. 37 Kaldor20 04. 38 According to Lipschutz (2004) a key feature for any global civil society is that it “is less a ‘problem’ for power than a product of power”, p. 205. Thus, a global civil society that do not want to be just a civilizing part of the neoliberal world order need to “(re)create forms of political sovereignty that can function, perhaps, in a counterhegemonic way”.

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The WSF as a Democratic Open Space? Within WSF there is a lack of a formal leadership since no one can represent the WSF as a unit but a de-facto informal leadership of influential individuals (e.g. Cassen, Whitaker, Amin, George, Shiva, Bello) and leaders from influential organisations (e.g. some French and Brazilian organisations such as Attac, CUT and MST). Thus, the power structure of WSF is formal in the construction of the forum as a space, through the Council and the Secretariat, and informal in the use of that space.39 The use of the “open” space in which campaigns, declarations, understandings and actions are formulated is, in the absence of formal rules of decisions, dominated by some persons and organizations of status. This is a serious problem since WSF as a space of heterogeneity incorporates numerous political conflicts. The conflicts, differences and tensions within the global justice movement, as a “movement of movements”, are immense, and they are played out at the forums. There are tensions between what has been termed “old” and “new” social movements, between NGOs and grassroots/peoples’ movements, activists from the North and the South, those believing in reform, transformation or revolution, between religious and secular groups, just to mention a few major ones . . . Since there is no formal decision-body it becomes unclear for all not-so involved how things are decided (since things are happening there are also, logically speaking, decisions made somewhere). The LSE Centre for Civil Society has shown that also WSF has a centre-periphery structure with some central organisations that have a lot more links to others.40 The informal use of the space is somehow both a major democratic deficit (for the vast majority of participants who will not understand how decisions are made) and a protection against ideological dominance from certain fractions (of which today we see e.g. a struggle similar to the history of the internationals between social democrats, communists and anarchists). It is indeed difficult to conduct deliberative democracy in a network structure like the WSF, but equally difficult to ideologically control the amorphous net.

39

And even the formal level has informal aspects. The self-appointed International Council has since long had very unclear criteria for inclusion, something that just recently been clarified. 40 Anheier and Katz 2005.

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Still, open space cannot be defended or developed by informalism. In a fundamental sense, “open space” is not possible; power and (informal) structure will always construct such a space.41 And power becomes more difficult to handle without formal clarity and transparency.

The Deficits of WSF The main empirical studies display that WSF actually has a serious social deficit, global deficit and democratic deficit.42 There is a lack of geographical inclusion. Each forum there is 50–80 countries that do not even have one (!) participant attending. Middle-Eastern, Asian (except South Korea, Pakistan and India), African (except South Africa) and Eastern European groups have weak representation.43 Since 2004 there has been a positive improvement while it is still a problem. There is a lack of social inclusion of other groups than the typical participants of the educated, English speaking middle-class from Latin-America, Europe, North America and India. In these investigations it becomes clear that WSF draws an elite of the counter hegemonic globalization emanating from middle class sectors in their societies. A vast majority of the participants has a college degree, is employed and organized.44 And as many as 10 % has a Masters or PhD . . . which, by the way, makes WSF one of the major academic gatherings (gathering yearly some 10–15000 academics)! From the Mumbai SF 2004 the trend was broken and several thousand Dalits (“untouchables”) took part. In Nairobi 2007 a big group of slum-dwellers also participated, although many more wanted but could not initially because of high entrance fees.45 The world-tour of the WSF helps to increase the inclusion, as do differentiated fees for participants. Still, a major hindrance for inclusion remains the high costs of international flights. WSF as a global space cannot avoid favouring the more resource strong movements/groups that can involve in the preparation of forums and participate regularly (because of

41

Nunes 2005; Freeman 1984. Santos 2006, pp. 69–72. See also the yearbook from LSE Centre for Civil Society: Global Civil Society. 43 The national forums in e.g. Lebanon, India, Egypt, Palestine and Ethiopia are here important signs of the possible future change of WSF. 44 Santos 2006, pp. 88–107. Building on surveys from WSF 2003 and 2005. 45 Vinthagen( 2008). 42

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the high costs of at least three inter-continental travels per year to preparatory meetings of WSF). There is a lack of a structure which facilitates joint projects or campaigns.46 Right now organisations and individuals present themselves at various workshops, bookstalls and seminars, creating a political market-place. The respect of each other, of various approaches to the same problem or different choices of important issues – is big within WSF. But the structure is badly adopted to facilitate actions and lasting collaboration (although it does occur anyway). The attempt with a 4th day of action proposals is an interesting experiment that might develop into an “open space of actionfacilitation”.47 A controversial debate is going on and fractions are struggling both on the formal and informal level, a debate which is framed as one between WSF as an “open space” or a “movement” (with a political program).48 So far it seems like the support of open space is growing. But the battle is far from over and sometimes it raises to the level of groups setting up minor counter or alternative forums to WSF, in Mumbai 2004 by mainly communists (the “Mumbai Resistance” forum on the other side of the street) and in Venezuela 2006 the Alternative Social Forum was made up by mainly anarchists and other Chavez critical activists.49

Conclusion: The WSF as a Democratic Global Civil Society? [WSF] is not a ‘summit of grassroots organizations’ nor is it a world congress of a new international movement, but rather a free-form context designed for encounters50

The World Social Forum (WSF) is the, so far, greatest historic expression of a democratic “global civil society”. But it is a very limited such, more 46

Sen et al. 2007. Vinthagen( 2008). 48 Sen et al. 2007. This book is an example of how some of the proponents of the both sides engage in constructive debate with each other. See also http://www.openspaceforum.net/ twiki/tiki-index.php. 49 The conflict between proponents of dialogue/open space vs. movement/action is sometimes polarized. While some argue that WSF should invite its opponents into the open space, others not only view WSF as a poor action generator but claim that WSF civilize the resistance and thus make the civil society tame (manageable for hegemonic neoliberalism). I would rather think it is an unwanted twin-effect of the attractiveness of WSF and the feeling of failure in the top-summit protests since the mythological “victory” in Seattle 1999 (when WTO was severely shaken by the protests). 50 Whitaker 2006, p. x. 47

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correctly described as a the most inclusive and participatory transnational civil society to this date. It is “representing this world as it fights for another possible world”, i.e. lives in and represents an imperialist, repressive and unjust world while it tries to transform it.51 We all “exist against-in-andbeyond capital”, i.e. we are of this world, structured and defined by it, yet not only, still simultaneously able to say no, move against our being of this world.52 Understood like that, WSF is a “critical utopia” in a contemporary unjust world of repression and social control giving people oppositional orientation and belonging, while WSF at the same time cannot become more utopian than its participating movements and groups enable it to be for the moment.53 As such there is an existential limit to how much we can expect from the WSF. In an imperial and neoliberal world you cannot have a complete representation of a non-imperial and non-neoliberal world during a world encounter, it is just the way it is, and we need to accept that. At the same time, in order to be an emancipatory global civil society, to be against-in-and-beyond this world order, two critera are helpful. Firstly, the WSF need at least to reach some kind of minimal level of global participation (“globalness”) before it can be labeled a “global civil society” and a minimal democracy in order to be seen as an emancipatory and democratic civil society. Secondly, it needs to be seen to move in an emancipatory, democratizing and globalizing direction. On this second criteria, WSF is strong. There are two reasons why. The first and fundamental quality of WSF is its experimental approach and self-reformable ability, not only to itself as an organization but also to its political project enabling the collective work for other possible worlds. By not pretending to already know the means and end of another world, it opens up for self-criticism, collective self-reform and cooperative learning with mutual respect for difference and individuality. To my knowledge this is a unique approach to critical opposition at this level of mobilization. Normally radicals of all sorts – be that from the left or right, secularist camp or any religious affiliation – are people glowing with exclusive knowledge, arrogance and self-elect leadership over those with “false consciousness”, those who are not (yet) enlightened by the Truth. Secondly, judging from changes within WSF between 2001 and 2007 a development on the path of its critical utopia is possible to detect. WSF is 51 52 53

Santos 2006, p. 85. Holloway 2002, p. 144. Santos 2006, pp. 10–12.

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increasingly becoming a participatory space, a global space involving various social groups and nationalities and a space of collective action-facilitation. At the same time, though, paradoxically, its popularity and integration of new groups has lead to an unsustainable growth. There is just so much new organizational measures can do. Up to a limit somewhere the forum cannot take on more participants without changing its form in a more fundamental way. Its contemporary mega-size is not only making it a nightmare to organize and accommodate for any city in the Global South, it is also, which is probably a greater problem, becoming an increasingly fragmented experience for those who participate. But on the first criteria above (achieving a minimal level), WSF is not as strong. The World Social Forum has a dialogical and participatory meeting culture, it attempts to create an “open space” and a “new form of politics” but still, it is not a democratic civil society, since it is dominated by informal decision and leadership structures and lacks proper formal structures for articulating agreements and disagreements. There exist geographic, actor and social (especially class, age, gender and race) exclusions that makes it a very limited space for various social mobilizations, while being an improvement from historical predecessors as e.g. the different internationals. Participation influence increases with the degree of English knowledge and Internet skills, with the money available for traveling and organizing, and with the personal network connections to the formal WSF leadership (IC and WSF Secretariat in Brazil) and informal leadership (key personalities). And certain groups criticize how they are made invisible although they do actively participate, e.g. women and young people.54 WSF have the possibility to develop into something worth calling global if it develops enough of appropriate local, national, macro-regional, transnational and/or global formal structures that is able to facilitate interaction (dialogue and action) and decision-making without becoming a new “power-house” (e.g. a “5th International” or a “global party”). One option is if WSF creates permanent working groups on the 20-plus themes already developed at the forums, maybe integrated with or in collaboration with movements’ own (alternative) theme-experts, e.g. on Water, Food Sovereignty or Militarisation. If these working groups developed formal organisations of democratic representation it might solve the democratic deficit of WSF by avoiding WSF to become a decision body but incorporating such bodies (in plural!) within WSF. 54

Santos2006.

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I think the World Social Forum’s structure (the “open space”) – in Whitaker’s words a “free-form context” – should be understood as potentially a real world version of the cyber-world “open source”: WSF as a real world Wiki, i.e. a “do it yourself ” format within a collaborative and collectively editable structure. WSF is potentially a globally accessible and interactive learning-platform with a protocol which can be improved through collaborative collective intelligence.55 By offering a transparent structure for autonomous activity different grievance groups and movements can adjust the structure and fill with a content that fits their needs. It is a structure which is possible and necessary to develop. So far, it does not include globally. Thus, my conclusion is that the self-reformability of the WSF, its relatively unique globality compared to other similar attempts in history, its counter-hegemonic orientation and its communicative open-space makes it our first institutionalized transnational and emancipatory civil society. Still, it is not (yet) a democratic or global civil society. The main threat or obstacle for the (potential) WSF as a Wiki is on the one hand the proposals of transforming WSF into movement in the line of an international with a central leadership of the struggle, and on the other hand, a halted self-reformability in its present participatory, inclusive and heterogeneous direction. The future of WSF demands that the plurality of a Wiki-kind of network creativity is combined with a collaboration of alternative themeexperts/professionals so that a heterogeneity of perspectives are facilitated together with temporary unity in action, with mobilization around common ground, alternatives and action campaigns. Some kind of framework for a strategy which both directs and limits a minimal set of goals, values and activities is unavoidable. Otherwise the heterogeneity will not act in any kind of concert but rather contradict itself. There are already some limits set, e.g. regarding armed rebellion. But there are others not regulated, e.g. regarding riot-making at summit protests. Also the use of other means need clarification, e.g. how to combine strikes, dialogue, boycotts, demonstrations, occupations and alliances effectively. With a joint strategic debate some kind of joint orientation and focus of movement mobilization will be possible to develop. And then an open debate on the

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A Wiki is a media which can be edited by anyone with access to it. To learn some Wikibasics see Lamb 2004. The main example is wikipedia.org.

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movement’s repertoire of various tactics, action forms and organization structures will be possible. It is self-evident that such a strategy framework need to be continuously debated, revised and improved, and it need to be flexible to context, issues and differences among the movements applying it. The challenge is to create something which is really different to earlier doctrines of party cadres and patrimonial relations, something which is itself an expression of the plurality of the movement of movements. But since WSF is already creating a new politics it should, I hope, also be possible to develop a new strategy for how to achieve that new politics on a global scale.

References Abrahamsson, Hans 2003, Understanding World Order and Structural Change: Poverty, Conflict and the Global Arena, New York: Palgrave. Anheier, Helmut and Hagai Katz 2005, ‘Network Approaches to Global Civil Society’ in Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius and Mary Kaldor (eds.), Global Civil Society 2004/5. London: Sage. Appelbaum, Richard P. and William I. Robinson (eds.) 2005, Critical Globalization Studies, New York: Routledge. Axford, Barrie 2005, ‘Critical Globalization Studies and a Network Perspective on Global Civil Society’ in Richard P. Appelbaum and William I. Robinson (eds.), Critical Globalization Studies, New York: Routledge. Cohen, Jean 1998, ‘Interpreting the Notion of Civil Society’ in Michael Walzer (ed.), Toward a Global Civil Society, second printing, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Cohen, Jean L. and Andrew Arato 1994, Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dee, Hannah (ed.) 2004 Anti-capitalism: Where Now?, London: Bookmarks Publications. della Porta, Donatella 2007, ‘The Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’ in Donatella della Porta (ed.), The Global Justice Movement: Cross-national and Transnational Perspectives, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Freeman, Jo 1984, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, London: Dark Star Press and Rebel Press. Glasius, Marlies, David Lewis, and Hakan Seckinelgin (eds.) 2004, Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts, London: Routledge. Habermas, Jürgen 1984, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society 1, Oxford: Polity Press. Holloway, John 2002, Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, London: Pluto Press. Kaldor, Mary 2003, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kaldor, May 2004, ‘Globalization and Civil Society’ in Marlies Glasius, David Lewis, and Hakan Seckinelgin (eds.), Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts, London: Routledge.

148 Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink 1998, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta and Sunil Khilnani (eds.) 2001, Civil Society: History and Possibilities, New Delhi: Foundation Books & Cambridge University Press. Lamb, Brian. 2004, ‘WIKIS’, Educause Review Sep/Oct: 38–48. Lipschutz, Ronnie D. 2004, ‘Global Civil Society and Global Governmentality’ in Marlies Glasius, David Lewis, and Hakan Seckinelgin (eds.), Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts, London: Routledge. Nunes, Rodrigo 2005, ‘Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness, Horizontality and the Movement of Movements’ in David Harvie et al. (eds.), Shut Them Down! Gleneagles, the G8 and the Movement of Movements, Leeds: Dissent. Polet, Francois 2004, Globalizing Resistance: The State of the Struggle, London: Pluto Press. Scholte, Jan Aart 1999, ‘Global Civil Society: Changing the World?’, CSGR Working Paper No. 31/99. May 1999. Scholte, Jan Aart 2007, ‘Global Civil Society: Opportunity of Obstacle for Democracy’, Paper for the Committee on Civil Society Research, Sweden, January. Santos, Boaventura De Sousa 2006, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond, London: Zed Books. Sen, Jai and Mayuri Saini (eds.) 2005, Are Other Worlds Possible? Talking New Politics, New Delhi: Zubaan. Sen, Jai and Madhuresh Kumar (eds.) 2003, Are Other Worlds Possible? The Open Space Reader on the World Social Forum and its Engagement with Empire 1, New Delhi: The Open Space Series. Sen, Jai, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.) 2004, World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation. Sen, Jai, Madhuresh Kumar, Patrick Bond, and Peter Waterman (eds.) 2007, A Political Programme for the World Social Forum? Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements, New Delhi and Durban: CACIM and CCS. Tilly, Charles 2004a, Contention & Democracy in Europe 1650–2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles 2004b, Social Movements 1768–2004, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Thörn, Håkan 2006, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of A Global Civil Society, New York: Palgrave. Walzer, Michael (ed.) 1998, Toward a Global Civil Society, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Whitaker Ferreira, Francisco 2006, Towards a New Politics: What Future for the World Social Forum?, New Delhi: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Vinthagen, Stellan 2002, ‘Motståndets globalisering’ [The globalisation of resistance] in Mikael Löfgren and Masoud Vatankhah (eds.), Vad hände med Sverige i Göteborg? [What happened with Sweden in Gothenburg?], Stockholm: Ordfront Förlag. Vinthagen, Stellan 2003, ‘Motståndet mot den nya världsordningen’ [The resistance against the new world order] in Janne Flyghed and Magnus Hörnqvist (eds.), Laglöst land [Lawless country], Stockholm: Ordfront. Vinthagen, Stellan (2008), ‘WSF Kenya: Another WSF Is Possible!’, War Resisters International, online at http://www.wri-irg.org. Vinthagen, Stellan (unpublished), ‘Rörelsernas kamp på den globala arenan’ [The movements struggle on the global arena].

CHAPTER 9

Social Forums – Challenges and New Perspectives Chico Whitaker

The decision of holding the World Social Forum on exactly the same days as the Davos World Economic Forum was in fact something of a “countercommunications operation:” The global media, which is entirely attuned to what global elites are doing and saying. would be obliged to open at least a little space to those who were contradicting these global elites at a simultaneous meeting time about alternatives for the future of the world. The WSF organizers won the bet, and the WSF got some media coverage. Yet communication with the world continues to be a big challenge to the WSF process. We are still fighting to make the WSF better known and experienced all over the world, and to make the majorities aware that “another world” is not only possible but it is necessary and urgent. A good example of this difficulty is the distorted information about the WSF International Council decisions after its meeting in Nairobi, in January 2007, regarding the continuation of the WSF process in 2008 and 2009. With very little information, those who preferred to see the WSF disappear said that its International Council did not know what to do, specially considering the lower attendance at the Nairobi Forum compared with earlier ones. That is to say, the claim was that the process was getting weaker. In fact, even with fewer participants at this Forum it was a big step forward to increase the African civil society political participation and articulation at the continental level. The Council decided to promote a Global Day of Action in January 2008, the 26th, with multiple, diversified and auto-organized activities all over the world; and then with a new centralized World Social Forum in 2009, in a place then to be defined, and then it was decided after the subsequent IC meeting to have the 2009 Forum: in the Amazon Region, more specifically in the Brazilian city of Belem do Pará.

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Nor did the global media pay much attention to the evolving regional, national and local plans announced at the IC meeting. So, very little was said before and after the United States Social Forum that was realized in Atlanta in June 2007, at the very heart of the country that so dominates the world today. Such information as this shows that instead of weakening, the WSF process is even speeding up, as more and more plan to participate in the 2008 Global Day of Action and to participate in the 2009 WSF in the Amazon region. Unfortunately for me I could not come to the United States Social Forum. I read nevertheless many reports, commentaries and evaluations disseminated through the internet. So, I could see that it was a very successful Forum, as a space where multiple and diverse organizations that are fighting for “another United States” – specially at the grassroots level – could exchange information and ideas, learn about each other, and mutually identify convergences and plan more articulated common activities and struggles. It seemed to me that the majority of those that came to the USSF left it with very much enthusiasm. But I would like to make a comment about something that, from my point of view, can have a negative effect on the continuation of the process. I saw reports that there was a final resolution that participants at the USSF were called upon to endorse. As this type of resolution or proposition tends to appear in many Forums, it would be perhaps useful to deepen this question. Its with the same preoccupation with the future, I would also like in this paper to indicate some new possibilities that are emerging in relation to the activities to be organized in connection with the 2008 Global Day of Action.

Final Declarations The question of final declarations or resolutions is not new in the WSF process. It accompanied the process since its beginning, in the discussion of how to ensure its character of space facilitating the emergence and articulation of as many as possible actions to change the world, and, at the same time, how to facilitate and deepen the engagement of the Forum’s participants in the actions and articulations proposed in it. Some participants consider that to ensure the engagement in actions, the Social Forum process should have a political mobilizing program, defined in a final declaration of each meeting, as an all activists’ meetings

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or assemblies. This preoccupation increases naturally as the time passes and as we do not see how our process is effectively changing the world. Many of us become impatient. Many of us become more and more anxious to obtain results, in the struggle to defeat those who – calmly or violently – impose injustices. Many of us think that we cannot only organize more and more meetings but we must do more to increase our own power in the face of the enormous dominating power. Others, like myself, think that the Social Forums are not this power but only spaces – open spaces – that facilitate the building of this power. The power to change things will be the one of the organizations and movements of the society. This position is that the Forums must function as big nests making possible interrelations and articulations among our many organizations and movements, in mutual respect of their diversity. This common space would make possible the appearance of new ideas, propositions and convergences, overcoming the sectoral limits and the local or national dimensions of the struggles, reaching to the planetary level. Such propositions should gain as soon as possible their own dynamics and force, and an autonomy liberated from the dependence of the place (the nest) where they appeared. In this perspective, this space – continuously at the disposition of those wanting to reinforce their own actions, or those wanting to come again to the nest to evaluate what is happening and build new alliances – must host as many propositions as possible, diversified in colors and sizes, as the struggles for a new world must be multiple and diversified, and grow at all levels of complexity and aims. Proposals of final declarations of the Forums – wished by those preoccupied with results, saying definitely what must be done – appear sometimes as an initiative of respected intellectuals, whose analysis prove to them that we know already how to change the world or, more frequently, as an initiative of important social movements, in meetings called Social Movements Assembly – or People’s Assembly, as it happened in Atlanta. All networks or social organizations can do such final meetings in the Forums, to close their discussions with decisions about the continuity of their struggles. It is even desirable. The problem is when some – like the Social Movements Assembly – are organized as the only one on the last day or immediately after its end. According to the principle of relational horizontality – one of the main characteristics of the Forums’ organization – all initiatives, propositions and declarations of the participants have the same importance. But if one of the assemblies has the privilege of being the only one at is final day, it

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appears necessarily as a final activity of the entire Forum, or its most important assembly, where final decisions will be adopted by all participants, that is to say, as the Social Forum’s final declaration. That is effectively how the Social Movements Assembly declaration is understood specially by the media, in spite of the WSF Charter of Principles. This Charter forcefully rejects final declarations exactly to avoid the possibility of synthesizing the Forums’ discussions and interchanges in some necessarily limited conclusions, or to put the rich diversity of the participants action under some specific banners.

The Movement to Action In fact those proposing such “final” declarations are calling – their declarations are usually named “calls” – all the participants of the Forums to engage themselves in the action they propose. When this occurs, we run the risk of seeing fewer and fewer initiatives coming to light, as well as fewer and fewer people attracted to the Forums, because people do not want to be obliged to participate in actions with which they don’t agree necessarily or completely. This is the result of advancing actions by hijacking the nest. It would be a pity if we made our diversity disappear or our mutual help be destroyed, or our mutual reinforcement be destroyed, or our nest to be destroyed, exactly when we begin to be understood – from the end of the last century – that many of us were too isolated in our struggles and now can be reinforced if we unite with others. The real question to be solved is how to ensure open spaces to meet – the Forums – and, at the same time, in parallel, how to engage and articulate with those who are ready to continue their action or begin new ones after leaving the Forums. The methodology adopted in the Nairobi WSF intended to answer this question, making possible the interchange in the first three days to sit together the fourth day – in as many as possible small or big meetings – to plan the actions that were discussed and proposed earlier. This method gave some results but not sufficient results, with some probable positive exceptions. We had many “planning” workshops in the morning and more than twenty plenaries in the afternoon, but in the plenaries people could only be informed about what was planned in the morning, with less possibility to engage themselves in other proposals, and not even to eventually combine actions. The final Social Movements Assembly took place also at the end of the Nairobi Forum. But independently of its being or its not being considered, the Social Forum final assembly, it seems that it was not a good solution to

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the problem we must solve. In a discussion list about the WSF this text of Stellan Vinthagen,1 referring to the Social Movements Assembly held in Nairobi, shows clearly that we must think a little more about the method used in any assembly or plenary: . . . That proposal of statement is read and after that a “debate” on the statement is opened with the opportunity of making changes. Within minutes the line of people who wanted to speak in Nairobi was filled and the interventions were very loosely connected to the statement. Mostly it was a line of monologues, announcements, antineoliberal speeches, congratulations on various struggles in the world, salutes of slumdwellers in Nairobi and of the successful WSF in Kenya, etc . . . It was not bad in itself, but it wasn’t a political debate about how to do global action campaigns or build a strategy for the movement of movements. As time passed, less and less peopled stayed on, and at the end of it, the chair of the meeting announced in front of the couple of hundreds that where left that the statement was adopted . . .

Ideas for the 2008 Global Day of Action The call for this Day of Action states:2 We are millions of women and men, organisations, networks, movements, trade unions from all parts of the world; we come from villages, regions, rural zones, urban centres; we are of all ages, peoples, cultures, beliefs, but we are united by the strong conviction that ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE With all the richness of our plurality and diversity and our alternatives and proposals, we struggle against neo-liberalism, war, colonialism, racism and patriarchy which produce violence, exploitation, exclusion, poverty, hunger and ecological disaster and deprive people of human rights. We commit ourselves to a week of action which will culminate in a Global Day of Mobilisation and Action on January 26, 2008. With our diversity which is our strength, we invite all men and women to undertake throughout this week creative actions, activities, events and convergences focusing on the issues and expressed in the ways they choose.

There are already plenty of ideas about the activities to be realized on 26th January 2008, in the frame of the Global Day of Action: regional and local forums, festivals, music and theater spectacles, protest marches, etc. 1

Activist-scholar from War Resisters International and School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. 2 seew ww.wsf2008.net.

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The proposal of linking each of these activities with others in other continents, can also create a dense web of relations, all over the world, of people fighting to overcome the present neoliberal domination. One idea is being developed in Brazil that could create the possibility of participation for many people, opening also perspectives for the future: the organization of “fairs of actions to change the world”. The fairs are based in the practice of the stalls that tend to be used in all Forums, where the organizations and movements show what they are doing and answer to questions about their actions, as well as disseminate written information about them. The potentiality of these stalls to facilitate intercommunication among Forum participants, more directly and freely than in the workshop discussions or conferences, were made clear by the organizers of the 2007 Melbourne Social Forum, in Australia, calling people to use stalls in the Forum: In previous years the stalls have been a highlight and we’d like to have a great array of stalls run by Melbourne’s activist community again this year. Stalls are a great way of having a presence at the event: to share knowledge with people, to sell your progressive goods, to find volunteers and interested people, and to let the community know about the important work your organisation is doing. It is (. . .) a great opportunity for some exposure for your group.

In this perspective, such a fair as a one-day event is easier to organize than a local social forum, in every little city or every region of bigger cities. All movements and organizations that are working for “another world” can be identified and invited, becoming then better known by the others and interchanging knowledge, experiences and information more easily than in Forums. Markets for the solidarity economy can be organized, as well as innovative experiences of social money. And new action articulations can born as in the Forums. Combined with spectacles of music or dance or even theater groups, the fair can also attract the population, making it possible to disseminate more widely the WSF message. This type of event could be then organized every year, at the date of the Social Forums at the world level, becoming a local tradition. And it would be possible also to use the internet so that the participants of the fair could follow what is being discussed, what is happening and what is being proposed worldwide, opening the possibility of a genuine world campaign andw orldwidesoci alF orum.

PART III BRIDGING ACTIVISM AND ACADEMICS

CHAPTER 10

Reformist Reforms, Non-Reformist Reforms and Global Justice: Activist, NGO and Intellectual Challenges in the World Social Forum1 Patrick Bond To fight for alternative solutions and for structural reforms (that is to say, for intermediate objectives) is not to fight for improvements in the capitalist system; it is rather to break it up, to restrict it, to create counter-powers which, instead of creating a new equilibrium, undermine its very foundations. AndreG orz, Strategy for Labor 2

Introduction: ‘Foreign Policy Bottom Up’ In South Africa, the merits of the World Social Forum (WSF) have been the subject of fierce debate. The difficulty experienced in establishing a national affiliated social forum is just one reflection of ongoing strategic conflict. The ‘Social Movements Indaba’ network, established in 2002, is the 1 This article was partially presented as the author’s inaugural professorial lecture in October 2007. Thanks are due staff/associates at CCS as well as other audiences who provided excellent feedback. Research and an initial presentation were supported by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the Korean Research Foundation through its project with the Gyeongsang University Institute for Social Studies (KRF2005-005-J00201). Other publications with background arguments to this analysis include Bond 2005a on decommodification and deglobalization strategies; Bond 2005b and Bond 2007 on the promises and pitfalls of the World Social Forum as of early 2005 and mid2007 respectively; Bond 2006a on civil society mobilizations; Bond 2006b on problems with Millennium Development Goal campaigning; and Bond 2006c on the fruitless search for global governance reforms. 2 Gorz1964.

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closest to a gathering of independent left organizations approximating the WSF, and meets annually. Unfortunately, several logical constituencies – organized labor, churches and health activists (in the Treatment Action Campaign) – have not been attracted to joining the Indaba, because its leading groups explicitly reject work within the ruling African National Congress and its Alliance with the Congress of SA Trade Unions and the SA Communist Party. Meanwhile a few South African scholars are actively involved in WSF monitoring (most notably University of the Witwatersrand sociologist Jackie Cock). There are also several popular education institutes for progressive internationalist politics that contribute to the WSF, including Khanya College in Johannesburg, the Alternative Information and Development Centre and the International Labor Research and Information Group in Cape Town and in Durban, the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. To elaborate on the latter (which I direct), CCS was established in mid-2001 with a primarily national focus. But from the outset, that mandate changed. Global networks are now crucial to CCS work, mainly because progressive actors in South African civil society themselves began not just thinking globally and acting locally, but also acting globally. Who can forget the new century’s initial global-focused protest, in August 2001 at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, where more than 10,000 people marched against the UN because of the conference’s shortcomings in relation to both Zionism and reparations for slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and apartheid. Exactly a year later, activists again targeted the UN, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. South African civil society organizations witnessed elite managerial shortcomings for addressing poverty and environmental crises, and again demonstrated – bringing out 30,000 protesters – during a 12 km march from Alexandra township to the Sandton financial district. Over the subsequent two years, tens of thousands of civil society protesters attacked the Bush and Blair governments for their invasion of Iraq. Much earlier, of course, civil society forces addressed the many ways that global injustices affect local organizing, here and everywhere. Beyond the highest-profile 19th and 20th century internationalist campaigns – anti-slavery, the Spanish Civil War, anti-colonial solidarity (especially for Vietnam but also much of Southern Africa) – we began to understand how globalization compelled globally-coherent opposition, in the spirit of Karl

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Polanyi’s ‘double movement’. By the late 1990s, one of the main manifestations of neoliberalism in the Third World – two decades of ‘IMF Riots’, i.e., short, sharp reactions by oppressed people to international economic pressures – began transforming into mass opposition parties and movements. Most famously, on 1 January 1994, the Zapatista movement spoke from an obscure region of southeastern Mexico about the suffering of Third World people when ‘neoliberalism’ (free market economic policies) accompanies longstanding political repression. The Zapatista guerrillas, peasants, liberation theologians and intellectuals successfully melded indigenous people’s militancy and highly effective use of communication technologies. The result was widespread international resonance with Zapatismo’s critique of the architectures of global power, making the people of Chiapas emblems of something much larger. At the end of 1999, the Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization was another critical rupture, putting elites everywhere on notice that democracy’s global-scale deficits were no longer immune to society’s critical gaze. In Durban, at the same moment, what initially appeared as a purely municipal matter exploded into national and global consciousness: service delivery demonstrations. Today, these mark South Africa as the world’s most protest-rich country, per capita. In 1999, investigations by the Durban Concerned Citizens Forum – headed by UKZN sociology professor emeritus Fatima Meer – into Chatsworth community grievances led to sustained mobilizations, analyzed by Ashwin Desai in his pathbreaking book We Are the Poors.3 The problems were soon articulated by grassroots activists in not merely local, but also national and also international terms. The education of Chatsworth and Durban as a whole culminated in a series of physical and court battles between the community and the municipality in early 2000 over evictions and water/electricity disconnections. (In 2007, Chatworth’s Crossmoor community has taken center stage in resisting shack settlement evictions.) In April 2000, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund held their spring meetings in Washington and ‘two Trevors’ – SA finance minister Manuel chairing the Board of Governors and Soweto community leader Ngwane teaching 30 000 people to toyi-toyi in protest – were filmed by Ben Cashdan for SABC’s Special Assignment (the film, Two Trevors go to Washington, is still a cult classic in the global justice community).4 The 3 4

Desai2002. Available on the DVD set CCS WIRED, or from the filmmaker: [email protected].

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Jubilee SA movement that had begun a couple of years earlier moved to centre stage by bringing up the problem of apartheid debt, and the demand for reparations. (In 2003, at the bequest of US secretary of state Colin Powell, Mbeki’s government sided with US corporations against Jubilee and the Khulumani Support Group in the New York courts. Though this led to the defeat of the reparations lawsuit, four years later, on appeal, a higher court ruled that the legal process should continue notwithstanding Pretoria’s sustained opposition.) At the same time, president Mbeki unveiled himself as a dissident/denialist on AIDS, and the Treatment Action Campaign rose above fierce stigmatization and repression to humiliate him at the June 2000 international AIDS conference in Durban (TAC’s comrades in ACT UP had done so a year earlier against a campaigning Al Gore, who until several protests changed his calculus, took millions from Big Pharma). The next month in Johannesburg, an international ‘Urban Futures’ conference sponsored by Wits University and the municipality – both facing intense protest by workers – allowed the newly-formed Anti-Privatization Forum to flower, for the conference acted as a magnet of unity against commodified education and municipal services. By 2001 the APF was waging war against the French company Suez, which by 2006 had had enough and left its once lucrative Johannesburg contract. A Free Burma Campaign and Palestinian Support Committee also gathered strength during this period, with periodic protests at the Myanmar and Israeli embassies, often targeting South African hypocrisy for ongoing official relations with the two regimes. By 2007, when Pretoria authorized a UN Security Council vote in the Myanmar junta’s favor, widespread national disgust was expressed, and later in the year, Gary Player was kicked out of Nelson Mandela’s honorary golf tournament because he had designed a golf course in Burma (consistent with his previous pro-apartheid activities). Environmental campaigning also developed during the late 1990s, as the post-apartheid government’s ecological stewardship proved worse than apartheid’s, i.e., more favorable to profits over people and planet. In nearly every category of threats to ecology – natural and social – this is well enough documented by even the government’s own statistics. Some of the internationalist networks that emerged to fight state and capital focused specifically upon hazardous chemicals (Thor mercury), occupational safety and health (especially asbestosis), nuclear energy, incineration, timber plantations and the petroleum industry. In Durban, by the mid-2000s, some of the strongest civil society linkages and solidarity relations were

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being forged by communities struggling with oil (South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and groundWork, e.g. with Nigerian and Ecuadorian anti-petroleum activists) and other toxins, and fighting carbon trading (Durban Group for Climate Justice). Other Durban organizations with international allies include the famous street traders of whom more than 500 were arrested by rigid municipal police over petty by-law violations on a single day in June 2007 (one vehicle was the NGO Streetnet); shackdwellers (the highest profile of whom, in Abahlali baseMjondolo, had marches and protests regularly banned or repressed); municipal services activists (Chatsworth); fisherfolk subject to forced removal from the city’s vast port in part due to US anti-terrorist provisions; and university academics (here at UKZN a 9-day strike in 2006 and ongoing freedom of expression issues receive global media coverage). Durban activists with connections to global networks also helped establish a strong critique of Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development, which had a high-profile airing (and protest) at the launch of the African Union at the Durban International Convention Centre in mid-2002. Four years later at the same location, the International Sociological Association met many of the same organic intellectuals who interacted with academics at the organization’s quadrennial congress, witnessing Desai’s Wolpe lecture referred to below. South African trade unions also regularly protested injustices on the regional and international stages, especially giving much-needed support to democratic and labor forces in Zimbabwe and Swaziland (the Mbeki government was partial to both repressive regimes). This was not necessarily easy during a period of rising working-class xenophobia and populist yellow-peril campaigning against East Asian goods. Labor internationalism was uneven, for during the late 1990s and early 2000s, some sections of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) also mistakenly endorsed the failed, protectionist ‘Social Clause’ concept within the framework of myopic World Trade Organization reform, and occasionally issues myopic global governance proposals. But generally Cosatu has maintained a progressive internationalist approach, finding common cause with oppressed peoples. Moreover, Cosatu and the SA Community Party regularly offer strong moral support to the Cuban, Bolivian and Venezuelan governments. These are just examples – not a comprehensive list – of how, dating to the turn of the 21st century, a ‘foreign policy bottom-up’ was established by progressive South Africans under difficult conditions. It is a most impressive group of social forces that call on their global-justice compatriots for

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assistance, as did the anti-apartheid movement to achieve sanctions, sports boycotts and solidaristic funding from the 1950s-1990s. One obvious point that unites many of the cases above, which we consider next, is the middle-class basis for many initial appeals to internationalist solidarity, as workers in NGOs (and to some extent universities) fire up the internet ether and make connections that in turn relate many of the base movements to each other in sectoral gatherings at sites like the WSF. But precisely that power and capacity require serious scrutiny so that they are not misused, as discussed below. In some ways, the Mbeki government’s ‘talk left’ strategy – raising Third World nationalist and even anti-imperialist grievances in speeches at major multilateral fora – has made solidarity more difficult (because like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe he has occasionally persuaded observers his rhetoric may match reality). But the ‘walk right’ that invariably followed outraged and mobilized activists every few months, and unveiled to the world’s progressive activists how important it is to counter the South African ruling party’s actual deeds. The main missing process for these activists would have been a unifying agenda, in which a process such as the WSF – beginning in Porto Alegre in January 2001, continuing through to an Africa meeting in Nairobi in 2007 – allowed many here and across the Third World to compare notes and develop strategy, sector-by-sector (for example, the 15 February 2003 antiwar mobilizations). We can return to this point to conclude. However, before considering South African debates about a unifying WSF political program, CCS associates repeatedly ask whether those forces in global civil society striving for social justice have adopted appropriate analysis, strategies, tactics and alliances. Often we answer in the negative, as we assess the extent of democratization in the movements and whether they have put sufficient efforts into achieving ‘non-reformist reforms’, to borrow the distinction made by the late Andre Gorz in his 1964 book Strategy for Labor, as opposed to the ‘reformist reforms’ that are easier to justify to funders and mainstream allies but which do damage instead of good to the cause of social justice. (The latter include the Millennium Development Goals and Make Poverty History campaigns which adopt many of the presumptions of neoliberalism.) To demonstrate this, we can review some autocritical aspects of praxis – as progressive intellectuals and NGO strategists work with social movements (and their organic intellectuals) in struggles to shape the world – that appear relevant in our circuits today. With that as the base, we can briefly

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summarize the case against that group of world elites within political society who have entrusted themselves with the duty of global-scale reform, before considering the most recent round of failed reforms, some of which NGOs have uncritically joined. It is only after these exercises that a more durable approach to global social justice can be identified, mainly in the WSF.

Intellectuals and NGOs in the Movement One issue discussed in detail at the Nairobi WSF in a vigorous Sociologists Without Borders5 panel is how to line up the resources of formal academics properly within a social change agenda, to complement rather than negate progressive civil society experiences. This is rarely straightforward. Reflecting on CCS’s own errors, scholar-activist Ashwin Desai expressed concern at the International Sociological Association meeting in 2006, when discussing work with social movements that are militant and well rooted within poor communities. Ironically, the most visible of these movements are known not because of their militant interventions but because they have attracted to them supporters from a largely middle-class background who have broadly left-wing political commitments. In a phrase, they have attracted ‘activists’ who seek to come in from the bitter cold of the post-apartheid struggle landscape to the new fires that are burning in communities. These activists bring a range of important skills, perspectives and, most of all, resources to assist in the development, representation and generalization of these struggles. Celebratory academic papers are produced, books and newspaper articles are written, court cases fought, money for busses, meetings, rallies and T-shirts raised. Unfortunately, these activists also bring with them certain infectious political diseases. Sometimes they are out to recruit members for their ultra-left sect or political party. Other times, as NGO workers who need to justify their existence, they insert themselves into struggles that may be written up in the next funding proposal. Still other times, one finds ambitious academics keen to distinguish themselves by getting the inside research track on some or other exotic rebellion, whose nuances they are best placed to enlighten their fellows in the academy about, while ratcheting up publication kudos. And, then lastly, one has the somewhat dated, free-floating, professional revolutionaries who genuinely believe they have something to add to these struggles or, more accurately, that these struggles have something to add to the course of the battles they are already fighting. You see them attending marches, doing political education, writing letters and articles in the press or providing strategic advice to movements that often need assistance on the legal, logistical or financial fronts.

5

Sociologists without Borders: http://sociologistswithoutborders.org/.

164 It is hard to think of any social movement that has lasted longer than six-months in South Africa that does not have quite an impressive support crew made up of the kinds of people I have just described. It is quite startling, then, that while social movements have been studied to death, those outsiders who play such a powerful role have largely escaped serious scrutiny . . . The actual constituency to which even the most radical academics are beholden are not the Poors. Nor is it the singular middle-class. Rather it is the mass of them gathered in conferences, journals, e-mail lists, universities and other sites of the production of bourgeois knowledge.6

Such concerns are regularly posed by South African activists, in part because of the tendency by academics to patronize and romanticize poor people and their movements (I am as guilty as anyone). Shannon Walsh – who as a CCS scholar was very active with several shackdweller communities – has described ‘uncomfortable collaborations’ between petit-bourgeois intellectuals and social movements: Bertrand Russell traces the origins of the idea of a ‘superior virtue of the oppressed’ to a certain kind of paternalistic ideology developed by the Left during the French Revolution, remaining there ever since. The adulation for the oppressed, he argues, usually arrives via a hegemonic actor, one who may well be part of the subjugation of the very ‘oppressed’ he so admires . . . Russell is scathing in his analysis of how idealizing the oppressed is useful to the hegemonic classes, both to assuage guilt, but also to refuse the oppressed real power since it is their very subjection that makes them virtuous . . . Uncomfortable collaborations are one such space to see power at work in the everyday. To transform our notions of the Poor to active, desiring subjectivities means first to destroy the discourse that has been spun around them, yet also to acknowledge that without announcing it, many choose to mobilize these identities to stake claims for material, social and political gain from the state. This is part of how the friction between various forces can often open up the most unlikely spaces for change.7

Following Walsh, it is crucial for us all to more self-consciously assess from where the discourses we deploy emanate, particularly in view of the danger of paternalism. For internationalists concerned with strengthening ‘civil society’ ranging from grassroots movements to NGOs (the two particular types of groups I personally am most involved with), we have an important warning from Tanzanian legal scholar and political economist Issa Shivji: As Amilcar Cabral, one of the foremost leaders of the African liberation movement, put it in his Weapon of Theory, ‘every practice produces a theory, and that if it is true 6 7

Desai2006 . Walsh2 007.

165 that a revolution can fail even though it be based on perfectly conceived theories, nobody has yet made a successful revolution without a revolutionary theory’. What is interesting about that period [1960s–70s] is that the radical intellectual discourse was integrated with militant activism; the two were mutually reinforcing. The NGO discourse in the current period of apparent imperial ‘triumphalism’ eschews theory, emphasizes and privileges activism. In the African setting in particular, whatever is left of critical intellectual discourse, largely located at Universities, runs parallel to and is divorced from NGO activism. The requirements of funding agencies subtly discourage, if not exhibit outright hostility, to a historical and social theoretical understanding of development, poverty, discrimination etc. Our erstwhile benefactors now tell us, ‘just act, don’t think’ and we shall fund both!8

Mike Davis has amplified the critique and applied it especially to urban NGOs in Third World cities, including those associated with World Bank projects.9 In the same spirit, James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer criticize NGO cadre who fail to properly address global power, for importing neoliberal precepts into social movements, dressing them up in the language of participation and consultation: The effects of structural adjustment programmes and other [global] interventions have the potential of causing popular discontent. That is where the NGO’s play an important function. They deflect popular discontent away from the powerful [global] institutions towards local micro-projects, apolitical ‘grass roots’ self-exploitation and ‘popular education’ that avoids class analysis of imperialism and capitalism. On the one hand they criticize dictatorships and human rights violations but on the other they compete with radical socio-political movements in an attempt to channel popular movements into collaborative relations with dominant neoliberal elites.10

The point to consider next, however, is that this Northern-influenced NGO cadre has done very poorly in recent years.

From Reformist Reforms to Non-reformist Global Justice? For Naomi Klein, the period of global capitalist expansion since the 1970s is punctuated by crucial moments when, to quote Milton Friedman, advisor to Augusto Pinochet after the 9/11/73 coup, ‘only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change’. According to Klein: 8 9 10

Shivji2006. Davis2006. Petras and Veltmeyer 2002.

166 [Friedman’s pilot project] was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a ‘Chicago School’ revolution, as so many of Pinochet’s economists had studied under Friedman there. Friedman coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic ‘shock treatment’. In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or ‘shock therapy’, has been the method of choice.11

While the neoliberal project may have failed to meet its sponsors’ promises, particularly in joining market freedoms with political liberty, nevertheless there is not yet a replacement conceptual framework strong enough to reshape the world. One reason is that a crucial middle ground exists where it appears a ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ ideology gives some hope to those shocked by neoliberalism. The idea here is to fix ‘imperfect markets’, add ‘sustainable development’ to the existing capitalist framework via UN and similar multilateral state-building efforts, promote a degree of global Keynesianism and oppose US unilateralism and militarism. Aside from UN agencies, Post-Washington Consensus advocates include large international NGOs (e.g., Care, Civicus, IUCN, Oxfam, TI), large environmental groups (e.g., Sierra, the World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace and the World Conservation Union); big labour (e.g., ICTU and AFL-CIO), liberal foundations (Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, Mott, Open Society, Rockefeller); the Socialist International, and a few governments (Norway, Italy). There are high-profile intellectuals, NGO leaders and especially rock stars associated with this current (Nancy Birdsall, Bono, Bernard Cassen, Peter Eigen, Bob Geldof, Anthony Giddens, Will Hutton, Paul Krugman, Kumi Naidoo, Dani Rodrik, Jeffrey Sachs, Amartya Sen, Nick Stern, Joseph Stiglitz). But in recent years, global reforms promoted by the Post-Washington group have nearly invariably failed. Consider intra-elite battles decided mainly by the arrogance of the United States (US) and European Union (EU) in recent years:

11

Klein 2007. Her other examples include the Malvinas war of 1982 between Argentina and Britain, China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, Eastern Europe during the 1990s, 9/11/01, the war on Iraq, the December 2004 tsunami, the August 2005 Katrina hurricane, as well as the happy shock we suffered in South Africa when in removing racial apartheid, the local and global elites brought us a more economically unequal version of class apartheid.

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• in relation to geopolitical tension, the lack of peace settlements (or indeed prospects) in the Middle East, Gulf, central Asia, central Africa and the Horn of Africa, with a looming war involving the US, Iran and probably Israel and oft-predicted long-term inter-imperial conflicts between the US and China; • on United Nations democratization, the inability to expand the Security Council in recent heads-of-state summits, notwithstanding pressure from aspirant members Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa; • on trade, repeated delays in concluding the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations; • in international finance, ongoing contagion of turbulence (including bursting market bubbles, bankruptcies and volatile currencies), extremely high – and growing – current account deficits in the US and other countries (including South Africa), World Bank legitimacy crisis, worsening IMF financial deficits, and US/EU resistance to Bretton Woods reform as witnessed by the leadership appointments in 2007 of two men from the neoconservative/neoliberal power structure, Robert Zoellick (World Bank) and Dominique Strauss-Kahn (IMF); • environmentally, the failure of the EU and supportive Third World states to defend, much less expand the Kyoto Protocol, in part due to the ‘carbon trading’ distraction and in part due to the alternative alignment promoted by the US and Australian regimes, with Canada, China, India and South Africa joining, as large CO2/per capita emitters lacking commitment to change production structures (with respect to other global ecological management problems arising in freshwater, maritime resources, trade in toxics, species extinction and the like, there has been very little or no progress); and • an overall ‘global apartheid’ structure in terms of economics, political power, culture, public health and social services, through which most measures of inequality and genuine progress continue worsening, making mockery of the (already relatively unambitious) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).12 According to South African president Thabo Mbeki, speaking at the September 2007 UN heads of state summit,

12

www.redefiningprogress.org.

168 The cold reality is that it will be difficult for the UN in its present form fully to implement its own decisions and therefore help the poor achieve urgently the MDGs. Indeed, until the ideals of freedom, justice and equality characterize this premier world body, the dominant will forever dictate to the dominated and the interests of the dominated, which are those of the majority of humanity, would be deferred in perpetuity.13

Mbeki’s pessimism is a tangible reflection of the lowered expectations the world elite really has for ‘global governance’ and world-scale reforms. Already in 2004, regretted cosmopolitan democracy champion David Held, ‘The value of the UN system has been called into question, the legitimacy of the Security Council has been challenged, and the working practices of multilateral institutions have been eroded.’14 These latter three points of Held are, indeed, celebrated by critics of imperialism, and after the UN General Assembly endorsed the US occupation of Iraq in May 2003, Tariq Ali suggested, simply, ‘let it go the way of the League of Nations’.15 However, for many well-meaning intellectuals and NGO strategists, the danger of cooption has emerged in the so-called Post-Washington Consensus ideology, which often finds expression in campaigns such as the MDGs, Make Poverty History and the Global Call to Action against Poverty. These efforts rely for credibility upon minor advances within multilateral elite institutions. Activists associated with Post-Washington strategies are sometimes accused of promoting ‘reformist reforms’ which legitimize existing power structures, accumulation dynamics, and political processes, and which might also have the effect of demobilizing their own constituents by virtue of gaining a modicum of change on issues such as debt relief or aid promises.16 ‘Non-reformist reforms,’ in contrast, would open wide the doors for further contestation, would empower the movements not the system, and would identify areas of structural contradiction for more intense struggles ahead. Reformist reformers include Make Poverty History strategists, unveiled in the British press as under the influence of Gordon Brown’s office via the Oxfam/Treasury/World Bank revolving door.17 At the end of 2005, writers like Stuart Hodkinson, Noreena Hertz and Maxine Frith analyzed the fatal flaws of Make Poverty History. According to Frith, the problem was that 13 14 15 16 17

Mbeki20 07. Held 2004; rejoinders (including by me) can be found in Held 2005. Ali2003. Bond, Brutus, and Setshedi 2005. Quarmby2005.

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celebrities ‘hijacked’ the campaign.18 For Hertz, ‘We achieved next to nothing’ because ‘the campaign’s design allowed it to accept inappropriate markers for success that were never real proxies for justice, empowerment or accountability. And also because its demands were never in fact audacious enough.’19 Hodkinson was even more critical: By being too dependent on lobbying, celebrities and the media, by failing to give ownership of the campaign to southern hemisphere social movements, by watering down the demands agreed by grassroots movements at the World Social Forum, and by legitimizing the G8 summit, the campaign was doomed from the start.20

The idea was to provide relief from crushing debt loads, to double aid and to establish a ‘development round’ of trade. At best, partial critiques of imperial power emerged amidst the cacophony of all-white rock concerts and political grandstanding. At worst, polite public discourse tactfully avoided capital’s blustering violence, from Nigeria’s oil-soaked Delta to northeastern Congo’s gold mines to Botswana’s diamond finds to Sudan’s killing fields. Most of the London charity NGO strategies ensured that core issue areas – debt, aid, trade and investment – would be addressed in only the most superficial ways. By 2007, one of the main lobbyists, rock star Bob Geldof, finally became so frustrated that he called those attending the Heiligendamm G8 summit ‘creeps’ and their work a ‘total farce’.21 Instead, a brighter future lies with those establishing non-reformist strategies that reject neoliberal precepts. At CCS we have seen four positions on how to not just reject but propose an alternative political framework.22 The debate was stimulated in July 2006 by the presence of Samir Amin, who was the key promoter of the ‘Bamako Appeal’, a document drafted five months earlier at the WSF in order to fuse socialism, antiracism/colonialism, and (national) development. The second position was an argument about ‘Why Bamako does not appeal’ by four CCS associates: Franco Barchiesi, Heinrich Bohmke, Prishani Naidoo and Ahmed Veriava. They accused the Appeal and the WSF of degenerating “into an organized network of experts, academics and NGO practitioners . . . The

18 19 20 21 22

Frith2005. Hertz2005. Hodkinson2005. Blair2007. Details can be found in Sen and Kumar 2007.

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WSF elite’s cold institutional and technicist soup, occasionally warmed up by some hints of tired poeticism, can provide little nourishment for local subjectivities whose daily responses to neoliberalism face more urgent needs to turn everyday survival into sustained confrontations with an increasingly repressive state.” Third, another very strong tradition in the WSF is represented especially by the International Socialist tendency and Fourth International strand of Trotskyism, which see their role in the Forum movement as establishing socialist consciousness and cadre (as CCS associate Ngwane argues is needed). A fourth position (which I am partial to) seeks the 21st century’s anticapitalist ‘manifesto’ in the existing social, labor and environmental movements already engaged in excellent transnational social justice struggles. The WSF’s greatest potential – so far unrealized – is the possibility of linking dozens of radical movements in various sectors. One of their struggles, the liberation of AIDS medicines from tyrannical monopoly patents which had previously prevented their consumption by poor people, has been sufficiently successful to claim both ‘decommodification’ and ‘deglobalization’ (of capital): these medicines are now free to low-income South Africans getting public health services (where those do exist) and are being produced by generic drug companies in several African sites. There are many other examples drawn from some of the finest networks of social justice activists presently active, in fields such as land (Via Campesino), healthcare (International Peoples Health Movement), free schooling (Global Campaign for Education), water (the People’s World Water Forum), energy/ climate change (the Durban Declaration), debt (Jubilee South), and trade (Our World is Not for Sale). The point, for those of us fortunate to study these movements, is not reification of everything poor people and their advocates do, especially given the kinds of conflicts – often unnecessarily ugly – that we in South Africa have seen emerge between advocates of the four political strategies suggested above. But it is to acknowledge that activists are driving the research forward in a manner that tells us more about the world than any other method, namely praxis in a non-reformist fashion. It behooves us to learn from their victories and failures, to both honor and lovingly criticize these comrades, if we want the most strongly rooted global justice program possible.

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References Ali, T. 2003, ‘Business as Usual,’ The Guardian, 24 May 2003. Blair, D. 2007, ‘Geldof and Bono Blast G8 for Betraying Africa’, Telegraph, 9 June. Bond, P. 2005a, ‘Globalisation/Commodification or Deglobalisation/Decommodification in Urban South Africa’, Policy Studies, 26, 3: 337–358. Bond, P. 2005b, ‘Gramsci, Polanyi and Impressions from Africa on the Social Forum Phenomenon’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29, 2: 433–440. Bond, P. 2006a, ‘Civil Society on Global Governance: Facing up to Divergent Analysis, Strategy and Tactics’, Voluntas, 17, 4: 359–371. Bond, P. 2006b, ‘Global Governance Campaigning and MDGs: From Top-down to Bottom-up Anti-poverty Work’, Third World Quarterly, 27, 2: 339–354. Bond, P. 2006c, Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reforms, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Bond, P. 2007, ‘Linking Below, Across and Against: World Social Forum Weaknesses, Global Governance Gaps, and the Global Justice Movement’s Strategic Dilemmas’, Development Dialogue, 49 : 83–98. Bond, P., D. Brutus, and V. Setshedi 2005, ‘Are Mainstream NGOs Failing Africa?’, ZNet Commentary, 21 June; and ‘When Wearing White Is Not Chic, and Collaboration Not Cool’, Foreign Policy in Focus, 17 June. Davis, M. 2006, Planet of Slums, London: Verso. Desai, A. 2002, We Are the Poors, New York: Monthly Review Press. Desai, A. 2006, ‘Vans, Autos, Kombis and the Drivers of Social Movements’, Harold Wolpe Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society and International Sociological Association, Durban, 28 July. Frith, M. 2005, ‘Celebrities “Hijacked” Poverty Campaign, Say Furious Charities’, The Independent, 27 December. Gorz, A. 1964, A Strategy for Labor, Boston: Beacon Press. Held, D. 2004 ‘Globalization: The Dangers and the Answers’, openDemocracy, www. opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/article_1918.jsp. Held, D. 2005, Debating Globalization, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hertz, N. 2005, ‘We Achieved Next to Nothing’, New Statesman, 12 December. Hodkinson, S. 2005, ‘G8, Africa Nil’, Red Pepper, 27 October. Klein, N. 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, London: Penguin. Mbeki, T. 2007, ‘Address by President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the 62nd session of the United Nations’ General Assembly’, New York, 25 September, http://www. info.gov.za/speeches/2007/07092610451002.htm. Petras, J. and H. Veltmeyer 2002, Globalization Unmasked, London: Zed Books. Quarmby, K. 2005, ‘Is Oxfam Failing Africa?’, New Statesman, 30 May. Sen, J. and M. Kumar 2007, A Political Programme for the World Social Forum? Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements, New Delhi, Institute for Critical Action – Centre in Movement and Durban, Centre for Civil Society, http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/CACIM%20CCS%20WSF%20Politics.pdf.

172 Shivji, I. 2006, ‘The Silences in the NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa’, Keynote Paper presented to the Symposium on NGOs, Arusha, Tanzania, 28 November. Walsh, S. 2007, ‘Uncomfortable Collaborations: Contesting Constructions of the Poor in South Africa’, Paper presented to the SANPAD Poverty Challenge Conference, Durban, 27 June.

CHAPTER 11

Feminists and the Forum: Is It Worth the Effort?1 Lyndi Hewitt

In January of 2004 I attended my first World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, and my experience there was transformative in ways that I never could have predicted. I traveled to the Forum seeking insight into the direction of transnational feminist activism, and upon my return felt inspired both intellectually and emotionally by the critical analysis and the vibrant energy I encountered there. Since that time I have been listening and learning, observing the questions, visions, and challenges of women’s and feminist activism in transnational spaces, all the while seeking ways that academic research might strengthen women’s movements for social justice. In this paper, I engage in critical methodological reflection and empirical analysis as equally but differently important endeavors that I hope will be useful for movement activists situated in a variety of settings, including the academy. In the first section, I attempt to make visible the ways in which my commitment to feminist research influences my scholarly practice, including the development of my question, the gathering of my data, and the interpretation of my findings. I reflect explicitly on the methodological challenges of scholar-activism, and highlight several tenets of feminist methodology that bear particular importance for scholar-activists participating in and researching the social forum process. I then discuss my methodological approach and articulate the importance of the central research question I seek to address: What is the Forum able to achieve for women? In the second portion of the paper, I lay out my analysis of this

1

Generous funding from the Center for Ethics at Vanderbilt University has supported this research. Thanks also to Brooke Ackerly, Marina Karides, and Sonalini Sapra for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of the paper.

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question. I consider the benefits and drawbacks of the social forum as a political space for women’s and feminist movements. I propose that there are reasons to be both skeptical of and optimistic about the Forum’s utility for advancing the agendas of feminists working transnationally, and ultimately I argue that activists for women’s rights should recognize the particular limits and advantages of the social forum process and space in order to elicit the greatest benefit from their participation in it. I conclude by sharing suggestions with the intention of enhancing the work of our community of scholar-activists researching and participating in the social forum process.

Methodological Reflections on Scholar-Activism I am acutely aware of my limited vision and of the perils of engaging in an analysis of transnational feminist activism from my position as a white, western, middle-class woman situated in the academy.2 This tension and discomfort leads me to ponder explicitly the crucial importance of ethical research practices as I study the social forum process and the activists who participate in it. Therefore, I feel compelled to highlight a particular methodological concern that may resonate with other scholar-activists. The space, process, and people of the Forum have increasingly become subjects of scholarly inquiry as more and more academics have been made aware of its existence. As this global space reaches scholar-saturation, we must be especially careful of where we are looking, of what we are able to see from our particular social locations, and of how we interpret what we see. Even multiple accounts or perspectives will fall short of telling a “whole” story. Critical and feminist methodologists continually remind us of this point,3 and as a feminist scholar committed to ethical and politically fruitful research, I take their cautions seriously. Feminist methodology can guide us in seeking such goals, particularly because it requires of its practitioners a vehement commitment to selfcritique. One’s own commitment to reflexivity must be augmented by a knowledge of past critiques (from scholars and activists), and an inten-

2

Maiguashca 2006 voices similar reservations about her research on feminist antiglobalization activism. Like her, I take seriously the epistemological and methodological critiques of postcolonial feminists (e.g., Mohanty 1988). 3 Haraway 1988; Harding 1987; Mohanty 2003; Sprague 2005; Tuhiwai Smith 1999.

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tional searching out of new critiques. An incorporation of those criticisms necessarily improves the quality of the work, and in so doing the possibility that it can contribute to positive social change. Activist scholarship must be dynamic; it must be produced in community with other scholars and activists to promote deliberative inquiry and reflexivity. DeVault offers a particularly appropriate characterization of the uniqueness of feminist methodology that touches on this point: I mean to suggest that it [feminist methodology] must always have an open and ‘provisional’ character, (Mohanty 1991: 15), but that it is nonetheless a ‘strikingly cumulative’ (Reinharz 1992: 246) discourse, held together by core commitments to addressing particular problems in the standard practice of social research and by a common history of learning through activism that provides much of its energy and insight.4

Some scholar-activists have provided specific models of research that are helpful in promoting reflexivity and successful activist scholarship. One example is Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999). Tuhiwai Smith is critical of the imperialist character of much of the western research on indigenous peoples. She shares Maori “guidelines” for researchers, which include principles such as: a respect for people, face to face representation, being generous and cautious, and not flaunting knowledge.5 Ackerly has also suggested multiple strategies for scholar-activists.6 She emphasizes the recognition of valuable theoretical insights of activists, and consistently gives activists authorial credit for the theories she distills from their insights. She also offers a number of concrete suggestions for researchers interested in forming partnerships with activists, including the development of research agendas and questions in concert with activists, and making the product(s) of the research more accessible to activists (possibly via listservs or other media).7 These types of collaborative relationships among researchers and activists, though certainly more difficult to achieve, tend to prove more beneficial in tangible ways, and go even further toward preventing the sorts of exploitative practices critical scholaractivists strive to avoid. Such principles of critical and feminist methodology are never far from my mind as I engage in research, but there is nothing quite as powerful 4 5 6 7

DeVault 1996, p. 34, italics mine. Tuhiwai Smith 1999, p. 120. Ackerly2000. Ackerly2007.

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as a personal experience to drive home the point. A few months ago, I participated in the US Social Forum in Atlanta. I was there in multiple capacities – student/learner, researcher, and organizer. I co-organized a session there and, for a few short hours, I removed my “researcher” hat completely and went into participant mode. The group that I work with at my university, the Global Feminisms Collaborative, had planned our workshop on the theme of community-university partnerships.8 Not surprisingly, we were not the only participant-observers at the US Social Forum, and as it happened there was a researcher from another institution in the room for our session. I speculated that this researcher’s questions and comments in our workshop were shaped not just by her personal interest, but by her goals as a researcher. Some of our community partners had joined us for the workshop, and in that moment our purpose was not about research, but about sharing what we were doing and what we had learned. I found that I began feeling a little protective of our project, and even somewhat suspicious, even resentful, of the researcher’s “agenda” and her interpretation of us. My feelings were at least partially validated when a colleague of mine later stumbled upon the researcher’s notes online, and I saw in those notes what I viewed to be an at-best incomplete, and at-worst inaccurate account of our group’s session at the social forum. In the days that followed I reflected more critically, and I recognized myself in this researcher. In all the activist meetings, workshops and protests in which I participate, I uncomfortably straddle the fence between scholar and activist. In a given meeting, I might shift perspectives multiple times; part of the time I will be listening, questioning, and commenting with my own research goals in mind, while at other points I engage the discussion solely with movement goals in mind. That brief moment of inhabiting the role of research subject illuminated for me a perspective to which I would not otherwise be privy. It gave me the occasion to reflect on the risk of interpretation, and on the importance of ethical research practice. If I felt “vulnerable” in this situation, how much more vulnerable might an activist feel who risks a job or organizational funding in cooperating with or being misrepresented by a researcher?9

8

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/gfc/USSF. In cooperating with researchers, some activists may risk their credibility in their own communities, their economic livelihood, or even their political security.

9

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Methodological Approach Equipped with the tools of feminist methodology, and newly influenced by the lessons of this salient personal experience, I seek to construct an analysis of the utility of the social forum for transnational feminist activism. Questions about the utility of the Forum have emerged not simply from my own intellectual curiosity, but rather from a political commitment to seeking ways that my research might address issues that are strategically important for women’s movements. I have never considered the topic of my research to be the World Social Forum, but rather women’s movements, and the WSF only insofar as it serves as a hub of feminist activism. Analyses of the costs and benefits of women’s participation in the Forum are largely absent from the landscape of activist scholarship, making such an endeavor timely, both intellectually and politically. In both developing and addressing these questions, I rely on multiple forms of evidence, primarily participant-observation at two World Social Forums (Mumbai 2004 and Nairobi 2007), the US Social Forum (Atlanta 2007), and one Feminist Dialogues meeting (Nairobi 2007). My experiences at activist gatherings have not only provided valuable insights toward answering my research questions, but in fact have motivated me to ask the research questions in the first place. This is a crucial point that I wish to emphasize, largely because researchers only rarely make transparent their motivations for asking particular questions. Each time I have participated in a social forum, I traveled with colleagues who were also engaging in feminist research. I have benefited enormously from the observations and insights they have shared with me, and I want to acknowledge explicitly their invaluable contributions to my thinking as I have developed my analysis. In addition to participant-observation at social forum events, I draw insights from semi-structured interviews and informal conversations10 with women’s rights activists, many of them organizational leaders; finally, I also incorporate existing research and writing on transnational women’s movements and the social forum. Through considering different kinds of data and their relevance to my questions, a broader range of perspectives influences my analysis. And although my reliance on multiple sources of data may still illuminate only a partial understanding, it may also help paint a more complex picture than would otherwise be possible. 10

Some of these conversations have taken place at a Forum, while others have taken place at organizational offices or in other personal settings.

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Emergence of a Feminist Research Question: What Does the Forum Do for Women? A number of feminist scholars and activists have written extensively on men’s domination of the World Social Forum, women’s disappointments in working to change the Forum, and more recently their successes in influencing it.11 Frequently, this work is produced by, or focuses on the efforts of, prominent feminist leaders and well-organized transnational networks such as Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM) and the World March of Women (WMW).12 Often implied in these feminist critiques of the WSF is that the social forum, and other global justice movements more generally, are themselves primary targets of women’s activism. Such accounts reflect the fact that feminists have devoted enormous energy not only to advancing women’s rights around the world, but also to influencing the structures of the Forum itself. If women’s movements had not begun to participate actively in organizing the Forum and demand that their voices be taken seriously, the Forum might have continued to neglect women’s concerns and struggles. Feminist international relations scholar Catherine Eschle notes that “. . . a feminist analysis was strongly evident in the official panels of the 2003 Forum only in those thematic areas organized by feminist groups. In short, the integration of feminist concerns into antiglobalization discourses remained dependent on the concrete presence of self-declared feminists.”13 Furthermore, many feminist activists accord great importance to the task of building alliances with other global justice movements in an attempt to ensure that they incorporate a gender perspective. This is evident both from my own experiences at the Forum and from feminist accounts of activism at the Forum. For instance, Fatma Aloo, board member of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), argued that the African feminist voice was stronger than ever at the 2007 WSF, but also noted that “we did not talk to the converted – we engaged with other groups that did not traditionally have a gender component in their work.”14 However, many activists also identify coalitionbuilding as one of the greatest challenges, often because of prejudices they

11 12 13 14

Conway 2007; Eschle 2005; Vargas 2005. Conway forthcoming; Vargas 2003. Eschle 2005, p. 1759. Geloo200 7.

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encounter in other movements,15 and because of a history of being exploited by other movements who are not explicitly feminist. A number of feminist leaders have expressed frustration at having provided support to other movements (e.g., trade unions) only to have their voices ignored when attempting to transform the patriarchal cultures of those movements, or when seeking reciprocal support for their own feminist campaigns.16 Since the first WSF in 2001, and in particular since Mumbai in 2004, women have devoted substantial energies to and made great strides in pushing a feminist agenda at the Forum.17 And while this continues to be a critical issue as feminists attempt to forge alliances with other global justice movements, it is not the only facet of the social forum that is worthy of feminist concern. In spite of the plethora of rich discussion and analysis of feminist influence on the social forum, the Forum’s role within women’s and feminist movements is understudied and discussed rather infrequently. The World Social Forum is commonly characterized as an “indispensable” space for transnational feminist activism,18 but the claim is rarely interrogated critically. In my conversations and interviews with feminist activists over the last few years, I have observed that feelings about the utility of the social forum actually range from staunchly supportive, to ambivalent, to downright dismissive. Thus, I argue that we must treat this issue as a serious research question. Instead of asking whether or not the Forum is “feminist-friendly,” or documenting women’s efforts to change it, I take up a related but different set of questions. I ask whether the social forum is a productive space for feminist activism. Are women’s groups able to come together to network, share strategies and visions, expand consciousness, etc.? Do they come away from the Forum with tangible results? Putting aside for a moment the goal of infusing global justice movements and the Forum with a feminist perspective, what are the benefits to feminists’ continued participation in the Forum? In short, is it worth the effort? Feminist movement organizations are asking themselves these same questions. In fact, Janet Conway reports that the World March of Women has had an ongoing debate about “whether to continue struggling over the 15

At the 2007 WSF in Nairobi, I noticed that LBT feminists, in particular, expressed this concern. 16 Mangalubnan-Zabala2004. 17 Conway 2007; Wilson 2007. 18 Alvarez et al. 2004; Conway 2007.

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organizational structures of the WSF or to simply exploit the spaces of the WSF as fully as possible.”19 Moreover, some organizations and activists appear to be leaving the Forum space altogether. Several of my colleagues and I have noticed that a number of feminists who were present at WSFs before and including Mumbai in 2004 chose not to attend subsequent social forums. This may be because, as some activists have suggested to us during informal conversations, they no longer deem the World Social Forum an effective use of their time and resources. In any case, it is vitally important that scholars and activists in women’s movements carefully consider whether participation in the social forum is, in fact, worth the enormous energy that it requires.

Skepticism of the Social Forum There are a number of convincing reasons to doubt the utility of the social forum for women’s and feminist movements. First, the Forum is, to a large degree, an elite and privileged transnational space.20 The resources required to travel to the Forum automatically exclude many under-resourced organizations and women who are poor, uneducated, or who must remain at home to care for family or land; thus, the issues most pressing to those women may never get to the table. Furthermore, even when smaller organizations are able to procure funding to send representatives to the WSF, it can be an enormous drain on organizational resources like money, time, and leadership. As anyone who has represented an organization at the Forum can tell you, the costs are truly multi-faceted. The preparation required is surprisingly time-consuming, especially for first-time participants, and the funds necessary for transportation, lodging, food, and workshop publicity are substantial. In committing to WSF participation, activists often must divert resources away from local efforts, thus risking their own organizational livelihood and success. Another criticism of the social forum process is that it emphasizes discourse over action. Although I have talked with a number of women who found the feminist events at the 2007 WSF stimulating and energizing, I 19

Conway 2007, p. 63. Desai 2005. At a 2007 WSF workshop entitled “Sponsorship, Scholarship, and Women’s Human Rights Activism: Building Bridges and Fostering New Leadership,” organized by the Global Feminisms Collaborative, Desai also argued that the Forum is a privileged transnational space.

20

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have also observed and talked with at least as many women who found the events disappointing in terms of conversations around concrete strategy. One South African activist struggled with the challenge of making feminism and its discourses accessible, relatable, and practical for the women with whom she works; she expressed great frustration with the amount of jargon used in the sessions, and was very skeptical that she would be able to return home with anything truly useful.21 Another South African activist in the LGBT community noted that she heard lots of talk that “Another World is Possible,” but was left feeling disenchanted with the lack of discussion of concrete tools and practical strategies to build that world.22 Another point to consider is that the feminist presence at the WSF is heavily shaped by well-networked leaders with substantial transnational organizing experience. These individuals and organizations deploy sharp, sophisticated critiques of global capital, fundamentalisms, and other sources of gender oppression, and they advocate tirelessly for women’s rights and the inclusion of a feminist perspective at the WSF. They tend to have wide communication networks, and are thus able to disseminate feminist discourses and information about their workshops more effectively than other groups. In many ways, these women are the faces of feminism at the WSF. An unintended consequence of this is that some women, especially grassroots activists, feel left out of the process. I observed a few women who commented that their issues were ignored in the mainstream feminist events at the Forum in Nairobi. Although issues such as democracy, fundamentalisms, and militarization received substantial attention, discussions of social and economic class, as well as environmental issues, were few and far between. Some women claimed that they felt more comfortable in events not organized by feminists because they talked about issues that resonated with them, and they did so without overusing academic language. The experiences of these women remind us that a concentration of feminist leadership at the WSF, even with rigorous critical analysis and efficient organizing, carries with it the risk of silencing voices and excluding activists with whom the “familiar” feminist discourses and issues do not necessarily resonate.

21

Anonymous interview conducted on 23 January 2007. This comment was shared at a workshop on sexual diversity sponsored by the LGBT South-South Dialogue on 24 January 2007. 22

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Finally, the social forum also tends to be an extremely lively and even chaotic space. No fewer than three organizational leaders have told me that they now choose not to attend the WSF because it just “too crazy” to get anything done.23 Similarly, some have criticized the WSF for its inability to be an “outcomes-oriented” space for women’s groups; because of the diverse set of experiences and perspectives, and because of the huge number of people and the short time period, the WSF is not conducive to hammering out consensus, resolutions, policy briefs, or campaign plans. Clearly, for some activists, this feature is problematic.24

Reasons for Hope Although the points I have articulated above are serious concerns, there are also compelling reasons indicating that the WSF has been and can continue to be a useful space and process for transnational feminist activism. In the wake of shrinking space for transnational dialogues, activists must exploit the opportunities available, and right now WSF is one of the only games in town. While the UN World Conferences and parallel NGO forums once provided consistent opportunities for face-to-face interaction, especially in the early 1990s, the UN is no longer hosting such conferences (and many women have become disillusioned with the UN structures anyway). The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) hosts a triennial forum that is widely recognized as an energizing and productive international gathering of feminist activists, but it only happens every three years, and cannot serve as the lone site of feminist collaboration.25 Therefore, the social forum is all the more important as a venue of transnational feminist organizing. Although I mentioned above the somewhat elite and exclusive nature of the Forum, it need not always be this way. Feminist organizers can learn from moments of success (e.g., vast local participation in Mumbai, the rich diversity at USSF), and do the work necessary to get more underrepresented voices in the space, thus enriching the conversations. Another way of addressing this issue would be to further develop the social forum process (outside of the actual meeting), rather than just the space. In the 23

Anonymous interviews conducted on 16 February and 7 June, 2007. This parallels recent concerns raised about the future of the WSF (see Bello 2007). 25 The next AWID International Forum is scheduled to be held in Capetown, South Africa in late 2008. 24

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months leading up to the 2007 WSF, the WSF process website26 was launched, and by many accounts was wildly successful. The common web space allowed groups with similar issues and goals to “meet” one another, discuss plans and possible collaborations for WSF, and generally build their networks. Even organizations that were unable to send representatives to the Forum could participate, removing a key barrier to transnational organizing around the Forum process. The social forum can also be an ideal space for strategy-sharing. Instead of diverting so many resources to influencing the Forum itself and building alliances with other movements, feminists might look toward using the space more fully to share experiences and strategies and build solidarity among women.27 At a USSF workshop on the social forum process, several panelists and audience members argued that their experiences at the social forums have a profound influence on their strategic practice. One activist with Interfaith Worker Justice relayed how much he had learned in just a few days in Atlanta. He articulated the utility of the Forum as a place to share ideas and strategies of resistance, and he insisted that the things he had learned would influence his practice when he returned home. These arguments underscore the point that strategies are one of the most valuable, tangible resources that activists take away from the Forum. We know that the challenges of global capital, militarization, and fundamentalisms manifest differently in different places. As Virginia Vargas writes, It is enriching to know that the common causes of justice and liberty do not necessarily imply the same strategies, nor the same results, and that, therefore, there is no one answer, nor set recipe with which to confront the same kinds of exclusion and discrimination affecting women. All of this permanently challenges the idea of universal solutions and unitary mindsets, and in turn enriches the horizon and complicates feminist strategies of transformation in the global-local arena.28

This is all the more reason to be discussing what has worked (and not worked) in particular contexts so that, through shared learning, women’s resistance can gain momentum and make progress. Below, I share a few examples. 26

www.wsfprocess.net. I am not suggesting that building alliances with other movements bears no importance, but rather that it is not the only important task. 28 Vargas 2005, p. 110. 27

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While at the Forum in Nairobi, I learned about the use of street theater in Zimbabwe; some women’s organizations have begun to use theater and performance as a means to level critiques against government. This tactic has proven to be an especially effective mode of activism and resistance because of its accessibility and, more importantly, because women can engage in protest without fear of prosecution. In using non-traditional forms of protest, women are subverting patriarchal authority. I also learned in Nairobi about a movement to create alternative rites of passage to female genital cutting. The organization, Rescue Women, is attempting to retain the cultural value of ritual for young girls, while removing the physical and emotional violence, and they are having considerable success. Their community has become increasingly supportive, and over five hundred young girls had gone through their program. Another activist from The Gambia pointed out that some women have effectively used the Women’s Protocol29 (as opposed to an international document like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) in Africa to combat not only female genital cutting, but also patriarchal marriage and inheritance laws. Governments have been more responsive to such a strategy in part because they could not claim that the norms were imposed from the outside. Although the particulars of these strategies of resistance may not be applicable or effective in all social and cultural contexts, women can learn from and adapt such strategies to fit their localized issues and circumstances. But in order to maximize this kind of sharing, there must be more intentional efforts to create such opportunities. Activists may find that by collaborating more with other groups in organizing events, and by emphasizing strategy-sharing as a primary goal of such events, they are able to acquire more tangible tools from their participation in the social forum.30 Finally, I would argue that the social forum is an outcomes-oriented space, but that understanding it as such requires us to expand our definition of “outcomes” to encompass celebration and the cultivation of collective identity. Just because no new policy is made does not preclude the possibility 29

The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, which went into effect in November 2005, is widely considered a groundbreaking international legal document that calls for the protection of a wide range of women’s human rights. 30 At the 2007 WSF, for the first time, one day was set aside to promote events that were co-sponsored by multiple organizations.

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of important emotional and cultural outcomes. For example, we should not underestimate the importance of being in solidarity, renewing women’s energies, and celebrating cultures. Many discussions I took part in at the 2007 Feminist Dialogues31 meetings and at the WSF revolved around the emotional dimensions of activism. One Algerian activist argued that churches are so successful at organizing women because they help them have fun and feel good; she went on to say that churches bring people joy through singing and dancing, and provide an escape from miserable family circumstances where their husbands are beating them, where “patriarchy rules.”32 Similarly, a South African activist argued that feminist groups should make space for celebration and fun (music, dancing, performance) in order to build connections with women, especially those who may not identify as feminist. Given the wonderful music, dancing, chanting, and parades that pervade the WSF space, it is particularly well-suited to this task.

Is It Worth the Effort? I suggest that women and feminists should not abandon the World Social Forum process and space, but that they could approach the social forum critically with a couple of cautions in mind. First, activists should recognize the Forum for what it is and exploit its most productive features (e.g., strategy-sharing), rather than expecting it to serve purposes that it is not well-suited to serve (e.g., creating consensus documents). Second, feminists must continue working to transform the social forum – not just the male-dominated organizational structures, but also the ways in which different kinds of women and women’s groups are able to use the Forum. We must work harder at inclusivity, particularly along dimensions of class, and also at building collective identity and solidarity in spite of differences. Only if a range of voices and concerns are well-represented at the forum can it truly be a productive space for transnational feminisms. I hope that future research will examine more closely the organizations that are less visible at the WSF, and in what ways the Forum is and is not useful for

31

The Feminist Dialogues first took place immediately prior to the 2004 WSF in Mumbai as an effort to create an explicitly feminist space for dialogue among activists involved in the WSF, and have continued at each subsequent WSF since then. 32 Small group session on Day 2 of the 2007 Feminist Dialogues.

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these groups, so that we can better assess effective strategies for addressing this existing shortcoming. Further, I argue, as others such as Thomas Ponniah33 have, that scholars can provide valuable analysis as participants in, and not simply observers of, global justice movements at the WSF. However, we must pay adequate attention to our own motivations and methods as we strive to advance the cause of global justice. Doing so is an essential component of engaging in ethical and politically productive research on/with/for activists working within the Forum.

Suggestions for Scholar-Activists Engaging the Social Forum In this final section, I offer a few suggestions for strategies to address the challenges of scholar-activism in the social forum. I assume that most, if not all, researchers at the social forum arrive not simply out of intellectual curiosity, but also to contribute to envisioning another world and effecting political and social change. Maria Mies tells us that while academics are not well situated to launch social movements, they can certainly join them and potentially play useful roles.34 However, if we go about our research in unreflective ways, we undermine that potential and exploit people in the process. We need to be talking more explicitly about our epistemologies and methodologies, and we need to be doing this in public spaces. We should make our research as transparent and accessible as possible, both to social forum activists and to other scholars studying the social forum process. We should make efforts to provide one another support and accountability, and to promote the collaborative production of knowledge that is both interesting to scholars in the academy and useful to movements as they do their work. There is already a wealth of interesting, useful, and ethical research happening in and around the social forums. In fact, many researchers working in this field enact principles that are consistent with the goals of critical and feminist methodology, even if they do not claim the specific label. However, there are still many untapped opportunities to share and compare data, methods and unpublished work, thus promoting transparency and 33 34

Ponniah2007. Mies1991 .

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accountability in all phases of our research processes. Below, I suggest a couple of specific ways we might think about exercising such opportunities. First, those of us engaging in research on the social forums should consider sharing our field notes, research protocols, survey instruments, and working papers online, at smaller meetings and conferences, as well as at the social forums.35 Although disseminating more polished versions of our work is not a bad practice, the academic timeline for publishing does not lend itself to sharing information quickly. In making our research tools, our raw data, and our analyses (even unpublished work) easily accessible, we may be able to solicit valuable feedback from activists, and also ensure that movement organizations need not waste valuable resources in seeking out research.36 Moreover, we may be better able to see patterns in what kinds of questions are important to movements, and thus take such insights into account as we develop our research agendas. One of the comments I have heard repeatedly in my conversations with activists is that they would value opportunities to talk with researchers about the issues that are important to them, but that there simply is never enough time or money to facilitate such discussions. Thus, we should be seeking out funding from our universities and from external sources to support workshops37 in which scholars and activists working in similar areas could de-brief with one another, discuss questions, and share observations and experiences in person.38 On some level, this type of strategy could be useful for communities of researchers in any field; however, the importance of collaboration, transparency and accountability are heightened when dealing with populations for whom the stakes are so high. 35

The North American Working Group on the World Social Forum Process (http://www. nd.edu/~wsfgroup/) and the Institute for Research on World Systems at the University of California-Riverside (http://www.irows.ucr.edu/) are both dynamic examples of information-sharing “hubs” on the social forums. 36 Verta Taylor (1998) notes that participatory, collaborative methods enabled her to use feedback from her research participants to clarify and strengthen her analysis of postpartum depression self-help movements. 37 Jackie Smith organized and hosted one such workshop at Notre Dame in November 2006. The workshop resulted in a collaboratively authored book, Global Democracy and the World Social Forums (Paradigm, 2007). 38 Such opportunities would also serve the purpose of including activist voices that may otherwise be left out due to lack of access to internet communication technologies or resources necessary to travel to large global gatherings.

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In closing, I would like to add that in promoting the practice and visibility of activist research that is both rigorous and ethical, we also further legitimize this form of scholarship and contribute to a transformation of our fields and of the academy. As Jackie Smith has argued, resistance within the academy is another important facet of our activism, and we must take it seriously.39 Moreover, Maiguashca points out that our promotion of activist scholarship not only transforms our universities, but also enables us to build healthier, more trusting relationships with activists. She notes that we must be “. . . much braver about and more adept at presenting our ‘politicized’ research as ‘real’ scholarship in academia.”40 With these thoughts in mind, I hope that our community of scholar-activists will continue to seek new ways of networking, sharing insights, and learning from one another as we strive to create research that matters for social movements locally and globally.

References Ackerly, Brooke A. 2000, Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ackerly, Brooke A. 2007, ‘Sustainable Networking: Collaboration for Women’s Human Rights, Activists, Scholars, and Donors’, in Sonita Sarker (ed.), Sustainable Feminisms: Enacting Theories, Envisioning Action, pp. 143–158, Oxford: Elsevier. Alvarez, Sonia E., with Nalu Faria and Miriam Nobre 2004, ‘Another (Also Feminist) World Is Possible: Constructing Transnational Spaces and Global Alternatives from the Movements’, in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, pp. 199–206, New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation. Bello, Walden 2007, ‘The Forum at the Crossroads’, Foreign Policy in Focus, http://www. fpif.org/fpiftxt/4196 (3 August 2007). Conway, Janet 2007, ‘Transnational Feminisms and the World Social Forum: Encounters and Transformations in Anti-globalization Spaces’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 8, 3: 49–70. Conway, Janet forthcoming, ‘Troubling Transnational Feminism(s): Contesting the Future of Feminism at the World Social Forum’, in Pascale Dufour, Dominique Masson and Dominique Caouette (eds.), Transnationalizing Women’s Movements: Solidarities Without Borders, Vancouver: UBC Press.

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Smith20 07. Maiguashca 2006, p. 135.

189 Desai, Manisha 2005, ‘Transnationalism: The Face of Feminist Politics Post-Beijing’, International Social Science Journal, 184: 319–330. DeVault, Marjorie L. 1996, ‘Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 22: 29–50. Eschle, Catherine 2005, ‘“Skeleton Woman”: Feminism and the Antiglobalization Movement’, Signs, 30, 3: 1741–1769. Geloo, Zarina 2007, ‘Women’s Voice was Strong and Clear’, Terra Viva, http://www. ipsterraviva.net/TV/Nairobi/en/viewstory.asp?idnews=836 (30 July 2007). Haraway, Donna 1988, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14: 575–599. Harding, Sandra 1987, Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Maiguashca, Bice 2006, ‘Making Feminist Sense of the “Anti-globalisation Movement”: Some Reflections on Methodology and Method’, Global Society, 20, 2: 115–136. Mangalubnan-Zabala, Earnest 2004, ‘Examining the Women’s Movement’, Women in Action, 2: 20–33. Mies, Maria 1991, ‘Women’s Research or Feminist Research? The Debate Surrounding Feminist Science and Methodology’, in Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook (eds.), Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research, pp. 60–84, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 1988, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30: 65–88. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 1991, ‘Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism’, in Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, pp. 1–47, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 2003, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory Practicing Solidarity, Durham: Duke University Press. Ponniah, Thomas 2007, ‘The Role of the Writer at the WSF’, Znet, http://www.zmag.org/ content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12061 (23 September 2007). Reinharz, Shulamit, with Lynn Davidman 1992, Feminist Methods in Social Research, New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Jackie 2007, ‘Organizing for the USSF: The Scholar-Activist’s Role’, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, New York. Smith, Jackie, Marina Karides, Marc Becker, Dorval Brunelle, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Rosalba Icaza, Jeffrey Juris, Lorenzo Mosca, Donatella della Porta, Ellen Reese, and Peter Jay Smith Rolando Vászuez 2007, The World Social Forums and the Challenge of Global Democracy, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Sprague, Joey 2005, Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Taylor, Verta 1998, ‘Feminist Methodology in Social Movements Research’, Qualitative Sociology, 21, 4: 357–379. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda 1999, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books.

190 Vargas, Virginia 2003, ‘Feminism, Globalization and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’, Cultural Studies, 17, 6: 905–920. Vargas, Virginia 2005, ‘Feminisms and the World Social Forum: Space for Dialogue and Confrontation’, Development, 48, 2: 107–110. Wilson, Ara 2007, ‘Feminism in the Spaces of the World Social Forum’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 8,3:10–27.

CHAPTER 12

Sociology, Human Rights, and the World Social Forum Mark Frezzo

In recent years, academics have begun to grapple with the pervasiveness of “rights talk” on a global scale – a phenomenon documented by journalists, grassroots activists, NGO representatives, and UN officials. With the restructuring of the interstate system following the Cold War, the expansion of the European Union, a series of financial crises across the global economy, and a dramatic shift among Latin American governments, social scientists have produced a large volume of research on transnational norms,1 cosmopolitan democracy,2 and global governance.3 Rooted in the fields of international relations, government, and law, these interventions share an interest in altering the world’s economic, political, and legal architecture. More precisely, they aspire to influence debates among elite policymakers, think tanks, and UN officials not only on the meaning of such terms as human rights and democracy, but also on the future of such inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the UN itself. In effect, the intertwined debates on transnational norms, cosmopolitanism, and global governance have supplanted the debate on development. In light of changing global conditions, these debates have caught the attention of sociologists. Why were sociologists delayed in studying human rights? In examining this question, Turner points to the contradictory legacies of positivism (manifested in the rejection of normative judgments) and cultural relativism

1 2 3

Brysk 2002; Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002. Archibugi 2003; Held 2004. Patomaki and Teivainen 2004; Fabian Globalization Group 2005.

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(manifested in the rejection of universal values).4 Notwithstanding their fierce opposition to one another, positivism and cultural relativism share an aversion to the doctrine of human rights. Whereas positivism affirms value-neutrality in sociology, cultural relativism accepts the presence of values in the sociological enterprise but rejects the universalism of the Enlightenment. The spirit of relativism was intensified by the major currents in social theory – each of which modified or problematized the grand narrative of human emancipation. Consequently, the shift from a positivist to a relativist ethos failed to open a space for the sociological analysis of human rights. Nevertheless, the transition from positivism to cultural relativism reveals an important paradox. Amidst the consolidation of US hegemony in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the push for positivist sociology coincided with the creation of the IMF, the WB, and the UN – the institutional pillars of a development and human rights regime. On the one hand, positivism – in the form of modernization theory – inspired a series of development projects across the Third World. Modernization theorists upheld the industrialization of Western Europe and the US as a model for development in poor countries. On the other hand, the discourse of human rights – codified as a universal norm – legitimized the security, peacemaking, state-building, and poverty-alleviation functions of the UN. As a consequence, the supposedly value-neutral concept of development and the supposedly universal doctrine of human rights reinforced one another for more than two decades. In fact, owing to its initial linkage to the WB and its embeddedness in the milieu of developmentalism, the UN came to conceptualize development as a right. Implying a range of social entitlements – and by extension a number of institutions to bring such entitlements to fruition – the “right to development” pointed beyond WB-sponsored projects. Though imperceptible during the postwar reconstruction, the tension between the WB and UN visions of development eventually produced a rift between the two institutions. In due course, the remarkable unevenness of development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America attracted the attention of scholars. Amidst the first crisis of US hegemony in the late 1960s and early 1970s, dependency theorists and world-systems analysts criticized the scientism, determinism, and Eurocentrism of modernization theory. In effect, they aimed to discredit the idea that all societies must follow the same path from tradition 4

Turner 2006, pp. 5–9.

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to modernity. Buoyed by the growth of Third Worldism in the UN system – a tendency that culminated in the Declaration for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974 – these academic assaults amplified skepticism not only about developmentalism, but also about the doctrine of human rights. If developmentalism and rights discourse were linked to US hegemony, how could they serve the interests of the Third World? While the myth of development had been invoked to legitimize the top-down transformation of non-Western societies, the doctrine of human rights had been mobilized to justify US interventions in the Third World. Though confined to the domains of development sociology, political economy, and historical sociology, the dependency/world-systems critique of developmentalism eventually converged with Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, and post-colonial critiques of such Enlightenment values as “freedom,” “equality,” and “democracy.” While Marxism and feminism emphasized the exclusion of workers and women from full participation in democracy, post-structuralism and post-colonialism undermined the foundation of the Enlightenment project of human emancipation. Since the influence of these theoretical frameworks remains significant in the current period, sociologists have been forced to work harder in recuperating the discourse of rights. More precisely, they have begun to refashion rights discourse not only to meet the objections of critical social theory, but also to compensate for a series of historical exclusions. A number of factors – including a proliferation of movement-NGO coalitions advocating equality, justice, and direct democracy – have prompted sociologists to turn their attention to the rights claims of impoverished, exploited, and marginalized populations across the globe. The common denominator among movements of indigenous peoples, peasants, workers, women, environmentalists, and anti-corporate activists can be found in the language of human rights. Rights discourse serves as a master frame insofar as it links diverse movements to one another (without denying them autonomy). In light of ongoing debates among movements, UN agencies, NGOs, and scholars on the scope of human rights legislation, the rights frame proves malleable. Based on the slogan of the French Revolution – “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” – the conventional classification of “generations of rights” illustrates the evolution of rights talk from the postwar period through the age of globalization. First-generation rights pertaining to individual liberty and security were proclaimed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of

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Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Though sketched in the UDHR, such second-generation rights as the entitlement to housing, healthcare, employment, and social security were elaborated in the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Finally, such third-generation rights as the entitlement to natural resources, a clean environment, cultural heritage, and communication have been advanced in the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, a number of declarations, and a series of publications by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). With a view to actualizing second and third-generation rights, UNESCO has been instrumental in promoting collaboration among scholars and NGO representatives. In the process, UNESCO has given credence to the idea that second and third-generation rights can be mobilized to challenge neoliberalism. This signifies a major breakthrough. The aforementioned UN documents serve as signposts not only of the growing rift between the UN and the WB, but also of intensified interactions among UN agencies (especially UNESCO), NGOs (especially Amnesty International), and social movements (especially those operating in conjunction with the WSF). To the end of situating the origin of the rights revolution in the global South, I have coined the term “movementNGO-UN nexus” to designate the sphere in which different organizational actors collaborate and compete with one another in defining rights agendas. In effect, pushes from “below” and “above” have created a force field of movements, NGOs, and UN agencies – a political opportunity structure founded on the highly contested discourse of rights. Accordingly, I argue that the movement-NGO-UN nexus constitutes an important topic for the sociology of human rights.

Sociology of Human Rights How are sociologists contributing to the analysis of human rights? At present, it is possible to demarcate two tendencies in the sociology of human rights. Grounded in the sociology of law, the first approach explores the social conditions under which human rights legislation is drafted, interpreted, enforced, and violated.5 In conceptualizing “rights as practices that 5

Sjoberg, Gill, and Williams 2001; Hajjar 2005; Levy and Sznaider 2006.

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are required, prohibited, or otherwise regulated within the context of relations governed by law”,6 the legal approach elucidates how rights circulate among a range of social actors – including IGOs, nation-states, communities, and individuals. More precisely, this approach examines how the conferral of rights by IGOs and nation-states empowers communities and individuals to act. In referring to human rights legislation or UN declarations, communities and individuals legitimize their rights claims. Though oriented toward the scrupulous analysis of how rights circulate among different actors, the legal approach does not preclude normative judgments on the global governance system or neoliberal policies. Grounded in the initiative for public sociology in the American Sociological Association (ASA), the second approach builds advocacy of human rights into sociological research, teaching, and service.7 Proponents of the public sociology approach point to an irony that marks the discipline. Though trained to analyze inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, sociologists have been reluctant to enter debates on equality. Though skilled in explaining an array of injustices, sociologists have been disinclined to reflect on the meaning of justice. Although the hesitance of sociologists to intervene in the name of equality and justice stems from the competing traditions of positivism (dominant from the late 1940s through the early 1970s) and relativism (dominant from the early 1970s through the present day), the initiative for public sociology has created a space for scholar-activism. Recent meetings of the ASA and the Society for the Study of Social Problems testify to growing solidarity with popular forces seeking more expansive rights and deeper participation in democracy. Building on the sociology of law and public sociology currents, I propose a post-development perspective on the study of human rights. Grounded in the literature on post-development,8 this approach pursues two objectives. First, it extricates rights discourse from the tradition of developmentalism. Though routinely counterposed to the neoliberal policies of the IMF, WB, and WTO, the second and third-generation rights demanded by grassroots groups and legitimized by sympathetic NGOs and UN agencies cannot be equated with a vision of returning to developmentalism. Phrased differently, there is no reason to assume that the solution to

6 7 8

Hajjar 2006: 207. Blau and Moncada 2005, 2006; Blau and Iyall Smith 2006; Turner 2006. Sachs 1992; Rahnema and Bawtree 1997.

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poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation comes in the form of “development” – a notion that implies the top-down transformation of society in accordance with a rigid model. Second, the post-development approach offers a materialist analysis of how movements, NGOs, and UN agencies interact with one another in operationalizing second and thirdgeneration rights. The post-development approach highlights three aspects of the movement-NGO-UN nexus. First, movements have made themselves more attractive to NGO sponsors by articulating their demands in the language of human rights and embracing non-violent tactics of resistance.9 Second, NGOs have channeled resources into promising movements, in exchange for influence on objectives, strategies, and tactics.10 Third, UN agencies have provided intellectual fodder and material support for NGOs. Amidst a growing tendency to separate human rights from development, the movement-NGO-UN nexus has provided the context for the emergence and evolution of the WSF. Owing to its status as the largest arena for justice activists, the WSF has become the most prominent player in the movement-NGO-UN nexus. Moreover, the progress of the WSF has promoted cross-pollination between development sociologists and social movement scholars.

Post-development and the WSF With the emergence of the Zapatista insurrection in 1994, the WSF in 2001, and a series of popular eruptions in Latin America, development scholars have shown a remarkable willingness not only to reflect on the origins, evolution, and possible future of their field, but also to interrogate the foundational concept of development itself.11 If development researchers manifest a high degree of reflexivity – attentiveness to how theoretical constructs facilitate and constrain social scientific discoveries – it is because they recognize not only that development theory remains plagued by semantic ambiguities (and contested interpretations), but also that the problems of poverty, inequality, exclusion, and environmental degradation in the global South remain paramount in the current period.12 In targeting 9 10 11 12

Bob2005 . Bob2005 . Peet and Hartwick 1999; Desai and Potter 2002. Leys 1996; Nederveen Pieterse 2004.

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these problems, subaltern groups have made an array of claims to second and third-generation rights. While it is true that the Truman administration’s fateful decision to articulate its reconstruction plans in the language of development enabled both the discovery of “underdevelopment” in the non-Western world and the creation of an academic field to analyze the phenomenon,13 it is also true that the newly minted concept of development found a receptive audience among reformers in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. For example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Economic Commission for Latin America facilitated the spread of developmentalism by explaining the structural imbalance between the industrialized countries of the core and the agricultural countries of the periphery14 – a discovery that would serve not only to inspire the policy of import-substitution industrialization, but also to foreshadow the critiques of development offered by dependency theory in the late 1960s and world-systems analysis in the early 1970s. For thoroughly comprehensible reasons, the decline of developmentalism in both theory and practice has given rise to innumerable polemics on capitalism, modernity, the “rise of the West,” and the logic of US hegemony. For the sake of clarity, it makes sense to disentangle the three most common uses of the concept: first, development as the teleological unfolding of human history from barbarism to civilization (or more charitably, from antiquity to modernity); second, development as the extensive and intensive growth of capitalism in the permanent quest for new sources of raw materials, fresh supplies of labor, and untapped markets; and third, development as a post-1945 project – spearheaded by the US government and implemented under the auspices of the WB and a network of financial institutions – to create the conditions for economic growth in the global South.15 While the first two uses of the concept have fallen into disrepute, the third use of the concept remains the subject of considerable debate – especially with the rise of the WSF and an array of interlinked movements against neoliberalism. On the one hand, the accumulated experiences of postwar development states – not only in Latin America, but also in the former European colonies of Africa and Asia – have dampened enthusiasm for the 13 14 15

Escobar 1995; Rist 2002. Peet and Hartwick 1999, pp. 41–43. McMichael2003 .

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old formula of state planning and industrialization in the name of improving living standards. On the other hand, the shift from development as “catching up” to neoliberal policies of fiscal austerity, privatization, deregulation, financial liberalization, and free trade have worsened living conditions in many parts of the global South. Thus, in envisioning “another world,” the WSF and allied movements reject both developmentalism and its successor neoliberalism. Yet the WSF’s Charter of Principles (2001) precludes the promulgation of a blueprint for a post-developmental and post-neoliberal world. Having produced a balance sheet on both the developmental period (late 1940s-early 1970s) and the neoliberal period (early 1970s-present), movements and NGOs within the WSF have intervened in the debates on “alternative development” and “alternatives to development.” More precisely, WSF actors have entertained the following questions. Should we reconstruct the concept of development to meet the requirements of the 21st century? Or should we abandon the concept of development in favor of something else? Although the WSF accommodates a diversity of perspectives and refrains from advancing political programs, its overall trajectory points in the direction of post-development.

The WSF Model Decoupled from the legacy of developmentalism, the doctrine of human rights – conceptualized as a norm to be claimed, contested, and modified by a variety of actors (including grassroots groups, NGOs, and UN agencies) – provides the grammar for disputes on the organizational structure, ideological orientation, and political objectives of the WSF. This argument has two components. First, notwithstanding its origins in the European Enlightenment and its subsequent appropriation by powerful nation-states, rights doctrine constitutes the master frame of the WSF Charter. Second, in advancing a vision of human rights “from below”, the WSF Charter serves not only to encapsulate the forum model of mobilization, but also to regulate the major disputes within the WSF. The WSF Charter summons human rights not only in rejecting the neoliberal policies of the IMF, WB, and WTO, but also in criticizing the dominance of the global North over the global South. As a consequence, the WSF Charter has become a touchstone for movements and NGOs advancing claims to second and third-generation rights.

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Scholars and activists routinely cite the WSF Charter in analyzing the nature, scope, and direction of the WSF as an entity.16 In effect, the WSF Charter serves as a mechanism for generating and enforcing “soft law” among grassroots groups and NGOs pushing for global justice. Often employed by legal scholars to designate conventions that are respected by institutions, the term “soft law” describes not only the code of conduct that binds disparate groups to one another within the WSF, but also a new model of organizing that has been diffused to smaller gatherings. In effect, the WSF Charter codifies a set of rules in the realm of transnational activism: the affirmation of human rights and non-violent tactics of resistance; the exclusion of political parties and sitting government officials from participation; and the rejection of political programs (WSF 2001). Gatherings at the continental, national, and municipal levels bearing the name “social forum” and embracing the motto “Another World Is Possible” are organized according to the specifications of the WSF Charter. By custom, organizations affiliated with the WSF are presumed to observe these rules even though they are permitted considerable autonomy as actors in a loose-knit transnational network. The openness of the forum model has led to a proliferation of smaller forums – including the African Social Forum, the Asian Social Forum, the Social Forum of the Americas, the European Social Forum, the United States Social Forum, and a series of forums in major cities across the world. By traveling from one social forum to another – transmitting philosophical, organizational, strategic, and tactical knowledge along the way – grassroots activists, NGO representatives, and sympathetic intellectuals are contributing to the diffusion of the forum model. In essence, the WSF Charter was designed to nurture an enduring coalition against neoliberalism by embracing the doctrine of rights, circumventing the reform-revolution debate, renouncing violence as a tactic of resistance, mitigating the risk of bureaucratization, and refusing to draft a blueprint for a post-neoliberal world. In this sense, the WSF Charter takes developmentalism – in its Keynesian, social democratic, state socialist, and Third Worldist guises – as a negative model. Notwithstanding the achievements of developmentalism in the areas of employment, social security, health care, and education, the WSF Charter effectively presupposes that the old model – as applied in the welfare states of North America and 16

Fisher and Ponniah 2003; Leite 2005.

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Western Europe, the state socialist regimes of the Soviet bloc, and the development states of the Third World – has run its course. At the same time, the WSF Charter explicitly “opposes the domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism”,17 echoes repressed currents in the history of the working-class movement (including anarchism and autonomism), and indulges in “utopistics”18 or “grounded utopia”.19 These alternative tendencies – options excluded by the official socialist and communist parties of the postwar period – find expression in the intertwined motifs of prefigurative politics and subsidiarity. Closely connected to the philosophy of non-violence, the principle of prefigurative politics holds that activists should anticipate in the present day the world they wish to create in the future. Historically, this principle played a prominent role in the push for decolonization in India, the Civil Rights Movement and currents of the New Left in the US, and Liberation Theology in Latin America. In the contemporary period, this principle has been mobilized by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Movement of Recovered Factories in Argentina, and other groups. The principle of subsidiarity stipulates that decisions should be made by the smallest or lowest competent agent. Arguably, it seeped into WSF discourse through Christian base communities, NGOs, Liberation Theology, and the Zapatistas. The term is most closely associated with the “relocalization” current in the WSF, which advocates the strategy of “reclaiming the commons” – whether by seizing and farming previously unused land (as the MST has done) or by repossessing and operating previously abandoned factories (as autonomist Argentine workers have done). Vandana Shiva elucidates this perspective: Localization provides a test for justice. Localization is a test for sustainability. This is not to say all decisions will be made on a local level. There will of course be decisions made on the national level and the global level, but to reach these other levels they have to constantly pass the screen of living democracy. Authority is delegated to more distant levels of government on the principle of subsidiarity: things are most effectively done at a level closest to where the impact is felt. This principle is an ecological imperative.20

17 18 19 20

WSF2001 . Wallerstein1998 . Mittelman2005 . Shiva 2005, p. 64.

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In one stroke, Shiva has described the point of convergence among advocates of Zapatismo, autonomists, anarchists, and environmentalists working within or alongside the WSF. More broadly, the principle of subsidiarity can be connected to the campaigns for food sovereignty and fair trade undertaken by such organizations as Via Campesina and Food Not Bombs. What are the implications of these principles? Taken together, the principles of prefigurative politics and subsidiarity exclude recourse to a fixed recipe for social transformation or a top-down approach to governance. They serve not only to codify the lessons learned during the postwar regime of development and human rights, but also to contribute to the debates on transnational norms, cosmopolitanism, and global governance.

Conclusion In exploring the underpinnings of the WSF Charter, I have advanced two arguments. First, I have contended that the WSF mobilizes the principles of prefigurative politics and subsidiarity to avoid the pitfalls of developmentalism (in its Keynesian, social democratic, state socialist, and Third Worldist forms). In the process, the WSF builds on the previously marginalized traditions of anarchism and autonomism not only by emphasizing the “process” over the “outcome,” but also by favoring decentralization, pluralism, and diversity in its organizational practices. Second, I have contended that the principles of prefigurative politics and subsidiarity – in echoing the sentiments of movements led by indigenous activists, feminists, and environmentalists – have facilitated the spread of the forum model across the world. These principles hold the key to the WSF’s endeavor to refashion human rights in the 21st century. Though fraught with difficulties – including the challenge of grounding second and thirdgeneration rights in “planetary citizenship” – this project holds considerable promise.

References Archibugi, Daniele (ed.) 2003, Debating Cosmopolitics, London: Verso. Blau, Judith and Alberto Moncada 2005, Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Blau, Judith and Alberto Moncada 2006, Justice in the United States: Human Rights and the Constitution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

202 Blau, Judith and Keri Iyall Smith (eds.) 2006, Public Sociologies Reader, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bob, Clifford 2005, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brysk, Allison (ed.) 2002, Globalization and Human Rights, Berkeley: University of California Press. Desai, Vandana and Robert B. Potter (eds.) 2002, The Companion to Development Studies, London: Arnold Press. Escobar, Arturo 1995, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fabian Globalisation Group 2005, Just World: A Fabian Manifesto, London: Zed Books. Fisher, William and Thomas Ponniah (eds.) 2003, Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, London: Zed Books. Hajjar, Lisa 2005, ‘Toward a Sociology of Human Rights: Critical Globalization Studies, International Law, and the Future of War’, in R. P. Appelbaum and W. I. Robinson (eds.), Critical Globalization Studies, pp. 207–216, New York: Routledge. Held, David 2004, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus, Cambridge: Polity Press. Khagram, Sanjeev, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.) 2002, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Leite, Jose Correa 2005, The World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance, Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books. Levy, Daniel and Natan Sznaider 2006, ‘Sovereignty Transformed: A Sociology of Human Rights’, The British Journal of Sociology, 57, 4: 657–676. Leys, Colin 1996, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. McMichael, Philip 2003, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Mittelman, James 2005, ‘What Is a Critical Globalization Studies?’, in R. P. Appelbaum and W. I. Robinson (eds.), Critical Globalization Studies, pp. 19–29, New York: Routledge. Patomaki, Heikki and Teivo Teivainen 2004, A Possible World: Democratic Transformation of Global Institutions, London: Zed Books. Peet, Richard and Elaine Hartwick 1999, Theories of Development, New York: The Guilford Press. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen 2004, Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions, London: Sage Publications. Rahnema, Majid and Victoria Bawtree (eds.) 1997, The Post-Development Reader, London: Zed Books. Rist, Gilbert 2002, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, London: Zed Books. Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.) 1992, The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Shiva, Vandana 2005, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

203 Sjoberg, Gideon, Elizabeth Gill, and Norma Williams 2001, ‘A Sociology of Human Rights’, Social Problems, 48, 1: 11–47. Tarrow, Sidney, 2005, The New Transnational Activism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Brian S. 2006, Vulnerability and Human Rights, College Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1998, Utopistics: Or, Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century, New York: The New Press. World Social Forum 2001, ‘Charter of Principles of the World Social Forum’, Retrieved from http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2.

CHAPTER 13

Another Structure of Knowledge Is Possible: The Social Forum Process and Academia Steven Sherman

In this paper, I consider the possibilities opened by the emergence of the social forum process (both manifested at the global level in the World Social Forum and at more local levels, particularly the United States Social Forum) for the reconstruction of the structures of knowledge. By structures of knowledge, I mean two things. First, following Immanuel Wallerstein, I mean the disciplinary organization and hegemonic approaches since the late nineteenth century in the social sciences.1 Secondly, and this will provide more of my focus, I mean the institutional and practical features of academia – the research universities, academic journals, university presses, libraries, conferences, professional associations, etc. Structures of knowledge in both senses produce ways of understanding the world. These ways of understanding in turn compete with those produced in other sites, including everyday common sense(s), journalism, think tanks, the entertainment industries, social movements etc. The academic forms (which themselves are not unitary) are by no means universally hegemonic. They are, nevertheless, quite significant. Academia in its modern sense has blossomed in tandem with the growth of modern nation states and the deepening of the capitalist world economy, during the period 1800 – the present, roughly the period that Immanuel Wallerstein describes as characterized by a coherent ‘geoculture’. Not unlike the modern nation-state, the research university starts to emerge around 1800, congeals in form about one hundred years later, and then rapidly spreads around the world as does the nation-state form in the period following World War II (i.e. decolonization).2 As the state was being separated from ‘the economy’, and 1 2

Wallerstein1991. Meyer and Hannan 1979.

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both were separated from ‘culture’, so academia developed ways of studying economy, politics, society and culture as separate concerns, each in theory shaped by universal laws. It does not seem unreasonable, therefore, to regard this structure of knowledge as fitting reasonably well with the structures of the nation state and the capitalist world economy. This does not mean that this fit is perfect or without contradictions, by any means. But the university would not have spread along with the nation-state if the contradictions between them were particularly acute. Present day academic structures of knowledge are also almost entirely print based. Without being technologically determinist, it does not seem entirely coincidental that the capitalist world system flourished in the era of print (the dates of Wallerstein’s modern world system – 1500 is almost simultaneous with the emergence of the printing press – 1450).3 Printing lends an air of authority to printed documents, which are both ascribed an individual author and not easily revised (nearly all of the conversations that constitute the context for the production of a particular text – before and after if is printed – disappear). As physical objects, they can stick around for hundreds of years. Even before the full fledged emergence of the nation state (by most accounts, nationalism is heavily entwined with print),4 print facilitated the authority of state centers by allowing rulers to distribute uniform decrees, laws, rulings, histories, etc. Although new media began to emerge roughly one hundred years ago, film, radio, and television had minimal impact on the production of academic knowledge. To this day, no one pursuing prestige in academic disciplines produces documentary films, except as supplemental to the ‘serious’ documentation of journal articles and books. We are presently undergoing a transition of some sort, of which the heyday of neoliberal globalization in the ‘90s increasingly appears to be a brief moment rather than a terminus. Perhaps this transition is to a new form of capitalism, decentered through a number of sites or recentered in East Asia.5 Or perhaps this transition marks the end of the modern capitalist world system, and will only end with the emergence of an altogether different system, one which may be more or less equal than its predecessor.6 Both a less equal world of gated communities, intensified 3 4 5 6

Eisenstein 1983. See Anderson 1983. Arrighi19 94. Wallerstein 1995.

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surveillance and fortified shopping malls and a more equal one rooted in autonomous movements are in fact already visible.7 Of course, a crucial element of this transition is a shift towards a new communications medium, the ‘hypermedia’ epitomized by the internet. An innovative institution that has emerged to help facilitate progressive agency in this period is the Social Forum. Beginning with the World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre in 2001, numerous regional and national forums have now also been held, including the US Social Forum held in Atlanta in June 2007 (all social forums have some sort of territorial basis – there have been no sectoral social forums regarding culture, food, religion, etc. Global conferences on population, women, the environment, and racism have been convened by the UN – mostly before 2000 – although, interestingly, these are rarely mentioned in the same breath as social forums). The Social Forum has several characteristic features. It is an ‘open space’ which fosters dialogue and networking between organizations, rather than a political agency in itself (although this is subject to debate). Political parties and armed groups are sidelined (again, to precisely what degree is also subject to debate) in favor of social movements not focused on the attainment and exercise of state power. Forums are typically open to all individuals who wish to participate, and any groups that broadly agree with the principles of their charter. Although the forum does not take positions, there is considerable sympathy among participants for ‘prefigurative politics’ which attempt to implement ideals and develop new sorts of institutions and social relations in the present, rather than ‘instrumental’ politics which divorce solutions from the means to attain them. An example of the former would be a food cooperative, the latter is epitomized by the bureaucratic political party which has a plan to be implemented upon the attainment of state power. The social forum is itself, for many participants, an example of prefigurative politics, and there is now a tradition of harsh criticism and protest at the forum (and in cyberspace) when it is seen as failing to embody its ideals. In contrast to traditional coalitions on the left (but rather like the wave of ‘anti-globalization protests’ around 1999–2003), social forums do not encourage groups and individuals participating to submerge their identities in favor of a list of demands or a single strategy. Social forums typically have workshops (usually panel discussions), plenary sessions,

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Davis and Monk 2007; Klein 2002.

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informational tents and tables. But in contrast to, say, academic gatherings, music, theatre, colorful costumes and protests (sanctioned by the forum or not) help to constitute the space as raucous and unbounded. Social forums constantly struggle with questions of inclusivity – are participants from all possible geographic locales, class positions, movement sectors, etc. present? These questions are not always successfully resolved, by any means, but they are constantly posed and struggled with. In general, and in dramatic contrast to earlier left forms of organization, the social forum constitutes itself as a work in progress, subject to critique and reformulation. The framework for this paper is that the social forum is a valuable site for thinking through the reconstruction of the structures of knowledge. The social forum provides a potential ‘free space’ for activist scholars to reconceptualize the structures of knowledge, one in which, at the very least, the disciplinary and class-based constraints on collective thinking pervasive in academia are weakened. Of particular importance is this – for the last two hundred years, the state has been the crucial location for the regulation of society, and the world has been ‘modernizing’ along capitalist, Eurocentric lines. The existing structures of knowledge facilitate this process. The structures of knowledge provide the backdrop for the professions validated by the nation-state, which administer modern society (teachers, engineers, lawyers, social workers, doctors, planners, etc.). If we are to create a world that is not focused on the state as regulator of society, that is not capitalist or Eurocentric (all aspirations of a considerable portion of social forum attendees), we will need structures of knowledge that function differently. Indeed, experiments with alternatives have already begun. In the remainder of the paper, I will sketch out a brief history of US academia and consider its present strengths and weaknesses as a space for critical thought and action. Then, I will note some concrete examples of new directions, and finally, on a more speculative note, consider some ways the social forum process could strengthen the creation of new structures of knowledge. This paper will be largely US focused, although I think much of it will resonate with circumstances elsewhere.

The American Academy In line with broader trends in American society, the recent history of American academia can be roughly divided into three periods – expansion of liberalism (1945–1965), radicalization of liberalism (1965–1975), and

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backlash (1975–present). In the first period, higher education was widely recognized as a public good which needed to be expanded. ‘Fordism’ required more trained engineers and other professionals, while optimism about the prospects for the management of social problems by governmental bureaucracy fueled the growth of the social sciences. More facilities were built, and efforts to make higher education affordable (such as the GI Bill) were implemented. More faculty were hired, and social sciences and area studies programs (both functional to the needs of cold war liberalism) were expanded. Although McCarthyism undermined academic freedom, and intellectuals often shared genteel fears of the masses,8 for the most part disciplines like political science and sociology could proceed with confidence about their tasks, knowing that the beliefs characteristic of the most prominent members of their disciplines – beliefs in American pluralism, the need for governmental measures to ward off the anomie and atomization of American modern life, etc. – were not so far from the political mainstream. Around 1965, things start to come unwound. Expansion of Great Society programs under Johnson generated pressure to expand higher education further, and steps were taken to rethink the admissions process to insure inclusivity (e.g. open admissions at CUNY). Vital Black Power, student, and anti-war movements rocked the academy. Militant protests raise questions about the complicity of the universities with military and corporate elites, the purpose of the universities, the nature of topics studied, relations between universities and surrounding neighborhoods. Many student activists entered grad school as protests began to wane in the early seventies, optimistic about the prospects of transforming the university and in turn transforming society. Indeed, much was achieved. Area studies programs were now introduced that related to the ‘new’ social movements – black studies, women’s studies, and such. Radical caucuses in sociology, anthropology and elsewhere gained an institutional toehold in their disciplines, and journals receptive to their thought were founded. Cultural studies eventually emerged as practically a new discipline, politically engaged and frequently bringing into the university voices traditionally considered marginal to its mission. Yet this partial transformation of the production of knowledge was not accompanied by a broader transformation of American society, or even a 8

For example, Hofstadter 1963.

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sustained presence by a left. Relatively little changed in the university besides what could be studied and how (although restrictions on student social life were also loosened). The structure of grading, for example, was never threatened. Nor was the relationship between the university and either local or national society seriously transformed. Disciplines remained intact, even if they were now in good part discombobulated and typically committed to methodological pluralism as a way of maintaining a truce between those adhering to traditional practices and those seeking to transform them. Although the movements helped consolidate the triumph of meritocracy over inherited position at the elite schools, universities remained exclusionary. Most radical professors did not sustain political ties to groups outside the academy. And, of course, American society would soon move in another direction altogether. Beginning with the economic crisis of the mid-seventies, governance would shift over the next decade from Keynesian fordism to neoliberalism, in which social spending was tightly restricted. Furthermore, the right would gain ideological momentum. Universities ceased expanding, while prison construction exploded. Financial aid dwindled. University budgets tightened, and full time professors were increasingly replaced by temporary adjunct positions. These trends had the effect of intensifying both students’ and faculty’s tendency to focus on their individual goals. With the federal government no longer interested in expanding social provisions, universities began to refocus on serving the business community (as well as on the criminal justice institutions, the only portion of the state not being defunded). Larry Summers, for example, the president of Harvard between 2001 and 2006 said that students should get less multicultural social science and more economics and mathematics. A number of elite universities produced international extensions of their business programs.9 The right wing began sustained campaigns of harassment against radical and liberal faculty, and the supposedly pervasive and oppressive ‘politically correct’ atmosphere on campus. Of late, right wing foundations have been making contributions to universities in order to set up right wing curricular programs and centers of research.10 After September 11, the federal government became more openly interested in surveilling academia, and, on several occasions, refused to give visas to prominent international scholars. Middle Eastern Studies in particular has been targeted 9 10

Ong 2006, pp. 139–156. Warren20 07.

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for ideological containment. However, so far, within the social sciences and the humanities, the right wing has not made significant ideological progress. The American Sociological Association, for example, has had two of its most left presidents in the last three years. With no left to call on, radical academics have had little option but to maintain a liberal defense of academic freedom, although, compared to the right wing, they are far less experienced at selling a position to the public. In this worsening climate, many faculty on the left have intensified talk of ‘academicactivists’, exploring ways that academics can escape their gilded ghettos and strengthen movements for change. And many of these academic-activists have been attracted to the social forum process. A number of scholars who might be said to write for a left public globally (Arturo Escobar, Immanuel Wallerstein, Boaventura De Sousa Santos, Michael Hardt) have clearly been energized by engagement with the World Social Forum, as have many others.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Contemporary US Academy as a Site of Radical Knowledge Production What is the status of academia, on balance, for radical scholars? If one can attain it, a tenured professorship is one of the more pleasant ways to ‘pay the bills’ in the contemporary US. This is not because of the pay (middling by middle class standards) or even the prestige (college professors typically rate as one of the most prestigious professions in opinion surveys). Rather, it is because of the autonomy afforded by these positions. Notwithstanding often substantial teaching and service responsibilities, professors in the social sciences and humanities are more or less free to shape their research agendas. Covertly, funding agendas of government and foundations, and norms of disciplines pose constraints that tend to push research in some directions and not others. But these are very weak constraints compared to those placed on nearly all other salaried employees in the US, including teachers outside of higher education and researchers in places like think tanks and corporations, and even those devoted to social change by working for nonprofits. Identifying oneself as a ‘Marxist’, for example, does not necessarily have adverse career consequences. Although Marxism is not presently fashionable in academia, views of the world that closely parallel Marxism – belief that capitalism is generally a bad thing, broad sympathy for workers, the nations of the ‘global south’, and other ‘subalterns’, critical

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examination of high literature and popular culture for the ways they reproduce oppressive ideologies, are quite pervasive in a number of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Notwithstanding the growth of fast food franchises and credit card hucksters in front of the bookstore, college campuses themselves are greener, quieter, less commercial than most spaces Americans spend time in. Many, if not most, have some ‘town square’ like spaces where civic activities – petitioning, peaceful protest – that have largely vanished in the US are still reasonably common. Productive social, intellectual, and political ties are often made with like minded colleagues and students. At the same time, such autonomy comes at the cost of accepting some less than universally appealing aspects. First, professors in the social sciences and humanities have basically resigned themselves to being ignored in the public world (although several professional organizations now talk more about ‘public intellectuals’ and have put in place a few programs, these efforts are still very marginal). They write for academic journals and university presses largely off the radar of any existing literary or political public sphere. Politicized professors sometimes find that years spent in graduate school and on faculty have eroded their ability to communicate in a direct way with activists outside the academy. Professional associations, journals, and other paths to prestige are highly competitive in ways sometimes at odds with values left professors would like to promote. Although interdisciplinary efforts are celebrated in theory, faculty must concern themselves with impressing their peers in a particular discipline, and so these efforts are fairly marginal. Faculty often find that students have very different agendas than their own. Most undergraduate students go to colleges hoping to earn degrees that will facilitate their professional advancement, rather than open-ended intellectual inquiry. Faculty typically play an insignificant role in deciding what sorts of communities their schools will serve. Most schools simply try to attract the most prestigious students (based on conventional assessments like grades and standardized test scores) they can find. Faculty at schools that have to settle for the least prestigious students often complain that their students are ill-prepared to read and write at a level needed for serious intellectual inquiry. Faculty at schools that are successful in the competition for ‘the best’ students complain that the students are homogenous by class and to some extent race, and often too privileged to be very excited by critical perspectives on US society. Related to this is the wild unevenness in funding between prestigious and less prestigious institutions. On the other hand graduate educa-

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tion within disciplines is celebrated as a context for interacting with inquisitive students who can potentially become partners in research. Professional graduate programs attract students who are more focused than undergrads, but the focus on training them for positions in one or another state apparatus in the loose sense (education, social work, law, policymaking etc.) somewhat constrains the intellectual space. However, these programs can sometimes be the context for the practical application of some of the social sciences, again, more ideologically constrained (with the boundaries determined by what is presently politically ‘realistic’) than within the disciplines. Faculty sometimes participate in efforts to develop new programs or assess older ones, but such program development is extremely constrained by certification requirements, funding priorities, etc. developed elsewhere. Apparent opportunities to reopen fundamental questions about pedagogy thus soon deteriorate into pedantic questions about whether to require 4 or 6 semesters of a foreign language, or whether to use the word ‘global’ or ‘transnational’ in the mission statement. Faculty (and student) relations with non-administrative staff (often highly feminized, non-white, and poorly paid) are for the most part non-existent and sometimes actively discouraged by institutions. The boundaries between idyllic campuses and surrounding communities (and many of the most prestigious institutions – University of Chicago, Columbia, Duke, etc. abut poorer communities) are discreetly and not-so-discreetly surveilled and policed to insure that the ‘wrong’ people do not spend much time on campus. In other words, while faculty ‘make their own thinking’, they do so ‘not in circumstances of their own choosing’. Relatively free to critique the existing world and dream of another one (although the latter activity is not generally professionally rewarded), they operate within institutional constraints that they have little ability to reshape. What I would like to suggest in the remainder of the paper is that the social forum process11 provides a space where many of the disciplinary, class, and institutional boundaries that seem insurmountable within academia can be transgressed. 11

There is a growing recognition that the ‘social forum’ cannot be understood simply in terms of the week-long event, but should be understood as a process of networking a variety of groups together. That includes work before, during, and after the events. Some work that is done outside of the explicit umbrella of the social forum may be considered part of this process to the degree that it is pursuing the end of creating space for dialogue, networking, projects between and among movements. It is this very loose sense that the term should be understood when used in this paper.

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Transforming the Structures of Knowledge In terms of thinking about how the social forum process can be a part of reshaping the structures of knowledge, I think it is worth framing the question in terms of a movement away from states and towards autonomous social movement actors as sources of transformation of society (‘towards’ is an important word here. By no means does it seem likely that the bureaucracies of nation-states and international organizations will disappear altogether anytime soon. For that matter, it is not clear to me that such a disappearance would be particularly desirable). On one level, the question is what sorts of knowledge would be useful for such a transformation? How would it be used? How would it be produced and disseminated? On another level, the same sorts of questions can be asked of particular social movements or organizations that scholars are working with. Or they can be asked of the social forum process itself. These three levels – the general knowledge needs of a movement based society, the specific needs of particular movements, and the needs of the social forum process share a focus on social movements. The social forum is a crucial space for academics to work on these questions because if its potential to create new alliances, both within academia (across disciplines and epistemic divides) and between academics and the many different sorts of actors who participate in social forums. If James Scott and others12 have illuminated contemporary structures of knowledge by asking how a state sees, we might ask ‘how do movements see?’ Or is ‘seeing’, with its implications of a panopticon, the wrong metaphor? According to these authors, ‘seeing like a state’ involves a heavy focus on quantitative surveillance of society, universal proscriptions for social engineering, reductionism, indifference to cultural difference, and efforts to model human behavior along the lines set out by mathematical physics. To some extent, this critique has had a major impact, and one does not need to travel to Porto Alegre to hear that more attention must be paid to local knowledge, cultural difference, and such. These are now clichés of most NGOs and major international organizations (and they are sometimes used to encourage ‘local’ development that does not challenge neoliberal evisceration of states).13 At the same time, since the major knowledge employing institutions like the World Bank and the nation-state remain 12 13

Scott 1998; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994. Petras2005.

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untransformed and retain a panopticon stance towards social life, critiques have made only a limited impact. Within academia, three major alternatives have been formulated. One emphasizes the construction of knowledge through dialogical attendance to cultural difference. A second involves the deconstruction of the categories that constitute the modern world.14 The other seeks to reformulate the social science project as historically grounded, emphasizing the contingent nature of any rules that are operant on the social field.15 While these approaches – and others – have their virtues, it is crucial to not practice ‘epistemological sectarianism’, that is, claims made by small groups of intellectuals not in touch with a diversity of movements that they have found the ‘one true way’ to disrupt the dominant ways of knowing. As is the case for many aspects of the left, what would be more worthwhile than competition between these positions would be instead a process of translation16 between the different positions so that they could discover both commonalities and unique aspects to strengthen each other. Would not the social forum process be a valuable context to begin this process of translation, free of disciplinary pressures? The debate can be further enriched by opening up questions of how the knowledge would be disseminated and used. Again, because the social forum brings together so many different kinds of academic actors, it is a better place to have such a discussion than an exclusively academic space. For example, present at the USSF were URPE (Union of Radical Political Economists), Global Studies, Sociologists without Borders, and many other left academic groupings. At the same time, social movement organizations who should be part of this discussion are also present. Although the planning committee of the USSF was not particularly sympathetic to the contributions of radical academics (and I’ve written a little elsewhere about how this might be rectified),17 these groups were nevertheless welcome and held workshops. The social forum potentially is a space in which they can interact and build stronger cross disciplinary networks. Can the social forum process strengthen unity between radicals in academia across disciplines? Can the social forum process help trigger a broad reformation of academia through new alliances of academics and activists? Can social forum based activities 14 15 16 17

Mitchell2002. Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences 1996. De Sousa Santos 2006. Sherman2007.

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perhaps act as a staging ground for experiments in the reorganization of academia?

Contemporary Examples of Academic Interventions In this section, I want to note several ongoing practices of radical academics that may provide useful models for further experimentation. Efforts to creatively combine the activities of scholars and activists are numerous, and provide the grounds on which new practices can be developed. For example, the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded 18 emerged out of an a conference held at a university, but primarily consists of writing by activists. It addresses a topic – the possible cooptation of movements by the ‘nonprofit industrial complex’ difficult to approach within an activist milieu heavily dependent on precisely this funding. Academics supplement the writings of activists by offering historical perspectives on these questions. Finally, the text was published by South End Press, a left-wing publishing house. Its purpose is clearly to offer insights into ways that movements for social change can act more autonomously, rather than to help refine universalist social theory or inform the practices of liberal policy makers. Thus it is an example of the way resources of the university can be mobilized towards the construction of the kinds of projects valued in the social forum process. The slogan ‘the revolution will not be funded’ was something of a subterranean theme at the US Social Forum, although it is hard to imagine the book generating as much debate within academia, given both its list of contributors and its publisher. At the American Sociological Association meeting of 2007 (theme: Is Another World Possible?), a reception entitled ‘New York City Activists meet the Sociologists’ was organized. ASA President Frances Fox Piven introduced a number of New York City activists, who briefly described struggles they are involved in, and encouraged other activists present to step forward. Most of the activists who spoke mentioned ways that sociologists could contribute, identified specific research goals that they wanted help with. It should be noted that it was clear that the vast majority of people present at the reception were sociologists attending the conference. A reception at a sociologist conference held in a convention center does not necessarily strike most activists as a place they need to be. However, 18

INCITE! 2007.

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one could imagine a similar reception being held more productively in the context of the US Social Forum. The effort to match activists research needs with sociologists could be continued in cyberspace. A more ambitious vision of the interaction of activists and scholars is provided by Boaventura De Sousa Santos’ vision of a popular university of the social movements (PUSM). The PUSM would bring together limited numbers of movement activists, scholars, and cultural producers for a couple of weeks of intensive seminars, devoted to understanding how to produce, teach, and disseminate knowledge. “On the one hand, it aims to enable self-education of activists and community leaders of social movements and NGOs, by providing them with adequate analytical and theoretical frameworks . . . On the other hand, it aims to enable self-education of progressive social scientists/scholars/artists interested in studying the new processes of social transformation, by offering them the opportunity of a diret dialogue with their protagonists.”19 Aspects of the PUSM have been adopted and put into practice in several countries. At the same time, important struggles are also waged to defend academia as a space for the production of critical knowledge and to weaken its complicity in the most oppressive state practices. For example, some psychologists recently waged a (for the moment) unsuccessful struggle to have the American Psychological Association condemn any participation by its members in military interrogations. That the organization could not even distance itself from these widely condemned practices is indicative of how much its activities are tied to state goals (the involvement with the CIA and the military takes place against a backdrop of uncontroversial involvement with police and prisons). Perhaps the social forum could be a useful place for coordinating actions on such a struggle across disciplines (one hardly heard a word about the struggle within psychology at the almost simultaneous sociologists’ conference described above), and working to isolate those throughout academia who insist on producing knowledge and techniques for purposes of torture, surveillance, and otherwise maintaining inequality. Similarly, the social forum process might provide a fruitful context to forge an alliance to defend space for academic dissidents such as Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein. This is not to disparage the professional associations and unions that already do so; rather, it is simply to note that there are certain kinds of alliances and discourses

19

Santos 2006, pp. 148–159, quote is on p. 150.

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that they cannot participate in directly, both due to the broad membership they represent and the rules governing the discourse of those sorts of organizations.

Towards a New Structure of Knowledge Finally, in the spirit of ‘another world is possible’, I want to suggest that the social forum can provide the basis for beginning to renew the structures of knowledge. The importance of the internet to the reconstruction of the structures of knowledge can hardly be exaggerated, although it has attracted relatively little attention among scholar/activists (on the other hand, activists have sometimes enthused over the networking potential of the new media, and at other times despaired over the prospect of the substitution of complaining on line for street protest, although this latter concept has not been confirmed by research). Innovations in the architecture of the web have come from corporations or non-profit movements (Wikipedia, open-source) entirely autonomous from left social movements. Compared to print, internet texts are readily available, easily searched, blend text, pictures, and sounds, and can be easily appropriated through ‘cut-and-paste’ or linking procedures. Thus texts are constantly being quoted, appropriated, revised, commented upon. The conversations around the text become part of the web as much as the text itself, complicating printbased notions of authorship. The capacity to access the web and the information on it has great democratizing potential, so long as that information is not privatized and restricted. The aura of the text in print form, at the very least, is being seriously revised if not deteriorating altogether.20 These features of the internet cannot help but affect the structures of knowledge, and those interested in reshaping these structures in line with aspirations for another world would do well to pay close attention. For example, the emergence of Wikipedia should be reflected upon by those seeking to reconstruct the structures of knowledge. Wikipedia is a free, web-only encyclopedia begun in 2001. It is produced by anyone who chooses to participate. It is backed by a non-profit foundation, the Wikimedia foundation, whose total assets barely exceed a million dollars. It now claims to include over 7 million articles. ‘Wikis’, as entries are called, cover everything from Michel Foucault to Walmart to the Internationalist 20

Diebert1997.

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bookstore in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to the Zapatistas. Entries can be easily created and edited by anyone on the web. Information included is supposed to be presented in a neutral manner, and contributors are supposed to limit themselves to settled facts. Deliberately misleading information is usually spotted and edited out by the substantial community that watches wikis (not that there is a single community monitoring all changes. Instead, those concerned with a particular page tend to watch it closely, creating a decentered community of thousands monitoring wikis). There is also an editorial board and arbitration board to ultimately resolve disputes. The point here is not that wikipedia constitutes the new structure of knowledge that I am calling for (Wikipedia’s emphasis on settled, referenced facts, and concomitant disparagement of memory and interpretations probably quite at odds with the needs of the movements). Rather, I mention it to highlight the rapidity with which a new, transnational knowledge tool can be collectively developed through the internet. The capacity of the internet to represent the knowledge of the ‘movement of movements’ or ‘other world’ embodied in the social forum process has not yet been tapped. The most ambitious attempt to represent the ‘movement of movements’ remains the book ‘We are Everywhere’, produced by the Notes from Nowhere collective.21 The book combined political polemics, a timeline, accounts of different organizations, individuals, etc in a deliberate effort to capture the kaleidoscopic quality of the new left. Yet it also had the limits of books in general. It was frozen in time. It could not be modified. Its availability was constrained by the distribution channels associated with its publisher. Similar problems afflict another effort to represent the movement, the wall of demands produced at the World Social Forum 2003. In response to a list of demands written by a small group of intellectuals (mostly white men) a wall was produced where everyone could scrawl their demands. Apart from reproducing the ‘freedom’ fallacy (simply allowing anyone to write whatever they want is enough to ensure that everyone is included) one could well ask whatever became of this wall, whether its multitude of demands was ever in any meaningful sense incorporated into the practice of movements, or whether it was simply shunted off to some archive to be consulted someday by the curious historian. I would suggest that an internet based representation could come closer to capturing the evolving, processual character of contemporary

21

Notes from Nowhere 2003.

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movements/social forums. What if a social forum were to offer a webbased visualization of the entire network of groups that have participated, with tools to understand the network of movements through linkages between groups, sectoral affiliation, philosophical orientation, etc.? What if, in turn, groups were to provide linkages to scholars or research centers they have worked with, or been inspired by? And then the site could be amended through procedures parallel to those employed by Wikipedia. One could imagine such a representation providing the seeds of an alternative structure of knowledge, that foregrounds movements and their knowledge needs (it should be noted here that US intelligence agencies have already developed their own version of Wikipedia, ‘Intelpedia’. Again, their completely classified approach is not appropriate for the goals of the social forum; instead it is simply noted that other knowledge producers/ users have begun to create wiki-style systems for their own purposes).22

Conclusion Because the social forum provides an open space, and subjects itself to internal critique, it provides an invaluable context for the integration of scholars into the ‘movement of movements’ and broad debate about the production and use of knowledge amongst both scholars and activists. Whereas earlier left movements tended to produce organizations whose sense of infallibility paralleled religious organizations (notwithstanding claims of being ‘scientific’), the social forum appears to incorporate the most vital aspects of the modern structures of knowledge, the awareness that knowledge must constantly be subject to debate, amendment, reconstruction, and must include a plurality of voices. At the same time, for radical scholars, the social forum is in many ways preferable to the contemporary academy, since it actively seeks to undo the class biases and exclusions that the academy incorporates into both its knowledge production and its physical infrastructure. The social forum appears to have potential both in terms of very short term tasks of academic radicals (such as delegitimizing the ties between the repressive aspects of the state and the academy, and defending academic freedom) and in terms of the most ambitious long term tasks (rethinking the role of knowledge in ‘another world’ in

22

Shane200 7.

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which autonomous movements play a central role). It provides a site where radical scholars can link with each other and with social movements. It demands the closest possible attention from activist scholars.

References Anderson, Benedict 1983, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Arrighi, Giovanni 1994, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times, London: Verso. Davis, Mike and Daniel Bertrand Monk 2007, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism, New York: The New Press. Eisenstein, Elizabeth 1983, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Escobar, Arturo 1995, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Diebert, Ronald 1997, Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia, New York: Columbia University Press. Ferguson, James 1994, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depolitization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences 1996, Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hofstadter, Richard 1963, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York: Knopf. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence 2007, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Boston: South End Press. Klein, Naomi 2002, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, New York: Picador. Meyer, John and Michael T. Hannan 1979, National Development and the World System: Educational, Economic, and Political Change, 1950–1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, Timothy 2002, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Notes from Nowhere 2003, We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-capitalism, London: Verso. Ong, Aihwa 2006, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham: Duke University Press. Petras, James, and Veltmeyer, Henry 2005, Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador, London: Pluto Press. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 2006, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. London: Zed Press. Scott, James C. 1998, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press. Shane, Scott 2007, ‘Logged in and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence’, The New York Times.

222 Sherman, Steven 2007, Achievements and Limits of the First United States Social Forum at http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/sherman040707.html. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1991, Unthinking the Social Sciences: The Limits of Nineteenth Century Paradigms, Cambridge: Polity Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1995, After Liberalism, New York: The New Press. Warren, Cat 2007, ‘Caught in the Crunch: Capitalism, Academic Freedom, and Conservatism’, Paper delivered at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

CHAPTER 14

World Social Forum: Re-imaging Development and the Global South beyond the Neo-colonial Gaze Eunice N. Sahle

Historians of the concept of development and its attendant economic practice of the capitalist mode of production such as Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton have provided seminal discussions of this notion in efforts to demonstrate not only its European roots but also the ways in which social forces in Europe contested the practices and effects generated by capitalism.1 While the concept of development and its portrayed outcomes such as progress, modernity, etc., is not new, it nonetheless has different genealogy as it pertains to social formations in the global South. Consequently, the ways in which it has translated in these regions and its effects cannot be assumed to take the European trajectory. The normative root of the concept of development as it is applied in relation to the contemporary global South has its origin in European imperial projects. Thus, the evolution of the notion of development as a domain of knowledge in the post-1945 period takes over where colonial notions of the White man’s burden that called for the ‘civilizing’ missions for the savage ‘other’ in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America left off. Development discourse though is not just a domain of knowledge but generates economic and political practices that while mediated by local historical and social realities have enabled the reproduction of an unequal world system since the high noon of modernization theory in the 1950s and the contemporary era of neoliberalism. This chapter has two parts with part one discussing how the conceptualization of development in hegemonic frameworks of development has enabled the reproduction of colonial systems of domination. The second section contends that the

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Cowen and Shenton 1996.

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nascent nature of the World Social Forum process notwithstanding, it provides a major political opportunity structure for the re-imagining of economic and political processes in the differentiated global South and of the South itself beyond the hegemonic European-North American neocolonial gaze.

Development Theory and Practice: Neo-colonial Systems of Domination Theories of development range form a variety from critical perspectives such as dependency, neo-Marxist, and feminist, to liberal informed traditions such as modernization, rational choice and neoliberalism. Our central concern here are hegemonic development theories such as neoliberalism and its earlier predecessor modernization theory given their critical influence in academic and policy circles, a factor that has resulted in their powerful influence in key turning points in economic and political processes in the global South. While not offering a full discussion of these theories2 we discuss the central ways in which hegemonic theories of development historically and in the contemporary era of neoliberalism have facilitated the reproduction of colonial systems of domination and in the process the marginalization of the majority of social formations in the global South. For our purposes here we argue that these theories have perpetuated the colonial system of domination in three ways: naturalization of the global economic-political hierarchy; the ahistorical, pathological and racist representation of the global South; and the domesticated representation of capitalism.

Naturalization of the Global Economic-Political Power Hierarchy During the colonial conjuncture, activities of imperial powers in the contemporary global South were represented as being morally just and mainly concerned with the establishment of “pre-take off ” foundations for economic and political modernization processes of these societies as outlined in Walt Rostow’s schema of stages of development.3 In society after society,

2 3

Rapley 2004, Sahle, forthcoming. Rostow19 60.

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the pre-colonial space was constructed as unstable, savage and chaotic and in much urgent need of the modernizing effects of the European civilized other who would usher in a new age of reason, modernity and progress. In the context of Malawi for instance, a colonial report captures this view: “throughout all this country there was absolutely no security for life and property for natives, and not over-much for the Europeans . . . Everything had got to be commenced” and three years after the issuing of this report the Governor of British ruled Malawi [Nyasaland] chronicles what he considered as the benefits brought by colonialism: An increasing number of natives are able to read and write, and, above all, are trained to respect and to value a settled and civilized government . . . Here will be seen clean broad level roads, bordered by handsome avenues of tress, and comely red brick houses with rose-covered verandas peeping out behind clumps of ornamental shrubs . . . A planter gallops past on horseback, or a missionary trots in on a fat white donkey from a visit to an outlying station. Long rows of native carriers pass in Indian file, carrying loads of European goods, or a smart-looking policeman, in black fez, black jacket and breeches marches off on some errand . . . The most interest feature in the neighbourhood of these settlements at the present time is the coffee plantation, which, to a great extent, is the cause and support of our prosperity.4

In colonial discourse, imperial economic and political projects in Malawi and elsewhere were presented as being for the benefit of the uncivilized natives and in the process the role of colonial interests such as those of missionaries, metropole colonial offices, local colonial bureaucrats and capitalists in the establishment of, for example, exploitative economic practices were naturalized, normalized and depoliticized. Yet, as dependency, world system and other critical traditions in social sciences indicate, colonial projects not only established economic structures for the benefit of the motherland but also resulted in the incorporation of social formations in the global South into the world system on unequal terms albeit unevenly. In the case of economic practices for example, during the imperial epoch “most of the surplus extracted by the foreign rulers and capitalists was transferred to the metropolitan countries or, from the nineteenth century onwards, to colonies of white settlement such as the USA, Canada, Australia, etc.”5

4 5

Johnston H. 1895, quoted in Crush 1995, pp. 1–2. Bagchi 1998, p. 26.

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While these colonial economic strategies left indelible marks that continue to influence economic and political processes in social formations in the global South, they are neglected in hegemonic debates and practises of development. As in the imperial age, the evolution of hegemonic theories of development has been underpinned by a process of naturalizing the practices of dominant forces in the world political-economic system. Take for instance, political modernization theorists’ view of political structures and practices in the global South: while calling for dominant states in the post-1945 world order to support the creation of one party authoritarian state forms, the role of these states was presented as being in the service of politically backward societies that would degenerate into chaos and most likely fall under the uncivilized spell of communist ideology and practices.6 Further, hegemonic theories of development have historically and in the contemporary juncture naturalized the power hierarchy that underpins the world political-economic order and thus neglected the political and economic effects of this social reality on social formations in the global South. The power hierarchy that marks the world order is presented as a natural and progressive arrangement in which the wealthy social formations that have reached the last stage of development as mapped by modernization theorists will rescue their poverty riddled and backward counter-parts in the Third World. This approach is for example embodied in the following elements of President Truman’s Four Point Program ushered in 1949: Fourth. . . . More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas . . . Our aim should be to help the free peoples of the world, through their own efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more material for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens . . . This should be a cooperative enterprise in which all nations work together through the United Nations and its specialized agencies whenever practicable. It must be a worldwide effort for the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom. The old imperialism – exploitation for foreign profit – has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair-dealing. All countries, including our own, will greatly benefit from a constructive program for the better use of the world’s human and natural resources. . . . Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.7 6 7

Pye 1966; Apter 1966; Huntington 1968. President Truman’s Point Four Message, Appendix 1, Rist 2004.

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From a Third World modernization perspective, the economic and political interests of the United States and other leading social formations in the global system are naturalized and in the process depoliticized. The political role of the USA for example in early 1960s in former Zaire – contemporary Democratic Republic of Congo – a development that enabled the rise to power of a brutal and corrupt dictatorship and, in Chile, events leading to the emergence of Augosto Pinochet’s regime of terror is considered as part of the rescuing mission of the enlightened and neutral actors at the apex of the world order.8 The naturalisation of the power hierarchy marking the world politicaleconomic order continues in the current era characterized by the hegemony of neoliberal development theory. In terms of the institutional framework that governs the modalities of this hierarchical order, its involvement in generating ideas and pushing for the implementation of economic strategies that contribute to human insecurity such as privatisation of provision of public goods – for example subsidies for farmers, health care and education – is not interrogated. Progressive terms such as partnership, empowerment and engaging civil society in the global South are other elements of contemporary hegemonic approaches to the development problematic. The objective of goal eight of the UN sponsored Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to “develop a global partnership for development” which among other things will lead to the emergence of “an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory.”9 Such a view limits our understanding of the world political-economic order; its neutral and progressive sounding language erases the power dynamics that underpins this order and the competitive nature of its capitalist base. To claim as the MDGs’ framework does that a partnership for development is possible in the contemporary global conjuncture ignores the discriminatory nature of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) institutional framework that governs the modalities of global trade. For years this framework has ignored demands by the majority of states and groups in civil society for its reconfiguration along democratic and equal lines. Since the emergence of the WTO trading regime for example, the majority

8

Hothschild 1988; Robinson 1996. See http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ for details on the rise and evolution of the Millennium Development Goals.

9

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of social formations in Africa have seen a decline in their share of global trade.10 Yet in hegemonic development discourse, this decline is in the main represented as the result of African countries’ failure to concentrate on their primary commodity comparative advantage. Further, in the case of poverty alleviation, the contributions of economic practices of institutions of global governance, such as their promotion of capitalist strategies of capital accumulation with its attendant social dislocations, are presented in neutral and moral terms.

Development and Representation of the Global South: Ahistoricism, Pathology and Racism The mapping out and consolidation of European imperialism in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean was in addition to military and economic power enabled by the construction of these regions in pathologic and racist terms. As Jonathan Crush argues in reference to the earlier highlighted representation of pre-colonial and colonial Malawi by Governor Johnston, in the stroke of a pen, Johnston reconfigured the local geographical landscape: “the civilized, ordered, white, male, English landscape erases its unordered, savage, chaotic, dangerous, African predecessor” and in the process sets “loose the redemptive powers of development”11 Johnston was not alone in representing African and other societies in the non-European world in racist and pathological terms. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o and I have argued elsewhere Georg W. F. Hegel considered “Africa as the land of childhood” and a continent outside the “sphere of human history.”12 Historically and in the era of development, especially when one considers the moral tone of “global designs” (to use Walter Mignolo’s phrase) such as Jeffrey Sachs’s inspired project of setting up Millennium Development Villages in various parts of Africa as a solution to the continent’s poverty and diseases, the global South continues to be represented in pathological terms. This is of course not a new phenomenon. As Achille Mbembe argues, in the case of Africa the continent “as an idea, a concept, has historically served, and continues to serve, as a polemical argument for 10 11 12

For seminal discussion on these issues, see Gibbon and Ponte 2005. Crush 1995, p. 2. WaTh iong’o and Eunice N. Sahle 2004.

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the West’s desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the world. In several respects, Africa still constitutes one of the metaphors through which the West represents the origin of its own norms, develops a selfimage, and integrates this image into the set of signifiers asserting what it supposes to be its identity.”13 The structural power of global capital, well articulated by scholars such as Stephen Gill, Immanuel Wallerstein, Guy Mhone and others, has played and continues to play a major role in the marginalization of the majority of social formations in the global South. Nonetheless, our premise is that the representation of these regions in racist and pathological terms in the colonial and neo-colonial era of development discourse is a constitutive element of this process. Language is central in the creation of systems of domination for as Stuart Hall explains, it . . . operates as a representational system. Language is one of the ‘media’ through which thoughts, ideas and feelings are represented in a culture. Representation through language is . . . central to the processes by which meaning is produced. . . . Sounds, words, notes, gestures, expressions, clothes – are part of our natural and material world; but their importance for language is not what they are but what they do, their function. They construct meaning and transmit it . . . [and] operate as symbols, which stand for . . . the meanings we wish to communicate. Signs stand for or represent our concepts, ideas and feelings in such a way as to enable others to ‘read’, decode or interpret their meaning in roughly the same way that we do. . . . meaning is . . . constructed – rather than simply ‘found’. . . . Representation [then] is conceived as entering into the very constitution of things.14

The global South is represented in the hegemonic theories of development as poor underdeveloped, and chaotic. In the developmental representational system, how the South became poor is never explained rather it is presented as a natural condition generated by the lack of initiative on the part of local people, their irrationality and the corrupt nature of their ruling elites. The ways in which colonial practices and contemporary modalities of the world economic-political system contribute to social and political realities in the global South do not feature in the representational system that underpins hegemonic theories of development which overwhelmingly inform the approaches of international institutions such as the

13 14

Mbembi 2001, p. 2. Hall 1997, pp. 1, 5, 6.

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World Bank and the development agencies of leading states in the global North to the global South.

The Mystification of Capitalism The concept of development has over time become part of our common sense, both in the global North and the South. In the context of Malawi, subaltern social forces in slum areas in the city of Blantyre and elite forces alike consider development as “a good thing” and as a process that if not “messed by politicians” could relieve the daily agonies of economic marginalization and address other forms of social distress.15 The global penetration of this concept and its associated outcomes, such as progress, modernity, has been facilitated by the hegemonic theories of development and the economic and political agendas they inform. However it is defined in orthodox development discourse and practices, development as the common sense of our age represents the promotion of capitalist-led economic strategies along the lines of Western societies. The so-called civilizing mission laid the foundation for this process. In the post-1945 era, global designs such as the ones represented in President Harry Truman’s Four Point Program and current neoliberal economic restructuring policies are the latest versions of persistent efforts by dominant forces in the global North, and their counterparts in the global South, to promote capitalist logics. Hegemonic theories of development mystify capitalism by representing it as necessary, neutral, and in essence the natural order of things for all societies. Arguing along these lines Gilbert Rist states “at the heart of Western thought”, of which hegemonic theories of development are a constitutive part lies the idea of a natural history of humanity: namely, that the ‘development’ of societies, knowledge and wealth corresponds to a ‘natural’ principle with its own source of dynamism, which grounds the possibility of a grand narrative . . . This is why the founding text of economics is called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, where the ‘progress of opulence’ is presented as an ‘order of things which necessity imposes in general’, and which ‘is promoted by the natural inclinations of man’. In this view, the ‘order of things’ – that is, progress – cannot be stopped: [capitalist] ‘development’ is not a choice but the finality – and fatality – of history.16

15 16

Fieldwork group interviews, Mbayani and Ndirande townships, Malawi, July 1998. Rist 2004, pp. 39–40.

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The domestication of capitalism in hegemonic theories of development enables its embedding in the global South as the only way to organize the economy. Further, the ahistorical nature of these theories mystifies the violence and social dislocation that marked the rise of capitalism in countries such as Britain, a process that is well illustrated by Karl Polanyi and in the colonies by scholars such as Walter Rodney.17 By using the evolution term of development, these theories represent capitalist forms in the global North as an achievable goal for late comers in the global South as long as the latter institutes measures such as market-led capitalism advocated by the World Bank. Yet, the negative social and other effects of neoliberal driven capitalism documented by scholars such as John Rapley among others are considered as the natural order of things leading these societies to capitalist nirvana.18

World Social Forum: The Re-imaging of Development and the Global South beyond the Neo-colonial Developmental Gaze The preceding discussion has highlighted the ways in which development theory and practice has facilitated the reproduction of neo-colonial systems of domination in the context of the differentiated global South. Nonetheless, this process does not mean that elite and non-elite social forces in the global South have been docile actors in the post-1945 age of promoting development along capitalist lines. Over the years, there have been counter-hegemonic responses from these forces. For instance, the early 1970s saw an elite-driven call for the establishment of a New International Economic Order. Since the 1980s various political movements for instance, labor, indigenous, human rights in the global South have contested the ascendancy and practices of the neoliberal development agenda. In 2001, a new space opened up for the contestation of the neoliberal world order when the first World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Since its emergence the WSF has become a transnational process characterized by bi-annual global meetings, and regional, national, and city forums.19 While the WSF process is a new phenomenon and like other political spaces marked by tensions,20 the view taken here is that 17 18 19 20

Polanyi2001. Rapley2004. See Santos 2006; Smith et al. 2008. See Santo 2006; Smith et al. 2008; Sahle forthcoming.

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it is providing a site to rethink the concept of development in transformative ways. Further, we contend that its emergence has ushered in a new conjuncture in the ongoing struggle for re-imagining the global South and processes of social change in these regions beyond the neo-colonial developmental gaze. Here we highlight three ways in which the WSF represents a transformative opportunity structure in post-1945 politics of development.

World Social Forum: Emergence of a Counter-hegemonic Representational System The rise of the WSF offers an opportunity to dismantle the hegemonic representational system that acts as cement for orthodox development theories and practices. It does so in two fundamental ways. First, the WSF has emerged as a site of knowledge production and second as a powerful illustration of global South’s political agency. During colonialism and in the post-1945 period, the global South has not been considered as a generator of knowledge. In both epochs, the global South has been constructed as the receiver of development knowledge from a modern and scientific global North. Even though the global South has been a site of knowledge production – for instance, the dependency and liberation theology traditions from Latin America –, the colonial imagination of the global South as an irrational space, incapable of generating knowledge continues to be reproduced through the deployment of new strategies such as war propaganda and others means. The WSF’s rise posits a major challenge to the neo-colonial pathological and racist representational system embedded in hegemonic theories of development. Since its emergence, the WSF process has provided a space for the generation and sharing of transformative knowledge among members of the various movements and organizations, involved in this process in the spirit of equality of knowledge forms. This departs from dominant trends that have historically and in the current conjuncture seen dominant forces in the global knowledge production apparatus universalize the global North political and economic trajectory, through knowledge forms that are presented as scientific and neutral. This process has been characterized by practices that devalue knowledge and values from other societies especially those in the global South. Boaventura De Sousa Santos has termed this process as “epistemicide”, and argues that there is need to acknowledge

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and be aware of the diversity of knowledge forms in the world, and that doing so would lead “to recognizing that the understanding of the world by far exceeds the Western understanding of the world.” He goes to contend that what is needed in the rethinking of politics of knowledge production and dissemination is the emergence of “a more balanced (neither relativistic nor imperialist) relationship among rival knowledges” for in the absence of such as a development, “all the policies aimed at promoting social justice will end up furthering social injustice”.21 A second way in which the WSF represents the emergence of a counterhegemonic representational system is its foregrounding the political agency of social forces from the global South. From a critical historical perspective, the political agency of social formations in the global South has always existed albeit within the limits set by local-global structural and other factors in a given conjuncture. However, these regions having mainly been portrayed as having no agency in mapping out and instituting their economic and political processes. Such denial of agency was central to the colonial project in various parts of the global South as a means of constructing consent in efforts to legitimize colonial interventions. For instance, in France, advocates of colonialism viewed this project as “one of the highest functions of societies that reached an advanced state of civilization” and its object was “to place the young society it has brought forth in the most suitable conditions for the development of its faculties.”22 Hegemonic perspectives of development have supported this view of nonEuropean social formations. For Walt Rostow “colonies were often established . . . to organize a tradition society incapable of self-organization (or unwilling to organize itself ) for modern import and export activity, including production for export.”23 In the post-1945 epoch hegemonic development theories, as the work of Timothy Mitchell on Egypt has succinctly demonstrated, has portrayed societies in the global South as having no political agency of themselves and thus in need of economic interventions from development agencies such as the USAID.24 The historical origin of the WSF lies in the global South. The proposal that led to its emergence, and which was presented at a June 22–24, 2000 21

Santos 2006, p. 14. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonization chez les peuples modernes, quoted in Rist 2004, p. 54. 23 Rostow 1960, pp. 96–97. 24 Mitchell2002. 22

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meeting in Geneva comprising of representatives from movements and organizations opposed to a neoliberal driven globalization process, was crafted by Brazilian social movements and organizations.25 In the proposal, these actors conceived of the WSF as “a new international space for reflection and for organization of all those who counter neo-liberal policies and are constructing alternatives to prioritize human development and overcome market domination in every country and in international relations”.26 While the WSF has over the years become a transnational social reality, its emergence in the global South signifies an important development in the historical and current struggles to foreground the political and other forms of agency of social forces in the global South, especially beyond that of ruling elites which has tended to be the central concern of hegemonic theorists of development.

World Social Forum: Promoting Thinking in Plural and Unmasking the World Political-Economic System Hegemonic development theories and the practices they have generated have in the main presented narrow views of economic and political processes. In terms of the economy, capitalism has been and continues to be portrayed as the only route to economic well-being and modernity in these theories. This approach, which promotes one regime of truth as far as the economic sphere is concerned has deeply colonized our mental space in such as a manner that alternatives, some of which already exist in various societies, are hindered or not considered as serious economic activities. While taking cognizance of the structuring power of local and global capitalist systems, the social movements and organizations involved in the WSF are articulating alternatives to the ‘one economic truth’ promoted in orthodox development thought and practice. As the work of William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah (2003) indicates, the initiatives concerning the economic sphere emerging from the WSF forum are not monolithic and range from producer and credit co-operatives proposals, calls for reforms to capitalist strategies so that the market can serve social needs, and many others. In their diversity, the initiatives these initiatives are opening up a new political and mental space to foreground pre-existing eco25 26

Santos 2006, p. 46. Leite 2005, p. 80.

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nomic strategies and to imagine others beyond the capitalist logic as J. K. Gibson-Graham have illustrated in their work on community economies in the last few years.27 As a site of knowledge production and also as a space that promotes plurality in economic thought and practice, the WSF represents a new conjuncture in the politics of development especially in the arena of economic production. For by acknowledging and stressing that diverse knowledge forms exist in the world and can equally contribute to different ways in which societies organize political, economic and cultural life, the WSF process has opened up a political and intellectual space to re-image and implement economic and political practices that are transformative when compared to hegemonic development discourses. As James Ferguson has argued, in a range of African societies, Wealth . . . has long been understood as first of all a question of relations among people. This is . . . a politically and theoretically rich understanding, vastly more so than the IMF-World Bank’s impoverished conception of the economy as an amoral, technical system. Against the truly fetishized view that would see “the market” as a natural force to which human life simply must submit, the African insight that markets, prices, and wages are always human products is a powerful one . . . the fundamental perception that economic facts are moral and human facts may also provide a resource for a much deeper critique. After all, when one’s society is being systematically destroyed by “the market,” that old Azande question is an acute one: “Who sent the market?” African traditions of moral discourse on questions of economic process may thus be understood not as backward relics to be overcome, but as intellectual and political resources for the future.28

In addition to opening up a space to think in plural terms as far as economic production is concerned, the WSF emphasis on the importance of local historical conditions in informing political, cultural and political practices significantly departs from the approach of hegemonic theories of development which conceptualizes the global South in ahistorical Eurocentric terms. While acknowledging the connections between the local and broader world social and economic processes, for the movements and organizations involved in the WSF forum, each society takes a historically specific path in political and economic trajectories. Thus, while the WSF process is an open space for sharing knowledge, forming linkages, in the 27 28

See Gibson-Graham 2006. Ferguson 2006, p. 82.

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mapping out and implementing alternatives, the entry point for movements and organizations involved this process is local histories and priorities. Such an approach destabilizes the universalizing tendencies of the hegemonic development theories and practices. This approach does not mean an isolationalist standpoint that is solely focused on local priorities. The issue at hand is that whatever external connections and priorities local movements and organizations choice at a given historical moment is a political act that is driven by concrete political and social realities articulated by these movements.29 In addition to foregrounding the centrality of local historical conditions, the movements and organizations of the WSF process have also unmasked the hierarchy that underpins the global political-economic system, but more importantly they have highlighted the ways in which this system contributes to the marginalization of the majority of people in the world. From its inception and in its Charter of Principles, the WSF has contended that global designs generated by this order, such as the contemporary neo-liberal driven globalization, has significant economic, cultural and political effects. In terms of the current neo-liberal world order, the Charter of Principles states: The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to the 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.

In contrast to hegemonic theories of development, in the WSF representational system, the world political-economic system is not progressive or benign: with the agency of leading forces in this system both in the global North and South, it has historically and in the contemporary era supported negative practices that have contributed to social dislocation and human insecurity. Further, by paying attention to the link between world political-economic system’s developments and those at the local level, the WSF forums interrupts the continuing myth in hegemonic theories of development that constructs the global South as being ‘out there’ as Hegel might put it, outside the sphere of the evolution of the world political29

Santos20 06.

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economic system and thus still in need of external interventions by leading actors from the global North. The myth of a global South that is outside the civilized world system continues to underpin hegemonic theories of development even in an era in which the notion of ‘global village’ is invoked in scholarly and policy circles. This myth in the main enables the reproduction of what Enrique Dussel refers to as the “developmental fallacy” that characterizes Western social theorizing which he contends fails to consider that since 1492, the periphery is not a ‘before,” but an “underneath”: the exploited, the dominated, the origin of stolen wealth,” accumulated in the dominating, exploiting “centre.” We repeat: the developmentalist fallacy thinks that the ‘slave” is a “free lord” in his youthful state, and like a child [“crude or barbarian”). It does not understand that the slave is the dialectical “other face” of domination: the as-always, the “otherpart” of the exploitative relation.30

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the continuity between colonial systems of domination and post-1945 rise of hegemonic theories of development. While taking note of this reality, in addition to the power of structural limits set by the neo-liberal world political-economic order, the chapter has also suggested that the emergence of the World Social Forum offers an important opening to rethink development and the global South itself beyond the neo-colonial lens of orthodox development theories that underpinned by the developmental fallacy articulated by Dussel. In the main, the WSF is laying the foundation for the re-imagining not only the global South but also a post-neoliberal world order.

References Apter, E. David 1966, The Politics of Modernization, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bagchi, A. Kumar 1988, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cowen, M. and Robert Shenton 2008, Doctrines of Development, London and New York: Routledge. Crush, J. 1995. Power of Development, London: Routledge.

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238 Dussel, E. 1996, The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philosophy of Liberation, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Fisher, W. F. and T. Ponniah (eds.) 2003, Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, SIRD, Selangor, David Philip; Cape Town / London / New York: Zed Books. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006, A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis / London: University of Minnesota Press. Ferguson, J. 2006, Global Shadows, Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, Durham / London: Duke University Press. Hothschild, A. 1988, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Huntington, S. 1968, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press. Pye, L. 1966a, Aspects of Political Development, Boston: Little, Brown. Gibbon, P. and Stefano Ponte 2005, Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Leite, C. J. 2005, The World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance, p. 80. Chicago: Haymarket Books . Mignolo, W. 2002, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mbembe, A. 2001, On the Postcolony, Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press. Polanyi K. 2001, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. Rapley, J. 2004, Understanding Development, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Rist, G. 2004, The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith, London / New York: Zed Books. Rodney, W. 1981, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Rostow, Walt W. 1960, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sahle, N. E. forthcoming 2008, World Orders, State Formation and Politics of Development. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 2006, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond, London, New York: Zed Books. Smith, J., M. Karides, M. Becker, D. Brunelle, C. Chase-Dunn, D. della Porta, R. I. Garza, J. S. Juris, L. Mosca, E. Reese, P. Smith, and R. Vázquez 2008, Global Democracy and The World Social Forums, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. UN Millennium Development Goals, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/. Wa Thiong’o Ngugi and Eunice Njeri Sahle 2004, ‘Hegel in Africa Literature: Achebe’s Answer’, Diogenes 51, 2: 63–67. William, I. R. 1996, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony, Cambridge:C ambridgeU niversityP ress.

Notes on Contributors Judith Blau is co-author, with Alberto Moncada, of Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision, Justice in the United States, Freedoms and Solidarities, and Two Logics: Globalization vs. Human Rights (2008, forthcoming). She is professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and president of the US chapter of Sociologists without Borders, www.sociologists withoutborders (with which the journal is affiliated). E-mail: jrblau@ email.unc.edu Patrick Bond is professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Civil Society. His research focuses on political economy, environment (energy, water and climate change), social policy and geopolitics, with publications covering South Africa, Zimbabwe, the African continent and global-scale processes. Recent books (since 2005) include: Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society: Negative Returns on South African Investments (co-edited); The Accumulation of Capital in Southern Africa: Rosa Luxemburg’s Contemporary Relevance (co-edited); Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation; Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reforms; Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa and Fanon’s Warning: A Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (edited). E-mail: [email protected] Janet Conway is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brock University in St. Catharine’s, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of Praxis and Politics: Knowledge Production in Social Movements (Routledge, 2006). She is involved in a multi-year research project on the WSF. She is a long-time activist in women’s, anti-poverty and social justice movements and a founder of the Toronto Social Forum. E-mail: [email protected] Mark Frezzo is assistant professor of sociology and associate director of the peace studies undergraduate program at Florida Atlantic University. He publishes and teaches in the areas of social movements, political economy,

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development sociology, and the sociology of human rights. He is a member of Sociologists without Borders. E-mail: [email protected] Michael Leon Guerrero has been the Coordinator of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance since April of 2004. Previous to that he worked for 17 years at the SouthWest Organizing Project where he served as a community organizer, Lead Organizer and Executive Director, supervising organizing efforts in low-income communities throughout the state of New Mexico and organizing campaigns on issues of environmental justice, corporate accountability and globalization. Currently Michael serves on the Boards of the Jobs with Justice, the New World Foundation, and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Michael was chair of the US Social Forum Resource Mobilization Working Group. E-mail: michael@ ggjalliance.org Chris Hausmann is a graduate student in sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where he leads the Oppositional Consciousness Research Project and participates in the Network Institue for Global Democratization. His research interests include social movements, methods, and social theory. E-mail: [email protected] Lyndi Hewitt is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, and a research assistant for the Global Feminisms Collaborative. Her previous work has focused on historical women’s movements in the US; her current research interests include transnational women’s and feminist movements, feminist methodology and critical pedagogy. Presently, she is conducting research for her dissertation, which examines differences in the discursive strategies of contemporary transnational feminist networks. She has attended three social forums, and is particularly interested in the impact of the forums on the strategic practices of social movements. E-mail: [email protected] Marina Karides is Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida Atlantic University. She has published multiple works on autonomous employment strategies, gender inequalities, and economic development ideologies. She is one of eleven co-authors of Global Democracies and the World Social Forums. She serves as Sociologists Without Borders’ representative on the National Planning Committee of the USSF. E-mail: [email protected]

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Walda Katz-Fishman is a scholar activist and popular educator who combines her research and teaching interests in class, race/ethnicity/nationality, and gender inequality and political economy with political activism in bottom-up struggles for economic equality and race and gender justice. She is a professor of sociology at Howard University – where she has taught since 1970, Board Chair of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, a Steering Committee member of Grassroots Global Justice and a Coordinating Committee member of the US Social Forum. She was co-recipient with Jerome Scott of the American Sociological Association’s 2004 Award for the Public Understanding of Sociology and has written numerous articles on political economy, race-class-gender inequality, today’s globalization and popular movements for justice, equality and popular democracy. E-mail: wkatzfi[email protected] www.projectsouth.org Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at SUNY Stony Brook. Her research focuses on the relationships between social movements; particularly within cycles of protest. Her primary research is on the contemporary women’s movement in the US and the transformations it undergoes through interaction with other movements (specifically the anti-war, global justice movements and international women’s movements). E-mail: rkutzfl[email protected] Michal Osterweil is PhD candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, department of anthropology. She is currently completing research for her dissertation on theoretical production in the Global Justice Movement, focusing on Italy; but also Social Forums; as well as zapatista inspired autonomist networks. She is also involved in research-activist projects such as Turbulence: Ideas for Movement, as well as the UNC Social Movement Working Group at UNC. E-mail: [email protected] Thomas Ponniah is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University. He is the co-editor of the first book of alternatives from the World Social Forum: Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum. He is currently finishing another book on the World Social Forum and is also co-editing the volume The Revolution in Venezuela. Ponniah was recently awarded Harvard’s Barrington Moore Prize for Advising Excellence in Social Studies and a Harvard Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. E-mail: [email protected]

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Eunice N. Sahle was educated at the Universities of Toronto (BA hons., Political Science and International Development and MA, Political Science ) and Queen’s (PhD Political Science) in Canada. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a joint appointment in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies and the Curriculum in International Studies. E-mail: eunice@ email.unc.edu Jerome W. Scott is a labor and community organizer and popular educator who brings activists and scholars together for popular economic and political education and action research to develop new leadership for building today’s bottom-up movement for fundamental social change. He was a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the auto plants of Detroit, MI in the late 1960s. He is Director of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide (Atlanta, GA, www.projectsouth.org), a Steering Committee member of Grassroots Global Justice and a Coordinating Committee member of the US Social Forum. E-mail: [email protected] Steven Sherman attained a PhD in Sociology from Binghamton University in 1999. He has taught at Greensboro College and Guilford College. He maintains the website lefteyeonbooks.org. E-mail: [email protected] Jackie Smith is associate professor of sociology and peace studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is a co-author of Global Democracy and the World Social Forums and author of a forthcoming book, Social Movements for Global Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press). She also has co-edited three books on transnational activism, including Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (1997), Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements (2002), and Coalitions Across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order (2005). Smith also has published numerous articles in books and journals such as American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Mobilization, Human Rights Quarterly, International Sociology, Journal of World Systems Research, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. E-mail: [email protected] Stellan Vinthagen is a scholar-activist who lives in the immigrant councilhouse area Hammarkullen and the Eco-Village Lilla Krossekärr in Sweden. He is a senior lecturer at School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University;

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Council Member of War Resisters International and co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network (www.resistancestudies.org). His research interest is focused on resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conflict transformation and social change. He has written or edited four books and numerous articles, among the latest (with Sean Chabot) “Rethinking Nonviolent Action and Contentious Politics: Political Cultures of Nonviolent Opposition in the Indian Independence Movement and Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement”, in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 27, 2007. Vinthagen has traveled in five continents to interview movement activists, done participant-observations at several top-summit protests of the global justice movement and discussed research results with participants at four WSF since 2002. E-mail: stellan. [email protected] Immanuel Wallerstein is Senior Research Scholar, Yale University; former president, International Sociological Association, 1994–1998; participant in World Social Forum 2002 (Porto Alegre), 2004 (Mumbai), 2005 (Porto Alegre), 2007 (Nairobi). E-mail: [email protected] Peter Waterman has spent most of his life engaged in and researching labour and other internationalisms. He worked in the international Communist movement twice, taught and researched in Nigeria, and then worked at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 1972–1998. He was involved with the ‘shopfloor internationalism’ of the 1980s and, has worked on ‘the new internationalisms’ and ‘communications internationalism’ since 1985. Most recently he has concentrated on the relationship of the international labour and the ‘global justice and solidarity’ movement. He has published extensively and in many languages. He is currently working on a compilation of his recent essays and on his autobiography as an internationalist. E-mail: [email protected] “Chico” Whitaker (*Francisco Whitaker Ferreira) is a leading social activist and one of the founding figures of the World Social Forum in Brazil. He is a member of the Executive Secretariate of the Brazilian Commission Justice and Peace; active in radical movements within the Catholic Church; he was a member of the Workers’ Party, having been elected in 1989 and 1992 as São Paulo Councillor on the PT ticket. He is a member of the WSF Brazilian Organizing Committee and the WSF International Council. In 2006 he received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize). E-mail: [email protected]

Index Academia vi, 103, 188, 205–206, 208, 210–211, 213–217 Activists i, 3, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 15, 26–27, 37, 42–43, 45–48, 50–52, 54–55, 59, 61, 66, 71, 76, 94, 99–100, 102, 109–110, 130, 133, 141, 143, 148, 150, 158–159, 161–164, 168, 170, 173–188, 191, 193, 196, 199–201, 209, 211, 212, 215–218, 220, 242–243 AFL–CIO 35,166 Africa, African 4, 10, 14, 19–20, 26, 27, 30, 32–33, 35, 58, 66, 93, 95–100, 103, 106, 109–111, 114–115, 118–120, 130, 133–134, 140, 142, 149, 157–159, 160–162, 164–167, 170–172, 178, 181, 182, 184–185, 192, 197, 199, 223, 228–229, 235, 238–239, 242 Alternative(s) 8–11, 18, 20, 24, 38, 85, 94, 97, 101, 114–115, 120–124, 127, 129, 137, 143–146, 149, 153, 157–158, 167, 169, 184, 188, 198, 200, 202, 208, 215, 220, 234–235, 238, 241, 243 Amazon 2,149–150 Anarchist, anarchy 29, 135, 137, 141, 143, 201 Anti–apartheidm ovement 133–134, 140, 162 ArticulacionF eministaM acosur 107, 111, 114, 178 Atlanta 1, 21–22, 29–33, 35, 38, 44–46, 53–54, 57, 65–66, 68–69, 71, 76, 87, 150–151, 176–177, 183, 207, 242 Bamako Appeal 74, 81, 88, 119, 121, 128–129, 148, 169, 171 Battle in Seattle 23–24, 26–27, 29

Center for Civil Society 128–129, 141–142, 158, 171, 239 Citizenship 8–9, 43, 201, 221 Civilsoci ety vi, 3, 9, 25, 47, 52, 100, 103–105, 132, 134, 137–140, 143–144, 146–149, 157–158, 160, 163–164, 171, 227, 236, 239 Colonial,c olonialism vi, 1, 15, 64, 94, 96, 153, 158, 169, 193, 225, 232–233 Communication 14, 52, 55, 60, 124, 136, 138–140, 149, 154, 159, 178, 181, 187, 194, 207, 243 Decent Work 117–130 Democracy 3, 20, 33, 42, 55, 70, 73, 75–76, 78–80, 82, 87–88, 99, 120, 128–129, 133, 139–141,144, 148, 159, 168, 171, 181, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 200, 202, 238, 241, 242 Participatory 19 Representative 41, 73 Depoliticization 41–43 Diversity 21–22, 24, 28, 32, 53–54, 57, 62, 72–78, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 105–106, 108–110, 112, 114, 134, 138, 151– 153, 181–182, 198, 201, 215, 233, 234 Emancipatory 107, 109, 111, 114, 117, 124, 127–128, 139–140, 144, 146 Emancipation of labor 121, 123 Economic development 10, 240 Farmers 24–25, 36, 100, 134, 227 Feminism i, 10, 12, 17–19, 49, 69, 83–84, 88–89, 107, 114–115, 126, 176, 180–181, 185, 188–190, 193, 240

246 Feminist Dialogues 17–18, 126, 129, 177, 185 Feminist political economy 18 Global Civil Society vi, 3, 25, 131–134, 137–140, 142–144, 146–148, 162 Global Day of Action 50, 61, 149–150, 153 Global Feminist Collaborative 176, 180, 240 Global governance 157, 161 168, 171, 191, 195, 201, 228 Globalj ustice i, ii, vi, 3, 7, 25–28, 33, 39, 50, 57, 69, 128, 157, 159, 161, 165, 170, 186, 199, 240–243 Global Justice Movement 8, 16, 18, 23, 27, 29, 38, 50, 100, 111, 115, 118, 128–129, 131–132, 141, 147–148, 171, 178–179, 186, 241, 243 GlobalS outh vi, 9, 11, 18, 58, 61, 103, 107, 109, 133, 135, 145, 194, 196–198, 211, 223–237 Globalization i, 1–2, 7–10, 17–20, 23, 25–26, 41–42, 54–55, 60, 65, 69, 73, 85, 94, 96, 100, 103, 110, 112, 114–115, 118–119, 127, 132, 142, 147, 158, 170–171, 190–191, 193, 202, 206–207, 221, 234, 236, 238–242 Anti–globalization 96, 100, 112, 114, 174, 178, 188–189, 207 Grassroots Global Justice 3, 28, 39, 57, 69, 240–242 Hierarchy 224, 226–227, 236 Horizontality 74, 148, 151 Humanr ights vi, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 20, 23, 32–33, 44, 47, 51–52, 54, 111, 133, 153, 165, 180, 184, 188, 191–196, 198–199, 201–203 HurricaneK atrina 29, 33, 44, 65 Indigenous 10, 13, 21–23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33–34, 37, 53, 58–59, 66, 76–77, 83, 108, 110, 134, 159, 175, 189, 193, 201, 231

Imperialism i, 23, 27, 33, 59, 62–64, 123, 132–133, 168, 168, 200, 226, 228, 236 Intellectuals 64, 135, 151, 159, 161–164, 166, 168, 199, 209, 212, 215, 219 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 23, 159, 191–192, 195, 198 Jobs with Justice

23, 27–28, 240

Kenyan Organizing Committee 8, 13–14, 16 Knowledge 5, 25, 45, 73, 78, 83–86, 88, 108, 112, 114, 144–145, 154, 164, 174–175, 186, 189, 199, 202, 206, 208, 211, 214–215, 217, 219–220, 223, 230, 232–233, 235, 238, 239 Constructionof kno wledge 215 Structures of knowledge vi, 4, 205–206, 208, 214, 218–220 Keynesianism 121–122,166 Labor i, 4, 22, 26, 29, 32, 35, 65, 117–129, 157–158, 161–162, 170–171, 197, 231, 242 Left 37–38, 62, 70, 73–74, 79–80, 86–87, 89, 95, 105, 119, 125, 127, 136, 144, 148, 158, 162–164, 171, 200, 207–208, 210–212, 215–216, 218–221, 238–239, 242 Miami, Florida 22, 28, 30, 34, 36, 38, 45, 61 Militarization 30, 94, 181, 183 Methodology 106, 112, 152, 173–175, 177, 186, 189, 240 Modernity 111, 193, 197, 221, 223, 225, 230, 234, 237 Modernization 192,223–224,226–227, 237 Movements of movements 69, 74–75, 86, 131, 141, 147–148, 153, 219–220 Neoliberalism 9–11, 36, 41, 80, 85, 96, 102, 105–106, 134, 143, 159, 162,

247 166, 170, 194, 197–199, 210, 221, 224, 239 NewO rleans 22–23, 29, 32–33, 38, 45, 59, 65–68

110–111, 143, 159, 163–164, 168, 170–172, 180, 192, 229 ProjectS outh 3, 21–22, 30, 32, 57, 69, 242–242

Open space i, 8, 11–12, 39, 42–43, 51, 54, 60, 62–63, 69, 72, 88–89, 95, 102, 105–108, 113–114, 126, 134–135, 141–143, 145–146, 148, 151–152, 207, 220, 235

Reformist vi, 94, 157, 162, 165, 168–170 Revolutionary 10, 67, 69, 135, 165, 242 Right to the City 36

Party (political) 4, 8–9, 13, 71, 74, 80, 105, 134–135, 145, 147, 158, 161–163, 207, 226, 243 Patriarchy 62, 64, 84, 123, 153, 185 Peace 8–9, 33, 36–37, 43, 45, 50–53, 59–60, 167, 202, 226, 239, 242–243 PeaceCa ucus 50–53 People’s Movement Assembly 52 Politics v, 3, 10, 22, 41–43, 47, 49, 51, 53–55, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77–79, 81, 86–89, 101–104, 108–109, 112, 114, 125, 128–130, 132–133, 135–136, 145, 147–148, 158, 171, 189, 202, 206–207, 221, 232–233, 235, 237–239, 242–243 Prefigurative 17, 200–201, 207 World 23, 131–132, 202 Power 1, 2, 10,22, 24, 28, 38, 51, 54, 59, 61, 64, 72, 84, 99, 105, 111, 114, 122, 124, 131, 137, 139–142, 145, 147, 151, 157, 159, 162, 164–165, 167–169, 202, 207, 209, 221, 224, 226–229, 234, 237, 243 Praxis 62–64, 67, 97, 105–107, 113–114, 139, 162, 170, 239 Process v, vi, i, ii, 1–5, 7–10, 21–23, 28–32, 34, 36–38, 41–46, 50, 52–54, 57–58, 60–68, 74–75, 79–80, 85–87, 89, 93–98, 100–113, 115, 118–119, 129, 135–138, 140, 149–151, 160, 162, 168, 173–174, 180–183, 185–187, 194, 201, 205, 208–209, 211, 213–217, 219, 224–236, 239 Poor 7–8, 12–17, 19, 21–24, 27, 35–37, 44, 53, 64, 66, 94, 100–104, 108,

Scholar–activism 4, 173–174, 186, 195 Self–organizeda ctivities 35 Sexuald iversity 110, 181 Social forum process v, vi, 3–5, 21, 30, 41–42, 44, 50, 52, 57–58, 60, 63–64, 68, 79, 89, 95, 97–98, 100–101, 103, 107, 109, 112, 115, 129, 150, 173–174, 180, 182–183, 185–187, 205, 208, 211, 213–217, 219, 224 Socialj ustice 2–3, 12, 20, 23, 26–27, 33, 72, 114, 129–130, 162–163, 170, 173, 233, 239 Social movements 11, 21, 25, 31, 34, 37, 42, 50, 59, 83, 87–88, 95, 97, 99–100, 102, 106, 108–109, 112, 114, 117, 126, 129, 131, 134–136, 138, 141, 148, 151, 157, 162–165, 169, 171, 186, 188–189, 194, 202, 205, 207, 209, 214, 217–218, 221, 234, 239–243 Social Movement Assembly 63, 68, 102, 115, 129, 151–153 Socialism 80,169 Sociology vi, 4, 69, 129, 159, 189, 191–195, 202–203, 209, 239–242 Subaltern 17, 92, 101–104, 108, 114, 197, 211, 230, 238 Subsidiarity 200–201 Transnational, transnationalism 13–14, 43, 54–55, 69, 103–104, 114, 128, 131, 133, 137, 144–147, 170, 173–174, 177–183, 185, 188–189, 191, 199, 201–203, 213, 219, 231, 234, 240, 242

248 Unions 25, 27, 35, 99, 117–120, 122–123, 125–130, 133, 136, 153, 158, 161, 179, 217 United Nations (UN) 17, 44, 50–51, 84–85, 104, 122, 138, 157–158, 160, 166–168, 171, 182, 191–196, 198, 207, 226–227, 238 United States Social Forum v, 1, 3, 5, 21–22, 28–32, 34–38, 43–46, 49, 50–57, 61–62, 65–67, 70–74, 76, 82, 84, 87, 150, 176, 182–183, 189, 199, 205, 215, 222, 240 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 194 Wall of Proposals 137 WashingtonConsensus 166, 168, 202 Wikepedia 146,218–220 Women’s rights 47, 49, 174 177–178, 181–182 Workshop 19, 24, 36, 44–47, 50–51, 53, 59, 72, 85, 119–120, 131, 136, 143, 152, 154, 176, 180–181, 183, 187, 207, 215 WorldB ank 23, 138, 159, 165, 167–168, 191–192, 194–195, 197–198, 214, 230, 231, 235 World Economic Forum 8–9, 11, 24, 85, 149 World March of Women 114, 120, 178–179 World Social Forum v, vi, i, 1, 3–4, 7–13, 17–24, 27–28, 39, 41–42, 50, 52, 58,

63, 68, 70–71, 88–89, 91, 93–95, 102–104, 108, 112–115, 117, 120, 124, 127–131, 134–135, 138, 143, 145–146, 148–149, 157, 169, 171, 173, 177, 178–180, 185, 187–191, 202–203, 205, 207, 211, 219, 221, 223–224, 231–234, 236–238, 240–243 Bamako,M ali 12, 14, 97 Caracas, Venezuela 13, 28, 44, 97, 104, 108, 110, 115, 143 Karachi,P akistan 12, 97, 142 Mumbai,I ndia 12–13, 28, 79, 93, 96, 98, 101, 103, 142–143, 173, 177, 179–180, 182, 185, 243 Nairobi, Kenya 3, 8, 12, 129, 131 Porto Alegre, Brazil 9–13, 17, 24, 28, 84–85, 93, 96, 162, 207, 214, 231, 243 World Social Forum Charter of Principles 4 World Social Forum International Council 11, 18, 28, 42, 63, 71, 78, 89, 96, 99–100, 113–114, 120, 126, 134–137, 141, 149, 152, 198, 203, 236, 243 World TradeO rganization 8, 23–26, 31, 122, 131, 138, 143, 159, 161, 167, 191, 195, 198, 227 Zapatistas

10–11,25,86,200,219