Insurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, and the Political

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Insurgent Encounters illuminates the dynamics of contemporary transnational social movements, including those advocating for women and indigenous groups, environmental justice, and alternative—cooperative rather than exploitative—forms of globalization. The contributors are politically engaged scholars working within the social movements they analyze. Their essays are both models of and arguments for activist ethnography. They demonstrate that such a methodology has the potential to reveal empirical issues and generate theoretical insights beyond the reach of traditional social-movement research methods. Activist ethnographers not only produce new understandings of contemporary forms of collective action, but also seek to contribute to struggles for social change. The editors suggest networks and spaces of encounter as the most useful conceptual rubrics for understanding shape-shifting social movements using digital and online technologies to produce innovative forms of political organization across local, regional, national, and transnational scales. A major rethinking of the practice and purpose of ethnography, Insurgent Encounters challenges dominant understandings of social transformation, political possibility, knowledge production, and the relation between intellectual labor and sociopolitical activism.

Sample chapter:
Introduction: Ethnography and Activism Within Networked Spaces of Transnational Encounter (PDF)

 

Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization

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Since the first worldwide protests inspired by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA)—including the mobilization against the November 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle—anti-corporate globalization activists have staged direct action protests against multilateral institutions in cities such as Prague, Barcelona, Genoa, and Cancun. Barcelona is a critical node, as Catalan activists have played key roles in the more radical PGA network and the broader World Social Forum process. In 2001 and 2002, Jeffrey Juris participated in the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti-corporate globalization networks in Europe. Combining ethnographic research and activist political engagement, Jeffrey took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests, and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization.

In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, Jeffrey provides a history of anti-corporate globalization movements, an examination of their connections to local dynamics in Barcelona, and an analysis of movement-related politics, organizational forms, and decision-making. Depicting spectacular direct action protests in Barcelona and other cities, he describes how far-flung activist networks are embodied and how networking politics are performed. He further explores how activists have used e-mail lists, Web pages, and free software to organize actions, share information, coordinate at a distance, and stage “electronic civil disobedience.” Based on a powerful cultural logic, anti-corporate globalization networks have become models of and for emerging forms of radical, directly democratic politics. Activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation; they are also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.

Sample chapter:
Introduction: The Cultural Logic of Networking (PDF)

 

Global Democracy and the World Social Forums (2nd Edition)

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The World Social Forum quickly became the largest political gathering in human history and continues to offer a direct challenge to the extreme inequities of corporate-led globalization. It has expanded beyond a single event to spin-offs in a variety of countries including the United States. The forums are an experiment in global and participatory democracy, bringing together networks, organizations, and activists from around the world to create visions of a just and liberated global society. All of the authors involved in this book have participated in World Social Forums around the globe. Recounting dozens of dramatic firsthand experiences from their attendance, these authors draw on their knowledge of global politics to introduce the World Social Forum process, explain its foundations, and discuss its relevance to ongoing transnational efforts toward freedom, peace, and democracy. In the new edition, Global Democracy shows how the World Social Forums have grown and developed since their inception in 2001 and how they are now connected with other global movements including Occupy, the Arab Spring, and beyond.

Sample chapter:
Globalization and the Emergence of the World Social Forums (PDF) [reprinted in Globalization: the Greatest Hits, a Global Studies Reader]