View source for Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era


'''* Book: Heather Gautney, Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era: NGOs, Social Movements, and Political Parties, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.'''


=Review=

Ariel Salleh:

"Gautney delivers an assessment of the World Social Forum phenomenon from
its beginnings to the present. Each Forum*Porto Alegre 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005,
Mumbai 2004, Caracas, Bamako, and Karachi 2006, Nairobi 2007, Bele´m 2009
was colored and often constrained by its unique regional and social character, but
the Indian gathering elicited an especially positive response. The author notes that
it marked ‘‘the broadening of issues to include fundamentalism, caste, and women’s
concerns, the expansion of the WSF to include dalits and other disenfranchized
groups, and the spread of the process beyond the Western hemisphere to another
major region of the world’’ (143).

The main body of the book is given over to examining the respective roles
played by NGOs, anarchist or autonomist elements, and political parties inside the
alternative globalization movement. Gautney teases out the strengths and weaknesses
of each political mode, and her treatment is generally a balanced one. NGOs like
ATTAC,1 she finds, manifest a kind of ‘‘embedded liberalism.’’ The WSF Charter
of Principles is likewise compromised, as she puts it: ‘‘with its emphasis on personal
responsibility and individual rights, [it] actually utilizes some of the same logics as
neoliberalism, despite the Forum’s ostensible opposition to it’’ (88). Conversely, the
other key WSF document, the Bamako Declaration, suffers from a rather top down
Marxist line. An ongoing structural weakness of the Forum is lack of transparency
concerning the activities of its International Council.

The conflict of political styles and WSF ideologies is usually summed up as a
tension between ‘‘verticals versus laterals.’’ And if the laterals, led by Chico Whitaker,
are keen to preserve the WSF as an ‘‘open space’’ for the exchange of ideas and
networking, the verticals would prefer a tighter structure, a clearly articulated political
position, and a capacity for making strategic interventions in the global order. Verticals
such as Walden Bello want to mount a direct challenge to neoliberal institutions like the
IMF (Bello 2002). The WSF Charter of Principles rules out participation by formally
constituted vertical groupings like political parties, but this has never been adhered to.
In fact, the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) was instrumental in founding the WSF, and
others have made substantial contributions without co-opting it. Moreover, President
Lula may have been subject to catcalls at some events, but his $50 million check towards
the 2009 forum in Bele´m was gratefully received.

Gautney’s book, with its crash course in Economics 101, handy Glossary and
Appendices, will be especially useful to teachers of political science and sociology,
particularly since the analysis of movement organization is studded with vignettes
from relevant social theory. Thus the reader is treated to Arendt on violence, Gramsci
on civil institutions, Habermas on discourse ethics, Bookchin on the pitfalls of
consensus, Hardt and Negri on the multitude, and Lenin versus Luxemburg on the
role of the party. Habermas’ argument for deliberative process seems to support
WSF laterals and advocates of ‘‘open space,’’ but his emphasis on decision-making
and renewal of the public sphere is closer to the verticals’ perception of a proactive
Forum. In an ideal world, however, the two ‘‘approaches’’ might surely function
alongside each other as distinct ‘‘phases’’ of the WSF."
(http://arielsalleh.info/theory/book-reviews/gautney-rev.pdf)


=More Information=

Other books:

#Tom Mertes in The Movement of Movements; 
#Jackie Smith, et al. in Global Democracy and the World Social Forums; 
#Judith Blau and Marina Karides in The World and U.S. Social Forums.


[[Category:Movements]]

[[Category:Politics]]

[[Category:Books]]