|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| '''* Dissertation: Alternative Futures of Globalisation. Draft May 2010''' | | '''* Dissertation: Alternative Futures of Globalisation. Draft May 2010''' |
|
| |
|
| | | This page has been embargoed and will reappear in about 10 days or so. |
| =Summary=
| |
| | |
| Chapter 1 is the introduction.
| |
| | |
| | |
| "In the next chapter I offer some of conceptual foundations for understanding this area of inquiry. I
| |
| begin by looking at discourses for alternative globalisation. To begin to understand the WSF(P)-
| |
| AGM complex, we must begin with the discourses that help frame the debate. I thus look at nine
| |
| models for AG. I then develop a constructivist understanding of embodied cognition and the
| |
| WSF(P) epistemology, which shows the way in the WSF(P) expresses its positions in relation to
| |
| neo-liberal globalisation. I further develop the idea of the WSF(P) as domain development, in
| |
| particular as counter public sphere. I develop the explanatory and analytic framework used
| |
| throughout this thesis, based on five interrelated windows that address socio-ecological
| |
| dimensions of the study. These five dimensions are: of cognitions (knowledge systems and
| |
| epistemic considerations), of actors (and their expressions of agency), of geo-structures (the
| |
| structural coupling of geography with political-economy-culture), of histories (‘ontogenies’ /
| |
| histories of becoming), and of futures (aims, visions, teleologies, and prefigurations).
| |
| In Chapter Three, I discuss the methodology I have used in this research project. I begin by
| |
| explaining the disciplinary domains the research has drawn from: Critical Futures Studies,
| |
| Critical Globalisation Studies and Community Development, and the trans-disciplinary basis of
| |
| the inquiry. I provide some epistemological grounding interests in scholar activism. I explain the
| |
| initial design of the research, which was instrumental in identifying and developing ‘Alternative
| |
| Globalisation’ as a key discursive domain. I go on to explain my approach to field research,
| |
| informed broadly from the Action Research tradition. I discuss the approach and process I have
| |
| used in documenting the field research, forming textual accounts. Finally I discuss the various
| |
| groups I have worked with and the accounts themselves.
| |
| | |
| In Chapter Four, I set the historical context for the thesis. I trace the historical origins of the
| |
| WSF(P) by looking at the key factors that led to its development, the hegemonic context of neoliberal
| |
| globalisation which the WSF was an initial response to, and the history and social
| |
| processes of the actors that form much of the initial tapestry of the WSF. I then examine the
| |
| processes by which the WSF was invented, including what it was intended to do, and its birthing
| |
| experience. Next, I explore the processes of innovating a WSF, including factors that have led to
| |
| its success, and ways that it has been modified and transformed by stakeholders, constituents and
| |
| participants. Through this I describe the emergence of a WSF as process – the ‘WSF(P)’.
| |
| | |
| | |
| Chapter Five of the thesis analyses the projects and processes I’ve been part of.
| |
| | |
| The analytic framework developed in Chapter Two is used to shed light on dimensions of the accounts:
| |
| | |
| | |
| 1) the agency of actors,
| |
| | |
| 2) their cognising processes,
| |
| | |
| 3) the histories that they embody,
| |
| | |
| 4) the futures they struggle for and represent, and
| |
| | |
| 5) the geo-structures they are implicated in.
| |
| | |
| I analyse each
| |
| account and correlate across the accounts looking for patterns and insights. Using this framework
| |
| I analyse five accounts: the Melbourne Social Forum, Plug-in TV, Oases, Community
| |
| Collaborations and the G20 Convergence.
| |
| | |
| | |
| In Chapter Six I return to my original concerns. I ask, what are the possible futures for a WSF(P)
| |
| and what implications does this have for the AGM? I develop four scenarios that help to integrate
| |
| and synthesise many of the questions, tensions, concerns and issues that run through this thesis.
| |
| These scenarios and the concluding discussion aim to contribute to a broader understanding of
| |
| themes that emerge in the thesis project."
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| =Motivation=
| |
| | |
| | |
| "All of this was underlined by a growing understanding of the systemic
| |
| nature of the challenges we face. Having read books like Kenneth Boulding’s The World as a
| |
| Total System (Boulding, 1985), I began to see how global problems and challenges cannot be
| |
| segregated into single issues, they are interconnected in intricate and complex ways.
| |
| To be honest, learning about all of these global / futures issues filled me with a sense of crisis,
| |
| punctuated by moments of despair and overwhelm and I began to look for ways forward amid this
| |
| landscape of challenges. I relate strongly with work done by Macy on despair (Macy, 1991) and
| |
| the scholarship done by Hicks. Hicks examined the psychological process of learning about
| |
| global / futures issues (Hicks, 2002), arguing we are affected by feelings of despair or frustration
| |
| when facing issues that seem too big, too abstract, which can bring on a feeling of powerlessness
| |
| and overwhelm, ‘psychic numbing’, avoidance and alienation. He argued we must move
| |
| ourselves and students through five stages: cognitive, affective, existential, empowered, and
| |
| action-oriented. While not an exact correlate, I experienced these ‘stages’ or dimensions:
| |
| overwhelmed by strong emotions, despair, and anger, then grappling with my own identity and
| |
| place within this new context of issues and challenges, looking for sources of hope and new
| |
| pathways of change and entering into communities and projects that address these challenges.
| |
| This process of re-integration has been as fundamental for my own health and wellbeing as it has
| |
| been for anyone else or thing that may have benefited from my shift.
| |
| | |
| | |
| I was particularly concerned about how people in every walk of life and in various locales, most
| |
| removed from centres or structure of ‘global’ power, could express agency and enact change in
| |
| dealing with the global pathologies and challenges that increasingly affect us, and the structures
| |
| that give rise to these pathologies. People across the world’s communities, in just facing their
| |
| own ‘local’ challenges, face unprecedented complexity and scale. How does the fisherman off
| |
| the coast of India face the threat of global warming and overfishing? How does the Indonesian
| |
| factory worker face the impact of IMF mandated structural adjustment programs? How does the
| |
| Australian, US or German farmer deal with the cross-pollination or ‘contamination’ of their crops
| |
| by neighbouring genetically modified (GM) crops? I was interested in grassroots collective
| |
| agency in addressing common global / trans-local challenges and shaping futures self articulated
| |
| as just, peaceful and sustainable ones.
| |
| | |
| This led me toward becoming both an organiser and inquirer within the World Social Forum
| |
| (WSF) process. Before I began this thesis, I participated in the WSF and became an organiser for
| |
| the local Melbourne Social Forum. I saw social forums as enabling community agency in shaping
| |
| a new globalisation, or “another globalisation”, and this gave me some faith and hope in our
| |
| capacity to respond to the challenges that we face as communities. I carried the hope that I would
| |
| be part of the construction of a global movement for social change that could effectively address
| |
| the myriad problems that the world is facing today. After this, I embarked on this thesis project
| |
| and made the decision to use my experiences in this process as the basis for an inquiry into how
| |
| social forums and other alter-globalisation platforms and processes contribute to creating a better
| |
| world; to look at social forums communities and network formations as platforms for envisioning
| |
| and enacting alternative globalisations, as well as the substance of the visions of these alternative
| |
| globalisations.
| |
| | |
| I quickly found out that understanding both the WSF process and literature on alternative futures
| |
| of globalisation was not going to be so easy. On the one hand, I found that the actors,
| |
| organisations and people that come to social forums embodied great diversity in their histories,
| |
| organisation, practices of enacting change, ideological orientations and their visions for ‘another
| |
| world’. The discourses at the academic level for making sense of the WSF process and
| |
| articulating alternative globalisations were equally diverse. Trying to define the WSF process
| |
| through only one perspective would not do justice to the richness that it represents, as the actors
| |
| within the process itself articulate what they do through a variety of perspectives. I found that I
| |
| needed to honour the various ways of knowing which concern themselves with understanding the
| |
| WSF process, as well how they articulate a ‘different’ globalisation and I thus began to map
| |
| these. I came to see that the composition of the WSF process and the body of literature on
| |
| alternative globalisation as a whole was typified by complexity, in the sense of holding or
| |
| containing immense diversity within common physical and conceptual space and I began to
| |
| inquire into the nature of this complexity.
| |
| | |
| In the tradition of action research my methodological approach to the investigation was to be an
| |
| engaged participant in the process. This entailed both participating in several WSFs, as well as
| |
| organising within the Melbourne Social Forum and a number of other projects connected to the
| |
| WSF as a process. This fieldwork was a process of immersion into different types of activism and
| |
| community development work aimed at both sustaining and enabling networks, groups and
| |
| organisations that work to create change. What I hoped to learn was how people in various
| |
| communities who want to or who must grapple with 'global' challenges can participate in the
| |
| transformation of our world, how popular participation extends agency into planetary issues and
| |
| concerns. I aimed to understand how we might create a democratic and participatory planetary
| |
| governance, so that global issues are not just the preserve of power and privilege, but the
| |
| 'unqualified', the local and marginal find empowerment in this new 'planetary' complex of issues.
| |
| I entered this thesis to look at how the WSF could provide some answers to these concerns. I
| |
| wanted to know what enabled popular empowerment and action for people addressing the global
| |
| issues that impact on their locales and hoped the forum process would give me some answers as
| |
| well as the practices and strategies for enacting change. I wanted to understand what agency
| |
| means for ordinary people in grappling with the complex and often overwhelming challenges
| |
| they / we face, and the visions for transformation that emerge through people in it.
| |
| | |
| My journey of discovery has been both challenging and rewarding, and I invite you to join this
| |
| exploration with me. I would be honoured if you would accept."
| |
| | |
| | |
| =Object of the Study:=
| |
| | |
| | |
| ==the [[World Social Forum]]==
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| "While groups had been laying the groundwork for it for almost a decade, the WSF as an event
| |
| began in January 2001, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In the tradition of counter-summits, it was a
| |
| forum counter-positioned to the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). It was held at the same
| |
| time of year, but contrasted sharply with the WEF. Whereas at the WEF the global business elite
| |
| came together to discuss how to further their corporate interests, the WSF was articulated as a
| |
| place for those contesting corporate (neo-liberal) globalisation, as well as articulating and
| |
| building alternatives to it, to come together. In response to the articulated inevitably of a neoliberal
| |
| future proclaimed by the pundits of corporate globalisation (Friedman, 1999; Fukuyama,
| |
| 1989), the WSF’s slogan became ‘Another World is Possible’.
| |
| | |
| By establishing an ‘open space’ methodology, in which those groups interested in holding a
| |
| workshop at the WSF could do so, and anyone with an interest could attend, forums swelled with
| |
| participants. The WSF began to bring together an ever-widening diversity of groups, from social
| |
| movements, to INGOs, to networks, across a wide variety of themes. In response to the popularity
| |
| of the forum, whose attendance seemingly grew exponentially, from 10,000 in 2001, to 50,000 in
| |
| 2002, to 100,000 in 2003, a WSF charter emerged to give vision and clarity to what the forum
| |
| aimed to be and to achieve (see the WSF Charter of Principles in Appendix A). WSFs have
| |
| continued to grow in numbers and diversity. The last WSF was held in the Amazonian region in
| |
| the city of Belem, Brazil, bringing together over 130,000 people and an estimated 20,000
| |
| Amazonian tribes people that spoke in defence of their native forests.
| |
| | |
| | |
| The WSF’s self articulation through the charter was part of the larger development of a WSF
| |
| process (WSF(P)). The process aspect of the WSF can be understood as:
| |
| | |
| 1) how the event process
| |
| has globalised to various regions,
| |
| | |
| 2) how the WSF methodology has evolved,
| |
| | |
| 3) the emergence of
| |
| hundreds of local / regional forums,
| |
| | |
| 4) the WSF’s evolving systems of governance and decision-making,
| |
| | |
| 5) how the WSF has converged with other actors and processes for local to global
| |
| change, and finally,
| |
| | |
| 6) the processes by which social forums facilitate relationships and
| |
| collaborations between a myriad of diverse actors.
| |
|
| |
| | |
| The WSF(P) is thus where popular empowerment, and the popular project(s) for global social
| |
| change were investigated. The WSF(P) has embodied a grassroots-to-global response to emerging
| |
| challenges faced by communities around the world. It is where people at the receiving end of
| |
| global problems, or those advocating for the marginal or voiceless, have gathered and voiced their
| |
| concerns, articulated alternative visions, and formulated strategies to achieve these visions. It has
| |
| been a platform for communities, organisations, and social movements to come together to form
| |
| shared agendas for change. It is where I have researched and studied the processes of peoples and
| |
| communities empowering themselves and exercising their agency in addressing the planetary
| |
| challenges they (and we) face."
| |
| | |
| | |
| ==‘[[Alternative Globalisation]]’==
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| "is an umbrella term for what is still an emerging category of inquiry
| |
| and action. It describes both Alternative Globalisation Discourses as well as an emerging
| |
| Alternative Globalisation Movement (AGM) (which is the network and constellation of actors
| |
| actively contesting and re-shaping globalisation). As discourses AG manifests as articulations and
| |
| discourse formations that stem from the sphere of culture (media, academy, discussed in Chapter
| |
| Two and Four) and as a movement AG manifests as actions, projects and social innovations that
| |
| carry the intention of ‘world changing’
| |
| | |
| I therefore use ‘alternative globalisation’ as an umbrella term which incorporates many actors,
| |
| discourses and processes, of world-changing / altermondialiste intent, of which the WSF(P) is a
| |
| subset. It includes the development of a broad set of discourses calling for ‘another’, ‘different’
| |
| and ‘alternative’ globalisation, as well as the on the ground processes of people enacting social
| |
| change. The term is ‘meta’ discursive, a way to enfold a diversity of actors and their discourses
| |
| into a totality. This totality, however charted, measured, explored and imagined, is still
| |
| developing. The multiplicity of actors and complexity of processes that are part of the WSF(P)
| |
| challenge a narrow view of what an AGM is.
| |
| | |
| | |
| ==[[Alter-Globalisation Movement]] (AGM)==
| |
| | |
| The WSF(P) and the AGM should be seen in their contexts, part of a broader dynamic and cocreative
| |
| process or dialectic.
| |
| | |
| As seen in figure 1.1, the World Social Forum process and the movement for another / alternative
| |
| globalisation are co-constructions. One can only be fully understood in terms of the other; the
| |
| dialectic between the two is formative. On the one hand, the WSF emerged from various ‘submovements’
| |
| within the anti-globalisation movement, some of which had their origins in the new
| |
| social movements of the 70’s and 80’s, (including movements for environmental, feminist,
| |
| disability rights, sexual rights, international solidarity / human rights campaigns) and the
| |
| Zapatista struggle and development of groups such as Peoples Global Action (PGA) (Gautney,
| |
| 2010); others were based on post-colonial movements, against Western led development projects
| |
| and older leftist struggles. Yet, on the other hand, the WSF as a process has facilitated the
| |
| movement’s transition from critique (as anti-globalisation) to alternative (as ‘alternative
| |
| globalisation’), by bringing together a new depth and breadth of actors calling for another and
| |
| different globalisation. This rich and diverse convergence of actors working for a different
| |
| globalisation has expanded and re-defined the parameters of what the AGM is against, as well as
| |
| what it struggles for. The WSF(P) is therefore frame-breaking in terms of understanding what
| |
| such a global ‘movement’ is, and what it stands for. The size and diversity of actors through the
| |
| WSF(P) challenge us to widen our view of what AG means and how it works.
| |
| | |
| | |
| As well, the WSF(P) is not the only world-changing and globalisation-challenging process or
| |
| effort, and thus can be looked at as part of a wider AG ‘constellation’ or process. By
| |
| acknowledging the diversity within the WSF(P), as well as the diversity of thinking and other
| |
| projects for global social change, we come to a fuller appreciation of what AG means today. The
| |
| WSF(P) can be seen as a sub-process within an emerging ‘cosmocracy’ (Keane, 2005, pp. 34-51),
| |
| the interlocking set of actor-agents that work on, build, contest and shape the discursive and
| |
| practical spaces and places of the global.
| |
| | |
| | |
| As seen in figure 1.2, the WSF(P) and associated actors can be seen as part of a broader AGM.
| |
| Such efforts and processes related to and overlapping with the WSF(P) include: the protest cycle
| |
| (Seattle, Genoa, Melbourne, Hong Kong), networks (such as Peoples Global Action),
| |
| alliances/coalitions (such as Civicus and Make Poverty History), UN sponsored events and
| |
| processes (Rio ‘92 to Copenhagen ‘09), as well as projects like the Global Reporting Initiative, all
| |
| which can be considered to be efforts at world-altering / altermondialiste."
| |
| | |
|
| |
|
| [[Category:Articles]] | | [[Category:Articles]] |
|
| |
|
| [[Category:Politics]] | | [[Category:Politics]] |