World Social Forums

Marxism and Contemporary "Peasant" Activism

by Chris Wright

Global Civil Society: Internationalization without institutionalization?

by Geoffrey Pleyers

Pleyers Geoffrey (2012) “A decade of World Social Forums: Internationalization without institutionalization?”, In: M. Kaldor, H. Moore & S. Selchow eds. Global Civil Society 2012, London: Palgrave, pp. 166-182.

Making Global Publics? Communication and Knowledge Production in the World Social Forum Process

by Hilde C. Stephansen

PhD Thesis, 2011

This thesis provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the character and significance of media and communication in... more This thesis provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the character and significance of media and communication in the World Social Forum (WSF), focusing on their relationship to processes of knowledge production. Using the concept of publics as a theoretical tool, it explores how, through mediated communication, forum organisers and communication activists seek to extend the WSF in time and space and thereby make it public. Engaging critically with the idea of the WSF as a global process, the thesis considers how mediated communication might contribute to making the WSF global, not so much in absolute terms as by creating a sense of globality, and how the idea of the global relates to other scales. It develops an understanding of the WSF as an epistemic project that seeks both to affirm the existence and validity of multiple knowledges and to facilitate convergence between them, and considers how different communication practices might further this project.

Based on ethnographic research carried out in connection with the WSF 2009 in Belém, complemented by fieldwork at other social forums, the thesis is structured as a series of case studies of different communication practices, ranging from efforts to engage with conventional mass media to various initiatives that seek to strengthen movement-based communication infrastructures and enable WSF participants to communicate on their own terms. These demonstrate that there are many different approaches to making the WSF 'public' and 'global', which beyond facilitating the circulation of media content also involve mobilising new actors to participate in media production and generating a sense of identification with a global WSF process. They also show that mediated communication can contribute to knowledge production not only by facilitating information sharing, but also through the more subtle processes of empowerment, network-building, and translation across difference it can stimulate when embedded in movement dynamics.

Resisting Globalization

by Richard Kahn

Co-authored with Doug Kellner, The Blackwell Companion to  Globalization, George Ritzer (ed.), Blackwell Publishers, 2007

The Global Justice Movement

by Geoffrey Pleyers

Globality Study Journal, N°19.
See also:
Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actor in the Global Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, (Dec. 2010).

http://uclouvain.academia.edu/GeoffreyPleyers/Books/347185/Alter-globalization._Becoming_Actors_in_the_global_age

After providing a brief overview of the global justice movement
history, this article analyzes the main argument... more After providing a brief overview of the global justice movement
history, this article analyzes the main argument raised by its activists to oppose the neoliberal ideology, as notably asserted by the shifts in the discourses of some G20 leaders. Activists however call attention to the gap between the speeches of the G20 leaders and the measures actually implemented.
Accordingly, global justice activists have decided to focus on seeking concrete outcomes through the following: specialized advocacy networks, empowerment at the local level and alliances with progressive regimes.

Making Democracy Spectacular

by Nick Mahony

Mediating the Publics of Public Participation Experiments

by Nick Mahony

Energy Sector Reforms: People’s Experiences

by shiju sam varughese

in Perspectives on Energy: Illuminations on Energy Issues at World Social Forum 2004, Eye to the World Papers: 01, Heinrich Boll Foundation-India, June, pp. 9-20, 2004

The paper identifies the three different standpoints on energy sector reforms emerging from the energy debates in the... more The paper identifies the three different standpoints on energy sector reforms emerging from the energy debates in the World Social Forum organised in Mumbai, India in 2004. These distinct articulations, I argue, correspond to three different epistemic registers of civil society.

The World Social Forum and the Lessons for Economic Geography

by Tony Sparks

O Fórum Social Mundial: em defesa do mundo como ele é

by Sérgio Coutinho

Publicado na Revista Tópicos, em 2009.

Uma crítica que foi feita ao Fórum Social Mundial (FSM) em sua mais recente edição, em Belém, foi a ênfase no caráter... more Uma crítica que foi feita ao Fórum Social Mundial (FSM) em sua mais recente edição, em Belém, foi a ênfase no caráter não conclusivo das deliberações apresentadas. Evitava-se o máximo possível fazer defesas coletivas de ideias que se confundissem com propostas do próprio FSM.

O Fórum Social Mundial como expressão do capitalismo humanitário

by Sérgio Coutinho

Paper para apresentação no Encontro Norte-Nordeste de Sociologia  no Centro de Convenções de Maceió. Grupo de Trabalho 21, "Trabalho e Subjetividade". Setembro de 2007.

A Liberatory Space? Rumors of Rapes at the 5 th World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2005

by Sara Koopman

Rumors were that 90 women were raped in the youth camp at the Fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, in January of... more Rumors were that 90 women were raped in the youth camp at the Fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, in January of 2005. Later reports were that there had been two. Yet the rumors speak to how the space of the forum is socially produced and what sort of space it is. How does space then shape the forum and what we can do from there? Lefebvre argues that revolutionary festivals are an important challenge to the abstract space of capitalism. Revolutionary festivals can liberate us, but our bodies must be free if we are to create a revolutionary space, another world. We need freer revolutionary spaces from which to nurture our struggles for freedom. Another forum is possible. Honoring our bodies, and making room for pleasure, is a way to create a freer forum. It is also an effective strategy for building that other world that we know is possible.

Knowledge transmission in cyberspace. Discourse analysis of professional web forums as internet subgenre

by Cristina Varga

PhD thesis, published in 2011

Since the beginning of the Internet, its features have been used to communicate knowledge between researchers in... more Since the beginning of the Internet, its features have been used to communicate knowledge between researchers in different universities or scientific laboratories, and later, with the increasing growth of the World Wide Web, knowledge became a collective good shared by its users. The current investigation has three main objectives: a) to describe the professional web forum as a discursive subgenre of the web, b) to illustrate the mechanism of knowledge transmission on the professional web forums, and c) to observe the variation across languages of the professional web forum as a subgenre of the knowledge transmission process.
In the analysis of the linguistic material of the professional web forum corpus we used a theoretical framework based on different linguistic trends and theories currently developed in France.
The analysed material consists in a comparable texts corpus, organised, in five sub-corpora, in function of the language the participants in the web forums use to communicate: English, Spanish, French, Romanian, and Catalan.
The analysis of the linguistic material of the professional web forum corpus provides essential information concerning the discursive features of the knowledge transmission process in different languages.

Book Review: Juris, "Networking Futures"

by Marco Cuevas-Hewitt

Published in 'Anthropological Forum', 2009.

First paragraph: Jeffrey Juris, currently working as an assistant professor of anthropology at Arizona State... more First paragraph: Jeffrey Juris, currently working as an assistant professor of anthropology at Arizona State University, comprises part of an exciting new generation of scholar-activists to be formed out of and inspired by the alternative globalisation movement (or what has also been called the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement, albeit mostly by its detractors) - surely the largest and most potent anti-capitalist emancipatory project to emerge since the proletarian internationalism of the 1960s and 1970s. This movement exploded into public consciousness in 1999 with the now-famous ‘Battle of Seattle’ in which 50,000 protestors (Juris amongst them) managed to shut down the summit of the World Trade Organisation. This institution was specifically targeted as the symbol par excellence of the new regime of global sovereignty that has, through the legitimating ideology of neoliberalism, been steadily imposed across the world since the Reagan and Thatcher administrations of the 1980s...

A New Way of Doing Politics

by Marco Cuevas-Hewitt

Newspaper article published in the 'Fremantle Herald' in 2005 to promote the Perth Social Forum.

First paragraph: The inaugural Perth Social Forum (PSF) to be held March 18-20 in the Fremantle Town Hall will herald... more First paragraph: The inaugural Perth Social Forum (PSF) to be held March 18-20 in the Fremantle Town Hall will herald a new way of doing politics in Western Australia. The PSF aims to bring together a diverse group of organisations and individuals working towards social and environmental justice at both the local and global levels...

(SOAS) Another Subject is Possible: Reporting on the World Social Forum (WSF) in the Indian Press

by Daniel Taghioff

Published in SOAS Literary Review

Current access to the ‘global media,’ in this case taking the specific example of access to the press via the... more Current access to the ‘global media,’ in this case taking the specific example of access to the press via the internet, might be seen as a way of getting non-western commentary on such issues. However, the problems of
media studies scholars often not knowing local languages come to the fore. Is the English language press, which is most often the press of the elites, not already implicated in attempts to globalize discourses on ‘globalization’? Are we not, as media scholars, when looking at English-language media (to paraphrase Jimi Hendrix) trapped in a room full of mirrors, where all we can see is ‘me’?  This piece looks into the coverage of the World Social Forum (WSF), held in Mumbai in 2004, using the methodology of examining the internet archives of the Indian English language press. The issue of the framing of ‘subjectivity’ and the ‘subject’ is looked into in depth in this coverage, in relation to dominant framings of the ‘liberal’ subject in its economic, political and ethical aspects.

The World Social Forum, a Globalisation from Below?

by Geoffrey Pleyers

See also:
Geoffrey Pleyers, Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actor in the Global Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, (Dec. 2010). Prefacio por Alain Touraine.
http://uclouvain.academia.edu/GeoffreyPleyers/Books/347185/Alter-globalization._Becoming_Actors_in_the_global_age

The Social Forums as an ideal model of convergence

by Geoffrey Pleyers

The Global Justice Movement

by Geoffrey Pleyers

Globality Study Journal, N°19.
See also:
Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actor in the Global Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, (Dec. 2010).

http://uclouvain.academia.edu/GeoffreyPleyers/Books/347185/Alter-globalization._Becoming_Actors_in_the_global_age

After providing a brief overview of the global justice movement
history, this article analyzes the main argument... more After providing a brief overview of the global justice movement
history, this article analyzes the main argument raised by its activists to oppose the neoliberal ideology, as notably asserted by the shifts in the discourses of some G20 leaders. Activists however call attention to the gap between the speeches of the G20 leaders and the measures actually implemented.
Accordingly, global justice activists have decided to focus on seeking concrete outcomes through the following: specialized advocacy networks, empowerment at the local level and alliances with progressive regimes.

Relazioni locali, nodi digitali e reti transnazionali di protesta

by Stefania Vicari

published in Polis Ricerche e studi su società e politica in Italia ISSN, Issue: 1, aprile 2006, pp. 5-30

The article is drawn from a project aimed at exploring the interplay between the representational power of new... more The article is drawn from a project aimed at exploring the interplay between the representational power of new information and communica-tions technologies and the shaping of 21st century social movements. The focus is on contemporary transnational activism developed on the path-ways of the Internet. Addressing the World Social Forum as an on/off-line network of global mobilisation, this study aims to show how its de-centralized actors differently interpret their belonging to such a transna-tional process in terms of relational structures and ideological practices. Investigating a network of 222 social forum websites, the article exam-ines claims of horizontality in digital communication and global partici-patory forms in contemporary activism. Furthermore, the study displays how the Italian participation to the World Social Forum network shows particular features.