Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization(Experimental Futures)

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, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. 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, Juris 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, Juris 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.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations and Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xv Introduction: The Cultural Logic of Networking 1 1. The Seattle Effect 27 2. Anti-Corporate Globalization Soldiers in Barcelona 61 3. Grassroots Mobilization and Shifting Alliances 93 4. Performing Networks at Direct-Action Protests 123 5. Spaces of Terror: Violence and Repression in Genoa 161 6. May the Resistance Be as Transnational as Capital! 199 7. Social Forums and the Cultural Politics of Autonomous Space 233 8. The Rise of Independent Utopics 267 Conclusion: Political Change and Cultural Transformation in a Digital Age 287 Appendix 1: Electronic Resources 303 Appendix 2: Pink and Silver Call, Genoa, July 20, 2001 305 Appendix 3: Peoples' Global Action Organisational Principles 307 Appendix 4: World Social Forum Charter of Principles 311 Notes 315 References 349 Index 365

About the Author :
Jeffrey S. Juris is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University.

Review :
“Networking Futures [is] an exciting and important book, and a contribution to sociology. . . . Juris provides us with an understanding of how activists are at the forefront of this global transformation, through their creative use of internet and other technologies, and through their comprehensively democratic and reflexive exploration of new social forms.” - Judith Blau, Contemporary Sociology “The view Juris offers is more in-depth than has been generally reported even by sympathetic journalists. . . . Networking Futures stands as a pioneering document of what may yet prove to be a new new world order.” - Vince Carducci, Popmatters “As well as being an insightful and inspiring resource for activists, Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalisation, is a absorbing history of the ever-evolving contemporary resistance to corporate globalisation. I found it a refreshing antidote to the constant barrage of neo-conservative blather emanating from the mouths of free market evangelists on the pages and the airwaves of the mainstream media-especially read in the context of collapsing global markets!” - Megan Yarrow, M/C Reviews “Networking Futures is one of the very first detailed ethnographic accounts of the alternative globalisation movement. The book manages to weave together some of the key historical moments of its ineluctable rise into a single compelling narrative from the intimate perspective of someone who was there. . . . Juris’s many accounts of the vitality, creativity and innovativeness of the alternative globalisation movement will inspire activists and academics alike for many years to come.” - Marco Cuevas-Hewitt, Anthropological Forum “Networking Futures is a terrific, deeply informed ethnographic account of the origins and activities of the anti–corporate globalization movement. Jeffrey S. Juris’s identity is as much that of an activist who happens to be doing first-rate anthropology as vice versa, and there is much for anthropologists to reflect on in the way that this work is set up and narrated through these dual identities.”-George E. Marcus, co-author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary “Networking Futures is one of the very first books to map in detail the multiple networks that are challenging corporate globalization. Taking as a point of departure an exemplary case-the Catalan anti–globalization movements of the past decade-Jeffrey S. Juris moves on to chronicle the collective struggles to construct not only an alternative vision of possible worlds but the means to bring them about. Networking Futures is a compelling portrait of the spirit of innovation that lies behind an array of progressive mobilizations, from anarchist movements and street protests to the World Social Forum. Based on a well-developed notion of collaborative ethnography, it is also a wonderful example of engaged scholarship: a much-needed alternative to academic work as usual.”-Arturo Escobar, author of Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes “Jeffrey S. Juris gives us an illuminating model for how to study networks from below using the tools of ethnography. And in the process he reveals the extraordinary power (as well as the challenges) of network organizing for social movements today.”-Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude “Networking Futures [is] an exciting and important book, and a contribution to sociology. . . . Juris provides us with an understanding of how activists are at the forefront of this global transformation, through their creative use of internet and other technologies, and through their comprehensively democratic and reflexive exploration of new social forms.” - Judith Blau (Contemporary Sociology) “Networking Futures is one of the very first detailed ethnographic accounts of the alternative globalisation movement. The book manages to weave together some of the key historical moments of its ineluctable rise into a single compelling narrative from the intimate perspective of someone who was there. . . . Juris’s many accounts of the vitality, creativity and innovativeness of the alternative globalisation movement will inspire activists and academics alike for many years to come.” - Marco Cuevas-Hewitt (Anthropological Forum) “As well as being an insightful and inspiring resource for activists, Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalisation, is a absorbing history of the ever-evolving contemporary resistance to corporate globalisation. I found it a refreshing antidote to the constant barrage of neo-conservative blather emanating from the mouths of free market evangelists on the pages and the airwaves of the mainstream media-especially read in the context of collapsing global markets!” - Megan Yarrow (M/C Reviews) “The view Juris offers is more in-depth than has been generally reported even by sympathetic journalists. . . . Networking Futures stands as a pioneering document of what may yet prove to be a new new world order.” - Vince Carducci (Popmatters)