Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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

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"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"

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NETWORKING FUTURES

Duke University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables..............................................................ixAcknowledgments...............................................................................xiAbbreviations.................................................................................xvIntroduction: The Cultural Logic of Networking................................................11. The Seattle Effect.........................................................................272. Anti-Corporate Globalization Soldiers in Barcelona.........................................613. Grassroots Mobilization and Shifting Alliances.............................................934. Performing Networks at Direct-Action Protests..............................................1235. Spaces of Terror: Violence and Repression in Genoa.........................................1616. May the Resistance Be as Transnational as Capital!.........................................1997. Social Forums and the Cultural Politics of Autonomous Space................................2338. The Rise of Informational Utopics..........................................................267Conclusion: Political Change and Cultural Transformation in a Digital Age.....................287Appendix 1: Electronic Resources..............................................................303Appendix 2: Pink and Silver Call, Genoa, July 20, 2001........................................305Appendix 3: Peoples' Global Action Organisational Principles..................................307Appendix 4: World Social Forum Charter of Principles..........................................311Notes.........................................................................................315References....................................................................................349Index.........................................................................................365

Chapter One

Let's make a network of communication among all our struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network of alternative communication against neoliberalism ... (and) for humanity. This intercontinental network of alternative communication will weave the channels so that words may travel all the roads that resist.... (It) will be the medium by which distinct resistances communicate with one another. This intercontinental network of alternative communication is not an organizing structure, nor has a central head or decision maker, nor does it have a central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who speak and listen.

It was November 29, 1999, and three friends and I were speeding up Interstate 5 on the way to Seattle for the big protest against the WTO. We had left San Francisco at dawn, hoping to make it before midnight. We had no idea what to expect, but we all had the feeling something big was about to happen, that we were somehow making history. We had not taken part in the previous weeks of direct-action training, but we were eager to join the fray. Shortly after passing through Eugene, I turned to my friend at the wheel, a longtime environmental activist, and asked him why he was going to Seattle. His face lit up and he responded, "This is going to be historic, radical environmentalists and organized labor are finally pulling it together. I don't know exactly what is going to happen, but this is going to be huge, there is no way I would miss this!" He seemed to be echoing a widely shared sentiment.

To be honest, at the time I had only a vague understanding of what the WTO was. I knew about the globalization debates and had been active in Latin American solidarity movements for years. Having lived and worked in Guatemala in the early 1990s, I knew a lot about structural adjustment and the destructive environmental and economic policies of the World Bank and IMF in Central America. During my first few years as a graduate student, I had worked with a local Latino employment cooperative in Oakland but had recently begun to collaborate with a San Francisco-based NGO supporting grassroots projects in the Global South. Moreover, as a student of social movements, I had also closely followed the Zapatista uprising, but I still had no sense of belonging to a grassroots movement against neoliberalism. The next few days would change all that. As for so many others, Seattle was my initiation into a new and inspiring world that would soon be known around the planet as the "antiglobalization" movement. Beyond street protests, each new mobilization would leave behind a new coalition of environmental, labor, solidarity, economic justice, women's, and indigenous rights networks, slowly weaving together the kind of decentralized intercontinental network-a broad transnational web of resistance-the Zapatistas had called for several years earlier.

Throughout this book, I move back and forth between the local and the global, between Barcelona and the distant locales that form part of the broader global networks Catalan activists have helped to produce. This chapter provides an overview of anti-corporate globalization movements, examining their emergence as a transnational phenomenon and analyzing their major defining characteristics. What are anti-corporate globalization movements? When and why did alternative networks emerge? How do different sectors articulate within broader movement fields? The rapid diffusion of network-based models has facilitated interaction among diverse political perspectives, reflecting a broader confluence among organizational forms, political norms, and new technologies. During the April 2001 protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec, radical activists proclaimed, "The movement didn't start in Seattle, and it won't end in Quebec!" My story begins in Seattle, however, because it was the first in a string of mass direct actions that were broadcast on a global scale and where so many diverse networks came together against a common enemy-corporate globalization-producing something larger than the sum of its parts.

The Battle in Seattle

We arrived in Seattle shortly before midnight. The streets were empty, and there was no indication of the gathering storm that would hit the following day. After a brief night's sleep, we made it down to the port for the action at 7:30 the next morning. We quickly downed some fresh coffee at the pier and then decided to join a large, motley group of protesters heading toward the conference center. We saw colorful costumes, huge puppets depicting world leaders, and protesters dressed as giant green sea turtles. The sound of drums was everywhere. Protesters wore backpacks stuffed with food, gas masks, and lemons, and many wore bandannas around their necks in preparation for the street battle to come. Just before reaching the conference center, we passed an intersection locked down by fifteen activists, blocking oncoming traffic. I would witness similar scenes around the world during the next few years, but this was my first mass direct action, and I had never seen anything like it. We were thoroughly unprepared.

As we approached the conference center, small groups began to break off from the larger crowd, taking up distinct positions around the perimeter. Activists communicated by cell phone, and everything seemed extremely well organized, but there was no...