Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This work shares findings and implications from a dissertation exploring how multi-issue, transnational coalitions and structures, able to mobilize large swaths of civil society across the world, are created and sustained. It is based on over 100 semi-structured interview-conversations and participant observation at the World Social Forum in 2003 and the European Social Forums in 2002 and 2003. Processes and their constitutive mechanisms were culled from this evidence, in an inductive-deductive spiral operationalizing McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly’s most recent explanatory framework from the Dynamics of Contention. The episode of contention is identified to be that of ‘globalization’, which is then broken down into ‘global economic integration’ and ‘internationalization’. It is within the latter that this study of the social forums and the ‘global movement of movements’ is located, and I call this process ‘the internationalization of activism’. I argue that this process is made up of three smaller processes: mobilization, scale shift, and actor constitution. Reframing the research question around these three processes, I then explored: how and why activists are mobilizing in unprecedented numbers, locales, and complex networks; how and why they are broadening their focus to include the transnational level; to what extent they are forging a single collective actor or identity; and what is the role of the World Social Forum in these processes. This study corroborated McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly’s hypotheses of robust mechanisms that constitute each of these processes, identified additional mechanisms in each, and concluded that one global collective actor is emerging around the shared demand for ‘deep democracy’. Implications for scholars, activists and policymakers were then discussed.