How exactly do new media shape contemporary protests?
Extract from Juris, J. S. (2012), Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation. American Ethnologist, 39: 259–279. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01362.x
When a new mass wave of global activism breaks out, casual observers and reporters often wax eloquent about the ways new media technologies are transforming social protest. During the actions against the WTO summit meeting in Seattle in 1999, for example, news reports fixated on the innovative use of Internet-based listservs, websites, and cell phones, which were said to provide unparalleled opportunities for mobilizing large numbers of protesters in globally linked yet decentralized and largely leaderless networks of resistance. More recently, the focus has shifted to how social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook completely transform the way movements organize, whether the so-called Twitter Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia or the outburst of protests around the globe inspired by and modeled after #Occupy Wall Street (see, e.g., Waldram 2011).5
In opposition to such techno-optimistic narratives, skeptical accounts inevitably remind us of the importance of deeply sedimented histories and politics of place for understanding the dynamics of protest in concrete locales or of the tendency for social movements to organize through decentralized, diffuse, and leaderless networks since at least the 1960s, if not long before (cf. Calhoun 1993; Gerlach and Hine 1970). Skeptics also remind us that many protesters in places like Tahrir Square did not have Internet access and were mobilized as much through face-to-face networks as through social media (see Gladwell 2011). Similarly, even though many #Occupy Everywhere participants are certainly avid users of Facebook and Twitter—hence, the widespread use of the hashtag sign as a diacritic—not every occupier and supporter uses social networking tools and smartphones. Indeed, #Occupy has also spread through the occupation of physical spaces as well as the diffusion of evocative images through traditional mass media platforms.
However, debates between techno-optimists and skeptics are rather beside the point. It is clear that new media influence how movements organize and that places, bodies, face-to-face networks, social histories, and the messiness of offline politics continue to matter, as exemplified by the resonance of the physical occupations themselves. The important questions, then, are precisely how new media matter; how particular new media tools affect emerging forms, patterns, and structures of organization; and how virtual and physical forms of protest and communication are mutually constitutive.
(Non)violence and the anti-corporate globalisation movements
Brief notes on Juris, J.S. 2008. Networking Futures: the Movements against Corporate Globalization. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
p. 91 ‘Militant anticapitalists… [adopt] more aggressive direct-action styles and practices [that] embody their militant visions’. They practice ‘”self-defense” and violence against property, including sabotage against bank tellers and corporate storefronts’.
By contrast, RCADE, MRG and other ‘network-based movements… tend to carry out nonviolent forms of civil disobedience’.
p. 142 ‘Militant tactics involve the ritual enactment of violent performances through distinct bodily techniques, political symbols, and protest styles’ e.g. combat boots, black attire, masked faces.
p. 162 Network activism as a form finds it very hard to counter the ‘[violent] tactical choices of others’.
p. 183 Media coverage of Genoa protests in 2001 turned Black Bloc militants into villains ‘decontextualising images and reinserting them within a narrative of the violent anarchist other’.
p. 194 Violence = ‘powerful cultural construct’. Disputes over definition of violence shape competing political identities. This entails ‘a cultural politics of violence’ [cf. Goldfarb 2012]
p. 195 Indiscriminate state terror in Genoa undermined activists’ ‘diversity-of-tactics principle’. Militant violence excuse used by riot police to attack both violent and nonviolent protesters.
p. 292-3 Media coverage of anti-corporate globalisation markedly different in Spain and USA. In Spain activist demands entered mainstream discourse via the media which generally favourable to their demands and portraying them as nonviolent. By contrast, in USA much stronger pro-globalisation discourse, including NYT.
The mainstreaming of nerd politics and other social movement trends
I’m being interviewed over Skype by Anneli Tostar of The Harvard Crimson about social movements. Here are some quick preparatory notes for the record, although I suspect the conversation will move in other directions.
1. What are the sorts of phenomena in relation to social movements that have stood out to you in recent years, either because of their content or method of activism?
A package of four interrelated phenomena, in fact:
- What I call the mainstreaming of nerd/geek politics, with Wikileaks’ State Dept cables, Tunisian revolution and #Nolesvotes (Spain) as 3 apt examples, all happening in late 2010 or early 2011
- This mainstreaming is taking place in an age of viral reality, esp. with success of social and mobile media; by this I mean the growing importance of people’s ability to decide what current affairs items to ‘share’ (or not) with their personal networks; Since when? well, in West and other regions (SE Asia, South America, Middle East) since the joint power of Twitter and Facebook, esp post-2009
- The Tahrir effect in 2011 -> Puerta del Sol -> Zuccotti -> St Paul’s etc
- Precarised students and professionals (see Paul Mason’s latest book, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere), most markedly post-2008 financial crash
2. How does the use of media (video, song, etc.) in the modern era compare with past methods of attempting to gain social mobility?
I think you mean social mobilisation (not social mobility?). If that’s the case, here I would invoke 1) and 2) above, i.e. the combined effect of geeky activism and social media. For example, one striking ‘game’ that activists play these days is ‘playing the algorithm’ (Postill in press), that is working collectively so that a given hashtag (=keyword) will ‘trend’ on Twitter, thereby achieving greater visibility and mobilising potential for their cause.
3. What are the implications of using primarily global platforms, rather than local or grassroots rallies?
I don’t see such a marked contrast between the global and the local. The platform may be global (or near-global, as China and other countries ban certain web platforms) but it’s still deftly appropriated for national and subnational (regional, local) causes. That said, it *does* make a difference whether or not the whole world can ‘see’ a given campaign at the click of a link. For instance, one thing I find absolutely fascinating about Twitter – compared, say, to a local web forum – is that it is a common platform shared by millions of people from most countries in the world in which their paths cross far more often than if they were using discrete platforms. This allowed Twitter-savvy activists in southern Europe and North America to follow, interact with, learn from, and be inspired by their brethren in North Africa during the 2010-2011 uprisings.
4. What do you see as the most effective way of mobilizing young people today? Is media an integral or even necessary part?
The challenge of the present continuous
By Oscar Hemer, Glocal Times No 17/18 (2012)
When, in the spring of 2010, we started the planning of the present special issue, in collaboration with the academic journal Nordicom Review, we did not realize how timely it was. A year later, when it started to materialize, I was quite convinced – as I believe that most of us were – that we witnessed the beginning of an historical revolution that might or might not turn out to be even more far-reaching than the one unleashed in 1989.
I say convinced in the past tense, because it is quite amazing how fast perceptions change. Much of what was said about “the Arab Spring” a year ago already seems strangely dated. The revolutionary euphoria has somehow been replaced by more sinister and even cynical reflections. The fluctuations in the public opinion, and not least the Western media’s reporting on current world events, hence demonstrate another striking contemporary phenomenon; what anthropologist John Postill has called the dilemma of the present continuous, which could also be phrased as the tyranny of the imminent, with little if any historical perspective. We seem to be constantly imagining a near future that rarely happens.
Yet, there is little doubt that we are actually in the beginning, or midst, of a transition process on a global scale, politically, economically, and culturally. Former imperial powers are in decline, whereas former colonies in the global South are on the rise as emerging dominant players of the New World Order. And communication plays a key role in all the current transformational processes, be it as the mobilizing force of the so-called social media or as less democratic and even destructive aspects of the same communication power.
Glocal Times was launched as a web magazine in 2005, coinciding with the publication of the anthology Media and Glocal Change: Rethinking Communication for Development. As its title suggests, the anthology was an innovative attempt to inventory a field that, at the time, was in a state of bewilderment and identity crisis, largely due to globalization. At the same time, there was a renewed interest in strategic communica- tion among donor agencies and other players in international development cooperation. Apparently, this new interest reached a momentum with the first World Congress on Communication for Development in Rome 2006, which managed to mobilize over a thousand participants from both academia and development practice. But instead of an expected break-through, the WCCD strangely rather marked an implosion of the field, and it is only recently that communication for development has started to gain a new momentum.
This special issue, developed by Glocal Times editor Florencia Enghel and guest editor Karin G. Wilkins, from the University of Texas at Austin, could be seen as a follow-up and up-date of the Media and Glocal Change anthology. It comes very timely, as we are now seeing a series of new institutional initiatives in the field of ComDev, such as e.g. the very recent proposal, by UNICEF in conjunction with The Communication Initiative, to form a global association of ComDev researches and practitioners. (This is an initiative to which we shall surely have reason to return.)
But it is perhaps even timelier in the face of the challenge to the field by the present continuous. Whereas “the world is moving our way”, as the director of The Communication Initiative, Warren Feek, put it in a consultation workshop recently held at UNICEF’s headquarters in New York (30-31 August), the world is also moving ahead of us, and if the field of ComDev does not seize the moment, we run the risk of being left behind.
This special issue, published in print format by Nordicom Review, also marks Glocal Times’ move from web magazine to Open Journal. It is a crucial step that will imply many changes and improvements. The content of all the 16 previous issues will eventually be indexed and searchable by author and article. We foresee that one section of the journal will in the future be peer-reviewed, whereas another section remains open for articles by graduates from Malmö University’s ComDev Master program and debate of current issues in the field by guest contributors. The full transformation of the journal will require some time and you may have to bear with some transitional inconveniences. But I am confident that this substantial double issue will provide full compensation in the meantime.
via Spanish Wikipedia (Google translation)
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| The X Party, Party of the Future | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Founded | December 17, 2012 |
| Country | Spain |
| Website | http://partidodelfuturo.net/ , http://partidox.org/ |
The X Party (El Partido X), also known as the Future Party, is a political party appeared publicly in early 2013 . It was submitted by online 8 January 2013 through his Twitter account (Partido_X), but the party had brewing and a year ago by a group of between 70 to 90 people close to 15M and movement of the culture and free software . This party advocates wikigobierno , the referenda , the popular legislative initiatives , the direct participation of citizens in the drafting of laws , the transparency and the use of the Internet as a tool. summarize their program in the phrase ” democracy, period “.
We are children of a historical moment in which there are two great revolutions: the 15-M, and the network as a space to organize.
A Party spokesman X, El País
Index |
History
It enrolled in the Register of Political Parties that of December 17, 2012, under the name of Party X, Party of the future.
Were presented with a video uploaded to YouTube on December 31, 2012 and a Twitter account in which was defined as “an operation to evict the Chamber citizen. Attentive on January 8. “Great excitement was generated and before the day of the presentation and had more than 3,000 followers on Twitter. Your site was announced days in advance but was not available until 10:00 on January 8. The X Party appeared through his Twitter account at 09:00 on January 8, 2013 and issued a series of tweets explaining his project.
Congratulations! You have survived the end of the world!
Although, in reality, this was not so difficult. What really has merit is to survive for so long to the crazy occurrences of those who govern us. In this country led by lunatics, the strange thing is that all remain alive.
Enough! Now comes the real end of the world. The end of the world. It’s the beginning of ours. Let them where it hurts.
If they are our problem, we will be yours.
All hands: reboot the system. Day 8 is the beginning of its end.Party X
Ideology
As defined in its web, the political ideology of the Party X is logic. Its program contains only one point: Democracy and Point (popular legislative initiatives, referendums binding propositional, or aprobativos abrogative, Wikigobierno, actual voting and permanent transparency).
They are based on common principles that drive human initiatives Internet and the world as: free software , the open source , the free culture or free information . They claim that these principles are changing the way of doing politics, and do not correspond exactly to any ideology, doctrine or philosophy, but are rather a pragmatic methodology. A “how to” open, horizontal, transparent, cooperative and respectful, which is powerful enough to be applicable to almost any common issue.
Program
His program, called Democracy and Point, is based on four mechanisms to establish a “true democracy” where citizens have control over what is legislated and executed. The mechanisms proposed are :
Referendum mandatory and binding
Consultations to validate all structural laws, regardless of their origin (proposed by citizens or legislators). The referendum is to be binding. You can be proactive, or abrogative approbative.
- Binding on it because what is decided will be mandatory.
- Through purposeful because he may propose new laws.
- Abrogative it may repeal laws of equal or lower rank than the proposals.
- And because a referendum approbative laws may be adopted by parliament arriving participatory way, as the popular legislative initiatives (ILP) or legislative .
or drafting legislation WikiGobierno participatory and transparent
The laws WikiLegislaciones are constructed collaboratively and transparently between citizens and governments. An application example is the current Civil Marco Brazilian Internet where the government presents a draft which provides citizenship amended in several phases until a balanced legislation for all contributions. The WikiGobierno is the result of a democracy that includes expert participation of citizens to develop and manage the common affairs. The most developed examples WikiGobierno there in the world are:
- the Cabinet Digital Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil (in force since 2003)
- incorporating Better Reykjavik the government of the Icelandic capital.
The Cabinet Digital is a program of physical and digital participation. Citizenship proposed changes in public policies related to various programs. Moreover large open consultations on general issues and the community itself makes proposals and prioritize the best, which is that after the government implements.
Better Iceland and Better Reykjavic are two projects of participatory democracy and WikiGobierno. Both platforms have served to boost public participation in change processes and Iceland have been transposed by the new governments. Citizens incorporate ideas, discussed and prioritized. Spaces are enabled to participate in public institutions (post offices, libraries, town halls, etc..). The Best Party (party anomalous that now rules the Icelandic capital) drafted its election collecting 100 ideas prioritized by the community.
Voting rights real and permanent
Besides participating and monitoring throughout the entire design process of law and public policy, are also demanding the right to vote on them for what they consider citizens who are affected or interested (in Spain not pass legislation, but it is some representatives elected every four years ). The proposals listed in section 2 of WikiGobierno include the ability and tools for citizens to exercise the vote in a continuous and permanent.
They argue that, as voter registration in Spain is about 35 million voters and the Congress of Deputies has 350 deputies each seat is equivalent to 100,000 votes.
Thus, if a particular law will have a direct involvement of a million people to vote from home or from any polling permanently enabled (post offices, town halls, etc …), will deprive the group of MPs ten seats weight proportion to each. If the number of people who voted was, for example, 3.5 million, each deputy would have a vote equal to 0.9 seats, thus 35 seats and their votes, citizens again. The more people choose to represent themselves and vote, less weight is the parliamentary vote. If all citizens vote, only the voice of the citizens decide.
X Party Program
Previous experiences in Spain, as inicativa Democracy 4.0 , provide the legal basis for the practice currently a continuous direct vote on all matters that affect citizens, fulfilling Articles 1.2, 9 and 23 of the Spanish Constitution , without any change in the law.
2. National sovereignty belongs to the Spanish people, from whom emanate the powers of the State.
Article 1 of the Constitution.
2. It is up to public authorities to promote conditions for freedom and equality of individuals and of the groups to which they belong are real and effective, removing obstacles that prevent or hinder their full enjoyment and participation of all citizens in political, economic, cultural and social.
Section 9 of the Constitution.
1. Citizens have the right to participate in public affairs, directly or through representatives freely elected in periodic elections by universal suffrage.
Article 23 of the Constitution. Fundamental right.
Transparency
Proposed mandatory transparency in every area and corner of the Public Administration . The public must be informed before any step you want to give the public administration in any respect, including both the description of the administrative and associated budget. The public will be watchful of all public expenditure, for according to them, effectively ending the corruption.
Plan
They have defined three stages of development prior to stand for election.
Phase 1 / Version 1.0 – Release and consolidation of PartidoX
In Phase 1, seeking public participation to gather suggestions, proposals, criticisms through an email.
Phase 2 / Version 2.0 – Web link to the solutions of future campaigns
In Phase 2, the game will offer the tool “collaborative development” to help people assess, modify and amend content developed by specialized civilian people and platforms that the party of the future considers “the seeds of this for solutions of the future. “
Its aim is to “create in a short time just and efficient policies are carried out by specialists who created them, but they are soon amended by civil society according to their needs and experience.”
Until phase 3 have decided to remain anonymous, as described on their website “We do not appear to be acceptable by everyone and anyone to bear.”
Phase 3 / Version 3.0 – The Future Party replicates and multiplies everywhere
In Phase 3 shall be submitted to the elections, triggering the “mechanism of replication “, where you find that the party can stand for election of all kinds, whether general, local or regional. For this “replication” not detract from the objectives of the party of the future and no individual or organization try to misuse it, they have designed a “model scalability , “where if you do not respect a rule will not allow the existence of that party by name.
They say that when it is very clear what is the Party X, will launch a open licenses, such as the free software (LINK), so other affinity cores implement their methods in different places or communities of interest.
They also claim that a win for them would be that other party also put into practice his method:
Because we do not fight with anyone, we just want to develop a method that we or others implemented. If everything changes so much that PP or PSOE use it as we thought, then perfect. The applied by that method, will be the party that wins the future X.
Interview with anonymous spokesman Party X, eldiario.es
Related News
Before the January 8, 2013
- Party X is born, a political party that aims to “reboot” and “restore democracy” (The Journal, January 2, 2013)
- Party X: the temptation of politics and political parties 2.0 virtual (Nodo50, January 2, 2013)
- The X Party, the party of the future that wants to ‘reboot’ the current democratic system ( Red Nation , January 2, 2013)
January 8, 2013
- 15-M supporters and free culture Internet start up the X Party ( El País , January 8, 2013)
- Party X: “We want to develop a method, not an ideology” ( eldiario.es , January 8, 2013)
- The spirit of the 15-M gives birth to Party X, a formation that aims to “reboot” ( 20 Minutes , January 8, 2013)
- Party X breaks into policy ‘restart’ the system ( Navarra News , January 8, 2013)
- Birth of a new political party, the Party X ( La Vanguardia , January 8, 2013)
- Video, Nace Future Party, a political gamble inspired 15M ( The Sixth , January 8, 2013)
- Party X is born to “vacate” the Chamber and “reset” the system ( Public , January 8, 2013)
- Birth of the ‘Party X. Party of the Future ‘to “reset the electoral space” ( EuropaPress , January 8, 2013)
- Party X is committed to transparency but hides his identity ( Cadena Ser , January 8, 2013)
References
Part of this article comes from the 15Mpedia article published under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.
References
- ↑ X Nace Party, a political party that aims to “reboot” and “restore democracy”, January 2, Eldiario.es
- ↑ Program. Democracy and point
- ↑ a b c Interview, Party X: “We want to develop a method, not an ideology”, January 8, 2013, Eldiario.es
- ↑ a b 15-M supporters and free culture Internet start up the X Party, January 8, ElPaís
- ↑ All hands: Let reboot
- ↑ Happy 2013! The year that we http://youtu.be/ekP6Uk5X0AQ reboot
- ↑ Future Party
- ↑ http://partidodelfuturo.net/el-partido/
- ↑ http://partidox.org/el-partido/preguntas-frecuentes/
- ↑ X Party Program
- ↑ http://culturadigital.br/marcocivil/debate
- ↑ http://gabinetedigital.rs.gov.br/
- ↑ http://www.democraciadigital-andalucia.com/
- ↑ http://betrireykjavik.is/
- ↑ http://gabinetedigital.rs.gov.br/
- ↑ Better Iceland, Citizens Foundation
- ↑ Better Reykjavik, Citizens Foundation
- ↑ More than 35 million Spanish vote next 20-N, about 600,000 more than in 2008.15 / 09/2011, RTVE
- ↑ Democracy Initiative page 4.0.
- ↑ http://demo4punto0.net
- ↑ Legal Foundations, initiative Democracy 4.0
- ↑ Legal Foundations, initiative Democracy 4.0
- ↑ Legal Foundations, initiative Democracy 4.0
- ↑ http://partidox.org/elaboracion-colaborativa/
See also
- Free Culture
- Direct Democracy
- Participatory Democracy
- Free Software
- Transparency
- Internet Voting
- Internet Game
- Pirate Party
- Seats in White
- WikiPartido
External links
Book review (1) of Localizing the Internet, by John Postill
Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account. John Postill. Oxford: Berghahn, 2011. xxv + 150 pp., figures, photographs, FAQs, index.
JENNIFER COOL
University of Southern California
American Ethnologist 39 (4), November 2012, 838-839.
This richly theorized book, which focuses on Subang Jaya, a middle-class suburb of Kuala Lumpur, examines ways Internet technologies and practices are increasingly implicated in the production of locality. Postill’s account, part of a larger comparative study on the extent to which the Internet has altered relations between local authorities and residents, is distinguished by imaginative and careful conceptualization of his object of study. Eschewing community or network (dominant terms and approaches he critiques in the book), Postill draws deftly from the field theories of Manchester School anthropologists (A. L. Epstein, Victor Turner) and Bourdieu to introduce a conceptual tool kit and lexicon that are valuable, not only to the description and analysis of Internet social worlds but more generally to scholars who aim to understand the mutual articulation of small- and large-scale social structures.
Postill conceives his object as Subang Jaya’s “field of residential affairs,” which he defines as “a domain of practical endeavor and struggle in which local agents . . . compete and cooperate over matters of concern to local residents,” often by means of the Internet (p. 4). The local agents he follows are “leading practitioners” in the field (p. 115). Net-savvy, ethnic Chinese, middle aged, and middle class, they include founder of the e-Community portal USJ.com.my, blogger–activist Jeff Ooi (elected to Malaysia’s parliament in 2008), Subang Jaya’s state assemblyman (1995–2008) Lee Hwa Beng, and Raymond Tan, the organizer of a Neighborhood Watch initiative. Postill tracks these men across two kinds of sites: regular “stations” (online forums, mailing lists, committee meetings, night patrols) in which agents engage in the recursive practices that reproduce the field and irregular “arenas,” sites of field change, where conflict and “social dramas” break out.
Like the Manchester School anthropologists who turned away from structural–functional models toward historical–processual explanation, Postill’s focus is social dynamics. He takes a diachronic view, looking for continuity and change in Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs from 1992 to 2009. Postill’s fieldwork was conducted in 2003 and 2004, yet he extends his analysis across 17 years through archival research. Localizing the Internet opens with a chronology of events, actors, and technologies that shaped the field over this time and concludes by looking back at this microhistory for defining events and social dramas that reveal the dynamics of structure and agency.
While social fields are conceived as being in continuous flux, field theorists argue that they have structure—formal dimensions whose “very stasis is the effect of social dynamics” (Turner 1974:37). Postill represents Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs as an inverted “T.” The vertical axis represents Malaysian government with federal, state, and local tiers positioned from top to bottom. The horizontal axis represents residential governance at the local level, with the voluntary sector to the left of the vertical axis, the municipal council at the intersection, and the private sector to the right. This structural model is theorized in the book’s first two chapters, which shape the account of empirical findings that follows in four thematic chapters demonstrating Postill’s overarching argument for the value of a field-theoretical perspective.
“Smarting Partners” (ch. 4) tells the overlapping stories of top-down government initiatives to transform Malaysia into a “Knowledge Society” and ground-up initiatives of “a local brand of Internet activism” that emerged in the late 1990s, which Postill dubs “banal activism” for its focus on issues such as taxation, traffic, garbage, schools, and local crime (p. 51).
“Personal Media” (ch. 5) tracks the personal media use of the three local leaders across social fields. Arguing against the view that these media globally reconfigure social relations in a dominant pattern of networked individualism, Postill shows how they are recruited into older patron–client relations and often put to communitarian, rather than individual, ends. For example, he shows personal media put in service of turun padang, a Malay phrase meaning “to go down to the ground,” the fundamental law of Subang Jaya’s governmental subfield by which local leaders are expected to have a regular presence “on the ground” (pp. 8–9).
“Internet Dramas” (ch. 6) builds on Turner’s key concept of “social drama,” a political process that originates around a crisis and highlights structural contradictions of the field. Calling them “Internet dramas” to “stress the increasingly complex . . . mediations at work” (p. 89), Postill recounts two that played out in Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs: one contained within the e-Community forum; the second, a successful mobilization against building a food court on land reserved for a police station, which spread rapidly beyond the local field to federal government and national media. These Internet dramas, he argues, show local agents appropriating the Net to their own ends. He also proposes that, with its focus on political process, the work of the Manchester School field theorists illuminates a “black box” in Bourdieu’s field theory (p. 99).
“Residential Socialities” (ch. 7) argues against a homogenous, network sociality, demonstrating instead a plurality of socialities differentiated by the nature of inter- action, discourses, and field articulation. Postill identifies committee, patrol, and thread sociality (web forum) as three distinct forms that emerged in Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs during his study.
The book’s conclusion recapitulates Postill’s over-arching argument for field theory as a way around the community–network stalemate that has dominated re- search and discussion of Internet localization. There is no “local community” impacted by the “network of networks,” he argues, nor a homogenous network sociality displacing place-based social action. The flattened hierarchies of Internet theorists and activists have no effect on the hierarchical structure of the modern state captured in the inverted “T” of Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs. If I am left wanting more insight into the messiness and role of rank-and-file residents in this porous, conflict-prone field, that speaks more to the different traditions of American cultural and British social anthropology than to any deficit in this compelling work.
Reference cited
Turner, Victor, 1974 Dramas Fields, and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Two diametrically opposed views on the #Occupy movement
Two wildly different takes on the Occupy movement have recently found their way into my Twitter feed. Both deserve careful consideration (watch this blogspace):
Take One: Bank of England official: Occupy Movement right about global recession
Andrew Haldane said protestors were correct to focus on inequality as the chief reason for 2008 economic crash
The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2012 21.06 GMT
The Occupy Movement has found an unlikely ally in a senior Bank of England official, Andrew Haldane, who has praised protesters for their role in triggering an overhaul of the financial services sector.
Haldane, who oversees the City for the central bank, said Occupy acted as a lever on policymakers despite criticism that its aims were too vague. He said the protest movement was right to focus on inequality as the chief reason for the 2008 crash, following studies that showed the accumulation of huge wealth funded by debt was directly responsible for the domino-like collapse of the banking sector in 2008.
Speaking at a debate held by the Occupy Movement in central London, Haldane said regulations limiting credit use would undermine attempts by individuals to accumulate huge property and financial wealth at the expense of other members of society. Allowing banks to lend on a massive scale also drained funding from other industries, adding to the negative impact that unregulated banks had on the economy, he said.
Take Two: To the Precinct Station: How theory met practice …and drove it absolutely crazy
Thomas Frank from The Baffler No. 21
[...] Building a democratic movement culture is essential for movements on the left, but it’s also just a starting point. Occupy never evolved beyond it. It did not call for a subtreasury system, like the Populists did. It didn’t lead a strike (a real one, that is), or a sit-in, or a blockade of a recruitment center, or a takeover of the dean’s office. The IWW free-speech fights of a century ago look positively Prussian by comparison.
With Occupy, the horizontal culture was everything. “The process is the message,” as the protesters used to say and as most of the books [on the Occupy movement] considered here largely concur. The aforementioned camping, the cooking, the general-assembling, the filling of public places: that’s what Occupy was all about. Beyond that there seems to have been virtually no strategy to speak of, no agenda to transmit to the world.
