Movements of Movements: Part 2: Rethinking Our Dance (Openworld's Challenging Empires, 5) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629633801 ISBN 13: 9781629633800

Verlag: PM Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

This collection provides a bracing window into some of the central ideas to have emerged from within grassroots struggles from 2006 to 2010. Rethinking Our Dance, the second of two volumes, offers a wide range of essays from frontline activists in Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Niger, and Taiwan, as well as from Europe and North America that address the question, “What do we need to do in order to bring about justice and peace?” Contributors include Kolya Abramsky, Ezequiel Adamovsky, Oussenia Alidou, Samir Amin, Chris Carlsson, John Brown Childs, Lee Cormie, Anila Daulatzai, Massimo De Angelis, The Free Association, David Graeber, Josephine Ho, John Holloway, François Houtart, Jeffrey Juris, Michael Löwy, Tomás Mac Sheoin, Matt Meyer, Muto Ichiyo, Rodrigo Nunes, Michal Osterweil, Shailja Patel, Geoffrey Pleyers, Stephanie Ross, and Nicola Yeates.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jai Sen, based at the India Institute for Critical Action: Centre In Movement (CACIM), is an activist/researcher/author on and in movement.

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The Movements of Movements, Part 2

Rethinking Our Dance

By Jai Sen

PM Press

Copyright © 2018 Jai Sen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-380-0

Contents

Acknowledgements and Credits, 
0 INVOCATIONS, 
Proem: Offering Shailja Patel, 
Introduction: On Rethinking Our Dance: Some Thoughts, Some Moves Jai Sen, 
3 INTERROGATING MOVEMENT, PROBLEMATISING MOVEMENT, 
Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness, Horizontality, and the Movement of Movements Rodrigo Nunes, 
Worlds in Motion: Movements, Problematics, and the Creation of New Worlds The Free Association, 
Break Free! Engaging Critically with the Concept and Reality of Civil Society (Part 1) Jai Sen, 
Believing in Exclusion: The Problem of Secularism in Progressive Politics Anila Daulatzai, 
Is Global Governance Bad for East Asian Queers? Josephine Ho, 
Incorporating Youth or Transforming Politics? Alter-Activism as an Emerging Mode of Praxis among Young Global Justice Activists Jeffrey S Juris and Geoffrey Pleyers, 
The Antiglobalisation Movement: Coalition and Division Tomás Mac Sheoin and Nicola Yeates, 
The Strategic Implications of Anti-Statism in the Global Justice Movement Stephanie Ross, 
Negativity and Utopia in the Global Justice Movement Michael Löwy, 
The Global Moment: Seattle, Ten Years On Rodrigo Nunes, 
Autonomous Politics and its Problems: Thinking the Passage from the Social to the Political Ezequiel Adamovsky, 
Boundary as Bridge John Brown Childs, 
Effective Politics or Feeling Effective? Chris Carlsson, 
PR Like PRocess! Strategy from the Bottom Up Massimo De Angelis, 
The Power of Words: Reclaiming and Reimagining Revolution and Non-Violence Matt Meyer and Ousseina Alidou, 
Break Free! Engaging Critically with the Concept and Reality of Civil Society (Part 2) Jai Sen, 
4 REFLECTIONS ON POSSIBLE FUTURES, 
"Becoming-Woman"? Between Theory, Practice, and Potentiality Michal Osterweil, 
The Asymmetry of Revolution John Holloway, 
The Shock of Victory David Graeber, 
Gathering Our Dignified Rage: Building New Autonomous Global Relations of Production, Livelihood, and Exchange Kolya Abramsky, 
Towards the Autonomy of the People of the World: Need for a New Movement 449 of Movements to Animate People's Alliance Processes Muto Ichiyo, 
Towards a Fifth International? Samir Amin, 
The Lessons of 2011: Three Theses on Organisation Rodrigo Nunes, 
'We Still Exist' François Houtart, 
Afterword: Another World Is Inevitable … but which Other World? Lee Cormie, 
Notes on the Editors and Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like

Openness, Horizontality, and the Movement of Movements

Rodrigo Nunes

Networked, horizontal forms of movement have been at the centre of many political debates in the last decade and have often been treated alternately as the 'limit' (by their enemies) and the 'solution' (by their proponents) to the problems of organising resistance to global capitalism. This however has unfortunately meant that critiques 'from the inside' — ie, by those who have experienced and share a general belief in them — have been much rarer than those articulated by partisans of other forms of organisation, resulting in much backpatting and triumphalism but few discussions of widely shared anxieties and frustrations; a problem that is only enhanced by the fact that it is often felt that horizontality must be 'defended' from its detractors.

It is this kind of internal critique that this paper attempts by envisaging a demystification of openness and horizontality, showing how they are often presented in complete absence of context, and pointing to their inherent limitations, contradictions, and dead-ends. The point is not to open another debate on 'less' or 'more' horizontality, or horizontality versus verticality, but rather to problematise these very notions; and by opening up their problematic nature to argue for a practice that tackles their ambiguities head on.

Before Openness and Horizontality, There Was Openness and Horizontality

Why have openness and horizontality become so central recently? Two answers seem possible. The first concerns the growing disappointment that erupted in 1968 with the real existing socialism. This was very present (and increasingly outspoken) in progressive movements all over the world, culminating in a strange aftertaste of consternation and indifference when those regimes crumbled circa 1989. In this narrative we encounter a learning process where the lessons of Eastern Europe — whose mistakes were universalised, practically or theoretically, to almost everywhere by communist and socialist parties of all shades — made subsequent waves of people struggling for social transformation wise enough to know what not to do, though still in the dark, and in some cases disillusioned, about what could be done. While this process is undeniable, it is clear that it alone cannot account for the move towards the open and horizontal organisation of struggles in recent years; in fact, one could argue it is more capable of explaining the rise of identity politics, single-issue campaigns, NGOs, and / or the sheer surrender of many people to the inevitability of the world as it is / was, and the neoliberal stance taken by many left parties and trade unions.

What is relevant about the 'rise' of openness and horizontality is not that it substitutes one total theory of organisation with another, but the fact that something like 'network' has a place today in the vocabulary and practices of organisations that remain hierarchical or that it is integral to the practices of companies and highly valued in business and management circles. In other words, what is relevant is not that these ideas have become important but that they have become practiced. Even if we say that openness and horizontality are the new ideology — an across the board one at that — the ideology as such can only exist because it has become (or is perceived as being in the process of becoming) materially possible on a large scale.

The bulk of the answer must, therefore, lie in a material process. One current narrative of this process identifies it with a restructuring in the most advanced sectors of capitalism (which, it is argued, exerts a hegemony that restructures all other sectors), commonly called the passage from the Fordist to the post-Fordist model of production. This can be characterised by the transformation of the relations between production and what is 'outside' it, consumption: gathering information about and circulating information that 'constructs' the market, the quantitative and qualitative increase of 'consumer relations' in relation to the productive process, hand in hand with a 'singularisation' of the product.

We are witnessing today not really a growth of services, but rather a development of the 'relations of service'. The move beyond the Taylorist organization of services is characterized by the integration of the relationship between production and consumption, where in fact the consumer intervenes in an active way in the composition of the product. The product 'service' becomes a social construction and a social process of 'conception' and innovation. ... The change in this relationship between production and consumption has direct consequences for the organization of the Taylorist labor of production of services, because it draws into...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1629633801
• ISBN 13: 9781629633800
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 648
• Herausgeber: Sen Jai
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar