Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

6 Shadow realm
Beyond resistance to global
nexus
There is no centre anywhere that could hope to organize and oversee all this
mutual thickening of ties. It would be like trying to instruct a forest how
to grow.
(PGA Bulletin Five 2000)
In order to transcend the current paradigm of new social movements the
main characteristics of recent collective action must be identified. Even
though I am not in search of the central movement of complex society, I
maintain that there are forms of antagonistic collective action capable of
effecting the logic of complex systems.
(Melucci 1989: 73)
Neither anti nor pro, but alter (alternative and other)
Two of the most common accusations against the alternative globalisation
movement are that it amounts to an ‘anti’ movement with little idea of an
alternative vision (Freidman 1999), or that it indulges in ‘movementism’
(Callinicos 2003) serial protesting that actively excludes political parties
because of a misplaced opposition to the party form. The presumption underlying
both these positions is that the expression of diverse perspectives through
a combination of dialogical encounter, protest and cultural experimentation is
insufficiently coherent to mount or maintain an ideological challenge to the
status quo. Therefore, those that constitute the AGM are dismissed as either
‘a Noah’s ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies
looking for their 1960’s fix’ (Freidman 1999) or they are conveniently
reframed as nascent parties to avoid the difficulties of theorising afresh:
These divergent currents operate like parties, organizing on the basis of
what amount to distinct political programmes, even if they spurn the
name ‘party’.
(Callinicos 2003)
The majoritarian logic behind these perspectives is concerned with efficacy,
efficiency and utility. In their construction of potential enemies and