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

108 Beyond resistance to global nexus
allies both these positions recognise that the AGM has opened a
discursive space in which fundamental issues of environmental and social
justice can be raised, a space that should either be closed off through
vitriolic dismissal (Freidman) or accommodated within the existing
paradigm of Marxist revolution (Callinicos). In both accounts, the AGM is
criticised to various extents for its incoherence and/or lack of organisation.
A significant flaw in the reasoning of these commentators lies in the
disassociation of the impacts of the AGM and its organisational form(s),
as if the impacts that make the movement(s) worthy of comment have
little to do with the way the movement(s) organise and relate to each
other. In both these accounts, ideological expressions of liberalism
and Marxism reduce complex social and political phenomena to established
paradigms of interest representation through market or party
structures.
Neither position, it would appear, has the political will to engage with the
means through which antipathy to party structures, diverse repertoires of
resistance and the construction of new affectivities have been articulated
through a rhizomatic expansion of networks that provide space for a multitude
of social and political programmes, without the need for an overarching
ideological narrative. These processes of encounter and exchange
facilitate the articulation and exploration of common values and emergent
interests that are either taken up and multiplied by iteration through facework
and CMC or instead fall back to the level of their initial expression.
The effect as we demonstrated earlier in our discussion of movement
plateaux is that outcomes are often unpredictable, and frequently spectacular
outcomes are the result of actions by seemingly peripheral activities
conducted by ‘minor’ actors.
The interesting question therefore, is the one that is not considered by
commentators such as Freidman and Callinicos – to what model of social
change does the rhizomatic interlinking of movements give rise and to what
extent does this model offer the potential of radical social transformation?
Similarly, if the concepts of reflexive framing and plateaux provide us with
a means of elaborating the sense making and intensive qualities of movement
interactions that lead to unexpected and seemingly disproportionate
outcomes, such as the perturbation of prominent discourses on development
and global trading, how then might that form be elaborated, communicated,
co-ordinated and extended? To explore this question we turn to
attempts to co-ordinate the AGM and to those who seek to spread the
medium as strongly as the message. In particular, we look at two distinctive
attempts to co-ordinate resistance and offer alternative visions to the prevailing
model of neo-liberal globalisation, People’s Global Action (PGA)
and the World Social Forum (WSF) Movement. We examine their roots,
organising processes and effects and speculate upon their likely trajectories
within the current geo-political context.