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

Beyond resistance to global nexus 119
orientation along the continuum between expressive escapism or violent
and obsessive rejection that otherwise tends to characterise antagonistic
movements. Movement actors, be they individuals, groups or movement
organisations enter into relation with each other in a space defined by the
‘pure’ antagonism (Melucci 1996a: 36) indicated in the PGA hallmarks and
this field of relations constitutes a space of co-ordination for the inter-scalar
politics of the AGM, without enforcing or limiting the capacity of
movements to act autonomously in pursuit of claims-making in a less
antagonistic manner.
The ‘co-ordination’ of this distributed and inter-scalar politics is an
emergent outcome of the voluntary participation in the network and the
affinities such participation generates. There are few sanctions within the
PGA process for groups or movements participating in more traditional or
orthodox political activity. Indeed this is frequently taken for granted, especially
where the divergence from the hallmarks is a condition of the individuals’
external connection or involvement within social movement
organisations that share similar aims but have differing organisational
models. This has been particularly true of southern movements where
financial means have determined the connection between the movement
and the network is conducted through the actions of individuals who are
specifically delegated to the PGA and/or leaders of their respective social
movement organisations. However, in the context of specific actions the
activities of individuals participating within PGA-initiated processes have
on occasion been subject to censure. Here the deliberately low-profile PGA
presence makes it difficult to determine those spaces/processes, that
Routledge (2004) calls ‘process geographies’ within which deliberate or
marked divergence from the hallmarks could prompt censure within the
broader PGA network. However, as we have described in Chapter 3 this
process of recursive structuration within the PGA network also precipitates
individuals engaged in ‘free-acts’ into unanticipated positions which can
lead to frustration where such individuals become accountable to a network
which is otherwise opaque.
These considerations resulted in close attention being paid to issues of
representation, communication and accountability within PGA at a global
level and attempts to formalise self-regulation of Europeans’ participation
at the global level to avoid ‘internationals’ mobility and wealth establishing
dominance by default. Examples include the criticism and reformulation of
the informal support group and the decision taken at the convenors meeting
in Prague before the IMF WB protests, where it was agreed that the
PGA global conference should have a quota system with a maximum of
30% European participants. However, because of the character of the
network and the lack of sanctions available, the application of this quota
system comes down to voluntary observance. The combination of
‘biographic availability’ (Wall 1999) of Western activists with the ‘pull’
of the symbolic spaces chosen for PGA conferences frequently means