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

ealised the full expression of these nascent civil societies (see Baker and
Welsh 2000).
In the Czech case, there was a clear incorporation of prominent dissident
and environmental concerns within the formal political arena. The
incorporation of significant ‘dissident’ demands relating to democratic
freedoms and environmental issues arguably ‘decapitated’ or ‘incorporated’
key radical constituencies (see Andrle 2003, Fagin 1999). In the new
democracies, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic, there is a widespread
view that the dynamism of civil society actors that prevailed during
the transitions has disappeared. Given the extent and vibrancy of the civil
sphere documented by Kenney (2002) such dissolution is highly unlikely.
The insight that civil society engagement with the institutional dynamics
of neo-liberal capitalist societies is a process requiring significant time and
effort in terms of identifying, formalising and declaring ‘the stakes’ (Melucci
1989, 1996a) underlines the importance of remaining alert to emergent social
forces within the new democracies (Baker and Welsh 2000). Within this
complex domain, issues of gender, ethnicity, and environment become
articulated within historically new market relations where they unfold in
the context of radically changed processes. Significant here are issues of
mobility, transformed communication and information exchange (Urry
2000) and the introduction of private property relations.
As Havel noted long before the transition phase commenced ‘capitalism...
is struggling with the same problems’ of alienation resulting in ‘depersonalization
and the loss of meaning in work’ combined with ‘the general
manipulation of people’s lives by the system’ (Havel 1990: 14). To Havel,
the maintenance of human scale and a positive orientation towards the
‘inventiveness of nature’ capable of ‘inscrutable complexity of [its] interconnections’
were vital to avoid people becoming a ‘herd’ as a consequence
of commodification and ‘consumer television culture’ regardless of the
underlying ‘socialist’or ‘capitalist’ form of ownership and control (Havel
1990: 15). The arrival of the new democracies marked an entry into a new
phase of struggle where ‘living in truth’ (Havel 1989) assumed new forms
representing expressions of in ‘plurality of social association from below’
considered by Havel to be the truly important features of high profile events
such as the Prague spring of 1968 (1989: 21).
The Prague IMF World Bank action
Identities, protest dynamics and technology 45
As host to the IMF/WB summit the Czech state was firmly placed in the eye
of a hurricane of global protest rendering the state as a node of network
convergence from ‘above’ and ‘below’. As we go on to demonstrate, global
political, intelligence and policing networks became increasingly focussed
upon the Czech Republic just as AGM networks also ‘colonised’ activist
space. Much of the framework involved in defining the stakes enacted on
S26 thus precedes the actual event by at least 12 months. The Czech