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

Prominent internationals learned of the Prague event through either
personal communications or internet postings with five such individuals
familiar with PGA arriving in the Czech Republic in the months preceding
the event (Interview British Activist [3]). A male UK activist with significantly
more experience than anyone else within this network node assumed
the role of ‘prime mover’ despite arriving with other intentions and
agenda. This is a common feature of such events frequently raised in terms
of accountability and the exercise of power compared to formally convened
and minuted bureaucratic organisations. Such criticisms fail to grasp the
impossibility of following such formal models faced by the conjuncture of
multiple movement actors. The field of relations and demands constituted
by a diverse constituency with varying degrees of familiarity and fluency
within such milieus are too fluid and complex to be bureaucratically
contained.
In such circumstances pre-existing network trust relations, personal
cultural capital, activist skills and demeanour combine in ways which
‘precipitate’ particular people into the ‘thankless’ places from whence
movement leadership is exercised. Movement dynamics ensure other forms
of accountability through the evaluation of leaders’ roles in relation to
abstract movement values and principles (see Barker et al. eds 2001).
All the internationals initial communications with Czech activists utilised
CMC. Interviews reveal how embedded assumptions mediate such interactions
in the absence of face-work exchanges. The history of Czech
resistance to Soviet Communism raised internationals expectations that
they would be entering a sophisticated activist community. In the words of
a highly experienced activist respondent
I think I expected it was going to be massive. I expected that the organising
would be really good, that the local organising would be really
sorted. I suppose I had a romantic notion that they had seen the success
of the Velvet Revolution. . . . and Oh this must be a hot bed – what all
these people who were in their late teens and now must be well my age
really (i.e. 30s).
(British Activist [2])
This was not an isolated view
Identities, protest dynamics and technology 51
You know, there was a revolution basically ten years before and yet we
seem to be in a complete vacuum and having to relearn and invent
everything. Where are those people now and what are they doing? All
those things were crucial to us.
(British Activist [6])
The disparity between this expectation and the material reality was
marked. Despite extensive e-mail contact one experienced international