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15. Networked social movements: globalmovements for global justiceJeffrey S. JurisFacilitated by the greater speed, adaptability, and flexibility afforded by newinformation technologies, decentralized network forms are out-competing moretraditional vertical hierarchies. Nowhere has this trend been more apparent thanwithin the realm of collective action, where transnational social movementsreflect the broad decentered networking logic of informationalism, even as theyattack the roots of informational capitalism. Since bursting onto the scene inSeattle in 1999, and through subsequent direct action protests against multilateralinstitutions and alternative forums around the world in places such asPrague, Quebec, Genoa, Barcelona, and Porto Alegre, anti-corporate globalizationmovements have challenged global inequalities, while making new strugglesvisible. The more aptly named “movements for global justice” – activistsare actually building alternative globalizations from below – involve a politicsof articulation, uniting a broad network of networks in opposition to growingcorporate influence over our lives, communities, and resources. Movements forglobal justice can thus be viewed as signs indicating a democratic deficit withinemerging regimes of transnational governance, as well as social laboratories forthe production of alternative codes, values, and practices.Inspired by the Zapatistas and previous struggles against free trade, structuraladjustment, and environmental destruction, global justice activists havemade innovative use of global computer networks, informational politics, andnetwork-based organizational forms. Theorists have pointed to the rise ofglobal “Netwars” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001) or the emergence of an “electronicfabric of struggle” (Cleaver, 1995), but such broad descriptions tell usvery little about concrete networking practices or how such practices aregenerated. Manuel Castells (1997: 362) has identified a “networking, decenteredform of organization and intervention, characteristic of the new socialmovements, mirroring, and counteracting, the networking logic of dominationin the information society.” However, scholars have yet to explore the specificmechanisms through which this decentered networking logic is actuallyproduced, reproduced, and transformed by concrete activist practice withinparticular social, cultural, and political contexts. 1341