Published in Anarchist Studies, 11, 1: 42-65

Shape Shifting: Civil Society, Complexity and Social Movements

Graeme Chesters

Abstract

This paper suggests that a process of democratic renewal catalysed by grassroots social movement networks has led to the re-imagining and re-defining of global civil society. It argues that the ‘alternative globalization movement’ indicates the antagonistic and transformative potential of this domain and demonstrates how anarchist praxis has been crucial to the development of complex adaptive behaviour, leading to the emergence of unanticipated macro-outcomes in social movement networks. The paper utilises insights drawn from the literature on social movement theory, ‘discursive’ and ‘deliberative’ democracy and the contemporary complexity sciences.

Key words: global civil society, globalization, anarchism, discursive democracy, social movements, plateau, chaos, complexity, emergence, collective intelligence.

Introduction

‘Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.’- George Santayana[i]

For radical social change to emerge, we have to pull fences down, cross borders, and make connections. We have to know what tools to make use of and what to discard, where to act, how to act, with whom and when. This paper comes out of grappling with those challenges alongside others within the alternative globalization movement in real and virtual spaces. It aims to take seriously the ideas of social movement, democracy and complexity and to respect the aim of a unity in diversity amongst radical political actors, which is easy to talk about but a lot harder to achieve.

Three broad themes are interwoven. The first is the claim that a global civil society exists, which is qualitatively different from civil society as traditionally understood and as associated with the bourgeois public sphere. I suggest that this domain is a space of conflict and resistance, a space where forces intersect, collide and produce, where resistance is accentuated rather than assimilated – a constituent space. The second claim is that it is anti-Statist forms of organising that shape this domain most strikingly by privileging networked forms of global action, communication and information exchange through which detailed and practical proposals to address global problems are emerging. The third claim I make is that in form and outcome(s) this movement constitutes a complex adaptive system, which demonstrates emergent properties of collective intelligence and the capacity to intervene meaningfully against globalized capitalism. Central to this paper is the argument that these emergent properties result from adherence to anarchist principles of organisation and decision-making, which are increasingly recognised as suited to accentuating the qualities of emergence associated with complex systems.

In putting flesh on the bones of these claims I use theoretical concepts from critical social theory and the contemporary complexity sciences, in doing so I am consciously seeking a metaphorical structure that escapes the fixity of network concepts that tend towards reifying social relations within ‘sticky’ conceptual cartographies, i.e. the tendency to ‘freeze’ accounts of movements through network mapping. Therefore, whilst network architectures denoting relative densities of flow (people ideas, resources) and the respective size of hubs and their number of links remain relevant to my discussion of networks, I am also arguing for a cartography that is able to conceptualise networks as always ‘in process’, expanding and contracting across an ‘n’ dimensional space. This argument places great weight upon those moments of brief but intense stabilization and re-configuration I refer to as plateau (Bateson, 1973, Deleuze and Guattari, 2002), junctures in which a network is manifest and transformed simultaneously. These might include ‘summit sieges’ (Seattle, Prague, Quebec, Genoa etc) or gatherings such as those held by People’s Global Action or the Social Forum movement. This paper is therefore also an attempt to contextualise the alternative globalization movement and to comment specifically about its form and the processes through which it can be glimpsed.

Underwriting this approach is the supposition that ontologies of the type characterised by pre-formed entities relating to each other within fixed parameters are rapidly being replaced by historically constituted ‘open’ ontologies that describe a radical relationality between the elements of systems (Reed & Harvey, 1992, 1996, Cilliers, 1998). This has led me to take seriously the claims made by those within the AGM, who suggest that global civil society amounts to more than a means of legitimising normative identities such as occurs within the bourgeois public sphere (Horkheimer, 1947, Marcuse, 1960, Foucault, 1975, 1977, 1979, Castells, 1997). Therefore, my argument proceeds with an eye on the possibility that when activists refer to ‘global civil society’, what is being identified is what myself and Ian Welsh have elsewhere described as a ‘parallelogram of forces’ (Chesters & Welsh, 2002), or what Negri is referring to when he speaks of the multitude as ‘the whole of singularities’[ii]. Both terms indicating something of the emergent outcomes (higher order system effects which are irreducible to the sum of the systems parts) of participative self-organised and networked struggles that evade capture or recuperation by statist forms.

Democracy and Resistance

In the 21^st century, contrary to some expectations there is still an appetite for democracy. With electoral participation falling to historic lows across social democratic states and ‘left-liberalism’ (Offe, 1997) withering on the vine of neo-liberal globalization, democracy has become a flagship for those seeking to rally us to alternative political projects. Democracy of the comprehensive, engaged and participatory kind is being championed once again, whether it is understood radically as inclusive (Fotopoulos, 1997) or discursive, (Dryzek, 1990, Dryzek, 2002) or liberally as deliberative (Elster, 1998 Bohman & Rehg, 1997, Dryzek, 2002).

The evidence of democratic renewal instigated by social movements is not difficult to find and is international in scope, with movements from the Southern hemisphere being particularly prominent and influential (Podur, 2002)[iii]. In South America, the immediate situation in Argentina jumps to mind and particularly the rise of the asembleas populares the neighbourhood meetings that are now determining decisions about much of social and economic life (Jordan & Whitney, 2002). However, we might also think more broadly of initiatives that retain statist elements yet are marked by a radical and democratic impulse. In this vein, one might think of the democratisation of municipal budgets in Brazil with the example of Porto Alegre and the impetus this has provided for the Brazilian Worker’s Party (PT) and their success at having ‘Lula’ elected President. One might also point to the broader role that antagonistic social movement networks have played in establishing democratic processes of self-organisation and determination in Brazil more generally (Alvarez, 1997). In Mexico, the Zapatista uprising has been rooted in a profoundly democratic praxis (Lorenzano, 1998, Chesters, 2001) that is fostered by and sustains the autonomous communities of Chiapas. Elsewhere in the world, on the Indian subcontinent, the Panchayat democratisation of village communities in West Bengal has led to the devolution of administrative and fiscal development to local levels, thereby giving unprecedented power to villagers. Whilst in Europe signs of an upsurge in community activism that negotiates with and adapts existing democratic structures are occurring. In the UK this appears to be happening through initiatives such as the Manchester Community Network[iv].

At the forefront of much of this democratic renewal are the grassroots social movements of the alternative globalisation movement (AGM)[v], often referred to as the anti-globalisation or anti-capitalist movement. Over the last decade the AGM has demonstrated disruptive, reflexive and creative capacities – a form of constituent power[vi] - and has intervened in the symbolic production of globalizing discourses through physical confrontation and a veritable ‘siege of the signs’ of global informationalised capitalism (Chesters & Welsh, 2002). At its most focused and confrontational, it reflects the characteristics of what Melucci (1996) called an antagonistic movement[vii] demonstrating through the frame of ‘anti-capitalism’ intent to contest the material basis of the prevailing system of production, distribution and exchange. The roots of this constituent power are located in what is often described as global civil society, a generative context that connects new social formations and base communities[viii] with established social movement networks and the more orthodox non-governmental actors – NGOs etc. This domain both structures and is structured by the AGM, and amounts to a qualitatively different and distinct domain to that encompassed by traditional understandings (Gramscian) of the term civil society. The discourse of global civil society expresses an evolving and radically democratic praxis that is rooted in the struggles of communities, movements and groups worldwide, the essence of which is often exhibited during conflictual collective action by the AGM. My claim is that this praxis is not only ‘at heart’ synonymous with anarchism (Graeber, 2001), it is also indicative of how anarchist principles translate in to social behaviours that are complex and adaptive resulting in the emergence of higher order macro-outcomes including a form of collective intelligence that facilitates focused intervention against key aspects of capitalist globalization.

Plateau

The AGM variously described as a ‘movement of movements’ or ‘network of networks’ (Melucci, 1996) has organised confrontational collective action using consensus and directly democratic mechanisms in protests against trans-national financial and administrative institutions such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. It has also managed to carve out ‘new’ democratic spaces in which to deliberate on complex global problems. These participatory fora, which include the conferences and gatherings of People’s Global Action (PGA) as well as the World Social Forum (WSF) and its regional sub-conferences, are becoming increasingly central to the consolidation of global social movement networks. My colleague Ian Welsh and I have borrowed from Gregory Bateson (1973)[ix] to refer to these events, both protests and gatherings, as ‘plateau’ (Chesters & Welsh, 2002). As such, we conceptualise them as moments of temporary but intensive network stabilisation where the rhizomatic substance of the movement(s); groups, organisations, individuals, ideologies, cognitive frames etc, are made manifest in extended temporal and spatial contexts – an ecology of action. This provides a reflexive impetus for the movement, an opportunity to recognise ‘itself’ and the embeddedness, or otherwise of its participants, and to accommodate difference through strategic innovation, including cognitive and symbolic re-framing (Welsh & Chesters, 2001, Chesters & Welsh, 2001) as well as the construction of new spatialities within the one temporality (action zones, different protest repertoires, etc). These plateau include the formulation and shaping of political projects at the local and global levels, further strategic and tactical reflection, skill sharing and the construction of alternative means of communication and information exchange, as well as the development of mechanisms for the expression of solidarity and mutual aid. Essentially, plateau are the means through which phase transitions can occur in movement forms; they precipitate increases in the flow of energy which produce non-linear changes in the system (of relations) conducting that energy.

Within these plateau the notion of a global civil society has emerged as a key interlocutory discourse moulding movement conceptions of how resistance to the social relations of capitalism might be understood and articulated. There has been an effort within the AGM to re-colonise this concept and to define it discursively, to go ‘beyond’ the traditional definition of a civil society composed of formal organisations and institutions (churches, trade unions, voluntary associations). Instead, the concept is used increasingly within the AGM to indicate a web of horizontal social solidarities (networked locally and globally) to which power might usefully be devolved or even ‘dissolved’. The important point here is the privileging of a network form at a global level over national institutional frameworks that are often linear and hierarchical.

Globalization and Civil Society

Anti-globalization activists understand that sympathetic and mutually beneficial global ties are good. But we want social and global ties to advance universal equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management, not to subjugate ever-wider populations to an elite minority. We want to globalize equity not poverty, solidarity not anti-sociality, diversity not conformity, democracy not subordination, and ecological balance not suicidal rapaciousness.’- Michael Albert.[x]

‘Global imaginations reconfigure what is possible, turning globalization from an inexorable force into a resource that opens up new vistas’ – Michael Burowoy[xi]

The changing constituency and form of civil society has been well documented (Foster, 2001, Scholte, 1999, 2002, Shaw, 1996, 1999). Nationally embedded civil society organisations have declined due to the erosion of their basis of support, including the decline in support for organised religion in all but its more fundamental guises, and the decline in civic associations that were a result of particular class affinities. The role these organisations have played in the normative legitimation of the state through the assimilation of oppositional currents within pseudo-state forms has therefore also been diminished. This observable decline in the legitimation of social norms through civil society institutions has been lamented across the political spectrum (Wolfe, 1989, Etzioni, 1993, Puttnam, 1995) and has occurred at the same time as the explosion in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in areas the ‘older’ institutions have vacated or where their influence has been diminished. Despite connections to the church, trade unions and other traditional civil society organisations, these NGOs mark a break with the conception of civil society as channelling conflictual impulses solely towards resolution within state structures. They are frequently focused on emerging global issues, such as the environment or global social justice and have through necessity, been required to operate in a networked manner with a trans-national focus. Add to this the enlargement of global communities of interest and affinity facilitated by computer-mediated-communications (CMC) and the proliferation of grassroots social movement organisations (SMOs) and social movement networks (SMNs), and one already has a very different picture of what civil society might look like. A picture, that has been shaped by the changes to economic, social and cultural life visited upon communities worldwide by economic and cultural globalization.

At the same time, the theorising of globalization has reached near saturation point in the social sciences and media over the past decade and it is not my intention to re-visit these debates here. Suffice to say that despite differences in accounts of the origins, patterns and prognosis of globalization, surveys of this literature point to a remarkable level of agreement amongst commentators on the challenge globalizing processes pose to the state-centrist assumptions that are familiar from previous social science discourses (Held & McGrew, 2000). The idea of the nation-state as the principal organising unit of political and economic life is called into question by the growth of extra-national administrative bodies, trans-national corporations and the liberalisation of capital and investment flows (c.f. Strange, 1996, Held, 2000, Negri & Hardt, 2001). This has led some commentators to the conclusion that these global networks and flows can be viewed as the ‘true architectures of the new global economy’ (Castells, 2000a, p.61); whilst at a political level the public are informed that ‘Globalization is not a policy choice – it is a fact’[xii]. The ‘facts’ about globalization in its guise as neo-liberal economic hegemony are profound and include a marked acceleration in the disparity between rich and poor: hemispherically from south to north, regionally between ‘peripheral’ and ‘core’ countries and nationally across class and ethnic boundaries (Castells, 1996: ch.2).

A concomitant of cultural and economic globalization has been the empirically observable and theoretically important return to prominence of civil society, with its attendant ambivalences and ambiguities. As I noted above, definitions of the term and what it describes are changing, and almost as soon as globalization had manufactured its own nemesis in the shape of ‘anti-globalization’, so began the process through which commentators and activists sought either to assimilate or resist the inclusion of the struggles against globalization under the rubric of civil society. Most attempts at defining civil society in the context of globalization have sought to be inclusive of the broader pattern of networked solidarities that typify the AGM. For example, Kaldor (2002) of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance has emphasised an ‘activist’ definition of civil society, which would be broadly acceptable to most within the AGM:

‘…a global public sphere comprising active citizenship, growing self organisation outside formal political circles, and expanded space in which individual citizens can influence the conditions in which they live both directly through self organisation and through pressure on the State." [xiii]

In this discourse global civil society is presented as the domain where globalising forces are recognised, interrogated and contested, thereby acting as a bulwark against the excesses of globalization and as a model for alternative forms of solidarity and internationalism. This definition also recognises the necessity of dealing with state structures and the dichotomous domains in which civil society actors must act. Something that comes out strongly in the work of the Berkeley school of ‘global ethnography’ represented by Michael Buroway and his colleagues:

‘The dense ties that once connected civil society to the state are being detached and redirected across national boundaries to form a thickening global public sphere. Yet these connections and flows are not autonomous, are not arbitrary patterns crossing in the sky, but are shaped by the strong magnetic field of nation states’ (Burawoy, 2000: 34).

This ‘magnetic field’ is empirically observable in the challenges posed to environmental and social justice NGOs, trade unions, charitable organisations, religious, third world and fair trade groups, as well as other unaffiliated organisations that have developed campaigns and begun to mobilise around ‘anti-globalisation’ and ‘anti-corporate’ platforms (Starr, 2000). These organisations are simultaneously required to apply leverage through state structures whilst addressing the global policy making process in campaigns directed at extra-national bodies (IMF/World Bank/WTO). These campaigns are often coupled with a critique of the neo-liberal model of economics that combined with the growth of information technology has been one of the motors behind capitalist globalisation. However, it should also be noted that it is this ‘magnetism’ that encourages the ambiguous relationships between states and NGOs. Many of the latter have been instrumental in the management and delivery of economic and social ‘development’ programmes initiated by such as the World Bank[xiv] and consequently they are often implicated in the very processes they profess to oppose.

Civil Society and the Democratic Deficit

Social theorists have remarked upon the reflexive, dialogical and deliberative character of civil society (Lash & Urry, 1994, Beck et al, 1995, Inoguchi et. al., 1998) traits which presuppose a democratic potential. This interest has grown alongside the much-heralded decline of participation in formal electoral processes, indicated by the low electoral turnouts across social democratic countries and the increasing dissatisfaction that is demonstrated with elected representatives. A dissatisfaction confirmed in research produced by the Democratic Audit of the UK and funded by the Rowntree Reform Trust, which indicates that participation levels in the 2001 general election were the lowest ever. The research team suggests their qualitative data indicates that the public ‘do not believe they possess the power they want through conventional politics and are increasingly sympathetic to direct action’ (Dunleavy, et. al. 2001). Such observations have evidently added weight to proposals already emanating from commentators within the domain of ‘conventional politics’, which stress the need to reassess fundamental questions about the nature of governance in a globalizing world and to re-examine the future of democratic structures and processes (Stiglitz, 2002).

These developments and the associated anxieties of political elites fearing a crisis of legitimacy have led to a number of initiatives at different levels of local and national government. These are focused on encouraging electoral participation and searching out alternative methods of engaging with and addressing the ‘democratic deficit’. Amongst reforms in the U.K. are mandatory classes in citizenship for younger people, experiments utilising information technology to provide ease of access to polling and a proliferation of inclusionary forums based around deliberative processes. In policy practice, this attempt to revive democracy has been expressed through the development of 'new' deliberative institutions, which have been introduced alongside ‘older’ democratic institutions, and which are often presented as experiments in ‘deliberative democracy’ (Benhabib, 1996, Dryzek, 1990, Elster, 1998). These include citizens' juries, citizens' panels, in-depth discussion and focus groups, consensus conferences, and round tables, albeit their proposals are of course subject to and often frustrated by the framework within which they take place and the lack of institutional means for carrying them forward (O’Neill, 2001, 2002).

In addition to these attempts at mitigation by the state, there have been concerted attempts to undermine the credibility of civil society organizations, particularly where these organisations have focussed opposition on the global stage[xv]. This has taken the shape of questioning the role of trans-national civil society organisations in processes of governance and policy formation by focusing on the internal democracy and external legitimacy of organisations claiming to represent a broad constituency without being subject to the ballot box, a somewhat ironic critique given the lack of democratic credentials amongst the World Bank, IMF and WTO. These institutions have been used to critical engagement with civil society institutions closely linked to nation states and embedded in national political cultures, but are now increasingly besieged by organizations and networks apparently seeking to construct and deepen a counter hegemonic account of globalization, to which they have responded in a confused and often contradictory way. Interestingly this serves to demonstrate something of the dilemma at the core of theorizing global civil society, which is to describe and account for its potentially transformational and counter hegemonic quality whilst considering the underlying question of whether a movement committed to radical pluralism can in practice ever attempt to be hegemonic.

Originally, Gramsci’s theoretical framework privileged civil society because of a presumed continuity and overlap between the institutions of civil society and the apparatus used for reproducing the state through the transmission of normative values and disciplinary mechanisms. Civil society according to Gramsci (1976) was composed of organisations rooted in both state and people, thereby making it a privileged domain for political contestation. However, as we have seen, these traditional forms have declined and are being replaced by newer civil society organisations organised formally and informally. Many of these organisations are less embedded in everyday social and cultural activity and, as such, their transformative potential is limited to the symbolic contestation of dominant social codes often expressed at a extra-national level, rather than with the revolutionary transformation of state. Add to this the interpenetration of state, private and public spheres and we are left with an increasing uncertainty as to whether civil society is potentially a transformative or normative domain.

Consequently, we must turn our attention again to the precise characteristics of what is being referred to within the discourse of global civil society. A number of questions are pertinent here and they suggest an important agenda for research. Is it possible to envisage a domain that operates as a counter-power to the forces of neo-liberal globalization, a domain that is conscious of itself and that seeks to deepen connections across movements, organisations and networks? How might it be organized, what forms could it take and is it already apparent in the events I have referred to above as plateau? What is more, do the established NGOs, trade unions and newer social actors such as ATTAC[xvi] best represent this global civil society, those whose challenges are potentially reconcilable within capitalism’s systemic capacity for assimilation and mutability? Or, can we claim that those within the AGM who adopt more openly confrontational repertoires are equally, or more acutely ‘representative’ of global civil society, presuming therefore that they express some deeper antagonistic conflict? More importantly of course, is whether we can perceive this hybrid combination of individuals, movements and organizations, this networked domain of social solidarities as a unified or unifiable opposition, or whether indeed, we would want to?

If civil society in whichever guise is articulating the concerns of a broad constituency of people for whom formal electoral politics are considered ineffective or unrepresentative. Then it holds that a reflexive account of the constituencies, representativeness, democratic structures and processes of civil society organisations, as well as their accountability to constituencies beyond their immediate membership or affiliation is called for. Social movement organisations and NGOs have traditionally responded to these challenges by emphasising the moral commitment of their membership, and stressing the active decision, which is a prerequisite of joining or supporting their activities. Normally this is combined with emphases on participation, organisational transparency, internal democracy and the encouragement of consensus, deliberation and consultation. However, it is apparent that there is a significant difference between ‘professional’ NGOs with an identifiable membership and their established role as ‘expert consultants, publicists and problems formulators’ (Jamison, 1996:226) and the polycephalous social movement networks that have increasingly come to prominence during protests against globalization and corporate power in Seattle, Prague (c.f. Chesters & Welsh, 2001) and Genoa.

This ‘network of networks’ – the alternative globalization movement, exists both inside and outside the larger NGOs and represents a ‘new’ and distinctive voice, which has become increasingly influential in political discourse and to some extent in policy development. This network is also markedly dependent upon democratic mechanisms organised across shifting coalitions integrated through computer mediated communications (CMC), face-work amongst actors already known to each other and occasional mobilisations for action or manifestations for dialogue. What is needed, therefore, are mechanisms for translating these informal deliberative and democratic structures in to processes that allow for engagement with groups that are otherwise outside the AGM. This would further open the constituent space heralded by a nascent global civil society that is already demonstrating a potential, that to use Santayana’s phrase, is like a ‘knife pressed against the future’.

Global Civil Society as Networked Insurgent Democracy?

There are many examples of this process of re-framing ‘global civil society’ as the key interlocutor between people(s) and capital. Perhaps the most well known is to be found in the communiqués of the Zapatistas, and particularly those authored by Subcommandante Marcos. His repeated calls upon ‘international civil society’ and his characteristically poetic valorisation of the ‘disarming facelessness of civil society’ (2001:54) led to the first Encuentro, held in 1996 and styled as an ‘intergalactic’ meeting for humanity and against Neoliberalism[xvii]. This was an invitation to their global network of civil society supporters: activists, artists, academics and others to consolidate their relationship and begin to theorise and implement a global strategy of networked resistance.

This appeal to global civil society has subsequently echoed through the World Social Forums, the Global PGA gatherings and can be identified in the praxis of various actors, such as the Italian Disobedienti network, who have also identified civil society as a transformative domain, albeit their formulation of civil society is filtered through the lens of contemporary autonomist-Marxism that remains so prescient to the culture of Italian activism (Wright, 2002). The ‘disobedienti’ seek to engage ‘civil society’ on terrain they identify as involving the ‘conflictive reform of welfare’ - campaigning against immigration controls and for a universal citizens income, a position that is in accordance with the political strategy recently advanced by Negri and Hardt (2000), who, in addition to Zapatismo, are the other major influence upon the disobedienti.

These and other currents within the AGM highlight an audacious project, which begins to shed light upon the questions I raised above concerning the possibility of a global counter hegemonic domain. It also moves us beyond traditional understandings of Leftist groups who have previously been concerned with the seizure of state power. Instead, we are presented with what amounts to a supreme confidence in the imagination and creative capacity of freely co-operating autonomous actors to engage in the day to day management of their own lives through a vital, open and un-coercive public sphere, a very similar account to the classic social anarchist position. At its core, this project desires to dissolve ‘political society’ in to ‘civil society’ and with it to re-formulate a truly democratic and participatory public sphere, as Marcos explains:

‘It will primarily be a revolution resulting from struggles on various fronts, using many methods, under various social forms, with various degrees of commitment and participation. And its result will not be the victory of a party, an organisation, or an alliance of triumphant organisations with their own specific social proposal, but rather a democratic space for resolving the confrontation of various political proposals’ (Zapatista Communiqué, 20^th January 1994).

This renewal of the democratic impulse is fostered by the ubiquitous emergence (or belated recognition) of networked forms of organisation across all areas of social and economic life. Castells has demonstrated how the rise of ‘network society’ means that societies are increasingly structured through ‘a bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self’ (1996:3) meaning that ‘global networks of instrumental exchanges’, international financial organisations, transnational corporations and the like, have the capacity to selectively ‘switch-off’ groups, organizations and even countries and regions from global networks[xviii]. The prevailing logic of economic networks in an era of neoliberal ascendancy has been to demonstrate this capacity tout court. However, at the same time the impacts upon communities of having been ‘switched off’, abandoned to the fate of marginality at best have also facilitated a return to the self, in the form of self reliance and the valorisation of particularistic or ‘local’ identities, hence the polarization between ‘Net’ and ‘Self’ in Castells account. The network form is not unique to corporations, however, and the evolution of networked relationships between diverse social groups has been an increasing feature of protest and social activism. Increasingly the threat from ‘fluid’ capital in an era of ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2000) and its capacity to organise the means of production in dispersed locales without external controls and in avoidance of regulatory frameworks has led to the expansion of oppositional networks which are necessarily international and even global in character. These networks are sometimes facilitated through direct contact, but are increasingly maintained through computer mediated communication (CMC), and such networks have been successful on a range of issues including the ‘electronic fabric of struggle’ (Cleaver, 1998) woven during the Zapatista insurrection and the successful opposition to the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)[xix].

These networks are employing confrontational, imaginative and highly symbolic repertoires of collective action based upon the ethos of ‘direct action for direct democracy’ and they have generated ripples beyond their obvious impacts upon international trade and related policy fora. The militancy and participative character of these movements has been significant in catalysing democratic renewal amongst traditional civil society actors, particularly NGOs who profess to feeling ‘outflanked’ by the effectiveness of direct action. So much so, that some have reacted by instigating processes aimed at internal democratic change and increased accountability to their membership. Greenpeace International, for example, has embarked upon a five year rolling programme of internal debate - ‘Breaking Down the Walls’- with proposals of action and deliberation aimed at addressing its own democratic deficit.

What I am describing here is the context of a global civil society composed of networked actors often in dense national or regional clusters, connected into global affinity structures maintained by computer mediated communications and intense periods of social interaction around specific protest events or reflexive gatherings (plateau). Global civil society so defined is not reducible to the AGM but the AGM is an example par excellence of the capacity and organisational logic of this domain[xx]. Attempts to understand this have not been helped by the over concentration on the ‘novelty’ of the WTO protests in Seattle in November 1999, belying the pre-existence of these international networking processes. The ‘success’ of Seattle only makes sense in this context.

To understand the evolution of the AGM as a conflictual actor within global civil society I want to look more specifically at the dynamics of form, and to turn to two mutually reinforcing interpretive frameworks – anarchism and complexity theory.

Form and Meaning – Complexity and Emergence

‘For them (scientists), chaos is an image of what can be touched but not grasped, felt but not seen. At a time when resistance to mastery is so sophisticated that it cannot help but be perceived as masterful, chaos presents them with a resistance that alleviates the fear of mastery. (Hayles 1990: 292-3)

In this section, I will introduce some thoughts on the nature of the dynamics of the AGM and try to account for its persistence and resilience. I will also introduce some ideas from the contemporary complexity sciences that I believe form a means of engaging with and understanding the AGM. This will therefore constitute a brief overview of the analytical framework I am developing elsewhere (Chesters & Welsh, 2002).

What I have sought to outline above is the discursive construction of a global field of struggle, constituted by the forging of connections between social movements operating in a context defined by the hegemony of neoliberalism and the arrival of the information age. Global civil society and in particular the AGM has proliferated by using inclusive methods of organising, pluralistic patterns of intervention and the targeting of organisations, events and situations that have a global impact and as such have resonance for social movements and other sympathetic constituencies globally. An additional success of these targeted actions against the G8, WTO, World Bank or IMF has been the enormous cross-fertilisation of ideas, concepts and collective action repertoires resulting from the express desire of organisers to see politically contiguous actions proliferate in the same spatial and temporal context. In this sense, a thousand flowers have metaphorically bloomed.

The AGM has therefore provided the means through which politically engaged people can conduct the necessarily collective work of deciphering their individual experiences of globalization and forging from them shared understandings that can become the basis of recognizable needs and therefore political demands. This work takes place within the shadow realm (Welsh, 2002) of alternative fora and networked interaction facilitated by co-ordinating bodies such as People’s Global Action (PGA). PGA grew out of the Zapatista Encuentros and has been a prime mover behind most of the large anti-capitalist mobilizations in recent years, including the protests in the City of London, Seattle, Prague, Gothenburg and Genoa. Their inaugural conference and first action took place in Geneva where PGA co-ordinated protests against the WTO who were meeting to celebrate 50 years of free trade (GATT) and to announce Seattle as the venue for their next Ministerial Conference. This led to the most significant instance of public disorder in Switzerland’s post-war history, including mass protests, clashes with riot police and property damage to the retail outlets of multinational corporations. An instance of opposition to the WTO which is absent from any of the most recent accounts of these movement networks (Brecher et al, 2000, Dannaher & Burbach [eds.] 2000, Cockburn et al, 2000, Starr, 2000), despite it being a portentous indication of what would later transpire on the streets of Seattle.

However, the key to understanding the AGM is not to be found amongst individual actors be they groups or organisations. We must instead focus our attention upon the processes of interaction between actors. If we are to reveal anything about how the AGM works, we must look to processes and to form, for it is within this hidden architecture that something of the dynamic strength of the AGM can be grasped. The AGM displays what are known as ‘small-world’ characteristics (Watts & Strogatz, 1998): it consists of hubs and nodes that are typified by a penumbra of ‘weak links’, or what network theorists call a high clustering co-efficient combined with a low degree of separation. In network analysis, this structure demonstrably allows for rapid communication across the network and is resilient to all but the most focused of attacks. It is also associated with generative processes that lead to macro-level outcomes that are not always apparent to their participants. To use the idiom of the contemporary complexity sciences, what the AGM seems to demonstrate is a set of emergent properties that are the outcome of complex adaptive behaviour occurring through participative self-organization from the bottom up. This organisational form and the behaviour that structures it leads to the emergence of a collective intelligence that in turn drives forward the same processes in a feedback loop leading to a substantial increase in agency and potential.

This collective intelligence has similarities to the concept of the ‘general intellect’, which some Italian political theorists have referred to as the ‘primary force of social production’ (Virno & Hardt, 1996:262). However, there remain some important distinctions. Both concepts describe the emergence of macro outcomes produced by reflexive actors engaged in complex patterns of interaction and exchange, outcomes that are historically determinate and unknowable in advance. Of interest is the apparent operation of this feedback loop within the AGM, whereby the emergent properties of acting in a decentralised, participatory and highly democratic manner are recognised at a collective level as affording a strength, durability and interconnectivity that would otherwise be absent and this feedback reaffirms the praxis (anarchist) that gives rise to the emergent properties. Recent scientific work in this field has demonstrated (Barabasi & Albert, 1999) that emergent properties are ubiquitous in complex network forms, albeit they often go unrecognised. What appears to have occurred within the AGM and what is potentially its great strength, is that its affinity with acutely democratic means and its adoption of anarchist praxis has encouraged organisational forms that give rise to emergent properties and that the advantages conferred from organising according to these principles have been recognised.

Unpacking the implications of complexity theory for social movement analysis is a task beyond the remit of this paper, although it is a project that is at the core of my work elsewhere (Chesters & Welsh, 2002). It is also important to contextualise this ‘complexity turn’ (Urry, 2002) by noting that reading the characteristics of business organisations and markets systems through the lens of complexity theory has recently become a standard repertoire of management science. The discourse of contemporary management theory is peppered with flat structures, complex adaptive behaviour, autonomous actors and emergence (c.f. Marion, R., 1999, Lewin & Regine, 2000, Fonsesca, 2001). Leading to the perception, despite the obvious discursive resonance such terms have for anarchists, that complexity must be intellectually ‘of the right’, an impression strengthened by Fotopoulos (2000) who describes complexity as the ‘emerging social paradigm for the internationalised market economy’. However, this reading of complexity ignores a growing wealth of evidence emerging from the study of complexity and markets (Lux & Marchiesi, 1999, Bouchard & Mezard, 2000) which demonstrates precisely why the accumulation of wealth has nothing to do with individual effort or creativity and everything to do with the entrenched social divisions engendered by capitalism. Moving away from these macro debates about the positioning of complexity on a left-right continuum and returning to the conceptual framework for analysing the dynamics of organisations or movements, we can also see that the theory of complex adaptive behaviour is not easily reducible or finally applicable to businesses operating within market systems.

As Griffin (2002) points out there is a paradox at the heart of the concept of encouraging autonomy within corporations that is resolved in management theory by positing the idea of an autonomous individual as external observer (leader/CEO) and a self-organizing system (corporation/business) of which the subject is also a participating part. The emergent properties of the system are then characterised ‘as if’ the system had the purpose imputed to it by the external observer. This stretches to breaking point the most basic of insights from the complexity sciences. Corporate capitalism is a system with a controlling imperative to generate profit, no actor(s) within such a system could ever be truly autonomous and any emergent pattern that demonstrated outcomes at odds with the profit imperative would probably be discouraged or deterred, despite the rhetoric of the management consultants. Consequently whilst complexity may well shed light upon organisational behaviour within market systems, perhaps its most interesting application is likely to be within social movement networks such as those that constitute the AGM, where participative self-organisation is comparatively open to unanticipated outcomes.

For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on one particular branch of the complexity sciences - network theory[xxi], which appears, in part, to account for the emergent properties of the AGM. The evidence emerging from within the natural sciences supports and dramatically reinforces the point made in the seminal sociology paper by Mark Granovetter entitled ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ (1973). This counter intuitive argument suggests that it is the weak ties between people, not strong friendships, that are most important when it comes to launching a new project, finding a job, accessing news etc. This is because weak ties are crucial for our ability to communicate beyond our immediate social (or activist) worlds. Our close friends and fellow activists almost inevitably move in the same circles as we do and as such are most likely to be exposed to the same information. We need to activate our weak ties if we are to open new channels of information and maximise our potential for agency, ties which might include e-mail contacts, people met during meetings, at protests, during gatherings etc. We also need to be able to connect with those activist hubs – individuals active within many networks (‘spiders at the centre of many webs’[xxii]), networking spaces (forums, information exchanges etc) social centres and so forth - without undue interference from structures and hierarchies or barriers to participation such as class, culture, age, gender, race etc which would inhibit such connections.

It appears then that the instincts of the AGM are broadly in keeping with these insights. Its reliance upon flat structures, network forms, its antipathy to institutionalisation and leaders per se, its generation and proliferation of events, gatherings, e-mail lists and web sites has created a structure that is dynamic, resilient and actualises through ‘weak ties’ the potential of those belonging to it. The apparent disorganisation, which is so obvious a feature of the AGM that it leads to groups self-identifying as ‘disorganisations’, masks a deeper truth - an emergent order on the edge of chaos. A truth hinted at in the protest slogan ‘anarchy IS order’, for as Steve Johnson writes in a recent book on emergence:

‘Nowhere are the progressive possibilities of emergence more readily apparent than in the anti-WTO protest movements, which have explicitly modelled themselves after the distributed, cellular structures of self-organising systems.’ (2001:225)

The lessons may therefore be quite profound, the successes of this movement; its capacity to concretely intervene on the streets and in boardrooms stems directly from its networked structure, its leaderless cultures and anarchic patterns of organisation and communication. These are indeed its strengths. Small world networks are actually ubiquitous, the same patterns are replicated everywhere from neural connections in the brain to the food webs that underlie the world’s ecosystems and on in to the apparently haphazard development of the Internet. So much so, that Physics itself is changing its focus; a central task in this new century will be the study of complex adaptive matter (Laughlin & Pines, 2000), in other words the study of emergent properties. These insights and the science behind them are in their infancy, but they are already yielding important discoveries about the capacities of complex systems to demonstrate properties that exceed the sum of their parts. Small world networks such as the World Wide Web are beginning to demonstrate the capability of collective intelligence and as Johnson points out:

‘…if the Web’s collective intelligence is still in its infancy, think of how much room the new protest movements must have to grow… Beneath the window smashing and the Rage Against the Machine concerts, the anti-WTO activists are doing something profound, even in these early days of their movement. They are thinking like a swarm.’ (2001:226)

Swarm logic?

There are a number of immediate problems with attributing ‘swarm logic’ to the AGM, although it is also clear that the AGM on occasions exhibits swarming type characteristics. One task here is to make a distinction between swarming and collective intelligence, which are conflated in the quote from Johnson above. An integral part of swarming is simple rules based behaviour derived from instinctual or essential characteristics of the swarming agent and their ‘observation’ of the behaviours of their immediate neighbours. The primary example of swarm logic cited by Johnson (2001) is of ants in an ant colony. Ants communicate through a system of pheromone signals and the observance of simple rules. Through interacting with their neighbours they are able to determine by graduated pheromone trails, what actions/activity would be most appropriate according to their limited repertoire of actions. One principle derived from this type of swarm logic is the notion that in certain circumstances ‘ignorance is useful’. This is not a principle one would wish to extrapolate to social systems, but as Johnson points out the systemic utility of ‘ignorance is useful’ at a micro level is obvious, much the same as we would not want a neuron in our brain to become sentient all of a sudden, neither is there the necessity within an ant colony for any one individual to be able to grasp the bigger picture. Complex outcomes, in this example the relative sophistication of an ant colony are derived without the need for a leader(s) or without any ant having a privileged insight, or being able to conceptualise the whole. Each ant is autonomous to the extent that it can derive from its interactions with other ants and its environment the most useful task to undertake at that particular moment. Using the idea of utility here of course imputes a purposive intent behind the whole, which of course the ant colony does not have, albeit that it is tempting to ascribe the continued survival and or expansion of the colony as providing the rationale ‘behind’ the myriad tasks and interactions that make up this complex adaptive system.

So, what does the concept of swarming mean for our engagement with the AGM? Obviously, there are many crucial differences between the actions of human beings, which are fashioned by an array of social and cultural norms and ethical imperatives and the behaviour of an ant colony that ‘thinks’ and acts like a swarm. Principally, of course, human beings are conscious, self-reflexive, purposive agents able to communicate using elaborate structures derived from sensory input, including language. The obvious point is that the ‘simple’ rules underpinning complex adaptive behaviour in social systems are never going to be very simple and the emergent outcomes are always going to be paradoxical and largely unknowable in advance. However, it is also entirely possible that we as self-reflexive agents, unlike ants, will be able to postulate connections between forms of organisation and types of interaction and the emergence of particular qualities at a systemic level. Ant colonies, on the other hand, demonstrate an evolutionary mechanism that guides the process of interactions amongst the members of the colony (swarm logic) and which is entirely unknown and unknowable to the ants themselves.

The key to understanding why one might apply the concept of swarming to the AGM is therefore in the ‘simple’ rules that underlie and give rise to patterns of behaviour that result in emergent qualities at the level of collective macro-outputs. These ‘rules’ developed organically within the AGM and they are not difficult to discern. They include an emphasis upon participation, antipathy to hierarchy, the privileging of consensus processes and directly democratic decision-making, respect for difference and the assertion of unity in diversity. The ‘outcomes’ of these forms of interaction are fluid yet robust networks that enable rapid communication and promote collective learning and the emergence of a collective intelligence. This is not to suggest that these networks are always politically more efficacious in the context of globalization than other differently organised expressions of political opposition, but it is an argument for recognition of the complex and sophisticated outcomes that derive from an anarchist praxis that is demonstrably central to the structuration of the AGM.

The less traditionally organised elements of the AGM, decentralised networks such as People’s Global Action, the No Borders Network and Sans Titre can therefore be said to exhibit a form of swarm logic. These actors have been the driving force behind the emergence of collective intelligence within the AGM, much as a ‘strange attractor’ might function within a complex system. The ‘pull’ exerted by these networks/organisations has been completely disproportionate to their apparent organisational capacity and the impetus they have created has given rise to an array of sophisticated alternatives to the global problems that the formal political system is incapable of addressing. Once again, it is important to nuance this point. I am not suggesting that actors within these networks are actually and in all instances the authors of these alternatives. Rather I am arguing that the form PGA et. al. takes and the magnetic pull that it exerts through confrontational collective action and its capacity to perturbate accepted models of political engagement, afford it tremendous influence over the organisational forms adopted by the AGM more generally. Examples would include the increasing adoption by traditional leftist parties of decentralised structures and participatory processes (albeit at a superficial level) which would have been inconceivable even a decade ago, notable here is the Socialist Worker’s Party’s involvement in Globalise Resistance and the turn towards deliberative democratic structures taken by NGOs including Greenpeace International[xxiii]. Networks such as PGA are acting as catalysts for organisational processes that give rise to the emergent qualities that in turn reinforce those same processes through the feedback loops provided by the protest and gatherings I have termed plateau.

Conclusion

The context and background for the emergence of the AGM and its swarm like behaviour are the new social and political circumstances within which we find ourselves. The end of the Soviet Union, the rise of post-Fordist production, social de-democratisation, capitalist globalisation, the information age and the threat of planetary ecocide require new methods and modes of engagement. Against this backdrop, understandings of what constitutes and defines civil society are changing. It is now possible to talk of a global civil society that takes the form of a network of horizontal social solidarities, whose project is less the capture of state apparatus and more the construction of a genuinely open and transnational public sphere where authentic democracy can be practised and its affinity with resistance to capitalist globalization deepened.

This is less about a project of identity building as envisaged by Castells (1997:8) and more about searching for an effective means of applying the parallelogram of forces[xxiv] that exists within global civil society and which is manifest acutely within the AGM. The insights offered by complexity theory suggest that the continuation of attempts to network struggles at a global level and the inclusion of ever more social sectors within processes of deliberation and decision making in transnational fora such as those provided by the Social Forum movement and the PGA process, will inevitably contribute to the process of globalizing alternatives. The ‘weak links’ that are established during the stabilization and reconfiguration of social movement networks during plateau events constitutes a rhizomatic extension of struggle within which an emergent collective intelligence is discernible. Anarchist praxis is at the heart of these processes, a participative self-organising dynamic that generates an immense pull on other social and political actors through its re-articulation of a resistance that privileges auto-poiesis, direct action and direct democracy. In a new context where complex systems proliferate and the networks underpinning them become ubiquitous anarchism offers a method of engagement and a means of understanding, which is unsurpassed. If there is a spider at the centre of every web the one spinning this new wave of networked resistance is resolutely and undoubtedly anarchist.

References:

Alvarez, S. E. (1997) Reweaving the Fabric of Collective Action: Social Movements and Challenges to “Actually Existing Democracy” in Brazil’ in Fox, R.G. & Starn, O. (1997) Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey.

Barabasi, A-L, & Albert, R. (1999) ‘Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks’, Science, 286: 509-12.

Bateson G. (1973) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Paladin, London.

Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity, Polity, Cambridge.

Beck, U., Giddens, A. & Lash, S. (1995) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Benhabib S. (ed.) (1996) Democracy and Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Bohman J.& Rehg W. (eds) (1997) Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.

Bouchard, J-P. & Mezard, M. (2000) ‘Wealth Condensation in a Simple Model of Economy’ Physica A, 282:536

Brecher, J, Costello, T. & Smith, B. (2000) Globalization From Below, South End Press, Cambridge, U.S.

Burawoy, M. et al. (ed.) (2000) Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World, University of California Press, London.

Castells, M. (1996) ‘The Rise of the Network Society’, Vol. 1, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Oxford.

Castells, M. (1997) ‘The Power of Identity’, Vol. 2, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Oxford.

Castells, M. (2000) ‘Information technology and Global Capitalism’, in Hutton, W. & Giddens, A. (Eds.) Global Capitalism, The New Press, New York.

Chesters, G. (2001) ‘Planting the tree of tomorrow: the Zapatistas, land, liberty and justice’ ECOS, 22, 1: 71-78.

http://www.banc.org.uk/ecosarta/arts22_1/ecosart7.html

Chesters, G. (2003 – forthcoming) Another World is Possible? Globalization, Social Movements and the State, Pluto Press, London.

Chesters, G. & Welsh, I. (2001) ‘The Rebel Colours of S26: Social Movement ‘Frame-work’ during the IMF/World Bank Protests’ Working Paper 18, Department of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/publications/workingpapers/wrkgpaper18.pdf

Chesters, G. & Welsh, I. (2002) ‘Reflexive Framing: An Ecology of Action’, Research Committee 24: Globalization and the Environment, XV World Congress of Sociology, 6-13^th July at the University of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

http://www.shiftingground.freeuk.com/isapaper.htm

Cilliers, P. (1998) Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems, Routledge, London.

Cockburn, A., St.Clair, J. & Sekula, A. (2000) 5 Days That Shook the World, Verso, London.

Cleaver, H. (1998) ‘The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle’ in Holloway, J. & Pelaez, E. Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, Pluto Press, London.

Dannaher, K. & Burbach, R. (eds) (2000) Globalize This!, Common Courage Press, Maine, U.S.

Dryzek, J. (1990) Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Dryzek, J. (2002) Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations, OUP, Oxford.

Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H. & Weir, S. (2001) ‘Worst Ever Turnout’ The Guardian, June 12,

Elster, J. 'The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory' in J. Elster & Hylland A. (eds.) (1986) Foundations of Social Choice Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Elster,. J. (ed.) (1998) Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Etzioni, A. (1993) The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda, Crown, New York.

Fonseca, J. (2001) Complexity and Innovation in Organizations, Routledge, London.

Foster, J. (2001) ‘Knowing Ourselves: A Brief History of Emerging Global Civil Society’ Presented to the 4th CIVICUS World Assembly, August, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Fotopoulos, T. (1997) Towards an Inclusive Democracy. The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project, Cassell, London.

Foucault, M. (1975), Birth of the Clinic, Tavistock, London.

Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, London.

Foucault, M. (1979), The History of Sexuality, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, London.

Keane, J. (1988) Civil Society and the State, Verso, London.

Graeber, D. (2002)"The New Anarchists," New Left Review 13:61-73.

Gramsci, A. (1976) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973) ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology, 78,6:1360-1380.

Greenpeace (2001) Breaking Down the Walls, Greenpeace, London.

Griffin, D. (2002) The Emergence of Leadership: Linking Self-Organization and Ethics, Routledge, London.

Hayles, N.K. (1990) Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science, Cornell University Press, London.

Held, D. (ed.) (2000) A Globalizing World?, Routledge, London.

Held, D. & McGrew, A. (eds) (2000) The Global Transformations Reader, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Horkheimer, M. (1947) Eclipse of Reason, OUP, New York.

Inoguchi, T., Keane, J. & Newman, E. (1998) The Changing Nature of Democracy, United Nations University Press.

Jamison, A. (1996) ‘The shaping of the global environmental agenda: The role of non-governmental organizations’ in Lash, S., Szerszynski, B. & Wynne, B. ((1996) Risk, Environment and Modernity, Sage, London.

Johnson, S. (2001) Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, Penguin, London.

Jordan, J. & Whitney, D. (2002) Que Se Vayan Todos: Argentina's Popular Rebellion. An eyewitness account of the financial meltdown and ongoing grassroots rebellion, Scatter International, London.

Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space, Sage, London.

Laughlin, R. & Pines, D. (2000) ‘The Theory of Everything’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97: 28-31

Lewin, R. & Regine, B. (2000) The Soul at Work, Orion Business Books, London.

Lorenzano, L. (1998) ‘Zapatismo: Recomposition of Labour, Radical Democracy and Revolutionary Project’ in Holloway, J. & Pelaez, E. Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, Pluto Press, London.

Lux, T. & Marchesi, M. (1999) ‘Scaling and Criticality in a Stochastic Multi-Agent Model of a Financial Market’ Nature 397:498-500.

Marion, R. (1999) The Edge of Organization: Chaos and Complexity Theories of Formal Social Systems, Sage, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Melucci, A. (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective action in the information age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Marcuse, H. (1960) Reason and Revolution, Beacon Press, Boston.

Negri, A. (1988) Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis & New Social Subjects 1967-83, Red Notes, London.

Negri, A. & Hardt, M. (2000) Empire, Harvard University Press, London.

Offe, C. (1997) ‘Micro-Aspects of Democratic Theory: What makes for the Deliberative Competence of Citizens?’ in Hadenius, A. (ed.) Democracy’s Victory and Crisis, CUP, Cambridge.

O’Neill, J. (2001) ‘Representing people, representing nature, representing the world’ Environmental Planning C: Government and Policy 19, pp.483-500

O’Neill, J. (forthcoming) Deliberative Democracy and Environmental Policy’ for B. Minteer and B. Pepperman-Taylor (eds.) Democracy and the Claims of Nature Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford

Podur, J. (2002) ‘Movements of Resistance in the Americas a Strategy North Americans could join’, Z Magazine, May 29^th. See: http://www.zmag.org/content/GlobalEconomics/podur_americas-strategy.cfm

Puttnam, R. (1995) ‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital’ Journal of Democracy, 1, 1:65-78

Reed, M. & Harvey, D.L. (1992) ‘The new science and the old: complexity and realism in the social sciences’ Journal for the Theory of Social behaviour 22: 356-79

Reed, M. & Harvey, D.L. (1996) ‘Social science as the study of complex systems’ in Kiel, L.D. & Elliot, E. (eds) Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Scholte, J.A (1999) Global Civil Society: Changing the World?
Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick.

Scholte, J.A., Schnabel, A. & Crockett, A. (eds) (2002) Civil Society and Global Finance, Routledge, London.

Shaw, M. (1996) Civil Society and Media in Global Crises, Continuum, London.

Shaw, M. (1999) ‘Civil society’ in Kurtz, L. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and armed conflict Academic Press, San Diego.

Starr, A. (2000) Naming The Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization, Zed Books, London.

Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents, Norton, New York.

Strange, S. (1996), The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Urry, J. (2002) Global Complexity, Routledge, London.

Virno, P. & Hardt, M. (1996) (eds) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Welsh, I. & Chesters, G. (2001) ‘Re-Framing Social Movements: Margins, Meanings and Governance’ Working Paper 19, Department of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/publications/workingpapers/wrkg19.pdf

Welsh, I. 2002. ‘Where Do Movement Frames Come From? Insights from S26 and Global “Anti-Capitalist” mobilisations’, Proceedings 8th Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference, Manchester, 2-4 April, Vo. 2. Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Watts, D.J. & Strogatz, S.H. (1998) ‘Collective Dynamics of “Small World” Networks’, Nature 393: 440-42

Wolfe, A. (1989) Whose keeper?, University of California Press, Los Angeles.

Wright, S (2002) Storming Heaven: Class Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, Pluto Press, London.

Biographical Note

Graeme Chesters is Research Fellow in the Centre for Local Policy Studies at Edge Hill University College. He is contactable at graeme@shiftingground.org

Acknowledgements

Many people have informed this paper through their ideas, actions and energies. In particular, I owe thanks to Ian Welsh with whom I have developed many of the concepts I have utilised in this paper and Alan Johnson for his comments, critique and conversation.