Cultural Studies: Networking Futures by Jeffrey S. Juris
Reviewed by Megan Yarrow
…Next to the wall, the police were battering people, except for a few of us with our hands raised. Several officers were totally crazed, while others said, “We don’t have to hit them anymore…I was really affected by an image of an older couple, pacifists, I suppose, with white shirts and their hands above their heads and blood all over their faces, and their shirts drenched in blood, begging the police, “Please stop hitting us!”(176-7)
(Nuria, a Movement for Global Resistance (MRG) activist from Barcelona, describes to Jeffrey S. Juris the police attack at Plaza Manin, Genoa in 2001, during anti-corporatist globalization protests against the G8 summit.)
As a self-described “militant ethnographer”, Jeffrey S. Juris is uniquely placed to study anti-corporate globalization movements. In Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization, he analyses anti-corporate globalization activism from the dual perspectives of active participant in protest movements and academic observer—he is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Arizona State University. In addition, his youthful and unpretentious approach has produced a lively and informative text that should appeal to activists, and readers interested in social justice.
Juris focuses mainly on the struggles of anti-corporate globalization activists over the past decade, pointing out that the anti-corporate globalization movement is not a unified movement, but comprises “congeries of overlapping networks”, which are constantly evolving and adapting to circumstance:
Despite their differences, activists within each sector are struggling to regain democratic control over their daily lives, wresting it back from transnational corporations and global financial elites (60).
Juris argues that as the power of more traditional and hierarchical forms of organizing to effect social change has diminished, largely unstructured, and fluid networks of resistance have appeared. The success of these contemporary networks is dependent upon their ability to mobilize where necessary, as well as generate sustained interest. The efficacy of these networks is evidenced by the remarkable number of protesters who have participated in major anti-corporate globalization protests and events over the last decade. (Details of the major protest actions throughout the last decade are provided in Table 3.)
Toward the end of the book, Juris contends that—limitations of the two-party political system aside—anti-corporate globalization activists have made conflict more “visible” and:
…sparked heated public debate around values and ideas that just a few years ago were ignored, tacitly accepted, or widely taken for granted: the supremacy of unfettered markets, unrestricted free trade and foreign investment, production for export over domestic consumption and other neo-liberal tenets (295).
Networking Futures explores how experimentation with digital-age technology and organizational forums such as email lists, websites and chat-rooms—along with ancillary culture-jamming, guerrilla communications and electronic civil disobedience—has enlivened and underpinned anti-corporate globalization movements.
You may or may not know that the Australian programmer Matthew Arnison developed the open publishing software that was used to establish the first Indy Media Centre (IMC) during the anti-WTO protests in Seattle. According to Juris, the global network now includes nearly 160-local sites and receives up to two-million page views per day. Funnily enough most Australian capital cities have an “Indymedia” website—Brisbane had one too—but it vanished a couple of years ago, apparently because it was infiltrated and corrupted.
Juris’s thesis extrapolates on the origins of networks of resistance (and how these networks continue to remain a progressive force) in Spain—a country with a long and proud culture of opposition to fascism and the state. Catalan resistance to Franco and the rise of the intercontinental Zapatista Encuentros led to the formation of solidarity groups throughout Europe, which Juris says were “instrumental” in the development of today’s anti-corporate globalization networks:
Emerging network norms and forms among Barcelona-based, anti-corporate globalization activists have been shaped by Catalonia’s unique political and historical context, including the region’s history of anarchism, nationalism, and assembly based struggles (92).
As well as incorporating detailed descriptions of the passionate network politics and continually shifting alliances between and within various protest groups around the world, Networking Futures has captured the vibrancy, energetic strategising and intense emotions experienced by activists during a number of direct actions. From the contagious euphoria following the “Battle In Seattle” (1999), in which 50, 000 activists managed to shut down the WTO meeting, to shock and fear in the aftermath of the “Battle of Genoa”—a protest against the G8 summit (2001) that resulted in the death of 22-year-old Carlo Giuliani, and where hundreds of protesters were beaten, tortured and psychologically abused in jail.
Juris’s account of the largest mass direct action against corporate globalization outside North America to date (in Prague, 2000) illustrates the application of networking dynamics to the physical protest. He observes how the various blocs occupied different spaces and performed decentralised manoeuvres such as rhythmic dancing, drumming and symbolic confrontation, before swarming and reclaiming areas of public space.
What I found most engaging about this book was how his privileged position as a participant allows Juris to reveal the essential humanity of the different actions:
Although a few activists were beaten and arrested, Miguel, Marcela, and I escaped to a bar at the far end of the park. We took off our bandannas, changed shirts, and shared our experiences from the front lines. These stories increased our sense of belonging to a common struggle despite the differences among protest blocs and networks. The emotions sparked by bodily contiguity and collective action had generated intense feelings of affective solidarity throughout the day (144).
By recounting his own personal experiences and the dialogue exchanged with friends, Juris offers an important counterpoint to the detached and stereotypical manner in which mainstream media frames protest actions for consumption as propaganda. And protesting corporate globalization isn’t always doom and gloom—sometimes there’s plenty of socializing, beer, music and dancing to be enjoyed—as his description of the No Border/PGA camp Strasbourg (2002) reveals:
On the evening of July 25, for example, after another day of terse interaction, the samba band led a spontaneous fire march around the camp, which involved hundreds of musicians and dancers dressed in pink and silver. The crowd danced and howled its way across the camp as fire breathers sent huge flames into the sky, heightening the hypnotic effect. The march culminated in a wild cathartic release, sparking hours of collective drumming and dancing (220).
As well as being an insightful and inspiring resource for activists, Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization, is a absorbing history of the ever-evolving contemporary resistance to corporate globalization. I found it a refreshing antidote to the constant barrage of neo-conservative blather emanating from the mouths of free market evangelists on the pages and the airwaves of the mainstream media—especially read in the context of collapsing global markets!
Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization
(2008)
by Jeffrey S. Juris
Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822342694
378pp US$23.95
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