The Movements of Movements: What makes us move?

670 Pages·2017·1.502 MB·English

by  Jai Sen

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Praise
This collection offers a thought-provoking opportunity to parse multiplicities
and recent directions in global justice organizing. Sen’s framing in this book
sets us up to take stock of two decades of social and political movement in
terms of dynamic motion: Not only as strategy and organization, but as
kinaesthetic experience, embodied transformation through space and time.
The nuanced, critical emphases on indigeneity, spirituality, gender, and
ecology, rich with specificity and insight, locate us unmistakably in our
present moment with its lessons gleaned of recent history and praxis, even
while bringing us full circle to the themes introduced an unbelievable twenty
years ago. We shall not be moved. We shall move. We shall keep moving.
—Maia Ramnath, teacher, writer, activist, and dancer/aerialist; author of
Decolonizing Anarchism
An important contribution to a developing internationalism that doesn’t
assume that the North Atlantic left has all the answers for the rest of the
world and which recognizes that emancipatory ideas and practices are often
forged from below. Refreshingly free of tired dogmas, non-sectarian, taking
internationalism seriously, and reaching back to 1968, the book provides a
bracing window into some of the central ideas to have emerged from within
movements in the sequence of struggle that unfolded from 2006 to 2010.
This book will be useful for activists and intellectuals in movement—be they
in universities, parties, trade unions, social movements, or religious
organisations—around the world.
—Richard Pithouse, researcher and lecturer in politics, Rhodes University,
Grahamstown, South Africa
Someone once suggested that movement cannot be thought, it has to be
lived. In other words, social movements—the coming together in processes
that build the power to bring about change—stem not from any kind of
blueprint that can set out an ideal for the world we ought to live in, nor can
there be a simple step-by-step guide on how to get there. At the same time,
there can’t be movement without a collective effort to understand the shared
and embodied experiences that constitute it, along with the problems,
concerns, and trajectories that arise in struggle. It’s this kind of critical
reflection that the authors assembled in this volume undertake, providing
intelligent and engaged analyses that avoid any stifling dichotomies,
whether between theory and practice, activism and academia, or indeed
between thinking and feeling. Possible futures, right now in the making,
become legible in how The Movements of Movements doesn’t shy away from
the complex and unsettling issues that shape our time, while thinking
through struggles for social and ecological justice in the wider contexts of
their past and present.
—Emma Dowling, Senior Researcher in Political Sociology at the Institute
for Sociology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany
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OpenWord is about open publication, and sees itself as a contribution to the
wider struggle for making knowledges open for people across cultures and
languages and on as many and as wide platforms as possible.
In this book, there are two broad categories of essays: Open and Restricted.
You are free to re-use—for non-commercial purposes only—all those essays
that have the OpenWord logo image-LP9108S1.jpg
on their opening page. For all other essays, check endnote 1 in each essay.
In all cases, please make your work available to others just as we are doing
for you, and please acknowledge your source and the respective authors.
The Movements of Movements, Part 1: What Makes Us Move?
© 2017 This collection as a whole, Jai Sen
© 2017 The individual essays, the respective authors
© 2017 This edition, OpenWord and PM Press
The Work is published and made available on a Creative Commons License,
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Volume 4 in the OpenWord’s Challenging Empires series
ISBN: 978-1-62963-240-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948146
Editor: Jai Sen
Contributing Editor: Peter Waterman
Associate Editor: Madhuresh
Content Editors: Parvati Sharma, Vipul Rikhi, and Jai Sen
Text Compilation: Jim Coflin
Cover: John Yates/stealworks.com
Layout: Jonathan Rowland
Wordle Illustrations: Christina Sanchez and Yih Lerh Huang
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter,
Michigan www.thomsonshore.com
This book is dedicated to
Peter Waterman
(January 26 1936–June 17 2017)
Friend, comrade, compañero, and fellow birthday bearer for the past thirty-
five years;
labour internationalist, cyberian, feminist, and feisty and fearless, always.
And to his indomitable spirit and infectious humour—and to the optimism of
his will.
May those live on forever!
JS
Contents
Acknowledgements and Credits
0
INVOCATIONS
What Moves Us
Shailja Patel
The Movements of Movements: An Introduction and an Exploration
Jai Sen
1
MOVEMENTSCAPES
From the Mountains of Chiapas to the Streets of Seattle: This Is What
Democracy Looks Like
David McNally
Anti-Systemic Movements and Transformations of the World-System, 1968–
1989
Fouad Kalouche and Eric Mielants
Beyond Altermondialisme : Anti-Capitalist Dialectic of Presence
André C Drainville
Storming Heaven: Where Has the Rage Gone?
Tariq Ali
Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism
Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel
Indigenous Feminism and the Heteropatriarchal State
Andrea Smith
Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Neo-Zapatista Social Movement Networks
Xochitl Leyva Solano
2
THE MOVEMENTS OF MOVEMENTS: STRUGGLES FOR OTHER WORLDS
Dalits, Anti-Imperialist Consciousness, and the Annihilation of Caste
Anand Teltumbde
Rethinking Self-Determination: Lessons from the Indigenous-Rights
Discourse
Jeff Corntassel
The Tapestry of Neo-Zapatismo: Origins and Development
Xochitl Leyva Solano and Christopher Gunderson
Ecological Justice and Forest Rights Movements in India: State and
Militancy—New Challenges
Roma and Ashok Choudhary
Open Space in Movement: Reading Three Waves of Feminism
Emilie Hayes
International Feminisms: New Syntheses, New Directions
Virginia Vargas
Re-Creating the World: Communities of Faith in the Struggles for Other
Possible Worlds
Lee Cormie
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha: Islamic Witness in the Contemporary World
François Houtart
Local Islam Gone Global: The Roots of Religious Militancy in Egypt and Its
Transnational Transformation
James Toth
Fighting for Another World: Yusuf al-‘Uyairi and His Conceptualisation of
Praxis and the Permanent Salafi Revolution
Roel Meijer
The Networked Internationalism of Labour’s Others
Peter Waterman
From Anti-Imperialist to Anti-Empire: The Crystallisation of the Anti-
Globalisation Movement in South Korea
Cho Hee-Yeon
The Weakest Link? Neoliberalism in Latin America
Emir Sader
The Return of Strategy
Daniel Bensaïd
Localisation as Radical Praxis and the New Politics of Climate Change
Peter North and David Featherstone
Refounding Bolivia: Exploring the Possibility and Paradox of a Social
Movements State
Guillermo Delgado-P
Forward Dreaming: Zapatismo and the Radical Imagination
Alex Khasnabish
Afterword: Learning to Be Loyal to Each Other: Conversations, Alliances,
and Arguments in the Movements of Movements
Laurence Cox
Recommended Web Pages and Blogs
Notes on the Editors and Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements and Credits for The Movements of Movements, Part 1:
What Makes Us Move?
Jai Sen
Content Editors
Beyond the features discussed in the Introduction, an important background
feature of this book (and of all the books in the Challenging Empires series
to which this book belongs) has again been the intensive and extensive
background work that has gone into the preparation and finalisation of the
essays we are publishing. The Content Editors for this book—and I as editor
—have tried to work closely with our authors in helping them more fully
develop and articulate their ideas, and I have therefore of course been very
happy indeed that so many of our authors have appreciated this and said
that they have rarely experienced this degree of attention. Most of the credit
for this goes to our Content Editors, Parvati Sharma and Vipul Rikhi, and I
warmly thank them for their contributions to making this book what it is.
Since this book is being published in two parts—see the Introduction—I here
list acknowledgements and credits only for the material in Part 1. The
chapters are listed here in alphabetical order by the author’s surname:
Parvati Sharma, for:
James Toth—Local Islam Gone Global: The Roots of Religious Militancy in
Egypt and its Transnational Transformation
Parvati Sharma and Jai Sen, for:
Daniel Bensaïd—The Return of Strategy
Cho Hee-Yeon—From Anti-Imperialist to Anti-Empire: The Crystallisation of
the Anti-Globalisation Movement in South Korea
Lee Cormie—Re-Creating the World: Communities of Faith in the Struggles
for Other Possible Worlds
Jeff Corntassel—Rethinking Self-Determination: Lessons from the
Indigenous-Rights Discourse
Guillermo Delgado-P—Refounding Bolivia: Exploring the Possibility and
Paradox of a Social Movements State
André C Drainville—Beyond Altermondialisme : Anti-Capitalist Dialectic of
Presence
Emilie Hayes—Open Space in Movement: Reading Three Waves of Feminism
Roel Meijer—Fighting for Another World: Yusuf al-‘Uyairi’s
Conceptualisation of Praxis and the Permanent Salafi Revolution
Peter North and David Featherstone—Localisation as Radical Praxis and the
New Politics of Climate Change
Andrea Smith—Indigenous Feminism and the Heteropatriarchal State
Vipul Rikhi, for:
Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel—Being Indigenous: Resurgences against
Contemporary Colonialism
Tariq Ali—Storming Heaven: Where Has the Rage Gone?
François Houtart—Mahmoud Mohamed Taha: Islamic Witness in the
Contemporary World
Fouad Kalouche and Eric Mielants—Antisystemic Movements and
Transformations of the World-System, 1968–1989
Alex Khasnabish—Forward Dreaming: Zapatismo and the Radical
Imagination
David McNally—From the Mountains of Chiapas to the Streets of Seattle:
This is What Democracy Looks Like
Emir Sader—The Weakest Link? Neoliberalism in Latin America
Anand Teltumbde—Anti-Imperialism, Dalits, and the Annihilation of Caste
Peter Waterman—The Networked Internationalism of Labour’s Others
Vipul Rikhi and Jai Sen, for:
Xochitl Leyva Solano—Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Neo-Zapatista
Social Movement Networks
Jai Sen, for:
Laurence Cox—‘Learning to be Loyal to Each Other’: Conversations,
Alliances, and Arguments in the Movements of Movements
Xochitl Leyva Solano and Christopher Gunderson—The Tapestry of Neo-
Zapatismo: Origins and Development
Roma and Ashok Choudhary—Ecological Justice and Forest Right
Movements in India: State and Militancy—New Challenges
Virginia Vargas—International Feminisms: New Syntheses, New Directions
Concept, Design, and Production
As discussed in the Introduction, working with OpenWord has been an
integral part of the conceptualisation and reality of this book—as a book and
in its first incarnation, as an ebook—and as in the case of the previous book (
World Social Forum: Critical Explorations ), much of the credit for this goes
to Nishant , former Co-Coordinator at OpenWord. My warm thanks to him
once again, in helping me down this road.
In the case of this book however, I have had the great privilege of also
having the partnership of three new volunteers and fellow travellers: Giulio
Maffini , an old friend I have had the privilege of rediscovering recently, for
nudging me into the use of diagrams to unpack and open up the meanings of
the sometimes dense content of this book (and of my writing!); Yih Lerh
Huang , a new friend and colleague, for joining Giulio in nudging me into the
use of diagrams in the book, and for infusing fresh energy and
professionalism into our work at OpenWord; and Christina Sanchez , for
helping me think through my Introduction to this book and also for
generating the Wordle and other diagrams that we have used here in our
books for the first time—and more generally for her enthusiasm and her
creative and critical engagement with my work. My warm appreciation to all
three, for their ideas and contributions, and for their critical engagement
and encouragement.
And most recently, we have also received the generous help of another new
friend, Jim Coflin , in compiling all the text into the one file required by our
co-publishers, PM Press.
Rights and Permissions
In addition to the mentions that we have made in the first endnote of the
respective essays, I am happy to also warmly acknowledge here the rights
and permissions we have got from the following publishers for republishing
the following essays in this book, which they had earlier published:
Blackwell’s (now Wiley-Blackwell’s), for James Toth’s ‘Local Islam Gone
Global: The Roots of Religious Militancy in Egypt and its Transnational
Transformation’
Duke University Press, for Virginia Vargas’s ‘International Feminisms: New
Syntheses, New Directions’
International Socialism, for the late Daniel Bensaïd’s ‘The Return of
Strategy’
Koninklijke Brill NV, for Roel Meijer’s ‘Fighting for Another World: Yusuf
al-‘Uyairi’s Conceptualisation of Praxis and the Permanent Salafi Revolution’
Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc, for Jeff Corntassel’s ‘Rethinking Self-
Determination: Lessons from the Indigenous-Rights Discourse’
New Left Review, for Emir Sader’s ‘The Weakest Link? Neoliberalism in
Latin America’
Paradigm Publishers, for Fouad Kalouche and Eric Mielants’s ‘Antisystemic
Movements and Transformations of the World-System, 1968–1989’
Taylor & Francis, for André C Drainville’s ‘Beyond Altermondialisme : Anti-
Capitalist Dialectic of Presence’; and—
Wiley’s, for Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel’s ‘Being Indigenous:
Resurgences against Contemporary Colonialism’.
Equally, aside from giving credit in the appropriate footnote, I would also
like to warmly acknowledge the following permission that the rights-holder
so readily and generously gave us:
Thinkmap Inc, for the image and text that we have used in the Introduction,
from the Visual Thesaurus ( http://www.visualthesaurus.com ). Copyright
©1998–2014; all rights reserved; and—
Jonathan Feinberg, the creator of Wordle diagrams ( http://www.wordle.net/
), both for creating this wonderful ‘toy’ and for making it freely available.
Material Resources
As in the case of our previous book, World Social Forum: Critical
Explorations , I would like to acknowledge the support we at CACIM
received back in 2007–9 from Oxfam-Novib, based in The Netherlands, for
covering professional editorial expenses in the early stages of the
preparation of what became this book, as a part of a grant that they made
available to us titled ‘The World Social Forum: A Critical Engagement’
(Project No BORX-505275-4713). As discussed in the Introduction both in
this book and in its predecessor, both these books have in many ways come
out of our experience of working through that period.
I would equally like to also thank InterPares, Canada, for its supplementary
support in 2009 for our work around the World Social Forum; even if its
grant was small and not really support for our books as such, this act of
solidarity when we needed support was very important for what we were
then more generally trying to do with respect to the WSF, and in a more
general way for our broader project of working with movement worldwide,
and where its support therefore also helped this particular project move
forward.
Networking as Resource: The CACIM Community as Cloud
Finally, as editor, I also want to note and acknowledge the fact that (as was
also the case with its predecessor), this book is the product of an immense
amount of almost global networking over several years, between several
people and in different permutations and combinations over the years;
indeed, that a book like this is perhaps only possible through such a cloud-
like process. Aside from a certain amount of professional support for which
we were initially able to raise funds for the bulk of the conceptualisation of
this book (and also of the book project outlined in the Introduction), and its
preparation has involved intense voluntary input from almost countless
individuals, over these many years:
All the contributors —whose names are given in the Table of Contents and in
the document ‘Notes on the Contributors’—and without whom, of course,
this book would just not have been possible;
All members of the original OpenWord Working Group and then
subsequently, of an OpenWord Editorial Collective that took shape for a
while, aside from myself as editor;
Adityan M , of New Delhi, India, who was earlier associated to CACIM as our
graphic designer, and with whom it has always been fun and thought-
provoking to discuss ways to represent what we are trying to do and the
ideas and worlds we are trying to engage with; and—
Matt Meyer , of Brooklyn, in the US, who has more recently come on board
this project and is now collaborating with us in our ongoing work at CACIM
of conceiving and formulating a larger book project around the material in
these books, and where he has also played the vital role in this project of
introducing me, and our original publisher OpenWord, to PM Press, as a
result of which the two are now co-publishing the two volumes of The
Movements of Movements .
All of these people—all of whom were or have become members of the
CACIM Community through this fact of association—have made key
contributions to the crystallisation of this book and of this book project, in
different ways and at different levels. I warmly thank them all!
0
INVOCATIONS
Proem
What Moves Us ¹
Shailja Patel
Some moments
history comes to us and says:
What do you truly want?
We tremble.
Often we run.
From the terrifying possibility
that we could choose
movement.
That we could begin
exactly where we are
in all our screwed-up
imperfection.
Some days we stand
before our world
and the question
vibrates the air around us:
What do you choose?
This day?