Global Justice Networks: Geographies of Transnational Solidarity by Paul Routledge & Andrew Cumbers

Author:Paul Routledge & Andrew Cumbers [Routledge, Paul & Cumbers, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor, Globalization, Political Science, Business & Economics, Politics, General, Human Rights
ISBN: 9781847797025
Google: 02S5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 5549539
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2009-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Relays of communication and information: imagineers

The abstract view of networks as horizontal relations is clearly not realised in practice, with the reality of network agency giving rise to more vertical relations. PGA Asia is organised primarily through the Internet, which acts as a communicative and coordinating thread weaving different place-based struggles together to create a convergence space. Of course, as we noted in Chapter 3, grassroots movements in the Global South have limited access to electricity and computer technologies. Hence the communication and information relays between participant movements in PGA Asia are conducted by the imagineers. As a result of their participation in a variety of activist networks, imagineers have a range of international contacts. Hence they, and their work spaces, become key nodes in the PGA network where informational traffic converges and disseminates. Hence, within the diversity of a network such as PGA Asia, there has developed ‘controlled heterogeneity’ (Riles 2001: 120), where decision making often devolves to a small number of individuals.

Power becomes the ability to enroll others on terms that allow key actors to ‘represent’ the others (Castree, 2002). As a result of the uneven access to (financial, temporal) resources and network flows, differential material and discursive power relations exist within PGA Asia (see Routledge, 2003a). As key networking vectors, the imagineers – because of resource access and skills such as communication and experience in activism and meeting facilitation – tend to wield disproportionate power and influence within the network, not least in effecting moments of network translation. Globally mobile (both physically – in that they have the time and resources to travel outside of their home countries – and through their access to distance-shrinking technologies), they perform much of the routine work that sustains the network (see also Juris, 2004a). They possess the cultural capital of (usually) higher education, and the social capital inherent in their transnational connections and access to resources and knowledge (Juris, 2004a; Missingham, 2003).

Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 3, ‘soft control’ by ‘crypto-hierarchies’ (King, 2004) can occur whereby the core group form unintentional elites (Juris, 2004a). These elite groups can act as covert structures in open consensus. For example, the details of meetings and discussions are published and circulated, but this information is primarily received by those connected to certain technological and social networks. PGA’s ‘hallmarks’, language and phraseology are a point of ‘soft control’ (King, 2004). The documentation of meetings and decisions usually only tells half the story. Points of serious contention are frequently left out on grounds that the parties involved in the disagreement might not want them to be published (King, 2004). Juris (2004a) has examined in detail the ongoing struggles over organisation and decision-making within the European PGA network. For example, in an open letter to the PGA by the Sans Titre network in advance of the PGA Europe conference in Leiden, Holland (2002), this critique was articulated thus:

Whenever we have been involved in PGA-inspired action, we have been unable to identify decision-making bodies. Moreover, there has been

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.