A-Infos (en) The Commoner* #8 - Convergence of Commons: Process Geographies of People's Global Action by Paul Routledge1 I. (1/2)

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Neoliberalism and its Discontents
A spectre is haunting the world. It is the spectre of
neoliberalism. While neoliberal ideology is
neither monolithic nor omnipresent, taking hybrid
or composite forms around the world (Larner
2000), it nevertheless articulates an overarching
commitment to `free market' principles of free
trade, flexible labour, and active individualism. It
privileges lean government, privatisation, and
deregulation, while undermining or foreclosing
alternative development models based upon social
redistribution, economic rights, or public
investment (Peck and Tickell 2002). It threatens to
colonize and capitalize those remaining areas of
social, economic, and cultural life that constitute
the commons: the land, water, forest resources
etc., that remain under some form of communal
control.
          Peck and Tickell (2002) argue that
neoliberalism has seen a shift from `roll-back
neoliberalism' during the 1980's - which entailed a
pattern of deregulation and dismantlement (e.g.
of state­financed welfare, education, and health
services and environmental protection) to an
emergent phase of `roll-out neoliberalism'. This
emergent phase is witnessing an aggressive
intervention by governments around issues such
as crime, policing, welfare reform, and urban
surveil ance with the purpose of disciplining and
containing those marginalized or dispossessed by
the neoliberalization of the 1980's.
          In both phases neoliberalism has had
profound impacts upon the commons. It entails the
centralisation of control of the world economy in
the hands of transnational corporations and their
allies in key government agencies (particularly
those of the United States and other members of
the G-8), large international banks, and
international institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization (WTO). These
institutions enforce the doctrine of neoliberalism
enabling unrestricted access of transnational
corporations (TNCs) to a wide range of markets
(including public services), while potential y more
progressive institutions and agreements (such as
the International Labour Organization and the
Kyoto Protocols) are allowed to wither (Peck and
Tickell 2002).
          Neoliberal policies have resulted in the
privatization, deregulation, appropriation, and
exploitation of communities' common resources of
livelihood (land, water, forests,
seeds, culture, and people's identity). This has
resulted in the pauperization, displacement and
marginalisation of indigenous peoples, women,
peasant farmers, and industrial workers, and a
reduction in labor, social, and environmental
conditions on a global basis - what Brecher and
Costello (1994) term `the race to the bottom' or
`global pillage'.
          In response to this, new forms of translocal
political solidarity and consciousness have
begun to emerge, associated with the partial
globalization of networks of resistance, involved, at
least in part, in the defence of remaining commons
resources. The attempts by marginalised
groups and social movements at the local level to
forge wider alliances in protest at their growing
exclusion from global neoliberal economic
decision-making can be conceived of as `grassroots
globalisation'(i) While establishing global networks
of action and support they attempt to retain local
autonomy over strategies and tactics (Appadurai
2000).

Grassroots Globalisation as Counter-Empire?

          Hardt and Negri (2000) term the emerging
global economic system `Empire' and
characterize it as "a decentered, detteritorializing
apparatus of imperial control" (xi ). Characterized
by an absence of boundaries, they argue that there
is no place of power ­ constituted by networks,
it is both everywhere and nowhere, a non-place.
However, geopolitical and geoeconomic power
does get territorialized in certain places. For
example, the United States - as the world's only
superpower with military bases in at least
fifty-nine countries - wields an immense influence on
international relations and, through its control of
the IMF and World Bank, the global economy
(Blum 2000, Mertes 2002).
          Hardt and Negri (2000) and Hardt (2002)
also argue that resistance to `Empire' constitutes
a counter-Empire, not limited to local autonomy,
but one that thinks and acts globally, effecting a
politics of association, rather than a series of
discrete local actions. In short, resistance must
create a `non-place' ­everywhere and nowhere -
from where alternatives to Empire are posed
(Hardt and Negri 2000: 205-218). The problem with
this formulation is that it underplays and the
geographical contexts and contingencies of
political action. It seems to pose resistance as
practising a reactive politics that mirrors `Empire',
rather than articulating a different kind of spatial
politics. Below, I will argue that, rather than
constituting a `non-place' of resistance, grassroots
globalisation networks forge an associational
politics that constitute a diverse, contested
coalition of place-specific social movements, which
prosecute conflict on a variety of multi-scalar
terrains that include both material places and virtual
spaces. I will consider one network, that of PGA, in
order to elucidate how grassroots globalization is
attempting to forge a convergence of struggles
over the commons. First, I will consider two
important aspects of contemporary grassroots
networks, heterogeneity and the politics of scale.
The heterogeneity of grassroots globalisation networks
Grassroots globalisation involves the creation of
networks: of communication, solidarity,
information sharing, and mutual support. The core
function of networks is the production,
exchange and strategic use of information ­ for
example, concerning oppositional narratives and
analysis of particular events. Such information can
enhance the resources available to
geographically and or socially distant actors in
their particular struggles and also lead to action
(Keck and Sikkink 1998). Information-age activism
is creating what Cleaver (1999:3) terms a
`global electronic fabric of struggle' whereby local
and national movements are consciously
seeking ways to make their efforts complement
those of other organized struggles around similar
issues.
          In particular, grassroots globalisation is
resulting in the forging of new alliances - as
different social movements representing different
terrains of struggle experience the negative
consequences of neoliberalism (Wallgren 1998).
By identifying structures of power within the
global political field, social movements have
established common targets of protest, exemplified by
the anti-WTO mobilisations in Seattle, 1999, and
the anti-World Bank and IMF protests in Prague,
2000.
          Such protests have been celebrated for
bringing together formerly disparate and often
conflicting groups, such as trade unionists,
environmentalists, indigenous peoples movements,
and non-government organisations. Underpinning
such developments is a conceptualisation of
protest and struggle that respects difference,
rather than attempting to develop universalistic and
centralising solutions that deny the diversity of
interests and identities that are confronted with
neoliberal globalisation processes. However,
because the globalisation of protest involves the
inter-penetration and multiplicity of forces at local,
regional, national, and global scales, such a
multiplicity raises the possibility of alliances that
contain various contradictions (Chin and Mittelman
(1997). For example, place-based gender relations
within particular social movements may be at
odds with those of other movements, in other
places, with whom they participate in struggle.
This raises questions about how social movements act
effectively in coalitions across diverse
geographical scales.
The scale politics of grassroots globalisation networks
The consolidation of a global system of financial
regulationii - as one of the means of neoliberal
global control - has prompted the `upscaling' of
previously local struggles between citizens,
governments, and transnational institutions and
corporations to the international level. Many of
these movements, although engaged in grassroots
globalisation networks, nevertheless remain
local or national based, since this is where
individual movement identities are formed and
nurtured.
          When local-based struggles develop, or
become part of, geographically flexible networks,
they become embedded in different places at a
variety of spatial scales. These different
geographic scales (global, regional, national, local)
are mutually constitutive parts, becoming links
of various lengths in the network. Networks of
agents act across various distances and through
diverse intermediaries. However, some networks
are relatively more localized, while others are
more global in scope and the relationship of
networks to territories is mutually constitutive:
networks are embedded in territories and at the
same time, territories are embedded in networks
(Dicken et al 2001). Of course, movements that
are local or national in character derive their
principal strength from acting at these scales
rather than at the global level (Sklair 1995). For
example, transnational corporations such as
Nestle, McDonalds, and Nike have usually been
disrupted primarily due to the efficacy of local
campaigns (Klein 2000). Even where international
campaigns are organised, local and national scales
of action can be as important as international
ones (Herod 2001). For example, the Liverpool
Dockers international campaign was grassroots-
instigated and coordinated (by Liverpool Dockers)
and operationalised by Dockers beyond the UK
working within established union frameworks
(Castree 2000).
          Space is bound into local to global networks,
which act to configure particular places. As a
result `each place is the focus of a distinct mixture
of wider and more local social relations'
(Massey 1994: 156), and hence places can be
imagined as `articulated moments in networks of
social relations (ibid p. 154). Moreover, while
networks can create cultural and spatial
configurations that connect places with each other
(Escobar 2001), so can particular places be
important within the workings of networks. For
example, in his research on the Madres de Plaza
de Mayo in Argentina, Fernando Bosco (2001) shows
how collective political rituals enacted in
different commons places across space (e.g. the
public meetings of Madres in plazas across
Argentina) enabled the sustainability of different
movement communities and movement identities.
By reinforcing moral commitments and group
solidarity, activist's identities were maintained
both within particular groups and between movements
and activists in wider solidarity networks.
          Bosco argues that the identification with
particular places can be of strategic importance
for the mobilisation strategies of particular
resistance movements. These can contribute to the
construction of strategic network ties with other
movements in the same locality or in other
localities. Activists may deploy symbolic images
of places to match the interests and collective
identities of other groups and thereby mobilise
others along common cause or grounds. Hence the
ties to particular places can be mobile, appealing
to, and mobilising, different groups in different
localities (Bosco 2001).
          However, because places are important loci
of collective memory, then social identity and
the capacity to mobilize that identity into
configurations of political solidarity are highly dependent
upon the processes of place construction and
sustenance (Harvey 1996). Such particularities of
place may come into conflict with those of other
places, for example due to different place-specific
understandings of gender relations. As a result,
these may vitiate against multi-scalar mobilizations
and pose important problems for the development
of grassroots globalisation networks. To discuss
this issue requires a consideration of the work of
David Harvey.

Militant particularism/global ambition

          Borrowing a term from Raymond Williams,
Harvey argues that place-based resistances
frequently articulate a `militant particularism'
(1996, 2000). This is where the ideals forged out of
the affirmative experience of solidarities in one
place have the potential to get generalised and
universalised as a working model for a new form of
society that will benefit all humanity - what
Harvey terms `global ambition'. However, Harvey
notes that militant particularisms are often
profoundly conservative, resting upon the
perpetuation of patterns of social relations and
community solidarities. He wonders whether there
is a scale at which militant particularisms
become impossible to ground let alone sustain.
Indeed, he argues that
          `Anti-capitalist movements... are generally
better at organizing in and dominating "their"
          places than at commanding space.
"[R]egional resistances"...can indeed flourish in a
          multitude of particular places. But while such
movements form a potential basis for that
          "militant particularism" that can acquire
global ambition, left to themselves they are easily
          dominated by the power of capital to
coordinate accumulation across universal but
          fragmented space. The potentiality for
militant particularism, embedded in place runs the
          risk of sliding back into a parochialist politics
(1996: 324).
          Successful international alliances have to
negotiate between action that is deeply
embedded in place, i.e. local experiences, social
relations and power conditions (e.g. see
Routledge 1993), and action that facilitates more
transnational coalitions. Social movements,
according to Harvey, can either remain
place-based and ignore the potential contradictions
inherent in transnational coalitions (e.g.
concerning different gender relations within participant
movements) or treat the contradictions as a nexus
to create a more transcendent and universal
politics, combining social and environmental
justice, that transcends the narrow solidarities and
particular affinities shaped in particular places. In
short, movements need to develop a politics of
solidarity capable of reaching across space,
without abandoning their militant particularist
base(s)
(1996: 400). This is especially pertinent for those
militant particularisms that arise to protest those
disguised particularisms - such as masculinism
and heterosexism - that masquerade as universal
(Fraser 1997).
          However, even if social movements are
capable of reaching across space, differential
power relations exist within the functioning of the
networks that are created. Particular actors are
often dominant within networks, due to their
control of key political, economic, technological
resources (Dicken et al 2001). Moreover, different
groups and individuals are placed in distinct
(more or less powerful) ways in relation to the
flows and interconnections involved in the
functioning of resistance networks. Thus, while
the working of networks involves the intermingling
of geographic scales, contradictions and tensions
remain either tied to the militant particularisms
of particular movements or in the placing of
specific actors within the network. Drawing upon these
theoretical debates concerning heterogeneity and
scale politics in the practices of grassroots
globalisation networks, I now consider a specific
network, People's Global Action (PGA). (iii)

People's Global Action

The PGA network owes its genesis to an
international encounter between activists and
intellectuals that was organised by the Zapatistas
in Chiapas in 1996. At the encounter, the
Zapatistas' Subcommandante Marcos declared
that those present would construct an
intercontinental network of resistance against
neoliberalism.
          This intercontinental network of resistance,
recognizing differences and acknowledging
          similarities, will search to find itself with
other resistances around the world. This
          intercontinental network of resistance is not
an organizing structure; it doesn't have a
          central head or decision maker; it has no
central command or hierarchies. We are the
          network, all of us who resist. (Marcos 2001: 13).
           In Spain the following year, the idea of a
network between different resistance formations
was launched by ten social movements including
Movimento Sem Terra (Landless peasants
movement) of Brazil, and the Karnataka State
Farmers Union of India. The official `birth' of the
PGA was February 1998, whose purpose was to
facilitate the sharing of information between
grassroots social movements. The PGA organized
an alternative conference (at the 1998
Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Geneva)
between social movements from Asia, Africa, and
Latin America that called for resistance to
neoliberal globalisation.iv As De Marcellus (2003)
notes, in the PGA network, indigenous movements for
whom the commons are the cornerstone of
organization, culture and identity, have been
important actors, such as the Kuna of Panama,
Maori of `New Zealand', the Quechua and Aymara
communites organized by the cocaleros, and the
CONAIE and CONFEUNASSC of Ecuador.
          The broad objectives of the network
enshrined in a series of hallmarks (see below) - are
to offer an instrument for co-ordination and mutual
support at the global level for those resisting
corporate rule and the neoliberal capitalist
development paradigm, to provide international
projection to their struggles, and to inspire people
to resist corporate domination through civil
disobedience and people-oriented constructive
actions (see PGA website). PGA has also
established regional networks ­ e.g. PGA Latin
America, PGA Europe, PGA North America and
PGA Asia to decentralise the everyday workings
of the network.


           PGA uses the Internet as a prime means of
communication and coordination - through its
web-site and various activist mailing lists. Through
these technologies, the PGA network, amongst
others, put out the calls for the recent global days
of action against capitalism, such as the protests
in Prague on September 26 2000. The PGA
network is facilitated by a Convenors' Committee,
which comprises social movements within the
network. The current Committee comprises
movements concerned with ethnic, women's,
labour and indigenous issues. The Committee
organise the PGA conferences (see below),
decide about the use of resources, advise local
organisers about technical and organisational
questions, and decide about the content of PGA's
information tools.
            In practice there have been problems with
the workings of the Convenors' Committee.
First, the convenors have not been able to take the
time to fully assume their responsibilities,
owing to the exigencies of movement work in their
respective localities. Second, the convenors
have had great difficulty in functioning at a
distance, having problems of access to necessary
information, as wel as language and cultural
problems. The process has tended to remain
haphazard, abstract, and dependent on email access
Hence much of the organisational work of the PGA
network has been conducted by Support
Groups of activists who have helped organise
conferences, mobilised resources (e.g. funds), and
facilitated communication between Convenors, and
information flows between the participants of
PGA. The Support Group activists are mostly
based in Europe, but some are located within the
other PGA `regions'. According to participant
activists, PGA represents a space of convergence
between different grassroots movements, wherein
the interactions between movements, and their
politics of association are facilitated (Interviews,
Bangalore, India 1999 and Cochabamba, Bolivia
2001). To discuss these in detail, I will now
consider the specific `process geographies' (Appadurai
2000: 7) that is the multi-scalar, dynamic,
processes of interaction and relationship that
characterize of PGA.

The Process Geographies of PGA.

The collective visions of PGA

In networks comprising diverse social movements,
it is crucial that there are certain unifying values
­ what I would term collective visions - to provide
common ground from which to coordinate
collective struggles. In PGA the militant
particularisms of movements find their global ambition in
the hallmarks and organisational principles of the
convergence. The hallmarks of the PGA, cited in
the PGA website, are as follows:
1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism
and feudalism; and all trade agreements,
      institutions and governments that promote
destructive globalisation.
2. We reject all forms and systems of domination
and discrimination including, but not limited to,
      patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism
of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all
      human beings.
3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think
that lobbying can have a major impact in such
      biased and undemocratic organisations, in
which transnational capital is the only real policy-
      maker.
4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience,
support for social movements' struggles,
      advocating forms of resistance which maximize
respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights,
      as wel as the construction of local alternatives
to global capitalism.
5. An organisational philosophy based on
decentralisation and autonomy

(Taken from the PGA website: www. agp.org).
The organisational principles deal with how the
network functions ­ concerning its conferences,
convenors, projects etc.

           The PGA hallmarks articulate certain
unifying values that create common ground but allow
for the diversity of (local) alternatives, projects,
tactics etc. since no single agenda could contain
such different militant particularisms. Indeed, such
unifying values tend to be interpreted by
participant movements in the context of their
differing local realities (Alger 1997). However, the
unanimity of the hallmarks masks various
contested social relations within the network that I
will discuss below. In terms of practical politics, this
has meant that PGA has adopted, through its third
international conference in Bolivia, a series of
Global Sustainable Campaigns, which movements
can collectively participate in, while responding to
the particularities of their local/national
circumstances. The four campaigns focus on
militarism, paramilitarism and state terrorism; territory
and sovereignty (e.g. issues of land and water
resources and indigenous rights); privatisation; and
construction of grassroots alternatives to the
capitalist system and the strengthening of local
initiatives and struggles. All of these campaigns
relate in particular ways to people's defence of
their communities and commons. Each PGA
regional network is in the process of discussing the
processes by which they intend to participate in
these campaigns. In certain ways, the hallmarks
and campaigns ­ as collective visions - represent
the kind of universal politics that Harvey (1996)
discusses as crucial to the formation of
transnational solidarities.
Processes of facilitation and interaction in PGA
PGA is concerned with five principal processes of
facilitation and interaction between movements.
It acts as a facilitating space for communication,
(e.g. using letters, e-mail, web-sites, newsletters,
telephone, fax, and face to face meetings such as
conferences); information-sharing (e.g.
concerning the effectiveness of particular tactics
and strategies, knowledge on place-specific legal
issues and local geographies etc.); solidarity (e.g.
demonstrations of support for particular
struggles such as protests, letter writing
campaigns etc.); coordination (e.g. organising
conferences, meetings and collective protests
etc.); and resource mobilisation (e.g. of people,
finances, and skills).
           PGA is organised primarily through the
Internet via its website (www.agp.org) and various
e-mailing lists. In addition, PGA organises
international and regional meetings, conferences,
and caravans. Rather than what Cleaver (1999) would
term an `electronic fabric', the Internet acts as a
communicative and coordinating thread in the PGA
network, which weaves different place-based
struggles together so that they may converge in
virtual space.
           The PGA web-site is translated into seven
languages and provides information about the
history of the network; PGA international and
regional conferences; various actions and
initiatives
that the convergence has organised; upcoming
events, and reports on struggles from around the
world. There are several email lists that provide
spaces for discussion, communication, information
sharing, and coordination. Many activists
participate in these discussions in PGA Europe, although
PGA Asia and PGA Latin America tend to witness
less activist participation. Although mass
movements participate in these regional networks
those with e-mail contact who tend to participate
in PGA discussions are usually only individuals
(often members of the Convenor's Committee) who
can communicate in English and who have access
to the Internet.


          The reliance on the Internet to organise
grassroots globalisation networks raises other
problems. First, is that of the circulation of
excessive amounts of information, or `information
blizzard' (Critical Art Ensemble 1994: 132), which
in certain crisis situations can become amplified
when activists resort to all means available:
letters, faxes, telephone calls, e-mail, and personal
visits (Ribeiro 1998). Second, the abstract,
disembodied character of Internet discussions (and
protest post-mortems) can accentuate what
become quite vitriolic debates (e.g. concerning
particular tactical approaches to protest events)
that might otherwise reach compromise if
conducted in a face-to-face manner, with the
attendant visual and verbal clues and nuances. As
Ribeiro notes:
          Trust, friendship, reputation, predictability,
hierarchical position within a social network,
          and even charisma are elements of political
activity that certainly cannot be reduced to
          technologies of communication. There are
features of face-to-face interaction (gestures,
          tone, pitch, indexicality) and even of
telephone conversation that are highly informative;
          these features are concealed in
computer-based interactions (1998: 341).
For, it is unlikely that trust between individuals
who have not met, can be fully developed over the
Internet. The depth of trust required to plan, and
conduct, political action together is place and
face-based (e.g. see the discussion of `homeplace'
in hooks 1991). In other words, it is dependent,
in part, upon movement's militant particularism.v
          Sustaining collective action over time is
related to the capacity of a group to develop
strong interpersonal ties that provide the basis for
the construction of collective identities (Bosco
2001). PGA has periodic international and regional
conferences and meetings that provide
material spaces within which representatives of
participant movements can converge, and discuss
issues that pertain to the functioning of the
network.vi Such conferences and meetings also enable
strategies to be developed in secure sequestered
sites, beyond the surveillance that accompanies
any communicative technology in the public realm.
Moreover, such gatherings enable deeper
interpersonal ties to be established between
different activists from different cultural spaces
and struggles. At the international conferences
meetings are held primarily in English or Spanish
(with the one being translated into the other).
Translation clusters are also formed where the
conference
proceedings are simultaneously translated into the
languages of the other people who are
participating.
          PGA also organises activist caravans. These
are buses of activists from various struggles
around the world, which visit social movement
struggles in countries other than their own. These
caravans have a certain historical precedent in the
solidarity convoys that took North American
activists to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and
Guatemala during the 1980's. These convoys brought
humanitarian aid to communities in those
countries, and articulated opposition to U.S. government
policies in the region ­ particularly the U.S.
government support for the military juntas in El
Salvador and Guatemala, and for the contra war
attempting to destabilise the Sandinista revolution
in Nicaragua.
          Rather than being forms of political tourism,
the PGA caravans are organised in order for
activists from different struggles and countries to
communicate with one another, exchange
information, share experiences and tactics,
participate in various solidarity demonstrations,
rallies, and direct actions, and attempt to draw new
movements into the convergence. The emphasis on
such processes is the two-way communication
regarding struggles, strategies, visions of society,
and the construction of economic and political
alternatives to neoliberalism. The caravans have
included an Intercontinental caravan in 1999,
which brought five hundred Asian farmers to tour
Europe; a United States caravan that culminated in
the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999; and
caravans before and after the PGA conferences in
Bangalore, India (1999), and Cochabamba,
Bolivia (2001).vii In addition, there have been
speaking tours (e.g. that which brought Colombian
activists from the Process of Black Communities
to Europe in 2001), and workshops and seminars,
concerning neoliberalism and its alternatives, on
several continents.
          Despite these initiatives, there are concerns
within the network that certain individuals and
groups sometimes block information flows,
marking out certain channels of communication and
coordination as their own, thereby marginalising
others while asserting their discursive dominance
within the network.viii At the PGA conference in
Cochabamba, it was noted that the PGA Support
Groups had a great, if not disproportionate, amount
of discursive and material power within the
network. This was due to them doing much of the
work unable to be completed by the Convenor's
Committee, their extensive activist contacts, and
their ability to raise funds for political actions and
conferences.
          The discursive dominance that individuals
have in relation to these flows and inter-
connections, is because different groups and
individuals are placed in more or less powerful ways
in relation to such flows. This is augmented by
differences in the material power enjoyed by certain
activists concerning mobility. Some activists are
more mobile than others in at least two ways. First
there is differential access to contemporary
communications technologies such as the Internet.
Huge inequalities of resource access exist
between activists in `Northern' and `Southern' states,
and between activists within states - for example,
in `Southern' movements, between movement
leaders and the movement masses (Slater 2003).
Even many of those movement leaders in the
South who have access to the Internet, frequently
have to use (relatively) expensive Internet cafes
in order to communicate within the PGA network.
          Second, there is differential financial
resource availability between activists and between
social movements, concerning the ability to travel
across continents to particular actions, meetings
and conferences. For example, while certain
European support group activists have been able to
visit movement struggles in Latin America and
Asia, few of the activists involved in these
movements have the financial resources to travel
outside of their countries. At both the PGA
conferences in India and Bolivia, PGA has
attempted to address the contradiction of wealth
disparities within the network by having the air
fares of `Southern' activists subsidized by relatively
wealthier `Northern' movements within the
network.
          Nevertheless, such disparities can lead to
the emergence of an elite group of mobile
`global' activists who enjoy the privileges of email,
mobility, and certain financial and discursive
power (see Harding, 2001 regarding funding of the
`anti-globalisation movement'). Certainly,
activists are able to use skills that they have
learned during political organising in their local
struggles during their participation in global
networks. For example, consensus methods of group
decision-making have been translated from
European-based struggles to international
conferences (see below). Moreover, existing local,
regional and national friendship and activist
networks are re-deployed at the international scale
for the purposes of global networking (Smith et
al 1997). Processes of interaction get stretched
out across greater distances for such activists,
potential y making `global' arenas of political
organising more like a new `local' arena of action
for them.

*[Ed. Note: Antiauthoritarian (libertarian communist) journal]

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  HELP: a-infos-org@ainfos.ca
  SUBSCRIPTION: send mail to lists@ainfos.ca with command in
  body of mail "subscribe (or unsubscribe) listname your@address".

  Full list of list options at http://www.ainfos.ca/options.html