Autonomy-Oriented Social Movements and the Politics of Affect

Abstract This dissertation explores damaging tendencies that exist within autonomy-oriented activism in the West. I examine how affect shapes the way that internal conflict is approached and internal strife is dealt with in radical communities. I adopt Sara Ahmed’s proposition “that our emotions are bound up with the securing of the social hierarchy” (Ahmed, 2004b: 4) and given that autonomy-oriented practices are committed to dismantling existing hierarchies, it follows that the less oppressive social configurations sought by autonomous social movements must have different emotional underpinnings. My thesis involves applying critical theory on affect and emotion in social movements to interview data gathered from activists both currently and historically involved in autonomy-oriented social movement communities in Kingston, Ontario. I ask whether anglophone, western-based, autonomy-oriented social movements reproduced understandings of affect/emotions/feelings that underwrite the social order they are working against? I also ask, “how are our emotions conditioned by capitalism?”. The research that I engage with provides responses to these questions by pointing out how the dominant discourse on emotions in the West encourages and informs certain modes of identity production that affect the diminishing and sad practices of autonomy-oriented communities and the (re)production of oppressive practices found in the dominant order. My work critically places this psychologizing view of emotions, and its damaging effects on resistance, within the context of neoliberal capitalism. I argue that the way we understand the politics of affect is an important dimension of radical struggle, and will inform and impact upon our individual and collective capacities to respond to, and refuse to reproduce relations of control and domination. I look for an understanding of “why” and to “what extent” these determinations exists, and look for hope in a politics of affect which supports an autonomy-oriented ethic.

The Internet as opportunity and challenge in contemporary social movements

This paper explores the relationship between the rise of “new” social movements (15-M and Occupy) and the Internet. The new social media gives rise to new kinds of social movements  which embed this technology from the moment of conception. The future of social movements will be characterised by movinets, which will have the effect of developing new efficient ways of activism. The movinets, with their embedded technology and capacity to circulate ideas among different spheres of reality, have a potential to alter the dynamics of social mobilisation.

Compared trajectories of agro-ecology in Brazil and France: The role of scientists and social movements.

2009

New Haitian social movements: Alternative modernities, (trans)local nationalisms, and solidarity economies

My dissertation is the first project on the Haitian Platform for Advocacy for an Alternative Development- PAPDA, a nation-building coalition founded by activists from varying sectors to coordinate one comprehensive nationalist movement against what they are calling an Occupation. My work not only provides information on this under-theorized popular movement but also situates it within the broader literature on the postcolonial nation-state as well as Latin American and Caribbean social movements. The dissertation analyzes the contentious relationship between local and global discourses and practices of citizenship. Furthermore, the research draws on transnational feminist theory to underline the scattered hegemonies that intersect to produce varied spaces and practices of sovereignty within the Haitian postcolonial nation-state. The dissertation highlights how race and class, gender and sexuality, education and language, and religion have been imagined and co-constituted by Haitian social movements in constructing ‘new’ collective identities that collapse the private and the public, the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern. My project complements the scholarship on social movements and the postcolonial nation-state and pushes it forward by emphasizing its spatial dimensions. Moreover, the dissertation de-centers the state to underline the movement of capital, goods, resources, and populations that shape the postcolonial experience. I re-define the postcolonial nation-state as a network of local, regional, international, and transnational arrangements between different political agents, including social movement actors. To conduct this interdisciplinary research project, I employed ethnographic methods, discourse and textual analysis, as well as basic mapping and statistical descriptions in order to present a historically-rooted interpretation of individual and organizational negotiations for community-based autonomy and regional development. ^

T.W. Adorno e a psicologia social

Neste ensaio, ressalta-se a importância da disciplina Psicologia Social na obra de T. W. Adorno e a concepção que formula acerca dessa disciplina. Esse autor defende que há uma nova forma de configuração dos indivíduos, expressada por atitudes e comportamentos individuais padronizados e por um ego frágil, facilmente cooptado por movimentos sociais totalitários. Tais indivíduos surgem em uma sociedade caracterizada por uma forma de dominação calcada na racionalidade administrativa e tecnológica. Para esse autor, a Psicologia Social deveria estudar esse objeto para que, com o esclarecimento produzido e difundido, os indivíduos possam resistir à adesão cega a movimentos sociais irracionais, tal como o fascismo, insistindo que a determinação desses movimentos não é individual, mas social.

Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of articulating Political Discourse Theory (PDT) together with Organizational Studies (OS), while using the opportunity to introduce PDT to those OS scholars who have not yet come across it. The bulk of this paper introduces the main concepts of PDT, discussing how they have been applied to concrete, empirical studies of resistance movements. In recent years, PDT has been increasingly appropriated by OS scholars to problematize and analyze resistances and other forms of social antagonisms within organizational settings, taking the relational and contingent aspects of struggles into consideration. While the paper supports the idea of a joint articulation of PDT and OS, it raises a number of critical questions of how PDT concepts have been empirically used to explain the organization of resistance movements. The paper sets out a research agenda for how both PDT and OS can together contribute to our understanding of new, emerging organizational forms of resistance movements.

El Foro Social Mundial y los movimientos antisistémicos

El FSM ha sido considerado el acontecimiento más relevante de la última década en el ámbito de la sociedad civil. La cuestión a la que trata de responder este trabajo es si el FSM será realmente capaz de contribuir de manera relevante a la transformación de la globalización capitalista neoliberal. Para responder a esta cuestión vamos a ir construyendo la argumentación necesaria para concluir si el FSM será el elemento clave para la transformación social que desde su seno se asegura que es, identificando el marco en el que nace y se desarrolla, la globalización capitalista neoliberal y los movimientos altermundistas; explicando el origen, las características, la evolución y las características novedosas que supone; mostrando los debates, retos logros y éxitos del Foro; e identificando el altermundismo y el desaprendizaje de la ideología capitalista neoliberal como la manera con la que el FSM incide en la transformación del sistema hegemónico actual.

Los Jóvenes de la transformación social

Vivimos tiempos inciertos. Atravesamos una gran crisis, o “la gran estafa” como algunos prefieren denominarla. Diversos factores han hecho que lleguemos a esta situación. Una Unión Europea no real, un crecimiento basado en pilares pocos sólidos, la extraordinaria desigualdad que han generado las políticas neoliberales. No es solo una crisis económica, pretenden venderla como tal pero nos encontramos ante una crisis política, antropológica, moral, ideológica, de la democracia. Para muchos nos encontramos ante una crisis sistémica donde las deudas se socializan y los beneficios se privatizan. Los gobiernos son dirigidos por los mercados y por instituciones transnacionales que no son democráticas, y los ciudadanos no eligen a sus dirigentes. Las deudas socializadas son ocasionadas por malos gestores de bancos que además se asignan sueldos altísimos e indemnizaciones multimillonarias. Se recortan derechos conseguidos en estos 40 años de democracia en nuestro país. Gobiernan partidos políticos que ganan las elecciones con programas electorales que incumplen de forma manifiesta desde el primer día, y que por tanto están deslegitimados para conducir la política para la que han sido elegidos. En este contexto los jóvenes son las principales víctimas

Social media and political change: The case of the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

Throughout the past decade, social media have come on the scene of various popular revolts. Their role as tools of information and coordination of social movements, from the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 to the Arab uprisings in 2011, has been widely debated. In most cases, online activism through blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media has allowed citizens to be part of a social networking exercise and to engage in a public sphere that would have otherwise been unreachable to them due to severe repression. In Tunisia and Egypt, social media helped protests start and expand thanks to their ability to coordinate and disseminate information quickly. The new information and communication tools were an influential factor in accelerating the revolutionary processes across the Arab world, albeit they cannot be seen as neither the spur nor the drivers of any revolution.

L’impacte social dels plans i dels projectes territorials. El cas de Catalunya

L’article analitza l’impacte social dels plans i dels projectes territorials entès com la percepció que una societat local té de les conseqüències que comportarà una intervenció determinada sobre el territori. La configuració d’un quart poder territorial format per moviments socials i la crisi del sistema de representació ciutadana han refermat la importància de l’impacte social, el qual té una incidència notable en les intervencions que afecten el territori, i això en provoca ben sovint la paralització o la modificació. Calen mecanismes per incorporar l’impacte social des que es comença a plantejar un projecte per evitar situacions d’estancament, per estudiar alternatives més òptimes i per reconèixer els valors territorials tal com són percebuts per la societat local

El papel del trabajo social en el Sueño de Barrio

Una de las preocupaciones importantes en el mundo del trabajo social es la calidad de las comunicaciones dentro de la Red de Servicios Sociales y la fluidez y operatividad de las relaciones de ésta con el entorno y personas para las que trabaja. De ello depende la calidad vida de gran parte de la ciudadanía de los pueblos y los barrios de nuestras ciudades. A través de la experiencia que se está llevando a cabo en dos barrios de Albacete veremos cómo la metodología de Comunidades de Aprendizaje es también un valioso instrumento para transformar la Red, reelaborándola a partir del sueño conjunto entre profesionales del trabajo social, entidades, la comunidad de aprendizaje y las personas participantes-usuarias de la Red. El acento, en este artículo, se sitúa en la posición que las personas profesionales del trabajo social ocupan en este"Sueño de barrio" y la importancia del fomento de los actos comunicativos dialógicos en su práctica profesional como garantía de mejora y transformación social.

Mobile ensembles: The uses of mobile phones for social protest by Spain¿s indignados

Peer-reviewed

Innovació social oberta: l'organització política com a plataforma

En els darrers anys hi ha hagut, al menys, dues petites revolucions en el món de lainnovació. Per una banda, la derivada del que ha sacsejat no només l'àmbit de lainnovació sinó tota la societat en general: la causada per l'impacte de les Tecnologiesde la Informació i la Comunicació. Per una altra, la innovació que "en part degut alpunt anterior" té lloc en àmbits d'innovació "no formal" i amb especial èmfasi enl'organització i l¿acció col·lectives. Aquí presentem un breu recorregut per conceptescom innovació, innovació oberta i innovació social per a entrar a definir el que creiemque són les principals característiques i components de la innovació social oberta. Enespecial, ens centrarem en aquesta innovació social oberta en el terreny de la políticaextrarepresentativa o extrainstitucionals, entroncant el discurs amb el dels movimentssocials, el ciberactivisme i la tecnopolítica.