Global Activism, Global Media - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074532195X ISBN 13: 9780745321950

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2005

Synopsis

Radical political activist movements are growing all the time. Activist politics have come to influence 'mainstream' politics over fundamental issues such as trade, gender relations, the environment and war.

This book brings together activists and academics in one volume, to explore the theory and practice of global activism's relation to all forms of media, mainstream and otherwise. The contributors examine how global activism is represented in the mainstream press and explain the strategies that activists adopt to spread their own ideas.

Investigating Indymedia and internet activism, they show how transformations in communications technology offer new possibilities, and explain how activists have successfully used and developed their own media. Case studies and topics include the world social forums, an example of a campaign from the NGO Action Aid, a campaign strategy from an internet activist, Greenpeace and the Brent Spar conflict, the World Development Movement and representations in the mainstream press, the Independent Media Centre, transgender activism on the net, Amnesty International, Oxfam and the internet.

About this title

About the Author

Marcelle C. Dawson is a senior researcher in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. She serves on the board of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee 47 (Social Classes and Social Movements). She is co-editor of Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa (2010) and author of a forthcoming monograph on the Anti-Privatisation Forum in South Africa. Her work has been published in Citizenship Studies, Journal of Higher Education in Africa and Social Movement Studies.Luke Sinwell is a senior researcher in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. He has published in Geoforum, Social Movement Studies and Review of African Political Economy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Global Activism, Global Media

By Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw, Neil Stammers

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2005 Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw and Neil Stammers
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2195-0

Contents

List of photographs, vii, 
Acronyms and abbreviations, viii, 
Preface, x, 
Introduction Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw and Neil Stammers, 1, 
Part I: Global Civil Society, Global Public Sphere and Global Activism, 15, 
1. Networks of knowledge and practice: global civil society and global communications Ronnie D. Lipschutz, 17, 
2. Media and the global public sphere: an evaluative approach Colin Sparks, 34, 
3. Social movements and global activism Neil Stammers and Catherine Eschle, 50, 
4. Between a political-institutional past and a communicational-networked future? Reflections on the Third World Social Forum, 2003 Peter Waterman; Postscript by Marianne Maeckelberg, 68, 
5. From Aldermaston marcher to internet activist Sarah Berger, 84, 
Part II: Global Activism and Mainstream Media, 93, 
6. Dying for diamonds: the mainstream media and NGOs – a case study of ActionAid Ivor Gaber and Alice Wynne Willson, 95, 
7. The power and limits of media-based international oppositional politics – a case study: the Brent Spar conflict Wilma de Jong, 110, 
8. The World Development Movement: access and representation of globalisation – activism in the mainstream press Dave Timms, 125, 
9. Peace activism and western wars: social movements in mass-mediated global politics Martin Shaw, 133, 
Part III: Global Activism and Activist Media, 147, 
10. Activist media, civil society and social movements John D. H. Downing, 149, 
11. If it leads it bleeds: the participatory newsmaking of the Independent Media Centre Kate Coyer, 165, 
12. Transgender activism and the net: global activism or casualty of globalisation Kate O'Riordan, 179, 
13. Bridging the gap: from the margins to the mainstream Pollyanna Ruiz, 194, 
14. Civil society organisations and the internet: the case of Amnesty International, Oxfam and the World Development Movement Anastasia Kavada, 208, 
Notes on the Contributors, 223, 
Index, 226, 

CHAPTER 1

Networks of Knowledge and Practice: Global Civil Society and Global Communications

Ronnie D. Lipschutz

Since 1990, the notion of 'global civil society' (GCS) has been the focus of a good deal of research, theorising and criticism. Much of the debate has focused on the relationship of transnational organisations to states and global governance. Another topic of conflict involves the status of social movements as well as their motivations, methods and objectives. A third line of dispute lies between those who view GCS as non-political and those who argue that it is very political. But, global civil society – by whatever of its many names we might wish to call it and however we might describe it – exists. Those agents, actors, organisations, institutions of transnational social exchange and action are there, for all to see (Lipschutz 1996; Wapner 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Colas 2002). And central to the projects and activities of GCS is communication.

It is, by now, something of a cliché to note that the world has 'gotten smaller' in recent decades, due to changes in transportation and communication technologies. As a result of this process of planetary diminution, it would appear that there is now more globalised activism than ever before in human history. This might well be the case, but the role of communication in enabling transnational political activism has been central for some centuries. Gutenberg's press made possible the Protestant Reformation by facilitating the movement of the printed word. Long-distance shipping during the eighteenth century brought word of uprisings and revolutions to all continents. Even the Revolutions of 1848 came about, in part, through continent-wide communications networks consisting primarily of journals, newspapers and travellers, which spread news of uprisings from one country to the next. Plus ça change ...

What is not often noted is that today's communications media are of two types, and facilitate somewhat different modes of political action. The most powerful media are private conglomerates, engaged primarily in generating and supplying consumer demand for 'news' and information through lurid headlines and broadcasts 'torn from the headlines'. Less powerful media, especially the internet, provide channels for two-way communications, permitting the creation of a global epistemic context within which virtually simultaneous political activism and action can take place in widely separated locations. Whether the flow of information and knowledge is one-way or two makes a difference in terms of who that news affects, how resulting effects come about and how those affected might respond.

A central point here, as we shall see below, is that effective political action is premised upon the ability of activists to make a case for ethical-political change, to convince large numbers of people, both individually and in groups, to sign on to the project for change, and to infuse that change into the ethical-political basis of a given society. The goal here is to act collectively and effect change through a systemic strategy that seeks to instantiate transnational ethical principles in individual societies. Individual consciousness raising is not enough and, in a globalised world, even national change is not always enough. A broader reach is necessary.

In this chapter, I take on the task of examining the role of communication media in the expansion and activities of global civil society. I begin with a general discussion of historical conceptualisations of civil society and its relationship to the liberal state and link the ethical basis of the state to the particular practices of different segments of civil society. Next, I describe how global communication systems and media have helped to create GCS and foster its various activities. Finally, I discuss the relationship between communications and global governmentality.

CONCEPTUALISING GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

There are two, rather broad, conceptualisations of civil society in tradition and literature. The first is associated with the market and the private sphere (Ferguson; Smith; Marx), the second, with politics and the public sphere (Hegel; Gramsci; Colas). Although we tend to view Ferguson (1776/1995) and Smith (1776/1982) as the intellectual antagonists of Marx (1932/1970), all three understood civil society in terms of (a) a separation between state (public) and market (private) and (b) as a realm of civil association beyond the reach or authority of the state. As propagated by de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835/1966), the liberal version of civil society visible in the United States provided both public goods that the state was unable to supply as well as private goods and affiliations that could only be obtained through the market and outside the state. Marx understood civil society in much the same terms, but regarded it as the cat's paw of the bourgeoisie, which maintained a very visible line between state and market in order to fence private property off from the public grasp. In Marx's teleology, consequently, when the proletarian revolution finally arrived, not only would the state wither away, so would civil society. Moreover, with them would go private property as well as the market.

For Marx, the ethics governing society clearly arose out of the desires and interests of capital (and the bourgeoisie), and the public sphere was, in any event, at their service. For Ferguson and Smith, society's morals were primarily religious ones, whose source was transcendent and, consequently, not open to debate, challenge or alteration. Businessmen would meet and plot, and to expect otherwise would be naïve, if not downright foolish. Their activities would have to be regulated, preferably via the moral force of religion but, if not, through public regulation (although not too much of it; this is why trust is seen as so central to capitalism). Thus, civil society would also determine what activities could be privatised and which could not.

The competing version of civil society's origins is associated with Hegel (1821/1952) and Gramsci (1970; see also Adamson 1980, 1988) and elaborated more recently by Alex Colas (2002). It is, in many ways, a less prosaic explanation and, perhaps, more romantic, in keeping with its German origins. All the same, it is not, therefore, any less correct than the political economists' version. According to Hegel, the ethics that underpin actor behaviour in capitalist society originate within civil society. That is, social norms originate within certain elements of civil society, and these are infused into the state through the force and actions of civil society. Recall that Hegel's teleological view of the state was such, that it represented something like the immanent will of the nation, transformed into the transcendent geist of the state.

Unlike the political economists, Hegel made a clear distinction between morality and ethics. As Colas points out:

for Hegel, morality can only become meaningful if it operates within a community, if it is given content through the individual's involvement in public life. ... [T]he associative elements of civil society take on not only a representative but an ethical role by integrating individuals into the wider community, recognizing the value of their work and educating them in the virtues of civic life. (2002:41)

Shlomo Avineri explains that Hegel distinguished between Moralität, which is individual, subjective morality and Sittlichkeit, the wider totality of ethical life. Moralität regulates the relations among individuals with one another qua individuals. But superimposed on this is the broader ethical life of the community [i.e., the State], of people relating to each other not as individuals but as members of a wider community (1972: Ch. 7).

Hegel made this differentiation clear in the Philosophy of Right, when he wrote

If the state is confused with civil society, and if its specific end is laid down as the security and protection of property and personal freedom, then the interest of the individuals as such becomes the ultimate end of their association, and it follows that membership of the state is something optional. But the state's relation to the individual is quite different from this. Since the state is mind objectified, it is only as one of its members that the individual himself has objectivity, genuine individuality, and an ethical life. (Philosophy of Right, 3.3 §258, 'Remark')

Hegel was not much interested in the sources of this ethical life – whether it originated in the family or some association in civil society – only that it be lived through the political community. Those ethics become the basis of state behaviour and are binding on civil society as well as the market. Once a set of ethics has become part of the state, in other words, it resembles a set of transcendent morals that must be followed and obeyed, whatever the individual interests of social and economic actors. However, whereas transcendent morals are fixed, ethics are not. They may differ from one state to the next and can be changed as seems appropriate and necessary.

This view of ethics becomes important in terms of understanding different forms of political activism undertaken by civil society. Colas draws on Gramsci to argue that civil society is the setting from which social movements and political activism originate, 'within the context of capitalist modernity' (2002:43). In order to reconcile the two apparently conflicting views, Colas further asserts that 'civil society has historically found expression in two predominant forms – one linked to the private sphere of the capitalist market, the other to the struggles against the all-encroaching power of the state' (2002:47). The former is populated by those organisations and actors who pursue their self-interest through the mechanisms of the market, the latter by those who seek to challenge and change the ethical structures and politics of the state. These are, of course, idealised forms: operating within the structures and strictures of economic liberalism, in which reproduction necessitates activities within the market, even the most dedicated social movement cannot survive on air alone. But note: activism through the market presumes that individuals' morality can be called upon to effect social change; activism directed toward the state seeks to change the ethics binding on all of civil society and the market.

What these two competing conceptions do not answer directly is the following question: are actors in the market, such as modern corporations, also part of civil society? The tradition of Ferguson, Smith, and Marx would say yes: the first two because it is the realm of 'freedom'; the third because it is the place where capital and the bourgeoisie control the mode of production. Hegel wrote about corporations, but not as we understand them today, since they did not exist in Hegel's time. His corporations were cities, guilds and other similar associations. Consequently, in Hegel's time 'economic actors' were either individuals or companies run by individuals. In either instance, individuals were certainly members of civil society and were, therefore, bound to act according to the ethical code of the state. By the time Gramsci wrote The Prison Notebooks, corporations had become widely recognised as legal individuals in their own right. Certainly, however, Gramsci's notion of civil society did not include such aggregations of capital nor the idea that capital might seek to propagate corporate morality through 'social responsibility'.

Colas, as indicated above, deals with this dilemma through the bifurcation of civil society. But this particular market-state confusion highlights a more fundamental tension in contemporary capitalist societies: how and why are the public (state) and the private (market) differentiated? In democratic market systems, civil society provides the foundational values and ethics that underpin the specific form of and limits on markets, and civil society's members expect the state to follow its dictates in this regard (not that this always happens). Not all elements of civil society are political; indeed, by the conventional definition (one shared by Locke and Marx, although with differing conclusions) civil society exists in some twilight zone between state and markets, engaged in activities that constitute and reproduce the fabric of everyday social life. Civil society is not considered to include the purely private realm, such as the family or the body, even though the norms of civil society as well as the laws of the state and the practices of the market all colonise and permeate the household and the bedroom.

This limited conception of civil society is a peculiarity of capitalism as well as the methodological individualism of liberal theory and practice. Within liberalism, especially as fetishised in the United States, the only legitimate political actor is the individual which is why, paradoxically, corporations are treated as legal individuals while labour and other social movements are not. As Mancur Olson deductively argued (1966), collective action ought only to occur through the aggregation of the interests of individuals who seek a return on their investment of resources and time. Olson found it difficult to explain the facts of groups and social movements that were not motivated by such self-interest, but was nonetheless forced to acknowledge their existence. What went unsaid by him, but has been of concern to others, is that such groups might exercise unwarranted and potentially corrupting power as against the rest of society's members who, unable or unwilling to act collectively, remain individuals (e.g., Huntington 1981). Consumers exercising their individual aggregated choice in markets are perfectly acceptable; citizens exercising their collective desires in politics are not.

This is why labour unions have always been regarded as problematic within liberalism: their threat to withhold property, that is, labour in the self or 'human capital' through the strike is envisioned as the theoretical equivalent of investors colluding to prevent the free flow of capital for investment and speculation. (That this parallel is patently ridiculous and incorrect hardly makes a difference on the ideological battlefield.) In liberal theory, therefore, civil society is the realm of legitimate non-political collective action, of associations that are motivated neither by economic self-interest nor a search for power but, rather, by shared pleasures and pastimes such as bowling and stamp-collecting (Putnam 2000). Political action is legitimate only when exercised through the individual vote. Because these associations pose no challenge to either the political and economic order and, in fact, reproduce it on a daily basis, their existence is not a problem for that order.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Global Activism, Global Media by Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw, Neil Stammers. Copyright © 2005 Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw and Neil Stammers. Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 074532195X
• ISBN 13: 9780745321950
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: De Jong Wilma, Shaw Martin, Stammers Neil