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Religious responses to globalization seem to contribute little to the overall globalization critique put forth in venues such as the World Social Forum. This essay suggests that in the struggle about globalization, religious actors are more important and religious voices more articulate than many have realized. Empirically, this analysis yields a more detailed picture of the directions that “religious rejections of globalization” take. Analytically, it sheds light on the relative significance of religion in the formation of global civil society or at least one sector thereof.

This chapter presents an analysis and interpretation of the World Social Forum (WSF) process. By its nature, its subject matter is broader and more discursive than the more specific case studies, but it also deals with the fundamental issues of solidarity, democracy, and grassroots engagement. More than any other development, the WSF process has come to embody the new democratic and participatory ideals of the broader international resistance against neoliberalism with its aspiration to provide an open and enabling space for debate about alternatives to neoliberalism.

Chapter 5 provides ethnography from the World Social Forums in Mumbai, India (2004), Nairobi, Kenya (2007), and from Belèm, Brazil (2009), and the involvement of Dalit activists in these large events. The World Social Forum has been held only once in Asia, but regional social forums have been organized in South Asia, and in 2011 a South Asia Social Forum was arranged in Dhaka, Bangladesh. During this forum it became clear that not only two contradictory worldviews were present at the forum, but also that South Asia was marginalized in the GJM and the World Social Forum process. The World Social Forum’s International Council meeting was held in connection with, and just following this regional forum in Dhaka in 2011. The World Social Forum International Council has been a controversial body, and the chapter discusses some of the debates from the meeting in Dhaka.

This chapter seeks to rescue human rights by developing an alternative epistemology of human rights associated with the phenomenon of ‘globalization from below’. This relates to the emergence of transnational networks of social movements, NGOs, and umbrella groupings such as the World Social Forum, which call into question the neoliberal paradigm and its version of human rights. A transformed rights discourse would be rooted in the politics of the global South which rejects the human rights used in the justification of colonialism and the dominance of international corporations. Rather, the emphasis is on public health over property rights and on the differences rather than universal features of human cultures. An example is the globalization of Western economic and social rights which privilege developed countries in international markets. If the Western dominant epistemology of human nature underlying the modern human rights movement is challenged, this gives us further reasons to be sceptical about current top-down methods of institutionalizing human rights.

In order to understand active citizenship and the formation of third sector organisations, one must look beneath their surface manifestations and understand their emergent nature. The vast majority of civil society networks and organisations are formed from below, emerging from the dynamic and creative turmoil that is driven by social disequilibrium and the search for new responses to contemporary issues and problems. This approach places agency at the centre of the analysis. Drawing on complexity theory, the chapter explores how emergent networks go through a period of formation, much of which will be invisible to the outsider and lack any coherent shape, only some of which will ultimately form stable organizational structures. The chapter analyses four case studies of small rural communities, which together demonstrate the basic principles of emergence. The fifth case of the World Social Forum applies the same analysis at a global level.

Chapter 2 describes the background of the GJM and the World Social Forum process. A brief overview is given of the organizational aspects and how the concept of network has been used in social movement studies to situate this study in relation to scholars writing on the GJM and the Occupy Movement. Criticism from the outside against the GJM is explored, but also coming from inside the movement. Ethical similarities and organizational differences between the GJM and the Occupy Movement are outlined and explore how activists in these two movements belong within the same broader discourse, focussing on a global economic élite. The chapter ends by relating activists in South Asia and Japan to the GJM and the Occupy Movement and demonstrates how activists in these regions have been marginalized in the movements and largely ignored in the scholarly writings.

Not all INGOs are alike, and they do not always play nicely. In fact, INGOs enjoy a diverse array of relationships with other INGOs. INGOs compete to offer specific visions of good practice for the entire INGO sector, and those visions depend on the INGO’s authority. We explore two such initiatives, both formed in 2001, the Accountability Charter (AC) and the World Social Forum (WSF). Each initiative is a mix of collaboration and condemnation, and while the AC is decidedly vanilla, neither has been particularly victorious in altering the ways the vast population of INGOs acts.

This chapter explores the strengths and limitations of community organising. It goes on to discuss how a consideration of hegemony, and Gramsci's proposal for developing organic intellectuals and building counter hegemony could help develop the effectiveness of community organising. This discussion is developed in the context of the World Social Forum. The second part of the chapter discusses the possible integration of the ideas of Paulo Freire around building his critical consciousness approach into community organising.

An awareness of the different forces of performance is vital to how one thinks about difference and the creation of something new. Current understandings of social transformation often see performative action as something created through discursive reiteration. Yet non-linguistic experiences, such as emotions, the movement of bodies and connection with others, might also generate new visions and forms of being together (Massumi 2002a). Chapter 3 takes up this line of inquiry by examining the World Social Forum.

This chapter discusses the content of the fourth congress of the Latin American Coordinator of Rural Organizations (CLOC). It reviews the decade-long process of building the organization and the struggle led by the CLOC during these years. An analysis of the strategies of the neoliberal capitalist system is provided, in order to define and coordinate lines of action and resistance. The information presented in this chapter is based on the resolutions of the fourth congress of CLOC, as well as the internal and public debates that were held in Caracas, Venezuela, in March 2006 within the framework of the World Social Forum.

Chapter 6 discusses theories about transnational feminism in South Asia generally, but more specifically it gives an overview of the history of Dalit feminism in India. The central importance of the Mumbai World Social Forum in 2004 is dealt with at length to highlight how Dalit feminists put feminism more generally at the core of the World Social Forum process. This is the chapter where the main ethnography about the local day-to-day work in between World Social Forums among activists and (I)NGO workers is to be found. It takes as its focal point the broader transnational network International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and presents three local ethnographies from within this network: first, ethnography from the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO) in Kathmandu, Nepal; second, from the office of IMADR–Asia Committee, in Colombo, Sri Lanka; and third, from among Burakumin networks in Osaka, Japan.

Far from being necessarily divisive, recognition is integral to the construction of effective global movements against injustice. I highlight three different sites at which the politics of recognition has important roles to play: within progressive movements, between progressive movements and by progressive movements on the ‘global stage’. At these different sites, I argue, recognition politics serves both integrative and performative functions. By identifying the sites at which recognition can contribute to global struggles and explaining the functions recognition serves, I add to our understanding of ‘regimes of recognition’, offer a new perspective on the nature of and prerequisites for the recognition encounter, and illuminate the importance as well as the limitations of political institutions like the World Social Forum and campaigns like the anti-War protests of 2003.