Nätverkspolitik. Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003-2005

AbstractPh.D Dissertation at Göteborg University, Sweden, 2008Title: Nätverkspolitik. Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003 2005.Title: Network Politics. Organizing, openness and control in Gothenburg Social Forumprocess 2003 2005.Author: Niklas HanssonLanguage: Swedish, with an English SummaryDepartment: Department of Ethnology, Göteborg University, Box 200, SE-405 30 GöteborgThe purpose of the thesis is to analyze the production of network politics, using the Gothenburg Social Forumprocess as an example. Concepts collected from theories of social movements; the resource mobilization theory and the new social movements-theory, are brought together within the conceptual framework of assemblage theory. Assemblage theory is a theory of society reconstructed by distinguished philosopher Manuel DeLanda s from out of late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze s concept of assemblage, a concept describing social entities as the non-stable result of historical processes. The analysis highlights the internal dynamics of network politics, with a focus on process before stable product, putting an extra effort into explaining everyday political organizing as something highly un-predictable, as organized outcomes (network organization) cannot start with a notion of networks as a collective or community acting in unison. The study rests on solid ethnological and ethnographic ground, and is based on a long-term participant observation within the local Gothenburg Social Forumprocess, e-mailing list material, interviews with social forum-organizers, websites, and alternative media press. The empirical focus of the study is mainly on the period 2003 2005. Throughout the empirical chapters the local social forumprocess is analyzed via its links to other levels within the World Social Forumprocess. The World Social Forumprocess is described as a self-organizing system with constantly interacting local, regional, national, and global levels, and as an emerging network of social forum-organizations interacting via feedback processes resonating through the system. The empirical chapters highlights different parts of the production of network politics and the local social forumprocess: diffusion of the forum-model as a successful organizing format within the global justice movement, decision-making and consensus building, ground rules for interaction between political organizations, forum-organizers, individual activists and groups, the role of the Internet within network politics, selection of social categories as temporary points of convergence between different political actors (organizations), the method called merger process which reflects the forum-organization as a broker-device between organizations, power-relations within network politics, and finally, a résumé-like chapter presenting glimpses from within a local social forum-event. In the conclusion I state how the social forums could be examined as political meeting-places within a leaderless social movement .Keywords: social forum, networks, assemblage, territorialization, coding, social movement