The Global Social Forum Rhizome: The World Social Forum as resistance relay and social movement politics in neoliberal capitalism

This study critically analyzes the social forum process through two intrinsically related dimensions. First, it places the emergence of the social forum phenomenon in the broader transformations towards neoliberal capitalism. It thus puts renewed emphasis on the often side-stepped structuring power of capitalism and class as analytic lenses for a deeper understanding of the alter-globalization movement in general and social forum process in particular. From this vantage point, movements and groups of the alter-globalization movement are not merely unconnected struggles over the particular but they are potential instantiations of struggles over class formation. Social forums are then arenas for convergences that could lead to a new 21st century class formation; a class formation keyed to neoliberal capitalism that would take on a very different form than during Fordism. Second, the study analyzes the social forum process—or what I am calling the Global Social Forum Rhizome —as a strategic instrument of the alter-globalization movement by examining them as resistance relays. I suggest that social forums\u27 unique organizational matrix has allowed for an ongoing process of \u27becoming-other-together.\u27 Social forums as relays provide the context and act as catalyst for generating linkages, mobilizations and convergences of this multi-centered movement of movements. As such, social forums can be understood as instantiations of an emerging new stage in social movement based organizing, which the study labels the Rhizomatic Left. However, the anarchist-inspired politics of social forums generate their own limits and shortcomings that this dissertation also addresses. The study stretches across various physical and virtual sites. The research relied on two main strategies: following online social forum related discussion and conducting on-site field work at social forums in addition to critically reviewing various academic literatures on social movements in general and social forums in particular