Edges of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and its “Others” (Rethinking Globalizations) by Janet M. Conway

Janet Conway’s new study of the World Social Forum (WSF) critically engages questions of full participation for women, indigenous organizations, subaltern groups, and other marginalized populations in this collaborative “movement of movements” fighting for “another world” of global social justice. Conway takes a carefully anti-racist, feminist, decolonial approach to the organizing principles and methods of the WSF as they are carried out and at times contradicted by the movement’s practices, giving nicely balanced summaries of multiple debates surrounding the organization. Conway’s particular strengths are seen in her delineation of the struggles in the WSF between “the emancipatory traditions of Western modernity … liberalisms, socialisms, anarchisms, and feminisms under historically new conditions,” (2) leading to an innovative modality of the political in “a new democratic imaginary—post-liberal, postmodern, and post-marxist—[that] is taking shape” (6)