The World and US Social Forums (review)

The World and US Social Forums, edited by Judith Blau and Marina Karides, explores both the political significance of the World Social Forum and the United States Social Forum, and the role of scholar activists within them. Since the first WSF meeting in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the WSF has quickly become the largest international meeting of social justice activists, inspiring the spread of local and national social forums across many countries. Bringing together activists across space and movements, the social forum process has helped activists to exchange ideas, share strategies, coordinate actions and expand and strengthen their social networks. Most of the volume’s contributors are scholar-activists based in the United States, but some are from Canada, Sweden and South Africa. A few chapters were written by key activists in the social forum process, namely Chico Whitaker, who helped to found the WSF in Brazil, as well as Michael Guerrero and Jerome W. Scott, who played key roles in organizing the USSF. Like any multi-author volume, there is some unevenness in the contributions. Rather than addressing each chapter individually, we will review the book’s three major sections and then the overall volume.

Part I focuses on the USSF, which first occurred in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007 and will happen again in 2010 in Detroit, Michigan. Some chapters focus on the history and emergence of the USSF, while others explore how it fosters new kinds of politics, praxis, especially with regards to conflict and difference. A highlight of this section is Michal Osterweil’s chapter, which highlights the success associated with the USSF primarily for its diverse participation and the deeper implications of this diversity. He claims that the conflict between an indigenous speaker and the caucus organizer (when the organizer cut-off the microphone from the speaker) at the closing plenary exemplified how participants overcame differences in their “systems of values.” Osterweil argues that, although at face-value this was seen as a negative instance, it was in actuality representative of conditions that are conducive to political action among radically diverse groups. Rather than viewing diversity as a “problem to be solved,” difference and conflict were treated as a necessary and fundamental part of improving political practices. The argument was both well-formulated and strongly supported by evidence.

Part II of the book engages the debates about the function, challenges and future of the WSF. Stellan Vinthagen’s examination of the relationship between global civil society and the WSF provides a number of interesting conceptual tools. As for the relationship between the two, if civil society is a space of communicative rationality, then the WSF certainly is the most inclusive and participatory such space yet created at the global level. In this sense, then the WSF can be understood, by analogy, as a real life open-source Wikipedia: accessible and diverse, but at the same time also in possession of a protocol that is moving toward a more authentic incarnation of its ideal under direction of a self-reflexive set of protocols. It is the continued ability of the WSF to learn from its past that gives it the potential to become a truly global civil society.

Part III of the book examines the various roles played by scholar activists at social forums and how these meetings foster the development of new kinds of knowledge. Patrick Bond argues that the 21^st century anti-capitalist manifesto should reflect the excellent work already being done by social movements, whose “victories and failures” need to be studied carefully. Lyndi Hewitt discusses her shifting role within the forum as both participant and researcher of feminist workshops. Steven Sherman’s chapter reflects on how social forums are productive sites for leftist intellectuals to exchange ideas, and for activists to find academics to meet their research needs. Mark Frezzo’s and Eunice N. Sable’s chapters focus on how the WSF has promoted human rights and challenged dominant models of economic development...