Networks, insurgencies, and prefigurative politics

Abstract

E-mail and Web pages made it possible to generate a space for global mobilization against the repression of the Zapatista indigenous rebels in the 1990s. The global justice movement that started in Seattle in 1999 extended global networks to organize action. In recent years, with the development of what has been called ‘Web 2.0’, spontaneous mass mobilizations emerged in large cities. These struggles are specific to each country and context; however, in all cases, they create shared spaces both in the physical world and in the networks, connecting the streets to the global flow of indignation. The intricate urban and digital spatiality of these insurgencies brings a demand for democracy that goes beyond national identities, through forms of protest that are more prefigurative than programmatic.

Everyday prefiguration: Youth social action in north India

“…This has been manifest in the rise of the World Social Forum (Fominaya, ), Occupy Movement (Schneider, ; Van De Sande, ), various facets of the collection of uprisings and assertions known as “the Arab Spring” in North Africa and the Middle East (see Tadros, ). It is also evident in a wide variety of other forms of political assertion during recent years, including the squatters’ movements (Vasudevan, 2015b), environmental activism (Mason, ), community garden initiatives (Guerlin & Campbell, ), community‐based recovery groups (Beckwith et al., ), alternative economies (White & Williams, ) and internet‐based political struggle (Sancho, ). The causes of the upsurge in prefigurative politics are complex but often relate to dissatisfaction with many established modes of political organising – for example, through political parties – and the rapid progress of the communications revolution of the 21st century, which has offered activists new opportunities to model and broadcast political messages.…”

Social media and Umbrella Movement: insurgent public sphere in formation

“…The Umbrella Movement shared many characteristics of social movements that have sprung up in recent years in the United States (Bennett, 2012;Castells, 2012;Juris, 2012), Egypt (Arditi, 2012;Castells, 2012;Tufekci & Wilson, 2012), Spain, Turkey, Mexico (Rovira Sancho, 2014), Guatemala (Harlow, 2012), and Chile (Valenzuela, Arriagada, & Scherman, 2012). These movements differed from the norms and rituals of conventional social movements and operated with a new "self-help" and "self-actualization" ethos.…”

“…In all these movements, SNSs exhibited an "outrage", "radical", "anti-establishment", or "insurgent" role (Arditi, 2012;Bennett, 2012;Castells, 2012;Downing, 2001;Juris, 2012;Rovira Sancho, 2014;Tufekci & Wilson, 2012).…”

“…Facebook use was found to be associated significantly with protest activities in Chile . After examining various social movements in the last two decades, Rovira Sancho (2014) concluded that with the emergence of Web 2.0, insurgencies are a networked fight for democracy that uses global visibility and freedom on the Net as a condition for its existence.…”

Prefigurative Politics between Ethical Practice and Absent Promise

“…Much of the empirically-driven work on prefigurative politics suffices with received definitions (McCowan, 2010;Mason, 2014;Howard and Pratt-Boyden, 2013;Baker, 2016), or uses the concept without much explanation at all (Young and Schwartz, 2012;Sancho, 2014). Authors who do problematise the term have, to date, abstracted from its temporal implications, asking instead e.g.…”