The Global Justice Movement: Resistance to Dominant Economic Models of Globalization

Resistance to dominant economic models of globalization has a long history that reaches back to various movements, protests and campaigns, as for example the Tupac Amaru uprising (1780–1781) or the anti-slave trade movement (which peaked between 1787 and 1807). This chapter focusses on one of the most recent incarnations, the ‘global justice movement’ (GJM). The recent mobilizations by the Indignados and the Occupy movements do not form part of this movement. These current movements entered the scene in 2011 and became prominent for their large street protests and occupations of public spaces. They are mainly directed towards their respective national governments, claiming more democracy and protesting against austerity programmes. According to Dieter Rucht in this volume ‘a social movement can be defined as a network of individuals, groups and organizations that, based on a sense of collective identity, seek to bring about social change (or resist social change) primarily by means of collective public protest’. In order to speak about a movement as an entity, there has to exist a certain degree of consensus of what activists perceived as a grievance and how problems and solutions are defined. The actors within movements also need to be related to each other, at least in the sense that they consider their struggles as related. Similarities in action forms and internal practices also have to exist in a meaningful way in order for observers to be able to talk about movements. These criteria are also important when we decide whether to consider a movement as a new movement or as a continuity of an existing movement. Although some claims and practices are very similar to the GJM’s, the organizational structure of the current protests differs and the international ties of the GJM are hardly used by these new movements. As the current mobilizations have a lot in common with the global justice movement and as there already exists some comparative research on these movements that reveals the continuities between the GJM and the current mobilizations, this chapter will occasionally highlight connections and similarities as well as differences and discontinuities between these movements.


Britta Baumgarten CIES Lisbon
Resistance to dominant economic models of globalisation has a long history that reaches back to various movements, protests and campaigns, as for example the Tupac Amaro uprising (1780/81) or the anti-slave trade movement (which peaked between 1787 and 1807. 1 This chapter focuses on one of the most recent incarnations, the "global justice movement" (GJM). The recent mobilisations by the Indignados and the Occupy movements do not form part of this movement . These current movements entered the scene in 2011 and became prominent for their large street protests and occupations of public spaces are mainly directed towards their respective national governments, claiming for democracy and against austerity programmes. According to Dieter Rucht in this volume "a social movement can be defined as a network of individuals, groups and organizations that, based on a sense of collective identity, seek to bring about social change (or resist social change) primarily by means of collective public protest." 2 In order to speak about a movement as an entity, there has to exist a certain degree of consensus of what activists perceived as a grievance and how problems and solutions are defined. The actors within a movements also need to be related to each other, at least in the sense that they consider their struggles as related. Similarities in action forms and internal practices also have to exist in a meaningful way in order for observers to be able to talk about movements. These criteria are also important when we decide whether to consider a movement as a new movement or as a continuity of an existing movement. Although some claims and practices are very similar to the GJM's, the organizational structure of the current protests differs and there are the international ties of the GJM are almost not used at all by these new movements. As the current mobilisations have a lot in common with the global justice movement and as there already exists some comparative research on these movements that reveals the continuities between the GJM and the current mobilisations, 3 this chapter will occasionally highlight connections, similarities, as well as also differences and discontinuities between these movements.
It is not easy to define the global justice movement: its diversity and its global scope resist any straightforward classification. Researchers discuss whether the label of what I call here "global justice movement" is appropriate. In the literature we find also find the terms "no-global movement", "antiglobalisation movement", "alter-globalisation movement", or "alternative globalisation movement", "movement for a globalisation from below". These terms are contested because there is disagreement about the main objectives of the movement. These have been described as "anticapitalist", "anti-corporate", or "anti-globalisation" 4 . In light of the great diversity of actors and aims 2 some authors speak about global justice movements in the plural. 5 The great variety of labels illustrates the difficulties of social science research to classify the GJM. 6 In face of the same difficulty the labels for the actual mobilizations are labelled in broad terms, such "Indignados" (referring to Stéphane Hessels essay "Indignez-vous", 7 "Occupy" referring to action forms, or "Arab Spring" referring to regions. It is also important to bear in mind that he activists themselves label their events in a all-encompassing way. For example, 15M was chosen as a name for the occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid referring only to the date of the event (15 May 2011), similarly the worldwide protests 15O (15 October 2011). 8 A major slogan of the GJM is "unity in diversity", which indicates a common identity and the valuation of internal differences within the movement. The GJM consists of various actors around the globe, including NGOs, grassroots organisations, political parties and individuals. During its time of existence it launched different campaigns from debt relief over the Tobin tax to environmental issues. The description "movement of movements" 9 fits the GJM well, because many movements like ecological, women's or indigenous movements played an important role in the GJM. Indeed, many activist groups that played a role in other social movements presented in this volume have also been part of the GJM, although the main part of their activities have not been related to it. The global justice movement developed out of a great variety of earlier movements and shares most of their claims and values. Breno Bringel has developed five characteristics for the GMJ, apart from its diversity: 1) the spectacular character of many of its action forms, 2) its use of internet based communication technologies, 3) its horizontal structure of decision making that goes along with a decentralized network-like structure, 4) the principle of "think global act local" and 5) the movement´s radical claims against the prevailing socio-economic models. It unites various sectors of the political and social Left and uses the prominent slogan "Another World is Possible" to confront Margaret Thatcher´s often repeated "There is No Alternative". 10 What is new about the movement since the 1990s is a more dense co-operation and the orientation of events towards the large international meetings of the political and economical elite. The movement became publicly visible in counter protests and the Social Forum Process: events around which the international cooperation within the movement is structured. "Many of the most visible civil society gatherings have been explicitly, and often antagonistically, related to events of the global elite". 11 The Social Forum Process consists of various large international meetings of activists that meet to debate alternatives to the current economic and political system, to network and to jointly protest against this system. An important question of definition that has an impact on the functioning of the Social Forum Process remains unresolved, however: "is it an event or a movement?". 12 In what follows I will describe the GJM in more detail, taking into consideration the driving forces for this kind of activism and the key conflicts. Moreover, I outline the actors, their action forms, debates and framings. The main movement events will be described from a chronological and from a geographical perspective.

The Development of the GJM in Different Phases
There is no consensus about when the global justice movement actually began: "Many say that it started in Seattle. Others maintain that it began five hundred years ago, when colonialists first told indigenous peoples that they were going to have to do things differently if they were to 'develop' or be eligible for 'trade'. Others argue that the movement began on 1 January 1994 when the Zapatistas launched their uprising with the words "Ya basta!" on the nights NAFTA [North American Free Trade Association] became law in Mexico. It all depends on whom you ask ". 13 Resistance against economic globalisation, however, goes back several centuries. 14 For example, Zahara Heckscher mentions the cases of the Tupac Amaro uprising (1780/81), the anti-slave trade movement (which peaked between 1787 and 1807), the campaign against the colonisation of the Congo, the First International Workingmen's Association (founded 1866) and the anti-imperialist movement. 15 These examples are connected to today's GJM, but they were not part of the movement. They were single-issue campaigns and movements. And although we can find organisation and protest with a global perspective, the degree of globalisation was far lower than in today's movements.
According to Elizabeth Smythe, the establishment of free trade agreements across the Americas and Asia were a starting point for the movement to become global. For example, in 1985 Canada and the USA signed a free trade agreement, followed by a trilateral free trade agreement with Mexico in 1991. 16 The counter-summit protests started around the same time as protests "outside the closed doors of inter-governmental decision making on global issues". 17 In this first phase activists struggled for access to intergovernmental organisations. 18 The activism of the 1990s was closely connected to hope that various UN would help to solve the global problems that the movements sought to address. Examples include the UN conferences on environment and development in 1992, on human rights in 1993, on population in 1994, on social development in 1995, and on housing in 1997. In this period, the movements argued for the strengthening multilateral agreements and of regulatory mechanisms; they aimed to expand attention to social concerns, to establish information regimes and to defend, and to expand access into global arenas. 19 In these years early anti-free trade networks became active, which are important for the later WSF process. There were e.g. the European farmer`s association, the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) or the International Forum on Globalization (IGFG) 1993. 20 These 4 early anti-free trade networks held international meetings long before the first World Social Forum, e.g. the meeting to form the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) in 1994, the 1996 Zapatistas' "meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism", and meetings following their example in Spain (1997) and in Brazil (1999). 21 People's Global Action (PGA), a network to facilitate organising across borders, grew out of a 1998 meeting in Geneva of over 400 representatives of grassroots organizations and NGOs from 71 countries". 22 The contemporary activist practices in the global north, as part of the AGM, in some respects, emanated from the Zapatistas in the global south, a movement that became publicly visible in January 1994 when NAFTA took effect. 23 In these period also falls the WB/IMF fiftieth anniversary party that gave rise to campaign Fifty Years is Enough. 24 The movement's milestones have been the G8, IMF, and WTO summits. The GJM attended (and disrupted or influenced to differing degrees) the summits in Birmingham in 1998, in Seattle in 1999, in Prague in 2000, in Genoa in 2001. Each of these events was accompanied by a panoply of fringe events and protests. 25 Table 1 shows an overview over the biggest events related to the GJM (events with more than 50 000 participants are marked grey, those with more than 100 000 are marked in a darker grey) : The counter summit protests are the starting point of a new phase of activism of the GJM. These massive protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle 1999 were the most outstanding event in terms of media attention and impact on further global meetings. 27 After Seattle, the world summits were organised in more remote places. In contrast to these increasingly secretive meetings that were protected from any large-scale protests, the WSF process was initiated as an alternative, participative way of joint debate about solutions. It aimed at creating alternatives to formal politics, changing values of the predominant sociopolitical order, and wanted to provide alternative venues for global problem solving. 28 The Jubilee 2000 campaign was a major campaign run during these years in order to campaign for debt relief. 29 In 2001, the 'Social Forum Process' began in Porto Alegre. In opposition to world Economic Forum Alegre. There were around 20 000 participants from 100 countries, amongst them also 436 members of parliament. The number of participants grew rapidly to 150 000 participants at the World Social Forum the following year, which was organised by more or less the same actors. 30 33 After the first World Social Forum, national forums rapidly spread especially in the South. 34 The most recent phase of the movement so far is characterised by a focus on work at the local level and enhanced coordination via internet, including various blogs and sites dedicated to counter information, for example the Indymedia pages that were broadly used as a way of information independent from the mainstream media. The increasing commercialization, the establishment and bureaucratization of the Social Forums lead to the creation of counter forums that were run parallel to the forums and served as a space for the more radical groups. 35 There is disagreement among scholars about how to evaluate the current state of the global justice movement. On the one hand, scholars such as Breno Bringel argue that the GJM has died as a unitary actor but nonetheless enjoys good health; it merely no longer has the basic characteristics that it had at the beginning. Identities have become more diverse, and not many activists today no longer define themselves as part of the GJM. Its ideas and practices, however, continue to be relevant, such as the global-local connection of transnational collective action and a broad repertoire of action that has been developed by the movement over the past decades. 36 The global-local connection has also gained new prominence: "activists want to change the world starting locally with their neighborhood assemblies". 37 Scholars such as Dieter Rucht, on the other hand, do not regard the GJM as dead. On the contrary, he mentions factors that have contributed to strengthening the movement: the growing relevance of transnational problems, the vast potential of movements in the global south, the availability of the internet as a tool for co-ordination and communication, and the past processes of learning from mistakes and negative experiences. 38 The GJM has lost some of its force during the last five years for several reasons. It is difficult to sustain a movement in the high intensity the GJM had between 1999 and 2006. 39 Global summits involve a substantial amount of personal and material resources and are therefore hard to sustain by actors that are usually not well endowed with such resources. Every day practices at the local level are also not without limits, however. They are less resource intensive, but "most of the time, they have scarcely any impact on public debate". 40 Especially in the United States the developments after 9/11 hampered activists. 41

The GJM's Critique of Globalisation
In spite of its diversity, the GJM has common aims and opponents. According to Ulrich Brand neoliberal globalisation is the defining context for the GJM: "a competitive strategy to restore economic growth and strengthen the power of capital on the local, national and international levels". 45  the key drivers of global neoliberal policies". 57 But it was not only the international economic summits that gave force to the GJM. Further the failure of the UN summits and the loose of confidence in NGOs to resolve the problem of growing worldwide inequality, called for alternative approaches. 58 With regard to organizational infrastructure and international cooperation it is important to note that the NGO sector grew very much. NGOs were "increasingly funded by international organizations, such as private foundations, the United Nations and the World Bank". 59 9 The development of infrastructure including offices and resources for travel, supported the rise of long-term cooperation at the international level. Since the mid-nineties cooperation became once more easier through the rise of internet-based communication.
The In this issue it is very close to the demands of the current movement in Spain that also connects various issues under the main claim for democracy from below. Besides the Social Forums that usually embrace a broad collection of issues, there have been several thematic forums, e.g. on education, health, democracy and human rights. 64 Social movements "frame, or assign meaning to and interpret events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists". 65 In terms of diagnostic framing, neoliberalism by the GJM is defined as the main cause of various grievances. The GJM argue that the "dominant form of economic globalization is not inevitable. But Guigni et al. 2006 argue that neoliberalism for many of the groups within the GJM is not enough to mobilise. They "suggest 'mid-range' or intermediate-level frames that link the struggle against neoliberalism to more specific issues and claims and which allow for the mobilization of many different kinds of networks. 66 Moreover, many of the groups protesting are not generally against capitalism. They aim at reducing "some of the perceived harmful effects of policies and practices by global political institutions and corporations". 67 Economic globalization is framed as a force that leads to a "race to the bottom" with regard to labour standards, provision of welfare or ecological issues, to name but a few concerns. Further global economy is accused to undermine democratic institutions. 68 The rejection of global neoliberalism, however, does not mean a rejection of globalization. According to Mario Pianta and his colleagues most actors in the GJM favour alternative forms of "globalisation from below" or "humanised globalisation", placing civil society and human beings centre stage. Only four per cent call themselves "anti-globalisation". 69 Finding solutions to the problems caused by neoliberalism is more complicated. A large part of the movement favours "transformation instead of revolution". 70 One partial solution practised is to defend established rights. This, however, is not enough. "Parallel to the struggle against neoliberalism, the GJM calls for greater participation of citizens in decision-making processes and arenas, both at the local and global level. 71 The movement claims "more people-centered than market-centered forms of global governance" and deglobalization. 72 This concept of deglobalization involves: "reducing dependence on foreign investment, redistribution of income and land, deemphasizing growth and maximising, abandoning market governance, constant monitoring of state and market by civil society, reorient production towards away from remote goods". 73 74 Local grievances and local resistance are always connected to economic neoliberal policies and to global processes. 75 Comparing the GJM to other movements, we see that the values and issues of the GJM do not differ fundamentally from those of the wave of contention that has preceded it, namely those of the new social movements. 76 They for example all claim for equality, democracy from below, or an alternative ecologically sound way of living. With regard to the claim for more participatory democracy, the Indignados 77 and Occupy movements also employ new forms of participatory decision-making and techniques of deliberative democracy. 78

Forms of Protest
GJM activists' framing of the issues at stake also has implications for the forms of protest they have adopted. The GJM is characterised by two large forms of protest events: "mass demonstrations and protest activities addressed against major international governmental or private institutions or 11 organizations on the one hand, and social forums on the other". 79 Both of these most visible forms of the GJMs were mainly organised in the shape of large counter-summits, at least timely related to global summits, but often organised nearby the places of the summits. 80 Pianta's study about global civil society events included the share of such events in 2003 and 2004: 30 per cent of all events were social forums, 26 per cent were parallel summits with regional conferences (European Union, American, or Asian government meetings), 21 per cent were meetings organised independently from official summits, 9 per cent were parallel events to UN conferences, and 7 per cent each were counter protests to IMF, World Bank or WTO meetings and to G8 summits. 81 About 50% of protest events take place around such meetings. Taking into consideration the novelty and impact of these meetings, Rucht has therefore argued that "the World Social Forum Generally, however, the number of organisations working together has more manageable size, below 24 in a quarter of cases, between 25 and 49 in 30 per cent of cases, between 50 and 199 in 23 per cent of cases". 95 Within the GJM are many different types of actors e.g. non-governmental organizations, anarchist groups, environmental groups, actor networks, like PGA, autonomists, indigenous movements, Socialist, anti-corporate and anti-war groups. 96 These actors vary not only in terms of their political orientation, preferred action forms, or access to resources and alliances; they also can also be distinguished by the nature of their organizational structures has often grown over years. We can distinguish two main types of organisational structure, the horizontal and vertical. 97  belonged to a political party, 36.6% were tied to unions, 52,7 to social movements, and 41.5% to NGOs. 100 Apart from the large visible forums and protest events, there are various important, albeit less visible, groups working at the local level all over the world. Geoffrey Pleyers subsumes this main organisational principle of the GJM as follows: "Activists want to change the world starting locally with their neighborhood assemblies". 101 Alternative solutions are practised in these small scale groups and projects. This principle is repeated within the actual assemblies, such as when the Spanish 15M that after the central occupation of Puerta del Sol spread to the "Bairros". 102 Looking at the organizational structure of the movements we find a lot of continuities, e.g. an "overlap between the WSF International Council and Our World network, the network that first protested against WTO". 103 According to Hayduk many activists OWS come "directly out of the Anti-Globalization movement". 104 The 15M in Spain is connected to the Spanish anarchist movements. My own observations in Portugal, by contrast, show very little connection of the current anti-austerity movements to the GJM, especially to the Social Forum processes. Although transnational co-operation was regarded as important, almost all movements during their first year of existence did not have institutionalised transnational ties. Exchange of ideas was mainly done via personal contacts, Erasmus students and with well known groups via the Internet. In my study about Portugal I did not find the use of earlier ties from the GJMs. 105 The recent Spanish 15M movement also involved a large number of people without experience in civil society groups and organizations. Further many of the groups involved in organising are new. 106  process with regard to the themes the protests should address. These processes have led to more cooperation and networking before the Forum. By decentralising, the movement is following the idea of the Zapatistas to "resist wherever you are". 115 Decentralisation was also initiated by the organisers of the forums who aimed at a broader participation, especially of those people who cannot effort to travel long distances. 116 To make participation for those people easier who are not used to international events, furthermore the language question became important. Already in 2005 WSF there were 16 official languages and 533 official interpreters. 117 The tension between "the global" and "the local", as Tejerina puts it, is not only a tension within the GJM but also in the actual movements, although these are not so globalized yet. 118 According to Tejerina: "the alter-global movement has opted for pursuing "glocal" actions. As a consequence, it has been in permanent oscillation between the fixed (here and now) and the mobile (there and before-after). This option has defined the alter-global movement and given it specificity when compared to previous processes of mobilization. Many 15M militants, particularly the youngest ones, have shown a global or "international vocation"; they are aware of the importance of raising support in other countries". 119

Impact and outcomes
Outcomes of social movements are difficult to measure. They do not only include political impact, but also e.g. long-term cultural shifts and movement internal developments. In general outcomes develop in complex processes and thus often cannot be attributed to a single movement or campaign. Compared to other movements of this volume, the GJM is still quite young. Its impact and outcomes are already in evidence, however. The first phase of the GJM in particular contributed to the strengthening of multilateral institutions and to the democratization of the global politics. 120 "The extraordinary success of the WSF lies in the fact that it emerged from an extensive history of transnational activism that had built a foundation of network ties capable of spreading the word about the initiative and of providing resources and motivation for participants". 121 On the discursive level there is an important impact of various campaigns of the movement visible: "growing numbers of public officials are echoing claims of social movement actors to demand efforts to strengthen democracy". In recent years the current system is criticized even from important spokespersons "who were once (and may still be) sympathetic to the neoliberal agenda". 122 The GJM was not only successful in changing discourses but also left its imprint on politics. "The GJM are, and have been, able to politicize certain aspects of capitalist globalization, but by and large they have been unable to intervene in those power relations. The power of capital and its allies in the political system, science and the media still seems too strong for the broader societal alternatives to be born". 123  At a fundamental level, the GJM also contributed to the democratisation of society: not only by its demands but moreover by its own practices of organization and meetings. 127 Especially the Social Forums helped to spread of the model of participatory budget assemblies which was already practiced in Porto Alegre before the World Social Forum. In terms of internal outcomes the movement has developed practices if decision making and participation. Bonds between various types of activists groups all over the world were strengthened. The GJM has developed an infrastructure as a "node of information, communication, and organization of different kinds of movements acting on different levels". 128 It remains a question for further research, however, to what extent this infrastructure serves the actual movements. A lack of international contacts in the first phase of the actual movements in some countries rather suggests that these could not easily be taken up. Between the actors of the GJM, however, there are many long term and often institutionalized contacts, that e.g. resulted in joint campaigns and international NGOs and associations.

Conclusion
This chapter has shown that the GJM is extremely difficult to conceptualise. Due to its great diversity, many boundaries that define a social movement are blurred. Its inner coherence can also not be easily to discovered. The movement includes actors that are not usually part of social movements, such as party politicians and state actors at the Social Forums. Furthermore, as the movement is made of a conjuncture of earlier movements, it is a question of definition to identify the beginning of the movement. While the counter protests belong to the classical repertoire of social movements, Social Forums are described as "autonomous gathering". 129 This issue gives rise to the question whether a Social Forum can still meaningfully analysed under the rubric of 'social movements'. I regard the Social Forums as events organised by a social movement. There is, however, no consensus in the literature as to whether to regard the WSF as an arena or as an actor. 130 In practice, this problem is connected to the question whether the Social Forum should communicate a position on political issues, or whether it should just be a meeting place where diverse opinions are debated.
Despite its great diversity of actors and aims, this chapter has shown how the GJM can be conceptualised as one movement. There is a feeling of belonging to this global movement amongst its actors. Joint events and campaigns are important to keep the co-operation between actors alive, but the movement has also developed an infrastructure of cooperation that includes not only informal contacts, but also long-term cooperation and global networks of the GJM actors. movement also is much more embedded into its national context.
In terms of issues and their framing, the GJM is closely related to the Indignados and the Occupy movement. The GJM and these movements, however, are not connected by a common identity, and the key actors are for the most part not the same. These new movements profited to some extent from the experiences of the GJM. The practices of deliberation, open meetings, the ideas of unity in diversity and to "walk slowly because it is a long way to go" were taken over from the GJM. Some groups of the GJM played an important role, especially in the US Occupy movement and in Spain. The current movements, however, did not so much profit from established transnational contacts.
Cooperation at the transnational level is still in its beginning and mainly restricted to joint days of action, exchanging information via Facebook and mailing lists, personal contacts and some instances of inviting speakers from abroad. 131 The detailed analysis of the GJM's impact of on these contemporary movements, their similarities and differences remains a question for future research.

Commented Bibliography
Broad