Embodied activism in networks of social movements: Relationality , interiority , and affect as hybrid social learning practices

Abstract

Grassroots-led networks of social movements are integral to a broader network of change, linking diverse initiatives through regional and transnational nodes. Beyond their organizational infrastructures, these Translocal Networks (TLNs) constitute a noospheric field of relational becoming, where collective actions, affects, and material-discursive exchanges form a connective tissue of sympoietic co-agency from. This connective sphere operates across multi-scalar and hybrid spaces—digital, embodied, and affective—enabling new forms of social learning and collective subjectivation. While network and social movement studies have explored decentralized governance and progressive and prefigurative strategies in new social movements, less attention has been given to their hybrid, liminal and intersubjective practices and territories. Emerging ontologies of interbeing, cosmologies of togetherness, and epistemologies of deep change challenge representational approaches by foregrounding the mutual constitution of human and more-than-human actors. These relational processes demand methodological research innovation capable of engaging digital narratives, embodied practices, and affective resonances as intertwined forces of transformation. In diverse TLN organizations, deep (culture) change involves shifting systems by addressing held values and worldviews and the belief that societal transformation comes from changing mindsets, perceptions, cultural practices, habits and values. In the face of increased isolationism and the fragmentation of the world, this paper argues that nowadays TLNs of social movements enact new materialist politics of vitality through practices that dissolve the human/nonhuman and mind/matter dichotomies, redefining activism as a distributed, affective, and co-constitutive process. Their hybrid repertoires of ‘inner and outer’ activism mobilize affect, embodiment, technology, and collective consciousness toward regenerative cultural practices. Thus, understanding these new social movement phenomena requires acknowledging inter-subjectivity, materiality, and discourse as co-productive forces shaping social learning, imagination, and activism. This exploratory study, grounded in critical literature review and content analysis, examines the Global Ecovillage Network and the Transition Network as TLNs case studies. Textual and visual narratives are analyzed to trace how new materialist agencies emerge through intra-actions (interior yet globally connected practices) between their digital platforms, communities, and cultural practices. Anchored in new materialism’s transdisciplinary paradigm, the study engages epistemological, ontological, and axiological dimensions that recognize matter as vibrant, relational, and active in shaping social realities. This framework extends beyond representational analysis by focusing on how material, affective, and discursive forces co-act to sustain hybrid learning and regenerative transformation in post-millennial social movements.