On Samir Amin’s call for a Fifth International

ABSTRACT

In his prodigious output, from works on capitalist development to analyses of Islamist movements to involvement in the World Social Forum, Samir Amin’s was a consistent voice for struggle against capitalism’s domination of the world and its peoples. In this brief essay I address his call for a shift from movement to organization, indeed, toward a kind of Fifth International and explain why I endorse it.     

Introduction: social movements and forums in times of authoritarian capitalism

ABSTRACT

On all continents the enormity of the violence and danger of the times gives rise to multiple new practices of struggle and to conceptual innovations, which seek to serve justice, solidarity, and dignity for all. We explore the possibilities and different worlds intended in the main slogan of the World Social Forum ‘Another world is possible’. During its early years the World Social Forum was characterized by a fair amount of optimism. We know now that most of the high hopes of the movements have not been adequately materialized. The rise of authoritarian leaders and the nexus between capitalism and populism emerging in different parts of the world has created a new context for the attempts to create democratic futures. This collection presents and interrogates a variety of diagnoses of the present and of new strategies for transformative change that are emerging out of the forum process.     

World Social Forum – possible perspectives

ABSTRACT

In the first part of this essay, I reflect on the divergences of opinion that have always existed in the process of the World Social Forum. This first part was written before the elections in Brazil last autumn. Since then Jair Bolsonaro has been installed as president of Brazil and the divergences I discuss in that first part have cooled down, at least in Brazil. Nevertheless, it remains important to record those divergences when we try to take further our debate about the future of the WSF process, as I do here as well, in the second part of my essay.     

Reflecting the Nepali Social Forum processes and 2018 event

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on one experiment that grounds the politics of World Social Forum in national and regional struggles. Nepal has now built a dynamic but fragile democratic process after a decade long Maoist insurgency that led to political transformation including secularism, republicanism, etc. The analysis is particularly relevant for political movements seeking ways forward in a political situation marked by sectarian struggles but also by the need to bring unity in the struggle against externally induced forces of oppression and exploitation.     

Complexity,technology and the future of transformative politics

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the ‘open space’ idea remains the key source of strength for the World Social Forum as a tool for transformative, liberatory politics. We suggest that this space can be seen as inhabited by two political identities formed on the basis of what we call the conventional left narrative on the one hand and the civilizational narrative on the other. We propose that WSF can continue to fulfil its mission well by serving as a forum where political and social activists and intellectuals can meet and learn from each other to overcome their current weaknesses. Key to such overcoming, we suggest, is that technology and complexity are politicized – a task which may be difficult but the avoidance of which may be irresponsible.     

Rethinking Samir Amin’s legacy and the case for a political organization of the global justice movement

ABSTRACT

A case is made here for the desirability and viability of the late Samir Amin’s call for a new International. However, the project to forge a political organization of the global justice movement must in the first instance draw lessons from the limitations of the recent network structure of new social movements, notably the World Social Forum, and rectify the failures of the old internationals of left-wing cadres. The actualization of such a radical idea also needs to observe the realpolitik of class formation and class struggle under conditions of the imperialistic globalization of capitalism today. Envisioned as a plural and participatory learning organization, the new International’s progression should be evolutionary and its strategic engagements have to balance the imperatives of political realism with the ideals of democratic values.     

“Let Us Continue Free as the Air”: Truthfully Reconciling Social Work Education to Indigenous Lands

ABSTRACT

Social work is being challenged to situate its theories and practice within the lands it finds itself on in North America. This article considers the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls for change from the perspective of how social workers are educated in relation to land, from Indigenous views on its colonial conversions to the land’s role in healing. The discussion is grounded in a course I teach on Reconciliation and Indigenous-Social Work Relations on the Haudenosaunee lands of the Grand River in Ontario. Social work students consider their vocation in relation to a truth-telling process that is a first step for reconciling with Indigenous nations and land. The article concludes with general implications for social work educators.     

The rational kernel within Samir Amin’s mythological shell: the idea of a democratic and pluralist world political party

ABSTRACT

Amin’s Leninist-Maoist vision is unlikely to be persuasive to twenty-first century citizens. Nonetheless, there is a rational kernel in Amin’s call for a new worldwide political organization. Some structures, mechanisms and tendencies of the capitalist world economy are relatively enduring and some patterns recurrent, although the world economy is also fluid, constantly changing and evolving. Although waves of globalization have radically transformed human societies and their economic activities during the past 500 years also in many positive ways, the expansion of the international society and world economy has often been characterized by violence, imperial subjection and colonial expropriation and exclusion. There is a rational kernel also within Amin’s analysis of the current world-political situation. Command over space and time by investors and megacorporations is power. Emancipation aims at freedom from domination. The decline of the World Social Forum indicates that progressive politics must move ‘beyond the concept of a discussion forum’. My argument is that emancipation from unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted sources of determination requires global transformative agency and planetary visions about alternatives.     

Social Justice as Concept and Practice in Australian Social Work: An Analysis of Norma Parker Addresses, 1969–2008

Abstract

Social justice is central to Australian social work. Principles of social justice underpin the definition of social work as a profession, its code of ethics, and its standards of practice and education. However, there is a dearth of empirical research regarding what social justice has meant to social work over time and how it has been enacted in practice, topical as social inequalities continue to escalate. As a first-stage study, this paper examines how social justice was represented within 19 Norma Parker Addresses delivered by Presidents of the Australian Association of Social Workers at national conferences between 1969 and 2008. Two key themes were evident: social justice as a concept and social justice as social work practice. Social justice was represented conceptually throughout the Addresses as an enduring guiding principle and moral responsibility for social work. How social justice was enacted in practice included themes of: standpoint; practices and strategies; educating social workers; and contested and constrained practice. The meanings and practices of social justice were embedded within the changing contexts within which the Addresses were delivered. Further historical studies can inform social work knowledge, practice, and critical reflection as the profession continues to evolve and confront persistent social justice challenges.     

Civil Society on Global Governance: Facing Up to Divergent Analysis, Strategy, and Tactics

This paper considers three different conceptualizations – three politico-ideological perspectives within civil society – on global-scale economics and geopolitics. The standpoints can be termed “Global justice movements,” “Third World nationalism,” and the “Post-Washington Consensus.” These three perspectives stand in contrast to the fusion of neoliberal economics and neoconservative politics that dominates the contemporary world. The three approaches sometimes converge, but more often than not they are in conflict; as are the civil society institutions that cohere to the three different political ideologies. From the three different analyses flow different strategies, concrete campaigning tactics, and varying choices of allies. The World Social Forum provides hints of a potentially unifying approach within the global justice movements based upon the practical themes of “decommodification” and “deglobalization” (of capital). It is, however, only by facing up to the ideological divergences that the global justice movement can enhance its presence.

The World Social Forum and the challenges of global democracy

Abstract Protests against economic globalization helped give birth to the World Social Forum (WSF) as a space for civil society groups to coordinate actions and articulate shared visions for global change. Since 2001 the WSF has brought together hundreds of thousands of activists from all parts of the world. But creating an inclusive political space that is also effective at generating unified action has proved challenging. In this article I explore the central tensions in the 2004 WSF and explore the possibilities for the Forum to overcome these obstacles and expand global democracy.     

Parting words: Trauma,silence and survival

Abstract

This article examines an enigma at the heart of Freud's work on trauma: the surprising emergence, from within the theory of the death drive, of the drive to life, a form of survival that both witnesses and turns away from the trauma in which it originates. I analyse in particular the striking juxtaposition, in Freud's founding work Beyond the Pleasure Principle, of his two primary examples of trauma: the repetitive nightmares of battle suffered by the soldiers of World War I, and the game of the child, faced with the loss of its mother, who plays fort and da (there and here) with his spool. My own understanding of Freud's insight did not emerge, however, simply through a reading of his text but began, in fact, in my encounter with a real child in Atlanta, a child whose best friend was murdered in the street and who is interviewed by the friend's mother. I thus read together the language of the nightmare and the language of the child in Freud's text, and then attempt to understand how Freud's text and the language of the real child shed light upon each other.     

Communicating across,within and between,cultures: Toward inclusion and social change

In this article, I provide some reflections on the theme of this special issue and the recent World Public Relations Forum, “Communication across cultures”. In doing so, I was initially tempted to respond with a “how to”, but instead asked myself a fundamental question: “Who is communicating with whom, and why? ” The reason I pose this question is because we need to take stock of our assumptions and the perspectives we take as communication scholars and practitioners. As we face the new opportunities and challenges of global, highly mobile, and increasingly diverse and digitally savvy publics, we also need to clarify some of our assumptions. To expound on this, I will touch on the global, mobile and multicultural context; then discuss how inclusion must be combined with a focus on diversity, and conclude with a call for practitioners communicating across, within and between cultures to advocate for social change.     

The World Social Forum: Another World Might Be Possible

First, I briefly examine the genesis of debate to define the World Social Forum (WSF) as a contributor to the global justice movement (GJM), since its emergence in Brazil in 2001. I then consider Geoffrey Pleyers' argument identifying a central tension within the WSF, and the GJM in general, between actors seeking to achieve non-domination by expressing anti-power subjectivity and those for whom the path to non-domination lay in strategising and designing counter-powers. Describing what transpired at WSF Dakar 2011and debates since, I question Pleyers' classificatory schema as leading to an unhelpful essentialism. That is, identifying a ‘two paths’ ideal-type and setting out to locate it in the world serves to legitimise one ‘tendency’ of progressive social movements. By contrast with Pleyers' evenly balanced approach—treating of each ‘path’ as possessing the same positive and negative qualities, rather than as qualitatively different moments in the practice of opposing domination—I find that what he calls ‘the path of subjectivity’ might rather be understood as the product of a certain lack of appreciation of the nature of the demands that opposing political tyranny places upon particpants in an organisation or movement.     

Forging a diagonal instrument for the global left: the vessel

ABSTRACT

This article takes up Samir Amin’s challenge to rethink the issue of global political organization by proposing the building of a diagonal political organization for the Global Left that would link local, national and world regional and global networks and prefigurational communities to coordinate contention for power in the world-system during the next few decades of the 21st century. The World Social Forum (WSF) process needs to be reinvented for the current period of rising neo-fascist and populist reactionary nationalism and to foster the emergence of a capable instrument that can confront and contend with the global power structure of world capitalism and aid local and national struggles. This will involve overcoming the fragmentation of progressive movements that have been an outcome of the rise of possessive individualism, the precariat, and social media. We propose a holistic approach to organizing a vessel for the global left based on struggles for climate justice, human rights, anti-racism, queer rights, feminism, sharing networks, peace alliances, taking back the city, progressive nationalism and confronting and defeating neo-fascism and new forms of conservative populism.     

Representation Beyond the State: Towards Transnational Democratic Non-state Politics

The crises of representative democracy and of state-based politics have been declared many times and ‘participation’ is often advocated as a remedy for the shortcomings of both. While the literature has extensively discussed representative practices in relation to territorial states, we argue in this article that more attention should be paid to the question of representation within transnational social movements striving for a politics that transcends current territorially bounded representative democracy. Analysing the World Social Forum and West African participatory trade policy-making, we find that as transnational social movements aiming at democratic goals deepen their interactions, they can face demanding questions such as: who or what has a right to be made present in a given political process and how is this established? We claim that avoiding the question of representation in transnational non-state-centred politics leaves power too many places to hide.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books review in this article: Emile Durkheim by Robert Bierstedt Ideology and Crime: A Study of Crime in its Social and Historical Context by Leon Radzinowicz Crime and its Correction: An International Survey of Attitudes and Practices by John P. Conrad The Delinquent Solution by D. M. Dowries Comparative Criminology, A Text Book by H. Mannheim Borstal Reassessed by Roger Hood Theories of Primitive Religion by E. E. Evans-Pritchard The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology edited by Michael Banton Political Systems and the Distribution of Power edited by Michael Banton Urbanisation and Migration in West Africa edited by Hilda Kuper Mental Health in a Changing World. Volume I of a Report of an International Study Group convened by the World Federation for Mental Health. Edited by Kenneth Soddy and Robert H. Ahrenfeldt Professional Employees by Kenneth Prandy The Elite in the Welfare State by Piet Thoenes, edited by J. A. Banks The Hidden Society by Vilhelm Aubert Social Sciences at Harvard, 1860-1920; from Inculcation to the Open Mind edited, with a preface, by Paul Buck The Protestant Establishment by E. Digby Baltzell     

Teaching Note—Student-Produced Public Service Announcements: A Project to Promote Active Learning in an Undergraduate HBSE Class

ABSTRACT

Student-produced videos are assignments that can increase students’ understanding of course content. This teaching note describes how an undergraduate Human Behavior in the Social Environment I course used student-produced public service announcement videos to develop an understanding of the different life stages in humans. The advantages and disadvantages of such a project are described.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Dealing with the Debt Crisis. Edited by I. Hussain and I. Diwan The IMF, the World Bank and the African Debt. Edited by B. Onimode The Economic Impact The Social and Political Impact Political Dimensions of the International Debt Crisis. Edited by B. K. Campbell Structural Adjustment in Africa. Edited by B. K. Campbell and J. Loxley The Hour of the Fox. Tropical Forests, the World Bank and Indigenous People in Central India. By Robert S. Anderson and Walter Huber     

Studying Another Culture through Children’s Games

Abstract

Laurel Holliday, ed. Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries. New York: Pocket Books, 409 pp. Hardback, $20.00. ISBN 0–671–52054–7. Paperback, $12.95. ISBN 0–671–52055–5. 1995. Reviewed by Samuel Totten.

Maita Floyd. Stolen Years, In My Little Corner of the World. Phoenix, Arizona: Eskualdun Publishers. $12.95. 1996. Reviewed by Carol Danks.

Julie Hamston and Kath Murdoch. Integrating Socially: Planning Integrated Units of Work for Social Education. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1996. 169 pages. Soft cover. ISBN 0–435–08899–8. Reviewed by John Douglas Hoge.