ABSTRACT
We live in an epoch of global shifts matched by equal doses of ambivalence, risk and uncertainty. What we have come to understand as globalisation and informationalisation represents an entirely novel phase in the growing complexity of human action and relationships, stretched over an increasingly seamless horizon of time, space and places. These developments have been generously characterised by their innate resistance to political crisis management by nation-states and even concerted actions by social movements. The Fordist restructuring of localised forms of praxis and knowledge has entered into profound conflict with structures put in place by the national economies of the late twentieth century, to follow them into the twenty-first. Indeed, there is every indication that we are witnessing the development of a new world (dis)order. One thing is certain, as the modern world system globalises-never before have local practices, or the definition of what constitutes the boundaries of locally defined space, appeared as relevant to our understanding of collective action and social movement activities.
