ABSTRACT
From their inception at the first World Social Forum (WSF), the Intercontinental Youth Camps (IYC) were sites of organizational experimentation. In particular, the camps in Porto Alegre, Brazil, were associated with “horizontalism.” Horizontalism became both an identity and a way of organizing and making decisions, and was associated with emerging anticapitalist social movements in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Although widely celebrated as an innovation by observers of the World Social Forum process and some participants in the camps in Porto Alegre, this horizontalist identity was not intrinsic to the Intercontinental Youth Camp as an institution.
