ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the conceptual and historical background for the thesis by introducing two sites of contestation: knowledge and globalisation. The struggle over globalisation gained widespread visibility in the Global North in 1999, when thousands of people protested outside the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle. Knowledge as embodied in different systems of science, technology, and information flows affects the processes of globalisation, and is simultaneously a site of contestation, shaped by political, social, and economic systems. The emergence of the Occupy movement, arguably one of the most recent manifestations of the global justice movement, highlighted this, with many attempts from within the movement to build and share activist analyses. Scientific narratives have been mobilised to support the neoliberal project, and to delegitimise opponents of neoliberalism, while ICTs have played a crucial role in the recent restructuring of capitalism. Hypotheses are generated, experiments carried out, evidence generated, and results delivered, all perfectly objectively.
