ABSTRACT
The global justice movement (GJM) became visible through counter-summits that, as in Seattle in 1999 and in Genoa in 2001, contested the ofcial summits of international governmental organizations, especially the G8, World Bank and IMF, WTO, and the EU. However, perhaps the movement’s most signicant cultural innovation has been social forums, set up as spaces of engagement and exchange among activists. Although the rst large-scale social forum, the World Social Forums (WSF), was in part organized as an alternative summit-scheduled to coincide with the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland-it was conceived as an independent space for encounters among civil society organizations and citizens. Generally, social forums emphasize creating networks of diversity, multiple discourses and identities, and face-to-face engagement that parallel some versions of postmodern models of cultural practice. Social forums are guided by the high valuation of one overarching ideology, diverse in its many facets and practice, that of deliberative or participatory democracy.
