‘Dialectics of presence’ at the World Social Forum

There was an ambiguous dialectics of presence at the 2011 World Social Forum (WSF) in Dakar, Senegal. An array of colour and festivity accompanied the opening march of about 60,000 to produce an upbeat expression of diversity and celebration that was later disrupted through organizational chaos and confusion at Cheikh Anta Diop University, where thousands of people from an estimated 130 countries gathered from 6-9 February.1 Revolts and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Sudan formed a backdrop against the unfolding of the forum. There was a sense, expressed by some participants, that Senegalese authorities reacted through deploying riot police at the opening march and stepping back from earlier support for the forum. Nonetheless, President Wade of Senegal was in attendance, President Evo Morales of Bolivia played a part in the opening ceremonies, and the forum culminated with the news that Hosni Mubarak had resigned in Egypt. In a view confirmed by many participant accounts, the forum was marked by ‘confusion, confounded’ with ‘classrooms filled with students, inadequate signage, tents that lacked facilities (chairs, interpretation and audio-visual equipment), programmes-late and insufficient’ (Kumar, in Alloo et al. 2011: 220). Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ‘and men speaking on behalf of the down trodden populace across the globe’, rather than social movements, dominated the space according to another account (Longwe, in Alloo et al. 2011: 225). It was also innovative according to the main decision-making, non-deliberative body of the forum, the International Council (WSF 2011). The Assembly of Social Movements was vibrant and well attended; large caravans of people arrived from West Africa and the Maghreb; remote participation with people in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and other countries was facilitated through the Dakar Extended project; and the forum was freely open to the public, in contrast to, for example, the 2007 Nairobi, Kenya, WSF in the south of the continent. Seeing the World Social Forum through ‘global civil society’ in this chapter

offers a wider conceptual lens through which to consider modes of social relation towards the global political economy than focusing on social forces, anti-globalization movements, new social movements, global social movements, multitude, or the post-modern prince might enable alone. Present also at the

forum are often neglected individuals, indigenous peoples and members of non-governmental organizations, trade unions, political parties, cultural and religious groups.2 While seldom conceptually interrogated, global civil society is frequently conjectured in relation to the World Social Forum. According to one assessment, the inception of the WSF captured progressive civil societal developments which were already underway ‘across continents, nations and cities and around a variety of themes’ (Wainwright 2005: 109). The WSF, we are also told, has fulfilled critical functions for global civil society through providing a physical and temporal meeting space; allowing it to retreat, energize and chart future directions; and providing a site and space to discuss, debate and elaborate an alternative world order (Bello 2007). If we want to speak of global civil society, although challenging in the absence of a mechanism to ensure global civic rights, the forum would be the site of an ‘emancipatory’, as opposed to ‘liberal’, global civil society (Santos 2006a: 42-43). It is considered, nonetheless, that ‘the WSF is one of the most promising civil society processes that may both contribute significantly to global democracy initiatives, and possibly constitute such an initiative itself ’ (Patomäki and Teivainen 2004a: 124) and that ‘the WSF is the most substantial initiative of the counter-hegemonic and emancipatory global civil society’ (Caruso 2007: 105). Confirming this significance, it has also been suggested that ‘[g]iven its scope and breadth as well as its focus on some of the most urgent conflicts of our day, the WSF is arguably the most important social and political development of our time’ and calls for far more attention from social scientists (Velitchkova et al. 2009: 194). However, global civil society at the forum merits much further consideration,

particularly if the WSF is considered to stand out as ‘a new major space created by and for global civil society’ (Patomäki and Teivainen 2004a: 212), or indeed if the ‘pre-figurative politics’ of the WSF is thought to enact the world which it envisages through presenting a new form of global governance and civil society (Smith et al. 2008: 25, 132). I consider such representations in this chapter through the WSF ‘strategy of convergence’ for ‘another possible world’ to bring together groups and movements of global civil society and facilitate the contested creation of an ‘open space’ or ‘movement of movements’. In looking for a ‘dialectics of presence’ at the World Social Forum, the sense of ‘place’ of global civil society and the social relations in which they are engaged are construed in this chapter as part of the dialectics of order and change in the global political economy (cf. Drainville 2004: 163, 32). The more recent consolidation of the strategy of convergence, whereby reconciliation appears to have been reached between contending perspectives, presents some real challenges for any assessment of the ‘creative tensions’ and ‘new politics’ of the forum process (Smith et al. 2008; Velitchkova et al. 2009), particularly in the context of preparations for the 2013 WSF in Tunisia as the forum attempts to address its perceived disconnection from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) uprisings.3