Introduction

Consider three momentary snapshots in the wax and wane of ongoing struggles over globalisation. In 1999, waves of protestors in Seattle succeed in shutting down the talks convened for starting a new round of trade negotiations for the World Trade Organisation. In 2000 the activist organisations who mobilised the ‘Battle of Seattle’ begin to organise workshops for potential recruits on the architecture of international financial regulation, trade flows and the rules and processes governing the World Trade Organisation. In 2002, in Oaxaco, Mexico, Zapotec indigenous people stage a peaceful nine-day hunger strike to demand access to basic goods like electricity and water, filling the town square with thousands upon thousands of cardboard cutouts in the shape of hands of all colours, waving their entreaty from long wooden stems grounded by clear plastic bags filled with earth.