A Paper for the NIGD (Network Institute for Global Democratisation) Seminar at the World
Social Forum, on ’Global Democracy? A North-South Dialogue’ held on February 4 2002, at Amarzen, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Jai Sen, March-April 2002
Are other globalisations possible?
The slogan of the World Social Forum as it stands today is ’Another World Is Possible!’. This paper is an attempt to critically interrogate and reflect on the theory and practice of the World Social Forum as an idea.
I want to start by asking the question I was asked last night at dinner : Just what does the
’democratisation of globalisation’ mean? I recognise that this is a little different from the issue of ’global democratisation’ that we are concerned with here at this Seminar, but it is still this that is the question that is most commonly asked. To the person who asked me this question, it is a meaningless phrase; she insisted that since globalisation is -as she understands it- just another word for capitalism, and since you cannot democratise capitalism, the phrase has no real meaning -and is therefore an illusion.
This of course begs the question of whether ’globalisation’ can indeed be equated with capitalism, and vice-versa, and beyond this -and very relevantly for this Forum as a whole- just what ’globalisation’ is. Since the Forum originally took shape at a time of -and as part of- a wave of reaction against neoliberal globalisation in many parts of the world, it is understandable that it has been bracketed along with those who are said to oppose ’globalisation’ -the protestors of Seattle, Washington DC, Prague, Quebec City, Gothenburg, and Genoa. But I personally have been very glad to see, at this second Forum, that many speakers are being more precise (by using more specific terms such as ’neoliberal globalisation’), and -more importantly- that many here seem to accept that the Forum has moved far past a position of being only ’anti-globalisation’. See full text
See also:
The long march to another world
Reflections on the past year of the World Social Forum process in India, and internationally. January 2003. By Jai Sen.
World Social Forum 2003
Information on the third WSF, which took place in Porto Alegre from 23-28 January 2003. Choike in depth report.
