Global days of action, global public transcripts and democracy

Abstract

Democracy and global democracy figure prominently in a number of global manifestos and petitions, which were released in conjunction with the global days and months of action taking place between 2011 and 2012. Drawing primarily on James Scott, I examine the production, circulation and contestation of three global public transcripts invoking democracy – the Manifesto for Global Democracy, the Global May Manifesto and the People’s Petition. I bring to light the subterranean politics of global post-2010 activisms revealing alliances and divisions in the construction of meanings ascribed to global democracy. I extend this argument exploring the relations between intellectuals and protesting commoners, highlighting how intellectuals have contributed to the circulation of practices and language of democracy within contemporary social protests, and to the ascription of diverging meanings to democracy and its concrete possibilities.

Keywords:

• democracy
• global governance
• post-2010 activisms
• intellectuals
• democratic theory and democratic practices

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my graduate and undergraduate students who helped me to keep me interested in global governance, democracy and fleeting moments of global resistance. I would also like to express my gratitude to Katherine Allison, Anders Uhlin, Moira Nelson, Matthew Johnson, an encouraging anonymous reviewer, and all the people and activists I met and conversed with during the global days and months of actions and at several academic conferences where earlier drafts of this paper were presented.

Notes

1. This is represented in language, common sense, good sense and folklore.

2. Scott’s contribution to the study of class-based resistance is primarily a critique against the narrow view of political action employed by historians, political scientists, journalists and leaders of popular movement who have been searching for explanations on staged violent or peaceful collective action overlooking subterranean/everyday forms of political action (Scott 1989, 33).

3. This piece hopes to modestly complement earlier interventions on post-2010 activisms that, at the time, characterised the protests as disorganised and with no manifestos (Tormey 2012).

4. For Elias and Beasley (2009), activists tend to give gendered power a human face, making hegemonic masculinities a more tangible concept to grasp.

5. The Global Spring 2012 included global actions days on May Day, May 12, May 15 and May 18.

6. For an analysis of the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic politics of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development see Goodman and Salleh (2013).

7. Vrasti (2011, postscript) calls the occupations ‘pedagogies of democracy’.

8. Mary Hawkesworth (2006) provides an excellent critique of democracy and the common.

9. The full Manifesto can be viewed at: http://globaldemocracymanifesto.wordpress.com/english-2/

10. The transcript of the Global Democracy Manifesto launch is available from the author.