2. UNDERSTANDING AMIDST DIVERSITY
The alterglobal movements composed of differentiated initiatives and components, but it does not include all the groups that oppose current forms of globalisation. Indeed, it does not include those who oppose globalisation but who do not define themselves as members of the movement itself, or those who, despite attempting to join, are not considered to be part of the movement by existing members. Other groups that are not involved are those closed communities that do not define themselves as part of the movement, having not been involved in its construction and often even declaring their opposition to its objectives. This form of anti-globalisation community closure is pursued in developed countries and in other areas of the world through a range of strategies.
The strategies employed by such groups are often paramilitary and based on terrorism. In the United States this is exemplified in the American Militagroups and the Patriot Movement that seek to defend, even through force, the national political and cultural perogatives from interference by global organisations and power structures, to which federal government itself is subject (Castells 1997: 84/97). In Japan, in contrast, there are the followers of the cult Aum Shinrkyo, a group to which various acts of terrorism have been attributed, such as poison gas attack in the 1990s. Through its involvement in lucrative economic activity, this group aims to construct a virtual community, using modern information technologies. This virtual community would strive on the one hand to oppose any global government, that they believe would stem from multinationals and have as its agents American imperialists and the Japanese police, who are blamed for leading humanity towards a nuclear catastrophe. Such opposition would involve conflict that is predicted to provoke apocalyptic consequences. On the other hand, this virtual community would seek to organise social life for any survivors of this predicted catastrophe (Castells 1997: 99/104). A final example of community closure that is effected through terrorist strategies is found in Middle Eastern and Asian areas, with Islamic terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda, that seek to close communities off from globalisation, whose Western origins they condemn.
Such strategies of community closure may, elsewhere, be enacted in the political arena within the very framework of democratic institutions. In the European Union, for example, at the turn of the new Millennium, populist political formations emerged, such as the Lea Nord in Italy which espouses a regionalist, anti-state perspective, or the Front National in France that assumes a nationalist perspective. These groups aim to oppose globalisation and developments that they see as related to it, through achieving electoral influence. For these groups, related developments include the increasing power of the European institutions to the disadvantage of sovereign states; the globalisation of the economy that is considered damaging to the interests of the populations that they claim to represent and immigration, seen as an imminent threat to a presumed cultural integrity, that they consider to be formed through the constitution of regional and national communities that remain linked to their historical origins.
Besides its non-inclusion of antiglobalisation groups such as those just described, that do not share its position, the alterglobal movement does not easily embrace collectives that are moving generically in the same direction, but without having clearly untangled the web of community closure and determined identities that is tightly wound around affirmations of cultural specificity. For example, large polemics ensued at the 2003 European Social Forum in Paris on account of the presence of Tariq Ramadan, an intellectual who has attracted the attention of those involved in important Islamic initiatives in Europe, and who is accused by his alternative globalisation critics of not expressing clear views on community closure, human rights and the status of Muslim women in social life. These Islamic initiatives in turn, although based in many areas of high immigration like France, are not organically rooted within the alternative globalisation movement.
Shared action for alternative globalisation thus involves individuals, groups and organisations that defined themselves and recognise each other as equally constitutuve parts of the movement, but which nevertheless remain differentiated. This definition and reciprocal recognition become clear in the realisation of key initiatives, both those performed in local contexts that evoke the issue of globalisation and those that have global resonance. Differentiated initiatives include: that in Seattle, in November 1999, where environmentalists and American industrial trade unionists, traditionally distanced from one another, came together, although remaining distinct, in the same demonstration, indicating this union ironically with the slogan “Teamsters and Turtles, Together at Last” (Coburn 2003: 163); initiatives whose composition is even more varied, like the World Social Forums (Marcon, Pianta 2002); initiatives in which trade unionists, members of the new radical left, boy scouts and missionaries participate in the same demonstration, such as the European Social Forum in Florence, in 2002.
These affirmations of difference and reciprocal recognition do not prevent tensions developing. Indeed, tensions between component parts and members of initiatives arise during action, relating to various issues such as the affirmation of leadership (Cassin, 2003), modes of demonstration and approaches to violent behavior by groups like the Black Block. Therefore the alterglobal movement is formed as a shared action in which multiple differences are manifest, and tensions are apparent.
Indeed, the movement is developing without attempting to smooth over differences and by living these tensions, while, at the same time, the establishment of communication networks between the components, organisations, groups and individuals, enables the shared actions to be planned.
Subjective involvement in the construction of the movement relies on the construction of these networks. Subjective involvement in the movement often engenders the affirmation and defense of the individual specificity of anti-globalisation campaigners, for example in the activities of members of Reclaim the Street or the Disobbedienti, thus distinguishing them from others participating in the same initiatives and shared action. Elsewhere, as in the case of Italian industrial trade unionists, members of religious pacifist groups active in Italy, brazilian agricultural laborers (Glória Ghon: 114/131) and the indigenous people of Chiapas (Le Bot 1997), statements of affirmation and the defense of subjectivity refer to a group.
Although it is intended to highlight specificity and differences, subjective affirmation by alternative globalisation campaigners is expressed in three main common phases. The first consists of an awareness of impositions on one’s own existence and on social life by dominant forces, and of cultural perspectives that can be attributed to current forms of globalisation. The second stems from resistance to these impositions. The third derives from attempts to define and practice alternatives to these impositions. In order to affirm him or herself in the face of impositions whose spread elicits resentment, therefore, each individual subject, for example a member of the Disobbedienti or of an NGO who intervenes directly in less developed areas, or a group, such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas, resists and seeks alternatives.
Thus, even if involvement in the movement occurs in a context of differentiation and tension, it takes place subjectively through the adoption of shared cultural modalities. By adopting these modalities of feeling, resistance and the search for alternatives to increasing domination and impositions, individuals involved in the differentiated initiatives developed by the alterglobal movement come to share a common cultural framework.
On this framework they can rest the understandings that are established between elements of the movement in order to devise initiatives and activities. Across this shared framework channels of communication spread, activated through direct contact between members of groups, with recourse also to what are now the considered traditional methods of communication of the press, radio and television, as well as to modern information infrastructures. These channels connect multitudinous subjects and components with the movement whilst also enabling its messages and initiatives to progress and be expressed. In its most extensive form, this involvement occurs in relation to generic critiques of and proposals of alternatives to globalisation, for example, by those who condemn the current relationship between developed and less developed areas of the world, and who highlight the need for action to restore some form of equilibrium.
The circulation of information regarding these initiatives via communication channels enables the construction of communication networks, across which general agreements between components, organisations, groups and individual subjects interested in alternative globalisation—agreements that underpin the realisation of initiatives.
However, the activation of communication channels is also important for stronger agreements established between individual subjects, groups and organisations who use the same specific terms to define the constitutive stages of the initiatives in which they are involved. The question of the relationship between developed and less developed areas just mentioned, which is a generic element of the agreement that involves large swathes of the movement, also constitutes a stage of action defined in specific terms in particular contexts of relationships between components of the alternative globalisation movement. The activation of communication channels through reference to these specific definitions enables communication circuits to be developed through which strong agreements between campaigners are forged, which in turn enable them to establish specific contexts for action. Thus we find strong agreement on the question of the relationship between developed and less developed areas within groups like the Disobbedienti: they consider it to be one of the most pressing issues, and define it in terms of the economic, political and social impliations of recent aspects of capitalism, that are evident in a context of new imperial domination in which the United States plays a key role. These agreements enable a context of united mobilisation to be established by the Disobbedienti, which exists alongside other contexts established by those who define the same question in their own terms; that is, alongside further stages in the alternative globalisation initiatives which touch on this question. One such context is that of members of alternative globalisation NGOs who tackle this issue by criticising the allocation of investments of world finance, to which they attribute the latest increase in the gulf between developed and less developed areas. They maintain that to address this question we need direct intervention through international cooperation. In this way differentiated contexts are established that feature high volumes of communication—contexts which develop by connecting with each other in the construction of initiatives within broader schemes of action.

In this general context, as the communication circuits combine with the communication networks, they contribute to the overall structure of the movement, so that strong agreements are linked with generic agreements.

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