Abstract
Transnational social movement studies have long neglected the way activists from the South, and particularly from Africa, have participated in World Social Forum processes. Alterglobal activists have also been accused of neglecting or dominating southern voices. The organization of the WSF in Nairobi was seen as an opportunity to make African voices be heard. This examines how Africans activists participated in Nairobi, and the complex relationship they have to northern and other southern (such as Asia and Latin America) activists. The African alterglobal movement is seen as a space of tensions (i.e. between South Africans and the rest of the continent, between French and English speaking Africa, or between NGOs and more radical organizations) reflected in national mobilizations. Our team of 23 French and 12 Kenyan scholars made collective ethnographic observations in more than a hundred workshops and conducted 150 biographical interviews of African activists in order to examine how: Africa was referred to in the WSF; activists financed their trip to Nairobi; and Afrocentric, anti-imperialist, and anticolonial arguments have been used.
Highlights
A rich literature has developed on World Social Forums (WSF), regional Social Forums, and other transnational contentious gatherings, and scholars have carried on surveys on their composition and participation (Agrikoliansky and Sommier 2005; della Porta and Tarrow 2005), few studies have addressed what is at stake with the localization, both geographic and symbolic, of the Forums
Reflecting on Africa at the WSF in Nairobi means at the same time thinking about the emergence of an African alterglobalism, incarnated inter alia by the African Social Forum (ASF)
Examining African participation in the WSF suggests two important aspects that need to be taken into account in the study of transnational activism
Summary
A rich literature has developed on World Social Forums (WSF), regional Social Forums, and other transnational contentious gatherings, and scholars have carried on surveys on their composition and participation (Agrikoliansky and Sommier 2005; della Porta and Tarrow 2005), few studies have addressed what is at stake with the localization, both geographic and symbolic, of the Forums. Reflecting on Africa at the WSF in Nairobi means at the same time thinking about the emergence of an African alterglobalism, incarnated inter alia by the African Social Forum (ASF).1 It implies reflections on the diversity of transnationalized African networks (both in organizational and ideological terms), on the tensions between the latter, and on the complex relationship these networks have to northern, and other southern (such as Asia and Latin America) activists. We are not satisfied with the binary explanations of this activism (seen either as an emergent sui generis civil society, or as the “compradors” of an ever-patronizing North) This is why we would like to show how African activists managed to participate in the WSF in Nairobi and what the conflicts were surrounding the right to talk about, for, and from, Africa. A robust materialism is often what allows us, by pointing to the constraints of collective action in a transnational setting marked by huge divides in terms of resources, to understand what is at stake in ideological constructions that denounce injustices or build bridges amongst African activists themselves, or between them and other transnational activists
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