Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic Practice in the Alterglobalization Movement

Abstract

In most accounts of social movements, prefiguration and strategy are treated as separate movement practices that are either contradictory or complementary to each other. In this article I argue that in the case of the alterglobalization movement, we have to understand prefiguration itself as strategic. When movement goals are multiple and not predetermined, then prefiguration becomes the best strategy, because it is based in practice. By literally trying out new political structures in large-scale, inter-cultural decision-making processes in matters ranging from global politics to daily life, movement actors are learning how to govern the world in a manner that fundamentally redesigns the way power operates. This process constitutes a prefigurative strategy in which movement actors pursue the goal of transforming global politics, not by appealing to multilateral organizations or nation-states, but by actively developing the alternative political structures needed to transform the way power operates.