Les altermondialistes : des activistes transnationaux ?

Abstract

Anti-Globalization Activists: Transnational Actors ? Social forums are now some of the most salient instances of anti-globalization activism on both the European and the world scale. As such, and because they lend themselves to empirical investigation, studying them advances our knowledge of this “new cause.” This article, based on a collective multi-method study conducted during the European Social Forum in the Paris area in November 2003, describes the sociographic features of the participants and discusses two common beliefs about them. The first, popularized at the end of the 1990s, describes anti-globalization militants as “the losers of globalization.” Rather than bear this out, our survey findings point out their high level of cultural resources and strong job stability. The second, put forward mainly by North American studies, on the contrary analyses them as the cosmopolitan elites of an emerging “transnational civil society.” The article qualifies this thesis: their intense involvement in international issues is indeed distinctive, but the reasons for their commitment to fighting for “another form of globalization” and the resources they draw on derive mainly from the national context.