Stability And Change In The Contours Of Alliances Among Movements In The Social Forum Process

Abstract

This chapter examines changes in the organizational space of the transnational social movements that are involved in the World Social Forum (WSF) process. It analyzes results obtained from surveys of participants in the WSF in 2005 in Porto Alegre, the WSF in 2007 in Nairobi and the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) that was held in Atlanta in 2007. The chapter examines the contours of the social movement connections found among WSF participants, and how these may be changing over time. Undoubtedly the locations of the meetings, the nature of the groups that sponsored the meetings, and the somewhat different purposes of the meetings, also influence the network structures that emerged at each meeting. While there is an interest in detecting and explaining the changes that occurred in the networks, one is also interested in the amount of stability. Keywords: changing structure; stable network structure; transnational social movements; U.S. SocialForum (USSF); World SocialForum (WSF)