The World Social Forum: postmodern prince or court jester?

Owen Worth and Karen Buckley

Third World Quarterly, 2009, vol. 30, issue 4, 649-661

Abstract: Since its inauguration in 2001 the World Social Forum (wsf) has been heralded as an ‘open space’ for civil society in which the disparate groups that make up the anti-globalisation movement can gather and ‘articulate’ possible alternative worlds. This article regards as unconvincing the strategic aspirations of the wsf to contest neoliberal hegemony and propel a multilayered counter-hegemonic project of the form (to quote Machiavelli and Gramsci) of a ‘postmodern prince’. It is argued that the wsf is more exclusive than inclusive in its nature. Rather than being the expression of the anti-globalisation movement, the Forum has become a funfair for the expression of ideas from academics and ngo/government workers, which has led to a form of elitism that the wsf attempted to avoid at its inception. Thus, rather than creating any form of inclusive participatory ‘open space’, the article will conclude that the wsf serves to entertain rather than to counter any form of transformation within global civil society.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/01436590902867003

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