UC-R Transnational Social Movement Research Working Group: At the U.S. Social Forum

UCR Sociology professors Christopher Chase-Dunn and Ellen Reese and four graduate students attended the United States Social Forum in late June, 2007 in Atlanta, where they studied the participation of labor union activists and organizations.

 

The forum brought together progressive and Third World activists from various movements to build relationships, develop leadership and share analyses of problems that communities face around the world.

 

The UCR team asked people about their attitudes toward global citizenship, a democratic government, capitalism and global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations, Chase-Dunn said. They also asked which movements attendees are involved with, which allows researchers to see the network structure of links among movements.

 

“A huge challenge to the existing institutions of global governance has been provoked by the actions of world leaders in the last few decades and the global justice movement has the potential to democratize institutions at the local, national and global levels,” Chase-Dunn said. “We are also studying the relationships among the many transnational social movements that are participating in the social forum process.”

 

The sociologists have identified a multicentric network of movements, with five key movements playing the role of bridgers that connect the rest.

 

“This is a very robust network structure that cannot be easily split asunder by internal disagreements or by efforts to disorganize it by those who would oppose moving toward greater democracy and equality,” Chase-Dunn said.

 

Sociology graduate students who attended the Atlanta event are Matthew Kanishiro, Ashley Koda, Preeta Saxena and Gary Coyne. They were assisted by a UC Irvine graduate student in political science, Bridgette Portman, and a team of undergraduate sociology majors from the University of Idaho.

 

Other UCR sociology graduate students helped with surveys at World Social Forum events in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005 and Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007.

 

Chase-Dunn is director of UCR’s Institute for Research on World-Systems, which studies the rise and fall of civilizations, long-term processes of globalization and climate change.

 

Reports from the events in Atlanta, Nairobi and Porto Alegre are available online at http://www.irows.ucr.edu/research/tsmstudy.htm .