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Battles in Seattle Redux : Transnational Resistance to a Neoliberal Trade Agreement
Author(s) -
Wainwright Joel,
Kim SookJin
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00622.x
Subject(s) - subaltern , transnationalism , articulation (sociology) , politics , negotiation , sociology , state (computer science) , gender studies , political economy , resistance (ecology) , political science , social movement , law , social science , ecology , biology , algorithm , computer science
This paper examines the possibilities and complexities of transnationalism through an analysis of political protests organized in Seattle against the Korea–US Free Trade Agreement, arguably the most significant bilateral trade negotiations involving the US state today. By studying the political practices of the Korean farmers' movement through participant research in Seattle from 4 to 9 September 2006, and revisiting the analysis of the 1999 “battles of Seattle” in recent work by Hardt and Negri, we argue that the concept “transnationalism” is potentially applicable to activists and subaltern social groups as much as states and elites, although these groups do not transnationalize through the same practices or in the same spaces. Our analysis of the protests aims to clarify the essentially spatial nature of political articulation (in Laclau's sense) that make the transnationalization of social movements possible.