A New Way of Doing Politics ? Global Justice Movements and the Cultural Logic of Networking

This article explores an emerging mode of political engagement among global justice activists in Barcelona and the transnational circuits through which they travel. Inspired by the Zapatistas and previous struggles against free trade, structural adjustment, and ecological destruction, activists have made innovative use of new technologies, creative direct action, and network-based organizational forms. I argue that what grassroots activists in Barcelona and elsewhere refer to as a «new way of doing politics» specifically involves a growing confluence among network-based technological infrastructures, network-based organizational forms, and network-based political norms, mediated by activist practice. Beyond morphology, networks are increasingly associated with values related to horizontal relations, participatory democracy, self-management, and decentralized coordination based on autonomy and diversity. The network has thus become a powerful political and cultural ideal, a guiding logic that provides a model of and model for emerging forms of directly democratic politics of local, regional, and global scope