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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Global Social Forum Rhizome: A Theoretical Framework, Peter N. Funke
The Global Social Forum Rhizome: A Theoretical Framework, Peter N. Funke
Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications
This work draws on Deleuze and Guattari's image of the ‘rhizome’ to develop a framework for mapping and understanding the global social forum process and its implications for the broader global left. The image of the rhizome is insightful for analytically accentuating the nature and workings, as well as the challenges and contemporary shortcomings, of the social forum process and more generally the broader global movement(s). Thriving on multiplicity and thus lacking a dominant core or main axis, the social forum-as-rhizome emphasizes the multi-connectivity and heterogeneity of this process, which has no central actor, issue, strategy, or ideology, beyond the …
Communications Networks, Movements And The Neoliberal City: The Media Mobilizing Project In Philadelphia, Dan Berger, Peter N. Funke, Todd Wolfson
Communications Networks, Movements And The Neoliberal City: The Media Mobilizing Project In Philadelphia, Dan Berger, Peter N. Funke, Todd Wolfson
Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications
Using the Philadelphia-based organization Media Mobilizing Project as a case study, this article argues for a more sophisticated understanding of social movement networks. We argue that the fragmentation of the neoliberal city has increased the saliency of networked-based organizing. Contrary to much of the existing scholarly literature, however, we argue that such networks combine horizontal and vertical forms of organization, as well as online and offline media. Networks are not purely horizontal, nor are new media necessarily the best or most natural apparatus for developing networked social movements. Instead, we argue, radio and video may be better suited to connecting …