Observing Protest from a Place

Social movements throughout the world have been central to history, politics, society, and culture. Observing Protest from a Place examines the impact of one such campaign, the global justice movement, as seen from the southern hemisphere. Drawing upon a collective survey from the 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar, the essays explore a number of vital issues, including the methodological problems of studying international activist gatherings and how scholars can overcome those challenges. By demonstrating the importance of the global justice movement and the role of nongovernmental organizations for participants in the southern hemisphere, this volume is an important addition to the literature on community action.

Johanna Siméant is professor of political science at the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne (CESSP), and has published La cause des sans-papiers (1998), Le travail humanitaire (2002), La grève de la faim (2009), Contester au Mali (2014) and edited books.|Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle is assistant professor of political science at Paris 1 Sorbonne University. She is currently director of the French Institute of Research in Africa (IFRA) in Nairobi (Kenya). Isabelle Sommier is Full Professor of Political Sociology at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University, former director of the CRPS (Centre de recherches politiques de la Sorbonne) and currently Deputy Director of the CESSP (Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, a fusion between CRPS and CSE Bourdieu institute). She has published on the theory of social movements, political violence, radicalization and terrorism.

Acknowledgements, Introduction, What can quantitative surveys tell us about GJM activists?. Activist encounters at the World Social Forum, Mapping a population and its taste in tactics, Women's issues and activists at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Division of labor and partnerships in transnational social movements, Making waste (in)visible at the Dakar World Social Forum, Latin Americans at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Tania Navarro Rodríguez and Héloïse Nez Groups and organizations at the WSF, Stepping back from your figures to figure out more, Conclusion, Technical appendix: Surveying an international event through a multinational team, General data on participants, Appendix to Chapter 8 on groups and organizations: Clusters obtained by Ascending Hierarchical Clustering, Questionnaire for participants to the Dakar World Social Forum, Editors' Biographies, Bibliography, Index