"The European Social Forum in comparison with Virtual Public Spheres within the Logic of the Democratic Functionalism"

Both at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social movements were emergent. They seemed diffused and unstructured, being made up of a multitude of associations whose cultural values were heterogeneous: socialist, anarchist, Catholic, human right-oriented, Union-based, environmentalist. Unlike other movements in the past, the internal divisions were seen as a source of strength rather than a weakness, so to be defined as a “movement of movements”, that is a polychrome subject situated in globalized societies. Moreover, the rapid emergence and worldwide proliferation of the Global Justice Movement (as it was said because its opposition to neoliberal globalization and its associated militarism) raised a number of questions that require rethinking social movement theory. Since the rise of democratic social mobilizations in the 18th and 19th century, technologies of communication became integral moments of their constituency, up to define the idea of modernity itself. Habermas argued that printed books, pamphlets and letters provided wide access to the ideas, critiques and social imaginaries of the Enlightenment. People gathered together in the bourgeois “public spheres”, i.e. salons, pubs, restaurants where citizens met each other to debate and negotiate consensual truths regarding politics and public affairs. Nowadays, the Global Justice Movement owes its existence to the linkages built up by Internet. Moreover, new forms of online social movement actions, cyber-activism, and cyber-politics seems to shape an opposition to neoliberal globalization strictly mediated across electronic networks. They clearly allow unprecedented opportunities for the exchange of information (outside the flows by main-stream media), but do they include all forms of contentious action? Does the future belong to the “electronically mediated network society” and to the mobilization enabled by computer-mediated communication (CMC)? The aim of the present work consists of showing the case of an European public sphere built up by collective mobilization and not limited to the virtual context: the European Social Forum. Still in the 21st century activists, associations and unions gather together once a year to discuss and debate about politics. They shape an “imagined” political community led to plans and strategies to realize alternatives to neoliberal globalization. They use Internet to reinforce the net of associations and to valorize the exchange of information, but they still prefer an “actual” meeting to an on-line forum. Because, as Marx proclaimed, neoliberal domination fosters material resistance.