Intercoll
Intercoll is a collective composed of social movements, activists and intellectuals involved in daily and concrete struggles, working to renovate critical thinking on the negative impact of global capitalism as well as developing economic, social, political and ecological (…)

Intercoll
Emerging countries, globalization and alter-globalization
Documents and Analyzes
January 2014
Intercoll wishes to acknowledge the generous support by the Hao Ran Foundation for this publication and this project. Many thanks also to CEDETIM (Paris) and the School of (…)

This paper is aimed at contributing to a better understanding of the relationship between religious politics and democracy in general, and political Islam and democracy in particular. For this purpose, the paper takes steps toward explaining the emergence of Turkey’s ruling Justice and (…)

This article explores Islamic politics in two Muslim- majority countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia, by linking their trajectories, from late colonial emergence to recent upsurge, to broad concerns of political economy, including changing social bases, capitalist transformation, (…)

This article explores the genesis of Indonesian political Islam and its interactions with the nationalist secular state in the immediate post-colonial era while examining some of the origins of the ‘radical’ stream that has garnered much attention in the current post-authoritarian period. It (…)

In the late 2010, a young man’s self-immolation in the suburbs of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, ignited a series of anti-government revolts from Tunisia to Egypt, and then to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). People’s desire to live more liberal and with more justice (…)

The Jasmine revolution resulting from North Africa and the Middle East has triggered a new wave of scholarly debates on the roles of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in contributing the democratic development and changes in authoritarian states. Against this backdrop, this article (…)

More than ten years after the first World Social Forum, in the context of the emergence of « new » mobilizations (Occupy, the Indignados, the uprisings and revolutions in the Arab world), Chico Whitaker reflects on the future of the WSF.
Although its radicalism, I consider this proposal (…)

Presentation to the IC of some considerations, results from contributions to the working-group. New comments and contributions from members of the WG are very welcome, as they can only enrich this document. All points are open to discussion.
#1. The current historical moment
The situation (…)

In an editorial to the issue #68 of the New Left Review dedicated to the Arab springs, Perry Anderson brings an historic perspective to the upheavals which occured all over the arab world in 2011. He recalls that the arab world has been characterized by two aspects : the unique longevity and (…)

Since 1979, economic reforms have led to a radical transformation of Chinese society. At the time of the planned economy, individual lives were being taken care of, and the citizens did not have to worry about
their present and future livelihood, over which they did not have much influence (…)

If accounting begins from the self-immolation of the Tunisian fruit seller, Mohamed Bouaziz, on 17 December 2010, we have entered the tenth month of the Mediterranean revolutions. The mercurial speed with which this impulse has spread is a testament to both the global spread of human discontent (…)

Katerina Dalacoura aborde les révolutions et les soulèvements des pays du monde arabe dans une perspective de comparaison par pays. Elle met en évidence la diversité des processus, de leurs causes et de leurs conséquences, mais aussi la pluralité des configurations politiques qu’ils ont générées (…)

The author analyzes the role of workers’ struggles and strikes in the revolutionary process ongoing in Egypt since January 2011. She also refers to the doctors’ and to the Al Azhar teachers, employees and students mobilizations in the recent months. She concludes that « The rebuilding of (…)

This interview with Gilbert Achcar, who is currently working on a book on the Arab revolutions, was conducted by Yvan Lemaitre, and published in the newspaper of the French NPA on July 28, 2011.
Yvan Lemaître — The smothering of all political life by the dictatorships obscured the (…)

Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the arab spring is the result of two simultaneous but contradictory currents. The first is the « second arab revolt », which aims at achieving the global autonomy of the Arab world that the « first Arab revolt » had sought to achieve. The second is the attempt by (…)

The current revolution in Egypt is led mainly by social movements. To understand the failure of the Egyptian regime in cracking down on the protests, examining the organisational profile and pattern of operations of a social movement is necessary.
Many people in academia, media and (…)

The primary argument of Lai’s work is that rapid economic growth has actually lead to an increased level of social protest in China during the reform-era period of the late 1990s and 2000s. He describes the situation in China as “pro-growth authoritarianism” (p. 820) in that the state is (…)

John Hariss’ introduction to the special issue on Globalization in the Global Labour Journal provides an effective overview and comparison of labour issues in China and India. Primarily, it looks at the different stresses and responses that organized labour and the broader working classes of the (…)

This article examines the rise and context of the “New Left” in China, as well as gives a basic introduction to its ideological formations. Carter explains that “progressive” is usually associated with Right Wing, where conservative is associated with the Left. The article gets into the (…)

Access to information is a fundamental universal human right. It can make the difference between prosperity and poverty, freedom and captivity, life and death.
Since 2009, The Rosetta Foundation has worked to eradicate the knowledge gap based on linguistic discrimination. We connect 13,000+ (…)

Walmart blocked autonomous union elections in its supermarkets/shops, shutdown non-profitable shops without proper compensation for workers, force workers to sign on worse working standards, surveillance at workplace, etc. In this context we could discuss how to support the Chinese workers’ (…)

Since the beginning of the new period, which started with the eruption of the May 15 movement in 2011 and later with the creation of Podemos in Jaunary 2011, the main debate between the growing number of social activists and politicians who have become involved in this cycle of repoliticisation (…)

Social policies and the wellbeing of the planet demand that financial resources which are currentlyn put towards speculation should be redirected towards the inclusion, in a productive way, of the poor, and towards a productive paradigm which won’t destroy the planet. How can we ensure financial (…)

In light of the end of the progressive governments’ cycle in Latin America and the obstacles encountered by the Syriza in Greece, how the social movements that preserve a transforming horizon must deal with the institutional path? In this sense, what lessons can be learned from revolts and (…)

Questions asked by partner websites
1. Humanitarian disasters, climate victims: Where is our international solidarity? Pierre Rousset, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
2. The new relationship between social movements and political parties in the light of the recent experience in Spain, Josu (…)

In the past, our social protection systems were organised at the national level. And even if, in developing countries, they have never been fully developed, before the ‘structural adjustment’ programmes of the 1980s and after, they all had social protection. To-day, these programmes are faced (…)

We are living a time of humanitarian disasters with multiple causes: geopolitical war, tear of social ties consumed by the neoliberal order, global ecological crisis ... But the social and progressive movements have since long abandoned the field of "assistance" to parastatal institutions, to (…)

Intercoll is an open space of development and confrontation of social and citizen movements. The ambition is to help the gradual emergence of a new "international collective intellectual" from the intellectual production of movements and research networks, and popular education connected to (…)

The spirit inspired of the WSF in Porto Alegre since 2001 is the coming together in a non-hierarchical fashion of the world family of anti-systemic movements to push for intellectual clarity, militant actions based on popular mobilization that can be seen as immediately useful in people’s lives, (…)

Montreal – August 2016 A paper by Maher Hanin – Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (F.T.D.E.S), KacemAfayaTunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) (Tunisia)
This new WSF session occurred here in Montreal on the second week of August in an opportune moment. In fact, many events happened (…)

It is known to all that WSF related processes have always been complex and with profound divergences between the multiple political nuances and involved actors. This fact should not be of any surprise to anyone. It is not an easy task to aspire the organization of an international joint action (…)

Summary: When the World Social Forum was conceived and other mobilisations shook the the neo liberal system, the focus was on global popular resistance, on what we do not want. The World Social Forum appeared on the global scene with a slogan of hope, of the need for a vision “Another World is (…)

For over a decade, the WSF was a political and social incubator taking into account the diversity of experiences and movements. Since, the challenge of articulating how the world of "organizations and other forms of collective action work in planning events and mobilization, has become more (…)

The Social Forum was born in this city in the south of Brazil where was played an innovative experience of popular mobilization and organization at a moment when Brazil and several Latin American countries were living a real democratic transition. The WSF has allowed the transmission of these (…)

New social movements are expanding in recent years as regards to citizens’ initiatives outside traditional channels (one example is the Occupy movement). Organizations such as trade unions are also involved in the construction of alternatives, without occupying the central place that was theirs (…)

For some people, the World Social Forum has no more political impact and is limited to debate spaces without consequences. For further questioning, the displacement of the WSF to the north has several barriers to participation. Suddenly, a huge pressure is exerted on the preparation of the WSF (…)

With the advent of the Forum: the war and the resistance to war
What has been the strength of the World Social Forum at first, it is the overall-prevention-and-permanent war of George W. Bush. There was a willingness to act to oppose the new imperialist war that threatened the planet. Today, (…)