Debate - Forum 2013 Development and Change Transforming Activisms 2010+: Exploring Ways and Waves

Across the world, the beginning of this decade has seen an abrupt and seemingly contagious upwelling of civic activism against the prevailing economic and political order. Illustrations of what is going on can be seen in Latin America, such as in Chile, where students took the lead in public protest against neoliberal measures affecting education, or in Guatemala and Ecuador, where indigenous people rallied against illegal mining activities by transnational corporations. In Tunisia, a self-immolation triggered a popular uprising which toppled the regime of President Ben Ali. A common interpretation is that this regime-changing event initiated what would be called the start of the ‘Arab Spring’ when the revolutionary wave spread to Mubarak’s Egypt, Ghadaffi’s Lybia, Yemen and Assad’s Syria (Bayat, 2013). At the same time, while less spectacular, elsewhere in Africa mostly non-violent large scale protests against the behaviour of incumbent rulers were reported in Cote-d’Ivoire, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Nigeria, Sudan and Mozambique (Gabay, 2012). In India, Anna Hazare headed an unexpected, widely supported anti-corruption movement (Shah, 2011), followed in early 2013 by an unprecedented popular campaign to protect women’s rights. At the same time, in China artists have initiated and sustain critical debate on freedom of speech and access to information. In Washington DC activist groups against the Wall Street ‘financial mafia’ started a movement under the banner of ‘Occupy’ leading to similar indignados mass activism in hundreds of cities throughout the globe (Hayduk, 2012). These numerous geographically dispersed - but in one way or another related - acts of public defiance and rebellion, suggest that something exceptional is happening within and across multiple political landscapes. This Forum edition of Development and Change therefore contributes to debates about the nature and ‘why now?’ of multiple spontaneous civic mobilizations. Are these different from previous acts of popular upheaval and the social movements associated with them? And, do they signal a turning point away from a history of a waxing and waning of such activisms?